UGA Humanities Festival announced for March 16 – April 2

The University of Georgia Humanities Festival is an annual series of public events showcasing the richness and diversity of research and practice in the humanities at UGA and throughout our extended community. The fourth annual UGA Humanities Festival will take place March 16-April 2, 2026, featuring lectures, conversations, performances, social gatherings, and keynote events.

More events will be added to the festival schedule as they are finalized.

The UGA Humanities Council is supported by the Office of Research, the Office of the Provost, and the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, with the participation of more than 30 colleges, schools, departments, and units across the university.

 

Keynote Events

Mar 17 • 5:30 pm • Founders Memorial Garden

UGA Humanities Festival Opening Celebration

All are invited to a public gathering with refreshments and conversation to begin the UGA Humanities Festival in its fourth year, with recognition of outstanding achievements by members of the UGA humanities and arts communities. The program begins at 5:30 p.m. and will include remarks by UGA students and faculty with notable achievements in their scholarship and practice during the past year.

Beverly’s Athens Closing Symposium

The Athenaeum and UGA Willson Center for Humanities & Arts present a closing symposium for the spring 2025 exhibition “Beverly’s Athens,” one of two exhibitions of Buchanan’s work currently on view on the UGA campus, with guest curators Mo Costello and Katz Tepper, panelists, and invited keynote speakers Dr. Patricia Ekpo and Bryn Evans.

The symposium concludes at 4 pm with an evening film screening and discussion at the Athenaeum from 6 – 8:30 pm of Beverly Buchanan, Athens, GA, 8 July 1995 with filmmaker, artist, and professor emerita Judith McWillie and co-curators Mo Costello & Katz Tepper.

 

Mar 24 • 4 pm • Georgia Museum of Art Auditorium

Discussion with Kat Gardner-Vandy

The Institute of Native American Studies presents a discussion with Kat Gardner-Vandy about Choctaw Star Stories and the vast library of knowledge contained in them.

Kat Gardner-Vandy is a Choctaw Nation Citizen, a planetary scientist, and teacher of Choctaw start stories and sky science. She is a STEM curriculum developer for middle school students, as well as an Associate Professor in Oklahoma State University’s Educational Foundations, Leadership & Aviation program. Learn more about here work here.

Mar 27 • 11 am • UGA Chapel

Phinizy Lecture: Rick Atkinson

Author and journalist Rick Atkinson will visit UGA and Athens for the Ferdinand Phinizy Lecture, which will be included in the Humanities Festival and in the Global Georgia public events series of the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts. It is also part of the UGA Spring 2026 Signature Lectures series. The event is free and open to the public, with no advance registration required. Requests for accommodations for those with disabilities should be made as soon as possible but at least seven days prior to the event. To request an accommodation, please contact Dave Marr at davemarr@uga.edu.

Rick Atkinson is one of the nation’s foremost public historians, the author of eight narrative histories about five American wars. The Fate of the Day, his second book in a planned trilogy on the American Revolution,  debuted in 2025 as the #1 New York Times nonfiction bestseller and was lavishly praised by critics and peers. With The Fate of the Day, Ken Burns said, Atkinson “takes his place among the greatest of all historians,” and according to The New York Times, “there is no better writer of narrative history.”

Atkinson won the Pulitzer Prize in history for An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, the first volume of his trilogy about the liberation of Europe in World War II. His other books include The Long Gray Line, a narrative saga about the West Point class of 1966; Crusade, a narrative history of the Persian Gulf War, and In the Company of Soldiers, an account of his time with the U.S. 101st Airborne Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During his long career as a journalist, which included two decades at the Washington Post, Atkinson won Pulitzer Prizes for national reporting (1982) and public service (1999). He has also served as the Gen. Omar N. Bradley Chair of Strategic Leadership at the U.S. Army War College, where he remains an adjunct faculty member.

