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In Brief
A monthly update of publications, recognitions and accomplishments
Recent News and Awards
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Spring 2024 : Research Student Spotlights and Awards
College of Humanities research students at the University of Utah presenting there research in spring of 2024.
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2024 Distinguished Alumni Awarded to Kevin Knight
Kevin Knight, veteran chief marketing officer, has been selected for the University of Utah’s College of Humanities Distinguished Alumni Award. Knight, who received a Bachelor of Arts degree in international and area studies in 2006, cut his teeth as an early employee of Facebook, Pinterest, and Compass.
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2024 College of Humanities Student Awards
Meet the University of Utah, College of Humanities student speaker, outstanding senior, and humanities excellence awardees.
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College of Humanities Faculty Honored with University Accolades
View all the awards received by humanities faculty.
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Inspire Podcast: Journey to Graduation
Student leaders, India Bown, Yovanni Valdez, and Zaynab Salih are among the 2024 University of Utah graduating class who started their college journey in the peak of the pandemic, completing an online orientation and starting all their first courses on Canvas or over Zoom.
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End of the Year Message from Dean Hollis Robbins
Congratulations to all of us – our new graduates especially – as we come to the end of an exciting year in the College of Humanities!
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“Because I Love My People”: Author Meets Reader with Min Jin Lee
On March 19, as part of the Tanner Humanities Center’s Author Meets Reader series, Min Jin Lee stepped into the Utah Museum of Fine Arts’s Dumke Auditorium for a conversation with Professor David S. Roh.
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Linguistics Undergraduate Students Publish Article in Prestigious Journal
Rachel Hayes-Harb, professor of linguistics at the University of Utah, led her capstone students through a large group replication study, which has culminated into an article that appeared in Studies in Second Language Acquisition Journal, in March 2024.
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Robin Wall Kimmerer and Kyle Whyte in Conversation
The University of Utah’s Tanner Humanities Center will host Whyte, a professor of environment and sustainability and George Willis Pack Professor at University of Michigan, in conversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants,” on Wednesday, April 17 at 7 p.m. in the Moot Courtroom of the S.J. Quinney College of Law.
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Faculty Feature: Medievalism with Chris Jones
Chris Jones, the inaugural ESRR Professor of English at the University of Utah, specializes in medieval literature, especially Old English, and has published widely on the reception of Old English in modern poetry, a subfield of Medieval Studies that his research helped found and shape.
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U Humanities Professor Receives NEH Grant to Memorialize Children Incarcerated at the Waialeʻe Industrial School for Boys in Hawai’i
The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded Maile Arvin, associate professor of history and gender studies at the University of Utah – in collaboration with the North Shore Community Land Trust in Hawai’i – $29,445 to support a community-based oral history research and story-mapping project of the Waialeʻe Industrial School for Boys. As part of a larger effort to fund projects that expand the reach and impact of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, NEH has awarded more than $400,000 to 14 Tribal Nations and organizations.
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Colleen McDannell Publishes “Catholic Utah – Images of America”
To read the article click here to visit the Salt Lake Tribune.
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Humanities Radio Presents: Leandra Hernandez
Leandra Hernandez, assistant professor of communication, discusses her book, “Feminist Mentoring in Academia (Communicating Gender)” which explores how feminist mentoring happens between professor and student; junior faculty and tenured; and occurs repeatedly.
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Aliens, Tyrants, Greek Tragedy, Social Media, Racial Tensions and the Costs of Upward Mobility: Great Books Explores Them All
There is only one course at the University of Utah that will take students on a journey of studying one the greatest Greek tragedies to studying the relationship between the humanities and theories of evolution to studying aliens and how they communicate. The course will also take students on a powerful exploration of ambition, power, and the nature of evil, with one of literature’s greatest villains. Led by a team of top professors in the College of Humanities, HUM 1500: Great Books, engages students in a rich and rewarding experience that offers insight into the foundational questions and challenges that motivate and vex the human condition.
