Dunlap Fellowship and Morris Society Award Project Reports
Since 1996, the William Morris Society in the United States Annual Fellowship (Now named in honor of the late Joseph Dunlap) has supported research and creative work related to William Morris, his causes, and his circle of associates.
2007: Elizabeth Carolyn Miller: Ms. Miller received her Ph. D. at the University of Wisconsin in 2003, and is the author of a book manuscript, Framed: The New Woman Criminal in British Culture at the Fin de Siecle. Now an assistant professor at Ohio University, she describes her current Morris-related book project, Print Culture and Late-Victorian Literary Radicalism: Progress on this project will entail a sustained period of research time at the International Institute of Social History, which houses two archives crucially relevant to my project: the archives for the Socialist League (William Morris’s influential political organization) and for its newspaper, the Commonweal. Two chapters of Print Culture and Late-Victorian Literary Radicalism require research in these archives: Chapter One, which focuses on artist-writer-activist William Morris, and Chapter Three, which focuses on the role of poetry in the late-Victorian radical press. Chapter One considers the apparent conflict between Morris’s depiction of print in his political novels and in his own print career. The utopia News from Nowhere and the dream-vision A Dream of John Ball both conceive of print as an industrial, alienating medium and anticipate a post-print society, but while writing these novels, Morris was also engaged in editing and writing for the Commonweal (where both novels originally appeared) and in printing numerous cheap political pamphlets for the Socialist League. Literary critics who discuss textuality in Morris’s neo-Medieval novels have not adequately accounted for his active career in political print. My project shows how critical claims regarding Morris’s “nostalgia” for oral culture fail to capture the complex analysis of media that winds through his oeuvre. I argue that the novels exhibit a sophisticated understanding of mass print’s inevitable limitations as a political medium, and a corresponding recognition of the textual foundations of modern cultural memory and cultural change. To fully understand Morris’s ambivalent relationship with print, however, I need to examine the papers that document production of his own newspapers and pamphlets. These will elucidate his day-to-day negotiation of how to make a social impact via print. Chapter Three, meanwhile, will provide the first sustained analysis of poetry published in late-Victorian socialist and anarchist periodicals. These publications typically included at least one poem per issue, most of which have not previously been subject to close discursive analysis, but I argue that they played a key role in late-Victorian radical discourse. Poetry functioned to represent the relationship between tradition (signified by language and poetic form) and change (signified by the poems’ revolutionary themes); more abstractly, it examined print’s loss of authority amid mushrooming periodical organs and accelerating textual production. Ultimately, this chapter will include quantitative analysis of the kind of poetry included in radical journals as well as close examination of numerous individual poems. As the most "literary" and influential of the era’s radical journals, the Commonweal will be a centerpiece of my analysis, and Morris’s role as poetry editor will be as relevant as his role as radical poet. Working-class readers often contributed poems to the Commonweal, and many of these were printed anonymously. Access to the Commonweal archives at the International Institute of Social History will provide background on contributors and offer insight into editorial decisions about which poems to include in the paper." 2006: Anna Matyukhina: Anna is the curator of the Acquisitions Department of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, and a specialist in the history of tapestry weaving who is currently completing a Ph.D. in art history at St. Petersburg State University on "The Traditions of Medieval Tapestry Weaving and the Tapestry Revival: William Morris." Anna gave a talk on "William Morris and Tapestry Weaving: The View from Russia" at the Morris in the 21st Century Conference in London last July. She has also contributed material in Russian to the Morris Society web site, and her article on "The Adoration Tapestry" appeared in the Society's January 2006 Newsletter. As a teacher of English to art history students, she introduces Morris's writings in her classes and has planned a new half-year course on Morris to be taught in the fall. The award will enable her to conduct dissertation research on Morris and Co. tapestries in Oxford, Cambridge and Birmingham. 