College of Arts and Humanities

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – Professor Rod Andrew has published a new book, The Marines’ Fight for Survival: War, Politics, and Institutional Crisis, 1945-1952 through The University Press of Kansas. The book explains how the U.S. Marines and their allies advocated for the Corps’ continued role in national defense following World War II.

ENGLISH – Professor Susanna Ashton published the Deeds Unbound project on partnership with Clemson Libraries. Deeds Unbound seeks to unearth the records of slavery found in Registers of Deeds offices across South Carolina. For the first time, the names of thousands of men, women, and children sold for profit and recorded only as property in South Carolina’s 19th-century deed books will be accessible in a digital format.

She also presented an hour-long workshop for a national audience organized by the Teagle Foundation about the teaching of Mark Twain’s classic novel, Huckleberry Finn, and Percival Everett’s Pulitzer-Prize Prize-winning reinterpretation, James.

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – Assistant Professor Camden Burd published his essay “The Nature of the Midwest: Environmental History, Regionalism, and the Future of Midwestern Studies” in Between Loving and Leaving: Essays on the New Midwestern from the University of Oklahoma Press. The historiographic essay examines the trajectory of midwestern environmental history while proposing new avenues for research. He argues that any history of the Midwest must consider environmental transformations as formative components of placemaking and regional formation.

HISTORY & GEORAPHY – On October 4 and 5, Professor Vernon Burton discussed two documentaries, one on Dr. Benjamin E. Mays and another on Thurgood Marshall at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of African American History and Life.  On October 8, he participated on a panel for the annual Joseph De Laine program on Briggs v. Elliot and Brown v. Board of Education at the Madren Center at Clemson.  On October 25, he spoke on memorialization and commemoration at Furman University, then on “Religion in the South” at Old Stone Church as part of the launch for University Historian Otis Pickett’s  new book Southern Shepherds and Savage Wolves. On November 1 in Savannah, Georgia, he keynoted the Legacy of Slavery and the Struggle for Freedom conference with a speech on the Civil Rights movement.

LANGUAGES – Associate Professor Jody Cripps participated in the Deaf Arts Academy as one of the signed music professors at Grande-Digue, New Brunswick, from October 5-9, which was featured on CBC News.

He also co-presented a presentation with Dr. Julia Silvestri (Yale University), Ian Sanborn (The Sanborn Arts), Pamela Witcher (Vancouver Community College), and JB Begue (Towson University) titled “A Different Kind of Quiet: Collaborative Discussion from Deaf Performers” at the Quiet Relations Symposium on October 20 at Duke University. It was supported by Duke University’s Office for Research and Innovation, with co-sponsorship from John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, and by the Music department staff. Cripps, Witcher and Begue have created a signed music hub that includes solo and ensemble performances, education, documentary, research and more.

PERFORMING ARTS – Lillian Utsey Harder, Brooks Center director emerita and artistic director of the Utsey Chamber Music Series, secured six broadcasts on American Public Media’s Performance Today: violinist Hannah White’s performance of Carlos Simon’s “Between Worlds” with Sphinx Virtuosi on September 16 and Valerie Coleman’s Tracing Visions (mts. 1 and 2) on October 23  from their concert on March 30, 2023; Verona Quartet’s performance of Dvorak’s String Quartet No. 13 in G Major, Op. 106, (movt. 1) on September 30 from their concert on November 1, 2022; Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras No. 9 by Sphinx Virtuosi on October 10 from their concert on March 30, 2023; violinist Geneva Lewis and pianist Evren Ozel’s performance of Brahms’ Sonata in G Major for violin & piano, Op. 78 on October 14 and Bela Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances, Sz. 56 on October 31 from their concert on March 28, 2024.

ENGLISH –Assistant Professor of English and World Cinema Maziyar Faridi presented an invited talk titled “To Venture from Home on the Thread of a Tune: Noise, Refrain, and Rhythm in Port City Films” at Tulane University. In this talk, Faridi presented sketches from a new book project on ecological rhythms.  

ENGLISH – Principal Lecturer Amy Monaghan moderated a post-screening discussion of the new film, Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father, with author Alysia Abbott. The event on November 1 at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, Massachusetts, drew approximately 200 attendees. Produced by Oscar® winner Sofia Coppola  and based on the acclaimed memoir of the same name by Abbott, Fairyland is a coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of San Francisco’s vibrant cultural scene in the 1970s and ’80s. The film chronicles a father-daughter relationship as it evolves through an era of bohemian decadence to the heartbreaking era of the AIDS crisis.

PERFORMING ARTS – On October 6, Associate Professor Lisa Sain Odom performed a duo vocal recital alongside tenor Jaeyoon Kim at the University of North Carolina- Pembroke. Odom sang classical vocal pieces by Richard Strauss, Leslie Adams, Ivor Novello and Lori Laitman, as well as musical theatre pieces by Jason Robert Brown, Adam Gwon and Richard Rodgers. Odom and Kim were accompanied by pianist Seung Ah Kim and performed the duet “Lippen Schweigen” from Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow to end the recital. On November 1, Odom traveled with eleven Clemson students, as well as faculty members Heather Haithcock and Jonathan Doyel, to the Classical Vocal Auditions for the South Carolina chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing. Over thirty-five teachers and more than two hundred student singers attended this event. During the auditions, three Clemson students won first place in their respective categories and were invited to sing in the public recital at end of day, one student won second place in his category, and three students won third place in their categories, with two additional students scoring high enough to advance to Regional auditions along with those who placed. 

PERFORMING ARTS – Professor Kerrie Seymour just wrapped a production of Jen Silverman’s The Roommate at LEAN Ensemble Theatre on Hilton Head Island. Working under contract with Actor’s Equity Association, she performed the role of Sharon in the two-person play. She is now in rehearsals for The Game by Bekah Brunstetter at Greenville’s The Warehouse Theatre where she will again perform under AEA contract as Rhonda. The show runs from December 5 – 21. She was recently signed to The Wayne Agency for nationwide talent representation for TV, film, and commercial work, and she was also added to Busch Management’s talent roster.

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION— Kathryn and Calhoun Lemon Professor of Philosophy Daniel Wueste received the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum 2025 Distinguished Service Award at the annual SEAC conference, October 8-10, at Villanova University. His “Doing Ethics with Integrity” was published as Chapter 13 in the Wiley-Blackwell A Companion to Doing Ethics, edited by Alan A. Preti and Timothy A. Weidel.

HISTORY – Professor Rod Andrew gave an invited lecture to the Upcountry History Museum in Greenville for the Museum’s Lunchbox Learning Series.  The topic was “Operation Starlite,” the first regimental-sized action, or major battle, between US ground troops (mainly Marines) and communist forces in Vietnam.  He noted that the battle was a tactical victory for US forces but had strategic implications for the rest of the Vietnam War, for better and for worse.

ENGLISH – Professor Susanna Ashton travelled to Mandarin Florida to speak with the Mandarin Museum and Historical Society as well as the Mandarin Community Club to give a research lecture on her book, A Plausible Man.

HISTORY – Professor Vernon Burton spoke on the impact of World War II at the South Carolina Statehouse as part of the “South Carolina Remembers: The 80^th Anniversary of the End of World War II” and informed legislators and the audience about the Clemson University Veterans Project on Sept. 2. On Sept. 3, Burton was part of a panel at the premier screening of “Becoming Thurgood: America’s Social Architect” at SC State University alongside Cecilia Marshall (Thurgood Marshall’s grandchild) and Cecil Williams, chronicler of the SC Civil Rights Movement, and the panel was moderated by SCSU President Alexander Conyers. At the Association for the Study of African American Life and History’s annual meeting this year in Atlanta, Burton discussed two documentaries that premiered there. On Sept. 25-26, Burton served on two panels at the Association for the Study of African American Life and History meeting in Atlanta to discuss a documentary film on the life of Dr. Benjamin E. Mays as well as “Becoming Thurgood.”

