Jennifer Howard

“Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,” said the Rat. “And that’s something that doesn’t matter, either to you or me. I’ve never been there, and I’m never going, nor you either, if you’ve got any sense at all. Don’t ever refer to it again, please. Now then! Here’s our backwater at last, where we’re going to lunch.” (Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows) The British have decided it’s time to stop messing about (in boats or anywhere else) and give Ratty the water vole some serious legal protection. Not a minute too soon, the Guardian reports: Water… Read more...

The Library of Congress wants to turn its European Reading Room into display space for an exhibit in honor of Abraham Lincoln. (2009 is his bicentennial.) Scholars do not think this is a good idea. Not only do they like the space—and it really is a knockout—they like the multilingual research support they get there. Does the proposed move mean that the Library now cares more about tourism than it does about research? Read more here (subscription required) and here…. Read more...

Literary Rejections on Display (“Join the Revolution, Join the Pity Party”): Sanctioned by Entertainment Weekly, and sure to make you smile. Through gritted teeth. Remember this: Someone out there will always say no. Can you tell I got a rejection today? One of the better, more thoughtful ones—much to admire, etc. etc.—which only makes it worse…. Read more...

Did Coleridge translate Goethe’s Faust? Two Romanticists say yes. Others say no. Passionate debate ensues. I’ve written about the devilish kerfluffle here. As one of my sources told me, “Coleridgeans are not known for their unanimity.”… Read more...

And, as the Chronicle reports today (subscription required), the students have won: The University of Iowa has backtracked on a plan to post all graduate students’ theses online and make them freely available to the public. The reversal came in response to vigorous protests last week from students in the university’s prestigious graduate program in writing, who said that the plan could threaten the commercial value of their novels, plays, and other creative works. Reax here and here (see the comments) and here…. Read more...

My friend Jim Hynes, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, tipped me off yesterday that students there are up in arms about a new university policy that requires them to make their dissertations available open access—as in free—in order to graduate. We’re talking fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction here, not scholarly work. The students, understandably, are worried that this may scotch their chances of getting publishing contracts for their work. My Chron colleague Andrea Foster had an excellent story today about it (subscription required). Open-access guru Peter Suber responds on his blog here: I defend OA for electronic theses… Read more...