Brooks Landon is the Interim Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program. A member of the University of Iowa English Department since 1978, he served as DEO (1999-2005) and Director General Education Literature (2006-2013). He is a former holder of the Herman J. and Eileen S. Schmidt Endowed Professorship (2011-2016) and of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Collegiate Fellows Award. The most recent of his five books is Building Great Sentences: How to Write the Kinds of Sentences You Love to Read (Plume, 2013). He has published widely on contemporary American Literature and Science Fiction. Apart from his signature Prose Style course on sentences, most of his classes either focus on various literary responses to technology or ways in which American culture has made technology, usually constructed as progress, one of its central concerns.  

Brooks Landon: "The ways in which people interact with science and technology seem to be at the heart of my scholarship, my teaching, and my service to the Department and the University. My last two books have explored constructions, representations, and implications of science and technology in science fiction film and in science fiction literature. Most of my classes either focus on various literary responses to technology or ways in which American culture has made technology, usually constructed as progress, one of its central concerns. Most of my classes also employ learning technologies, study electronic textuality, and require multimedia writing. And I've been deeply committed to helping the Iowa English Department figure out how technology will revolutionize the way we do business in the twenty-first century. In short, I'm fascinated by what comes next."