UO Today

Emily Moore is the Instruction and Outreach Archivist, and Mahala Ruddell is the Lead Processing Archivist in Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Oregon. They discuss their work and the value of UO's collections. They also talk about some of the curious things they have come across in the archives. • uoregon.edu/special-collections • uoregon.aviaryplatform.com • oregondigital.org Research Notes: Abigail Fine, assistant professor of Musicology in the UO's School of Music and Dance, talks about her new book "The Composer Embalmed: Relic Culture from Piety to Kitsch" which was published by the University of Chicago Press in June 2025. She also offers other titles to explore relic culture. • "The Author's Effects: On Writer's House Museums" by Nicola J. Watson • "Relics of Death in Victorian Literature and Culture" by Deborah Lutz • "Cranioklepty" by Colin Dickey • "The Hummingbird Cabinet: A Rare and Curious History of Romantic Collectors" by Judith Pascoe

Leah Middlebrook, assistant professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature, and director of the Oregon Humanities Center talks about her new book "Amphion: Lyre, Poetry, and Politics in Modernity." Research Notes: Lowell Bowditch, professor and department head of Classics, discusses her recent book "Roman Love Elegy and the Eros of Empire."

Courtney M. Cox, assistant professor of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies, talks about her newly-published book "Double Crossover: Gender, Media, and Politics in Global Basketball." In the book, Cox follows athletes, coaches, journalists, and advocates of women's basketball as they pursue careers within the sport. Despite all attempts to contain them or prevent forward momentum, they circumvent expectations and open new possibilities within and outside of the game. Throughout the book, Cox explores the intersection of race and gender against the backdrop of the WNBA, NCAA, and other leagues within the United States and around the world. Blending interviews and participant observation with content analysis, she charts how athletes and advocates of women's basketball illuminate new forms of navigating the global sports-media complex.

Poet Henri Cole is author of eleven collections of poetry and a memoir. His latest collection, The Other Love, is forthcoming in summer 2025. He and Leah discuss his sonnets and his approach the form. He reads two poems from the collection Gravity and Center: Selected Sonnets 1994–2022. On April 17th, 2025, Cole gave a reading as a guest of the UO's Creative Writing Program.

In an era of increased isolation where civic deserts, disinformation, and technological dependence separate us from one another, how can we reimagine our capacity for deeper connection and sustainable collaboration in our current reality? Deepa Iyer, a social justice advocate, leads an exploration of the pathways that strengthen ecosystems for social change in this talk. Deepa Iyer is a South Asian American writer, strategist, and lawyer. Her work is rooted in Asian American, South Asian, Muslim, and Arab communities where she spent fifteen years in policy advocacy and coalition building in the wake of the September 11th attacks and ensuing backlash. Currently, Deepa leads projects on solidarity and social movements at the Building Movement Project, a national nonprofit organization that catalyzes social change through research, strategic partnerships, and resources for movements and nonprofits.

Ryan Tucker Jones, History, and 2024–25 OHC Faculty Research Fellow. This interdisciplinary global history integrates the newest, exciting advances in whale science to reinterpret the last 500 years of human-cetacean relations. In the past decades, satellite tagging, drone footage, DNA analysis, and long-term behavioral studies have revealed whale lives in unprecedented detail. The newest cetacean science not only reveals ways that whales experienced this history, but also casts new light on the crucial global stories of colonization, industrialization, and the creation of a modern, interconnected world.

In an era of increased isolation where civic deserts, disinformation, and technological dependence separate us from one another, how can we reimagine our capacity for deeper connection and sustainable collaboration in our current reality? Deepa Iyer, a social justice advocate, leads an exploration of the pathways that strengthen ecosystems for social change in this talk. Deepa Iyer is a South Asian American writer, strategist, and lawyer. Her work is rooted in Asian American, South Asian, Muslim, and Arab communities where she spent fifteen years in policy advocacy and coalition building in the wake of the September 11th attacks and ensuing backlash. Currently, Deepa leads projects on solidarity and social movements at the Building Movement Project, a national nonprofit organization that catalyzes social change through research, strategic partnerships, and resources for movements and nonprofits.

William Hatungimana is an assistant professor of Global Studies in the Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages at the University of Oregon. He discusses his work on immigration and African-China relations. He also talks about the classes he teaches ie: "International Cooperation and Conflict" and "Transnational Migration." Research Notes-ICYMI Kemi Balogun is an associate professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Sociology, and director of African Studies at the University of Oregon. She discusses her book "Beauty Diplomacy: Embodying an Emerging Nation" published in 2020. The book takes a look inside the world of Nigerian beauty contests to see how they are transformed into contested vehicles for promoting complex ideas about gender and power, ethnicity and belonging, and a rapidly changing articulation of Nigerian nationhood.

