Accolades

Awards

Associate Professor Elizabeth Wrigley-Field (Sociology) is the 2026 College of Liberal Arts Dean's Medalist. Dean’s Medalists are scholars who exemplify the highest standards of research, instruction, interdisciplinary reach, University citizenship, academic leadership, and local and national engagement. 

Assistant Professor Emily Fairfax (Geography, Environment & Society) is the 2026 Scholar of the College and Professor Cindy García (Theatre Arts & Dance) is the 2026 Waldfogel Scholar of the College.

Senior Lecturer Lydia Belatèche (French & Italian) and Lecturer Charles McNamara (Classical & Near Eastern Religions & Cultures) are the 2026 recipients of CLA's Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Professor Andrew Scheil (English) and Associate Professor Elliott Powell (American Studies) are the 2026 recipients of CLA's Arthur “Red” and Helene B. Motley Exemplary Teaching Award.

Associate Professor Molly Kessler (Writing Studies) and Graduate Program Coordinator Alison Hribar (Spanish and Portuguese Studies) are the 2026 recipients of the Excellence in Graduate Student Career Support Award. This award recognizes one faculty member and one staff member who demonstrate outstanding dedication to mentoring, advising, and empowering graduate students in exploring a wide range of career paths. 

Senior Lecturer Melissa Licht (English), Professor Bonnie Klimes-Dougan (Psychology), and Associate Professor Jane Sumner (Political Science) are the 2026 recipients of the University's Distinguished Teachers Morse-Alumni Award. This honor is awarded to exceptional candidates nominated by colleges in their quest to identify excellence in undergraduate education. 

Professor Christopher Federico (Political Science), Professor Ronald Greene (Communication Studies), and Professor Andrew Oxenham (Psychology) are the 2026 recipients of the Award for Outstanding Contributions to Graduate and Professional Education. This honor is awarded to exceptional candidates who have been nominated by colleges for excellence in graduate and professional education.

The goal of the McKnight Land-Grant Professorship Program is to advance the careers of assistant professors at a crucial point in their professional lives. The designation of “McKnight Land-Grant Professor” is held by recipients for a two-year period. Congratulations to the following CLA faculty who were recognized as 2026 McKnight Land-Grant Professors:

• Assistant Professor Maria Nieves-Colón (Anthropology)
• Assistant Professor Juan Del Toro (Psychology)
• Assistant Professor Aamina Ahmad (English)
• Assistant Professor Laura Garbes (Sociology)
• Assistant Professor Di Zhu (Geography, Environment & Society)

The Distinguished McKnight University Professorship program recognizes outstanding faculty members who have recently achieved full professor status. Congratulations to teh following CLA faculty who were recognized as 2026 Distinguished McKnight University Professors:

• Professor Kathleen A. Collins (Political Science)
• Professor Douglas Kearney (English)
• Professor Scott Vrieze (Psychology)

Fellowships

Congratulations to the following CLA faculty who were selected as 2026-27 Institute for Advanced Study Residential Faculty Fellows:

• Assistant Professor Tamara Fakhoury (Philosophy), "Reasons to Resist"
• Assistant Professor Dingru Huang (Asian and Middle Eastern Studies), "Between Animal and Machine: Ecologizing Modernisms in Wartime China"
• Assistant Professor Rotem Tamir (Art), "Latitude 33°"
• Associate Professor Elizabeth Wrigley-Field (Sociology), "How Demography Constrains and Enables Ideational Persistence and Change"
• Associate Professor Nick Estes (American Indian Studies), "Red Power/Red Scare: Archives of Repression and Indigenous Resistance"
• Assistant Professor Alice Lovejoy (Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature), "Surface and Memory: A Media and Environmental History of Tape"
• Assistant Professor Rahsaan Mahadeo (African American & African Studies), "When the Hands of Time are Cold as I.C.E.: The interminability of deportation"
• Professor Kathryn Nuernberger (Creative Writing/English), "A Natural History of War: Poems"

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Megan Giddings (English), recipient of the University's 2026 McKnight Presidential Fellow Award. The McKnight Presidential Fellows Program is a three-year award given to the most promising individuals who have been granted both tenure and promotion to associate professor in an academic year.

Assistant Professor Juan Del Toro (Psychology) has been named a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science (APS). The honor recognizes scholars whose research makes significant contributions to the science of psychology.

Awards

Congratulations to:

• Senior Lecturer Gayle G.G. Golden (Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication)
• Senior Academic Advisor Charissa Blue, Senior Academic Advisor (Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Program / American Indian Studies)

recipients of the John Tate Awards for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising. These awards recognize sustained and substantial contributions to undergraduate education at the University of Minnesota through commitment to academic and/or career advising.

