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When he set off for college, a young Garrett Stewart was sure he was going to be an architect.

Stewart had always been interested in the visual aspects of the field, “but I discovered in my first design class that I couldn’t think in 3-D,” he says. “Nowadays, of course, you can have a computer do that for you.” So, the frustrated freshman transferred to his other interest area, English, and it’s been his life’s work ever since.

Stewart, the James O. Freeman Professor of Letters in the Department of English in the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has been a professor at Iowa since 1993. He writes and teaches primarily on the British novel, literary theory, film, and art history.

Stewart’s interest lately, though, is books and how they are manipulated to create art or depicted in works of art.He examines this in his latest study, Bookwork: Medium to Object to Concept to Art.

UI President Sally Mason has selected Stewart to deliver this year’s presidential lecture on Feb. 12 at 3:30pm in the fourth floor assembly halls at the Levitt Center for University Advancement. The lecture grows out of his research in Bookwork.