Salvador Herrera is an assistant professor of Latinx Literature and Cultural Production in the Department of English at the University of Oregon. He discusses his work exploring transborder aesthetics providing Tanya Aguiñiga's "Metabolizing the Border" project as an example. He also talks about the classes he teaches and the value of UO's pursuit of becoming a Hispanic-serving Institution. Research Notes: Devin Grammon and Sergio Loza talk about their recently published book "Aquí se habla: Centering the Local and Personal in Spanish Language Education" co-edited with Adam Schwartz and Dalia Magaña. Devin is an assistant professor of Spanish Sociolinguistics. Sergio is an assistant professor of Spanish Linguistics and the director of the Spanish Heritage Language Program. Both are in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Oregon. They will participate in a book release talk on Wednesday, May 21, 2025 at 4 p.m. in the Centro Cultural César Chávez at Oregon State University. Dalia Magaña's book: https://ohiostatepress.org/books/titles/9780814214817.html Adam Schwartz's: book: https://www.multilingual-matters.com/page/detail/?k=9781800416901 Article by Devin Grammon: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sd7h1ts

Deepa Iyer is a South Asian American writer, strategist, and lawyer. She leads projects on solidarity and social movements at the Building Movement Project. Deepa talks about her social change ecosystem framework which includes ten roles that many people play in the service of social change values. And she talks about her children's picture book "We Are the Builders!" Deepa Iyer: https://www.deepaiyer.com Research Notes: Neil O'Brian, assistant professor of Political Science at the UO, discusses his new book "The Roots of Polarization: From the Radical Realignment to the Culture Wars" which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2024. Neil O'Brian: https://neilobrian.com Eric Schickler: https://sites.google.com/berkeley.edu/eric-schickler Daniel Schlozman: https://www.danielschlozman.net Christina Wolbrecht: https://christinawolbrecht.com

Based on five years of ethnographic research, Allison Pugh offers a humanistic response to the rise of AI, one that probes the profound meaning of human connection, reckons with the challenges of seeing and being seen, and reimagines what we know of ourselves and others in light of the automation challenge. Allison Pugh is a professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. She writes about how people forge connections and find meaning and dignity at work and at home. In her latest book The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World (2024), Pugh develops the concept of “connective labor,” the collaborative work of emotional recognition. This includes three key components—empathetic listening, emotion management, and the act of “witnessing,” in which one individual reflects what they have seen and heard. Drawing on years of interview and observational data, Pugh shows how in sectors like education, healthcare, and therapy, this work is increasingly systemized—a process that she argues makes it ripe for eventual mechanization. In the face of teacher shortages and hype around “chatbot therapists,” Pugh makes a case for connective labor's value to society and the potential consequences for inequality should it become a scarce commodity.

David Wacks, Romance Languages, and 2024–25 OHC Faculty Research Fellow. In this project I study medieval translations, chronicles, legends, and plays based on the Hebrew Bible from the Iberian Peninsula's three religious traditions. I show how Muslim, Jewish, and Christian authors draw on shared languages and traditions, stage the religious polemics of the day, and how, under the surveillance of the Spanish Inquisition, clandestine Jews and Muslims read their own traditions into Christian retellings of the Hebrew Bible.

Allison Pugh is professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University and author of "The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World." She talks about the importance of connective labor, the collaborative work of emotional recognition. She will give a talk "Re-imagining the Other/Ourselves: Finding the Human in the Age of AI" on April 17, 2025. Research Notes: Melissa Graboyes, History, University of Oregon, and director of the Global Health Research Group, talks about she includes undergraduate students in her research endeavors in global health and the history of malaria.

Nicholas Forster is an assistant professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon. He talks about his interest in cinema and Black performance, and the book he is writing about Bill Gunn, an unsung hero of Black filmmaking. Research Notes: Stephen Rodgers is the Edmund A. Cykler Chair in Music and Professor of Music Theory and Musicianship at the School of Music and Dance at the University of Oregon. He talks about his project: Art-Music-Performance—a mobile performance and exhibition space.

