Seattle University President Stephen Sundborg, S.J., appointed Professor Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs as the Theiline Pigott McCone Chair in Humanities. The two-year appointment starts July 2018.
The Theiline Pigott McCone Chair in Humanities is dedicated to promoting scholarly life among faculty. The President of Seattle University bestows this award to a member of the College of Arts and Sciences faculty who is an outstanding teacher and scholar in one of the basic humanities disciplines.
Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs is a Professor in Modern Languages and Women and Gender Studies, and past Director for The Center for The Study of Justice in Society as well as current Pigott McCone Chair. She is a poet, literary critic, cultural worker and mother. She is the author/editor of eight books of poetry, criticism and culture, and multiple articles, encyclopedia entries, opinion pieces. She received her MA and PhD from Stanford University, and studied Masters degree work in Mexico, Spain, France, Portugal and Brazil. She is first editor of Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, and Rebozos de Palabras: An Helena Maria Viramontes Reader, as well as Word Images. She also authored the recently published and forthcoming poetry collections: The Runaway Poems, (Finishing Line Press) and How Many Indians Can We Be? (Mango Press). Her published poetry collections are: A Most Improbable Life and The Plastic Book. She has presented her work all over the world, multilingually, and specializes in expanding subjectivity. She was a Commissioner for the Arts for the state of Washington (2014-2017) and is the daughter of migrant farmworkers, as well as a past field and cannery worker herself. Her poetry has been anthologized and read around the world, and she has given keynotes and poetry readings globally.