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.
