Aim For the Stars
Dometa Wiegand is a recent graduate of the WSU English Department and now holds a PhD in English and is a new assistant professor at Iowa State University in Science and English.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, where you grew up, your degrees, and why you chose English as a degree?
I am a first generation college student who grew up in the woods of Northern Wisconsin in a working class family. I really think this was helpful in choosing English. My family was not full of accountants and lawyers who would tell me that it was impractical. I chose what I really loved to do, believing that if I worked hard I could do anything. I am sure I was naïve and I am sure that was a positive for me.
What is your current job at Iowa State University?
I am currently the Assistant Professor of 19th-Century British Literature and Science.
What are some ways that the WSU English department prepared you for your current job?
The English department at WSU was a great choice for me. The professors in the literature area were demanding and supportive. My advisor encouraged me to follow my leanings of interdisciplinarity, which is something I am extremely grateful for. I was given a wide latitude in my research which I believe ultimately made for much better scholarship. My interdisciplinary research turned out to be a good fit for a humanities department in a Research I institution of science and technology. The department also gave me the opportunity to teach several literature courses, which I believe was essential on the job market. Also, because WSU involves the graduate students in department life, I was able to see how departments actually run. Learning the politics of cooperation and conflict up close was eye-opening, and possibly the most practical education I received.
Can you tell us a little bit about your current book project? How did it come out of your dissertation?
My current book project is on 19th-century astronomy and its effects and influences on Romantic poetic imagination. It grew directly out of my dissertation, as I was encouraged to think of the diss as a book from the beginning. It has fleshed out (and I hope improved!) but the bones were there when I left the program.
What advice would you give to graduate students currently enrolled in the English Department?
Take advantage of your time there. Don’t waste any of it. You may think you aren’t, but did you go for coffee this morning? Were you at open mic night? Do you ritualistically kibbitz with friends at the Writing Center for an hour or two twice a week? If so, you probably are wasting some precious time. Believe it or not, your days will never be freer or more time-filled than they are right now. The academic job market in the humanities is a cold, dark, uncaring place. If you wasted three hours this week, twelve hours this month, and 48 hours this semester you could have turned one of your seminar papers into an article to publish. Do it. You need to.
What do you see as the most important issue facing current and future English majors?
I believe that on the surface there are many “new” problems for those pursuing an academic career in English. Now, at the undergraduate level the degree is incredibly flexible and can be used innovatively- –options narrow at the doctoral level. The job market has never been bleaker. When you have a tenure track job the pressure to publish is enormous at the same time that fewer and fewer university presses are able to print monographs. The difference between a dissertation and a scholarly monograph is that the dissertation is assured of at least five readers. At the same time, I believe that there is really only one problem and it is very “old.” You have to find the thing you want to do more than anything. You have to do it because you can’t imagine a life where you don’t do it. You have to believe and you have to make sure that nobody else outworks you. Never let yourself fail because someone else outworked you. There will always be somebody smarter. There will always be somebody in a more prestigious program. There will always be somebody better connected. Be the somebody who works the hardest.
What are some goals for your future or projects you would like to undertake?
I am incredibly happy and lucky to have found the job that fits me. We are exploring the possibility of a Ph.D in Literature, Science, Environment, and Technology at Iowa State. Helping to build that possible program is very exciting. Research-wise I have plans to explore the history of mathematics (specifically calculus) during the nineteenth-century. I am also interested in the Renaissance transmission of Pythagorean and Euclidean philosophy and how that literary influence transmits itself to the Romantics. Then of course, there is so much work to be done in physics of the 18th and 19th centuries and how it is reflected in the world view emerging through industrialization and colonization. Further down the line I want to put together a book on Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a poet that I feel is often neglected because he’s difficult.