Mellon Sawyer Seminar at the University of Iowa

October 05, 2021

The University of Iowa Obermann Center for Advanced Studies in the Office of the Vice President for Research is pleased to announce the award of a grant totaling $225,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to host a Mellon Sawyer Seminar on “Racial Reckoning and Social Justice Through Comics” at the University across the academic year 2022-23.

“We are honored to receive our third Andrew W. Mellon Sawyer Seminar Award. This project will connect artists and humanities scholars of comics, visual culture, and histories of race and representation in the U.S. and globally” said UI President Barbara Wilson. “We’re grateful for the Mellon Foundation’s continued support of the University of Iowa over the years.”

The Mellon Sawyer Seminar will be co-directed by University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences faculty members Corey Creekmur (Cinematic Arts, English, and Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies), Ana Merino (Spanish and Portuguese), and Rachel Williams (Art & Art History, Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies).  Among their other professional interests and accomplishments, Creekmur edits the award-winning book series Comics Culture for Rutgers University Press and is First Vice President and a founding member of the Comics Studies Society. Merino, in addition to writing plays, poetry, and fiction, has published El cómic hispánico, Diez ensayos para pensar el cómic, and a critical monograph on Chris Ware; she has also curated a number of major exhibitions of comics.  Williams has recently published Elegy for Mary Turner: An Illustrated Account of a Lynching and Run Home If You Don’t Want to Be Killed: The Detroit Uprising of 1943, both works of graphic nonfiction centered on historical cases of racial injustice

In addition to a year-long intensive seminar with local participants, the Sawyer Seminar will feature a series of public presentations by prominent visiting creators and scholars, a film series, workshops, podcasts, and other public events, all of which will critically engage questions of racial representation in the popular international formats of comics.  Mellon Sawyer Seminar funding will also support an in-residence post-doctoral fellow and the dissertation research of two affiliated UI graduate students.

“Racial Reckoning and Social Justice Through Comics” will be the third Mellon Sawyer Seminar hosted at the University of Iowa, and will build upon the strong foundations for comics studies at the University of Iowa established a decade ago when the co-directors brought major comics scholars, publishers, and artists to Iowa City for a series of events and exhibitions as part of the Obermann Humanities Symposium “Comics, Creativity, and Culture.” This Seminar is also designed to directly engage with ongoing discussions and initiatives around social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion on campus, in Iowa City, and beyond.  

A full list of visitors and events will be forthcoming on a seminar website, a link to which will be available via the Obermann Center’s website.

NWP Professor Melissa Febos's book lights up the media in 2021

September 22, 2021

The University of Iowa—renowned worldwide for creative writing—has struck literary gold again, thanks to Melissa Febos, associate professor of English in the Nonfiction Writing Program.

Since Febos published her third book, GIRLHOOD, in March, the national media have lined up to sing its and its author's praises.

GIRLHOOD, Febos’ second essay collection, examines narratives that women are taught about themselves and internalize during their adolescence, and the steps needed to free themselves from these narratives. With excerpts published in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Febos’ vulnerability struck a chord with readers across the nation.

“I had largely seen the struggles of my girlhood as unwarranted—I thought I'd struggled too much for someone who hadn't undergone what I considered any major trauma,” Febos said. “What I quickly discovered is that growing up as a girl in a patriarchal society is constituted by a series of harms so ordinary that they go largely unrecognized.”

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GIRLHOOD received rave reviews from the New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, NPR, and many other nationally renowned publications. In an excerpt featured in the New York Times Magazine titled “Getting to No”, Febos writes about the unwanted physical touch women endure and the barriers women face when they want to reject this touch. Throughout the piece, Febos shares her personal experience with unwanted physical touch, cuddle parties, and sex work. With more than 1,000 comments, the article resonated with many readers who thanked Febos for her experiences and shared their own stories.

“My writing practice is partly one of sitting down in absolute privacy and attempting to name experiences that feel or have felt unspeakable,” Febos said. “When I get a powerful response of readers identifying with those articulations, well, it is the best possible outcome. That's my hope. That we make it all speakable so that we can find each other, and then collaborate in the work to change ourselves and society.”

Around the book’s publication, Febos published another excerpt as an Op-Ed in the New York Times titled “What if the Pain Never Ends?” As a person who endures chronic back pain, Febos writes about the challenge of facing a life of accommodation and dependency with grace and perspective, and the importance of resisting society’s prescription of inferiority and her own internalized ableism.

In addition to the NYT excerpts, Febos was also featured on the MSNBC national morning show "Morning Joe," and was interviewed by The Nation, The Los Angeles Review of Books, NPR’s "Live with Alison Stewart," and many other outlets.

“Writing this book evolved my thinking from the question of ‘what was wrong with me?’ to ‘how can I consciously grow my thinking so that it accords with my own beliefs instead of those I've inherited from a system that is in direct opposition to them?’ or, more simply, ‘how do we heal from the inevitable harms of girlhood?’” Febos said.

GIRLHOOD succeeds Febos’ memoir WHIP SMART, and her first essay collection, ABANDON ME. In March 2022, Febos will release her fourth book, a nonfiction work that combines memoir with essays on creative writing craft: BODY WORK: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative. In four chapters, it details the political power of autobiographical writing, and its influence on Febos’ life as an intersection of aesthetic, spiritual, social, and psychological practices.

