College of Arts and Humanities

ENGLISH – ENGLISH – In April, Professor Susanna Ashton delivered a public talk in Pendleton, South Carolina, on free speech, censorship, and public debate in the nineteenth century, using an 1849 attack on the Pendleton post office to explore broader questions about intellectual freedom and civic discourse.

Later that month, Ashton delivered a keynote lecture in Hallowell, Maine, based on her research into the histories of enslaved people who escaped from South Carolina to freedom. The event brought together local residents, educators, and public history advocates to discuss regional and transnational histories of freedom.

Also, the National Park Service approved Ashton’s application to the Network to Freedom for the gravesite of James Matthews, a man who escaped slavery in South Carolina and made his way to Hallowell. The official designation was announced publicly to the community on Saturday, May 3, creating an opportunity for local commemoration, education, and dialogue with Ashton and students who contributed to her research.

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – Assistant Professor Camden Burd was recently awarded the Dorothy Schwieder Prize, an award from the Midwestern History Association to honor the best article on Midwestern history published during the previous calendar year. The winning article, “In Search for a Postextractive Future: Ruin, Recreation, and Militarism in the Upper Midwest,” was published in Agricultural History 99, no. 4 (2025). 

ENGLISH – On April 14, the Faculty Senate presented Associate Professor Cameron Bushnell with the Alan Schaffer Senator of the Year award. The Schaffer award recognizes Faculty Service and commitment to faculty governance. Bushnell served for the past year as Chair of the Faculty Senate Policy Committee and Lead Senator for the CAH delegation. 

LANGUAGES – Jody Cripps, associate professor of American Sign Language, and his colleague JB Begue from Towson University gave a Zoom presentation titled “Rain”: A Signed Music Analysis to Columbia University’ Teachers College’s Feel the Music 2026 Conference on April 4th.

Cripps also presented his Navigating Signed Music presentation (virtual) to Aimee Whyte’s sociology class at Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY. Cripps also, along with his Creative Inquiry (CI) students Chrysa Calvert, Andrea Fletcher, Harley Mitchell, and Cassady Fortson, provided a poster presentation titled “Exploring the Relationship between Libraries and American Sign Language” at the Focus on Creative Inquiry Poster Forum at Clemson.

Lastly, Cripps and his CI students traveled to Martha’s Vineyard to conduct research work and provide a presentation to Chilmark community members at Chilmark Public Library. Doreen Simons, a deaf community partner, joined them. Their presentation is titled “Hands Waving: Creating a Signed Language-Friendly Community.” This presentation covers their past and current research projects and outreach.

ENGLISH – Assistant Professor of English and World Cinema Maziyar Faridi has published an article titled “Deceleratory Encounters with Measures of Modernity: A Still Life” in the latest issue of Diacritics. This article explores philosophies of rhythm, value, and labor time under conditions of modernity. In March, Maziyar presented “Neither Now nor New: The Untimely of the Other Modernisms” at the American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference.

PERFORMING ARTS – Lillian Utsey Harder, Brooks Center director emerita and artistic director of the Utsey Chamber Music Series, secured three broadcasts on American Public Media’s Performance Today: WindSync’s performance of Viet Cuong’s Flora (movements 1 & 3) on April 8 from their concert on March 7, 2025;  Sphinx Virtuosi’s performance of Valerie Coleman’s Tracing Visions on April 20 from their concert on March 30, 2023; and Verona Quartet and pianist David Fung’s performance of  Grażyna Bacewicz’s Piano Quintet No. 1 on May 4 from their performance on November 1, 2022.

INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES – Chair and Professor Lisa Melonçon, along with co-editor Miriam F. Williams, published a new book,Liminality: The Work of Resilience in Technical Communication (University Press of Colorado) through the WAC (Writing Across the Curriculum) Clearinghouse. 

