The Department of American Studies mourns the passing of our cherished colleague and friend, Dr. Lauren Rabinovitz. Lauren joined the University of Iowa in 1986 after earning her PhD in American Civilization from the University of Texas and working as Assistant Professor of the History of Architecture and Art at the University of Illinois at Chicago. At Iowa, Lauren mainly worked in the Department of American Studies, which reflected her fiercely interdisciplinary interests as a teacher and scholar. She chaired the Department of American Studies from 2000 to 2008, and again from 2017 to 2018. Lauren was the heartbeat of our community. She led with diligence, integrity, a sharp eye for detail, and a commitment to fairness. She was no-nonsense, and she set high expectations for colleagues, students, and herself. But Lauren balanced this rigor with generosity, humor, and collegiality. Beyond her work in American Studies, Lauren had joint appointments in Communication Studies (1986-1998) and Cinematic Arts (1998-2019). She also served as director of the Center for Ethnic Studies and the Arts (2006-2011), director of the Division of Interdisciplinary Programs (2005-2008), chair of the African American Studies program (2006-2008), and interim chair of the Department of Women’s Studies (2007-2008). She served on over twenty dissertations and developed popular undergraduate courses that are still being offered. Lauren was a guiding light at UI until her retirement in 2019. She was named a Faculty Scholar in 1996, and she received the Regents Award for Faculty Excellence in 2010—one of the highest honors the university gives to faculty. 

Lauren was a trailblazing and internationally-respected feminist scholar who published an eclectic collection of foundational works on film, media, and popular culture. Her books include Points of Resistance: Women, Power & Politics in the New York Avant Garde Cinema, 1943-1971 (University of Illinois Press, 1991), For the Love of Pleasure: Women, Movies, and Culture in Turn-of-the-Century Chicago (Rutgers University Press, 1998), Memory Bytes: History, Technology, and Digital Culture (Duke University Press, 2004), and Electric Dreamland: Amusement Parks, Movies and American Modernity (Columbia University Press, 2012). She was also on the front-wave of multi-modal, experimental digital humanities scholarship with The Rebecca Project, a CD-ROM interactive book she published in 1995 with her partner Greg Easley. Lauren was one of the founders of Console-ing Passions, a feminist collective devoted to the study of television, culture, and identity. She organized its first conference at the University of Iowa in 1992.  That organization continues to thrive through annual conferences and a book series published by Duke University Press.

Few scholars have such a wide-ranging and influential body of work. And few scholars have the bravery to pursue new avenues of inquiry after they have established themselves as an expert on a specific topic. Lauren continued to research and publish in retirement. She edited the forthcoming Cambridge History of American Popular Culture and had completed all but the final chapter of another book, Food in America. 

But for all her impressive credentials, it is the material that does not show up on her CV that made Lauren so special. She was curious, brilliant, creative, kind, and inspiring. She will be missed, and we hope to honor her memory and follow her commitment to fearless excellence and to building communities for a more just future.