HASWELL, Janis Tedesco 1950-

PERSONAL: Born May 17, 1950, in Spokane, WA; daughter of Joseph P. and Marjorie (Franklin) Bell; married Richard S. Tedesco (divorced, April, 1993); married Richard H. Haswell (a professor of English), June, 1994; children: (first marriage) John, Joseph, Paul, Michael, Kristin. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: Seattle University, B.A., 1972; Gonzaga University, M.A., 1986; Washington State University, Ph.D., 1993. Politics: Independent. Religion: Roman Catholic. Hobbies and other interests: Piano, aerobics, travel.

ADDRESSES: Home—1014 Memphis, Corpus Christi, TX 78412. Office—Department of English, Texas A & M University—Corpus Christi, 6300 Ocean Dr., Corpus Christi, TX 78412; fax 512-825-5844. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: University of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio, TX, assistant professor of English, 1993-94; Washington State University, Pullman, visiting assistant professor of English, 1994-96; Texas A & M University—Corpus Christi, began as assistant professor, 1996, currently associate professor of English.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association of America, National Council of Teachers of English, South Central Modern Language Association, South Atlantic Modern Language Association.

WRITINGS:

(With Janet Popham) Introduction to "The Raj Quartet," University Press of America (Lanham, MD), 1985.

Pressed against Divinity: W. B. Yeats and the Feminine Mask, Northern Illinois University Press (DeKalb, IL), 1997.

Paul Scott's Philosophy of Place(s): The Fiction of Relationality, Peter Lang (New York, NY), 2002.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Gendership: Strategizing Gender for the Student of English, with husband, Richard H. Haswell.

SIDELIGHTS: Janis Tedesco Haswell once told CA: "I always wanted to write. I grew up with a father who, at one point, quit his job to write, stealing away to the den for hours on end to pen the great American short story. In the fourth grade I tried my hand at a new line of 'black stallion' books, but I soon discovered that Walter Farley's talent exceeded mine. Eight years later, in high school, as I read Walter Kerr on Sophocles, I realized I would never write an Oedipus Rex—I couldn't even write The Black Stallion Returns—but I might write a Tragedy and Comedy. My ability to relate to an academic audience, to comprehend and internalize complex material and its ramifications, to reflect on issues of the mind and heart and honestly face and articulate my own values and ideas—all this is bound up with the continual process of reimagining myself as a teacher and scholar, the exploratory and epistemic process of drafting, revising, and reconceiving the subject matter and my relationship to it. Only when I am able to withhold nothing in terms of effort, thinking, and interrogation of the material—ultimately doing justice to my sources—do I find something to say, and a voice.

"'Justice' is a good word here. What I learned by studying and writing about W. B. Yeats or Paul Scott helps me understand myself as a writer. If I represent their insights justly, then what I write today as a literary critic (to be read in the future by another student, another writer) should ring true, just as Walter Kerr's words did for me years ago. Rather than self-serving and narrow, as academic writing sometimes seems in graduate school, it should and can be a bridge whereby readers can access and identify with other people, other texts, and other contexts. Perhaps that is the basic meaning of 'voice.' Yeats speaks to me. Scott speaks to me. As an academic, I can inspire others to tap into that richness, a richness that will enlarge our world and free us (as Scott says) from being too near ourselves."