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In Brief
A monthly update of publications, recognitions and accomplishments
Recent News and Awards
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Tanner Humanities Center Fellows Present Works in Progress (January–February 2025)
Every spring, research fellows at the Tanner Humanities Center give work-in-progress talks in a casual setting and receive feedback from colleagues across campus.
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Deconstructing LEGOs
Not every professor has a LEGO-filled office. Then there’s Chris Ingraham.
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Undergraduate student publishes peer-reviewed article in Ecological Citizen
Alex Kellgreen, a Communications major and English minor, recently had an article published in the online journal Ecological Citizen. His reflective piece, "A condemned cathedral: Thoughts on Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire," was based on texts he encountered in a course with Professor Alf Seegert.
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Spring 2025 Undergraduate Research Awards
Learn more about the spring 2025 undergraduate research award winners.
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Humanities Scholar Spotlight | Aspen Bergeson
Learn how being a Humanities Scholar impacted Aspen's first year at the University of Utah.
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U, USU Research Day on the Hill marks 25 years
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Research Day on the Hill— an annual opportunity for University of Utah undergraduate researchers to show off their hard work at the Utah State Capitol.
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Community Connection: Showcasing Student Photography at The U
A once-bare 30-foot wall in the Languages and Communication building has transformed into a vibrant showcase of student talent, thanks to support from the College of Humanities and, in part, to the efforts of Roger Tuttle, an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Communication.
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Fall 2024 Undergraduate Research Highlights
Learn about the Fall 2024 research projects Humanities students worked on.
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Isabel Moreira discusses her new study of Balthild, Queen of France
Who was Balthild, and what does it mean to identify her with the abolition of slavery? This is the central question of Isabel Moreira’s book.
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Listen to Matt Basso on CityCast
Matt Basso, Associate Professor of History and Gender Studies, appeared on City Cast Salt Lake to talk about the history of labor unions in the U.S. and what that might teach us about the future of unions in Utah.
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Graduate Student Spotlight | Olivia Chandler
Olivia Chandler, a second-year MS student in the Environmental Humanities Program, is looking forward to reading books for pleasure when she graduates!
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Kendall Gerdes Receives 2025 Outstanding Book Award
Kendall Gerdes, Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric Studies, has received a 2025 CCCC Outstanding Book Award for Sensitive Rhetorics: Academic Freedom and Campus Activism.
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Alumni Spotlight | Angelina Termunde
Angelina Termunde grew up in Utah and graduated from the University of Utah in 2020 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Strategic Communications.
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Librarian Receives Fulbright Grant for Intercultural Exchange
Marie Paiva, librarian at the J. Willard Marriott Library, was recently awarded a Fulbright Specialist Program grant. The award will allow her to complete a project at Mohammed bin Rashid Library in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
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Emma Sutton's Gordon B. Hinckley Lecture
In her lecture, Emma Sutton revealed how music became central to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Pacific experience.
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Professor Anna Hodgson Wins Excellence in Classroom Teaching Award
Anna Hodgson, Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in World Languages & Cultures, was presented with the Excellence in Classroom Teaching – Post Secondary award from the Southwest Conference on Language Teaching (SWCOLT) at the organization’s annual conference in Chandler, Arizona.
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Lightning Talks Explore Language Learning, Post-War Justice, and Community Media
Lightning Talks are a forum in the College of Humanities for new faculty and postdoctoral fellows to present an image about which they can tell an interesting research story.
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National security and how it got that way
Before he became an academic historian, the University of Utah’s Peter Roady helped shape national security policy at the U.S. Department of Defense.
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Jasmine Agular to Present Her Senior Thesis
We are thrilled to announce that Jasmine Agular, an undergraduate CommSHER student in the Department of Communication, will be presenting her Senior Thesis at the upcoming WSCA Undergraduate Scholars Research Conference.
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Linguistics Department Welcomes NACLO
On January 23rd, the Linguistics Department hosted 20 high school students from Utah and Idaho as they competed in the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO).
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.