HISTORY – Assistant Professor Kathryn A. Langenfeld, had two articles published. One, ‘Fraud and Forgery in the Reign of Constantius II: The Silvanus Affair of 355 CE,’ reinvestigates a fourth-century forged-letter conspiracy and forestalled coup in the late Roman Empire. It appears in the latest volume of Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschicte, a premier international journal of ancient history. The other, ‘Firmus and the Crocodiles Revisited: Paradoxography and the Historia Augusta’s Life of the Four Tyrants,’ appeared in Histos, an online journal of ancient historiography.

ENGLISH – Lecturer Chelsea McKelvey published a chaper titled, “Closet Catholicism, Private Entertainments, and Shakespeare in Seventeenth-Century Yorkshire” in Early Modern Performance Beyond the Public Stage.

LANGUAGES – Professor Johannes Schmidt presented a paper entitled “Herder’s Spacio-Poetics” at the bi-annual meeting of the International Herder Society in Toronto.

INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES – Associate Professor Todd Anderson has taken on a new service role in the CU Honors College serving as a National Scholars Program Faculty Advisor. His duties include teaching a special seminar to the freshman 2029 NSP Cohort this semester, then serving as a mentor for the cohort until their matriculation in 2029. 

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY– Professor Rod Andrew published “Flying Leathernecks: The Public Debate over Close Air Support and the Future of the U.S. Marine Corps, 1945-1952” in the July 2025 edition of the Journal of Military History.

ENGLISH – During June, July, and August of 2025, Professor Susanna Ashton delivered lectures at Coastal Carolina University in Conway SC; the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts; the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; and the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati, Ohio.

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – Professor Vernon Burton, as Executive Director of the College of Charleston’s Lowcountry and Atlantic World (CLAW) program, welcomed the Omohundro Institute’s 28th Annual Conference to the College of Charleston on June 12. In June and July, Burton introduced historian Peter Wood and University of South Carolina Distinguished Professor of Literature David Shields as speakers for the Clemson Historic Properties’ “Brick by Brick” Series.  On June 20, the Dr. Benjamin E. Mays Historic Preservation Site  and GLEAMNS Human Resources Commission honored Burton with the official dedication of The Orville Vernon Burton Research Library. On July 17, Burton delivered a lecture, “Reconstruction, Liberty, and the Supreme Court’s Denial of Justice,” as the keynote at the annual meeting of the interdisciplinary St. George Tucker Society.  On July 24, Burton spoke in Charleston at the Annual Association of African American Museum conference on the 60 year history of the Voting Rights Act.  Also in July, Burton was interviewed by AP reporter Sue Carpenter for “Voting Rights Act Turns 60: What’s Next for the Landmark Civil Rights Law.”  On August 13, New York Times Political columnist Thomas Byrne Edsall interviewed Burton on comparing the current president with other presidents for an upcoming article.

LANGUAGES – Associate Professor Jody Cripps published three articles. The first was titled, “Breaking the Barriers: Bringing the Signing Deaf People’s Voices to the Academia” and it was published in Sage Perspectives. Second, he and his colleague Russell Rosen wrote a chapter titled, “Routing Process in Research Methods: Original and Replication Studies of Flipped-Type Pedagogy in American Sign Language” and it was published in Sage Research Methods: Data and Research Literacy. Lastly, he wrote a research paper with his students, Sophia La Porta, Ashley McCollum, and Allison Rambo, and two community partners, Lynn Thorp and Doreen Simon, titled “The Buried History of Martha’s Vineyard: Nine Deaf Ancestors at Abel’s Hill Cemetery” and it was published in Martha’s Vineyard Museum Quarterly. 

PERFORMING ARTS – Lillian Utsey Harder, Brooks Center director emerita and artistic director of the Utsey Chamber Music Series, secured seven broadcasts on American Public Media’s Performance Today: violinist Hannah White’s performance of Carlos Simon’s “Between Worlds” with Sphinx Virtuosi on June 13 from their concert on March 30,2023; the Verona Quartet’s performance of Dvorak’s String Quartet No. 13 in G Major Op.106 (mvt. 1) on June 27 from their concert on November 1, 2022; Sphinx Virtuosi’s performance of Michael Dudley’s “Prayer for our Times” on July 7 and Valerie Coleman’s “Tracing Visions” (mvts. 1 and 2) on July 21 from their concert on March 30, 2023; Geneva Lewis and Evren Ozel’s performance of Brahms’ Sonata in G Major for violin and piano in G Major, Op. 78 on July 11 from their concert on March 28, 2024; WindSync’s performance of Nadia Boulanger’s 3 Pieces for Organ, mvt. 1 (arr. by Lara LaMoure) on July 29 from their concert on October 29, 2024; and clarinetist Anthony McGill and the Pacifica Quartet’s performance of James Lee III’s Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet on August 14 from their concert on September 14, 2023.

INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES – Lecturer Josh Herron was an invited speaker in a webinar on AI Literacies with MIT Open Learning in May as part of a jury-selected publication, AI Literacies and the Advancement of Opened Culture: Global Perspectives and Practices, the latter which was released earlier this year.

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY– Assistant Professor Emily Hoge recieved a Kluge Fellowship at the Library of Congress for the 2025-2026 year. According to the John W. Kluge Center, the fellowships are offered to scholars in the humanities, social sciences and professional fields such as architecture or law. Twelve Kluge Fellowships are awarded each year through a competitive selection process.

ENGLISH – Lecturer Seth McKelvey published his first book, No Exit: Contemporary American Literature and the State, with the University of Virginia Press in June. Offering a new perspective on anti-state attitudes in American culture, McKelvey argues that a major body of work in 20th- and 21st-century American literature links literary representation to political representation in order to imagine escape from the political state, constituting what he terms a “poetics of escape.” Portions of this book previously appeared as articles in American Literature and the Journal of Modern Literature, and McKelvey will be presenting work from No Exit at this year’s Modern Language Association annual convention.

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – For the tenth year, Professor Brent Morris was a lecturer for the UPenn Wharton School Lauder Institute. An integral part of Wharton international MBA students’ Global concentration is the Summer Immersion which takes place in a student’s first year in the Lauder program. Students travel to multiple sites across different continents to learn about the culture, history, social customs, and business practices in the target region. Each year, Morris opens the program in South Carolina with a series of lectures on Southern social and economic history before seeing the students off on the Asia leg of the program.

ENGLISH – Alumni Distinguished Professor Lee Morrissey’s book, Milton’s Ireland: Royalism, Republicanism and the Question of Pluralism (Cambridge University Press, 2024), was launched in the beautiful surroundings of historic Marsh’s Library, Dublin, on July 8th, by Daneille Clarke, Professor of English at University College, Dublin, and Jason McElligott, Director of Marsh’s.  Those in attendance included faculty and graduate students from Irish universities, the parent of a recent Clemson English alumnus, and a current Clemson English major.  His book was also reviewed in TLS by Roberta Klimt.

PERFORMING ARTS – On June 20, Associate Professor Lisa Sain Odom created and hosted the first annual Summer High School Festival for the South Carolina chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (SCNATS), as part of her position as SCNATS President. The event featured high school students from throughout the state who performed in master class and were coached by various university professors from South Carolina. Also, in her role as SCNATS President, she traveled to the National Association of Teachers of Singing AuditionCon in Philadelphia in June, where she sponsored Clemson student singer Michael Stebbins who won third place in the nation for his vocal performance in his category of Upper College Musical Theatre Tenor/Baritone/Bass voices. In May, she assumed the duties of Vice Chair of Musical Theatre and Dance for the Southeastern Theatre Conference after being elected to the position. 