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – Assistant Professor Amanda (Mandy) Regan has been elected Co-Vice President of the Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH) alongside Brandon Walsh of the University of Virginia. ACH is the leading professional organization for digital humanities in North America. She will serve a two-year term as Co-Vice President, followed by a two-year term as Co-President. 

ENGLISH – Members of the First-Year Writing team from the Department of English presented their research, “Early Findings from a Study on Instructor & Student First-Year Writing Curriculum Experiences at Clemson,” at the 10th Annual Clemson University Research Symposium on May 6. The panel presented initial insights from an IRB-approved assessment of student and instructor experiences of the revised English 1030 curriculum. Presenters included postdoctoral fellows Kelly Sauskojus and Matthew Burchanoski, graduate instructor Megan Crowe, and Director and Associate Director of First Year Writing, Michelle Smith and Molly Nestor. 

HISTORY & GEORAPHY – On May 14, Associate Professor of History Lee B. Wilson was a featured presenter at the Georgetown Public Library’s series, “A Glorious Cause: South Carolina and the American Revolution”. The series offers free public educational programs illustrating the Palmetto State’s key role in securing American independence while exploring various aspects of colonial society that shaped the new nation. 

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – Professor Rod Andrew has been named by the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation as the 2026 co-recipient of the General Wallace M. Greene Jr. Award, awarded to the best book on the history of the Marine Corps.  This is for his book, The Marines’ Fight For Survival: War, Politics, and Institutional Crisis, 1945-1952.  The Foundation will also be presenting the General Roy S. Geiger Award to Andrew for the best article on Marine Corps Aviation for his article, “Flying Leathernecks: The Public Debate over Close Air Support and the Future of the U.S. Marine Corps, 1945-1952” in the Journal of Military History (July 2025).

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – Assistant Professor Camden Burd was recently awarded a residential research fellowship at the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, Missouri, to continue his research on his book project that explores the environmental history of neoliberalism. He was also awarded a residential research fellowship from the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University to conduct research on his book project examining the environmental attitudes and rhetoric embedded in early video game and software design. 

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – Kathryn and Calhoun Lemon Professor James Burns was interviewed by the national podcast Intentional Teaching hosted by Derek Bruff. He discussed the $500,000 Mellon Foundation ‘Teacher-Scholar’ grant for which he was the primary investigator. The grant has brought nearly one hundred faculty from across the United States to the Clemson campus over the past three years to participate in workshops focused on integrating civic engagement and voting into humanities and social sciences courses.  

ENGLISH – Assistant Professor Stevie Edwards organized and presented in two panels at the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference in March: “Childfree & Childless Women Writers: Writing Against Gender Norms” and “I Could Not Stop for Death: Poets on Addiction & Substance Abuse.” She also gave poetry readings at two off-site conference events: “Wednesday Night Poetry” and “Button Poetry Live: Charm City.” Recently, she gave a reading at Clemson’s Cooper Library as part of the annual Clemson Literary Festival. Her poem “Campus Life” was published in Porcupine Literary, a magazine that focuses on creative writing about being an educator. Additionally, she is holding a local book release for her fourth book of poetry, The Weather Inside, at Pendleton Bookshop on Friday, April 24th at 6 p.m.

ENGLISH – Associate Professor Jonathan Beecher Field was a guest on Lauren Lassabe Shepherd’s American Campus podcast to take part in a discussion about college rankings. 

PERFORMING ARTS – Lillian Utsey Harder, Brooks Center director emerita and artistic director of the Utsey Chamber Music Series, secured a broadcast on American Public Media’s Performance Today of violinist Geneva Lewis and pianist Evren Ozel’s performance of Bela Bartok’s Romanian Folk Dances, Sz. 56 on March 30 from their concert on March 28, 2024.

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Associate Professor Elizabeth Jemison delivered the keynote lecture at the American Academy of Religion’s Southeast Regional Annual Meeting on February 28. The meeting was held at Furman University, and her talk was titled, “Studying Religion in Fractured Communities: Resources for our Present.”

