ERIC GIDAL
Business Address: Department of English
University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242
Phone: 319-335-1510
E-mail:
EDUCATIONAL AND PROFESSIONAL HISTORY
1. Higher Education
University of Michigan, 1990-95, English Language and Literature
Ph.D., 1995; MA, 1992.
Brandeis University, 1984-88, English and American Literature
BA, 1988.
2. Professional and Academic Positions
Associate Professor, 2002-present, University of Iowa.
Visiting Professor, Spring 2012, Spring 2004, Université Montpellier III.
Assistant Professor, 1996-2002, University of Iowa.
Lecturer, 1995-96, University of Michigan.
Teaching Fellow, 1991-94, University of Michigan.
Course Assistant, 1990-91, University of Michigan.
Instructor, 1989-90, Ecumenical Social Action Committee, Boston, MA.
3. Honors and Awards
Career Development Award, Fall 2012
Stanley International Programs-Obermann Center Research Fellowship, 2006-7.
Career Development Award, Spring 2006.
Arts and Humanities Initiative Award, 2005-6.
Collegiate Teaching Award, 2004.
Old Gold Summer Fellowship, 1997.
Mellon Dissertation Fellowship, 1994-95.
Mellon Pre-Candidacy Fellowship, 1993.
4. Memberships
Modern Language Association
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
North American Society for the Study of Romanticism
North American Victorian Studies Association
Germaine de Staël Society for Revolutionary and Romantic Studies
TEACHING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
1. Teaching Assignments, 2005-13.
Semester, Year / Advisees / Courses Taught / Students EnrolledUndergraduate / Graduate
Fall 2013 / 3 / ENGL:2338:0001 (008:062:001): 18th Century British Literature / 25
ENGL:2309:0001(008:078:001): Selected British Authors Before 1900 / 23
Spring 2013 / 4 / ENGL:2338:0001 (008:062:001): 18th Century British Literature / 26
ENGL:6400:0001 (008:223:001): Romantic Literature / 9
Fall 2012 / 4 / CDA
Spring 2012 / 4 / Montpellier Exchange
Fall 2011 / 4 / 8:62 Eighteenth-Century Literature / 27
8:120 Honors Thesis Workshop / 12
Spring 2011 / 5 / 8:62 Eighteenth-Century British Literature / 25
8:112 Literature and Culture of the Romantic Period / 20
Fall 2010 / 5 / 8:120 Honors Thesis Workshop / 10
8:421 Seminar: Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literatures / 8
Spring 2010 / 1 / 5 / 8:63 British Romanticism / 31
8:112 Literature and Culture of the Romantic Period / 30
Fall 2009 / 1 / 4 / 8:35 Introduction to Poetry / 26
8:78 Selected British Authors Before 1900: William Blake / 28
Spring 2009 / 4 / 8:63 British Romanticism / 29
8:98 Honors Proseminar: The Image and the Word / 13
Fall 2008 / 3 / 8:62 Eighteenth-Century British Literature / 27
8:222 Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature / 13
Spring 2008 / 1 / 2 / 8:63 British Romanticism / 26
8:168 Topics in Poetry and Poetics: Elegies and the Elegiac / 7
Fall 2007 / 1 / 1 / 8:62 Eighteenth Century British Literature / 27
8:78 Selected British Authors: William Blake / 25
Spring 2007 / 1 / 8:63 British Romanticism / 32
8:421 Seminar: Restoration and 18th Century Literature / 7
Fall 2006 / 8:177 Literature and Art / 21
Spring 2006 / Career Development Award
Fall 2005 / 1 / 8:112 Literature and Culture of the Romantic Period / 22
8:177 Literature and Art / 17
Spring 2005 / 1 / 8:35 Introduction to Poetry / 32
8:63 British Romanticism / 29
2. Students Supervised
Degree Objective / Student Name / Years / OutcomePh.D. candidates / Robin Barrow / 3 / Degree awarded
Melissa Donegan / 1 / comprehensive exams completed
Bridget Draxler / 3 / Degree awarded
Geoffrey Kaeuper / 1 / comprehensive exams completed
Josh Kotzin / 1 / comprehensive exams completed
Margaret Loose / 1 / comprehensive exams completed
Jennifer Howell / 2 / Degree awarded
Christine A. Mazurkewycz / 5 / comprehensive exams completed; dissertation completed
Bryan Mangano / 4 / comprehensive exams completed; dissertation completed; degree awarded.
