Faculty Accomplishments
Assistant Professor of Classics Kassandra Miller has won the Barbara McManus Award for Outstanding Scholarship from the Women’s Classical Caucus. The award recognizes Miller's article "Intentional Menstrual Suppression in Imperial Rome,” which originally appeared in the Journal of Roman Studies (JRS 114, 2024: 27– 59). Critieria for the Barbara McManus Award include work that reframes a debate, changes the direction of research, asks entirely new questions, and applies a theory or methodology in a new way.
Michael Burke, professor of English and creative writing, emeritus, published an essay in the journal Rustica, Issue 4. In his essay, "A Kind of Magical Thinking," Burke tells the story of the four vehicles that have been stolen from him, "which seems like more than my fair share," he said.
Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society Ashton Wesner coauthored a paper out in the journal Education Sciences for its special issue "Rethinking Engineering Education." Wesner's open-access article "Educating Socially Responsible Engineers Through Critical Community-Engaged Pedagogy" investigates how social justice course content and community-engaged learning experiences can change engineering student attitudes toward civic engagement and social responsibility. The authors' interviews and focus groups showed that engagement with community-led projects during coursework were important factors in both increasing students' interest in engineering and potentially retaining underrepresented students in engineering higher education.
Zach Peckham, the Jennifer Jarling Forese Writer-in-Residence and a visiting instructor in creative writing, wrote a review for the Summer 2025 issue of the Chicago Review. Peckham reviewed the book Death Styles by Joyelle McSweeney. This review is one of many reviews, poems, and essays he has published.
Visiting Assistant Professor of English Kaushik Tekur published an article in the journal Eighteenth-Century Fiction titled "The Para-Lyric, (Non-)Performance, and Personhood." In the article, Tekur discusses two lyric poems—Mary Robinson’s "The Lascar” and William Wordsworth’s “Gipsies”—"to argue that they engage with what could be dubbed 'para-lyric,'" according to the article's abstract. Tekur is a scholar of police power, formalism, and the long 18th century.
Véronique Plesch, the James M. Gillespie Professor of Art, edited the fall issue of the Maine Arts Journal on the theme of "Thinking Through Making." The issue offers an exploration of the creative process, with the contributors welcoming the reader not only into their studios, but also their minds, as they address the many ways in which making is a form of thinking. Plesch wrote the Introduction for the issue as well as an article for her "Art Historical Musings" column. In "Making, Thinking, Learning," she equates the creative process with decision-making and considers the ways in which art historians gain insights into artists’ thought processes and working methods. She shows how the subject matter or the medium leads artists to think in a certain manner and what lessons can be learned from the making. Finally, she looks at works that by being “a repository for thoughts” invite the viewer to accompany the artist in their mental processes. This essay offered her the opportunity to include several works by Sol LeWitt in the Colby College Museum of Art.
Photographer and Professor of Art Gary Green will open an exhibition titled After Morandi, which he says is a visual conversation with the Italian painter and printmaker Giorgio Morandi, on Oct. 5. The exhibition of Green's photography will take place in Casa Morandi, where the painter lived and worked in the countryside outside Bologna, Italy, from Oct. 5, 2025, through Jan. 6, 2026. Green has published a book by the same name, After Morandi; limited copies will be available at the show.
Véronique Plesch, the James M. Gillespie Professor of Art, was a guest on Museum Open House, a weekly cable television program that highlights outstanding museums and cultural institutions. Host Jay Sugarman engaged Plesch in a conversation about the South Solon Meeting House, known for its 70-year-old fresco murals. Plesch, who sits on the board of the South Solon Historical Society, shared with viewers the history and significance of the building and led a virtual behind-the-scenes tour to help them better understand and appreciate what makes the South Solon Meeting House one of Maine’s cultural treasures. The episode is available on YouTube and will air at a later date.
Jordan Troisi, director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, was a guest on the podcast Designed for Learning, hosted by the University of Notre Dame. In an episode titled "Making the Space to Reimagine Teaching," Troisi discussed course design institutes, in which "faculty gather with colleagues and teaching specialists in an extended process of reimagining their work as educators," the podcast noted. Course design institutes are the subject of a recent book Troisi coauthored, Developing High-Impact Course Design Institutes: A Model for Change.
Megan Cook, the Arthur Jeremiah Roberts Associate Professor of Literature, received a grant of approximately $294,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to further her work on a new critical edition of the shorter poems of John Lydgate. Often regarded as the most significant English author of the 15th century, Lydgate's work was wide-ranging and prolific. He wrote everything from paeans to kings to stain-removal guides for laundresses, said Cook. The NEH grant will support her joint efforts with R.D. Perry (University of Tennessee-Knoxville) and Taylor Cowdery (UNC-Chapel Hill) to transcribe, edit, and prepare an edition of approximately 120 of his works.