PERFORMING ARTS  – Professor Linda Li-Bleuel presented a session, “Igniting Passion: Repertoire as the Key to Sustaining Piano Interest with High School and Young Adult Students,”at the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) National conference in Chicago on March 23. She also presented a concert with renowned mezzo soprano, Kylee Slee, at the Sigal Music Museum on March 26.

PERFORMING ARTS – Associate Professor Lisa Sain Odom presented a highly attended session entitled, “Singing for the Golden Age” at the 2026 Southeastern Theatre Conference Convention in Chatanooga, TN. Also in March, Odom spoke on a panel about College Auditions for Singers at the Mid Atlantic Region Conference for the National Association of Teachers of Singing in College Park, Maryland. 

LANGUAGES – Distinguished Professor Salvador Oropesa presented the paper, “La frontera en la miniserie televisiva Cuando nadie nos ve (2025): Andalucía noir,” at the X Congreso Internacional Tenerife Noir de investigación sobre el género negro, Campus de Guajara in Universidad de La Laguna, Spain, on March 5.

LANGUAGES – Assistant Professor Miyabi Ozawa presented the paper, “dooshite, naze, and nande: The use of why-questions in Japanese” in a panel, “Corpus-based approaches to Japanese language teaching: What we do is not what we think we do” at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in Vancouver. She also presented another paper, “Self-initiated my-case tellings with first-person singular pronouns in Japanese talk-in-interaction” at the annual meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics in Chicago. Additionally, one of her students in Japanese for International Business II, Madison Bellville, won the most competitive Category 3 at the 2026 Speech Contest organized by the Georgia Association of Teachers of Japanese and was awarded round-trip flight tickets to Japan.

LANGUAGES – Associate Professor Roberto Risso has published his fourth monograph, Qui Io Devo Vivere (Dell’Orso Editore, University of Turin). The book is an in-depth analysis of the last book and masterpiece of the Italian author Guido Morselli, a relevant author for the European canon of 20^th-century literature. His book analyses five major themes of the book: solitude, suicide, nature/culture, life/death and his philosophy of composition.

LANGUAGES – This semester, Senior Lecturer Alma García Rodríguez developed and taught Spanish Grammar and Composition for Heritage Speakers (SPAN 3120). Recently approved and added to the curriculum, it is the first course at Clemson designed specifically for heritage speakers of Spanish. In this course, grammar instruction is contextualized through students’ lived experiences and engagement with literary texts. Students analyzed narratives that explore the complexities of Hispanic identity and the experience of navigating between the Spanish-speaking world of the home and the English-speaking environment of school and social life, and connected the themes of the text to their own linguistic and cultural experiences while applying the grammatical structures studied in class.

LANGUAGES – Associate Professor Kumiko Saito published a journal article, “Beyond Alternative History: Time Travel and Historical Continuity in Kindred and The Incident at the Gamō Residence,” in Literature.

LANGUAGES – Professor Johannes Schmidt published “Memory and the Holocaust” in Holocaust Remembered, an annual publication of the South Carolina Council on the Holocaust. He also co-edited this issue and has been serving on the Council since 2021.

ENGLISH – Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature Rhondda Thomas made a presentation on “Liberation as Resistance of the Enslaved at John C. Calhoun’s Fort Hill Plantation” at the 2026 South Carolina Interpreters Mini-Conference in Columbia, SC, on March 6, 2026. 

LANGUAGES – Professor Eric Touya read a paper entitled “The Crisis of Liberalism in the US and France. Theory and Practice from Tocqueville to Current Times” at the 71^st Conference for French Historical Studies. The theme of the conference held in Philadelphia was “Liberties/ Libertés”. Touya explored the problematic relation between liberalism and democracy from the 19^th century to the era of illiberalism. He contended that among all forms of liberalism, social liberalism was most conducive to preserving democracy.

