Darius Stewart is a Lulu “Merle” Johnson Fellow and PhD student in English Literary Studies with a Graduate Certificate in African American Studies, specializing in African American Literature and Culture from 1831 to the present, while also pursuing a Graduate Certificate in Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies.

I write and teach across disciplinary boundaries, with interests in Victorian and modernist fiction, poetics, narrative theory, film and media, and art history.

For over twenty years in Iowa, Bonnie Sunstein has taught nonfiction writing, ethnographic research, methods of teaching of writing, and folklore studies, and directs programs in both undergraduate writing and English education.

Kate Torno works with all English or English & Creative Writing majors.  She also meets with English minors and students considering English coursework for electives.  She is the administrative advisor for English handling the waitlists and caps for the ENGL and CNW courses.

Thelma Trujillo is a writer and educator from La Villita, Chicago. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters in Literary and Cultural Studies from Illinois State University.

Inara Verzemnieks is the author of the memoir, “Among the Living and the Dead: A Tale of Exile and Homecoming on the War Roads of Europe,” published by W.W. Norton. The book, which the Washington Post in a recent review called “important,” and “exquisitely written,” retraces the steps of her grandmother, a war refugee, and her great-aunt, a Siberian exile, in the wake of World War II, and recounts Verzemnieks's own journey back to the remote Latvian village where her family broke apart. 

I joined the English Department at the University of Iowa in 2011. My research and teaching explores twentieth-century poetry and culture, contemporary print and digital media, and the history of literary movements.

Deborah Elizabeth Whaley is an artist, curator, writer, poet, vegan blogger, and Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Iowa. From 2017-2020, she served as Senior Scholar for Digital Arts and Humanities for the UI Digital Studio, where she was an ambassador and liaison for the digital humanities, as well as director of the Public Digital Humanities graduate certificate.

Ellie White is a first-year Ph.D. student and Teaching Assistant at the University of Iowa, where she intends to study Victorian literature and transnational coming-of-age novels.

The literature, language, and thought of early medieval England lie at the heart of my professional activity. I teach courses that engage students in the challenges and pleasure of literature of the distant past, while my research explores the complexities and delights of cultures of early England.

Alexus Williams is a PhD student in English and Lulu “Merle” Johnson Fellow at the University of Iowa. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Biology, Outdoor Conservation, and English from Mount Mercy University and a Master of Arts in English from University of Northern Iowa.

Doris Witt grew up in Glasgow, Kentucky, and holds a BA in English from Centre College, an MA and PhD in English from the University of Virginia, and a JD from the University of Iowa.  She specializes in post-WWII multiethnic American and transnational/postcolonial literature and culture.

David Wittenberg teaches in English, Comparative Literature, and Cinematic Arts. His research and teaching interests include 19th- through 21st-century literary theory and philosophy, American literature, architectural design and theory, and popular culture studies.