Phoebe Gloeckner Promoted to Full Professor at U-M Stamps School of Art & Design
Phoebe Gloeckner, renowned graphic novelist and multimedia artist, has been promoted to full professor at the University of Michigan’s Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design. The promotion was formally approved by the U‑M Board of Regents on May 15. Her promotion to full professor makes her the first comic artist tenured at the rank of full Professor.
“Amongst the academic field of cartooning, broadly understood discursively as drawing, graphic narrative art, and/or narrative illustration, there is no peer to Professor Gloeckner,” said Dean Carlos Francisco Jackson. “She is the most impactful faculty member working within the academy in the broader field of cartooning/illustration/graphic narrative art. Through her creative work, teaching and service to the Stamps Community, Professor Gloeckner has more than earned this promotion to full Professor at the University of Michigan.”
Known for her formal experimentation, Gloeckner blends prose, illustration, audio, motion and static media to explore the possibilities of digital storytelling. She is widely recognized for her groundbreaking work in graphic storytelling, including her 2002 book The Diary of a Teenage Girl, hailed as “one of the most brutally honest, shocking, tender, beautiful portrayals of growing up female in America.” Cartoonist R. Crumb has described her story Minnie’s Third Love, published in A Child’s Life and Other Stories, as one of the “comic book masterpieces of all time.” The Diary of a Teenage Girl was adapted into a critically acclaimed film.
Her work has been published in multiple languages and exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States and Europe. In 2008, Gloeckner was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship to support her ongoing project documenting the life of a family in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, whose teenage daughter was murdered amid the city’s extreme wave of violence. Her observations, spanning years of reporting and storytelling, will culminate in a series of novels.
Professor Gloeckner has an MA from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas in Biomedical Communications (Medical Illustration), and a BFA from San Francisco State University in Fine Arts. She joined the Stamps faculty in 2004 as an Assistant Professor, promoting to Associate Professor with tenure in 2010.
In addition to her promotion, Gloeckner has been selected for induction into the Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame in 2025. The Eisner Hall of Fame recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to the comic and graphic storytelling medium. Eligibility requires at least 35 years since a creator’s first professional work — in Gloeckner’s case, her debut in underground comix as a teenager. Her early stories appeared in influential titles such as Weirdo, Young Lust, Buzzard, Wimmen’s Comix, and Twisted Sisters.