Professor Anna Lise Seastrand (Art History, Religious Studies) has received an Honorable Mention from the Association of Asian Studies South Asia Council for the Bernard S. Cohn Prize (First Book on South Asia). Her book, Body, History, Myth: Early Modern Murals in South India (Princeton University Press), was recognized for its outstanding contribution to the field of South Asian studies.

Publications & Creative Activities

Professor Maggie Hennefeld's (Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature) book Death by Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema (Columbia UP, 2024) was recently awarded the Limina Prize for Best International Film Studies Book, for publications that appeared in 2024. The prize was awarded by the Italian Consulta Universitaria Cinema and the international journal CINEMA & CIE.

Assistant Professor Atilla Hallsby (Communication Studies) has published Sovereign, Settler, Leaker, Lie: Forms of the Secret in U.S. Political Rhetoric (Ohio State University Press, 2026). Surveying presidential scandals, detective narratives, national security disclosures, and racist dogwhistles, this book examines the rhetorical forms of political secrets and their material consequences for twenty-first-century public culture in the United States. 

Professor Michelle Phelps (Sociology) received the 2026 Outstanding Book award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences for her book, The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America.

Awards

The Liberal Arts Engagement Hub will be receiving an "Upholding Our Beloved Community Award" from Sweet Potato Comfort Pie at their annual MLK Junior Holiday of Service event on Saturday, January 18. In 2023, Sweet Potato Comfort Pie had a residency at the Hub, and they have continued to use the space for their Juneteenth play rehearsals. 

Publications

Awards

Assistant Professor Atilla Hallsby (Communication Studies) received the Golden Anniversary Monograph Award, conferred by the National Communication Association for his article, “A Copious Void: Rhetoric as Artificial Intelligence Version 1.0.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 50(3)(2024). This award recognizes the best article of the year from across the Communication Studies discipline, and is among the most selective/competitive honors awarded by the National Communication Association. 

PhD candidate Caitlin Baulch (Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication) recently received the following awards: Barbara Heifferon Graduate Student Fellowship for top graduate student paper at the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine Symposium; and Honorable Mention in the Association for the Rhetoric of Science, Technology, and Medicine's (ARSTM) Article of the Year Award for 2025. 

Professor Robert Krueger (Psychology) was listed in the Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researchers list, representing the top one percent of researchers in their field by number of citations. See all of the University's researchers: 24 University of Minnesota researchers among most cited in the world in 2025.

Fellowships & Grants

Publications & Creative Activities

Assistant Professor Emily Winderman (Communication Studies) has published Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History (John’s Hopkins University Press, 2025). Drawing on extensive archival research, the book traces the unexpected origins of this rhetoric in urban reform movements, showing how early associations of alleys with sanitation, morality, and criminality created lasting impressions that would later influence abortion discourse.

Associate Professor Luis Ramos-Garcia (Spanish & Portuguese Studies) has published Memorias de un Sueno: FIT de Cadiz 1986-2024, a landmark work that documents, analyzes, and celebrates one of the most influential theatre gatherings in the Ibero-American cultural landscape.

Professor Alice Lovejoy's (Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature) book Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War (2025) was selected as one of Science News magazine's ten favorite books of 2025. Science News is published by the Society for Science in Washington, DC.

Professor Kathryn Nuernberger (English) published her third nonfiction collection, Held: Essays in Belonging (Sarabande), which is about symbiotic mutualisms, mutual aid, and ways of being together in the midst of climate change. Nuernberger is also the author of two poetry collections.

Professor Kim Todd (English) co-created the exhibit "Metamorphosis: Maria Sibylla Merian’s Art and Impact in Minnesota" with English alum and former Minnesota State Poet Laureate Joyce Sutphen and ceramic artist Katharine Eksuzian. The exhibit is on view at the Andersen Horticulture Library at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum through January 5.

Awards

Professor Ananya Chatterjea (Theatre Arts & Dance) received a Creative Impact Award from the United States Artists and Joyce Foundation. This award recognizes artists and organizations that have enriched the Great Lakes region through creativity and culture.

Graduate student Jaewon Byun's (Anthropology) co-authored Korean textbook, Disability: Leaving the Institutional Setting ("장애, 시설을 나서다"), has been selected for the 2025 Sejong Books Awards.

Assistant Professor Aaron Hall's article “Bad Roads: Building and Using a Carceral Landscape in the Plantation South,” published in The Journal of American History (2024), was awarded the prestigious Cromwell Article Prize by the American Society for Legal History. The prize recognizes the "best article in American legal history published by an early career scholar" during the prior year.

Associate Professor Zozan Pehlivan's (History) book, The Political Ecology of Violence: Peasants and Pastoralists in the Last Ottoman Century, has been named the co-winner of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association (OTSA) Book Prize for 2024.