2005: Piers J. Hale: Piers received his doctorate from the Department of History at Lancaster University, England in 2003. In his thesis, entitled For Ecosocialism: Re-reading William Morris, Robert Blatchford and Edward Carpenter on Labour, Nature and Embodiment, 1884-1900, he examined nineteenth-century socialist conceptions of the relationship between sustainability and justice. Piers is currently engaged in post-doctoral research at the University of British Columbia, where he teaches classes in ethics and in the history of science. On learning of his nomination, Piers wrote: "I would like to express my gratitude to the William Morris Society and to Mrs. Dunlap in particular for the generous award you have given me under the Jospeh R. Dunlap Memorial Fellowship. I am honoured to be one of the Dunlap Memorial Scholars for the coming year and shall endeavour to extend our knowledge of Morris with my research. William Morris remains a central figure in my research into the relationships among socialism, biology and the environment. Throughout the nineteenth century, concepts of biological development profoundly influenced contemporary theories of social change. This was never more so than in the decades following the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) in which he first presented his theory of evolution by natural selection. Throughout the 1880s, people with a range of political commitments attempted to naturalise their own politics in light of evolution--amongst them were the eminent liberal scientist (and "Darwin's Bulldog") Thomas Henry Huxley, the revolutionary socialist Karl Marx, and the Russian-born anarchist and geographer Peter Kropotkin. I want to argue that Morris also entered the fray, and, indeed, that it is only in this light that we can get a full appreciation of his theory of socialism and social change. Beyond the immediate interest that the fruits of this perspective will have for Morris scholars, I believe that this research will also help to gain acknowledgement of Morris as a significant figure in this period of the history of science." 2004: no award 2003: no award 2002: no award 2001: Philip E. Chase, a Ph.D. candidate in English at Drew University. Chase’s thesis, "William Morris and Germanic Legend: A Communal Ideal," considered how Morris’s exposure to certain kinds of Teutonic literature, particularly the Icelandic sagas, helped him to move from "conservative radicalism" to "egalitarian socialism." Concentrating on Morris’s creation of a "communal ideal through German Philology" through his Icelandic translations, Chase used the funds for travel to study Morris’s manuscripts in various collections. He expected that the stipend would give him the opportunity to travel to Britain to examine materials in the British library and to work with Dr. Andrew Wawn of the University of Leeds, author of The Vikings and the Victorians. 2000: Peter Hoffenberg, Assistant Professor of History, University of Hawaii, to help defray airfare and other expenses for the "Morris 2000" conference in Toronto, where he delivered a paper, "Socialist? Orientalist? Imperialist? William Morris and the 'Eastern' Question of Indian Art." 2000: April Oettinger, Ph.D. candidate in art history, University of Virginia, for research on the impact of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499) on Morris and Burne-Jones, specifically to underwrite travel to the Houghton Library, Harvard University, to examine Morris's own copy of the book. In 2001, April reported that she would be a research fellow at the Warburg Institute in London in January 2001, and gave give a seminar there on the 19th-century "afterlife" of the book. In October 2001, she delivered a paper in Toronto entitled "William Morris' Hypnerotomachia Poliphili" at the Renaissance in the 19th Century conference. The fellowship made this travel, and the research behind it, possible, and April sends "many thanks again to the Society for giving me this opportunity." 1999: Carolyn Adele Gardner, writer and independent scholar, to assist with a book she was writing on Morris. The funds specifically helped to cover the cost of attending the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts in Ft. Lauderdale, FL (17-20 Mar 1999), where she delivered a paper on "The Maid in the Wood and the Lady in Green: Female Power and Self-Realization in William Morris's Later Prose Romances." 1999: Thomas J. Tobin of Duquesne University, for research connected with the Morris portion of his Ph.D. thesis, "The Pre-Raphaelite Critic: A Comprehensive Edition of Periodical Criticism of the Pre-Raphaelites." He uses the fellowship to travel to archives at Harvard and Yale and to format and post materials on his web site, The Pre-Raphaelite Critic. In 2000, Tom thanked the Society, reporting that his dissertation had been completed, and that the fellowship award has allowed him to post the full text of many heretofore-lost periodical sources related to Morris and Pre-Raphaelitism on his web site at http://www.engl.duq.edu/servus/PR_Critic/. He is thankful for the assistance the Society has given him, and intends to continue to serve the Society as a member of it s ogverning committee and as its webmaster. 