Parmida Mostafavi is an assistant professor of Anthropology who studies the connections between race, capital, and consumerism, with a focus on the material culture of the Iranian diaspora. Research Notes (26:34): Lanie Millar, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, discusses her book "Forms of Disappointment. Cuban and Angolan Narrative After the Cold War" (SUNY Press, 2019), which argues that late 20th and early 21st century Cuban and Angolan novels enact a poetics of disappointment: narrative techniques which constitute a new formal and affective relationship to the histories of revolution shared across the South Atlantic.

Olivia Wing, PhD candidate, History, and 2024–25 OHC Dissertation Fellow. By the late 1960s Asian American youth played a central role in the creation of a pan-Asian American political identity. My dissertation seeks the pre-1960s origin of youth's increasing prominence in the creation of Asian American cultural citizenship by examining intersections of youth, gender, and leisure/recreation. Charting the trajectory of Chinese and Japanese American youth involvement in beauty pageants, sports, and public celebrations, my project uncovers regional histories of community formation and representation that contextualize later interethnic tension and coalition. 

Eleanor Paynter is a scholar, teacher, poet, and Assistant Professor of Italian, migration, and global media in the School of Global Studies and Languages at the University of Oregon. She discusses her book "Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present"(https://www.ucpress.edu/books/emergency-in-transit/paper), her teaching, and what attracted her to the UO. The chapbook on tanks she mentioned is out of print, but a related piece is still up here at Diagram https://thediagram.com/16_2/paynter.html Another chapbook is here: https://dulcetshop.myshopify.com/products/oceano-eleanor-paynter Here's the podcast I hosted at Cornell: https://open.spotify.com/show/1uu5mmNxbVdJUJgZwXAeK4 Research Notes (24:15): Christopher Chávez is the Carolyn S. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Advertising and the director of the Center for Latina/o and Latin American Studies at the University of Oregon. He discusses his new book "Isle of Rum: Havana Club, Culutral Mediation and the Fight for Cuban Authenticity." (https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/delaware/isle-of-rum/9781978838833/)

Candace Bond-Theriault discusses the need to center LGBTQIA+ communities in the conversation about reproductive health, rights, and justice. Bond-Theriault asserts that for reproductive justice to be truly successful, we must acknowledge that members of the LGBTQIA+ community often face distinct, specific, and interlocking oppressions when it comes to these rights. Family formation, contraception needs, and appropriate support from healthcare services are still poorly understood aspects of the LGBTQIA+ experience, which often challenge mainstream notions of the nuclear family. Candace Bond-Theriault, JD., LL.M. is a queer lawyer, writer, mother, and social justice advocate working at the intersections of law, policy, reproductive health rights, racial justice, LGBTQIA+ liberation, economic justice, and democracy reform. She is Adjunct Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Howard University, and Senior Director of Policy at the Black Women's Health Imperative. Her book Queering Reproductive Justice: An Invitation (2024), blends advocacy with a legal, rights-based framework and offers a unified path for attaining reproductive justice for LGBTQIA+ people.

Aycan Akçamete is an assistant professor of Comparative Literature and Theatre Arts at the University of Oregon. She talks about her book project "Staging Turkey at Arcola Theatre: Intercultural Networks and Cosmopolitan Spectatorship" and her teaching. Research Notes: Mattie Burkert is an associate professor of English and Digital Humanities, and author of "Speculative Enterprise: Public Theaters and Financial Markets in London, 1688–1763" (University of Virginia Press, 2021) https://londonstagedatabase.uoregon.edu https://www.r18collective.org

Patty Krawec is an Anishinaabe/Ukrainian writer and speaker belonging to the Lac Seul First Nation in Treaty 3 territory in Ontario, Canada. She is author of "Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future."

Candace Bond-Theriault, author of "Queering Reproductive Justice: an Invitation," discusses the intersectionality of the reproductive justice movement and its core values. In Research Notes, Judith Raiskin and Linda Long discuss the Eugene Lesbian Oral History Project and the resulting documentary Outliers and Outlaws. https://outliersoutlaws.uoregon.edu

Patty Krawec is an Ojibwe Anishinaabe and Ukrainian writer and speaker. An activist and former social worker, she belongs to Lac Seul First Nation in Treaty 3 territory and resides in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Her first book, "Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future" was published in 2022 by Broadleaf Books. Her second book, "Bad Indian Book Club," will be published later in 2025. Patty discusses her Indigenous and Ukrainian background and how she approaches relation, spirituality, history, and activism.

