U.S. Impact

Journal, Co-Created by English Professor, Receives Prestigious Award

January 24, 2024

An academic journal co-created by Kristin Mahoney, Associate Professor in the Department of English at Michigan State University, has received the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) Best New Journal Award. This prestigious award was presented on Jan. 5 at the 2024 Modern Language Association Annual Convention in Philadelphia.The journal, Cusp: Late 19th-/Early 20th-Century Cultures, focuses on field-defining scholarship…

Alumni / Featured Alumni / Michigan Impact / U.S. Impact

Graphic Design Graduate Competes for Miss America

January 9, 2024

Maya Schuhknecht, a Spring 2023 Michigan State University graduate with a BFA in Graphic Design and the reigning Miss Michigan, is competing this week for the title of Miss America 2024. The 2024 Miss America Competition is taking place Jan. 6-14 in Orlando, Florida, where 51 contestants are vying for the title of Miss America 2024 along with more than…

Award / English / News / Student / U.S. Impact

MSU Organization Earns Seventh Straight National Excellence Award

November 30, 2023

Michigan State University’s National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) student organization is the only NCTE student affiliate in the country to receive this year’s NCTE Student Affiliate Excellence Award.This is the seventh year in a row the MSU organization has earned this award, which recognizes student groups that meet the NCTE’s qualifications of excellence and show commitment to their…

Faculty / News / Publication / Publishing, Editing, and Authorship / Religious Studies / Research / Scholarship / U.S. Impact

Research Shines New Light on Role of Women in Founding Jewish American Education

November 6, 2023

Laura Yares has spent “years sitting in archives” researching a period of Jewish American education that historians have largely overlooked as insignificant, a period in which very little had been written about up until the release of Yares’ recently published book, Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America. An Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies with a…

News / Scholarship / U.S. Impact

Exploring the Role of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education

November 3, 2023

Educators and students currently are trying to figure out how to make room in the classroom for a third kind of learner. While large language models (LLMs) like Chat GPT are not capable of learning in the messy, human sense, they are increasingly sophisticated. These forms of generative artificial intelligence (AI) “learn” from human inputs, training their algorithms to generate…

Portrait of a woman wearing glasses, a purple dress, and a colorful necklace.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion / English / Faculty / Faculty / Faculty Stories / News / Research / U.S. Impact

Ask the Expert: How Does Black Horror Help Us Understand Cultural Anxieties?

October 23, 2023

The genre of horror, and specifically Black horror, has been gaining attention in mainstream media in the last decade. Films by Black writers and directors featuring Black actors — think “ Us” and “Get Out” by writer and director Jordan Peele — are exploring themes of race and gender through a different lens while opening larger dialogues about belonging and…

MSU Associate Dean and Professor Bill Hart-Davidson pictured with a background of shifting blue light.

Faculty / Faculty / Faculty Stories / News / Research / U.S. Impact

Ask the Expert: How Can AI Support Writing and Student Learning?

September 14, 2023

With the start of the school year approaching, educators are wondering how artificial intelligence, or AI, may be used in learning environments, including by students for writing papers. Bill Hart-Davidson has been researching AI since he first came to Michigan State University in 2004 and launched a research center about writing in digital environments.

Faculty / Faculty / News / Religious Studies / U.S. Impact

Muslim American 9/11 Hero Subject of Film by MSU Religious Studies Professor

September 8, 2023

It has been 22 years since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. As we reflect upon the events from that day and mourn the tragic loss of life, we also remember the heroes. The story of one 9/11 hero is the subject of a new documentary film cocreated by Mohammad Khalil, Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and Director…

Alumni / Diversity, Equity and Inclusion / English / Featured Alumni / News / U.S. Impact

MSU Graduate Co-Founds Multimillion-Dollar Company Fueled by Goat Milk and Kindness

June 13, 2023

Michigan State University graduate Josh Kilmer-Purcell is a New York Times bestselling author who, together with husband, Dr. Brent Ridge, founded a multimillion-dollar skin care company, starred in their own reality TV show, and won season 21 of The Amazing Race — and those are just a few of the couple’s many accomplishments in what can be described as an…

Scholar Stanford W. Carpenter sits in a chair in front of a suspended microphone and camera held by another man. In the background is a display of stained-glass windows as part of a museum exhibit.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion / English / Faculty / News / Production / Programs / U.S. Impact

‘Afrofantastic:’ Science Fiction, Technology, Black Culture Explored in New Documentary by MSU Professors

June 9, 2023

Afrofuturism has entered more mainstream conversations in the last decade thanks to its influence on fashion and art, notably in the music of Janelle Monae and in the film “Black Panther.” However, the idea of Afrofuturism, which often combines science fiction, technology, and a Black understanding of liberty, expands beyond pop culture into practice and social action. To help answer…