Accolades

News about the publications, creative activities, and recognition given to our faculty, staff, and graduate students
Spring blossoms bloom in front of Northrop Auditorium
To add your news to Accolades, send an email to clanews@umn.edu.

June 2024

Awards

Congratulations to Associate Professor Saje Mathieu (History) who was selected to receive a Fulbright U.S. Scholar fellowship. Fulbright Scholar Awards are prestigious and competitive fellowships that provide unique opportunities for scholars to teach and conduct research abroad. Fulbright scholars also play a critical role in U.S. public diplomacy, establishing long-term relationships between people and nations. Alumni include 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows, and thousands of leaders and world-renowned experts in academia and many other fields across the private, public, and non-profit sectors.

Congratulations to members of OIA's Marketing and Communications team for receiving 2023 Maroon & Gold Awards:

Publications & Creative Activities

Associate Professor of English V. V. Ganeshananthan (English) has won the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction with her 2023 novel Brotherless Night. The Women’s Prize for Fiction was established in 1996 to highlight and remedy the imbalance in coverage, respect and reverence given to women writers versus their male peers. The Prize is awarded annually to the author of the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the UK. The winner receives £30,000 and the ‘Bessie’, a bronze statuette created by the artist Grizel Niven. This award is in addition to the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, which Ganeshananthan won earlier this spring.

May 2024

Awards

Assistant Professor Sivan Cohen Elias (Music) has been awarded the 2024 ACF McKnight Composer Fellowship, an award that celebrates the vitality of Minnesota’s musical landscape, with the selected artists utilizing installations, sound objects, electronic and electroacoustic mediums, interdisciplinary practices, improvisation, theater, and cross-cultural collaborations.
 
Associate Professor VV Ganeshananthan (English) has won the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction with her 2023 novel Brotherless Night. One of the most substantial of literary awards, the $150,000 prize recognizes English-language writing by women and nonbinary authors. Brotherless Night is also a finalist for the Women's Prize for Fiction, with that winner to be announced in June.
 
CLA recognizes the following staff members for their commitment and leadership as cohort members in the 2024 CLA Administrative Leaders Program:
 
  • Adriana Taborda (Office of Undergraduate Education)
  • Aleks Zarnitsyn (Philosophy)
  • Amanda Schmit (Psychology)
  • Anna Freyberg (Liberal Arts Engagement Hub)
  • Carter Griffith (Language Center)
  • Clancy Theade (School of Music)
  • Clarence Wethern (American Studies; American Indian Studies; Chicano and Latino Studies)
  • David Olsen (Liberal Arts Technology Innovation Services)
  • Deana Selvaggio (Office of the Dean)
  • DeAnn Strenke (Office of Undergraduate Education)
  • Eric Gregor (Fiscal Administration)
  • Jessica McCarty (Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences)
  • Laura Scroggs (Liberal Arts Technology Innovation Services)
  • Lena Schroeder (French and Italian; German, Nordic, Slavic, and Dutch)
  • Melissa Collins (School of Music)
  • Melissa Grosso (Office of Undergraduate Education)
  • Mona Clemensen (Office of Undergraduate Education)
  • Nora Livesay (American Indian Studies)
  • Patrick Maloney (Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature; Classical & Near Eastern Religions & Cultures)
  • Sierra Hough (Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication)
  • Will Shuford (Economics)

Publications & Creative Activities

Professor Carl Elliott's (Philosophy) book The Occasional Human Sacrifice was published by WW Norton. His book is an intellectual inquiry into the moral struggle that whistleblowers face, and why it is not the kind of struggle that most people imagine.

Assistant Professor Danni Gilbert's (School of Music) research project "Women’s Perceptions of Advancement Opportunities in Higher Education Music Settings: A Mixed Methods Study," was recently published in the College Music Symposium: Journal of the College Music Society. This project pertains to issues of gender equity and work-life balance among collegiate music faculty based on a nation-wide survey of members of the National Association for Music Education and the College Music Society. Results revealed a statistically significant difference between the perceptions of men and women based on their responses

April 2024

Awards

Associate Professor Lisa Channer (Theatre Arts & Dance) is a recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board - Arts Experiences award for a Theatre Novi Most production of “Sickle,” a play by Abbey Fenbert. 

Congratulations to CLA's recipients of the President's Award for Outstanding Service:

  • Professor Karen Z. Ho (Anthropology)
  • Associate Professor Emeritus David Lawrence Feinberg (Art)

Associate Professor VV Ganeshananthan (English) has won this year's Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, for her novel Brotherless Night. This is the second year of the prize, which awards English-language writing by women and nonbinary authors. 