Lim's project is a cultural history of race in South Korea that examines ideas and practices of race in literary and cultural production and discourse shaped at the nexus of modern Korean history and globalization processes. She examines Korean racial formation through literature, K-pop, and TV dramas like Squid Game. She explores how Koreans' ideas of race were informed by their experiences under Japanese colonialism and U.S. neo-colonialism, connecting Korean studies with concepts like racial formation, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness.

Karl Scholz, President of the University of Oregon, discusses the UO's new strategic plan and how the Big Ten's Academic Alliance will benefit the university.

In a world increasingly defined by crisis, public service institutions like colleges, universities, and nonprofit organizations require capable, dynamic, and trustworthy leadership—yet stories of leadership failures there abound. The problem, Kathleen Fitzpatrick argues in Leading Generously, is a fundamental mismatch between the communal purposes that leaders must serve and the individualistic structures under which they operate. Transforming institutions so they can be resilient in the face of uncertain futures will require a similar transformation in leadership practices, turning hierarchies into collective and collaborative spaces designed for the common good. Doing so, however, requires a willingness to reimagine the idea of leadership itself. Kathleen Fitzpatrick explores not just the problems with the institutional status quo but also the tools to transform it. Her wide-ranging research brings together key theories of leadership with the experiences of successful leaders whose stories demonstrate innovative possibilities for collaboration in the service of institutional transformation. Kathleen Fitzpatrick is Interim Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies and Professor of English at Michigan State University. Prior to assuming this role, she was Director of DH@MSU and founding director of Mesh Research, a lab focused on the future of digital scholarly communication. Her work across her career has focused on building resilient, sustainable scholarly communities and transforming their processes of communication to foreground connection, conversation, and collaboration.

Beata Stawarska, Philosophy and 2024–25 Oregon Humanities Center Faculty Research Fellow My project engages with the untranslated and relatively unknown theoretical writings by L. S. Senghor, the first president of independent Senegal, a poet, and a philosopher. I will translate selected essays and author an article dealing with the topic of vital force in Senghor's philosophy. I will argue that Senghor's ideas are rooted in the traditional West African culture, especially Serer animism, wherein life and death, bodies and spirits, are interdependent rather than mutually opposed. Senghor's philosophy indicates therefore a departure from European efforts to articulate an African ontology of life force.

Christopher Long, Provost of the University of Oregon, began his tenure at UO in June 2024. He discusses what attracted him to UO and his leadership style, which he characterized as relationship based, and values informed. He also talks about UO's participation in the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the importance of open access publishing, and the Humane Metrics Initiative.

A Work-in-Progress talk with Zachary Wallmark, Musicology, and 2024–25 OHC Faculty Research Fellow My project explores American cultural and social history through the lens of musical instruments. I offer critical examinations of the development, popularization, and sonic palette of instruments that have played an iconic role in American (and global) music and culture: banjo, trumpet, steel guitar, saxophone, electric organ, drumset, electric guitar, synthesizer, and turntables.

Leah Middlebrook, Comparative Literature and Spanish at the UO, is the in-coming director of the Oregon Humanities Center. She talks about her scholarship and what attracted her to the OHC. Paul Peppis, English at the UO, is the out-going director of the OHC, having served 11 years. He talks about his scholarship and how academia has changed during his 29-year career as a professor of English.

Writer Miriam Gershow's debut novel The Local News, published in 2009, was an Oregon Book Award Finalist. Her collection, Survival Tips: Stories was published in 2024. She teaches writing in the English Department at the University of Oregon. Gershow discusses her writing and reads from Survival Tips.

Gabriela Pérez Báez, Linguistics, and 2023–24 OHC Faculty Research Fellow. “Diidxazá is an Indigenous endangered Mesoamerican language spoken in southern Mexico. I will test out pacing and methods towards publication of a 10,000 entry Diidxazá-Spanish-English dictionary. I will focus on Spanish and English definitions and on different data sets in preparation for a full-scale process in AY24–25. The dictionary will be a peer-reviewed, electronic, open access publication which stands to make immeasurable contributions to the revitalization of Diidxazá and the advancement of the study of Mesoamerican languages.”

Devin Grammon is an assistant professor of Spanish Sociolinguistics, and an affiliate in the Spanish Heritage Language Program in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Oregon. Grammon talks about his research on language learning among students studying abroad in Southern Peru and how linguistic variation can be used to perpetuate racism and discrimination. He also talks about his current project as an OHC Faculty Research Fellow “Spanish in the Linguistic Landscape of Eugene, Oregon.”