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION– Kathryn and Calhoun Lemon Professor Daniel Wueste presented “On the Province of Practical and Professional Ethics” on the first day of the 35th Annual International Conference of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, in St. Louis. He was one of five panelists for a session, “How do we evaluate our effectiveness when teaching ethics?: Conversations with Professors,” on March 6^th, with Cara Biasucci, Joanne LaLonde, Deborah Mower and Glenn Sinclair. He was also a judge through quarterfinals of the National Championship Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl on March 7 and 8. 

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – Professor Rod Andrew gave an invited lecture to the Emeritus College on “Andrew Pickens and the American Revolution in the South” on February 26.

ENGLISH – On February 18, Professor Susanna Ashton delivered a video talk to the Kennebec Historical Society of Maine about her research into fugitives who escaped from South Carolin, focusing on the life of James Matthews, who escaped from Dorchester, SC and built a life in Hallowell, Maine.

LANGUAGES – American Sign Language faculty Jody Cripps and Stephen Fitzmaurice, along with Rachel Soudakoff (Deaf Adventures) gave a presentation about their students’ study abroad experiences titled Study Abroad Using ASL: A Case Study of “Life as a Signer” at the University of Arizona’s Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Roundtable in Tucson, AZ.

ENGLISH – Assistant Professor Stevie Edwards’ fourth book of poetry, The Weather Inside, was recently released by the University of Arkansas Press. This book was a finalist for the Miller Williams Poetry prize, judged by National Book Award Winner, Patricia Smith. A book release event is planned at Pendleton Bookshop for April 24th at 6 p.m. 

PERFORMING ARTS – Lillian Utsey Harder, Brooks Center director emerita and artistic director of the Utsey Chamber Music Series, secured broadcasts of five selections on American Public Media’s Performance Today: guitarist Ziggy Johnston and flutist Anthony Trionfo’s performance of Astor Piazzolla’s Ausências (arranged by Sergio Assad and João Luiz) on February 12 from their concert on April 1, 2025; Ziggy and Miles Johnston’s performance of Radames Gnattali’s Suite Retratos for two guitars (movt.4) on February 16 from their concert on April 1, 2025; Septura’s performance of Scott Joplin’s Suite from Treemonisha (movts. 3 & 4) and George Gershwin’s An American in Paris on February 18 from their concert on October 28, 2025; Sphinx Virtuosi’s performance of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 9 in A Major (movt. 3) on February 23 from their concert on March 30, 2023.

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Senior Lecturer Brett Patterson was selected by the Clemson University Honors College to be the Faculty Fellow for the incoming class of the National Scholars Program.

PERFORMING ARTS – Associate Professor Kerrie Seymour will be reprising the role of Annie Wilkes in William Golding’s stage adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery at Wolfbane Productions in Lynchburg, Virginia from April 10 – 26. She will be performing under contract with Actors’ Equity Association. Also, she directed the Clemson Players’ production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which performed in the Brooks Center for the Performing Arts earlier this month.

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Associate Professor Charles Starkey presented the paper,  “Emotion, Binding, and Synesthesia” at the annual meeting of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology in Atlanta in February.

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – Assistant Professor Camden Burd published his article “Playing Gaia: Simulation, Science, and the Significance of Video Games for Environmental History,” in Environmental History. The article explores the history behind, and meaning of, the popular game SimEarth, released by Maxis in 1990. Designed by Will Wright, the game tasked users to consider atmospheric, geologic, and biological variables to simulate a global system. Wright based the game on James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis—a theory of Earth that posited that the planet was a singular cybernetic system. Throughout gameplay, players are introduced to Lovelock’s ideas both through explicit text and implicit visual design. Exploring SimEarth and Wright’s interpretation of Lovelock’s work, Burd’s essay encourages environmental historians to examine video games for their unique visual form and style of argumentation.