Fellowships & Grants

Congratulations to CLA’s IAS Residential Faculty Fellows for 2024-25:

  • Associate Professor Hakim Abderrezak (French & Italian): “Burning the Sea: Clandestine Crossings in the Mediterranean Seametery”

 
  • Assistant Professor Megan Finch (English): “Black Women Unhinged: Idiocy, Madness, and Perverse Relations in Post-1960s Black Women’s Novels”

 
  • Professor Christine Marran (Asian & Middle Eastern Studies): “Documenting Environmental Displacement and Trans-Pacific Immigration with Creative Nonfiction as Method”

  • Associate Professor Cawo Abdi (Sociology): “Intractable Public Education Inequities and The School Choice Debate: Somali Students in Minnesota”
  • Associate Professor Lisa Channer (Theatre Arts & Dance): “Eileen in '60: A Documentary Film”
  • Regents Professor Jean O'Brien (History): “Memory and Mobility: Grandma's Mahnomen, White Earth”
  • Assistant Professor Catharine Saint-Croix (Philosophy): “Blades of Grass: Protest, Attention, and the Epistemic”

  • Assistant Professor Jamele Watkins (German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch): “From Solidarity to Terror: East Germany and Race Through the ’Free Angela Davis Campaign‘”
PhD candidate Ashley E. Kim Duffey (Art History) has been selected as a William H. Truettner Predoctoral Fellow, Smithsonian American Art Museum and Big Ten Academic Alliance Fellow, Smithsonian Institution Fellowship Program.
 
Congratulations to Assistant Professor Katerina Korola (German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch), recipient of a Mellon Fellowship for Assistant Professors at the Princeton Institute of Advanced Study and a fellowship from NOMIS Foundation and the eikones Center for the Theory and History of the Image for her book project, Picturing the Air: Photography and the Industrial Atmosphere, as well as other projects.

 

March 2024

Awards

Associate Professor Lamar Peterson (art) was awarded a 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Peterson’s selection comes after a rigorous application and peer review process, one in which just 188 individuals were selected from almost 3,000 applicants based on outstanding achievement and exceptional promise.

Associate Professor Kat Hayes (Anthropology) is the recipient of the 2024 CLA Dean’s Medal.

Associate Professor Kelley Harness (School of Music) was named 2024 Scholar of the College and Professor Andrew Oxenham (Psychology) was named the 2024 Waldfogel Scholar of the College.

Associate Professor Kathleen Collins (Political Science) and Assistant Professor Jessica Lopez Lyman (Chicano & Latino Studies) are the 2024 recipients of CLA's Arthur “Red” and Helene B. Motley Exemplary Teaching Award.

Professor Katherine Scheil (English) is the 2024 recipient of CLA's Career Readiness Teaching Award.

Communications Specialist Terri Sutton (English) is the 2024 recipient of the CLA Career Readiness Advocate Award.

Senior Lecturers Fahima Aziz (Economics) and Katrien Vanpee (Asian & Middle Eastern Studies) are the 2024 recipients of CLA's Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award.

CLA recognizes the following staff members for their commitment and achievement as 2024 Outstanding Service Award recipients:

  • Alexis Cuttance, Political Science
  • Rachel Drake, English
  • Keiko Ehret, French & Italian; German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch
  • Elleni Fellows, LATIS
  • David Hanzal, School of Music
  • Karen Haselmann, Art/LATIS
  • Sarah Jahn, Psychology
  • Lisa McDaniel, Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication
  • Lisa Sass Zaragoza, Chicano & Latino Studies
  • Charissa Blue, Undergraduate Education
  • Amanda Nelson, History
  • David Olsen, LATIS
  • Liz Olson, Classical & Near Eastern Religions & Cultures
  • Millie Reid Rivera, Theatre Arts & Dance
  • Lamar Roberts, Undergraduate Education
  • Carmen Sims, Communication Studies
  • Amanda Steepleton, Liberal Arts Engagement Hub

Finance Documentation Team (workgroup)

  • Kyle Blume
  • Keiko Ehret
  • Jennifer Franko
  • Anna Freyberg
  • Pam Groscost
  • Royce Hunter
  • Cheryl Oulicky
  • Michael Sallberg
  • Kory Schmitz
  • Eric Short

Ted Mann Concert Hall (workgroup)

  • Sari Baker
  • Ben Eng
  • Ben Kent

Workflow Hiring (workgroup)

  • Corissa Arko
  • Elleni Fellows
  • Kara Kersteter
  • Rana Murphy
  • Patrick Russell
  • Christopher Stordalen

Associate Professor Lisa Channer (Theatre Arts & Dance) received an IAS Fellowship for Spring 2025 and a Minnesota State Arts Board Creative Individuals Grant for a new film entitled “Eileen in ‘60.” 