ENGLISH – Postdoctoral felllow Jagadish Paudel received an honorarium from the American Society for the History of Rhetoric (ASHR) for preparing a teaching resource for both graduate and undergraduate rhetoric courses for the project “Expanding History of Rhetoric Pedagogy Initiative” (2025). The resource he prepared was on Vāda discussion as a rhetorical practice: Reimagining dialogue through ancient South Asian traditions. He also received an honorable mention from the  Council of Writing Program Administrators’ Graduate Research Award (2025) for his project, Rhetoric of Multilingualism: WPAs’ Initiatives in Enacting Linguistic Justice.

LANGUAGES – Associate Professor Kelly Peebles presented a paper, “A Young Queen for an Auld Alliance: Grieving Madeleine de France, Briefly Queen of Scotland,” at Femmes et Fama. (Re)Writing Women’s History in France and Burgundy, 1400-1600. The conference, a celebration of emerita Art Historian Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier (American University of Paris), was held at the German Historical Institute/Deutsches Historisches Institut in Paris, June 17-18. Additionally, she recently joined the Editorial Team of the Royal Studies Journal as Layout Editor. 

LANGUAGES – Professor Johannes Schmidt’s article “The Lost Legacy of Johann Gottfried Herder” was published in a Special Edition of The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms—Journal of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas.

INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES – Senior Lecturer John Smith published “Bedraggled Magnolias: Song of the South’s 1986 Return to Atlanta” in the Summer 2025 edition of Journal of Film and Video. “Bedraggled Magnolias” is a study of domestic politics and the Disney film Song of the South (Wilfred Jackson and Harve Foster, 1946). Editor Cynthia Barton’s introduction notes, “In an inventive study of social dynamics in Atlanta, Smith explores the white nostalgia surrounding the dominant culture’s appreciation of the film in 1946 and 1986 as well as African American responses to Disney’s racialized plantation genre film. As Smith documents, there were more protests in response to the 1946 release than in response to D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915), and the wide acclaim for Spike Lee’s 1986 film She’s Gotta Have It confirmed the rising import of Black-authored productions in 1980s entertainment.”

PERFORMING ARTS – Associate Visiting Professor Kimberly W. Souther has been selected as a guest conductor/clinician for the Region 2 South Carolina Music Educators Association Honors Orchestra on November 14-15 and Oconnee County Honors Orchestra on October 21.  She will rehearse and lead the orchestras, sharing her research in audience engagement with South Carolina music educators, staff, and students in attendance.  Both opportunities culminate in a final live and recorded performance.

LANGUAGES – Professor Éric Touya read a paper entitled “Christianity’s Decline in France and the Future of Democracy” at the Fifteenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society at Sapienza University in Rome, Italy. The topic of the conference was “Fragile Meanings: Vulnerability in the Study of Religion and Spirituality.”

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Associate Professor and Chair Ben White published a research article, “The Apostle of Struggle: Reappraising Howard Thurman on Paul,” with Peter Eisenstadt, a former affiliate member of the Department of History & Geography, in the journal Church History.  The article’s concept was born in discussions of the Religious Studies Faculty Reading Group, which has met bi-weekly every semester for ten years.  White was also elected into the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, founded in 1938 “for the furtherance of New Testament studies internationally,” at their annual meeting in Regensburg, Germany.

INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES – Professor David Blakesley chaired the 12^th Triennial Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society on the theme, “Kenneth Burke, the Humanities, and Agency in the Era of AI.” This virtual conference was hosted by Clemson’s Department of Interdisciplinary Studies from May 22–25, 2025, and included a film festival, at which Blakesley presented “The Making of The Wordman Film.” Twenty-two Clemson faculty members and graduate students in the Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design program presented at the conference, which was attended virtually by over 100 scholars from as far away as South Africa, China, and Belgium. Assistant Professor Eddie Lohmeyer created and hosted an art exhibit, the “Virtual Burkeian Parlor,” in New Art City featuring creative projects by Clemson students, faculty and others.

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – On April 25, Professor Vernon Burton keynoted the Liberty Fellowship 20^th anniversary meeting in Greenville, where he spoke on the significance of Lincoln and liberty today, and also participated in a panel on arts and society.  On April 30, the New York Times published an analysis of 35 presidential historians, including Burton, surveyed to assess the questions, “Are Trumps’s Actions Truly Unprecedented?” On May 1, Burton and his coauthor of Justice Deferred published an op-ed, “If there is no birthright citizenship, are you a citizen – and can you prove it?” in the Post and Courier. On May 6, Burton was quoted in the Associated Press story, “Marco Rubio Now Holds 2 Top Jobs.  Just one other politician has done the same,” which was published in the Miami Herald. On Thursday, May 8, Burton spoke at SCETV at the annual meeting of the South Caroliniana Library, which this year paid tribute to South Carolina historian Walter Edgar. On May 12, at the Forum Club meeting of the Clemson University Emeritus College, he spoke on his discipline, History, in the academy today.

LANGUAGES – Associate Professor Jody Cripps published a chapter titled “Signed Music and the Deaf Community” in Ana Cruz’s book, “Culture, Deafness & Music: Critical Pedagogy and a Path to Social Justice.” It talked about how music in signed language is integrated in the deaf community. He also led the study abroad program, “Life as a Signer: The Deaf’s Perspective.” He and seven Clemson students, along with three from other colleges, went to New Zealand and Australia for three weeks. While in Wellington and then in Auckland, he gave presentations titled “What does ‘Sign Language Community’ mean to us?” to the deaf community in both areas. Moreover, in Australia, he and the deaf tour guide from Deaf Adventures, Rachel Soudakoff, gave a presentation about their deaf-led study abroad experiences to a deaf agency in Melbourne.

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – Associate Professor Caroline Dunn, with co-author Mikkaela Bailey ’19 (M.A. History), published “Visualizing Elizabeth of York’s Ladies-in-Waiting” in Volume 51 (2) of the journal Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques. The article illuminates the experiences of female attendants in both ritual occasions and daily life at the queen’s court and explores ways to visualize their roles and networks, using Net.Create software. The authors demonstrate the monarchs’ reliance upon courtiers, and proves that rather than being isolated in gendered, female quarters, women engaged with men at court daily; their interconnectivity within the network of governance reveals the multiple spokes – male and female – that comprised the wheels of medieval royal governance.

ENGLISH – Assistant Professor Stevie Edwards’ fourth book, The Weather Inside, was a finalist for the Miller Williams Prize and has been offered publication from University of Arkansas Press; the book will be released in spring 2026. Stevie’s poem “My Dear Felicity” appeared in Asterales Journal. She also had two poems, “Rogue” and “Dream After Watching Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” published in Crab Orchard Review. Edwards is looking forward to two writing residencies this summer: the Sundress Academy for the Arts’ Firefly Farms in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the Buinho Creative Hub in Messejana, Portugal.

PHILOSOPHY – Assistant Professor Quinn Hiroshi Gibson published a paper in Neuroethics entitled ‘Depression, Intelligibility, and Non-Rational Causation‘. It argues for the use of an updated version of an old clinical distinction between endogenous and exogenous depression, one based on whether depressive symptoms are intelligibly related to their causes.

PERFORMING ARTS – Lillian Utsey Harder, Brooks Center director emerita and artistic director of the Utsey Chamber Music Series, secured two broadcasts on American Public Media’s Performance Today: WindSync’s performance of Nadia Boulanger’s Prelude from 3 Pieces for Organ, (arr. By Lara Lamoure) on April 25 from their concert on October 29, 2024; and clarinetist Anthony McGill and the Pacifica Quartet’s performance of James Lee III’s Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet on May 12 from their concert on September 9, 2023.

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – Assistant Professor Stephanie Hassell presented a paper, “African Experiences of Slavery in Portuguese India, 16th – 18th Centuries,” at Yale University’s Virtual International Conference on the Black Indian Ocean: Slavery, Religion, and Expressive Cultures (1400-1700), on April 2-3, 2025. Also, her first book, Slavery and Religious Conversion in Portugal’s Indian Empire, 1500-1700, will be released in April 2025 as part of Ohio University Press’s Indian Ocean Studies Series.

