INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES – Associate Professor Todd Anderson was in the Norwegian high arctic over the summer, completing a six-week residency at Artica Svalbard, which was sponsored by the Queen Sonja Print Award. Anderson was one of two international artists chosen this year by HMTQ Sonja’s not-for-profit for artists and printmakers. Anderson spent his time windmilling between remote fieldwork on area glaciers and studio work in Longyearbyen. He is pleased to report a polar bear seen but not encountered.
HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – In June, South Carolina ETV’s Curiosity Trek released its online video interviewing Professor Rod Andrew on Clemson graduate Major Rudolph Anderson and his role in the Cuba Missile Crisis. Andrew also gave two public lectures this summer on General Andrew Pickens—one as part of the Brick-by-Brick series sponsored by Clemson Historic Properties and OLLI on July 9 and a second one for the Oconee SC 250 Committee on August 6.
INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES – Professor and Campbell Chair in Technical Communication David Blakesley published Shaping Rhetorical Studies: The Research of RSA Fellows, with Commentary, edited by Cheryl Glenn, Richard Leo Enos, and David Blakesley with Parlor Press, 2026, 760 pages. The book includes his essay “Defining Film Rhetoric: The Case of Hitchcock’s Vertigo” and a new Reflection essay. He presented “The Aesthetics of Cinematic Storytelling: Outtakes and Experiments fromThe Wordman Film” and “Burke & Books” at “Rhetoric in a Precarious World. Moving Forward with and from Kenneth Burke,” the International Conference on Rhetoric and Kenneth Burke, Ghent University, Belgium, July 2, 2026. He also presented on and chaired two panels at the Rhetoric Society of America conference in Portland, Oregon, 22 May 2026, “Rhetorics of Resilience in Crucible Moments” and “Rhetorics of Engagement in Crucible Moments,” Coffeehouse Conversations with RSA Fellows.
HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – Associate Professor Joshua Catalano received a grant from the South Carolina American Revolution Sestercentennial Commission for “Signage & Markers Grant for Fort Rutledge & The Battle of Esseneca.” This grant and an interdisciplinary efforto recreate a wall from Fort Rutledge culminated with the observation of the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Esseneca on August 1st. Catalano and Research Assistant Professor Spencer Roberts were also part of a team that received the Preservation Service Award, Presented by the Governor of South Carolina, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, and Preservation South Carolina for the Hopewell Carriage House Archaeology Field Lab.
PERFORMING ARTS – Chris Cline, lecturer of Audio Technology, recently mixed the latest album by the Bay Area musical project, We Is Shore Dedicated. “Secundomir” features a who’s who of Bay Area and New York jazz musicians, blurring the lines between art-rock and improvisation. The LP is currently landing in college radio stations and is being promoted by Shine On, a leading PR firm in the world of independent music. Listen to We Is Shore Dedicated on Spotify.
LANGUAGES – Associate Professor of ASL Jody Cripps conducted and assisted his Creative Inquiry students, Andrea Fletcher and Chrysa Calvert, on writing an academic article, “Exploring the Relationship between Libraries and American Sign Language.” It was published in Public Library Quarterly, and is based on a projected completedat the libraries and a museum on Martha’s Vineyard. They, along with two other students, Cassady Forston and Harley Mitchell, also traveled to Martha’s Vineyard to do perform research and outreach. Cripps also traveled to the island again at the end of July to give a presentation on Katie West, the commonly known last islander who knew Martha’s Vineyard’s signs. Also, he and some of his students assisted with Martha’s Vineyard Museum’s online exhibit on the Deaf Chilmarkers, “They Were Heard: The Unique Voice of the Martha’s Vineyard Deaf Community.”
ENGLISH – Assistant Professor Stevie Edwards went on a two-week book tour this August, promoting her fourth book of poetry, The Weather Inside (University of Arkansas Press, 2026). She gave readings in Philadelphia, PA; Rochester, NY; Ithaca, NY; Portland, ME; Cambridge, MA; Reston, VA; and Washington, DC. Her readings ranged from bookstores to dive bars, poetry slams, and literary salons. Additionally, her ode “Love Poem to My Belly” was published in EPOCH Magazine, and her pantoum “Grounding Exercises” was published in Pulsebeat Poetry.
PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Assistant Professor Quinn Hiroshi Gibson published a paper titled “AI Agents, Data Power, and the Ideological Horizon of AGI” in the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction. The paper argues that the corporate narrative according to which AI agents mark fundamental progress towards artificial general intelligence is philosophically indefensible and serves a primarily ideological purpose. The key capacity required for general intelligence, viz., understanding, is neither enhanced nor brought into being by increased agentic sophistication. The narrative is then seen to have a primarily ideological purpose providing moral cover for the consolidation of corporate control and ownership that AI agent deployment is likely to exacerbate.
PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Cary Berkeley Kaye, Lecturer in Pre-Law Studies and CU Pre-Law Advisor, joined the board of the American Moot Court Association (AMCA). AMCA is the national organization that coordinates moot court competitions for undergraduates.
ENGLISH – At the Modernist Studies Association conference in Loughborough, UK, Associate Dean Michael LeMahieu contributed a paper, “Let Bad Enough Alone,” to a roundtable commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the edited collection Bad Modernisms, published by Duke University Press.
ENGLISH – Senior Chelsea McKelvey published a monograph, Preacher-Poets: Early Modern Sermons, Literature, and Gender (Routledge, 2026). McKelvey demonstrates that early modern sermons had a larger impact on early modern literary texts and culture than previously assumed, analyzing the role of gender in theological and non-theological texts. This book argues that the sermon genre was a critical force in early modern culture by illuminating its role in shaping literary texts and examining the role of gender in order to connect sermons to the broader early modern cultural discourse.
INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES – Professor and Chair Lisa Melonçon co-edited Research Practices in Technical and Professional Communication (The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado). The book examines how research is, at its core, a series of decisions that define how we see, describe, and intervene in the research sites in which we engage. The new work appears in the book series, Foundations and Innovations in Technical and Professional Communication, which is edited by Melonçon.
LANGUAGES – Associate Professor Arelis Moore published “Social Determinants of Mental Health Influencing the Emergency Department Experiences of Latinx Children and Adolescents with Mental and Behavioral Health Crises and Their Care Partners: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Study,” in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. The study examines how immigration-related barriers, insurance access, socioeconomic conditions, psychosocial stress, and health-system factors shape the experiences of Latinx children and their care partners before, during, and after emergency department visits. Its findings highlight opportunities to improve care through culturally and linguistically responsive services, stronger care coordination, community partnerships, bilingual community health workers, and human-centered health-system design. The research is part of the AHRQ-funded RIPCHD.PED project, a collaboration among Clemson University, Prisma Health, and the University of South Carolina. The study was conducted with Anjali Joseph, principal investigator, and Devi Soman of Clemson University’s Center for Health Facilities Design and Testing. This work advances efforts to promote equitable, patient-centered pediatric mental and behavioral health care.
HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY – On August 11, Professor Brent Morris was announced as winner of the 2026 Governor’s Award in the Humanities, the highest honor of the SC Humanities Council. Established in 1991, the Governor’s Awards recognize outstanding achievement in humanities research, teaching, and scholarship; institutional and individual participation in helping communities in South Carolina better understand our cultural heritage or ideas and issues related to the humanities; excellence in defining South Carolina’s cultural life to the nation or world; and exemplary support for public humanities programs. Also, for the eleventh year, 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. 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 – Professor Lee Morrissey spoke at the British and Irish Spenser Seminar, held at University College, Oxford in May.
ENGLISH – Senior Lecturer and Associate Director of First-Year Writing Mary Nestor and Associate Professor and Associate Chair of English Megan Eatman presented on a panel at the Computers and Writing Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. Their presentations focused on the challenges of constructing policies for student AI use and supporting graduate instructors at program and departmental levels. Nestor also presented at the Council of Writing Program Administrator’s National Conference in July. The title of her presentation was “Communicating AI Best Practices to Graduate Instructors of FYW through a Traffic-light Quick Guide.”
PERFORMING ARTS – Associate Professor Lisa Sain Odom presented a poster, “Teacher-to-Teacher Mentorship: Strategies for Successful Collaboration,” at the 59th National Association of Teachers of Singing Conference in San Antonio, TX on Saturday, July 4th. The poster was co-presented with Professor Justin DeLong from Ball State University. It shared a case study and an evaluation of NATS mentorship program data to determine what strategies lead to successful mentorship experiences.
LANGUAGES – Assistant Professor Miyabi Ozawa presented her research “Use of first-person singular pronouns in Japanese interactions: The case of initiating a telling prompted by the co-participant” at the International Conference on Conversation Analysis 2026 at University of Alberta in Canada on June 28. Also, she co-founded a new Special Interest Group “Japanese Linguistics and Pedagogy” at the American Association of Teachers of Japanese to foster a community centered on Japanese linguistics within the context of Japanese language pedagogy, and presented her research “Why-interrogatives in Japanese Conversation: A corpus-based study of usage patterns and pedagogical implications” in the group online on June 19.
PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Assistant Professor Sonia Maria Pavel was recently interviewed about her research in philosophy of education by The Economist. The conversation was aired in the July episode of The Economist‘s Weekend Intelligence podcast, “The New Homeschoolers”. The arguments she makes in the interview are based on her ongoing research for her first book, A Systematic Political Philosophy of Education, as well as on a recently published article on homeschooling, co-authored with Jeremy Cynamon (Political Science, Clemson University).