Congratulations to the following recipients of MidCareer Faculty Research Awards:

  • Assistant Professor Erin Durban (anthropology), Enabling Ethnography: Towards Anti-Ableist Knowledge Production
  • Associate Professor Kerry Ebert (Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences), Effects of Systematic Client Feedback in Children’s Speech-Language Treatment
  • Associate Professor James Lee (psychology) and Post-Doctoral Associate Emily Willoughby (psychology), Genome-wide Association Study of Cognitive Aging, Reaction Time, and Brain Size in the UK Biobank
  • Associate Professor Mandy Menke (Spanish & Portuguese), Student Language Use in Critical Approaches to Language Education
  • Associate Professor Patricia Ahearne-Kroll (Classical & Near Eastern Religions & Cultures), Commentary on Aseneth: A Study of Three Greek Texts and The Book History of Their Respective Codices

And congratulations to the following recipients of Warwick MidCareer Faculty Research Awards:

  • Associate Professor Claire Segijn (Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication), Media Effects and Ethical Ramifications of Phones ‘Listening’ into Offline Conversations

  • Associate Professor Jane Sumner (political science), The Politics of Small Business Ownership

Publications & Creative Activities

Northrop Professor Brenda Child (American Studies) was named a 2024 National Book Awards Judge by the National Book Foundation.

Professor Ana Forcinito (Spanish and Portuguese Studies) and Carolina Añón Suárez, (Ph.D. 2021 from the University of Minnesota, currently an Assistant Professor at Fairfield University) received recognition from the City of La Plata in Argentina for their volume Generación Hijes: memoria, posdictadura, y posconflicto en América Latina (Generation of Sons and Daughters: Memory, Post Dictatorship, and Postconflict in Latin America), published by Hispanic Issues Online at the University of Minnesota. The co-edited book was designated as being of municipal interest due to its significant  contribution to Memory, Truth, and Justice on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the delivery of the Final Report of the CONADEP, known as Nunca Más (decree of the Deliberative Council, March 14, 2024). 

Fellowships & Grants

Heritage Studies and Public History students and faculty collaborated with One Streets Minneapolis to help secure a 1.6 Million federal grant to support the boulevard conversion of Olson Memorial Highway. Under the leadership of Associate Professor Greg Donofrio (architecture), HSPH students conducted much of the historical research and interpretive work that has supported this project. In addition, six HSPS students will be awarded the National Council on Public History's Student Project Award for their work on the "Bring Back 6th" in April, marking the fourth time in the past six years that HSPH students have received this national award.
 

February 2024

Awards

Congratulations to CLA's recipients of the 2023-2024 John Tate Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising:

  • Associate Professor Sarah-Jane (Saje) Mathieu (History)
  • Associate Director of Advising Bavi Weston

Congratulations to CLA's recipients of the 2024-26 McKnight Land-Grant Professorship Award:

  • Assistant Professor Shir Alon (Asian and Middle Eastern Studies)
    Assistant Professor Madelaine C. Cahuas (Geography, Environment & Society)
    Assistant Professor Serra M. Hakyemez (Anthropology)
    Assistant Professor Josef Woldense (African American and African Studies)


Professor Jisu Huh (Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication) was named a recipient of the 2023-24 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. 

January 2024

Awards

Assistant Professor Jamele Watkins (German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch) has been selected as a Residential Fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Advanced Study for spring 2025 for her project From Solidarity to Terror: East Germany and Race Through the "Free Angela Davis Campaign."

Associate Professor & Director of Urban Studies Kate Derickson (Geography, Environment & Society) was recognized as a 2024 Fellow by the American Association of Geographers. The AAG Fellows is a recognition and service program that applauds geographers who have made significant contributions to advancing geography.

Regents Professor Julie Schumacher (English) has been long-listed for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, given annually to a "mid-career fiction writer who has earned a distinguished reputation and the approbation and gratitude of readers."

Publications & Creative Activities

Professor Michal Kobialka (Theatre Arts & Dance)’s book A History of Polish Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2022) has been selected for special honorable mention recognition in the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America’s 2023 Anna M. Cienciala Award competition.

Associate Professor Kathryn Nuernberger (English) in January published, with co-author Maya Jewell Zeller, Advanced Poetry: A Writer's Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024). Nuernberger is one of two University professors receiving funding through the inaugural Artist-in-Residence program of the Research and Innovation Office, awarding projects that bring art and science together to illuminate important ideas. Through “Katydid Songs and Silent Crickets: Poems in the Grasses,” poet Nuernberger will learn about local pond and grassland habitats with College of Biological Sciences Regents Professor Marlene Zuk and use this research to write poems answering the griefs of climate change and mass extinction with songs of hope and beauty.

Professor Katherine Scheil's (English) essay "Father Shakespeare: Grieving for Hamnet on Stage and Screen" was published in the collection Shakespeare Biofiction on the Contemporary Stage and Screen (Arden Bloomsbury, 2024).  In early January she travelled to the UK to work with Ailsa Grant Ferguson (University of Brighton) on the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project "Susanna Hall and Hall's Croft: Gender, Cultural Memory, Heritage," which explores new ways to present heritage narratives of early modern women and the construction of literary cultural heritage.
 

Fellowships & Grants

Assistant Professor Katerina Korola (German, Nordic, Slavic and Dutch) was awarded a fellowship at the University of Basel's eikones Center for the Theory and History of the Image for the 2024-25 academic year.

Professor Christophe Wall-Romana (French & Italian) was awarded a prestigious fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for his project entitled “Translation and Critical Edition of Selected Writings by Ismayl Urbain (1812-1884).” Qualifications for Success, 2023.

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