Tuesday, December 19, 2023
ed folsom speaking
Our valued colleague Professor Ed Folsom, who is a professor emeritus at the University of Iowa - Department of English, received an honorary doctorate from TU Dortmund last Wednesday, December 6. IWP Director Christopher Merrill served as laudator for the ceremony. Congratulations to Professor Folsom on this achievement, which reflects many decades of excellent scholarship, and our thanks to everyone who attended.
For those unfamiliar with his work: Professor Folsom is a leading expert on Walt Whitman and his oeuvre, and is one of the cofounders of the Walt Whitman Archive, an essential resource. The Archive, and Folsom in particular, collaborated with IWP to create WhitmanWeb, which you can find at https://iwp.uiowa.edu/whitmanweb/en.
Folsom later published with Merrill an edition of SONG OF MYSELF that includes a complete commentary in which they "carry on a dialog with Whitman, and with each other, section by section, as they invite readers to enter into the conversation about how the poem develops, moves, improvises, and surprises." Folsom is also the founder of "Whitman Week," which first took place in 2008 at Dortmund.