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: Sphinx Virtuosi’s performances of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 9 on January 13 and Michael Dudley’s “Prayer for Our Times” on January 19 from their concert on March 30, 2024; Evren Ozel’s performance of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27, No.2 (“Moonlight Sonata”) on January 21 from his concert on January 30, 2025; and WindSync’s performance of Nadia Boulanger’s 3 Pieces for Organ and Mozart’s Andante from Serenade C minor, K. 388 on January 27 from their concert on October 29, 2024.

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Associate Professor Elizabeth Jemison’s book, Christian Citizens: Reading the Bible in Black and White in the Postemancipation South (UNC Press, 2020), was cited in a recent article in New York Magazine. The article, “Two Paths for American Christianity” by Sarah Jones covers a confrontation at a Minnesota church at which one of the ministers works for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Jones cites Jemison’s research into the history of Christian religious disagreement over issues of race, citizenship and slavery.

LANGUAGES – Associate Professor Arelis Moore has received the 2026 Outstanding Faculty Contributions to Service-Learning in Higher Education – Instruction Award from the Gulf South Summit, recognizing her exemplary and sustained integration of service-learning into the curriculum. Selected from a highly competitive nomination pool, the award honors her commitment to engaged, community-centered teaching. Moore’s scholarly and pedagogical work is grounded in reciprocal partnerships with Latinx communities in Upstate South Carolina. Through intentionally designed service-learning experiences, she engages students in addressing social determinants of health while centering culturally responsive, community-defined priorities. Students develop cultural competence, bilingual and professional skills, and civic responsibility, while community partners gain sustained collaboration, research support, and capacity-building resources. Her long-standing community-academic partnerships ensure that service-learning activities are co-designed with Latinx-serving community-based health organizations, ethically implemented, and sustained across academic terms, reflecting a deep and consistent commitment to advancing both student learning and community well-being. Moore will accept the award at the 2026 Gulf South Summit in Houston, Texas, in March 2026.

ENGLISH – Professor Lee Morrissey’s book, Milton’s Ireland: Royalism, Republicanism, and the Question of Pluralism (Cambridge UP, 2024), won the James Holly Hanford Award from the Milton Society of America.

INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES – Spencer Roberts, Research Assistant Professor on the Cemetery Hill Project, is representing Clemson University on the board of the Southeastern Cemetery Consortium, a newly-launched initiative to provide resources, networking, and support for communities seeking to restore and preserve historic cemeteries across the southeast. Dr. Roberts is one of the founding board members for the Consortium, alongside other representatives from Georgia and North Carolina. Cemetery projects in need of assistance can browse resources, explore in-depth guides, and request support. Organizations that support historic preservation can join as Consortium Partners to help with projects in their regions. Finally, private companies involved in cultural resource management and preservation can request to be listed in the company directory for projects that have funds to hire support.

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY –  Assistant Professor Camden Burd published his article “In Search of a Postextractive Future: Ruin, Recreation, and Militarism in the Upper Midwest,” in a special issue of Agricultural History themed “Writing History in Place.” His article examines the various attempts of boosters and regional organizations in Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula as they responded to the shifting economic landscape in the decades after the Second World War. Though varied, each proposal was influenced by the boosters’ sense of place. As such, the search for a postextractive future relied upon the unique industrial history and environments that had defined the region for over a century.  Burd also published a short essay in an edited collection titled Lingering Inland: A Literary Tour of the Midwest, which was recently published by the University of Illinois Press. His essay explores the environmental and place-based influences of the writer and poet Jim Harrison.

ENGLISH – Assistant Professor of English Jonathan F. Correa Reyes published an article, “Towards a Medieval Theory of the Human: Literacy and Bede’s Parable of Cædmon”, in the 2026 special issue of Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies.

