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In Brief
A monthly update of publications, recognitions and accomplishments
Recent News and Awards
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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.
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Author of “Pachinko,” Min Jin Lee, Speaks at the University of Utah
The University of Utah’s Tanner Humanities Center will host Min Jin Lee, author of “Free Food for Millionaires” and editor of “The Best American Short Stories 2023,” as part of the Author Meets Readers series at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Tuesday, March 19, at 7 p.m. Lee will be in conversation with David Roh, professor of English at the U. A book signing hosted by The King’s English will follow with Lee’s novels available for purchase.
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A New Insight on Journalism Education: Faculty Feature with Marcie Young Cancio
From writing about women’s luxury shoes for Condé Nast to being the first multiplatform managing editor at the Disney-owned ABC station in the San Francisco-Bay Area, Marcie Young Cancio has been navigating and adapting to the changing field of journalism throughout her 20-year career. She now brings her experience and knowledge to the University of Utah’s journalism program housed in the Department of Communication to help students be successful and stay relevant in an ever-changing industry.
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USA Today Honors Jill Landes-Lee as Utah's Woman of the Year
Jill Landes-Lee is one of the nominees for USA TODAY’s Women of the Year program, a recognition of women who have made a significant impact in their communities and across the country.
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Humanities Radio Presents: Elijah Millgram
Elijah Millgram, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, discusses his book, “Why Didn’t Nietzsche Get His Act Together?” which argues for a new framework for making sense of Nietzsche that transforms the way we read him.
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Master of Communication program launches at University of Utah Asia Campus
The University of Utah is excited to announce the extension of the Master of Communication program at its U Asia Campus in Incheon, South Korea. Applications are now open for the professional program, and the first cohort of students is scheduled to begin studying at the extended campus in fall 2024.
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Debate League for Refugees Offers Scholarships
Read the full story on KSL. Young refugees have opinions and insight to share, but cultural and linguistic barriers, trauma and time constraints often mean their voices aren't heard in traditional classrooms. So the University of Utah set out to create a space just for them.
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Lepa Marinkovski Named to 2024 New Leadership Academy Fellow Cohort
Lepa Marinkovski, assistant professor lecturer in the Department of English and the director of Humanities Scholars in the College of Humanities, has been named one of the 32 New Leadership Academy (NLA) fellows for 2024. NLA is a nationally recognized leadership development program that gives participants the courage, knowledge and tools to lead transformative change. Marinkovski will participate with leaders from institutions all over the country in varying levels of leadership for this year-long leadership opportunity.
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Humanities Radio Presents: Benjamin Cohen
Benjamin Cohen, professor of history, discusses his book, “An Appeal to the Ladies of Hyderabad: Scandal in Raj,” which tells the dramatic story of a couple’s rise and fall from elite society in ninetieth century India that set the benchmark for Victorian scandals.
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Paisley Rekdal Wins Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award
Claremont Graduate University has honored Paisley Rekdal, Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Utah, with the prestigious Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for her book, “West: A Translation.” The $100,000 award commends outstanding poetry volumes published in the preceding year, with a legacy that includes books by luminaries such as Henri Cole, Tom Sleigh, Patricia Smith and Ross Gay.
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Robin E. Jensen Wins Prestigious Golden Anniversary Monograph Award from the National Communication Association
Robin E. Jensen, professor of communication at the University of Utah, recently received the 2023 Golden Anniversary Monograph Award from the National Communication Association for the article, “Re-envisioning Fertility Science: From J. Marion Sims’s Invasive Gynecology to Sophia Kleegman’s ‘Conservative Surgery’ Hermeneutic,” published in Quarterly Journal of Speech in 2022.
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Both Legacy and Memorial: Japanese American Incarceration in the American West
Feb. 15-17, 2024, the American West Center, in partnership with the Utah Humanities Council, the Utah Humanities Book Festival, NEH’s “United We Stand,” the Utah Division of Arts and Museums, and the Asia Center, will be hosting a three-day symposium exploring the history and legacy of Japanese American incarceration in the American West
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Humanities Radio Presents: Danielle Endres
Danielle Endres, professor of communication, discusses her book “Nuclear Decolonization: Indigenous Resistance to High-Level Nuclear Waste Siting,” which explores how Indigenous populations have been affected by global nuclear production and how they have successfully resisted the projects.
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Exploring Religion through Poetry: Faculty Feature with Maeera Shreiber
In her twenties, Maeera Shreiber, professor of English and chair of Jewish Studies Initiative, attended her grandmother’s funeral services. In accordance with Jewish custom, the assembled friends and family joined together to shovel dirt over the casket. A non-Jewish friend also took up a shovel – only to have it grabbed out of his hands by Shreiber’s father, who then pushed the man aside. Halacha, Jewish law, dictates that that Jews should be buried only by fellow Jews, and although Shreiber’s father was a secular Jew with “exquisite manners,” the importance of this Jewish/non-Jewish boundary was deeply engrained in him – to the point that it overpowered social niceties.
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Humanities Student Scholar Spotlight
Spotlighting College of Humanities student scholars in Fall of 2023.
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Who is a Scientist? Faculty Feature with Maureen Mathison
Science and writing are often two fields that go hand-in-hand, but the innerworkings of the two areas are mostly left unresearched. The interdisciplinary aspect of these subjects goes together quite well for Maureen Mathison, associate professor of writing and rhetoric studies at the University of Utah, who teaches a variety of science-based writing courses and focuses much of her research on the rhetoric of science. Mathison is increasingly hopeful about the challenges science faces in addressing its own current limitations.
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Against Amnesia: LaToya Ruby Frazier
LaToya Ruby Frazier believes life is not to be "belittled or squandered"— both one's own life and the lives of others. The first work of Frazier's I encountered was "The Notion of Family," I felt this commitment then (the same is true for her body of work at large), as I did again with intense and moving clarity when I was lucky enough to attend her talk organized by the Tanner Humanities Center. I invoke the word luck because it is not every day that you meet an artist who means and owns all her utterances, imbued with both intention and care.
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Utah College Media Collaborative
PBS Utah, in partnership with Amplify Utah, is proud to announce a historical cross-campus collaborative bringing together student-led newsrooms from four public Utah universities and colleges.
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.