Rebecca Fons is the Programming Director at FilmScene, Iowa City’s premiere art house theater, and also serves as the Development and Programming Director for the Iowa Theater – a multi-disciplinary film and performance center in her hometown of Winterset, IA. Rebecca was the Education Director for The Chicago International Film Festival for nearly a decade and is a co-founder of Destroy Your Art, a yearly film/performance art event in Chicago. Rebecca received a Masters Degree in Arts Management from Columbia College Chicago and a BA in Cinema and Comparative Literature Studies from the University of Iowa and is a Steppenwolf Theatre Associate and member of the Gene Siskel Film Center’s Community Council. She serves on the screening committees for the True/False Film Festival and the South By Southwest Film Festival, and as a juror at festivals around the country. 

Katina Lillios is an archaeologist and is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Iowa. Katina has a PhD in Anthropology from Yale University and a BA in Archaeology and Art History from Boston University. She has taught at the University of Iowa since 2003. Katina is interested in the ways that people use their material world to create social identities and cultural differences. She has devoted her career to exploring this question for the peoples of the Neolithic through Bronze Age of the Iberian Peninsula (4000-1500 BCE), a period of profound social and climate changes. Through archaeological excavation and the study of artifacts, and often working in collaboration with interdisciplinary teams, her work has centered on understanding the ways that people of the past used things and monuments, such as heirlooms, sacred objects, and ancestral burials, to shape their futures. 

Brenda Longfellow is an associate professor and Head of the Art History division at the University of Iowa. She received her Ph.D. in classical art and archaeology from the University of Michigan, and her research is focused on the art and architecture of the ancient Roman Empire. She is the author of the book Roman Imperialism and Civic Patronage: Form, Meaning and Ideology in Monumental Fountain Complexes (Cambridge 2011) and co-editor of the book Roman Artists, Patrons, and Public Consumption: Familiar Works Reconsidered (Ann Arbor 2018).​

​She is a 2019 recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities summer stipend and was the 2013 Andrew Heiskell Post-Doctoral Rome Prize winner at the American Academy in Rome.  

​喻荣军, or Nick Yu, joins us this fall from the People’s Republic of China. His professional titles include: Artistic Director of the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, Artistic Director of the Shanghai International Comedy Festival, and Co-director of the Shanghai Performing Arts Group.
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Yu has had over 60 of his original plays produced in China and abroad. He also works in film, TV, and radio. His writing has won him the Cao Yu Script Award and an Outstanding Social Achievement Awaird at the Cairo International Experimental Theatre Festival.

​“Bringing International Sports Competitions to Our Community; Diplomacy, Logistics, and Challenges”
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Within the past 5 years, the Iowa City/Coralville area has become a hub of international sporting events. Wrestling has been on of the biggest draws. In 2012, the U.S. Wrestling Olympic Team Trials held at Carver-Hawkeye Arena smashed the attendance record with 57,766 people in attendance. The 2016 Olympic Team Trials saw similar success setting the 2nd place attendance record. The success of the Olympic Team Trials enabled Iowa City to host the 2018 Wrestling World Cup this past April, drawing competitors and spectators from around the world. Outside of wrestling, Iowa City/ Coralville put on the UCI Cyclo-Cross World Cup every year. This international cycling competition is put on in collaboration with the same organization that puts on the Tour de France. Josh Schamberger has been at the center of it all.

“Creating Alternative Worlds in Animation”
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Peter Chanthanakone is an award winning director and producer specializing in 3D animated short films. He has won numerous film festival awards and his works has been selected in major film festivals around the world such as Germany, France, Austria, Canada, China, Belgium, S. Korea, Pakistan, India, Australia, Italy as a retrospective at the 2013 VIEW Animation Video Festival and on a giant screen in Times Square in the NYC International Film Festival.