Humanities News, Features, and Other Updates

Congratulations to Humanities 2024 Graduates!

Published May 1, 2024

Humanities undergraduates posed with department head Scott Maratto at spring commencement on Saturday. Back row: Scott Maratto, Michael Bunker (CCM), Daniel Ryan (STC), Austin McFarlane (STC), Elsie Burton (STC). Front Row: Charlotte Haanela (English), Karissa Sanders (English), Kara Laramore (English), Cameron Gorelick (English), Aspen Stampfler (English), Maddie Nass (STC), Grace Parsekian (STC), Mindy Pierre (STC).

A total of 21 graduate and undergraduate students crossed the stage on Friday and Saturday at Michigan Tech’s annual spring commencement ceremonies.

18 Undergraduates, one masters, and two PhD students were honored over the weekend for having completed, or nearly completed, their degrees across four humanities programs.

Our 2024 graduates will go on to a wide variety of pursuits, from careers in communications, media, and academia; to graduate study in fields like law & policy, and archival studies; to traveling and studying abroad. We are so proud to see our students representing the diversity a humanities degree has to offer!

The department would like to offer our heartfelt congratulations to the following students:

Communication, Culture, and Media: Melissa Dowler, Lyndsay Lagreid, Elijah Poirier, Cole Risko, Ashton Verduin.

English: Cameron Gorelick, Charlotte Haanela, Kara Laramore, Karissa Sanders, Aspen Stampfler.

Scientific and Technical Communication: Michael Bunker, Elsie Burton, Joshua Jongema, Austin McFarlane, Maddie Nass, Grace Parsekian, Mindy Pierre, Daniel Ryan.

Rhetoric, Theory & Culture: Genevieve Delali Antonio (MS), Samantha Quade (PhD), Tori Reeder (PhD).

2024 Commencement Photos

Brown Bag Talk: Deconstructing Writing Pedagogy with LEGO: Exploring Methods of Engaging STEM Students Further in Writing Pedagogy Spaces with Tucker Nielsen

Published April 26, 2024

By Samantha Canevez

What:

Abstract:

Writing centers and writing classrooms have tendencies to focus on a pure linguitic approach to teaching composition. This presentation will explore alternative methods for engaging with students of different disciplines outside of the humanities, including the use of Lego bricks to practice critical thinking, creative writing, and composing rhetoric effectively. Pulling from the concepts of metonymy and deconstruction, using Lego bricks enables students to translate familiar objects to subjects otherwise foreign or barely practiced. We will briefly examine a few exercises instructors or writing coaches can do with their students to see these principles in effect.

Who:

Presented by RTC Masters Student Tucker Nielsen

All are welcome to attend!

When:

Friday, October 6, 2023

Where:

Petersen Library, Walker Arts & Humanities Center

Brown Bag Talk: Fetishization of Algorithms in Everyday Life with Stefka Hristova and Soonkwan Hong

Published April 26, 2024

By Samantha Canevez

What:

Abstract:

The sheer presence of algorithms poses existential questions about how deeply computational mechanisms have come to permeate everyday life. Join the Director and Associate Director of the Institute for Policy, Ethics, and Culture in discussing biases and unintended consequences of algorithms and AI.

Who:

Presented by Associate Professor of Digital Media, and Director of IPEC Stefka Hristova, and Associate Professor of Marketing and Associate Director of IPEC Soonkwan Hong

All are welcome to attend!

When:

Friday, October 6, 2023

Where:

Petersen Library, Walker Arts & Humanities Center

Brown Bag Talk: Disability Justice and (In)Visbility in Long Covid and ME Activism with Jennifer Nish

Published April 26, 2024

By Samantha Canevez

What:

Abstract:

This presentation explores how chronic disease activists with Long Covid and myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME, have mobilized embodied rhetorics in the context of a transnational crisis: the rapid rise in post-infections disease caused by COVID-19. I use (in)visibility as a conceptual framework for understanding the rhetorical and political problems that people with these post-infectious diseases face as well as the tactics with which activists respond.

Who:

Presented by Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition Jennifer Nish

All are welcome to attend!

When:

Friday, November 10, 2023

Where:

Petersen Library, Walker Arts & Humanities Center

Guest Presentation: Beyond the Tenure Track: Alternative Careers & Scholarship with Angela Gibson and Janine M. Utell

Published April 26, 2024

By Samantha Canevez

What:

Join us for a presentation via Zoom with Dr. Angela Gibson, Director of Scholarly Communication at MLA and Dr. Janine Utell, Program Manager of Professional Development at MLA (Modern Language Association) to discuss “Beyond the Tenure Track: Alternative Careers & Scholarship.” The Peterson Library will be open, so you can join there but obviously you can join from anywhere.

This is a great opportunity to talk with two people who navigated into fulfilling academic-adjacent careers while maintaining active connections with the academy and a research agenda.

Who:

Presented by Angela Gibson, Director of Scholarly Communication at MLA and Janine M. Utell, Program Manger of Professional Development at MLA

All are welcome to attend!

When:

Monday, November 13, 2023

Where:

Presented via Zoom.