LANGUAGES – Assistant Professor Magdaléna Matušková recently published an article Allegro Moderato: Music, Memory, and Self-Reflection in Santiago by João Moreira Salles in the Annals edition of The Latin Americanist, Volume 69, Number 1, March 2025. It is also accessible through Project MUSE. The article is about the role of music in the Brazilian documentary, Santiago, directed by João Moreira Salles.

ENGLISH – Senior Lecturer Kathleen Nalley had a series of sonnets published in the May 1 issue of South Florida Poetry Journal, as well as in the spring issue of Brillig: a micro lit mag. Additionally, her second full-length poetry collection, a collaborative manuscript with poet Gabrielle Freeman, titled DISSENT, was accepted for publication by Harbor Editions and is forthcoming in November. Nalley was also named interim director of the Converse University MFA program.

ENGLISH – On April 22, 2025, Professor Rhondda Robinson Thomas gave a talk about her work on the Cemetery Hill Project to a group in Spartanburg, SC, who are seeking to identify all graves and establish a preservation plan for the Old City Cemetery, established in 1900 when graves were reinterred from the first cemetery established for Black residents in 1849. The meeting took place at the Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Spartanburg.

ENGLISH – Professor Susanna Ashton was the keynote speaker for the Celebration of Writing: Publication and Public Action, April 24^th, a conference held at Coastal Carolina University.

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – Assistant Professor Camden Burd’s essay, “Green as a Shade of Blue: Political Rhetoric, the Democratic Party, and the Early Environmental Movement in the Upper Midwest,” was recently published an edited collection from the University of Kansas Press in The Liberal Heartland: A Political History of the Postwar American Midwest. The essay explores how democratic politicians harnessed a language that criticized industrial malpractice, advocated for resource preservation, and demonstrated a commitment to the working class to pass a series of environmental legislation in the 1960s and 1970s.  On April 22, 2025, Burd presented research from his first book, The Roots of Flower City: Horticulture, Empire, and the Remaking of Rochester, New York (Cornell University Press, 2024), as part of the Neilly Author Series and the Dr. Matthew E & Ruth Harmon Fairbank Alumni Lecture presented by the River Campus Libraries and the School of Arts and Sciences in partnership with the Local History & Genealogy Division of the Rochester Public Library.

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – On April 2-3, Professor Vernon Burton keynoted the premiere of a documentary film on Benjamin E. Mays (in which he was a commentator) and served on a panel to discuss the documentary at Howard University.  On April 10, he spoke on emancipation at the Charleston Library Society and discussed the meaning of emancipation with former Clemson M.A. student Ben Parten of Georgia Southern University.  On April 22, he participated in a Rutgers History and Literature Departments’ panel discussing “The haunting stereotype of ‘The Old Time Negro’ and Black Storytelling in the Plantation’s Shadow.”  On April 24-25, he was the keynote speaker at the 20^th anniversary meeting of the SC Liberty Fellowship, speaking on liberty and participating in a panel on arts and society.  

PERFORMING ARTS – Assistant Professor of Music Lauren Crosby published a peer-reviewed article, “The Sound of Boba Fett: Star Wars Leitmotifs in Streaming Television,” in a special issue of the French academic journal Emergences: Son, Musique et médias audiovisuels that focuses on new perspectives on the music of John Williams.

ENGLISH – Assistant Professor Stevie Edwards’s poem “My Dear Felicity” was featured in the second issue of the journal Asterales. This poem is from the manuscript-in-progress for her fourth book, Childless Dog Lady.

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Associate Professor Quinn Hiroshi Gibson, together with former Clemson Visiting Assistant Professor Sarah Arnaud, published ‘Neurodiversity, Identity, and Hypostatic Abstraction’ in Philosophical Studies.

PERFORMING ARTS – Lillian Utsey Harder, Brooks Center director emerita and artistic director of the Utsey Chamber Music Series, secured five broadcasts on American Public Media’s Performance Today: WindSync’s performance of Mozart’s Serenade for Winds in C Minor, K. 388 (Movt. 2: Andante) on April 2 from their concert on October 29, 2024; Verona Quartet and pianist David Fung’s performance of Grazyna Bacewicz’s Piano Quintet No. l (Movt. 1) on April 3 from their performance on November 1, 2022, and the Verona Quartet’s performance of Duke Ellington’s Cotton Club Stop from their performance on November 1, 2022; violinist Geneva Lewis and pianist Evren Ozel’s performance of Stravinsky’s Divertimento, “The Fairy’s Kiss” (arr. by Samuel Dushkin) on April 10 from their concert on March 28, 2024; and Sphinx Virtuosi’s performance of Michael Dudley’s “Prayer for our Times” on April 16 from their performance on March 30, 2023.

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Professor Charlie Kurth organized the visit of Sara Protasi from the University of Puget Sound on April 10-11. While at Clemson, Protasi gave a public lecture titled “Cultivating Courage in an Age of Fear,” which was attended by over 40 faculty and students. Funding for the events was generously provided by the Department of Philosophy and Religion and the Humanities Hub. Protasi also met with undergraduate philosophy majors and minors for a separate conversation about her work on envy. The visit concluded with a research meeting where Protasi and Kurth talked with Associate Professor Charlie Starkey and Professor Cindy Pury (Psychology) about potential collaborations that would bring together their work on emotion and courage.

PERFORMING ARTS – Professor Linda Li-Bleuel received the 2025 Outstanding Service Award for dedicated service to the Clemson University commissions. This was the result of voluntarily assuming the role of Chair for the Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) Committee, an advisory group devoted to promoting appreciation, understanding, and safety for Clemson’s APIDA community. This committee gained recognition for its work and was elevated to the status of the APIDA Commission in 2022, and Li-Bleuel continued as Chair.

ENGLISH – Postdoctoral Writing Fellow Jagadish Paudel presented his paper, “Introducing ‘Image Events’ in the FYC Classroom: Teaching Composition by Combating Racial and Social (In)justice,” at the 2025 Conference on College Composition and Communication, held in Baltimore from April 9–12. In recognition of his conference paper, Paudel also received the prestigious 2025 Chairs’ Memorial Scholarship at the conference.

ENGLISH – Assistant Professor Jon Correa Reyes co-authored the article, “From Chile to Camelot: Reception of the Arthurian Arc of Mampato and Ogú“ in Arthuriana: the Journal of Arthurian Studies. The essay analyzes how the Arthurian arc of the Chilean comic Mampato and Ogú challenges the neocolonial rhetorics that cast Chile as a stagnant country, and how it afforded Chileans an opportunity to participate in a global cultural current of Arthurian adaptations. He also served as the guest editor for this issue of Arthuriana, authoring the introductory essay, “Medieval Studies as a Public Good.” 

LANGUAGES – Together with co-editor Rainer Godel, Professor Johannes Schmidt published the Herder Yearbook 17, now for the first time with Mohr Siebeck publishers, one of the oldest in Germany. This is the sixth time Johannes co-edited this academic journal for the International Johnn Gottfried Herder Society. This new venue allows for eBook and Open Access, while continuing the series in print.

PERFORMING ARTS – Associate Professor Kerrie Seymour wrote and acted in the new short film PURPLE, which was screened at both the Maryland International Film Festival and Greenville’s Reedy Reels Film Festival. The film won the Best Film Made in Upstate SC at Reedy Reels. Additionally, she was featured in a commercial for Tekmetric, based out of Texas.

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Associate Professor Charles Starkey co-authored “Memorialization of Courage,” which was presented by author Cynthia Pury (Psychology) at the Memorialization: Theory, Methods, Goals, and Ethics conference at the University of Mississippi.