The Ferdinand Phinizy Lectureship is endowed through the University of Georgia Foundation, administered by the department of history, and presented in partnership with the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts and the University of Georgia Press.

 

Apr 1 • 3 pm • Park Hall 265

Panel Discussion: English Alumni In Publishing

In celebration of the recent launch of the Publishing Certificate at UGA, the English Department, The Georgia Review, and the University of Georgia Press are hosting an English Alumni In Publishing Panel on Wednesday, April 1st, at 3 p.m. in Park Hall room 265. This event is sponsored by the Willson Center and is part of the UGA Humanities Festival.  The event is free and open to the public.

Four accomplished English Department alumni will be featured on the panel:

Carrie Olivia Adams – Carrie Olivia Adams lives in Chicago, where she is the executive editor for the nonprofit, indie press Black Ocean and the Promotions and Marketing Communications Director for the University of Chicago Press. She is the author of five full-length poetry collections, The Book of Marys and Glaciers (Tupelo 2026); Be the thing of memory (Tolsun Books  2021); Operating Theater (Noctuary Press 2015); Forty-One Jane Doe’s (book and companion DVD, Ahsahta 2013); and Intervening Absence (Ahsahta 2009) in addition to the chapbooks  “Proficiency Badges” (Meeking Press 2020); “Grapple” (above/ground press 2017); “Overture in the Key of F” (above/ground press 2013); and “A Useless Window” (Black Ocean 2007).  She is the curator of the Poetry & Biscuits house reading series, and when she’s not making poetry, she’s likely making biscuits.

CJ Bartunek – C.J. Bartunek is a writer, editor, and photographer living in Athens, Georgia. Her writing has appeared in Oxford American, The Christian Science Monitor, Pacific Standard, and elsewhere. Managing editor and nonfiction editor of the literary journal The Georgia Review, she holds a PhD in English from the University of Georgia and an MFA from UGA’s graduate program in narrative nonfiction through the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Laura Theobald – Laura Theobald is a production editor at the University of Georgia Press and an English PhD candidate contemplating a creative dissertation at UGA. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections—Salad Days (Maudlin House, 2021), Kokomo (Disorder Press, 2019), and What My Hair Says About You (Metatron, 2017)—plus three chapbooks: “Edna Poems” (Lame House Press, 2016), “The Best Thing Ever” (Boost House, 2015), and “eraser poems” (H_ngm_n Books, 2014). She received an MFA from LSU, where she served as managing editor of the New Delta Review. Her poetry has appeared in jubilat, HTML Giant, The Volta, Hobart, The Atlas Review, Everyday Genius, Big Lucks, and Black Warrior Review, among others, and in anthologies including Women of Resistance (O/R Books, 2018). She is currently working on a fourth poetry collection and a work of autofiction.

Laura Usselman – Laura Usselman is a literary agent at the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency, where she represents narrative and idea-driven nonfiction and select literary fiction. Some of her notable clients include Sofi Thanhauser, winner of the Whiting Award and author of Worn: A People’s History of Clothing (Pantheon); Kaitlyn Tiffany, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of Everything I Need I Get From You (FSG) and the forthcoming The Housewives Underground (Crown); Katherine Blunt, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her work at the Wall Street Journal and author of the bestselling California Burning (Portfolio); Zoë Schiffer, who leads the business newsroom at WIRED and is the author of Extremely Hardcore : Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter (Portfolio); and Soraya Palmer, whose novel The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts (Catapult) was a finalist for the PEN Open Book Award and winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Before joining SKLA, Laura earned her MFA in Fiction at Virginia Tech and worked in the marketing department of Cambridge University Press. A native of Atlanta and an alum of the University of Georgia, she lives with her spouse and her three daughters in Decatur, Georgia.

Each panelist will talk a little about their professional journey and current role, before answering questions from the panel moderator and panel attendees.