1998: Shannon L. Rogers, a Ph.D. student in Modern European History at Pennsylvania State University. Her dissertation, entitled New Wine in Old Bottles: Making Popular History in Nineteenth Century Britain, explores the relationship between historical fiction and popular notions of history. Shannon has been examining the books read by "historical" authors, including Morris, in order to evaluate the veracity of their fictional accounts of the past. This has led her to an ancillary project--an inventory of William Morris's library. Since she has already gathered information on Morris's library available in the United States, Rogers's next step is to pursue archival records found only in Britain, specifically Sydney Cockerell's unpublished diaries, held by the British Library. The Society is pleased to help fund this endeavor and looks forward to the finished catalogue, which should be of infinite use to Morris scholars. In 1999, Shannon sent the following report on her project-in-progress, a comprehensive catalogue of William Morris's library: "I have spent the past year collecting all the bits and pieces of lists of Morris's books from the Pierpont Morgan Library, Yale, and the British Library. During a recent trip to the UK, in part funded by the Society's grant, I had copies made of several microfilmed manuscript lists and the relevant diaries of Sydney Cockerell." 1997: Regina Hansen described her "Report Progress on Wood Beyond the World Video" in 1998 as follows: "Due to the October 1st birth of my son Dominic, completion of 'The Wood Beyond the World' video has been postponed to June of 1998. Script, puppets and sets for the production have been completed, as has the recording of the dialogue and videotaping of all interior scenes. Still to be taped are scenes involving the harbor of Langton-on-Holm and all scenes taking place within the actual 'Wood.' These will be finished by late January. The editing process will begin in early March. Visual artist Michele Hansen--my sister--has produced a contrast between Walter's world and the enchanted, lush and over-abundant Wood to which he travels. Michele has cast Langton-on-Holm in the neutral colors and simple lines of Morris's beloved Iceland, while using Pre-Raphaelite paintings and Morris's own designs to create the Wood and its denizens. The female characters are straight out of Rossetti and Burne-Jones while Walter and his father are bearded, simply-clad Norsemen. In adapting Morris's story to video, I have made some necessary changes. Although I have not eliminated Walter's romantic escapades, the sexuality has been toned down for a general audience. Let's call it 'PG' rather than 'PG-13.' At the same time I have streamlined the plot, bidding farewell (with a sigh) to both the Bear-Folk and the city of Starkwall. I would like to thank Michele Hansen, voice artists Matt Gage and Kate Burr, technicians Rich Howley and Tom Miller, and composer Milton Gurin for their work. Special thanks to the Morris Society in the U.S. for much needed funding." 1996: Chatham Ewing: in 1996, Chatham Ewing was a graduate student in English at New York University. His William Morris Society Fellowship was used toward producing an electronic facsimile of the Kelmscott Chaucer which aims to combine the best features of a visual facsimile with those of a critical edition complete with essays and bibliographies. In 1997, he wrote to us to report: "The Society gave initial funding to my project which entailed producing a facsimile of the Kelmscott Chaucer for the World Wide Web and possibly CD-ROM. The first portion of the project is now complete and is available for viewing on the Fales Library web page (for the address send e-mail to Chatham Ewing at cbe2866@is4.nyu.edu). Essentially, this project is a look at how authentic a reproduction the digital medium can produce, and what the benefits of such translation could be. Work on a prototype--a version of Gothic Architecture, printed by the Kelmscott Press in 1893--shows that digital editions could easily and rather inexpensively serve as adjuncts to the actual text in a rare book room, by simultaneously increasing access (through either CD or WWW technology) and preserving the materials from unnecessary handling. However, the best digital photographic facsimile fails to capture what some would mundanely call useful information, and what Walter Benjamin might rather more poetically call the 'aura' of a book. The historical reality of a unique object provides us with a window into the past which can't completely find its way onto a computer screen." 