Looking Back and Looking Forward
Zabelle Stodola
Zabelle Stodola
I
was born and brought up in north London. Like other British children at that
time, when I was eleven I took a weeklong series of nationally administered
tests which decided whether I would attend a grammar school and follow an
academic curriculum or attend a secondary modern school and follow a vocational
curriculum. The tests were called the “Eleven-Plus,” and I failed to qualify for
grammar school entry. Believing that I had greater intellectual potential than
my performance on the Eleven-Plus suggested, my parents took me out of the
state system and sent me to a small private convent day school where I received
a basic academic education. But because I was a late bloomer, at the age of
sixteen I was able to transfer back into the state system for my last two years
of secondary schooling. I attended Enfield County Grammar School and benefitted
greatly from its rigorous academic curriculum.
When
I finished high school in 1967, I was lucky enough to be accepted by the
University of Kent at Canterbury for a BA in English and American Literature.
Kent was one of a spate of new universities in the 1960s and 1970s known for
their progressive and innovative curricula, especially in the humanities. At
Kent one of my American literature teachers was the charismatic A. Robert Lee. Google
him today and you’ll find that he’s still publishing in nineteenth- and
twentieth-century American literature, especially Native American and
Multicultural American literatures. Because Bob Lee was so excited about his
subject, I found American literature far more interesting and intriguing than
English literature, and when I decided to apply for graduate programs in the
USA several years later, he suggested Penn State, where he had some contacts.
But
I didn’t go to Penn State right after I graduated from the University of Kent in
1970. Instead I took a year off and worked in a children’s library. Then I
obtained a Diploma in Education (specializing in adult education) at the
University of London Institute of Education. In 1972 as a young Lecturer I was
hired to teach English literature and language courses at Uxbridge Technical
College in west London. I absolutely loved the teaching, but after two years I
realized that if I was going to do graduate work in America to understand the
literature in its cultural context, I needed to take the plunge.
So
in 1974 at the age of twenty-five, I left London, one of the world’s great cities,
for sleepy State College, Pennsylvania. Initially I was interested in
twentieth-century American literature, and I wrote my MA thesis on six short
stories by Tennessee Williams that he reworked into plays. But then I met the
formidable bibliographer and early American literature specialist Harrison T.
Meserole, a highly respected senior scholar at Penn State. At that time the discipline
of Early American Literature was in its infancy; in fact, it was still called Colonial
American Literature. But Harry Meserole was determined to train a new
generation of graduate students in the field so they could continue to open it
up. My decision to write my dissertation on six early American women writers
was partly pragmatic and partly personal. I found the material fascinating, but
I also liked the idea that I could contribute to an area that was still
evolving. It proved to be a smart
decision.
When
I graduated with my PhD in 1980, tenure-track jobs in English were very hard to
come by, but many positions were expected to open up as professors of Harry Meserole’s
generation retired (that did not happen and the job market remains challenging
for new PhDs even today, three decades later). Late in the hiring season in
1980, the UALR English Department advertised a tenure-track Assistant
Professorship in American Literature for someone who could also teach Technical
Writing. I had expertise in both these areas so I applied and found that I liked the place and also the
fact that (surprisingly) UALR was in the midst of a hiring boom. That year
alone the English Department recruited three junior faculty: creative writer
David Jauss, who is still a member of the department and my close friend;
American Studies specialist Steve Tatum, who left after a year and a half; and
me. And I’ve been at UALR ever since, advancing to Associate Professor in 1985
and to Professor in 1990. I’m very grateful for the professional opportunities
that UALR has offered me.
I
have worked with some wonderful colleagues and some wonderful students over the
years and have especially enjoyed my position as director of the William G.
Cooper, Jr., Honors Program in English. I’m also honored to have received the 2012
Mentor of the Year award from the McNair Scholars Program here at UALR. The
McNair Scholars Program is a federally funded TRIO Program which provides
special support to students from disadvantaged backgrounds to help them get
into graduate school.
I’ve
devoted my professional career to publishing and presenting in two areas: early
American women writers and captivity narratives. Sometimes the two areas
overlap (many of the best known captivity narratives, especially Indian
captivity narratives, are written by women) but sometimes they do not. So, for
example, I’ve published books and articles on the seventeenth-century American
writers Mary Rowlandson and Anne Bradstreet, the eighteenth-century authors Sarah
Kemble Knight and Sarah Wister, and the nineteenth-century figures Olive
Oatman, Ann Eliza Young, and Mary Renville. My anthology Women’s Indian
Captivity Narratives, published by Penguin in 1999, best illustrates the
merging of women writers and Indian captivity narratives. My most recent books
concern captivity narratives arising from the US-Dakota War of 1862: The War
in Words: Reading the Dakota Conflict through the Captivity Literature (2009)
and A Thrilling Narrative of Indian Captivity: Dispatches from the Dakota
War (co-edited with Carrie R. Zeman, 2012), both from the University of
Nebraska Press. I am passionate about the importance of ongoing research and
professional activity, so I am particularly happy to have published a book in
the same year I retire. And with more time in the future, I plan to continue
researching and writing.
I
cannot resist including in this overview an email sent to me recently by an
Assistant Professor at Kent State University. His name is Wesley Raabe and I
had never even heard his name before I received his message:
“Professor Stodola,
I assume you've been told this many times, but I
would just like to add to the chorus thanking you for the consistently marvelous
quality of your work on captivity narratives. The past week I've been reading
student papers on Rowlandson, and I find that whenever they cite
Derounian-Stodola their work is always better.
So thank you.
Wesley Raabe
Assistant Professor, English
Kent State University.”
(25 October 2012,
quoted with permission)
If
you’re interested in more information on my publications and professional
development, please see two other documents I’ve included on this site: a
condensed vita (on “Career Highlights” page) and an address called “The
Accidental Colonialist: Notes on Academic Choice and Identity” which I
delivered when my term as President of the Society of Early Americanists ended
in 2005 (on “Career Choice” page).
As
to the “Looking Forward” part, my husband, Bob, and I are planning to relocate
northeast to Maine. It will be a big move and a logistical challenge. But we
are looking forward to living in a new place and experiencing the next phase of
our life together. Indeed, hopefully that’s where we will be when we celebrate
our 25th wedding anniversary in 2014.
