Distinguished Alumni Award


Shanto Iyengar 71MA, 72PhD

2006 Achievement Award

Shanto Iyengar, 71MA, 72PhD, is one of the worlds leading scholars on the relationship between media and politics. During his distinguished career as a professor, author, and speaker, he has earned the respect both of experts in the field and a broad popular audience.

After coming to the United States in 1966 to pursue his chosen field of study, Iyengar quickly distinguished himself. Already the recipient of a bachelors degree in his native India, he completed an American undergraduate degree at Linfield College in Oregon. In 1968, when he entered the UI graduate program in political science, he impressed his professors as an outstanding student.

After graduating from Iowa, Iyengar became a member of the political science faculty at Kansas State until 1980, when he was drawn to Yale University by a postdoctoral fellowship to study political psychology. He taught at Yale and SUNY-Stony Brook before UCLA recruited him in the late 1980s. Stanford University approached him a decade later, and Iyengar now holds senior positions in the political science department, which is ranked second in the country by U.S. News & World Report, and in the Department of Communication, where he is Chandler Chair in Communication and director of the Political Communication Lab.

Considered one of the top political scientists in the nation, Iyengar has published in all of the major journals in this field and received the prestigious Murray Edelman Lifetime Career Award from the American Political Science Association. In addition to this area of expertise, he is viewed as a pioneer in the field of political communication. His achievement in these two areas represents no small triumph in an age of high professional specialization.

Iyengar has published six books and countless academic articles. His work on the effects of negative campaign advertisements in American politics, Going Negative: How Political Advertisements Shrink and Polarize the Electorate, has not only gained widespread attention, but also contributed an important voice in the national debate on the subject. Another book that garnered international attention, Is Anyone Responsible?: How Television Frames Political Issues, appeared in paperback and was reprinted in a Spanish edition.

These works, and many others, are examples of how Iyengars writing combines high standards of scholarship even as it grapples with the most pressing questions our nation and world face about the nature of contemporary politics. His research has been supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.

While Iyengar has undoubtedly made his mark in the elite academic world, he has maintained strong ties with the University of Iowa and the Department of Political Science. He regularly collaborates with faculty and graduates from Iowa, returns to offer seminars, helps UI graduates in their careers, and generally remains extraordinarily loyal to the university.

In Iowa and much farther afield, Shanto Iyengar is recognized for his impressive service as a teacher and for his invaluable contributions to the national and international discussion of media and politics.


About Distinguished Alumni Awards

Since 1963, the University of Iowa has annually recognized accomplished alumni and friends with Distinguished Alumni Awards. Awards are presented in seven categories: Achievement, Service, Hickerson Recognition, Faculty, Staff, Recent Graduate, and Friend of the University.


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The Krause Essay Prize and its $10,000 award is presented annually by a unique panel of judges: UI graduate students. Photo: Tim Schoon/UI Office of Strategic Communication Students in the University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program's graduate seminar dug into their weekly reading assignments with particular enthusiasm this past spring?and for good reason. By the end of the semester, they were tasked with selecting the best of the bunch for a prestigious award on behalf of a university known for its literary tradition. This marks the 12th year that nonfiction graduate students served as judges for the newly renamed Krause Essay Prize, a national award presented to an essayist who pushes the boundaries of the genre through experimentation, exploration, and discovery. Thought to be the only national literary honor selected by students, the prize is accompanied by a $10,000 award for the first time this year thanks to a new partnership between the UI Nonfiction Writing Program and the Kyle J. and Sharon Krause Family Foundation. Shawn Wen, winner of the 2018 Krause Essay Prize, is the author of A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause. Her writing has appeared in The New Inquiry, Seneca Review, Iowa Review, White Review, and the anthology City by City: Dispatches from the American Metropolis. This year's Krause Essay Prize recipient is Shawn Wen, a San Francisco-based multimedia artist and the author of A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause (Sarabande Books, 2017), a book-length essay on the life of French mime Marcel Marceau. Wen, whom students selected from a pool of 14 nominees, accepted her award at a ceremony in September in the Old Capitol Senate Chamber. Nicol?s Medina Mora Perez, a third-year MFA student from Mexico City, was among the prize judges in the spring seminar taught by author and Nonfiction Writing Program director John D'Agata (98MFA). Perez said that beyond discussing the merits of the nominated essays each week, class conversations revolved around how they define essay writing and the type of nonfiction they wanted to champion as representatives of the UI. By serving as judges, Perez says, students had the opportunity to read a broad selection of contemporary nonfiction that they may not have otherwise sought out. "By the end of the semester I had a clearer idea of the sort of work that people are publishing today, which includes stuff that I'd like to imitate and stuff that I'd rather not," Perez says. "I guess it's a bit like watching the World Cup with your soccer teammates: You see moves that you think are cool and want to steal for your own gameplay, but you also notice pitfalls that you should learn to avoid." Wen says she's been "over the moon" since learning she was selected as this year's Krause Essay Prize winner. A producer for Youth Radio in Oakland, California, Wen says discovering essay writing "was very much like falling in love" and has long admired the UI's approach to the genre. "When I started writing essays, I felt like all these dusty windows in my brain were opened, letting in light and fresh air," she says. "It's incredibly meaningful to me that my writing has been recognized by this program and its students." D'Agata dreamed up the prize in 2007 as a way to introduce his students to high-caliber essay writing and the many forms it can take. The professor asked colleagues from around the country to recommend their favorite essays from the past year, which he then compiled into a reading list for his seminar. As an added twist, D'Agata noted that submissions could be from any medium?including radio and film?as long as they were "essayistic." 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The Krause Foundation is helping to fix that." Krause Essay Prize Winners The UI Nonfiction Writing Program has awarded a national essay-writing prize annually since 2007. With support from the Kyle J. and Sharon Krause Family Foundation, the award was renamed the Krause Essay Prize this year. For more on the prize, visit krauseessayprize.org. 2018: Shawn Wen, A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause 2017: Peter Middleton and James Spinney, Notes on Blindness 2016: Oliver Sacks, Gratitude 2015: Claudia Rankine, Citizen 2014: Sophie Calle, The Address Book 2013: David Rakoff, Waiting 2012: Lauren Redniss, Radioactive 2011: Judith Schalansky, Atlas of Remote Islands 2010: Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, New Normal? 2009: Mary Ruefle, The Most of It 2008: Joshua Raskin, I Met the Walrus 2007: Aaron Kunin, Secret Architecture

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