2025-26 faculty and graduate student achievements in the humanities and arts

davemarr on May 13, 2026

A split image shows a woman with long dark hair and a red top on the left, and a bald man with glasses and a white goatee on the right.

Humanities and arts faculty and graduate students at UGA continued to showcase the world-class quality of their research, teaching, and public engagement during the 2025-26 academic year, collecting nationally competitive fellowships and awards, publishing books ranging from academic monographs to fiction and poetry, mounting acclaimed exhibitions, and distinguishing themselves in innumerable other ways. Below is a sampling of their accomplishments.

If you have received a major grant, fellowship, or prize in the humanities and arts, or had a significant publication, exhibition, or performance of your work, please let us know. We would love to share the news of your success.

Pictured: Amna Qayyum, assistant professor of history and women’s and gender studies, and Ed Pavlić, Distinguished Research Professor of English and African American Studies. Qayyum was awarded a 2026 Fellowship by the American Council of Learned Societies, while Pavlić was named a 2026 Fellow by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

 

• Marni Shindelman, associate professor and chair of photography in the Lamar Dodd School of Art, had a series of photographs featured in Oxford American. The work, titled Restore the Night Sky, looks at the influence that privatized immigration detention centers have on the rural landscapes they inhabit.

• Andrew Zawacki, Distinguished Research Professor of English, published These Late Eclipses, a collection of poems composed during the Covid-19 lockdown from March to September 2020, with Verge Books. Zawacki was also one of four artists selected for the inaugural P5 Photo Poetry Pamphlet Series directed by Photoworks, published in Autumn 2025 and Spring 2026.

• Erika Hermanowicz, professor of Classics, with Neil McLynn of the University of Oxford, published the first English translation of The Conference of Carthage in 411 with the University of Liverpool Press.

• Yale University Press has published Politics and Memory: Civil War Monuments in Gilded Age New York, the new book by Akela Reason, associate professor of history and director of the Museum Studies Certificate Program.

• Peter Van Zandt Lane, professor of composition in the Hugh Hodgson School of Music and director of the Dancz Center for New Music, released Axils, an album of electroacoustic and chamber works that features contributions by a host of UGA and Athens artists.

• Susan Rosenbaum, associate professor of English, along with her research partner Jonathan Ellis of the University of Sheffield, received a $351,000 grant from Britain’s Arts and Humanities Research Council for a 27-month project to develop an edited collection of Elizabeth Bishop’s postcards for general readership, a second scholarly book, and exhibitions of Bishop’s postcards at the Sorbonne in Paris and in Sheffield, UK. Rosenbaum’s work on Bishop has received support from the Willson Center in multiple forms – a Faculty Research Fellowship, a Faculty Research Grant, a Research Cluster, and funds for travel and exhibition – as well as from the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and the department of English.

• J. D. Sargan, assistant professor in the department of English, was awarded the Medieval Academy of America’s 2025 Inclusivity & Diversity Subvention to support the publication of his monograph, Trans Histories of the Medieval Book: An Experiment in Bibliography, by ARC Humanities Press.

• John P. Bray, professor of theatre and film, published his monograph Jack Gelber: Consider This as the first of the eight-part Routledge Studies on Edward Albee and American Theatre series. Earlier in 2025, Bray’s own play Tracks (or, The People Who Live Here) was an official selection for the Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival, with a staged reading and response session.

• Blessing Temitope Adewuyi, a doctoral candidate in the department of religion, was awarded a highly competitive Louisville Institute Dissertation Fellowship.

• Emily Sahakian, associate professor in UGA’s departments of theatre & film and Romance languages, published a new critical edition and translation of Tale of Black Histories, a play created by the Caribbean writer Edouard Glissant, with co-editor/translator Andrew Daily of the University of Memphis.

• Cecília Rodrigues, associate professor of Portuguese in the department of Romance languages, was awarded the Consortium of Latin American Studies Programs 2025 Excellence in Language Education Award. The prize this year recognized exceptional leadership in Portuguese language instruction, pedagogy, curriculum development, and the promotion of the study of this language in the US.

• The Cupola Project, an exhibition led by Martijn van Wagtendonk, associate professor and chair of sculpture in the Lamar Dodd School of Art, in collaboration with more than 45 students and faculty and with support from the Willson Center, was displayed at the Hambidge Hive in Atlanta in fall 2025.

• Fausto Sarmiento, professor of mountain science in the department of geography, was awarded the 2025 Distinguished Landscape Practitioner Award by the North American Chapter of the International Association for Landscape Ecology at its annual meeting in April. This honor is bestowed to individuals or organizations that have made significant contributions to the applications of landscape ecology principles to real-world problems.

• Nanette R. Spina, associate professor of religious studies, is co-editor of the new volume Gendered Agency in Transcultural Hinduism and Buddhism, published in October 2025 by Routledge as part of its Critical Studies in Religion, Gender and Sexuality series.

• Chris Choe, a PhD Candidate in the department of history, was awarded a fellowship by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History for his project “US Governance in the Panama Canal Zone, 1914–1979.”