LANGUAGES – Professor Eric Touya had published an article, “Developing Humanities Perspectives across Disciplines”, in “Public Humanities: Theories and Methods”, Publications of the Modern Language Association, Vol. 140, Issue 1, 2025. Drawing on his experience teaching women in business in the francophone world, Toya considers the value of the humanities in cultivating civic- and community-mindedness in students and preparing them to take humanistic inquiry into their future careers. He seeks to demystify and deconstruct the discourses of the economists most often studied in university courses, whose models are often purportedly grounded in mathematical reasoning. From a public humanities perspective, his critical intervention reexamines the dichotomies of campuses/communities and academy/public and demonstrates how the work within our classrooms is integral to preparing students for engaging with other communities in the ways they bring humanistic inquiry into the world beyond college. Exploring connections between the classroom and the community, in conjunction with humanities-based reflection on issues of race, gender, and class, helps students to understand the complexity and diversity of socioeconomic realities from a non-Western perspective. 

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Associate Professor and Chair Ben White’s new book, Counting Paul: Scientificity, Fuzzy Math, and Ideology in Pauline Studies, was released this month with Oxford University Press.

ENGLISH – Professor Susanna Ashton authored an article in Publishing History issue 36 entitled “William Stanley Braithwaite and Poetic Stereotypes,” which examines the life and work of African American printer, publisher, critic and poet William Stanley Braithwaite.

ENGLISH – Associate Professor Nic Brown authored the cover story for issue No. 10 of The Bitter Southerner, published March 28. The story is a profile of actor Michael Shannon, focusing on a recent project recreating the music of the pioneering alt-rock band R.E.M.

HISTORY – Professor Vernon Burton presented a paper, “What is Victory Day to the Black Man?” on March 1, at the South Carolina Historical Association annual meeting held this year at Francis Marion University. From March 19 to 21, he gave a public lecture on his book, Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court, to the University of Georgia School of Law and Department of History, in addition to directing two seminars for history graduate students. On March 27, at the Captain Kimberly Hampton Memorial Library in Easley, SC, he presented a lecture, “Lincoln, Liberty, Reconstruction, and the Supreme Court.” On March 22, he presented a guest lecture on “Reconstruction in South Carolina” at the Modjeska Simkins School. He also secured grants from the 1772 Foundation and the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission to support the University of South Carolina’s publication of Georganne Burton and his graphic history of Penn Center.

PERFORMING ARTS – Lillian Utsey Harder, Brooks Center director emerita and artistic director of the Utsey Chamber Music Series, secured six broadcasts on American Public Media’s Performance Today: Goldstein-Peled-Fiterstein Trio’s broadcast of Joachim Stutschewsky’ s Hassidic Fantasy on December 26 and March 25 from their concert on February 9, 2023; guitarist Jason Vieaux’s broadcast on December 27 of Agustin Barrios’ Waltz in G Major, Op. 8, No. 3 from his concert on September 14, 2024; Sphinx Virtuosi’s broadcast on January 1 of Michael Dudley’s Prayer for our Times from their concert on March 30, 2023; pianist Maxim Lando’s broadcast on January 9 of Nikolai Kapustin’s Variations, Op. 41 from his concert on September 15, 2022; and Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society’s broadcast on January 14 of Howard Ferguson’s Octet for Winds and Strings, Op. 4 from their concert on October 18, 2021.

LANGUAGES – Under the guidance of Assistant Professor Magdaléna Matušková, Clemson students Cassie Hunt and Hayden Roof participated at the UGA Conference on the Americas on February 21, 2025, in Athens, GA. Roof, writing and presenting entirely in Spanish, won the award for best undergraduate student essay with his writing on the film, También la lluvia (Icíar Bollaín, 2010).

ENGLISH – Assistant Professor Jonathan F. Correa Reyes pulished “Conjuring Ethiopia: Blackness as Dignity in Juan Latino’s Poetry,” in Viator 55, no. 1 (2025). Reyes’ study revisits the sixteenth-century author’s references to Ethiopia and the Ethiopians in his first published volume of poetry, examining recent questions regarding Latino’s birthplace in light of the power of his writing.

ENGLISH – Associate Professor Elizabeth Rivlin presented a paper titled “Hull House: A Historical Case Study in Public Shakespeare,” in the Public Shakespeare / Public Humanities Seminar, at the Shakespeare Association of America Annual Meeting March 20-22 in Boston.

PERFORMING ARTS – Professor Shannon Robert was inducted into the Southeastern Theatre Conference Hall of Fame in Baltimore. This recognition honors the dedicated contributions of theatre artists to the SETC organization and its mission to develop theatre education, promote opportunities, and support live theatre regionally and nationally.

INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES – Associate Professor Aga Skrodzka has published her new monograph, The Sex Slave in Cinema: An Inegalitarian Spectacle, with Edinburgh University Press. This book examines the visual politics of the cinematic figure of the ‘sex slave’ from its origins in silent film to its iterations in blaxploitation cinema, European art cinema, Nollywood, and, in its most concentrated form, the Hollywood blockbuster thriller.

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Associate Professor Charles Starkey presented “Perception, Value, and Virtue: Huff and Fuchert’s Taking Moral Action” as part of a symposium on moral psychology at the annual meeting of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics in Norfolk, Virginia.

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Associate Professor and Chair Ben White gave the annual George Howard Lecture in the Department of Religion at the University of Georgia on March 24.  The lecture was entitled: “Fuzzy Math: the Challenge of Counting Paul’s Authentic Letters,” based on White’s forthcoming book, Counting Paul: Scientificy, Fuzzy Math, and Ideology in Pauline Studies.

HISTORY – Professor and Humanities Hub Director James Burns presented on the Humanities Hub’s Mellon Foundation Teacher Scholar Grant at two national conferences in Washington D.C.  The first was the Annual Conference of the Assocation of Undergraduate Educating Research Universities. The second presentation, with a different cohort of Teacher-Scholars, was at the Meeting of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

HISTORY – Professor Vernon Burton appeared with Andrew Sullivan on NPR’s The Middle with Jeremy Hobson to discuss the topic “Is democracy really at risk?” in January. On Feb. 4, Burton was the lead historian for an amicus brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on maintaining the integrity of the Georgia election system (Case S25A0490 Brief of AmiciCuiae History Professors in Support of Appellees External Vigilance Action, inc., et al.).  Burton has also been appointed to the South Carolina Sesquicentennial Commission (SC250) Advisory Council for Scholars to assist the Commission in helping shape educational programming, public history initiatives, and commemorations that highlight South Carolina’s essential contributions to the Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution.  On Feb. 3, he spoke at Wofford College on the Civil Rights Movement in South Carolina.  On Feb. 13-14,  he participated in a radio program in Chicago on Abraham Lincoln’s legacy and a conference at the University of Illinois on Lincoln and Liberty.  Lastly, on Feb. 25, he chaired a panel as a commissioner at the annual conference of the South Carolina African American Heritage Commission at the State Archives.  

LANGUAGES – Jody Cripps, Associate Professor of American Sign Language, and his colleague, Dr. Anita Small had published a chapter titled “Exploring the Creation of Lyrics, Composition, and Performance in Signed Music” in “Lights: The Real Us Behind the Scenes & Activity Guide.” 

ENGLISH – Assistant Professor Stevie Edwards’ poem “Father’s Day” was featured as The Best American Poetry’s “Pick of the Week.” Additionally, their poems “Heat Wave,” “After Watching Thelma & Louise,” and “With Wings” were published in The Screen Door, a journal for literary voices of the queer south.

