Jane Desmond

Jane C. Desmond is a published author and the co-founder and director of the International Forum for U.S. Studies. She is a professor of Anthropology and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Education Desmond earned her Bachelor of Arts in Music and Dance from Brown University in 1973. and a guest teacher in the American Studies Department at La Sapienza University in Rome, Italy (2016, 2018).

Desmond is the co-founder and director with Virginia Dominguez 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). and the Interdisciplinary Course Development Award (2002). 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). Desmond, J.C., 2019. Zones of Production in Possible Worlds: Dance's Precarious Placement, an Afterword. Dance Research Journal, 51(1), pp. 96–101. 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. Desmond, J., 2017. “Make ‘America’Smart Again”: A Response to Trump’s First 100 Days. Comparative American Studies, 15(1-2), pp. 4–6. 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. Desmond, J.C., 2016. Displaying death and animating Life. University of Chicago Press.