 

Apr 2 • 5:30 pm • Ciné

Georgia Museum of Natural History Lecture: Underwater Archaeologist Ashley Lemke

Ashley Lemke is an archaeologist and an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Her visit is presented by the Georgia Museum of Natural History, the department of anthropology, the Laboratory of Archaeology, and the Archaeology Institute of America, in partnership with the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts. It is part of the 2026 UGA Humanities Festival and the Willson Center’s Global Georgia public events series.

Lemke received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Michigan. An expert on submerged ancient sites, she has received grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Her books include Anthropological Archaeology Underwater and The Architecture of Hunting. She has directed research projects in North America and below its waters, including in the Great Lakes and Atlantic Ocean. She has conducted archaeological research in Europe in Germany, Spain, Romania, and Serbia.

Lemke collaborates with computer scientists to explore applications of virtual worlds, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality for archaeological research and discovery. She previously taught at the University of Texas at Arlington, where she received the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Outstanding Teaching Award for Tenure Track Faculty, and was inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers. Lemke is a past chair of the Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology and Fellow of The Explorers Club.

 

Apr 2 • 6pm • Athens – Clarke County Library

Reading and Conversation with Writers Tarfia Faizullah and Jamel Brinkley

Poet Tarfia Faizullah and author Jamel Brinkley will read from their work and take part in a moderated Q&A with Athens-Clarke County Poet Laureate Mikhayla Robinson-Smith in an event organized by The Georgia Review and the Institute for African American Studies, with support from the Center for Asian Studies and book sales by Rec Room Books. The event is part of UGA’s fourth annual Humanities Festival.

Tarfia Faizullah is the author of two poetry collections, Registers of Illuminated Villages (Graywolf, 2018) and Seam (SIU, 2014). Her writing has appeared widely in the U.S. and abroad in outlets including PBS News Hour, Huffington Post, Poetry magazine, Ms. magazine, the Academy of American Poets, Oxford American, The New Republic, The Nation, and the collection Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket, 2019), and has been displayed at the Smithsonian, the Rubin Museum of Art, and elsewhere.

Jamel Brinkley is the author of Witness: Stories (2023, Farrar, Straus and Giroux/4th Estate), winner of the Maya Angelou Book Award, and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Kirkus Prize, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. A Lucky Man: Stories (2018, Graywolf Press) was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Story Prize, the John Leonard Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and winner of a PEN Oakland Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.

 

 

Full Calendar of Events

Mar 16 • Noon – 2 pm • Forecourt of Park Hall

DIY Dawgs: A FanZine Frenzy

Celebrate creativity, the unconventional, and the desire to geek out over whatever your obsession is at DIY Dawgs: A FanZine Frenzy. Zines are noncommercial, handmade publications where you can share your unique voice and interests. Zines are all about connecting through words and art –there is nothing slick or materialistic about these DIY creations.

DIY Dawgs: A FanZine Frenzy will start on 3/16 From 12 to 2 in the forecourt of Park Hall. Browse hundreds of zines, start your own collection, or delve right into making your own zine. Take part in zine making workshops and activities and learn about the history of fanzines. Supplies, snacks, and encouragement provided!

FanZine Frenzy will conclude on March 18, as zine creators share their words and art at Cine as part of Humanities Trivia Night.

 

Mar 17 • 5:30 pm • Founders Memorial Garden

UGA Humanities Festival Opening Celebration

All are invited to a public gathering with refreshments and conversation to begin the UGA Humanities Festival in its fourth year, with recognition of outstanding achievements by members of the UGA humanities and arts communities. The program begins at 5:30 p.m. and will include remarks by UGA students and faculty with notable achievements in their scholarship and practice during the past year.

 

Mar 18 • 2 pm • Georgia Museum of Art

Faculty Perspectives: Dr. Cecilia Herles

Cecilia Herles, assistant director of UGA’s Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies, will give a gallery talk on “Shacks, Stories and Spirit: Beverly Buchanan’s Art of Home,” one of two exhibitions of Buchanan’s work currently on view on the UGA campus. Herles will examine Buchanan’s art through her expertise in ecological feminism.

