US States News, May 3, 2007, Thursday

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US States News

May 3, 2007 Thursday 4:50 AM EST

HEADLINE: DENISE KNIGHT RECEIVES NEH STIPEND TO FINISH SCHOLARLY WORK ON CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN

BYLINE: US States News

DATELINE: CORTLAND, N.Y.

BODY:

SUNY Cortland issued the following news release:

The letters written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman offer a revealing look into the mind of this American feminist author who lived from 1860-1935, but contemporary scholars desiring to read most of them must visit geographically scattered libraries and private collections.

This summer Denise D. Knight, a distinguished teaching professor of English at SUNY Cortland, will simplify the lives of Gilman's literary enthusiasts by finishing a forthcoming edited collection of letters with co-editor Jennifer Tuttle, titled The Selected Letters of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

"The volume of letters will provide additional insight into Gilman's views on a host of issues: economics, social matters, child-rearing, feminism, historical events, and even death," said Knight, who is among the world's leading experts on Gilman's life and works. "It will also reveal valuable information about her relationships with, and influence on, many important historical figures of her time. Equally important, publication of her letters will offer readers a sometimes-intimate glimpse of the private woman behind the public persona."

The correspondence also reveals much about the public figures with whom Gilman corresponded, including Jane Addams, Susan B. Anthony, William Dean Howells, Lester F. Ward, George Bernard Shaw, Edward Bellamy and Carrie Chapman Catt.

To help her complete the task that for the first time makes the last unpublished area of Gilman's writings - her personal letters - accessible to knowledge-seekers, Knight was recently awarded a competitive National Endowment for The Humanities (NEH) Summer Fellowship for senior scholars conducting research significant to the humanities.

For two months starting July 1, the summer stipend will support her as she drafts the chapter introductions, finishes writing hundreds of endnotes, and finalizes the manuscript for submission this coming fall to the publisher, the University of Alabama Press. Tuttle, an associate professor of English at the University of New England in Portland, Maine, will work with Knight on the project.

Knight was one of only 115 academics from around the country to be awarded a 2007 NEH summer stipend to conduct research travel or use the time to finish up important work that advances the humanities. She is one of four SUNY Cortland faculty to be honored in the last three years with the $5,000 summer stipend, not to be confused with the NEH Fellowship for a full year of research and scholarship. Each year, the College can nominate both a junior and a senior scholar for an NEH summer stipend.

"Denise's award is a testament to her highly ranked scholarship as demonstrated by her more than 10 published books on Charlotte Perkins Gilman," commented Glen Clarke, associate director of research and sponsored programs, who worked closely with Knight to obtain the prestigious grant.

Knight, a 17-year member of the SUNY Cortland English Department faculty, has devoted the last five summers to reading, transcribing, editing and putting into context this collection of letters written by and to Gilman. She has read nearly 17,000 pages of correspondence taken from microfiche, photocopies and original letters and transcribed almost 1,000 pages. The Schlesinger Library in Cambridge, Mass., which owns the largest repository of Gilman papers in the world, granted Knight a one-year loan of microfiche containing Gilman's letters.

"The Selected Letters is the last significant piece of Gilman's writings to be published, and it will contribute enormously to our understanding of her legacy," Knight said. "I estimate that nearly 95 percent of the included material will consist of previously unpublished letters."

Knight served as the president of the Charlotte Perkins Gilman Society from 1998 to 2003. Her 1997 book, Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Study of the Short Fiction, is the only full-length analysis of Gilman's extensive collection of short stories. Knight also edited a two-volume critical edition, The Diaries of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, published in 1994, and volumes of Gilman's stories, novels and poems.

"It is in the correspondence - intended originally for private consumption, rather than for public display - that we see vivid expressions of Gilman's struggles, frustrations and personal pain, but also evidence of her courage, determination and self-empowerment," Knight said. "Significantly, the letters provide crucial pieces of her biography that are otherwise lost to the academic community."

In 1922, Carrie Chapman Catt, founder of The League of Women Voters, credited Gilman through her writings with "? utterly revolutionizing the attitude of mind in the entire country, indeed of other countries, as to woman's place."

A virtual explosion of scholarly writing about the literary figure has occurred since she was rediscovered by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Carl N. Degler some 40 years ago.

Gilman was described as "one of the leading intellectuals of the women's movement on both sides of the Atlantic" by Degler in his introduction to the 1966 reprint edition of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's ground-breaking work, Women and Economics (1898).

According to Knight, the sole published edition of Gilman's letters, Mary A. Hill's 1995 volume, "A Journey From Within: The Love Letters of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1897-1900," reproduces only three year's worth of select correspondence between Gilman and her second husband.

"The publication of Gilman's letters is a vital part not only of her legacy, but more significantly of women's history," Knight said. "It will make a significant contribution to the fields of women's studies, epistolary writing, the progressive movement and to our understanding of the culture of end-of-the-19th century America."

Knight, a prolific and internationally recognized scholar of 19th-century American literature, is listed in 2000 Outstanding Scholars of the 21st Century by Melrose Press, Cambridgeshire, England.

In addition to teaching and serving as graduate coordinator of the Master of Arts in English, Knight is assistant chair of the English Department. She was promoted to distinguished teaching professor by the SUNY Board of Trustees in 2006. Four years earlier, she received the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching and an inaugural SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.

The College presented her with its 2004 Outstanding Achievement in Research Award. The SUNY Cortland chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, the English honor society, honored her with its 2002 Teacher of the Year Award.

Knight earned a certificate in Labor Studies from Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations in 1981. She graduated summa cum laude from SUNY Albany, where she also earned her master's degree and doctorate in English.