College of Arts and Sciences

On this week’s episode of Segue, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville’s weekly radio program exploring the lives and work of the people on campus and beyond, College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) Dean Kevin Leonard, PhD, interviews Jason Stacy, PhD, professor in the Department of History.

This episode of Segue airs at 9 a.m. on Sunday, Aug. 15. Listeners can tune into WSIE 88.7 FM The Sound or siue.edu/wsie.

After earning a bachelor’s and master’s in history from SIU Carbondale, Stacy went on to earn a master’s of liberal arts from the University of Chicago and a doctorate in history from Loyola University of Chicago. His research interests include the U.S. Antebellum period, social science pedagogy and Walt Whitman’s journalism. Since joining the SIUE faculty, he has published more than a dozen journal articles, several book chapters, four books, and five digital editions of Walt Whitman’s journalism for the Walt Whitman Archive.

Stacy’s most recent book, Spoon River America: Edgar Lee Masters and the Myth of the American Small Town, was published in May by the University of Illinois Press. His work comments on Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, a collection of poems that became a bedrock myth of life in small-town America. Throughout his book, Stacy discusses the ways readers embraced, debated and reshaped Masters’ work in literary controversies and culture war skirmishes.

In May, Stacy was named the 2021 Paul Simon Outstanding Teacher-Scholar Award recipient. The highly competitive award is annually presented by the SIUE Graduate School to a faculty member who has a proven record of combining scholarship and teaching.

“Welcome to Segue, Dr. Stacy,” begins Leonard. “How did you become interested in history?”

“I grew up in a small town outside of Chicago called Monee,” says Stacy. “In high school, I took a three-year-long course that combined history and literature, which is probably where I developed my quirk of being a historian interested in the part of print culture that involves literary output.”

As an undergraduate student at SIU Carbondale, Stacy was certain that he wanted to be a teacher but unsure if he could teach English.

“I always enjoyed my history classes,” explains Stacy. “I thought there was a certain narrative element to being a history teacher. Many of the primary source documents I studied in my history courses could be interpreted by applying some of the literary skills I was interested in.”

After finishing his master’s at SIU Carbondale, Stacy went on to teach at Stevenson High School for seven years before pursuing a doctoral degree.

“What led you to pursue an academic career?” inquires Leonard.

“Schools of education often offer many varied degrees for high school teachers that are focused on pedagogy or credentialing,” answers Stacy. “Pedagogically, I was satisfied with my work as a teacher, but I was interested in structured work that would continue to fuel interest in the subject I was teaching every day.”

Stacy found the transition from high school teaching to doctoral work to be natural.

“I taught the fundamentals to students of all caliber and backgrounds all day,” says Stacy. “Then, I went to graduate seminars in the evenings, bringing what I had learned as a high school teacher to my studies and research. I found it to be a fruitful hybrid of what are unduly often seen as separate worlds.”

“What are the questions that have guided the course of your research throughout your career?” asks Leonard.

“I’m primarily interested in literature as a historical artifact,” answers Stacy. “My first book, Walt Whitman’s Multitudes, was a study of Whitman’s journalism during the 15 years before he wrote Leaves of Grass. This was a revolutionary work of poetry in its structure, style and subject for the time period. I conducted a deep study to find how his prior journalism laid the groundwork for this poetry.”

“This idea is similar in Spoon River America, where I take Edgar Lee Master’s best-selling book of poetry and analyze its origins in the rural Midwest, specifically in the late 19th century. What has guided me are the ways in which literature works as a historical artifact in particular ways, which is much different from newspapers and government documents.”

Tune in at 9 a.m. on Sunday, Aug. 15, to WSIE 88.7 The Sound to hear the entire conversation.