 

Mar 18 • 5:30 pm • Ciné

Humanities Trivia Night

The UGA Humanities Festival’s most competitive event returns as host Mark Mobley brings his wit, intelligence, and disciplinary skills to an evening of humanities-related trivia, prizes, fun, and recrimination. Form or join a team to compete at trivia on humanities-related topics that will make players wish they’d paid more attention in class. Free and open to all.

 

Mar 19 • 1:30 pm • Fine Arts Building 053

Max Kade Writer in Residence Jan Brandt – “Transatlantic Writing”

“Transatlantic Writing: From East Frisia to Athens, via Berlin, Los Angeles, New York and Kansas City” is the first reading event at UGA by Jan Brandt, the Department of Germanic & Slavic Studies 2026 Max Cade Writer in Residence. It is presented with support from the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts as part of the 2026 UGA Humanities Festival.

Born in a small town called Leer, Brandt is an award-winning author known for exploring themes of place, identity, and change. Normally based in Berlin and East Frisia, he is best known for his 2016 debut novel Gegen die Welt (Against the World), which was a finalist for the German Book Prize. Much of his work is shaped by both his rural roots and his family’s long history of migration to the United States. Through attentive storytelling and thoughtful reflection, his stories invite readers to consider how personal histories intersect with global change.

 

 

 

Mar 19 • 5 pm • Main Library Data Studio (300)

Applied History: VIPR Team Open House

UGA students have been thinking in time this year.

Join attendees to discover and honor the work that students in Dr. Kevin Jones’s Applied History VIPR class have been doing all year to consider how better understanding the past can help make better decisions now for the future. Students have been collaborating on digital humanities projects that highlight the principles of Applied History through a series of policy case studies based on original historical research and written for public audiences.

This class is a part of UGA’s new Vertically Integrated Projects for Research (VIPR) and the new Applied History Certificate Program, a collaboration between the Franklin College department of history and the School of Politics and International Affairs. This interdisciplinary 18‑credit program is designed for students who want to use historical insight and analytical skills to inform smarter public policy, stronger institutions, and more engaged communities.

 

Mar 21 • 10 am • Athenaeum

Beverly’s Athens Closing Symposium

The Athenaeum and UGA Willson Center for Humanities & Arts present a closing symposium for the spring 2025 exhibition “Beverly’s Athens,” one of two exhibitions of Buchanan’s work currently on view on the UGA campus, with guest curators Mo Costello and Katz Tepper, panelists, and invited keynote speakers Dr. Patricia Ekpo and Bryn Evans.

The symposium concludes at 4 pm with an evening film screening and discussion at the Athenaeum from 6 – 8:30 pm of Beverly Buchanan, Athens, GA, 8 July 1995 with filmmaker, artist, and professor emerita Judith McWillie and co-curators Mo Costello & Katz Tepper.

 

Mar 23 • 3:30 pm • MLC 248

Antonio Pedrós‑Gascón on Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer

Antonio Pedrós‑Gascón, associate professor  of Spanish at Colorado State University, an internationally recognized scholar of Peninsular literature, will deliver a lecture on Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer, one of the key feminist voices of the 19th‑century transatlantic world.

Pedrós‑Gascón currently leads the scholarly edition of Gimeno de Flaquer’s Complete Works, a major contribution to the recovery of this influential yet underrecognized figure whose writing reached audiences in Mexico, Spain, and Argentina. In addition to this project, he has published widely on 19th‑ and 20th‑century Spanish literature.

Concepción Gimeno de Flaquer – director of El Álbum de la Mujer (Mexico, 1883–1890) and El Álbum Ibero-Americano (Madrid, 1890–1909) – authored more than a dozen books, several novels, and over 1,000 articles. She was also the first person to advocate publicly for feminism at the Ateneo de Madrid.

