Faculty Accomplishments

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.

Leuven University Press published a book of essays co-edited by Associate Professor of Art Daniel Harkett titled Animal Modernities: Images, Objects, Histories. Co-edited with his colleague from Dartmouth, Katie Hornstein, the book is hailed as an "innovative study of animal art histories in modern art" that "challenges the traditional human-centered focus of art history and explores how modern art, visual culture, and modernity itself emerge from relationships between humans and animals." Harkett and Hornstein discussed the book on a blog interview. Other Colby contributions to the book include an essay from Laura Nüffer, assistant professor of East Asian Studies; a symposium at Colby involving all of the contributors, which served as a vital step in the writing/workshopping process; McFadden Grants that subsidized the publication; and an intersection with the "Thinking with Animals" PHIL (Public Humanistic Inquiry Labs) Nüffer and Harkett are leading.

Véronique Plesch, the James M. Gillespie Professor of Art, presented a lecture on the frescoes of the South Solon Meeting House on Aug. 17, 2025. Close to 100 people (artists and people from the art world, scholars, and the general public, both local and from out of town) attended a summer celebration to support this important landmark. Plesch, who sits on the board of the South Solon Historical Society, previously taught a course about the meeting house and oversaw the students who created its now-official website.

A work of nonfiction by Debra Spark, the Zacamy Professor of English, was published in the Cincinnati Review. Titled "Open Secret," the piece is part of a series of essays Spark has written about "life-changing coincidences and their aftermath," which allows her to explore larger social justice, moral, or philosophical issues. "Much of today’s literary nonfiction is memoir-based, exploring important topics, but this piece takes a step back and tells the story of someone else, a woman named Janet, who learns an important story herself, about her mother’s past," said the Review's Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman. "The essay unfolds with careful research and tact, with a mission to challenge what we know about each other and what we keep secret, intentionally or not."

Tanya Sheehan, the Ellerton M. and Edith K. Jetté Professor of Art, has finished 10 years as executive editor of the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art Journal. The journal is the longest-running scholarly periodical dedicated to the history of art in the United States, and Sheehan has been the driving force behind its transformation into a first-rank research periodical. "She cultivated and strategically leveraged an enviable professional network, reaching out each year to hundreds of scholars across related fields and disciplines to identify and solicit contributions," said Liza Kirwin, interim director of the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives. "Tanya also redefined the structure of the journal by introducing new sections for shorter, commissioned contributions from artists and curators. These additions brought fresh voices and diverse perspectives, broadening the journal’s reach and appeal." The journal has also won several design awards during Sheehan's time as editor.