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: Grazyna Bacewicz’s Piano Quintet No.1 (movt.1) and Duke Ellington’s Cotton Club Stomp performed by the Verona Quartet and pianist David Fung on December 3 from their concert on November 1, 2022; Beethoven’s Sonata No. 9 in A Major (movt. 3), arr. Ruben Rengel, performed by Sphinx Virtuosi on December 4 from their concert on March 30, 2023; Joachim Stutschewsky’s Hassidic Fantasy  and Ernest Bloch’s From Jewish Life performed by the Goldstein-Peled-Fiterstein Trio on December 17 from their concert on February 9 2023; Viet Cong’s Flora (movts. 1 and 3) performed by WindSync on December 30 from their concert on March 7, 2025.

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Associate Professor Elizabeth Jemison joined the Board of Scholars for Facing History & Ourselves, a national educational nonprofit that supports middle and high school teaching of civics and history. Members of the Board of Scholars volunteer their various scholarly expertise for curriculum creation, staff education, and public-facing lectures with FH&O.

PERFORMING ARTS – Lecturer Kailey Potter recently produced and directed a staged reading of John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore for Mortal Fools Collective in Virginia, reviewed here by Peter Kirwan of Mary Baldwin University. Potter’s critical review of the Atlanta Shakespeare Company’s fall production of Matt Barbot’s The Venetians will appear in the next edition of Shakespeare Bulletin.

LANGUAGES – Professor Johannes Schmidt published a review on “Johann Gottfried Herder Predigten: Riga 1765–1769” by Dominik Fugger and Jenny Lagaude in the Lessing Yearbook 52 (2025).

ENGLISH – Professor and Chair Will Stockton edited The Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Religion. The 34-chapter volume surveys new and longstanding critical conversations about the role of religion in Shakespeare’s plays and poems. It contains essays from over thirty scholars on a range of different religious topics, from Reformation and Paul to Antitheatricalism and Bardolatry.

LANGUAGES – Professor Eric Touya published two book reviews. The first was on Francophone Oceania Today: Literature, Visual Arts, Music, and Cinema  (Liverpool University Press, 2025) by Michelle Royer, Nathalie Ségeral and Léa Vuong, and his review was published in French Review, 99.3, 2026, p. 198-199. The second review, on Voices of Pain, Cries of Silence: Francophone Jewish Poetry of the Shoah, 1939-2008 (Peter Lang, 2024) by Gary D. Mole, was published in Dalhousie French Studies, Revue d’Études Littéraires du Canada, vol. 127, 2025, p. 128-129.

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Associate Professor and Chair Ben White was recently elected to the editorial board of the Journal of Biblical Literature, the flagship journal for Biblical Studies, published continuously since 1881.

ENGLISH – Professor Susanna Ashton presented a community storytelling event about the History of Pendleton and an 1849 attack on the post office at Everlan, the senior living community in Patrick Square at Clemson, on November 12.

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – Professor Vernon Burton introduced former Savannah mayor and Civil Rights leader Dr. Otis Johnson for a discussion of civil rights at the Beech Institute in Savannah during the “The Legacy of Slavery and the Struggle for Freedom” conference on November 2.  Later that afternoon, he led a discussion with CORE leader Mercedes Wright Arnold at the African American Civil Rights Museum in Savannah followed by a tour of the museum.  On November 3, Vernon and Georganne Burton gave a lecture and discussed the role of Penn Center, from its Civil War beginnings to its major role in the Civil Rights movement. Also at the Penn Center, Burton introduced the Civil Rights icon David Dennis for a discussion followed by a tour.  That evening, he was the host and moderator for the Organization of American Historians (OAH) “Future of the Past” webinar on “Voting Rights.”  On November 4, he led a tour of Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston and participated in a panel discussion with the minister Eric S.C. Manning and author Kevin Sack.  That day, he also introduced and moderated talks by Joseph McGill, Jr. and Herb Frazier on their Slave Dwelling Project.  On November 5, he led the conference group on a tour of the International African American Museum and participated in a panel discussion. That afternoon, he led a tour of the Avery Research Center at the College of Charleston and introduced and moderated panels with Dr. Millicent Brown, who was the lead plaintiff in the first successful South Carolina public school desegregation case, and Cecil Williams, the chronicler of the Civil Rights Movement in the state.  That evening, he gave a lecture at the conference on the 1968 Hospital Strike in Charleston.  At the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association, on November 7, he was part of the plenary panel discussion on “Nonviolent Direct Action and the Struggle for Civil Rights with legendary civil rights activists Bernard Lafayette, Jr., Joan Browning and Kredelle Petway.  On November 8, he presided and commented on the session “Reckoning with the Past: Digital Tools and the Documentation of Racial Violence roundtable. On November 21, he was part of the Social Science History Association’s (SSHA) plenary panel and delivered a paper, “Practices that Sap Voting Power: Restrictions, Gerrymandering, Suppression.”  On November 22, he spoke at the SSHA’s memorial service for his friend, the sociologist and demographer, Dr. Andrew Beveridge.