PHILOSOPHY – Assistant Professor Quinn Hiroshi Gibson published a chapter in the Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Delusion, edited by Ema Sullivan-Bissett. It was published early in the year, though I don’t know exactly when. His chapter, ‘Delusion and Rationality’, (Chapter 14, pp. 214–227) discusses the philosophical positions on the relation between delusions and rationality and argues that delusions are best understood as irrational beliefs, as opposed to non-beliefs, or rational beliefs. He further argues that, given this interpretation, delusions should be modeled in terms of where the irrationality enters, at the stage of entertainment, the stage of formation, or the stage of maintenance.  

Hiroshi Gibson also published a post on the American Philosophical Association’s blog entitled ‘Reconciling the Manifest and Scientific Images of Addiction‘ in which he argues that by appealing to a leading neuroscientific theory of addiction, we can make progress understanding addiction in ordinary interpersonal, psychological, and moral terms.

RELIGIOUS STUDIES – Associate Professor Elizabeth Jemison has joined the Steering Committee of the Afro-American Religious History Group of the American Academy of Religion, where she will serve a three-year term.

PHILOSOPHY – Professor Charlie Kurth’s paper, “Shames and Selves: On the Origins and Cognitive Foundations of a Moral Emotion” was accepted at the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, the premier venue for philosophical research on the sciences.  In the paper, Kurth draws on work from a range of disciplines—philosophy, anthropology, psychology, primatology, cognitive science and history—to argue that evolutionary forces equipped humans with a distinctly moral form of shame.

ENGLISH – The Writing Program Administrators (WPA) team composed of Associate Professor Michelle Smith, Senior Lecturer Mary Nestor, and Post-Doctoral Fellows Kelly Sauskojus, Matthew Burchanoski, and Jagadish Paudel participated in and presented at the Carolinas Writing Program Administrators Meeting on February 7 at Furman University in Greenville, SC. The presentation, “Questions From a WPA Team,” was a roundtable discussion featuring Smith’s reflections on a plan for transitioning and changing Clemson’s first-year writing (FYW) program. Smith highlighted the introduction of a new WPA postdoctoral fellows’ program and topics for revising the first-year curriculum, which incorporates inquiry-based research and reflective writing.

PERFORMING ARTS – Visiting Assistant Professor Kimbery Souther has been appointed to the Executive Board of the College Orchestra Directors Association (CODA) as Chair of Development. In this role, she will help CODA activate their strategic plan, increase enrollment, develop methods for financial contributions, and improve the quality and impact of publications, policies, advertising, and fund-raising. The chair of development also implements new policies and aids the organization in increasing accessibility and effectiveness for all collegiate orchestra directors and graduate students.

HISTORY – On February 1, 2025, D’Ondre Swails, Assistant Professor of History and Global Black Studies, delivered the keynote address at the 44th annual King’s Feast hosted by the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. The event celebrates the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

LANGUAGES – Éric Touya published the new book Penser la ruralité en Aquitaine : Saubusse (1930-2020). Héritage, Territoire, Transmission (Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux)  The book explores France’s past and present from a rural perspective, a topic not often studied or understood. It examines the transformations of rural France over the past century (including the collapse of agriculture and the rise of technology and globalization) and what these changes mean for our perception of what constitutes a community, the common good, civic engagements, democratic values, and the future of France. The book has been reviewed by Damien Bouhours in Le Petit Journal.com, Philippe Miquel: “Landes: l’histoire du village de Saubusse sous la loupe d’un universitaire américain”, in Sud-Ouest, and Nathalie Benoy in Radio France Bleu Gascogne  on January 12, 2025 ; Histoire et Sociétés Rurales, Vol. 63, 2025, and Dalhousie French Studies: Revues d’études littéraires du Canada, Vol. 127, 2025.

HISTORY – Professor Vernon Burton  had two articles published: “Confronting the Lost Cause Memorialization in South Carolina” in Grappling with Monuments of Oppression: Moving from Analysis to Activism, part of the Restorative Justice in Heritage Studies and Archaeology book series (Routledge Press, 2025) and “Jimmy Carter’s Day-to-Day Life as President: The White House Diary,” in The Literary Legacy of Jimmy Carter:  Essays on the President’s Books (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025).  On Jan. 5, at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association Burton presented a paper at a session on “Historians and the Courts.”  On Jan 13, he spoke on “Lincoln, Liberty, Reconstruction, and the Constitution” to a group at the Clemson University Emeritus College; on Jan. 23, at the Charleston Library Society, he moderated a discussion on Professor Ben Parten’s new book, Somewhere Toward Freedom; and on Jan. 15 he spoke at the 10^th anniversary celebration of the Modjeska Simkins School in Columbia.

ENGLISH – Assistant Professor Su Cho was one of 35 writers selected to receive a 2025 Creative Writing Fellowship of $25,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts. This year’s fellowships are in poetry and enable the recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career development. Fellows are selected through an anonymous review process and are judged on the basis of artistic excellence of the work sample they provided. These fellowships are highly competitive, with more than 2,000 eligible applications received for FY 2025.

ENGLISH – Assistant Professor of English and World Cinema Maziyar Faridi presented an article at the “Thinking Out of the Box” symposium in Paris in December 2024. Commemorating the 35^th anniversary of the Paris Program in Critical Theory, the symposium gathered a group of affiliated theorists and philosophers to reflect on the future of critical theory. Maziyar presented parts of his film-essay on “Khora” and memory. 

PHILOSOPHY – On Jan. 15 Assistant Professor Quinn Hiroshi Gibson gave a talk entitled “Foundation and Conceptual Issues in Medicine and Mind Science” in the Clemson University School of Health Research (CUSHR) Clemson Health Advancement Talk (CHAT) series. In the talk, he outlined three major strands in my research program: foundational questions in philosophy of medicine, the modelling of disordered psychological conditions, and the bioethics and political philosophy of medicalized conditions. 

PERFORMING ARTS – Lillian Utsey Harder, Brooks Center director emerita and artistic director of the Utsey Chamber Music Series, secured five broadcasts on American Public Media’s Performance Today: Goldstein-Peled-Fiterstein Trio’s broadcast of Joachim Stutschewsky’ s Hassidic Fantasy on December 26 from their concert on February 9, 2023; guitarist Jason Vieaux’s broadcast on December 27 of Agustin Barrios’ Waltz in G Major, Op. 8, No. 3 from his concert on September 14, 2024; Sphinx Virtuosi’s broadcast on January 1 of Michael Dudley’s Prayer for our Times from their concert on March 30, 2023; pianist Maxim Lando’s broadcast on January 9 of Nikolai Kapustin’s Variations, Op. 41 from his concert on September 15, 2022; and Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society’s broadcast on January 14 of Howard Ferguson’s Octet for Winds and Strings, Op. 4 from their concert on October 18, 2021.

PHILOSOPHY – Professor Charlie Kurth published a review of Debra Hawhee’s, A Sense of Urgency: How the Climate Crisis is Changing Rhetoric, in the journal Metascience. Drawing on his experiences living in Asheville, NC through Hurricane Helene and its aftermath, he argues that Hawhee’s book projects a misplaced optimism.

LANGUAGES –  Three faculty members of the Department of Languages  presented in panels related to American Sign Language (ASL) and Deaf Studies at the 2025 Modern Languages Association conference in New Orleans. Professor Joseph Mai and Associate Professor Stephen Fitzmaurice co-presented on a discussion panel related to Disability and Hiring: Access, Accommodation, Belonging, and Retention titled “Moving (Slowly) Forward: Reshaping Campus Accessibility for the ASL Community.” Associate Professor Jody Cripps co-presented with Pamela Witcher, Vancouver Community College, and JB Begue, Towson University, on a discussion panel related to Deaf Performance, Language, and Art addressing “Signed Music and its Applications.”

ENGLISH – Professor Lee Morrissey was invited to publish a blog post for the Cambridge University Press about his new book, Milton’s Ireland, which the press published in December 2024. 