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Aileen H. Clyde Women’s History Lecture Series with Dr. Heather Belnap
In recognition of the complexity and change experienced by 20th century women in Utah and elsewhere, the mission of the Aileen H. Clyde 20th Century Women's Legacy Archive is to document and preserve the history of women whose lives and work helped create social and cultural change. Each year the Department of History in partnership with the Aileen H. Clyde Women’s History Initiative host an annual lecture illuminating women’s history. This year’s lecturer will be Dr. Heather Belnap.
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Working with Joy and Passion: Keys to a Successful Career with Holly Rowe
Holly Rowe celebrates nearly 30 years as one of sports most versatile announcers. The 3 time Emmy winner was named to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2023 winning the Curt Gowdy Award.
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An Unexpected Lens Into the American Racial Story
Fortuitous timing and a researcher dissatisfied with current historiography led to the discovery of new documents, two databases, three books, and accolades for University of Utah History professor Paul Reeve.
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Humanities Radio Presents: Kendall Gerdes
Kendall Gerdes, assistant professor of writing and rhetoric studies, discusses her book, “Sensitive Rhetorics: Academic Freedom and Campus Activism” explores sensitivity as a term of art in rhetoric.
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Danielle Endres Discusses Indigenous Resistance to Nuclear Waste
The Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah hosted a talk with Danielle Endres, professor of communication and director of the U’s Environmental Humanities program. Endres discussed her new book Nuclear Decolonization: Indigenous Resistance to High-Level Nuclear Waste Siting, which details the activism of the Western Shoshone, Southern Paiute and Goshute people against establishing nuclear waste repositories on Indigenous land.
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Creating a New Generation of Environmental Leaders
The College of Humanities and the School for Cultural & Social Transformation at the University of Utah have partnered to foster the next generation of environmental leaders through a new interdisciplinary undergraduate certificate in Environmental Humanities and Transformative Justice.
In Brief
October 2022
- Joy Pierce, associate professor of writing and rhetoric studies, published a chapter Studies in Symbolic Interaction. The special issue: “Festschrift in Honor of Norman K. Denzin: He Knew His Song Well” includes world-renowned qualitative research scholars. Pierce’s chapter is titled “Fishing with the GOAT: Honoring Norman K. Denzin.”
- Brandon R. Peterson, associate professor (lecturer) of philosophy, published an article, “Rahner and the Cross: What Kind of Atoning Story Does He Tell?” in the latest issue of Philosophy & Theology.
- Maile Arvin, associate professor of history, created a podcast, Relations of Salt and Stars. Our ancestors traveled through salt and stars, and so do contemporary Pacific Islander communities today. Relations of Salt and Stars is a new podcast produced by the Pacific Islands Studies program at the University of Utah, and hosted by faculty members Arvin (Native Hawaiian) and Angela Robinson (Chuukese).
November 2022
- Kevin Coe’s (professor of communication) book, “The Ubiquitous Presidency: Presidential Communication and Digital Democracy in Tumultuous Times” (coauthored with Joshua Scacco, University of South Florida) received the 2022 Roderick P. Hart Outstanding Book Award from the Political Communication Division of the National Communication Association.
- Jeff McCarthy, director of Environmental Humanities, organized a climate change roundtable at the Modernist Studies Association Conference titled "Modernist Salvage / Salvaging Modernism."
December 2022
- Hollis Robbins, dean of the College of Humanities, published “Examining Phillis Wheatley” in the LA Review of Books.
- Joy Pierce, associate professor of writing and rhetoric studies, was nominated, then chosen to participate as part of the inaugural cohort in the Leadership Institute for a New Academy 2023 (LINA), a new ACLS initiative made possible by the Mellon Foundation. The 2023 spring semester-long initiative will conclude with a four-day meeting in New York this July.
- Joy Pierce, associate professor of writing and rhetoric studies, has been invited to conduct a half-day workshop (solo) on digital qualitative research with an emphasis on data collection and ethics for the International Qualitative Research Network at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus. The workshop will take place in June 2023.
- Eric Herschthal, assistant professor of history, published a review-essay in The New Republic titled, “How the Right Turned 'Freedom' Into a Dog Whistle.”
