Grace Pregent has been appointed Interim Director of The Writing Center in the College of Arts & Letters. Her appointment runs from June 1, 2020, to December 31, 2020. Trixie Smith, who currently is on sabbatical, will return to her position as The Writing Center Director in January 2021. Pregent began serving as the Associate Director of The Writing Center in 2019,…
Paula Winke, Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages, has been appointed Director of the Second Language Studies Program in the College of Arts & Letters, effective August 16, 2020, through August 15, 2024. The Second Language Studies (SLS) Program is an interdisciplinary research and pedagogy program whose members investigate the acquisition and teaching…
Salah Hassan has been appointed Director of the Global Studies in Arts and Humanities (GSAH) program. This three-year appointment is effective August 16, 2020, to August 15, 2023. Hassan served as Interim Director of GSAH during the 2019-2020 academic year. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and a core faculty member in the GSAH and Muslim Studies programs. A…
Kinitra Brooks grew up connecting ideas, asking questions, and demanding the freedom to do so. Today, the Associate Professor in MSU’s Department of English continues to push boundaries through her study of Black women, genre fiction, popular culture, and the work of conjure women as intellectual history. “Basically, I teach and research Black women creating weird stuff,” Brooks said. “That includes Black women…
The CREATE! Micro-Grant Program has selected 12 student projects to each receive $500 to respond critically and imaginatively to events occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the winning projects also will reflect on the fight for social justice in the Black Lives Matter movement, producing art that responds to struggles brought on by the pandemic and acts of police…
Elena Ruíz’s anti-violence research has attracted the interest and support of advocacy organizations and philanthropic groups world-wide, including the Me Too Movement Organization for which she was named principal researcher for gender-based violence in January 2020. An Assistant Professor in MSU’s Department of Philosophy, Ruíz identifies strategic interventions for sexual violence and social structuresthat harm and keep people from meeting their basic needs. Through cross-disciplinary…
Stacia Rigney, Assistant Professor and Affiliated Graduate Faculty in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures, has been appointed Director of the College of Arts & Letters Citizen Scholars program, effective August 16, 2020. “I'm excited to work in the Citizen Scholars Program. One of the university's main responsibilities is to prepare students to be informed, equitable, inclusive, and active citizens.…
Each year, the College of Arts & Letters presents two Varg-Sullivan Endowed Graduate Awards to graduate students for their outstanding achievement in the arts or letters. This year’s winners are Jessica Stokes, Outstanding Achievement in the Arts recipient, and Bronson Hui, Outstanding Achievement in the Letters recipient. Paul Varg and Richard Sullivan are former Deans of the College of Arts…
It is easy to deploy diversity rhetoric; by contrast, helping create an inclusive and just society is a monumental task, even more so, during tumultuous times. This is why, however well-intentioned, so many institutions and companies choose rhetoric. As we commemorate the anniversary of the end of slavery in the United States, we must commit to the hard, latter choice:…
Adam Brown, Associate Professor in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design, won the Grand Prize in the Arts Division at the Japan Media Arts Festival for his work, [ir]reverent: Miracles on Demand, which will now be part of a major exhibition at the National Museum in Tokyo later this year. His project was one of 3,566 overall entries from 107 countries in…