Publications & Creative Activities 

Professor John Robert Warren (Sociology) co-authored a recent article titled "Childhood fluoride exposure and cognition across the life course." This article received media attention, and articles have been published on the following news outlets: CNN and Scientific American.

Awards

Professor Brenda Child (American Studies) received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Indigenous History at the recent meeting of the Western History Association.

Mapping Prejudice, a former Liberal Arts Engagement Hub residency, has won a 2025 W. K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award. 

Assistant Professor Anna Seastrand (Art History, Religious Studies) won the 2025 Religion and the Arts Book Award for Body, History, Myth: Early Modern Murals in South India.

Dr. Katie Levin (Center for Writing) has been selected as the 2025 recipient of the NCPTW’s Ron Maxwell Award for Distinguished Leadership in Promoting the Collaborative Learning Practices of Peer Tutors in Writing (The NCPTW Ron Maxwell Leadership Award). The NCPTW Ron Maxwell Leadership Award is presented annually to a writing center professional who has contributed with distinction to undergraduate student development through mentoring peer writing tutors involved in collaborative learning. The NCPTW Ron Maxwell Committee often recognizes individuals who have provided extraordinary service to the evolution of the NCPTW organization and conference.

Awards

Professor Maggie Hennefeld (Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature) received the David Shepard Career Achievement Award from the Denver Silent Film Festival on September 12.

Assistant Professor Carlo Antonio Villanueva (Theatre Arts & Dance) has been named a 2025 Dance Research Fellow at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. His project, titled "Live Dancing and the Archive: Locating Improvisation in Bill T. Jones’ Choreographies," tracks changes in Jones' choreography across time and bodies in order to understand an archive's ability to hold liveness.

PhD Candidate Snigdha Kumar (Sociology) was awarded the Caroline Rose Student Paper Award for the Sociologists of Minnesota at the Graduate Level for their paper, "Blessed by the State: The Platformization of Finance and its Mutually Constitutive Relationship with the State."

PhD Candidate Chris Robertson (Sociology) was named a 2025 Hawkinson Scholar by the Hawkinson Fund for Peace and Justice.

Assistant Director of the Religious Studies Program Nathanael Homewood has been awarded the 2025 Anne Bolin & Gil Herdt Book Prize for his book Seductive Spirits: Deliverance, Demons, and Sexual Worldmaking in Ghanaian Pentecostalism (Stanford University Press, 2024). This annual award recognizes a book of significance in the field of human sexuality.

Publications & Creative Activities

Professor Michelle Phelps (Sociology) and PhD Candidate, Daniel Cueto-Villalobos (Sociology), recently published an article titled "Making racial demands: tracing the struggle over public safety in Minneapolis." This article argues that the charter debate in Minneapolis illustrates how social movement organizations work to construct public perceptions of what is in minoritized groups’ interests, a process we conceptualize as making racial demands.

Awards

Assistant Professor Maria Nieves-Colón (Anthropology) has been named a 2025 Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences. Her research will investigate the genetic and health impacts of the influx of millions of Africans to Latin America during the colonial period. 

Graduate student Christopher Robertson (Sociology) has been awarded the prestigious American Bar Foundation's Law and Society Association postdoctoral fellowship in Law & Inequality.

Assistant Professor Ed Cornelius (Sociology) was awarded the Best Graduate Student Paper Award for the ASA Section on Global and Transnational Sociology. His article, "Discursive mismatch and globalization by stealth: The fight against corruption in the Brazilian legal field" was previously published in the Law & Society Review in 2023.

Fellowships & Grants

Publications & Creative Activities

Professor Douglas Kearney (English) published his ninth book, the poetry collection I Imagine I Been Science Fiction Always (Wave Books, 2025). Kearney wrote the libretto for the opera The Comet/Poppea, composed by George Lewis, which received its New York premiere at the Lincoln Center, performed by the American Modern Opera Company (AMOC*).

Assistant Professor Megan Giddings (English) published her third novel, Meet Me at the Crossroads (Amistad).

Professors and acclaimed scholars Ellen Messer-Davidow and John Watkins retired this year after decades of service to the English department. Watkins was honored with a festschrift edited by Professor Katherine Scheil and PhD alum Linda Shenk, Early Modern Improvisations: Essays on History and Literature in Honor of John Watkins (Routledge).

Curriculum Administrator Kyle Edwards and Professor August Nimtz (Political Science) have published their book The Communist and the Revolutionary Liberal in the Second American Revolution (Haymarket Books). The book presents "a unique comparative look at two of the most influential historical figures of the nineteenth century: Karl Marx and Frederick Douglass."

• PhD student JoJo Bell's Red Stained: The Life of Hilda Simms 
• Alum Joe William Trotter, Jr.'s (PhD '80) Building the Black City: The Transformation of American Life

Past Accolades