Thomas Maclean / 2 / Degree awarded
Patty McLain / 1 / comprehensive exams completed
Mary Moran / 2 / Degree awarded
Scott Nowka / 3 / Degree awarded
Annemarie Pearson / 1 / Qualifications completed
Anne Stapleton / 3 / Degree awarded
Rebecca Roma Stoll / 3 / Comprehensive exams completed
Katherine Wetzel / 1 / Qualifications completed
Andrew Williams / 4 / Comprehensive exams completed
Missa Yook / 2 / Degree awarded
Undergraduate / Kristine Sherman / 1 / Independent Study Completed
Honors / Margot Gregory / 1 / Honors Thesis Completed
Sherrie Lumm / 1 / Honors Thesis Completed
Rebecca Mnuk / 1 / Honors Thesis Completed
Andrew Williams / 1 / Honors Thesis Completed
3. Other Contributions to Instructional Programs
Director, English Honors Program, 2009-2013.
Chair, Honors Program and Leadership Task Force, 2008-9.
Graduate Admissions Committee, 2007-8.
Undergraduate Advising Committee, 2007-8.
Presentation at Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Interdisciplinary
Colloquium, Fall 2008.
Co-curator, William Blake at 250, exhibition and events, 2007-8.
Chair, Curriculum Committee, 2003-7.
Associate Chair and Director for Undergraduate Studies, 2002-5.
Chair, Task Force on the Undergraduate Curriculum, 2002-3.
Associate Director, General Education Literature, 2000-2.
Presentation at Faculty Colloquium on Interdisciplinary Pedagogy, Fall 1998.
Presentation at Faculty Colloquium on Undergraduate Instruction, Spring 1997.
SCHOLARSHIP
1. Publications
a. books
Poetic Exhibitions: Romantic Aesthetics and the Pleasures of the British Museum. Cranbury, N.J.: Bucknell University Press, 2001.
b. articles
“Conversation, Censorship, and National Literature: Mme de Staël’s De l’Allemagne and the British Reviews.” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (2011:12): 263-76.
“Melancholy, Trauma, and National Character: Mme de Staël’s
Considérations sur les principaux événements de la Révolution français” Studies in Romanticism 49.2 (2010): 261-92.
“Museum Elegies” in The Oxford Handbook to the Elegy, ed.
Karen Weisman (Oxford University Press, 2010) 620-36.
“‘A gross and barbarous composition’: Melancholy, National
Character, and the Critical Reception of Hamlet in the Eighteenth Century” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 39 (2010): 235-62.
“’O happy Earth! reality of Heaven!’: Melancholy and Utopia in
Romantic Climatology”
Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 8.2 (2008): 74-
101.
“Mme de Staël and the Sociology of Melancholy”
The English Malady: Enabling and Disabling Fictions
Ed. Glenn Colburn, Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008.
“British Romanticism in the Museum Age: A Review of Recent
Scholarship”
Literature Compass 3.2 (2006): 127-37.
“Civic Melancholy: English Gloom and French Enlightenment”
Eighteenth-Century Studies 37.1 (2003): 23-45.
“Prospect and Form in the Eighteenth-Century Progress Poem”
Richerche di Storia dell'arte 72 (2000): 21-28.
“Wordsworth’s Art of Memory.”
Studies in Romanticism 37.3 (1998): 445-75.
“Playing with Marbles: Wordsworth’s Egyptian Maid.”
The Wordsworth Circle 24.1 (1993): 3-11.
c. reviews
The Ecological Thought
By Timothy Morton. Studies in Romanticism 50 (2011): 371-75.
The Illustrated Shakespeare, 1709-1875
By Stuart Sillars. Nineteenth-Century Literature 65.1 (2010): 93-96.
Imagining the Gallery: The Social Body of British Romanticism
By Christopher Rovee. The Wordsworth Circle 37.4 (2006): 202-3.
Coleridge’s Melancholia: An Anatomy of Limbo
By Eric G. Wilson. The Wordsworth Circle 36.4 (2005): 159-61.
Desire and Excess: The Nineteenth Century Culture of Art
By Jonah Siegel. Modern Philology 100 (2002): 304-7.
The Visual and Verbal Sketch in British Romanticism.
By Richard Sha. Keats-Shelley Journal 49 (2000): 215-17.
The Sculpted Word: Keats, Ekphrasis, and the Visual Arts.
By Grant F. Scott. Keats-Shelley Journal 46 (1997): 194-96.
2. Published Reviews of Scholarship
Poetic Exhibitions
Allan Rawes (The Yearbook of English Studies 34 (2004): 255.
Nigel Leask (History Workshop Journal 56.1 (2003): 267-71.
James Heffernan (European Romantic Review 14.3 (2003):376-80.
Gillen D’Arcy Wood (The Wordsworth Circle 33.4 (2002): 159-60.
3. Invited Lectures and Conference Presentations (since 2005)
“The Testimony of the Rocks: Speculative Geology, Industrial Archaeology and the Search for Ossian” North American Victorian Studies Association, Pasadena, CA, October, 2013.
“Consuming Passion, Staging Culture: Macpherson's Ossian and Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloïse” Consuming Passions, Economies of Desire in French Literature and Arts, 1100-1815, Washington University, St. Louis, October 2013.
