Richard Utz

Interim Dean, Professor

Member Of:
  • Ivan Allen Dean's Office
  • School of Literature, Media, and Communication
Fax Number:404-894-1287
Office Location: Skiles
Office Hours: by appointment

Overview

Personal Pronouns:
he, him, his

Richard Utz is an academic leader who has served as senior associate dean in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts (IAC) and as chair of the School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC). Under Utz’s leadership, LMC experienced consequential growth in external research funding, faculty productivity, and enrollment and diversity in its undergraduate and graduate programs, and it added to its curriculum minors in Black Media Studies, Science Fiction, and Social Justice (with the School of History and Sociology), and a profession ready master’s degree in Global Media and Cultures (with the School of Modern Languages and the Library). Utz also oversaw the renovation and repurposing of multiple spaces to further student success and belonging such as the Undergraduate Hub, the Sci-Fi Lab, the Career Origination Lab, and the Digital Integrative Liberal Arts Center, funded by the Mellon Foundation. During his tenure, LMC saw the appointment of its first Regents’ Professor, and he incentivized research that reaches out to educated general publics, significantly amplifying his school’s reputation. He led these efforts by example, publishing two editions of the unit’s calling card essay collection, Humanistic Perspectives in a Technological World, and sharing his views in the Chronicle of Higher EducationInside Higher EdTimes Higher Education, and Issues in Science and Technology

As a leader at the College level, Utz has overseen faculty affairs processes and professional development, including a comprehensive resource hub and workshop series on reappointment, promotion, and tenure and a faculty-to-faculty mentoring process. He served as co-champion for building and implementing the Ivan Allen College Strategic Plan, organized high impact events on integrating the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences with STEM fields, and played a role in strategic communication and development activities, garnering funds for LGBTQ+ projects and international summer internships. He also represented the college to internal and external constituencies, serving on the Institute Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council, the Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage Selection Committee, and the Arts@Tech Strategic Planning Steering Committee.

Before joining Georgia Tech in 2012, Utz held administrative and faculty appointments at Western Michigan University, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, University of Northern Iowa, and Technische Universität Dresden. He received his Ph.D. in English and German Literary Studies and Linguistics from the University of Regensburg, Germany, and his scholarship centers on medievalism, medieval culture and literature, the interconnections between humanistic inquiry and science/technology, reception study, and the formation of cultural memories and identities. An impactful scholar, he was a plenary speaker at the world’s largest international congress in Medieval Studies, served for eleven years as President of the International Society for the Study of Medievalism, and helps shape his field of study on the editorial advisory board of journals and book series based in Australia, Great Britain, Denmark, Germany, and the United States. Utz has shared his research in three monographs, 21 (co)edited essay collections and special journal issues, 80 journal articles and book chapters, and 70 book reviews. His work has been translated into French, Portuguese, Russian, and Turkish, and he has received media attention by the Christian Science MonitorFrankfurter Allgemeine ZeitungForbesNew York TimesSputnik MundoSüddeutsche ZeitungTime Magazine, and Serious Eats (seriously!). Utz’s has been recognized with a German Academic Exchange Service Teaching Fellowship, the Johann von Spix International Visiting Professorship at Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, the Iowa State Board of Regents Award for Faculty Excellence, and as Director’s Visiting Scholar at Harvard University’s Dumbarton Oaks Research Library.

Education:
  • Dr. phil. Universität Regensburg, Germany
Awards and
Distinctions:
  • President, International Society for the Study of Medievalism (2009-2020)
  • Director’s Visiting Scholar (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, Harvard U, 2018)
  • Johann von Spix International Visiting Professor (U of Bamberg, 2017)
  • Dr. Phillip Hubbard Award for Outstanding Educator (U of Northern Iowa, 2006)
  • Faculty Excellence Award (College of Humanities & Fine Arts, U of Northern Iowa, 2004)
  • University Distinguished Scholar Award (U of Northern Iowa, 2003)
  • Regents Award for Faculty Excellence (Iowa State Board of Regents, 2002)
  • Donald N. McKay Faculty Research Award (U of Northern Iowa, 2001)
  • Outstanding Teaching Award (College of Humanities & Fine Arts, U of Northern Iowa, 1995)
  • English Department Professor of the Year (Sigma Tau Delta, U of Northern Iowa, 1993)
  • Dr. Katharina Sailer Award for Outstanding Work in the Field of English Studies” (Dissertation Prize, U of Regensburg, 1991)
Areas of
Expertise:
  • Higher Education Administration, Leadership, And Management
  • History Of Humanistic Inquiry, Science, And Technology
  • Late Medieval English Culture, Literature, And Language
  • Medievalism Studies
  • Reception Studies

