English Professor Curt White Named Distinguished Professor

Date: 1/18/07
Contact: Marc Lebovitz

Illinois State University President Al Bowman has appointed Curtis White, English, as Distinguished Professor at Illinois State effective Aug. 16, 2007.

The Distinguished Professor designation allows the University to honor faculty members of distinction and to demonstrate to the broader community that excellence is the foundation of the University. Among the criteria for appointment are achieving national recognition for scholarly research, creative production or leadership in creative or scholarly activities. In addition, candidates must have been clearly identified by students, colleagues, or external agencies as an outstanding teacher or must have contributed significant public service in accord with his or her academic discipline.

Distinguished Professors are invited to deliver one public lecture or presentation on a topic of their choosing; they receive a $1,000 budget per annum in support of activities as a Distinguished Professor and continue to hold the title throughout their service to Illinois State.

In choosing White, the review panel cited his prominence as a public intellectual, service to Illinois State University and to its model of shared governance, service to the field of contemporary fiction, and his commitment to teaching, reflected in his teaching general education courses as well as advanced courses.

White is an internationally recognized voice in contemporary, innovative fiction and social critique. His challenging texts have captivated academic and popular audiences alike, garnering high praise in scholarly journals such as the International Fiction Review and publications as varied as the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Elle, Spin, and the Weekend Australian.

As varied as the venues in which his work has been reviewed are the publishers that have brought out his work: University of Iowa Press, University of Indiana Press, Fiction Collective 2, Dalkey Archive Press, Viking, HarperCollins, Norton and Penguin UK, among others. This representative list underscores White's crossover appeal to academic and popular audiences. His seven books of fiction, three books of nonfiction, and over four dozen published essays and short stories attest that he is an astonishingly prolific contemporary American writer.

With his recent essays in Harper's magazine and his book "The Middle Mind: Why Americans Don't Think for Themselves," White has emerged as a public intellectual, a social critic whose work the noted theorist Slavoj Zizek referred to as "indispensable." White has been featured on NPR and CSPAN, his work was the subject of a special issue of the Review of Contemporary Fiction, and his texts have been translated into numerous languages.

Colleagues at universities throughout the United States testify to his brilliance as a thinker and writer, also indicated by the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and several Illinois Arts Council fellowships that he has won.

White has also achieved distinction as a mentor to younger writers, and his extensive work in the small press publishing industry demonstrates an impressive commitment to the promotion of new and experimental writing. A dedicated and challenging teacher, he has provided outstanding service throughout his nearly 30 years at Illinois State University by advising numerous student writers at the undergraduate and graduate levels (many of whom have achieved success in publishing their own work) and through his commitment to general education classes, his years as chair of the Academic Senate and his current position as chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee to the Illinois Board of Higher Education.

As a public intellectual equally comfortable in the pages of Contemporary Perspectives in Social Theory and the Village Voice, White has admirably answered the question, from media and general public, of why scholarly pursuits - particularly in the humanities-really matter. His increasingly prominent international reputation reflects admirably on Illinois State.