Research News

Kendall Gerdes, Associate Professor in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric Studies, has published a book with timely relevance.

Four years ago, the campaigns for Utah’s opposing gubernatorial candidates teamed up to produce and distribute a 30-second ad affirming their mutual respect and a shared commitment to democratic norms.

On October 2-5, the College of Humanities' Second Language Teaching & Research Center (L2TReC) hosted the 9th International Conference on Immersion and Dual Language Education at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City. An interdisciplinary audience of nearly 650 practitioners and researchers from both the K-12 and higher education participated in tours of local dual language immersion (DLI) schools, 14 pre-conference workshops, 115 conference sessions, and two symposia.

The Lightning Talks presentations on October 14 featured the College of Humanities’ strengths in scholarship that reaches across languages, regions, and historical periods. In 15-minute presentations, each accompanied by a single image or artifact, new faculty and postdoctoral fellows shared their work with the larger University of Utah community.

Jay Jordan has been selected by the U.S. Department of State for a two-month English Language Specialist project. He will be working with the Institute for Population and Social Research at Mahidol University and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Prince of Songkla in Thailand.

Yuree Noh, affiliate faculty in the College of Humanities' Middle East Center, was recently awarded two grants to study public opinions about women's and migrants' rights in the United Arab Emirates, and develop the world's most comprehensive dataset of surveillance and censorship practices.

Discover the four outstanding faculty members honored with prestigious awards in the College of Humanities. Learn about their achievements and contributions to academic excellence.

Colleen McDannell, Sterling M. McMurrin Professor of Religious Studies, investigates the role of women in founding hospitals in Utah, reflecting on the disparate fates on Holy Cross Hospital and Deseret Hospital in Salt Lake City.

Matt Basso, associate professor of History and Gender Studies at the University of Utah is wrapping up a nearly five-year project with the National Park Service (NPS) that provides new resources for understanding the World War II home front, one of the most remarkable periods in our nation’s history.

An initiative in the College of Humanities in its second year, the Lightning Talks series invites early-career faculty and postdoctoral fellows to share their research in a quick, 15-minute presentation organized around a single image or artifact of their choosing.

In Choosing Well: The Good, the Bad, and the Trivial, Chrisoula Andreou, Professor in the Department of Philosophy, highlights the challenges of making effective choices.

Rone Shavers, Associate Professor in the Department of English, provides a definition of the term 'Afrofuturism'.

Elizabeth Callaway, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of English and affiliated faculty in the Environmental Humanities Graduate Program, and Rebekah Cummings, MLIS, Director of Digital Matters at the Marriott Library, have received an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to hold a three-week Summer Institute for Higher Education at the University of Utah.

Dr. Sonca Vo, postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Linguistics, paves the way for more comprehensive and fair language assessments by advocating for a more holistic approach.

Stories of a “floating world.” Professor Scott Black, Department of English, discusses his newly published article, “Saikaku’s Evanescence.”

In an occasional series on archival stories, Isabel Dulfano, Professor in the Department of World Languages and Cultures, discusses her experiences working in the San Cristobal de las Casas archives this summer.

Looking back on the Spring 2024 semester, it’s easy to celebrate the remarkable achievements of this year’s Humanities Scholars and the opportunities the program provides.

Professor Leslie Francis (Department of Philosophy and School of Law) and Political Science Professor John Francis publish new book entitled "States of Health: The Ethics and Consequences of Policy Variation in a Federal System."

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded Maile Arvin, associate professor of history and gender studies at the University of Utah – in collaboration with the North Shore Community Land Trust in Hawai’i – $29,445 to support a community-based oral history research and story-mapping project of the Waialeʻe Industrial School for Boys. As part of a larger effort to fund projects that expand the reach and impact of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, NEH has awarded more than $400,000 to 14 Tribal Nations and organizations.

The Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah hosted a talk with Danielle Endres, professor of communication and director of the U’s Environmental Humanities program. Endres discussed her new book Nuclear Decolonization: Indigenous Resistance to High-Level Nuclear Waste Siting, which details the activism of the Western Shoshone, Southern Paiute and Goshute people against establishing nuclear waste repositories on Indigenous land.