ENGLISH – Professor Susanna Ashton held over 20 talks and public events during the past two months at universities, bookstores, libraries, and historic sites promoting A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave who Inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin (NY: The New Press 2024). This Fall, her title made the Wall Street Journal’s annual holiday gift guide and received a glowing review from The New Republic. This past month has also seen her publish a scholarly book review in Criticism and a short essay about a young fugitive on Freedom-seekers.org website. But the most exciting achiement of the fall, as she reports, was appearing in the Merriam Webster Dictionary with her recent writing from The Hartford Courant cited to indicate contemporary usage of the term “working-class.” 

HISTORY – Professor Vernon Burton published an article in Slavery & Abolition, “Contested Pasts and Mythic History: Formerly Enslaved Women, Francis Pickens, and the Federal Writer’s Project.”  He also co-authored “Can the Constitution and Democracy Survive the Roberts Court?” with Rhetoric, Communication and Information Design Ph.D. student Frances Chapman in Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture. On October 16 at Clemson, Burton participated in the panel, “Briggs Before and Beyond” sponsored by the Cecil Williams South Carolina Civil Rights Museum. At the Southern Historical Society annual meeting in Kansas City, he chaired a session on slavery, and on October 25 at the graduate student luncheon, he spoke on Digital Humanities and Artificial Intelligence in history. On November 7, Burton keynoted the 32^nd annual meeting of the Society of Nineteenth-Century Historians at Augusta University, delivering the inaugural Dicken-Garcia Lecture.  He appeared on the “Research Report from Augusta University” podcast on November 12 discussing research on Abraham Lincoln. On November 13, he spoke on his book, Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court as part of Wofford College’s “Defining or Dividing? Contemporary Issues in American Culture and History” lecture series. On November 15 in Columbia, he spoke as part of two panels for the South Carolina Bar Association’s symposium, “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 Turns 60.” He was interviewed and quoted in the Miami Herald on “Who Can the President Pardon?” Also on November 15,  at the groundbreaking of the addition to the Benjamin E. Mays Historical Site, which now serves as a museum, the director announced that the addition will be used for the “Orville Vernon Burton Research Library.”

PERFORMING ARTS – Professor of Music Paul Buyer will publish the 2^nd edition of his book, Working Toward Excellence, in 2025 with Morgan James Publishing. He is also writing a book chapter on World Percussion as a contributor to The Handbook of Percussion Pedagogy, to be published by Oxford University Press in 2026. Buyer was recently interviewed by Bold Journey magazine, a community that features people’s experiences on leadership, productivity, resilience, confidence, relationships, and mental health, and he was recognized as Professor of the Game at the Clemson-USC game on November 30, 2024.

LANGUAGES –Associate Professor of ASL Jody Cripps, as the editor of the peer-reviewed Society for American Sign Language Journal, worked with Clemson University undergraduates Brooke Turell, Jaylin Dillard, Danielle LaVigne, and Alejandro Mejia-Tejada in publishing three articles related to ASL and Deaf Studies: “Bringing Sign Language Back to Martha’s Vineyard”, “Hereditary Deafness and Society: The Quest of Ethnical Awareness”, and “Inclusion of American Sign Language in Science and Engineering.” Also, in October, Cripps taught deaf professionals about signed music and promoted their creativity in musicality at the second session of the Canadian Cultural Society of the Deaf’s Deaf Arts Academy in Winnipeg, Canada. He and his colleague, Pamela Witcher, also presented “Signed Music” to deaf high school-aged students and staff at the Manitoba School for the Deaf. In November, Cripps and his Creative Inquiry students Aislinn Horrell, Alina Romero, Reagan Moore, Brianna Motko, Elizabeth Sabol, and Carolina Strinsky went to Hartford, CT, to explore more about the first deaf school in America and its founding members and the school’s relationship with Martha’s Vineyard. They also went to the 2024 National Humanities Conference in Providence, RI, and provided a presentation titled “Hands Waving: Creating a Signed Language-Friendly Society” with two Clemson alumni, Brooke Turell and Allison Rambo, along with Doreen Simons, who is a deaf community partner. He also published two articles in peer-reviewed journals in November. The first article, titled, “Examining the Audience’s Reaction to The Black Drum—Signed Musical Production,” was published in Participants: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies. The second article he wrote with his colleagues, Elizabeth Austin and Leyla Craig, was “A Case Study of University Mass Casualty Simulation with High-School Deaf Students Who Sign” in the Journal of Emergency Management. 

ENGLISH – Assistant Professor Stevie Edwards has been invited to join the editorial board for Sundress Publications, based in Knoxville, TN. As a member of the board, Edwards will help make decisions about winners of book contests, winners of poetry broadside contests, as well as other literary contests. 

LANGUAGES – The Clemson German Program, in an effort led by BMW Principal Lecturer of German Lee Ferrell, joined four other Upstate universities and two chambers of Commerce to host the first Upstate Forum for European and American Business (UFEA) on October 22 at Furman University. This conference combined the efforts of USC-Upstate, Furman University, Clemson University, Spartanburg Community College and Greenville Technical College in cooperation with the European American Chamber of Commerce and the Greenville Chamber of Commerce. The event brought together speakers from industry to speak with students and businesses from the Upstate region on the role of Germany in the state of South Carolina.  In addition to a keynote presentation by Max Stewart of the Greenville Area Development Corporation, there was also a panel discussion on Germany and the Battery Boom in South Carolina followed by a roundtable session for students hosted by numerous German companies from the region. 

ENGLISH – Pearce Professor of Professional Communication Jordan Frith, in collaboration with Sarah Read at Portland State University, was awarded the “Best Paper” award at the annual meeting of the Association of Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Design of Communication Special Interest Group. Their paper, titled “Holistic methodologies for fusing material and discursive infrastructures: Tracing the sociotechnical imaginaries that enable the world’s fastest supercomputer” details the development of the two-year project plan they developed for their National Science Foundation-funded project studying the global dynamics of supercomputing infrastructure.

PERFORMING ARTS – Lillian Utsey Harder, Brooks Center director emerita and artistic director of the Utsey Chamber Music Series, secured four broadcasts on American Public Media’s Performance Today: violinist Geneva Lewis and pianist Evren Ozel’s broadcast on October 23 of Stravinsky’s Divertimento from “The Fairy’s Kiss” Suite for violin and piano (arranged by Samuel Dushkin), and Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances broadcast on November 29 from their concert on March 28, 2024; and Sphinx Virtuosi’s broadcast on November 4 of Carlos Simon’s Between Worlds and broadcast on December 9 of Ricardo Herz’s Sisifo na Cidade Grande from their concert on March 30, 2023.

ENGLISH – Senior Lecturer of English Kathleen Nalley recently participated in the November 9 opening reception of “Turtle Tales,” a multi-artist exhibit that featured the turtle at No. 3 Pottery Gallery in downtown Simpsonville. Alongside seven other poets from across South Carolina, she read two poems created for the event.

LANGUAGES – Professor Johannes Schmidt published an article in the conference volume Johann Gottfried Herder und Bückeburg—»Was habe ich hier ausgerichtet? Wessen kann ich mich rühmen?«, edited by Martin Kessler. The title of Schmidt’s talk and contribution is “Becoming Maverick, Dissenter, and Individualist.Herder’s Orientation during the Bückeburg Years 1771–1776”. The conference took place in Fall 2023 in Bückeburg, Germany, and was organized by the President of the International Herder Society, Martin Keßler.

PERFORMING ARTS – Associate Professor of Theater Kerrie Seymour performed the role of Heidi in What the Constitution Means to Me by Heidi Schreck in a co-production with LEAN Ensemble Theatre and Furman University Theatre. Through December 29, she is performing the role of Annie Wilkes in an adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery at the Warehouse Theatre.

