PATRICIA AKHIMIE
Patricia has been selected to receive a Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching for the academic year 2020-2021.
She has also been awarded the inaugural Founder’s Award from the Society of Senior Ford Fellows in recognition of her work for the society. The mission of the Society of Senior Ford Fellows is “to leverage its collective achievements as publicly facing scholars in the arts, education, engineering, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences in order to influence academic, national, and global conversations and action toward the attainment of social justice, equity, and the advancement of intellectual rigor and democratic values in the United States and global society.” Dr. Akhimie's work has helped them immeasurably attain those goals in building infrastructure and creating clear pathways for sustained communication among the Fellows.
MANU CHANDER
Manu signed a contract to co-edit a new book series for Oxford University Press, “Race in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture”; he will be delivering the 2022 Kane Distinguished Lecture at Ohio State—previous people to deliver the lecture include Sianne Ngai, Lisa Lowe, Wai Chee Dimock, and Kwame Anthony Appiah.
BELINDA EDMONDSON
Belinda Edmondson was the respondent to Dr. Eli Rosenblatt for his presentation "Creole Ambivalence: The Politics of Jewishness in Caribbean Suriname, 1890-1959", as part of the Fall 2021 virtual lecture series at Fordham University on Black Studies and Jewish Studies in Dialogue:
https://youtu.be/iTv5LV-0Mhw
RACHEL HADAS
In May 2021, Rachel's poem "In the Cloud," about Zoom teaching, was published in The New Yorker. She had two new books published in the summer of 2021: PIECE BY PIECE (prose selections), Paul Dry Books, and LOVE & DREAD (poems), Measure Press. A new book of poems, PANDEMIC ALMANAC, is forthcoming Spring 2022 from Ragged Sky Press. Also due out Spring 2022 is her translation of a book of the rollicking DIONYSIACA of Nonnus, a poet of the Greek diaspora ca 4th c. CE. Her reviews continue to appear in the Times [of London] Literary Supplement and elsewhere.
She is serving on the advisory council for Cornerstone: Learning for Living, an initiative supporting the humanities in higher education which is co-sponsored by the Teagle Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Below is a newly published excerpt from her translation of a poem from late antiquity. A translation of the entire 48 books of the "Dionysiaca" of Nonnus, each book rendered by a different translator, will be published in April by the University of Michigan Press.
CAROL HEFFERNAN
Carol Heffernan's Dandelion Salad in Brooklyn: A Memoir will be published in 2022 by Broadstone Books. Also "'The Booke of Gostlye Grace' of Mechthild of Hackeborn: Visions of a Thirteenth-Century German Mystic in Fifteenth-Century England" will appear in the winter issue of Magistra.
MELANIE HILL
This fall semester, Dr. Melanie R. Hill has been awarded a prestigious fellowship by Yale University and presented with the College of Humanities and Social Sciences Distinguished Alumni Award in English from George Mason University. In addition to her accolades this fall, Dr. Hill has participated in several presentations from the "Ways of Hearing, Ways of Knowing" Conference, highlighting sound and religion at St. Louis University to the American Studies Association on her research on womanist preaching in literature and music. Dr. Hill’s essay, “Passing the Torch, Sharing the Light” was also published in the James Baldwin review in honor of the late Zora Neale Hurston Board of Governors Professor of English, Dr. Cheryl A. Wall. In addition to her scholarship, Hill has also performed with her Gospel violin in the presence of Dr. Cornel West and Rev. Dr. Cheryl T. Gilkes. Highlighting her research and forthcoming manuscript, Dr. Hill also implemented a podcast on womanist preaching and sound, curated by Yale University. Please access the link, below, to hear more about Dr. Hill’s research.
NAOMI JACKSON
Her
essay considering the 20-year anniversary of singer Aaliyah's passing appeared online in
Harper's Bazaar in August 2021. Her personal essay on mental health and race is forthcoming in the December 2021 print issue of
Harper's magazine.
AMIR MOOSAVI
Amir Moosavi is on competitive fellowship leave with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Earlier this year a collection of articles that he co-edited was published with Leiden University Press. Titled Losing Our Minds, Coming to Our Senses: Sensory Readings of Persian Literature and Culture, it is the first book to bring sensory studies to the study of Persian literature and Iranian cultural production.
In fall 2021, he is presenting new papers at two (now virtual) conferences: “The Journal as Form: Re-Thinking Approaches to the Study of Arabic Periodical” (hosted by the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin) and “From Morning Hunt to Beloved Gazelle: Literary and Visual Representations of Animals from Central Asia to the Maghreb” (hosted by the University of Cambridge).
