JALDA‟s Interview with Professor Wendy Steiner

Wendy Steiner is the Richard L. Fisher Professor of English Emerita at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Steiner earned her B.A. from McGill University in 1970 and both her M.Phil. and Ph.D. in English from Yale University in 1972 and 1974 respectively. After teaching at Yale (1974-1976) and the University of Michigan (1976-1979), she joined the Penn faculty in 1979. Promoted to associate professor three years later, she was named full professor in 1985. At Penn, she served as Chair of the English Department from 1995-1999, Founding Director of the Penn Humanities Forum from 1998-2010, Master of Modern Languages College House from 1985-1988, and director of the Penn/King‘s College Program in London from 1989-1990. Professor Steiner‘s fields are interartistic relations and literature in English of the 20th and 21st centuries. Among her books on modern literature and visual art are The Real Real Thing: The Model in the Mirror of Art (2010); Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in Twentieth-Century Art (2001); and Pictures of Romance: Form Against Context in Painting and Literature (1988). Professor Steiner has received awards from the Guggenheim, ACLS, and Mellon Foundations among others, and her cultural reviews have appeared widely in U.S. and British periodicals, including The New York Times, London Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian. Steiner has also created librettos and multi-media productions for two operas, The Loathly Lady (2009) and Biennale (2013), and co-created a real-time music visualization, Traces on the Farther Side (2011). Javad Khorsandi, Ph.D. student of English Language and Literature at Shiraz University has arranged this interview with Professor Steiner.