LANGUAGES – Associate Professor of American Sign Language Jody Cripps and his colleagues, Carlisle Robinson, Maryam Hafizirad and Dawn Jani Birley gave a presentation on Deaf Arts Academy at Tokyo International Deaf Arts Festival in Za-Koenji Public Theatre, Tokyo, Japan on November 9th, 2025. In this presentation, he talked about signed music and his experience as a signed music professor at the academy. 

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – Professor Caroline Dunn was invited by the conveners of the Late Medieval Seminar to present an overview of her latest book Ladies-in-Waiting in Medieval England  at the Institute of Historical Research (London) on November 14.

LANGUAGES – Associate Professor Stephen Fitzmaurice co-authoredIntroducing ASL-English Educational Interpreting (Routledge), a groundbreaking textbook designed for educational interpreting students and educators.  The text offers a research-informed framework for understanding the diverse range of competencies necessary for effective interpreting with Deaf students in public schools.

PERFORMING ARTS – Lecturer Yuriy Leonovich has researched, edited, and published multiple works by renowned cellist David Popper, including orchestrations and new Urtext editions. His recent achievements include orchestrations of twelve works, ten of which are organized into two suites of five pieces each. He also contributed new scholarly prefaces to more than twenty previously published editions, expanding historical and editorial context for performers and researchers. His work also included updating and verifying the recording list for every work that currently has a known recording, providing a clearer overview of the performance history of Popper’s music. Results of Leonovich’s research can been seen at www.davidpopper.org.

LANGUAGES – Professor and Chair Joseph Mai presented at 25 Years of French and Francophone Cinema in the 21^st Century at Villanova University. The colloquium will result in an edited volume, with each chapter focusing on an important French or Francophone film from each year of the first quarter of the century. He also participated in a roundtable titled “Watching the First Lumière Films, 130 Years Later” at the Wilson Center for the Humanities and Arts at UGA, discussing Gabriel Veyre, an early camera operator sent by the Lumière brothers to French Indochina to make the first moving images there. 

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – The research of Professor Brent Morris was featured in the November 17 episode of Origins, a project of PBS/WKNO Memphis. “Origins of Everything” is a show about the undertold histories and cultural dialogues that make up our collective story. Morris’ research and most recent book, Dismal Freedom: A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp explores the lives of maroons—people who self-emancipated from enslavement and took refuge in the largest swamp in the United States—and unearths the stories of these freedom fighters, their lives, and their struggles for liberation. This same research has also been featured in the New York Times as well as an exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

LANGUAGES – Assistant Professor Kumiko Saito has begun her role as Associate Editor-in-Chief for the online journal Literature.

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Associate Professor and Chair Ben White participated on a review panel of his recent book, Counting Paul: Scientificity, Fuzzy Math, and Ideology in Pauline Studies (OUP, 2025) at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Boston on November 23. 

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.