Writer Maurice Carlos Ruffin is author of the novel The American Daughters published in 2024. He talks about his writing and teaching and reads a passage from The American Daughters. Ruffin is an associate professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University. He gave a reading at the University of Oregon on May 22, 2024, as a guest of the Creative Writing Program.

Aimée Morrison is an associate professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. She talks about her work to understand how people decide how to represent themselves online, what motivates those decisions, and what effects they have. She also discusses her experience as a professional woman who has been diagnosed later in life with ADHD and her work to bridge scholarly and popular knowledge about neurodiversity. On May 16th, 2024, Morrison gave a talk titled “Touch Grass” as the annual lecturer for the UO's New Media and Culture Certificate program.

Moeko Yamazaki, PhD candidate, History, and 2023–24 OHC Dissertation Fellow “My dissertation critically examines the logistics industry by looking at the history of FedEx. I examine how economic deregulation, the expansion of precarious employment, and the weakening of labor unions made the growth of logistics possible. I demonstrate that the logistics industry enabled businesses and consumers to enjoy the benefits of the technological developments of speed and efficiency while preserving the longstanding power dynamics of capitalist industrial relations in which the most vulnerable workers pay the greatest cost.”

Joe Buck is the Vice President for Advancement at the University of Oregon. He talks about the fundraising priorities for the university and the value of philanthropy for higher education.

Poet and critic Mark Jarman is author of twelve poetry collections and four books of essays. His most recent book of poetry is Zeno's Eternity published in 2023. He discusses his work and reads from his recent collection. Jarman gave a reading at the University of Oregon on May 2nd, 2024, as a guest of the Creative Writing Program.

Katherine Kelp-Stebbins, Comics and Cartoon Studies, and 2023–24 OHC Faculty Research Fellow. “My project examines graphic reportage as a tool for documenting international human rights struggles. The book considers how reporter-artists use comics to tactically and ethically intervene in discourses of injustice and representation. Via their subjective verbal-visual mediality, comics challenge the differential optics by which some lives are made more or less visible and valuable. Questioning how journalistic objectivity has overdetermined the documentation of humanitarian crises, the book uses comics to rethink the evidentiary claims of the image.”

Three UO humanities faculty whose scholarship engages the natural sciences in various ways talk about their work across the divide between the science and the humanities and why that work matters: why it is important for humanists to study the sciences, to work with scientists, and to interrogate the two cultures' divide, especially in this moment. Vera Keller, Professor and Department Head of History, is a historian of early modern Europe particularly interested in the emergence of experimental science and the entanglements of research with capitalism, colonialism, and political economy and more broadly in the history of knowledge, of research, and of the research disciplines. Nicolae Morar is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy, and associate member of the UO Institute for Ecology and Evolution. Professor Morar's research interests lie at the intersection of biology, ecology, and bioethics. His work considers how various conceptual analyses in the philosophy of biology and ecology influence and transform debates in bioethics, and in ethics broadly construed. Cera Smith is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies and Black Studies. Professor Smith's research focuses on twentieth and twenty-first century U.S. Black literature, Black Studies, and the health humanities. Their current book project analyzes how and why U.S. Black artists use biology to depict racialized life.

Arigon Starr is an enrolled member of the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma. She is an award-winning musician, composer, actor, playwright, and artist. She created the comic Super Indian. Arigon Starr gave the final talk in this year's Indigenous Comics Speaker series on April 22nd, 2024, hosted by the Native American and Indigenous Studies program and the Comics and Cartoon Studies program at the University of Oregon.

Chandler James is an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon, who specializes in American Politics, with a focus on the U.S. presidency and public opinion. In addition, he is a committed environmentalist and outdoorsman. He joined the UO faculty in fall 2023.

Nina Amstutz is an Associate Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Oregon. Professor Amstutz along with Portland artist and activist Cleo Davis curated the exhibition “Policing Justice” which is on view at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art through May 19, 2024.

Stephen J. Shoemaker, Religious Studies, and 2023–24 OHC Faculty Research Fellow. “My project will provide something that has long been needed: a book-length study of the historical figure of Muhammad, the formation of the Qur'an, and the beginnings of Islam that is both grounded in the methods of historical criticism and aimed at the general reader. Unfortunately, this important perspective has been largely absent from public discourse on Islam, and it is this significant gap that my book aims to fill.”