Brown Bag Talk: The Self-ish Gene: Retroactive Tropes in Richard Dawkins’s Evolutionary Rhetoric with Oren Abeles

Published April 26, 2024

By Samantha Canevez

What:

Abstract:

Building on recent developments in Lacanian rhetorical cricicism, this presentation demonstrates how contemporary evolutionary theory posits genetic determinism without a clear definition of the gene. It makes this case through close readings of Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene, the landmark text of neo-Darwinian genetics. It demonstrates how Dawkins uses metaphors to substitute a single determinate agent in place of the genome’s interactive complexity. Despite Dawkins’ admission that he could not define the gene, his metaphors give his “selfish gene” a sense of unity and coherence that allows him to describe all other levels of life (organisms, species, ecosystems) as reducible to it.

Who:

Presented by Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition Oren Abeles.

All are welcome to attend!

When:

Wednesday, October 13, 2023.

Where:

Petersen Library, Walker Arts & Humanities Center.

Academic Job Market Roundtable Discussion, Humanities Brown Bag Series

Published April 26, 2024

By Samantha Canevez

Richard Canevez, Jennifer Nish, Jason Archer, James Hammond, and Holly Hassell participated in a panel discussion on the academic job market.

What:

A panel discussion featuring new tenure-track faculty hired in 2022/2023 to discuss the academic job market within the humanities, and their individual experiences with the academic job search that led them to Michigan Tech. Featuring Jason Archer, Richard Canevez, James Hammond, Holly Hassell, and Jennifer Nish.

Who:

Recent tenure-track faculty Jason Archer, Richard Canevez, James Hammond, Holly Hassell, and Jennifer Nish.

All are welcome to attend!

When:

Friday, September 22, 2023

Where:

Petersen Library, Walker Arts & Humanities Center

Jennifer Nish Awarded Honorable Mention for Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award

Published April 25, 2024

By Samantha Canevez

News

Dr. Jennifer Nish was awarded honorable mention for her book, Activist Literacies: Transnational Feminisms and Social Media Rhetorics.

Humanities faculty Jennifer Nish has been awarded an honorable mention for the Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award by the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition for her 2022 book, Activist Literacies: Transnational Feminisms and Social Media Rhetorics.

From the CFSHRC web site, “The Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award is presented biennially in even years for work in the field of composition and rhetoric to recognize outstanding scholarship and research in the areas of feminist pedagogy, practice, history, and theory.”

Dr. Nish joined the humanities department at Michigan Tech last fall (2023) as an associate professor of rhetoric and composition, and was quickly nominated for the Distinguished Teaching Award. She was inducted into the Academy of Teaching Excellence this spring. Her research topics include transnational feminism, activist rhetoric, disability studies, and digital media.

Activist Literacies

“What does it mean when we call a movement “global”? How can we engage with digital activism without being “slacktivists”? In Activist Literacies, Jennifer Nish responds to these questions and a larger problem in contemporary public discourse: many discussions and analyses of digital and transnational activism rely on inaccurate language and inadequate frameworks. Drawing on transnational feminist theory and rhetorical analysis, Nish formulates a robust set of tools for nuanced engagement with activist rhetorics.”

Find Activist Literacies on Amazon.

Stephanie Carpenter Awarded Summit Series Annual Prize for Moral Treatment

Published April 23, 2024

By Samantha Canevez

English faculty Stephanie Carpenter has been awarded the 2024 Summit Series annual prize for her recent novel, Moral Treatment, from publisher Central Michigan University Press.

The 2024 submission guidelines called for previously unpublished, manuscript-length works, such as novels, novellas, or anthologies, written by current or former residents of Michigan. Included in the prize is publication of the completed work.

Moral Treatment takes place in a psychiatric hospital inspired by the State Hospital in Traverse City, MI, where Stephanie grew up. It follows the parallel stories of Amy Underwood, a troubled 17-year-old patient at the hospital, and “the doctor,” the 65-year old superintendent whose grip on the institution is starting to slip.

Says the Summit Series award page, “Both a coming-of-age story and a story about the challenges of aging, Moral Treatment vividly imagines an era of idealism, crisis, and transition in mental health care in the United States.”

Stephanie Carpenter is an assistant professor of creative writing at Michigan Tech. She teaches courses in reading, writing, and literature in the humanities department.

Distinguished Speaker Lisa Guenther Presents on Social Justice, Prison Work

Published April 19, 2024

By Samantha Canevez

News

Dr. Guenther led a seminar that centered around the concept of “Wiindigo Infrastructure,” or the idea that certain infrastructures can be harmful to disadvantaged groups.

Distinguished speaker Lisa Guenther was on campus Tuesday and Wednesday, where she led a social justice seminar based on the article “Beyond Wiindigo Infrastructure” by Winona LaDuke and Deborah Cowen, and gave a public lecture on her work with the P4W Memorial Collective titled “Collective Memory at Canada’s Prison for Women.”

Dr. Guenther is Queen’s National Scholar in Political Philosophy and Critical Prison Studies at Queen’s University in Canada, and has worked and written extensively in the field of prison studies. We thank her so much for joining us and sharing her work!