This lecture will introduce Gimeno de Flaquer’s life and work, highlighting her importance for contemporary conversations in feminism, literary history, and theory.

 

Mar 24 • 4 pm • Georgia Museum of Art Auditorium

Discussion with Kat Gardner-Vandy

The Institute of Native American Studies presents a discussion with Kat Gardner-Vandy about Choctaw Star Stories and the vast library of knowledge contained in them.

Kat Gardner-Vandy is a Choctaw Nation Citizen, a planetary scientist, and teacher of Choctaw start stories and sky science. She is a STEM curriculum developer for middle school students, as well as an Associate Professor in Oklahoma State University’s Educational Foundations, Leadership & Aviation program. Learn more about here work here.

Mar 24 • 5:30 pm • Willson Center

Reception: Works by Sam Stabler

The Willson Center hosts this reception for an exhibition of works by Lamar Dodd School of Art faculty member Sam Stabler. Light refreshments will be served and all are welcome.

Stabler’s practice is rooted in the act of drafting and drawing. Using a sharp blade and fine pencil line, his works seem to float within the frame. Through layered processes such as painting, cut paper, and collage, Stabler creates intricate and technically refined compositions.

Drawing inspiration from sources ranging from Old Master Flemish still lifes to portraits of Dennis Hopper in Easy Rider, Stabler borrows and recontextualizes imagery from both art history and pop culture. Combining the familiar and the obscure, he also incorporates everyday objects—like a basketball or a frying pan—adding another dimension of meaning.

His distinctive color palette of fluorescent hues enhances the layered complexity of his works, resulting in unique combinations or mashups that reflect a vibrant cultural miasma.

Stabler was born in Atlanta in 1984. After attending the University of Georgia for undergraduate studies, he attended Central St. Martins College in London for his graduate degree. From London, he moved to New York City with his wife where he worked in the commercial art world. After his sons were born, he returned to Athens where he continues his art practice, founded a design-build construction company and teaches at the University of Georgia.

 

Mar 25 – 11:35 am • MLC 370

The Humanities and AI: Critical Conversations – “Teaching Writing with GenAI, Empire, and Environment in Mind”

The Jill and Marvin Willis Center for Writing will host The Humanities and AI: Critical Conversations, a three-part conversation series this spring semester focused on generative artificial intelligence and its impact on our land, labor, water, and writing. Conversations are open to all UGA faculty and graduate students and will take place in the Jill and Marvin Willis Center for Writing, Room 370 of the Miller Learning Center. Light refreshments will be provided for each conversation. Discussions will be facilitated by Dr. Rebecca Hallman Martini, associate professor of English and director of the Willis Center for Writing, and Dr. Elise Robinson, academic professional and program director for the Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies. Guest faculty members will join Hallman Martini and Robinson in conversation for each event. The series is co-presented by the Willis Center and the Willson Center.

This third session in the series, “Teaching Writing with GenAI, Empire, and Environment in Mind,” will feature a conversation with Caroline Young, senior lecturer in English. Participants will consider a wide range of possible approaches, from critical and ethical use of AI to AI refusal, with a focus on disciplinary roles across the institution. For example, how might teaching with/about AI differ in computer science, public health, environmental studies, and the humanities? Participants will have the opportunity to discuss their own teaching artifacts and analyze examples.

 

Mar 25 • 6 pm • Ciné

Odum Environmental Ethics Lecture: David Walter Banks

Atlanta-based photographer David Walter Banks, whose book Trembling Earth: A Transcendental Trip Through the Okefenokee was published by The Bitter Southerner in 2025, will give the Odum Environmental Ethics Lecture as part of the university’s annual Humanities Festival. The lecture is presented by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts and the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program in partnership with The Bitter Southerner.

Banks’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and the New York Public Library. His commercial clients have included TIME, Apple, The New York Times, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, and many others, and he has lectured at institutions including Western Kentucky University, the University of Miami, Savannah College of Art and Design, the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, and the University of Massachusetts.

