Faculty Accomplishments

An article by Sam Plasencia, assistant professor of English, was published in the Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists (Volume 13, Number 1). Titled "Disrupting Anti-Blackness: David Walker’s Fugitive Inhabitation of an American Grammar," the article "offers a reading of Walker’s insurgency, arguing that his unique typographical performance usurps dominant grammatical and rhetorical forms (italics, em-dashes, negative questions, shifting pronouns, commas, metonymic slippages, and repetition) in order to scramble the governing anti-Black episteme, wherein language is variously deployed to suppress, elide, mask, legitimize, and normalize the violence of anti-Blackness," according to the article's abstract.

Kaushik Tekur, visiting assistant professor of English, wrote a book review of Before Equiano: A Prehistory of the North American Slave Narrative that appeared in Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly (Volume 47, Number 2). The book, written by Zachary McLeod Hutchins, "argues for fragmentary accounts of enslaved people—in the form of runaway advertisements, newspaper accounts, among others—to be considered slave narratives," writes Tekur. "The book ultimately makes a bold claim for reinterpreting the 'origins' of the slave narrative in the Anglo-American world. It emphasizes a different reading practice, rooted in an eighteenth-century cultural practice of reading newspapers, which gathered details about Black people over the span of several weeks, if not months, to be able to construct a fuller account of their lives."

The Maine Art Education Association has named the Colby Arts Office its 2026 Art Advocate of the Year. Established in 2020, the Colby Arts Office creates a culture of creativity across campus and in Waterville. "We applaud your belief in the arts as a powerful force for building vibrant, thriving communities," said Maine Art Education Association President Matthew Johnson in a letter to the Arts Office. "What truly distinguishes your work, however, is your sustained dedication to the arts through the revitalization of downtown Waterville and the creation of spaces where communities can gather, connect, and grow through artistic expression. Your willingness to collaborate, innovate, and champion local schools is both inspiring and deeply meaningful."

Carrie Levan, the Montgoris Family Associate Professor of Government, has a new book soon to be released. Neighborhoods Matter: How Place and People Affect Political Participation is forthcoming this April from New York University Press. "Participation in official governmental institutions and activities has declined dramatically," said the publisher. "Americans are less inclined to express trust in, or cooperate with, political leaders and each other to address society's most pressing problems. In Neighborhoods that Matter, Carrie LeVan explores this growing crisis in civic engagement, arguing that where we live—and the people who live around us—may be to blame."

An article by Associate Professor of Art Marta Ameri was published as a chapter in the book the Routledge Companion to Seals and Seal Studies in Antiquity (2026). Titled "Women's Seals in Iran and Central Asia: Prestige Items or Administrative Tools (or Both)?" the article is included in the book's "Gender" section. Ameri was also the content expert for a children's book Life in the Indus Civilization: An Interactive Ancient History Adventure" (Capstone Publishing, 2025) as part of the publisher's "You Choose" series.

A study led by Amanda Gallinat, an ecologist and a lecturer of environmental studies, investigating how spring bird arrival times are shifting with climate change was the subject of an article by WBUR. Titled "Spring bird migration in Concord now a week earlier than in Thoreau's time, study finds," the article highlighted Gallinat's research conducted by combining volunteer observations with observations made by Henry David Thoreau. While birds migrating a relatively short distance, such as from the southeastern U.S., are "better at gauging cues about changing temperatures" and thus adjusting arrival time to coincide with the bloom of spring food, "birds wintering in Central and South America 'are really at a loss' when it comes to predicting temperatures in far-away Concord," the article noted.

Michael Burke, professor of English and creative writing, emeritus, contributed a chapter titled "Deepening and Complicating: The Creative Nonfiction Workshop" to the recently released Evolving Strategies for Writing Feedback on Creative Manuscripts: A Multi-Genre Pedagogy Guide (Routledge, 2026). In his chapter, Burke used a student's essay from his last class before retiring to demonstrate what he was writing about, "with the student's enthusiastic permission, of course," he said. The student, who asked for anonymity because of the essay's content, was thrilled to be included, as Burke selected hers from several other student submissions. The chapter is an example of faculty-student collaboration that extends beyond the classroom.

James M. Gillespie Professor of Art Véronique Plesch edited the winter issue of Maine Arts Journal and wrote the introduction, in which she discusses the theme of "Words and Images" and the contributions to the issue. In her "Art Historical Musings" column on "Images and Words," she discusses her long involvement with the scholarly field of word and image studies and sketches the history of the exploration of the relationships between the two modes of expression. As she considers word/image interactions, she discusses what is at stake in practices such as describing works of art, using titles, inserting words in artworks, and turning words (and letters) into art. She also tackles the question of legibility (and of illegibility), of the often conflictual relationship between the visual and the verbal, and also of how the word/image dichotomy can be transcended. In "Moving Paint, Writing Memories: A Conversation with Stephen Hannock," Plesch shares excerpts from conversations with Hannock in which they discuss his use of words in his Panoramic Vistas series. Finally, she also contributed "Words in Graffiti: A (Mostly) Visual Essay." in which she shares a collection of photographs taken over the past forty years throughout the world along with some considerations on graffiti’s distinctive features.

Amanda Gallinat, lecturer of environmental studies, recently had an article published in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology discussing her work that paired historical observations of bird arrivals initiated by Henry David Thoreau in the 1850s with modern eBird observations. The article, "Integrating historical records and citizen science data to understand bird responses to climate change in Concord, Massachusetts: Thoreau to eBird," shows that birds are shifting their arrival times earlier with warming temperatures, but that these shifts do not keep pace with local plants and insects.

Amanda Gallinat, lecturer of environmental studies, had an article published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Ecology titled "Combined volunteer and ecological network observations show broad-scale temperature-sensitivity patterns for deciduous plant flowering and leaf-out times across the eastern USA." Gallinat and her colleagues also wrote a blog post for the journal explaining their major findings. The post explains how they tackled the challenge of "understanding how changes in the timing of seasonality is affecting the hundreds of thousands of plant and animal species across large regions" by turning to the Nature’s Notebook platform for help.