LANGUAGES – Senior Lecturer Satomi Saito published his new book, The Evolution of Classical Detective Fiction in Japan: Between Honkaku and Henkaku (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026). The book traces the evolution of honkaku (orthodox) detective fiction in Japan, examining how a Western-derived puzzle genre was adapted, contested, and transformed within Japan’s twentieth-century cultural climate. It begins with the genre’s prewar formation, focusing on Edogawa Rampo’s shift from a faithful practitioner of honkaku to a representative figure of Japan’s henkaku (unorthodox) mode. The second section analyzes the postwar honkaku movement, demonstrating how Seishi Yokomizo and Seichō Matsumoto revitalized the genre while revealing the limits of the classical puzzle model. The final section turns to the New Orthodox School of the 1990s, whose writers pushed honkaku to its limits by reworking narrative structures and subverting genre conventions. By foregrounding debates surrounding honkaku, this Element theorizes detective fiction as a historically contingent system of formal constraints and cultural negotiations, positioning modern Japanese literature as a crucial site for rethinking genre, narrative logic, and the global circulation of literary forms.
PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy Cosim Sayid published a law review piece, ‘Law, Language, and Aboutness: Diaz v. United States as Case-Study.’ It uses a notion in the philosophy of language to make more precise legal inquiries into modeling legal rules — in this case, the issue being the extent to which an expert could testify about an accused criminal’s mental state: whether she knowingly transported illegal narcotics. He closes by expressing how aboutness could be useful in addressing other sorts of interpretive issues. He also published ‘Cheap Talk, Deepfakes, Epistemic Injustice, False Light, and Free Speech,’ in which he argues that the law should understand the false light tort as protecting one’s reputation from indirect attacks on it, so as to be a twin to direct attacks that found liability in an action for defamation. As part of his argument, he uses the notion of epistemic injustice in a way that’s made rigorous using game theory’s notion of cheap talk, and he shows how we can be sensitive to free speech concerns by creating wrongfulness-tracking liability-rules to effect corrective justice.
LANGUAGES – Professor Johannes Schmidt collaborated with Professor Brygg Ulmer (Computer Science) and others on a research project involving AI and “tangible, embedded and embodied interaction” (TEI). The project “Variations on a TEI token: iterations toward tangibles for engaging large document corpora” involved large text data, in this case all published works by the German author G.E. Lessing, that could be manipulated using 3D-printed objects. A paper on the research was published in TEI ’26—Proceedings of the Twentieth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction, Article No. 96, 1-7.
PERFORMING ARTS – Assistant Professor Kimberly Souther served as a panelist for the International Conductors Lab and Competition held in Greenville, South Carolina on August 8, 2027. Twelve conductors auditioned and were accepted into the competition, performing individually for panelists and receiving critique and encouragement. She will also serve as a conductor for Harold Lloyd Entertainment, performing the newly restored films and music scores of Harold Lloyd and Carl Davis/Robert Israel. Her recent visit to Los Angeles to visit the Sony and Disney studios is part of a new collaboration that will also include future film performances for the Clemson University Symphony Orchestra as well as recording opportunities during the 2027-28 academic school year.
PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Associate Professor Charles Starkey presented “Building Enrollment in Philosophy Programs” at the invitation of the Executive Director of the American Philosophical Association, at the organization’s workshop for Philosophy chairs, heads, and directors, in August. His paper, “The Complexity of Courage,” co-authored with Cynthia Pury (Psychology), was accepted in July for inclusion in The Cambridge Handbook of Character edited by Robert Sternberg (Cornell, Psychology) and Aakash Chowkase (Yale, Medicine). He also presented “Characterless Virtues” at the annual meeting of the Canadian Philosophical Association in Halifax in June.
LANGUAGES – Professor Eric Touya read a paper entitled “Gender and Feminist perspectives on Secularism in Contemporary France: Religion, tradition, nouvelle ‘laïcité’” at the 67th Annual Conference of the Society for French Studies, held at the University of Leicester, England. The paper focused on how religion and gender relations are at the heart of transformative processes in contemporary France that have prompted challenges to secularization theories. Questions examined in the paper included: how can states promote both gender equality and religious freedom, without harming either religious people or women? What political approaches can enhance religious inclusion and the full participation of women in society? What form of secularism can guarantee religious women’s rights and social inclusion? And how can religious freedom be guaranteed to religious institutions, communities, and individuals?
PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION – Professor and Chair Ben White gave a talk on July 7th in Adelaide, Australia, at the International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature entitled “’You Do Not Have Many Fathers’: The Reception of Paul in 1 Clement and the Problem of Dating the Apostolic Fathers before Marcion.”