1996: Kevin Melchione received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His dissertation in aesthetics was entitled "Cultivation: Art and Aesthetics in Everyday Life" and his work on Morris was part of a larger project examining the role of craft in contemporary culture. In 1997, he reported that "my project is a critical reconstruction of the theory of craftsmanship spawned by Ruskin and Morris and underwriting the contemporary studio crafts movement. In contrast to other modernist disciplines like painting and sculpture, which have re-invented themselves many times over, the modern studio crafts are marked by a continued commitment to the views formulated at their inception in the late nineteenth century. In other traditions, ideological shifts accompany stylistic shifts; an important part of writing the history of these disciplines is coming to terms with the relationship between what is said and what is done. The curious anomaly of the studio crafts is that, despite stylistic changes, assumptions about the nature of handwork, craftsmanship, mechanical production, and the history of the decorative arts have been handed down with little revision. These assumptions have congealed into what I call the 'folk wisdom' of the studio crafts. The wholesome ring of this folk wisdom, along with its vagueness, has hampered serious consideration of the most ambitious and problematic claims of the modern Studio Crafts movement. I am attempting to bring crafts criticism beyond this folk wisdom by isolating the legitimate moral and aesthetic values in Morris's thought, separating them from the vague truisms that have plagued discussions of artisanal work in the industrial era."
In 2005, the Society initiated the William Morris Society Award to support further creative and academic work that helps to spread the ideas and ideals of William Morris to a wider public.
2007: Holly Dworken Cooley: After receiving her Ph.D. in English literature from Case Western Reserve University in 1988, for many years Ms. Cooley taught Victorian literature and writing at the University of Pittsburgh-Bradford and Rio Salado College in Phoneix, Arizona. Now residing in Florida, she is the editor of http://www.goblinmarket.com/, an electronic journal for children's literature, and a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. Ms. Cooley describes her project: As I envision it, the child-friendly art to accompany the text will illustrate the connection between childhood and later life: for example, a young Morris studying the patterns of leaves and flowers, and then an older Morris working similar patterns into a tapestry. I also see examples of Morris designs in different mediums included throughout the text, to introduce young readers to his distinctive designs. A brief list of Resources at the end will include selected works written by and about Morris, as well as internet sites, including The William Morris Society website. Too, I intend to include a list of places in both the United Kingdom and the United States that can be visited to see examples of his paintings and interiors. I would like to convey a sense of the genius involved in looking at all aspects of life as art and in pursuing art in as many different areas as Morris did. Children, I suspect, will find the range of his interests and accomplishments just as intriguing as older audiences always do. 2006: no award 2005: Ignacio Zulueta lives and writes in Oakland, California. He is a graduate of Brown University’s playwriting program, the proud author of two award-winning plays. Mr. Zulueta is a 2005 Tournesol Playwriting Resident at San Francisco’s Z Space Studios. "Red House" is a full-length play about the entangled affairs of William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti- told entirely from the perspective of Georgiana Burne-Jones, the self-effacing biographer of her husband and his circle. In the staid and class-obsessed Victorian era, their art was unheralded in its embrace of egalitarian spirituality, rural anachronism, and tragic romance. But what is splendid on canvas can verge on the sordid when attempted in the real world: one by one, the lives of the Pre-Raphaelites became suffused with the same ill-starred tragedy that permeated their works. The playchronicles Georgiana¹s rapprochement with these long suppressed betrayals. Though devoted to the legacy of her departed friends, Georgiana struggles to reconcile herself to their failings and human weaknesses. Grappling with vivid memories that make her widowed life seem shadowy by comparison, Georgiana finds herself caught in the paradox of reliving her past while simultaneously destroying it.
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