For Trembling Earth, Banks paddled 500 miles and spent 69 nights over three years deep in the Okefenokee Swamp, photographing its wonders and absorbing what he calls “the unmistakable yet ineffably mystical quality of this primordial space.” Using in-camera techniques rather than post-production effects and with a highly individual eye for the uncanny and the sublime, Banks created a fantastical, personal essay in 90 photographs that communicate his dreamlike vision of the Okefenokee’s unique, awe-inspiring, and precarious ecosystem.

 

Mar 27 • 11 am • UGA Chapel

Phinizy Lecture: Rick Atkinson

Author and journalist Rick Atkinson will visit UGA and Athens for the Ferdinand Phinizy Lecture, which will be included in the Humanities Festival and in the Global Georgia public events series of the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts. It is also part of the UGA Spring 2026 Signature Lectures series. The event is free and open to the public, with no advance registration required. Requests for accommodations for those with disabilities should be made as soon as possible but at least seven days prior to the event. To request an accommodation, please contact Dave Marr at davemarr@uga.edu.

Rick Atkinson is one of the nation’s foremost public historians, the author of eight narrative histories about five American wars. The Fate of the Day, his second book in a planned trilogy on the American Revolution,  debuted in 2025 as the #1 New York Times nonfiction bestseller and was lavishly praised by critics and peers. With The Fate of the Day, Ken Burns said, Atkinson “takes his place among the greatest of all historians,” and according to The New York Times, “there is no better writer of narrative history.”

Atkinson won the Pulitzer Prize in history for An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, the first volume of his trilogy about the liberation of Europe in World War II. His other books include The Long Gray Line, a narrative saga about the West Point class of 1966; Crusade, a narrative history of the Persian Gulf War, and In the Company of Soldiers, an account of his time with the U.S. 101st Airborne Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. During his long career as a journalist, which included two decades at the Washington Post, Atkinson won Pulitzer Prizes for national reporting (1982) and public service (1999). He has also served as the Gen. Omar N. Bradley Chair of Strategic Leadership at the U.S. Army War College, where he remains an adjunct faculty member.

The Ferdinand Phinizy Lectureship is endowed through the University of Georgia Foundation, administered by the department of history, and presented in partnership with the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts and the University of Georgia Press.

 

Mar 31 • 5:30 pm • Lamar Dodd S151

Nora Wendl – “Almost Nothing: Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth”

The Lamar Dodd School of Art has partnered with the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, along with the Creative Writing Program, the Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies, and the Interdisciplinary Modernisms Workshop (UGA ModSquad), to welcome essayist, artist, and associate professor of architecture at the University of New Mexico Nora Wendl for a lecture on her 2025 book Almost Nothing: Reclaiming Edith Farnsworth.

 

Apr 1 • 3 pm • Park Hall 265

Panel Discussion: English Alumni In Publishing

In celebration of the recent launch of the Publishing Certificate at UGA, the English Department, The Georgia Review, and the University of Georgia Press are hosting an English Alumni In Publishing Panel on Wednesday, April 1st, at 3 p.m. in Park Hall room 265. This event is sponsored by the Willson Center and is part of the UGA Humanities Festival.  The event is free and open to the public.

Four accomplished English Department alumni will be featured on the panel:

Carrie Olivia Adams – Carrie Olivia Adams lives in Chicago, where she is the executive editor for the nonprofit, indie press Black Ocean and the Promotions and Marketing Communications Director for the University of Chicago Press. She is the author of five full-length poetry collections, The Book of Marys and Glaciers (Tupelo 2026); Be the thing of memory (Tolsun Books  2021); Operating Theater (Noctuary Press 2015); Forty-One Jane Doe’s (book and companion DVD, Ahsahta 2013); and Intervening Absence (Ahsahta 2009) in addition to the chapbooks  “Proficiency Badges” (Meeking Press 2020); “Grapple” (above/ground press 2017); “Overture in the Key of F” (above/ground press 2013); and “A Useless Window” (Black Ocean 2007).  She is the curator of the Poetry & Biscuits house reading series, and when she’s not making poetry, she’s likely making biscuits.