• Jorge García-Granados, lecturer of Spanish in the department of Romance languages, was awarded a Barbara A. Shailor ATBL-American Philosophical Society Research Fellowship by the American Trust for the British Library for 2025-26.

• Chad Howe, professor of Romance languages and linguistics and director of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute, was named an inaugural member of UGA’s Faculty Innovation Fellows program, a group of faculty leaders chosen to help expand a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship across campus.

• The Society for the Study of American Women Writers presented its Karen Dandurand Lifetime Achievement Award to Willson Center associate academic director Barbara McCaskill, Distinguished Research Professor of English and co-director of Culture and Community at the Penn Center National Historic Landmark District. Presented in honor of Dandurand, a vice president of the SSAWW from 2004 to 2009 and founding editor of the journal Legacy, the award recognizes that Dr. McCaskill’s mentorship, scholarship, teaching, and service stand in a class of their own.

• Anindit Dutta, a graduate student in the Creative Writing Program, was selected for the Tin House Workshop, a professional development gathering for early-career writers with craft talks, readings, and personalized mentorship from established writers and other industry professionals.

• Saurabh Anand, a PhD student in the department of English and Willson Center Graduate Research Awardee, received a grant from the LGBTQ+ Heritage Alliance through the NYC LGBTQ Historic Sites Project for his project Traces and Triumphs: Documenting Queer Histories in Athens, Georgia, which explores pre-1980 queer histories in Athens.

• O-Jeremiah Agbaakin, a doctoral student in the department of English and the Creative Writing Program, won the John Lewis Writing Grant in poetry from the Georgia Writers Association.

• Elizabeth Stich, assistant professor in the department of dance, published her book Aerial Arts and Dance Improvisation: A Guide to Creativity for Aerialists with Routledge. Research and writing for the book were supported by a 2024-25 Willson Center Faculty Research Fellowship.

• Nora Benedict, associate professor of Spanish and digital humanities in the department of Romance languages, earned a 2026 Humanities and AI Virtual Institute (HAVI) development award. For the project “The Garden of Forking Prompts: Systematic Mapping of Narrative Space,” Benedict and colleagues from the University of Colorado-Boulder and the University of Washington will use the literary frameworks of Jorge Luis Borges to investigate the landscape of AI-generated fiction.

• Magdalena Zurawski, associate professor of English and creative writing, accepted invitations to participate in the Vashon and Djerassi artist residency programs during her Willson Faculty Research Fellowship in fall 2026.

• Sharina Maillo-Pozo, associate professor of Romance languages, was awarded the Isis Duarte Book Prize by the Haiti/Dominican Republic section of the Latin American Studies Association for her 2025 book Bridging Sonic Borders: Popular Music in Contemporary Dominican/Dominicanyork Literature.

• The Spirit of Socialism: Culture and Belief at the Soviet Collapse, a 2025 book by Joseph Kellner, assistant professor of history, was the subject of an admiring long-form review in the London Review of Books. Kellner researched the book with the support of a 2023-24 Willson Center Faculty Research Fellowship.

• Amna Qayyum, assistant professor of history and women’s and gender studies, was awarded a 2026 Fellowship by the American Council of Learned Societies for her project “The War on Reproduction: Authoritarianism and the Global Politics of Family Planning in Pakistan.” ACLS Fellowships are among the most prestigious and competitive awards in the United States for outstanding scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.

• Ed Pavlić, Distinguished Research Professor of English and African American Studies, was named a 2026 Fellow by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, one of the most prestigious individual awards in the humanities, arts, and natural and social sciences. Pavlić is a recent Willson Center Faculty Fellow whose work on an upcoming biography of the writer James Baldwin was featured in a February profile for @UGAResearch. The Guggenheim Fellowship will support the completion of Darker than Blue: A Radical Life of James Baldwin, which is under contract with Henry Holt and Company for publication in 2028.

• Sonia A. Hirt, dean and Hughes Professor in Landscape Architecture and Planning in the College of Environment and Design, was one of 14 international scholars selected to participate in the 2026 Summer Institute for the Study of East Central and Southeastern Europe of the American Council of Learned Societies. The ACLS will convene these leading scholars from Eastern Europe and North America for a two-week residency hosted by ACLS and the Centre for Advanced Study in Sofia, Bulgaria.

• Aruni Kashyap, associate professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Program, will translate The Smell of Bamboo Blossoms, a short story collection by acclaimed Indian writer Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi, into English for publication by Penguin Random House’s Modern Library imprint. Thongchi is one of a small number of prominent writers from India’s northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh who continue to write in the Indo-Aryan language Assamese.

• Constance Owl, a Presidential Fellow doctoral student in the department of history and a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, has been awarded a Cobell Graduate Summer Research Fellowship to work with Cherokee language specialists translating the Cherokee content from the historic Cherokee Phoenix newspaper.

• Pass the Ammunition, a short animated video by Joseph Peragine, director of the Lamar Dodd School of Art, was displayed at California State University Fullerton’s Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana.

• Faculty members and students in the arts and humanities were honored for their excellence and accomplishments in research, teaching, mentorship, and service during 2025 Honors Week at UGA. All are part of a thriving community that is served by the Willson Center through its grants and research awards.