OXFORD,
Miss. – A Department of English faculty member received the coveted
2008 Faculty Achievement Award at the University of Mississippi’s
annual fall faculty meeting.
Douglas Robinson, professor of
English, was presented with a $1,500 prize and an engraved plaque. The
honor, started in 1985, recognizes professional scholarship, high
scholarly standards and overall outstanding career performance.
The award was announced by Interim Provost Morris Stocks.
“Dr.
Robinson has a wide range of interests, from composition theory,
translation and interpretation of Scandinavian writings to American
literature and the somatics of literature,” Stocks said. “In recent
years, he has been involved in overseeing our first-year writing
courses.”
Robinson, who said that directing the first-year writing program has given him great satisfaction, used the words “stunned” and “very, very pleased” to describe his reaction to being chosen for the award.
“During the 19-plus years I’ve been at Ole Miss and watched my colleagues get awards, I wondered what they were doing that I wasn’t,” Robinson said. “Whatever it was, I guess I’m doing it now.”
A native of Indiana, Robinson has been a member of the UM faculty since 1989. He earned three degrees from the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland, and a doctorate from the University of Washington.
“When I was 16, I spent a year in Finland as an exchange student,” Robinson said. “I ended up going back there to live for a total of 14 years. I worked in three different departments at two universities, first as a lecturer, then as a professor.”
A prolific writer, Robinson published “Pentinpeijaiset” (his first novel in Finnish translation) in 2007. Previously, he authored “Estrangement and the Somatics of Literature: Tolstoy, Shklovsky, Brecht,” “Performative Linguistics: Speaking and Translating as Doing Things with Words,” “Who Translates? Translator Subjectivities Beyond Reason,” “Western Translation Theory from Herodotus to Nietzsche,” “Ring Lardner and the Other” and “American Apocalypses: The Image of the End of the World in American Literature.”
For more information about UM’s Department of English, visit http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/English or call 662-915-7439.