ENGLISH – Professor Rhondda Robinson Thomas moderated the “Public Histories” panel at the Georgetown and Legacies of Slavery Forum: Honoring Stories, Embracing Communities on Friday, December 6, 2024, at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in collaboration with Dumbarton Oaks, Tudor Place, and The Black Georgetown Foundation. Thomas is researching and documenting the lives of enslaved persons who labored at Dumbarton Oaks for US statesman John C. Calhoun and his family in the early to mid-1820s for her Call My Name project and the Cemetery Hill project.

LANGUAGES – Professor Eric Touya read the paper, “Baudelaire’s Expression of Life: Poetics and Politics of Production in Modernity” at the Semicentennial Colloquium of Nineteenth-Century French Studies at Duke University. He also read “AI’s Ethical Challenges in Literary Studies: Postcolonialism, Feminism, and Democratic Responsibility, Nurturing Democratic Responsibility in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” at the 25^th Annual Conference on Ethics Across the Curriculum at Clemson University. He also published the article entitled “’Plus jamais la guerre !’ Claudel diplomate: 1927-1947. Prolongements dans les Suppléments aux Œuvres complètes” in Bulletin de la Société Paul Claudel, Vol. 242. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2024, p. 15-25. 

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION – Professor and Chair Ben White gave a paper entitled “Acts and the Historical Paul: a Response” at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in San Diego, CA on November 23^rd.  

INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES – Associate Professor Todd Anderson’s printed artwork “Swiftcurrent Glacier, The Last Glacier” and the original woodblock he carved in its making were both recently acquired by the Hockaday Museum of Art in Kalispell, Montana, for their permanent collection. “It is an honor to have my artwork placed in context and conversation with historic art luminaries, including Russell Chatham and Lucille Van Slick and contemporary peers like Ian van Coller and Bruce Crownover,” Anderson said.

HISTORY – Assistant Professor Camden Burd published his first book, The Roots of Flower City: Horticulture, Empire, and the Remaking of Rochester, New York (Cornell University Press). The book historicizes how a small group of entrepreneurs adapted their businesses to the nineteenth-century American imperial project by distributing plant material to settler-colonists across North America. Furthermore, Burd discusses how the capital from that enterprise flowed back to Rochester, New York transforming the antebellum boomtown into a horticultural wonderland by the late nineteenth century.

HISTORY – On Sept. 20, Professor Vernon Burton participated in a question and answer session with Bob Elder of Baylor University, who delivered a lecture at Clemson on the life of John C. Calhoun. Introducing Burton, Clemson University Historian Otis Pickett announced that this would become an annual lecture series officially named the “Dr. Orville Vernon Burton Annual Lecture Series on The U.S. South.”  On Sept 25, Burton and Professor J. Brent Morris spoke to the Confederation of South Carolina Local Historical Societies at the state archives in Columbia.  On Oct. 12, Burton chaired a session on Presbyterians at the Faith and History Conference in Birmingham and that evening gave a keynote on South Carolina’s Political History in Laurens, SC.

ENGLISH – Assistant Professor Stevie Edwards’s poem, “On Gluttony” was published last month in Glass: A Journal of Poetry. It is a love poem that features cannibalism. 

LANGUAGES – Associate Professor Stephen Fitzmaurice published an Open Education Resource (OER) chapter, titled “Importance of Fingerspelling in Educational Settings”in the co-edited A Survey of American Sign Language/English Interpreting Settings.  Along with Jessica Bentley-Sassaman of Bloomsburg University, Fitzmaurice also published an article in the International Journal of Interpreter Education, 15(1) titled “Perceptions of non-deaf parties in a student interpreted transaction.”

PERFORMING ARTS –  Lillian Utsey Harder, Brooks Center director emerita and artistic director of the Utsey Chamber Music Series, secured six broadcasts on American Public Media’s Performance Today: pianist Maxim Lando’s broadcast on September 17 of Improvisation on Duke Ellington from his concert on September 15, 2022, and an additional broadcast on September 30 of Nikolai Kapustin’s Variations, Op. 4; guitarist Jason Vieaux’s broadcast on September 20 of his arrangement of Agustin Barrios’ Waltz in G Major, Op. 8, No. 3 from his concert on September 14, 2021; Verona Quartet and pianist David Fung’s broadcast on September 24 of their performance of Grazyna Bacewicz’s Piano Quintet No. 1 (movt. 1) and Duke Ellington’s Cotton Club Stomp from their concert on November 1, 2022; Sphinx Virtuosi’s broadcast on September 27 of Jessie Montgomery’s Strum from their concert on March 30, 2023; broadcast on October 11, 2024 of Howard Ferguson’s Octet for Winds and Strings by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center from their concert on October 18, 2021.

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION – Professor Charlie Kurth traveled to Helsinki, Finland to launch the Negative Emotion Research Group (NERG), an international group of emotion researchers. Participants spanned six disciplines across the humanities and social sciences—Philosophy, History, Anthropology, Theology, Literature, and Psychology. The launch events included a two-day manuscript workshop, a roundtable discussion on the future of interdisciplinary emotion research, and a series of networking events that allowed junior researchers to engage with more senior scholars. The events were funded through a 14,500€ Catalyst Grant from the Helsinki Institute for the Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Helsinki for which Kurth was the PI.

INTERDISCIPLINARY – Professor and Chair Lisa Melançon co-authored “Creating assignments that put programmatic inclusion and diversity work into practice” in Inclusive STEM: Transforming Disciplinary Writing Instruction for a Socially Just Future (pp. 123-145). The chapter asked the question: what happens in a large technical and professional communication writing program when it creates a programmatic inclusion vision and then sets out to enact it within an assignment? The chapter describes an evaluation of an assignment and the student work produced in relation to both student learning outcomes and the connection to programmatic inclusion. The chapter offers a discussion of what worked well for this assignment and what could be improved to facilitate better implementation of student learning and programmatic inclusion.

LANGUAGES – Professor Salvador Oropesa published the book chapter. “María Oruña’s El bosque de los cuatro vientos: The Architecture of Literary Genres.”  Edited by Inmaculada Pertusa-Seva and Melissa A. Stewart in New Directions in Spanish Female Detective Fiction, Cambridge Scholars, 2024. (pp. 115-30).

LANGUAGES – Together with co-editor Liisa Steinby of the University of Turku, Professor Johannes Schmidt published “Forms of Temporality and Historical Time in the Work of Johann Gottfried Herder.”  He co-authored the Introduction and the Afterword and single-authored the chapter “Herder: Time, Temporality, and (Christian) Telos.” The edited volume was published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis. 

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION – Associate Professor Charles Starkey and Professor Cynthia Pury (Psychology) presented “The Disunity of Courage” at the  Annual Meeting of the Society for Ethics Across the Curriculum in October at Clemson.

LANGUAGES – Professor Eric Touya read his paper, “Baudelaire’s Expression of Life: Poetics and Politics of Production in Modernity” at the Semicentennial Colloquium of Nineteenth-Century French Studies, “Producing and Receiving the Nineteenth Century” at Duke University. He also read “AI’s Ethical Challenges in Literary Studies: Postcolonialism, Feminism, and Democratic Responsibility”, Nurturing Democratic Responsibility in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the 25^th Annual Conference on Ethics Across the Curriculum at Clemson University. He also published article, “’Plus jamais la guerre !’ Claudel diplomate: 1927-1947. Prolongements dans les Suppléments aux Œuvres complètes” in Bulletin de la Société Paul Claudel, Vol. 242. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2024, (pp. 15-25).

PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION – On September 21^st, Associate Professor and Chair Ben White gave a talk entitled “Fuzzy Math: The Challenge of Counting Paul’s Authentic Letters” for the New Insights into the New Testament Conference, organized by Bart Ehrman at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.  One of 10 international speakers for the weekend conference, which had nearly 2,000 attendees, White discussed the thesis and arguments of his forthcoming book with Oxford University Press, entitled Counting Paul: Scientificity, Fuzzy Math, and Ideology in Pauline Studies.