History Professor Keisha Blain selected as SITPA Fellow at Duke University

Friday, April 8, 2016

Keisha Blain
Keisha Blain

Keisha N. Blain, assistant professor in the Department of History, has been selected as a 2016-2018 Summer Institute on Tenure and Professional Advancement (SITPA) Fellow at Duke University.

SITPA is a mentoring and professional socialization initiative at Duke designed for early-career faculty to facilitate successful transition from junior faculty status to tenured associate professor. The two-year SITPA fellowship provides information, guidance, and strategies on how to be successful in the tenure quest. In addition to providing research and teaching grants to fellows, a central feature of SITPA is matching fellows with a senior faculty mentor in their discipline, from a college or university other than their own.

Blain is an historian of 20th century United States. She joined the University of Iowa faculty this academic year, in the Department of History, part of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. She specializes in 20th century U.S. history, African American history, the modern African Diaspora, and Women’s and Gender Studies, and is the co-editor of Charleston Syllabus: Readings of Race, Racism, and Racial Violence, released this year.

The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences offers about 70 majors across the humanities; fine, performing and literary arts; natural and mathematical sciences; social and behavioral sciences; and communication disciplines. About 15,000 undergraduate and nearly 2,000 graduate students study each year in the college’s 37 departments, led by faculty at the forefront of teaching and research in their disciplines. The college teaches all Iowa undergraduates through the college's general education program, CLAS CORE. About 80 percent of all Iowa undergraduates begin their academic journey in CLAS. The college confers about 60 percent of the university's bachelor's degrees each academic year.