University of Iowa - Department of English

Check out some of our English students abroad! 🌍 With students pursuing internships, study programs, or faculty led programs, English at Iowa can take you across the world (literally)! Are you an Iowa English student abroad now? DM us a picture and location to be included in future posts!!

What era are you in this summer?? ✨✨

Congratulations Professor Verzemnieks!!!

Congratulations to Dr. Bronwyn Stewart for completing her PhD!!

Bronwyn Stewart’s scholarship is in the gutter! And she wouldn’t have it any other way. Her dissertation merges performance studies and waste theory to explore feminist and q***r theatre and performance art created during the late 20th-century that is structured and organized around gutters—urban spaces that are often marginalized and imbued with disgust, shame, and excess. Before attending the University of Iowa, she received her BA in English from California State University, Northridge. During her time in Iowa City, Bronwyn has worked closely and collaboratively with local arts venues such as the Englert and FilmScene. She has also worked with the Performing Arts at Iowa team to write and report on artists and performance events across the Departments of Dance, Music, and Theatre as well as Hancher Auditorium. She has taught classes in the English Department, Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies and teaches writing courses at Kirkwood Community College. 

Thesis Title: “Gutter Performance: To Be in Strange and Perverse Spaces”

Congrats Dr. Stewart!

Congratulations to Dr. Stewart on this amazing achievement! Dr. Darius Stewart received his BA with honors in English (creative writing) from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 2004, and an MFA in poetry from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin in 2007. In 2017, he returned to graduate study in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, where he earned an MFA in nonfiction and later served as Provost Visiting Writer in Nonfiction, teaching Advanced Nonfiction courses. He is a Lulu “Merle” Johnson Doctoral Fellow in English and received his PhD in English from the University of Iowa in May 2026, specializing in the Black autobiographical tradition, Black q***r masculinities, and Black masculinity studies. His dissertation, “Speculative Romance: A Critical Memoir,” supported by a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship, is a hybrid project that subverts romance tropes by examining infidelity within the cultural context of the “down low.” He is the author of Intimacies in Borrowed Light: Poems (2022) and Be Not Afraid of My Body: A Lyrical Memoir (2024), a 2025 Stonewall Book Award–Israel Fishman Nonfiction Honoree and Lambda Literary finalist. He is currently on the academic job market and revising his dissertation for publication.

Out now! Get your copy today!!! Congrats Professor Lin!!! 🌺🌸

Professor Brontësaurus is here to announce that the construction has started in EPB!! The EPB will be closed this summer as a result!

It’s time to celebrate our amazing English MA 2026 grads!!

For the moment, Nick will continue his career as a bookseller at Prairie Lights Books, and plans on applying to MFA programs in the Fall.
Thesis Title: “Wishlist: Joe Christmas and Black Fungibility in Faulkner’s “Light in August””

Congrats Nick!

Congrats Professor Lewis!!! Get your copy now!!! 🩷💙

It’s time to celebrate our amazing English MA 2026 grads!!

John Lande is a writer from the Seattle area with an interest in discussing modern combat sports in relation to Marxist theory. He plans to move to New York this summer and enter the workforce!

Congrats John!