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.
