Snapshot

Professor of English David Faldet’s recent book, Oneota Flow (U of Iowa Press), was chosen as the summer reading for Luther’s first-year class this fall, so David had the thrill of giving the opening convocation lecture to an audience who had read his book.  In Oneota Flow David folds his local roots and stories into a natural-cultural history of Decorah’s Upper Iowa River and the Driftless region of Northeast Iowa.  David’s interests in ecology make him an invaluable link between Luther’s English department and its Environmental Studies program, and his project as Jones Distinguished Professor was to lead the faculty to explore the major questions and texts of that field.  A Luther grad and a PhD from Iowa in nineteenth-century British literature, David teaches Victorian literature as well as rhetoric.  David’s fine talent as a visual artist combines with his literary scholarship in his work on the poet and designer William Morris.

Teaching statement

Teaching is, for me, an extended conversation. That conversation takes place in class discussion, in office grading sessions and conferences, or working with papers. The teaching in conversation is personal, and it works both ways.  See David Faldet's spotlight video about teaching and learning. 

Teaching areas

Victorian Literature, Rhetoric, Writing, Paideia

Scholarly interests

I’m working on a series of essays about the conjunction of human history and natural history along the Upper Iowa River. This project fuses my interest in ecology and local history with my interest in writing. In addition, I research the Victorian period, especially the work of William Morris, an English socialist, poet, essayist, designer, craftsman, businessman, and printer.

Writing Sample from The Smell of Rain

Scrutiny of even the most familiar and simple elements of experience can lead to surprise. Several years ago, a soil scientist informed me that the most common smell identifiable as "rain" is made up of bacterial spores, bursting into reproductive frenzy with the impact of raindrops on dust. The actinomycetes bacteria that produce these fragrant spores are the source of drugs that save people from infections that would otherwise kill us: tuberculosis, leprosy, and cholera. The smell of rain, for which I long on a hot, dry day, is the birth cry of friendly bacteria. This knowledge has not changed my imprecise habit of calling that certain delicious smell "rain." The excuse for my inaccuracy is this: what is obvious to my nose remains invisible to my eye.