ICC English Professor retires after 25 years of teaching

After working in ICC’s Humanities department since 2000, Professor Jim Sullivan will be retiring this December.

Sullivan is a professor of English and has taught many classes, including Composition, Introduction to Literature, Mythology, and Creative Writing Poetry.

Sullivan is also a published author, having written “On the Walls and in the Streets: American Poetry Broadsides from the 1960s” and “Shibboleth.” Sullivan has also written several articles about literature and poetry.

You can find Sullivan’s work at your local library, or you can buy his books online on Amazon.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Essie Newton

Why are you retiring?

Jim Sullivan

Well, when I retire I won’t have to grade papers anymore. I love working with students and the classroom is a lot of fun, but grading is not.

Another reason I am retiring is my wife, who works at Bradley, is retiring this month. She’s a psychology professor at Bradley.

Our daughter turns 26 in September, so she is going to be on our insurance.  So we will keep her on that until she can’t be on it anymore. And then I’ll retire.

EN: What are you planning to do after you retire?

JS: I will probably waste a lot of time. I will spend time gardening, reading, and writing. I want to write some more poetry and fiction and do a lot of reading. I will probably do a little traveling.

I live in Delavan, Illinois, and I want to get more involved with the Delavan Historical Society.  I think it would be interesting to research and write a real serious history of Delavan. I think it would be interesting anyway.  I want to delve into that when I have the  time to devote to it.

I also like to cook. I don’t know if I will ever do this, but one of my fantasies is to go through my cookbooks and just cook my way through a cookbook or two.

EN: Where would you like to travel, and what places have you already traveled to?

JS: I have traveled to a lot of places over the years. My wife and I have talked about next winter, after I retire, touring along Route 66. Just driving southwest down there, seeing stuff along the way, seeing some people we know, and maybe taking a train back and seeing some other stuff on the way back.

We took a trip to Iceland several years ago and I would love to go back there sometime.  Iceland is amazing.  It’s so raw and everything there is so different from everything else. Anywhere you go on that island, it is unique.

We have also talked about going to Scotland sometime. Those are some trips I would like to take.

EN: Have you always lived in Illinois?

JS: No, I was born in Seattle, but my family moved to Illinois when I was six. I grew up in Lombard up in the Chicago suburbs, and I went to Loyola for college and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for grad school. So I have lived in various parts around Illinois.

EN: How did you come to teach here at ICC?

JS: When I finished my PhD, I got a temporary job at Bradley. And that’s when I met Wendy, my wife. After that, I was looking for jobs around central Illinois. So I was teaching part-time and temporary jobs at Bradley, at ICC, and at Lincoln College.

Eventually in 2000, a full-time tenure job became open here at ICC, and I applied for it. I think it helped that some people knew me here already, since I had already worked here doing part-time and temporary jobs in the 1990s. I was glad to get the job here.

EN: What pushed you into becoming an English professor?

JS: When I was in college, working on my bachelor’s degree, I didn’t know I would be doing this. Really, I didn’t. 

I  took a break from academia after my bachelor’s degree, then I decided to get a master’s degree to learn a little bit more because I wanted to. And then I took another break after that.

During that break, I decided to study art for a while, because art is one of my interests too. But I found myself spending all my time reading and writing, and realizing that, no, this is what I want to do. I want to get back into literature more deeply.

So I decided to get back into the PhD program and to have an academic career after that.  

EN: What have you written and what inspires you to write?

JS: I have written in a lot of genres. I have written a lot of literary criticism, published articles and book reviews. I have a book about poetry and art in the 60s. [“On the Walls and in the Streets: American Poetry Broadsides from the 1960s.”]

I have published some fiction. I have a book, a collection of stories called “Shibboleth.”

It is some of the more barbaric stories from the Bible retold. So that was fun to do.

I have written a lot of poetry that has been published in magazines.

What inspires me? I have an idea to write something, and so I sit down and something comes out or it doesn’t.

There was one summer when I decided every morning I would write a poem about bees. That eventually grew into something that got published. But I am not always that disciplined.

EN: What would your advice be to aspiring writers?

JS: Write every day. That’s it. Write something bad every day. Have low standards.  Produce something. And you will eventually start writing some good stuff when you have given yourself enough practice. Do not expect it to be good in the beginning. 

EN: You mentioned before that you do enjoy working with students. Do you think you ever might do a writing workshop or something like that, after you retire?

JS: I have done that kind of thing in the past, when I’ve been invited to do it.

I don’t know if I would be open to that. Maybe, maybe not. We will see.

EN: What about ICC do you like? What are some of the things you have enjoyed doing here?

JS: One thing that has been fun to do in some of my literature classes has been showing off my collection of weird stuff. Like poems that are published in unconventional ways, which is one of the things I am especially interested in.

Something that is really nice about ICC compared to some other places I have worked is the diversity of students I get here. There are students of all ages here, whereas in some places there are very few students who are not of traditional college age.

But here, there are lots of students at different parts of their lives. There is also an enormous diversity of abilities and backgrounds. There is nothing uniform about this place. That is one of the things I like about it.