- Nadja Durbach, professor of history at the University of Utah, along with Tammy M. Proctor of Utah State University will serve as co-editors of the Journal of British Studies. Their five-year term will begin July 1, 2023.
- Alexis M. Christensen, associate professor/lecturer of Classics in world languages & cultures, is starting a new archaeological field school – the Libarna Urban Landscapes Project (LULP) – in conjunction with Professor Katherine V. Huntley of Boise State University. The field school is an opportunity for students to get hands-on archaeological experience at the site of a Roman colony. Libarna (2nd century BCE - 5th century CE) was an important settlement in northwest Italy where Gallic, Etruscan and Roman cultures came into contact. In the summer of 2023, LULP will begin excavations exploring part of the city occupied by private houses and workshops.
January 2023
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Danielle Endres, professor of communication, quoted in Newsweek, “Putin’s Poseidon and the Radioactive Tidal Wave of Death.”
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Avery Holton, professor of communication, interviews on Fox 13, “Do You Know Who’s Writing your News?”
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Isabelle Freiling, assistant professor of communication, gave an invited talk, “Communicating science in a social media world: The risk of (not) intervening against “misinformation,” German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment.
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Chrisoula Andreou, professor of philosophy, published “Choosing Well: The good, the bad, and the trivial” with Oxford University Press.
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Jeff McCarthy, director of Environmental Humanities, published an Op-Ed in the Salt Lake Tribune titled “The Climate Crisis and the Threat to Democracy.”
February 2023
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James Tabery, professor of philosophy, published “Victims of Eugenic Sterlisation in Utah: cohort demographics and estimate of living survivors,” in The Lancet Regional Health Americas, Feb. 15, 2023
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Cindi Textor, assistant professor of world languages and cultures, with co-translator Lee Soo Mi, published a volume of four novellas by Korean-Japanese author Lee Yangji. “Nabi T'aryŏng and Other Stories” is available from Seoul Selection as part of a series of English translations of Korean literature in diaspora.
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Joy Peirce, associate professor of writing and rhetoric studies, received the James McCune Award of Veneration at the U’s 2023 Black Faculty and Staff Awards.
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Rachel Griffin, associate professor of communication, received the Malcolm X Award of Social Justice at the U’s 2023 Black Faculty and Staff Awards
- David Roh, professor of English, was awarded an Honorable Mention in Litarary Studies by the Association for Asian American Studies for Minor Transpacific: Triangulating American, Japanese, and Korean Fictions (Stanford)
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Blair Bateman, adjunct professor of world languages and cultures, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Utah Foreign Language Association "in recognition of a lifetime of service to our profession, our students, and our multilingual world."
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Jackie Osherow, distinguished professor of English, published her ninth collection of poems, “Divine Ratios,” was published by LSU Press, Feb 15, 2023
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Chris Low, assistant professor of history, had the Turkish translation of his book, “Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj” (Columbia University Press, 2020), published by Telemak Kitap (Istanbul) in February 2023. It was the winner of the Middle East Studies Association's Albert Hourani Book Award.
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Chris Low, assistant professor of history, delivered the Paul A. and Marie Castelfranco Lecture for the Department of Religious Studies at University of California-Davis. The talk title was: "Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj."
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Jeff McCarthy, director of Environmental Humanities, presented a paper at the Conference on Environmental, Cultural, and Social Sustainability at the University of Ljubljana titled “The Climate, the Possibility, and the Environmental Humanities.”
March 2023
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Isabelle Freiling, published “Science and Ethics of “Curing” Misinformation,” in the AMA Journal of Ethics, March 2023
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Hugh Cagle, director of the International Studies program and associate professor of the history of science, won a fellowship at the National Humanities Center where, during the summer of 2023, he will be conducting research for his next book, an environmental history of the Brazilian Amazon.
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Jeff McCarthy, director of Environmental Humanities, edited the essay collection “The Anthropocene Ocean” along with USC law professor Robin Craig, and it will be published in March by the University of Utah Press.
June 2023
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Joy Pierce, associate professor of writing and rhetoric studies, was invited to give a workshop at The Qualitatives Annual [pre]Conference in conjunction with Couch-Stone Symposium in British Columbia, Canada.