Arts and Humanities

Susan Gubar, professor of English, was named an alumni fellow by the University of Iowa's College of Liberal Arts.  Gubar earned her Ph. D. from the UI College of Liberal Arts in 1972; alumni fellows are recognized as the most accomplished alumni of the College.

Professor Arthur Liou's new video series "Current" and "Maelstrom" will be featured along with professor Barry Gealt's painting in Collins Lefebvre Stoneberger Gallery, in Montreal, Canada, in May 2009. The video project is sponsored by the New Frontier Grant and the College of Arts and Humanities Institute.

Large scale photographs from the Banta series by Osamu James Nakagawa, of the Henry Hope School of Fine Arts, were recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston for their permanent collections.  This body of work was exhibited at the Coleman Center for the Arts in York, Alabama, August 15-September 30. Nakagawa also  received a Japan Foundation Arts and Culture Grant for this exhibition. The Banta series was also included in a group exhibition, “Transitional Dialogue” at the Texas Women’s University Gallery, September 30-October 31. Nakagawa’s gallery SEPIA International in New York City is showcasing the Banta photographs, as well as his previous bodies of work, the Kai and Mado series, in an exhibition at the Carrousel Du Louvre during  the Paris Photo’08 International Photography Festival, in Paris, France, Nov. 12-Nov 16.

The Yiddish poet Dov-Ber Kerler, the Alice Field Cohn Chair in Yiddish Studies at IU, was awarded the 2008 Dr. Hirsch and Dora Rosenfeld Prize for Yiddish Literature by the Montreal Jewish Public Library’s J.I. Segal Awards committee for his 2006 book of poems entitled "ELABREK: lider fun nayem yortoyznt" (English title: "ELABREK: poems of the new millennium").

Rega Wood, Philosophy, serves as the principal investigator for the Richard Rufus Project (RRP), which received a $250,000 NEH Scholarly Editions award for 2008-2011.  RRP is currently editing Richard Rufus' commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, the earliest surviving Western European commentary on that work.

The ceramic work of Associate Professor of Ceramic Art Malcolm Mobutu Smith is featured in a cover-story review by art critic Matthew Kangas in the October 2008 issue of Ceramics Monthly. Ceramics Monthly is one of the leading journals in the field of ceramic art.

Tim O'Connor, professor of Philosophy, was the featured guest on a live, one-hour weekly radio program, PHILOSOPHY TALK, from the studios of KALW, 91.7 FM, Information Radio, San Francisco. He spoke on Levels of Reality.

Allen Wood, professor of Philosophy, gave the keynote address at the North American Kant Society meeting at Purdue University in October 2008.

On November 9, Jeff Veidlinger presented a talk on “Jews and Power” for the Dawn Shuman Institute in Chicago, and on November 16, gave a presention on  “Soviet Jewish Soldiers, Jewish Resistance, and Jews in the USSR During the Holocaust” at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s international conference at New York University.