CJ Bartunek – C.J. Bartunek is a writer, editor, and photographer living in Athens, Georgia. Her writing has appeared in Oxford American, The Christian Science Monitor, Pacific Standard, and elsewhere. Managing editor and nonfiction editor of the literary journal The Georgia Review, she holds a PhD in English from the University of Georgia and an MFA from UGA’s graduate program in narrative nonfiction through the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

Laura Theobald – Laura Theobald is a production editor at the University of Georgia Press and an English PhD candidate contemplating a creative dissertation at UGA. She is the author of three full-length poetry collections—Salad Days (Maudlin House, 2021), Kokomo (Disorder Press, 2019), and What My Hair Says About You (Metatron, 2017)—plus three chapbooks: “Edna Poems” (Lame House Press, 2016), “The Best Thing Ever” (Boost House, 2015), and “eraser poems” (H_ngm_n Books, 2014). She received an MFA from LSU, where she served as managing editor of the New Delta Review. Her poetry has appeared in jubilat, HTML Giant, The Volta, Hobart, The Atlas Review, Everyday Genius, Big Lucks, and Black Warrior Review, among others, and in anthologies including Women of Resistance (O/R Books, 2018). She is currently working on a fourth poetry collection and a work of autofiction.

Laura Usselman – Laura Usselman is a literary agent at the Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency, where she represents narrative and idea-driven nonfiction and select literary fiction. Some of her notable clients include Sofi Thanhauser, winner of the Whiting Award and author of Worn: A People’s History of Clothing (Pantheon); Kaitlyn Tiffany, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of Everything I Need I Get From You (FSG) and the forthcoming The Housewives Underground (Crown); Katherine Blunt, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her work at the Wall Street Journal and author of the bestselling California Burning (Portfolio); Zoë Schiffer, who leads the business newsroom at WIRED and is the author of Extremely Hardcore : Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter (Portfolio); and Soraya Palmer, whose novel The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts (Catapult) was a finalist for the PEN Open Book Award and winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Before joining SKLA, Laura earned her MFA in Fiction at Virginia Tech and worked in the marketing department of Cambridge University Press. A native of Atlanta and an alum of the University of Georgia, she lives with her spouse and her three daughters in Decatur, Georgia.

Each panelist will talk a little about their professional journey and current role, before answering questions from the panel moderator and panel attendees.

 

Apr 1 • 4:30 pm • Park Hall 265

Postcolonial Collective Lecture: Yogita Goyal

 

Apr 1 • 5 pm • Venue to be confirmed

Conversation – “Innovating the Humanities: Applications with Real Impact”

Apr 2 • 5:30 pm • Ciné

Georgia Museum of Natural History Lecture: Underwater Archaeologist Ashley Lemke

Ashley Lemke is an archaeologist and an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Her visit is presented by the Georgia Museum of Natural History, the department of anthropology, the Laboratory of Archaeology, and the Archaeology Institute of America, in partnership with the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts. It is part of the 2026 UGA Humanities Festival and the Willson Center’s Global Georgia public events series.

Lemke received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Michigan. An expert on submerged ancient sites, she has received grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Her books include Anthropological Archaeology Underwater and The Architecture of Hunting. She has directed research projects in North America and below its waters, including in the Great Lakes and Atlantic Ocean. She has conducted archaeological research in Europe in Germany, Spain, Romania, and Serbia.

Lemke collaborates with computer scientists to explore applications of virtual worlds, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality for archaeological research and discovery. She previously taught at the University of Texas at Arlington, where she received the President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Outstanding Teaching Award for Tenure Track Faculty, and was inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Teachers. Lemke is a past chair of the Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology and Fellow of The Explorers Club.

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