video: celebration of my “Professor of the Year” award, 1998
In 1998-99 I was named the “Pennsylvania Professor of the Year” by the Carnegie Foundation, a huge honor even though I don’t quite know what the award specifically meant. My friends and colleagues at Penn took this as a sign that our success in establishing the Writers House starting 1995-96 was worth celebrating. And so there was a big party. A highlight of the party was a moving speech given by my late mentor Bob Lucid. Someone made a video or all or most of the event, and recently Zach Carduner digitized an old VHS tape I had lying around. So HERE it is.
Al Filreis is Kelly Professor, Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House, Director of the Center
for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Co-Director of PennSound, and Publisher of Jacket2—all at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his books are Secretaries of the Moon,
Wallace Stevens & the Actual World, Modernism from Left to Right, and Counter-Revolution of the Word: The Conservative Attack on Modern Poetry, 1945-60. His new book is 
Founder/Faculty Director, 