PDF version of Conference Program
Teresa Mangum will provide the closing keynote, connecting the themes of the day: scholarship that moves from the page to the people, from theory to impact, from the classroom to the community. Drawing on her service on the Board of Directors for the National Humanities Alliance, Mangum will illuminate how faculty expertise extends far beyond the classroom in ways that range from guiding policy conversations on Capitol Hill to fostering cross-sector partnerships, and ensuring that humanistic perspectives remain central in addressing our most pressing challenges. You’ll be invited to consider higher education as both a home for knowledge creation and as a catalyst for public good, affirming the enduring value of the humanities in shaping a more informed, connected, and cohesive society. She also welcomes you to bring ideas to share!
Teresa Mangum is an emeritus professor and the recent director of the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Iowa.
In recognition of her crucial contributions locally and nationally, the Modern Language Association’s Associated Departments of English (ADE) chose her as the 2026 winner of the Francis Andrew March Award.
We’re excited to have her with us at a conference focused on real-world results and university-community collaborations, because Mangum has pioneered projects that support and enhance the digital humanities and the professional growth of faculty as well as undergraduate and graduate students.
Her leadership of public-facing humanities teaching and scholarship includes the Dickens Universe, the National Humanities Alliance, the Consortium of Humanities Centers, and the Imagining America National Advisory Board.
She is the author of Married, Middlebrow, and Militant: Sarah Grand and the New Woman Novel (University of Michigan Press, 1998); editor of the volume A Cultural History of Women: The Age of Empire, 1800-1920 (Bloomsbury, 2013); and co-editor of the University of Iowa book series, Humanities and Public Life.