05/13/20

AMES, Iowa — Following a national search, Sarah Kyle, professor of humanities at the University of Central Oklahoma, will become the new chair of the Department of Art and Visual Culture in the Iowa State University College of Design. She will begin her appointment July 1.

“One of Sarah’s greatest assets is her ability to make connections — among disciplines, artifacts and ideas as well as among departments, students and faculty,” said Luis Rico-Gutierrez, dean of the College of Design.

“Her vision for an inclusive campus engaged in cross-cultural and collaborative learning; her experience bringing historical perspective to contemporary issues in art, design and science; and her efforts to expand student opportunities for international study and cultural engagement are a perfect match for the Department of Art and Visual Culture, the College of Design and Iowa State University. I look forward to welcoming her as a member of the college’s leadership team.”

Kyle will succeed professor Ingrid Lilligren, who has served as art and visual culture department chair since 2013 and was interim chair and program director from 2010-2013. Lilligren will step down from her duties as chair at the end of June and will return to the faculty to teach full time in August.

Kyle currently serves as director of the master of arts in liberal studies program at the University of Central Oklahoma and as an advisory board member for the university’s Melton Art Gallery. She teaches introduction to art and culture; general humanities; upper-level courses in early Renaissance Italy and Renaissance and baroque humanities; and senior undergraduate and graduate seminars in alchemy, art and medicine in early modern Italy; baroque Rome; Dante’s “Inferno;” early modern traditions; humanities capstone; and culture of knowledge in early modern Europe.

Kyle has received recent research grants from the Kress Foundation/International Center of Medieval Art (2019), Friends of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries (2019), American Philosophical Society (2017), Renaissance Society of America (2016) and DaVinci Institute (2016). She served as a research fellow at the University of Iowa Obermann Center for Advanced Studies in 2017-2018 and a faculty fellow at the University of Hawaii East-West Center, funded by a US Department of Education Title VI Grant in Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Language, in 2017-2019.

Kyle holds a bachelor of arts in visual arts and English with honors from the University of Western Ontario; a master of arts in the history of art from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario; and a PhD in the history of art from Emory University, Atlanta. In 2019, she received e-learning facilitation certification from the Center for eLearning and Connected Environments to teach and design online and hybrid courses.

She is the author of “Medicine and Humanism in Late Medieval Italy: The Carrara Herbal in Padua” (Routledge, 2016) and is working on a new book, “The Mirror and the Key: The Roccabonella Herbal and Pharmacology in Renaissance Venice.” She has lectured and presented her work internationally.

Kyle is a member of the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs, College Art Association, Council on Undergraduate Research, Humanities Education Research Association, International Center of Medieval Art and Renaissance Society of America.

Contacts

Luis Rico-Gutierrez, Design Administration, lrico@iastate.edu
Heather Sauer, Design Communications, hsauer@iastate.edu

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