Interests

Research Fields:
  • Communication
  • Digital Media
  • Education Policy
  • German
  • Literary and Cultural Studies
  • Media Studies
  • Science and Technology Studies
Geographic
Focuses:
  • Europe
  • Europe - United Kingdom
  • North America
  • United States
Issues:
  • Race/Ethnicity
  • Digital Humanities
  • Education
  • Higher Education: Teaching and Learning
  • History and Memory
  • Literary Theory
  • Literature
  • Media

Courses

  • LCC-3502: Medieval Lit & Culture
  • LCC-3823: Special Topics Lit/Cult
  • LCC-4100: Seminar in STAC
  • LMC-2000: Intro-Lit, Media, & Comm
  • LMC-2050: Lit, Media, Comm Seminar
  • LMC-3226: Major Authors
  • LMC-3502: Medieval Lit & Culture
  • LMC-4000: Senior Seminar in LMC
  • LMC-4200: Seminar Lit/Cult Theory

Publications

Selected Publications

Books

Journal Articles

Chapters

  • Academic Medievalism and Nationalism
    In: The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism
    Date: 2016

    Medievalism - the creative interpretation or recreation of the European Middle Ages - has had a major presence in the cultural memory of the modern West, and has grown in scale to become a global phenomenon. This essay surveys the nationalist tradition in the reception of medieval culture among amateurs, dilettantes, enthusiasts, and antiquaries to full-time academic scholars. 

    View All Details about Academic Medievalism and Nationalism

Internet Publications

All Publications

Books

Journal Articles

  • Medievalism, Anti-Semitism, and 21st-Century Media
    In: Studies in Medievalism 28 (2019): 41-51 [Peer Reviewed]
    Date: January 2019

    View All Details about Medievalism, Anti-Semitism, and 21st-Century Media

  • Medievalism and the Subject of Religion
    In: Studies in Medievalism 24 [Peer Reviewed]
    Date: 2015

    Assesses the reasons for the relative disregard of scholarly work on studying the continuity of religious thought and faith by scholarship in Medievalism Studies over the last 25 years. Postulates that medievalism scholars have an ethical obligation to investigate and historicize religion and theology, at least in its temporal manifestations.

    View All Details about Medievalism and the Subject of Religion

  • Quo Vadis, English Studies
    Date: 2014

    The Modern Language Association's Division on the History and Theory of Rhetoric and Composition had invited me to contribute a paper on the topic of "Rhetoric as a New Paradigm for English Studies" for the 2014 annual meeting of the MLA in Chicago. While the other participants at the session, Douglas Hesse (University of Denver), Peter Leslie Mortensen (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), and Michael Bernard-Donals (University of Wisconsin, Madison), focused on illustrative examples of the cultural work rhetoric can do within the "English" paradigm, my own proposition as the only "English literature" person now at a major technological research institution turned out somewhat more radical. My thought experiment asked whether we need "English" departments at all, extending previous deliberations published in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Utz 2013) 

    View All Details about Quo Vadis, English Studies

  • The Good Corporation? Google's Medievalism and Why it Matters
    In: Studies in Medievalism 23 [Peer Reviewed]
    Date: 2013

    Examines the role of the corporation in its attempt at using the positive aspects of a return to the Middle Ages, and examines the support its technologies (specifially the N-gram Viewer) has afforded historical and cultural semantics. 

    View All Details about The Good Corporation? Google's Medievalism and Why it Matters

Chapters

  • Academic Medievalism and Nationalism
    In: The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism
    Date: 2016

    Medievalism - the creative interpretation or recreation of the European Middle Ages - has had a major presence in the cultural memory of the modern West, and has grown in scale to become a global phenomenon. This essay surveys the nationalist tradition in the reception of medieval culture among amateurs, dilettantes, enthusiasts, and antiquaries to full-time academic scholars. 

    View All Details about Academic Medievalism and Nationalism

  • Robin Hood, Frenched
    In: Medieval Afterlives in Popular Culture
    Date: 2012

    Between 1963 and 1966, French Television broadcast a medievalist series entitled Thierry La Fronde, or Thierry the Sling. This successful series, which was also shown in Canada, Poland, Australia, and the Netherlands, transposes the English Robin Hood narrative into late medieval France in fascinating ways. Drawing from the postmedieval English tradition surrounding Robin Hood, in which the protagonist appears as a member of the nobility who has fallen from grace, Thierry de Janville, a young Sologne nobleman, who had fought against the English occupation by the French during the Hundred Years War, loses his title and lands because of his disloyal steward. Taking up the name "Thierry La Fronde" and surrounding himself with a host or merry men (and Isabelle, his "Maid Marian"), he wields his knightly sword as well as the popular sling in his résistance against the oppressive Black Prince and his allies. My analysis of the series addressed the feuilleton's indebtedness to numerous elements of the Robin Hood narrative, characters, and episodes, specifically those in The Adventures of Robin Hood and Ivanhoe, two TV shows targeting Anglo-American audiences in the 1950s.

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Internet Publications