The University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) has appointed two faculty members to the position of associate dean, effective Jan. 1, 2017. Meenakshi Gigi Durham will be associate dean for outreach and engagement, and Christine Getz will be associate dean for graduate education. Both will continue their research and departmental teaching or service as they fulfill their new responsibilities.

Meenakshi Gigi Durham is professor of journalism and mass communication with a joint appointment in Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies. Her administrative experience includes serving as administrative research fellow in the UI Office of Research and Economic Development, and faculty associate director in the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. She earned her PhD in journalism and mass communication from the University of Florida in 1990 and joined the UI faculty as an assistant professor in 2000; she also had a career as a professional journalist and editor in India and the U.S. With a research focus on representations of gender and sexuality in the media, Durham is the author of three full-length books—including The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It (Overlook Press, 2008), which garnered national and international media attention—and numerous journal and encyclopedia articles, book chapters, essays, and short stories. Her honors and awards include being named CLAS Collegiate Scholar in 2012 and receiving the 2014 Teresa Award for the Advancement of Feminist Scholarship from the International Communication Association.

Christine Getz is a professor of musicology. She is the associate director for graduate studies in the School of Music and has served since 2014 as an administrative fellow in CLAS. She earned her PhD in musicology in 1991 from the University of North Texas and joined the UI faculty as an assistant professor in 1999 after starting her career at Baylor University, where she received the Baylor University Outstanding Teaching Award for tenure-track faculty and served as a lecturer and director of the Collegium Musicum. Her research interests include music, culture, and sacred music in early modern Milan, and she has published numerous essays and articles in the field. Getz is the author of two full-length books—including 2013’s Mary, Music, and Meditation: Sacred Conversation in Post-Tridentine Milan (Indiana University Press, 2013), which received a subvention from the American Musicological Society—and editor of a volume of 16th-century motets for the series Recent Researches in Music of the Renaissance (A-R Editions, 2008). She was named CLAS Dean’s Scholar in 2005.