“Ossianic Telegraphy: Bardic Networks and Imperial Relays”
Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society, Paris, France, July 2013.
“In Search of Ossian: Collecting and Locating Tradition”
Iowa Humanities Festival, Des Moines, Iowa, March 2013.
“Ossianic Unconformities: Bardic Poetry in the Industrial Age” Eighteenth-Century Salon, Washington University, St. Louis, November 2011 (invited and sponsored presentation).
“Ossianic Unconformities” Eighteenth Century Scottish Studies Society, Aberdeen, Scotland, July 2011; North American Society for the Study of Romanticism, Montreal, November 2011; British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Oxford, UK, January 2012.
“Conversation, Censorship, and National Literature: Mme de Staël’s De l’Allemagne and the British Reviews” National Languages and Literatures in Early Modern Europe, Rutgers University, NJ, September, 2010 (invited and sponsored).
“Climate and Character in the Romantic Essay” North American Society for the Study of Romanticism, Vancouver, BC, August, 2010.
“Teaching Germaine de Stael’s Corinne” (roundtable participant) American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Albuquerque, NM, March 2010.
“Climate and Character in the English Essay”
Modern Language Association
Philadelphia, PA, December 2009
“Melancholy Figures: Portraiture, Caricature, and the English Malady in the Eighteenth Century”
Modern Language Association
Philadelphia, PA, December 2009
“Elegiac Nationalism: Mourning Germaine de Staël in the Pages of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine”
International Germaine de Staël Symposium
Washington University in St. Louis, MO, May 2009
North American Society for the Study of Romanticism
Duke University, May 2009
“‘O Happy Earth! reality of Heaven!’: Utopia and Melancholy in Romantic Climatology”
North American Society for the Study of Romanticism
Toronto, OT, August 2008.
“Hamlet’s Melancholy Character”
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Portland, OR, March 2008.
“Ethnographies of Romantic Melancholy: Mme de Staël in Italy”
Centro Interdisciplinare di Studi Romantici / North American
Society for the Study of Romanticism
Bologna, IT, March 2008.
“Locating Melancholy: Mme de Staël and the Sociological
Imagination”
Modern Language Association
Chicago, IL, December 2007.
“Climate and Melancholy in Early Social Theory”
Society for the Study of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Portland, ME, November 2007.
“Melancholy and Social Critique in the Romantic Age”
North American Conference on British Studies (invited)
Boston, MA, November 2006.
North American Society for the Study of Romanticism
Purdue University, September 2006.
“Mme. de Staël and the Sociology of Melancholy”
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Montreal, March, 2006.
“Cosmopolitan Melancholy: Sorrow and the European Union”
European Studies Conference
University of Nebraska, Omaha, October 2005.
“The Sociology of Melancholy”
Mid-Western American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Indiana State University, Terre Haute, October 2005.
SERVICE
1. Profession
Editor, Philological Quarterly, 2013-present.
Review Editor (Romanticism), Romanticism and Victorianism on the
Net (http://www.ron.umontreal.ca/), 2008-2013.
Editorial Board, Philological Quarterly, Literature Compass.
Editorial Reader for Comparative Literature, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Eighteenth-Century Culture, European Romantic Review, Genre, Literature Compass, Nineteenth-Century Contexts, Philological Quarterly.
Proposal Review, Cambridge University Press.
2. Department
Director, English Honors Program, 2009-2013.
Executive Committee, Fall 2010.
Chair, Honors Program and Leadership Task Force, 2008-9.
Graduate Admissions Committee, 2007-8.
Undergraduate Advising Committee, 2007-8.
Chair, Curriculum Committee, 2003-7.
Associate Chair and Director for Undergraduate Studies, 2002-5.
Chair, Task Force on the Undergraduate Curriculum, 2002-3.
Associate Director, General Education Literature, 2000-2.
Executive Committee, 1998-99.
Search Committee, 1999-2000; 1998-99; 1997-98.
Graduate Qualification Committee, 1999-2000.
General Education Faculty Adviser, 2000-2001; 1999-2000; 1998-99; 1996-
97.
Assistant for Undergraduate Advising, 1997-98.
Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, 1996-98.
3. College
Scholarship Committee (2010-present).
Faculty Assembly, 2006-2009.
Curriculum Committee, European Studies Group, 2004-5.
4. University
Arts and Humanities Initiative Review Panel (2013-present).
UI Honors Executive Committee (2011-2013).
International Programs Executive Committee (2009-present).
Director, Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Interdisciplinary Colloquium, 2009-present (Advisory Board, 2004-present).
Faculty Senate, 2008-2011.
Chair, HLC Self-Study Subcommittee, Education within the Major, 2006-7.
Reader, Obermann / International Programs Stanley Award Fellowships, Fall 2006.
5. Community
Board of Adjustments, Iowa City Department of Planning and Zoning, 2002-4.