My teaching and research focus on early modern book history, poetry, and drama, including Milton and Shakespeare. After leaving Oxford, where I attended on a Rhodes Scholarship, I became a writer for Time magazine, and I also continue to write for popular publications such as Slate, The Week, and The London Review of Books, while teaching classes in creative nonfiction and the essay.

My research focuses on racial, ethnic, and regional identities, and way those identities got expressed in nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. culture. I am particularly interested in the relationship between regional identities like Yankee and Southerner and “racial” identities like Anglo-Saxon, Negro, Celt, and Teuton.

Aron Aji, Director of MFA in Literary Translation, joined the faculty in 2014. A native of Turkey, he has translated works by Bilge Karasu, Murathan Mungan, Elif Shafak, LatifeTekin, and other Turkish writers. He leads the Translation Workshop, and teaches courses on retranslation, poetry and translation; theory, and contemporary Turkish literature.

Kaveh Akbar teaches at the University of Iowa and in the low-residency MFA programs at Randolph College and Warren Wilson. His poems appear in The New Yorker, Poetry, PBS NewsHour, Paris Review, Best American Poetry, The New York Times, and elsewhere.

Hannah Bonner is a current creative nonfiction MFA student at the University of Iowa. She has an MA in Film Studies from the University of Iowa and a BA in English & Creative Writing from UNC-Chapel Hill. 

I have taught at the University of Iowa since 1973, with semesters abroad as an exchange professor in France, Iceland, and Denmark. Over the years I’ve offered a range of courses centered on British and transimperial literature 1830-1940, with an emphasis on poetry, nonfiction prose, and the social, political, and cultural contexts of literature.

I teach literary and cultural history, with a courtesy appointment in the UI Center for the Book. Offering an MFA degree and a Graduate Certificate, the Center combines the study of book history with the production of book art. My particular research interest is in the history of readership, as reflected in my book The Pilgrim and the Bee: Reading Rituals and Book Culture in Early New England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).

I teach, research, and write about 20th and 21st century drama, theater, performance art, and media. In my current book project, Act without Words: Speechless Performance on Modern Stages, I examine why and how the concept of a “language” of gesture has attracted theater artists, writers, and theorists disenchanted with the capacity of spoken and written language to represent human experience.

Annie Burkhart (she/her) is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Iowa and a General Education Literature (GEL) instructor. Annie studies gender and sexuality in Victorian and fin de siècle culture, aiming to uncover queer influences in the literature of the period.

Torie Burns is a PhD candidate studying American literature from 1900 to the present, with an eye toward digital applications for the humanities. 

Dr. Tara Bynum is an Assistant Professor of English & African American Studies and a scholar of early African American literary histories before 1800. She received her PhD in English from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Political Science from Barnard College.

Maria Capecchi  (she/her) is an English Ph.D. candidate and General Education Literature (GEL) instructor at the University of Iowa, where she studies early modern poetry and drama, with additional concentrations in performance, book studies, and critical race theory. Maria’s research includes cross-disciplinary work with the UI Department of Theatre Arts and with the UI Center for the Book, where she has earned a graduate certificate.

Connie Chen is a nonfiction writer and visual artist undressing divine flesh in objected, abjected, and rejected bodies. She engages the intersections of psychoanalysis, queer and feminist theory, disability studies, Christian theology, and critical theory in her work.

Caroline Cheung is a PhD Candidate in English with a graduate certificate in Gender, Women’s, & Sexuality Studies. She works at the intersections of women of color feminisms, theories of state violence, transformative justice and prison abolitionism.