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 21st 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.