Maxwell Foxman is an assistant professor of Media Studies and Game Studies in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. Professor Foxman's primary research focus is on how games and play interact with non-game contexts and media professions. This research engages several overlapping realms such as immersive media, game journalism, esports, and game production. Foxman is the co-author of Mainstreaming and Game Journalism with David Nieborg which was published in 2023 by the MIT Press.

Laura Pulido professor of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies and Geography at the University of Oregon where she studies race, environmental justice, and cultural memory. Her research explores the relationship between race, place, and social and environmental processes. She has devoted much of her career to studying environmental racism, especially how racism is conceptualized and operationalized in the scholarship and practice of environmental justice. Most recently, she has been studying how white supremacy and white nationalism impact climate denial and refusal.

Three UO humanities scholars with extensive expertise in the philosophy of AI, computation, digital humanities, information politics, and data ethics engage, through perspectives rooted in the humanities, the challenges that AI and other data-driven technologies increasingly present today. Ramón Alvarado, assistant professor of Philosophy and Data Science Initiative, the Data Ethics coordinator, and author of Simulating Science: Computer Simulations as Scientific Instruments (2023) Mattie Burkert, associate professor of English, director of the Minor in Digital Humanities, the interim director of the New Media and Culture Certificate, and the Principal Investigator and Project Director for the London Stage Database Colin Koopman, professor of Philosophy, author of How We Became Our Data: A Genealogy of the Informational Person (2019), and the project lead of the Our Data, Our Selves web project.

Miguel Gualdrón Ramírez is an assistant professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. His research interests include Critical Philosophy of Race, Latin American and Caribbean Philosophy, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art, 18th and 19th century German Philosophy, and 20th century Continental Philosophy. Gualdrón Ramírez studied philosophy as an undergraduate and MA student at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and earned a PhD in Philosophy from DePaul University, Chicago. Before joining UO, he was Assistant Professor in the Philosophy and Religion Department at the University of North Texas (2021-2023) and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Oxford College of Emory (2018-2020).

Artist Omar Khouri was born in London and spent his childhood in Lebanon. In 2002, he graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston with a BFA in illustration. After spending a year in Los Angeles working in cinema and television, he returned to Beirut. In 2006, Khouri cofounded Samandal Comics Magazine, the first experimental comics periodical in the Arab world. He is currently Samandal's Editor-in-Chief and one of its many international contributing artists. In 2010, Khouri's sociopolitical satire Utopia won Best Arabic Comic book at the Algerian International Comic Book Festival. His work spans many art forms including painting, comics, animation, theatre, film, and music. Khouri is currently artist-in-residence for the UO's Comics and Cartoon Studies program. He is producing a U.N. report on the right to food in comics form as a collaboration with Law professor Michael Fakhri and English and Comics Studies professor Kate Kelp-Stebbins. This work is in conjunction with professor Fakhri's appointment as Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food for the United Nations.

Diego Mauricio Cortés is an Assistant Professor of Global Media at the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication. Professor Cortés's research intersects alternative and community media, Latin American Indigenous studies, religious studies, and popular culture. Through this multidisciplinary practice, he examines formations of contemporary Indigeneities in the Andes, transnational evangelicalism, American whiteness, and media representations of the war on drugs. Professor Cortés is currently working on a book manuscript that explores the repercussions of the rapid expansion of evangelicalism (non-denominational American Christianity and Pentecostalism) among Andean Indigenous communities in Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Prior to joining the UO faculty in fall 2023, Professor Cortés was an assistant professor of Communication Studies at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.

Sergio Loza, Romance Languages, Director of the Spanish Heritage Language Program, and 2023–24 OHC Faculty Research Fellow. My project explores the collective experiences of Latinx students who served as student ambassadors for the Spanish heritage Language program at the University of Oregon. These student ambassadors collaborate in various administrative tasks as well as advocate for multilingualism and Latinx representation on campus by organizing events on campus. The design, implementation, and outcomes of this program highlight the applied ways in which social justice educational frameworks can inform innovative programmatic initiatives that enrich the educational experiences of Latinx students.

Devin Grammon, Romance Languages and 2023–24 OHC Faculty Research Fellow. The idea that bilingual signage helps to create welcoming and inclusive public spaces for U.S. Spanish speakers is complicated by the inequitable treatment of English and Spanish on many signs in terms of translation quality, text size, fonts, and other factors. My project examines bilingual public signs in downtown Eugene in order to explore how representations of Spanish can reinforce racializing stereotypes about U.S. Latinos and construct a public sphere that is hostile to members of this ethnolinguistic group.