People

Paul Schmitt

Paul Schmitt

Title/Position
PhD Graduate Candidate
Jennie Sekanics

Jennie Sekanics

Title/Position
PhD Graduate Student
Jennie Sekanics is an English Ph.D. scholar and TA for Foundations of English at the University of Iowa, where she studies twentieth and twenty first century fiction, feminist theory, and trauma studies.
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Heidie Senseman

Title/Position
MFA Nonfiction Graduate Student
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Kathleen Shaughnessy

Title/Position
PhD Graduate Candidate
Kathleen Shaughnessy is an English Ph.D. candidate who works on themes of the gothic and medical science in 19th-century British literature.
Bennett Sims

Bennett Sims

Title/Position
Associate Professor
Bennett Sims is the author of the novel A Questionable Shape, which received the Bard Fiction Prize and was a finalist for The Believer Book Award, and the collection White Dialogues.
Jenny Singer

Jenny Singer

Title/Position
MFA Nonfiction Graduate Student
Alyssa (Adare) Smith

Alyssa (Adare) Smith

Title/Position
PhD Graduate Candidate
photo of Max Sonin

Max Sonin

Title/Position
PhD Graduate Student
My research focuses on structures of humor and text-generation. Outside of academia, I have published five novels in Russian, including the first Russian queer YA novel Письма до Полуночи (AST, 2019) and a thriller-crime series about teenage detectivess Miriam "Mishka" Mironova (Popcorn Books, 2020-2024).
Anne Stapleton

Anne Stapleton

Title/Position
Professor Emerita of Instruction
My teaching and scholarship explore literature and culture of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Great Britain, with a particular focus on Scotland.
Harry Stecopoulos

Harry Stecopoulos

Title/Position
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Professor
Harry Stecopoulos, Professor of English, teaches courses on modern US literature, culture, and performance, with specific interests in in the novel, cultural studies, and postcolonial theory.
 Bronwyn Stewart

Bronwyn Stewart

Title/Position
PhD Graduate Candidate
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Darius Stewart

Title/Position
PhD Graduate Candidate
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.
Garrett Stewart

Garrett Stewart

Title/Position
James O. Freedman Professor of Letters
I write and teach across disciplinary boundaries, with interests in Victorian and modernist fiction, poetics, narrative theory, film and media, and art history.
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Cary Stough

Title/Position
PhD Graduate Student
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Pia Struzzieri

Title/Position
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Pia Struzzieri is an Assistant Visiting Professor of English. She earned her MFA in Fiction Writing at Columbia University and an AB in Literary Arts and Modern Culture/Media at Brown University. 
Bonnie Sunstein

Bonnie Sunstein

Title/Position
Professor
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.
May Teng

May Teng

Title/Position
MFA Nonfiction Graduate Student
Portrait of Aileen Tierney

Aileen Tierney

Title/Position
PhD Candidate
Aileen Tierney is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Iowa. She studies avant-garde/experimental literature of the 20th-21st century with an emphasis on the emergent methodologies of the digital humanities.
Kate Torno

Kate Torno

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. Click on her name to see her full profile and office hours.
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Thelma Trujillo

Title/Position
PhD Graduate Candidate
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.
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Tobias Veeder

Title/Position
Visiting Assistant Professor
Tobias Veeder is a Visiting Assistant Professor teaching "ENGL-1200 The Interpretation of Literature: Diverse Voices in Classic and Contemporary Texts."
Inara Verzemnieks

Inara Verzemnieks

Title/Position
Associate Professor
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. 
Stephen Voyce

Stephen Voyce

Title/Position
Associate Professor
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.
Parker Watson

Parker Watson

Title/Position
PhD Graduate Student
Deborah Whaley

Deborah Whaley

Title/Position
Professor
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.
photo of Harris Wheless

Harris Wheless

Title/Position
MFA Nonfiction Graduate Student
Harris Wheless is a writer from North Carolina and an MFA candidate in Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program.
Bambi Whitaker

Bambi Whitaker

Title/Position
PhD Graduate Candidate
Ellie White

Ellie White

Title/Position
PhD Graduate Student
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.