Jane Desmond

Desmond holds a doctorate in American Studies with a background in performance arts, the fine arts and transnational study.

She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Music and Dance from Brown University in 1973.[1] In 1975, she received a Master of Fine Arts with a concentration in dance from Sarah Lawrence College.[1] It was ten years later that Desmond completed a graduate study in media theory, production, and criticism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[1] She then began her education in American Studies at Yale University, first with her M.Phil in 1991 and then earning her Ph.D. in 1993.[1]

From 1975 to present day, Desmond's career in academia has spanned across many institutions and faculties. At Cornell University she was a lecturer in dance (1975-1978) as well as an assistant professor and co-director of the dance performance program (1978-1980).[1] Soon after she began at Duke University as an artist-in-resident in dance (1982-1993) and later as the director of the Duke in New York arts program (1990-1992).[1] In her time at Duke she was appointed full-time faculty.[1] In 1993 she started work at the University of Iowa, first as an associate professor of American Studies and Women's Studies (1993-1999), then as a tenured associate professor of American Studies (1996-2000), next an associate professor of International Studies (2003-2006), and lastly an associate dean of international programs (2004-2006).[1] Her international teaching experience includes her time as an Otto Salgo Chair in American Studies at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary (2000), and a guest teacher in the American Studies Department at La Sapienza University in Rome, Italy (2016, 2018).

Presently, Desmond juggles many roles as the co-founder and director of The International Forum for U.S. Studies, the founding resident director of the Summer Institute in Animal Studies at the Center for Advanced Study, and a professor of Anthropology and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois (UIUC).[1] At UIUC, affiliated faculty include the Department of Dance, the College of Fine Arts, and the College of Veterinary Medicine.[1]

Most recently, Desmond was appointed a Faculty Associate at the UIUC Center for Advanced Study, directing the Human-Animal Studies at Illinois Initiative from 2020 to 2021.[1] The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has also awarded her the Arnold O. Beckman Award for Research (2018), granted her a tenured faculty Fellowship and Associate Appointment at the UIUC Centre for Advanced Study (2016), appointed her as an annual Faculty-Associate in Residence (2010-2011), and named her the Humanities Research Institute Faculty Scholar (2009-2010).[1]

At the University of Iowa, Demond was awarded the Arts and Humanities Individual Research Award (2004) and the Interdisciplinary Course Development Award (2002).[1] She was also named their Global Scholar (2000-2002).[1]

Other notable achievements include The National Op-Ed Project Public Voices Fellow (2019-2020), the University of Edinburgh Centre for Advanced Study Fellowship (2019), her appointment as the Eminent World Scholar as a visiting professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University as part of the American Studies program (2009), being named president of the International American Studies Association (2007-2011) and her CIC Academic Leadership Program Fellowship (2005-2006).[1]

Her notable grants include the Hewlett Foundation, The Ford Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation.[1]

• Desmond, J., 2019. Vivacious Remains: An Afterword on Taxidermy's Forms, Fictions, Facticity, and Futures. Configurations, 27(2), pp. 257–266.[2]
• Desmond, J.C., 2019. Zones of Production in Possible Worlds: Dance's Precarious Placement, an Afterword. Dance Research Journal, 51(1), pp. 96–101.[3]
• Desmond, J.C., 2018. Leisurely death and dying?: Body, place, and the limits to leisure-a prologue. In Leisure and Death: An Anthropological Tour of Risk, Death, and Dying (pp. ix-xviii). University Press of Colorado.[4]
• Desmond, J., 2017. “Make ‘America’Smart Again”: A Response to Trump’s First 100 Days. Comparative American Studies, 15(1-2), pp. 4–6.[5]
• Desmond, J.C., 2017. Reading “America” Across and Against the Grain of Public Discourse. In Global Perspectives on the United States: Pro-Americanism, Anti-Americanism, and the Discourses Between (pp. 1–3). University of Illinois Press.[6]
• Desmond, J.C., 2016. Displaying death and animating Life. University of Chicago Press.[7]