“It is basically an argument for the transformative power of telling our own hardest stories,” Febos said. She will be launching the book locally on March 22, 2022, with a virtual reading at Prairie Lights Bookstore with fellow essayist Elissa Washuta.

Febos’ writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, The Guardian, McSweeney’s, and many other acclaimed publications. She is a four-time MacDowell Fellow, the 2018 recipient of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Sarah Verdone Writing Award, and a LAMBDA Literary Jeanne Córdova Nonfiction Award recipient. In addition to these recognitions, Febos has also earned fellowships with the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, the Barabara Deming Memorial Foundation, The BAU Institute at the Camargo Foundation, The Ragdale Foundation, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.

Febos joined the Iowa faculty in 2019. View her personal website.

 —by Grace Culbertson

Len MacGillivray, professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry, to receive prestigious disciplinary award

September 07, 2021

The American Chemical Society has named Professor Leonard "Len" MacGillivray, the chair of the University of Iowa Department of Chemistry, the recipient of the 2021 ACS Midwest Award. The award, granted by the ACS's St. Louis section, each year recognizes one scientist who has significantly contributed to the development of chemical research and education.

MacGillivray's award marks the second year in a row that a UI chemist has earned the prestigious honor. In 2020, Professor David Wiemer won the award.

MacGillivray, who is an Elected Fellow of the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Royal Society of Chemistry, earned his PhD in 1988 from the University of Missouri‐Columbia, and joined the UI faculty in 2000.

The UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences named him Dean's Scholar in 2005, Collegiate Scholar in 2010, and Collegiate Fellow—the college's highest faculty honor—in 2019, the year he became chair of the Department of Chemistry. The university recognized him with the Faculty Scholar Award in 2007, and in 2019, the UI Graduate College gave him the Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award. He has a secondary appointment in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Experimental Therapeutics in the UI College of Pharmacy, and is affiliated with the UI's Environmental Sciences Program. 

The primary research focus for MacGillivray and his team in the MacGillivray Research Group is in the field of supramolecular chemistry—an area that bridges chemistry, physics, and biology through exploiting noncovalent bonds—as related to organic solids.

His team's work has significant influence on their field. To date, MacGillivray has published 246 articles in refereed journals, which are regularly cited by other researchers. He is co-editor of International Union of Crystallography Journal, and serves on the editorial board of several other key journals. He is in demand nationally and internationally as a speaker, and has delivered over 240 invited lectures and conference presentations, in addition to chairing and organizing 26 symposiums and conferences.  

MacGillivray will formally receive the award at the ACS Midwest Regional Meeting to be held October 20-22 in Springfield, Missouri, at which he will deliver a lecture for the Midwest Award Symposium. 

About the ACS Midwest Award

The St. Louis Section of the American Chemical Society established the ACS Midwest Award in 1944 to publicly recognize outstanding achievements in chemistry in the Midwest region. The award is conferred annually on a scientist who has made meritorious contributions to the advancement of pure or applied chemistry, chemical education, and the profession of chemistry.

Rene Rocha named Herman J. and Eileen S. Schmidt Chair

May 18, 2021

Rene Rocha, professor in the University of Iowa Department of Political Science and faculty director of the Latina/o/x Studies program, has been named the Herman J. and Eileen S. Schmidt Chair by the university and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Sara Sanders, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said Rocha is a perfect fit for the prestigious appointment.

"The Schmidt Chair advances excellence in teaching,” Sanders said, “and Professor Rocha is an outstanding teacher. He is dedicated not only to his students' academic success, but also to their personal growth as individuals. This appointment is richly deserved, and on behalf of our entire college, I congratulate Rene on his success.”

Named, endowed chairs are the university's highest honor for distinguished faculty. The Schmidt Chair is the only chair at Iowa designed to support and recognize excellence in undergraduate teaching, mentoring, and curriculum development.

Rocha joined the UI faculty in 2006. A leading scholar of racial and ethnic politics in the United States, his articles are regularly published in influential journals, including The Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, Policy Studies Journal, American Politics Research, State Politics & Policy Quarterly, Urban Affairs Review, and Review of Policy Research. He mentors students at all levels in conducting research, and teaches courses such as "Introduction to the Politics of Race" and “Immigration Politics”. Rocha has directed the interdisciplinary Latina/o/x Studies program for four of the past five years. His research has received prestigious recognition in his field, including awards from the American Political Science Association, the Midwest Political Science Association, the Western Political Science Association, and the Southwestern Political Science Association.

The Schmidt Chair was established by a philanthropic gift to the UI Center for Advancement by the estate of Herman J. “Herm” and Eileen Schmidt of Greenwich, Connecticut. Herman was a native of Davenport, Iowa, who earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the UI in 1938. He and Eileen desired that the chair be awarded to a faculty member in any College of Liberal Arts and Sciences department who demonstrates a priority and emphasis on teaching undergraduates.

The UI acknowledges the UI Center for Advancement as the preferred channel for private contributions that benefit all areas of the university.