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Madison U. Sowell was appointed provost and vice president of academic affairs at Tusculum University in June 2018. [1]
Sowell was born and reared in Piggott, Arkansas, where he still owns and maintains family cotton and soybean farms. He joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) when he was 17, shortly before beginning his undergraduate studies in the prestigious Brigham Young University Honors Program, entering in the same cohort as Clayton Christensen, who later developed the theory of "disruptive innovation." Sowell then served a mission in the Italy North Mission.
Sowell earned a bachelor's degree summa cum laude from BYU (with Highest Honors from the Honors Program) and a master's degree and Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard University, where he won the Jacoby Prize for scholarship and his department's travel-study prize for outstanding teaching. At Harvard he studied Italian literature with Dante Della Terza (a pupil of Luigi Russo), Italian Renaissance history with the historian Felix Gilbert, and epic poetry with the celebrated translator Robert Fitzgerald.
Sowell has written over 150 articles, book reviews, editorials, and essays primarily related to Dante and Italian literature. His illustrated books Il Balletto Romantico: Tesori della Collezione Sowell (Palermo: L'Epos, 2007) and Icônes du ballet romantique: Marie Taglioni et sa famille (Rome: Gremese, 2016) were co-authored with his wife Debra H. Sowell, a dance historian and Southern Virginia University professor emerita of humanities. His latest single-authored book, Disdéri's Dancers and Carte-de-Visite Ballet Photography in the French Second Empire (Benevento: Edizioni Kinetès, 2023), was formally presented at the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II and the Accademia Nazionale di Danza in Rome in December 2023. The story of the writing of the book was published in the Giornale di Kinetès. [2] He also served as an editor of the Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association .
In early 2009, Sowell was appointed a member of the board of trustees of Southern Virginia University, where he lectured on Dante and medieval and Renaissance art and participated in the Executive Lecture series. On July 29, 2010, he was appointed Interim Provost at SVU. [3] On April 12, 2011, he became the provost at Southern Virginia. The provost reports to and works closely with the president, is the chief academic officer and leads the university’s academic areas and faculty. After six years of full-time service, he was granted a sabbatical leave in Fall 2016 to work on several writing projects.
Sowell served from 1998 to 2001 as president of the Italy Milan Mission. He has also served as an LDS high councilor, bishop, a Missionary Training Center branch president, a ward Young Men's president, a counselor in the West Virginia Charleston Mission presidency, and church organist.
Sowell served as a trustee, interim provost, and provost at Southern Virginia University, a liberal arts college located in southwestern Virginia. [4] He was awarded the 2018-2019 Howard D. Rothschild Fellowship for research at Harvard University's Houghton Library. [5] He is a former trustee of the First Freedom Center, whose mission is to advance the human rights of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.
A professor emeritus of Italian and comparative literature at Brigham Young University (BYU), he taught and served as the chair of BYU's department of French and Italian for three terms (1989-1998), an Alcuin Fellow, a Karl G. Maeser General Education Professor, the Scheuber and Veinz Professor of Humanities and Languages, and the director of the BYU Honors Program and an associate dean of undergraduate education (2006-2009). He is a specialist in the epic tradition of Italian literature from Dante to Tasso and the author and editor of several books, including Dante and Ovid: Essays in Intertextuality and a translation of The Cabala of Pegasus by Giordano Bruno (Yale University Press). He has also served as the organizer of various library and museum exhibits of rare dance books and prints. [6] He and his wife are among the foremost collectors of pre-1870 dance prints in the world.
Karole Armitage is an American dancer and choreographer currently based in New York City. She is artistic director of Armitage Gone! Dance, a contemporary dance company that performs several times annually in New York City as well as touring internationally. She was dubbed the “punk ballerina” in the 1980s. She earned a Tony nomination for her choreography of the Broadway musical Hair.
Southern Virginia University (SVU) is a private liberal arts college in Buena Vista, Virginia. The college, though not officially affiliated with a particular faith, embraces the values of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was founded in 1867 as a school for girls and is now a private four-year coeducational institution. The Carnegie Classification categorizes it as a very small baccalaureate-only college with an arts & sciences focus.
Carolyn Arthur "Biddy" Martin is an American academic, author, and a former president of Amherst College, in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Fabio Grossi is a retired Italian dancer and ballet teacher.
Steven Don Bennion has served as president of Snow College, Ricks College, and Southern Utah University.
Spencer Joel Condie has been a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1989. Condie previously worked as a professor at Brigham Young University (BYU) and also served as a mission president for the LDS Church in Eastern Europe. In 2010, he was designated as an emeritus general authority.
Victor Leifson Ludlow is an emeritus religion professor at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah and the author of several books on the Book of Isaiah, most notably Isaiah, Prophet Seer and Poet.
James Albert Toronto is a professor of Arabic language and Islamic religion at Brigham Young University (BYU). He was previously a professor of comparative religion at the same institution.
Monte Steven Nyman was president of Southern Virginia University (SVU) from 2003 to 2004. He had previously been academic vice president at SVU and a professor of religion at Brigham Young University (BYU).
Richard Holton Cracroft was an author and emeritus professor of English at Brigham Young University (BYU) where he held the title of Nan Osmond Grass Professor in English and spent time as head of BYU's English department and as dean of the College of Humanities. He directed BYU's American Studies Program (1989–1994), directed the Center for the Study of Christian Values in Literature and edited the seminal A Believing People anthology, a landmark in Mormon letters. His devotion to the field is most famously summed up in his Association for Mormon Letters presidential address "Attuning the Authentic Mormon Voice: Stemming the Sophic Tide in LDS Literature" and his long-running column "Book Nook" in BYU Magazine which demonstrated the breadth of Mormon literature to a wide audience.
Debra Hickenlooper Sowell is a dance historian and professor of humanities and theater history at Southern Virginia University. She retired as an associate professor of humanities in the Department of Humanities, Classics and Comparative Literature at Brigham Young University (BYU) in 2011.
Robert K. Thomas (1918–1998) was a professor of English at Brigham Young University (BYU) as well as the founder of BYU's honors program and later the academic vice president of BYU.
Paul Kay Sybrowsky was the president of Southern Virginia University (SVU) from June 1, 2012 until August 31, 2014. He was a general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 2005 until 2011. He also served as a commissioner of the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities and chairman of the board of trustees of Utah Valley University.
Thomas Goddard Bergin was an American scholar of Italian literature, who was "noted particularly for his research on Dante's Divine Comedy and for its translation". He was the Sterling Professor of Romance Languages at Yale University, and Master of Timothy Dwight College. He is the first poet to have his words launched into outer space to orbit the Earth.
Quinn Gunn McKay is an American academic, writer, and a leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Dante Della Terza was an Italian academic living and working in the United States.
The Dante Society of America is an American academic society devoted to the study of Dante Alighieri. One of the oldest scholarly societies in North America, it predates both the Modern Language Association, founded in 1883, and the American Historical Association, founded in 1884. After the German Dante Society, it is the second-oldest scholarly organization devoted to the study of Dante. The Society was also one of the first scholarly societies in the United States to have women among its founding members. The current president is Alison Cornish of New York University.
Reed N. Wilcox was the president of Southern Virginia University (SVU) from 2014 to 2023.
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