Faculty News

Dr. Richard Armstrong has been appointed a visiting scholar at the Institute for the Medical Humanities at The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston. Armstrong will be at UTMB while on leave in fall 2012, working to complete his next book, Theory and Theatricality: Classical Drama and Early Psychoanalysis.

Dr. Cynthia Freeland has just returned from a trip to Australia where she delivered the annual lecture at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. As publicity for the lecture, Freeland did interviews for ABC radio in Sydney on the hour-long, nationally-syndicated Margaret Throsby show, for ABC’s local station in Canberra, and for the Canberra Times newspaper. She also gave a talk at Sydney University to SHAPE, a faculty group dedicated to philosophy of Society, History, Aesthetics, Politics, and the Environment. While in Australia, Freeland also took the opportunity to visit Ayers Rock in the outback, where she especially enjoyed a sunset camel tour.

Dr. Gabriela Maya’s play, Unendurable Story, has been chosen for the Mildred’s Umbrella Museum of Dysfunction festival of short plays.

Dr. Kimberly Meyer was awarded a one-month fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center, where she will work uninterrupted on her writing projects for the summer of 2012. Founded by artists in 1984, the Vermont Studio Center is the largest international artists’ and writers’ residency program in the United States, hosting 50 writers and visual artists each month from across the country and around the world.

Dr. David Mikics was named a John and Rebecca Moores Distinguished Professor this year. The Art of the Sonnet (written with Stephen Burt) came out in paperback from Harvard/Belknap, and The Annotated Emerson, a book edited by Mikics, is forthcoming. The Annotated Emerson is a richly illustrated reader’s edition of Emerson’s selected writings, designed for both the scholar and the beginning reader of Emerson. “David Mikics’s Annotated Emerson is the best possible introduction to Emerson’s prose and poetry,” wrote Harold Bloom.

Dr. Tamler Sommers, professor of philosophy, will be releasing Relative Justice: Cultural Diversity, Free Will, and Moral Responsibility with Princeton University Press in 2012. Wrote Shaun Nichols of the University of Arizona, “Many philosophers and social scientists have powerful, provocative ideas, and many are captivating writers. Few have both talents. Tamler Sommers is one of the few. This book is brash, fascinating, and a delight to devour.”

In November, Sommers also presented a TEDx talk in Utrecht, Holland, on moral persuasion. You may view it at TheHonorsCollege.com/news.

Dr. Jonathan Zecher, who joined the Human Situation faculty in fall 2011, is newly relocated to Houston from Durham, England, where he just completed his Ph.D. in historical theology.

Staff News

The Honors College bids a fond farewell to Laurie Cedilnik and Shannon Parrish Singleterry. Laurie is working on a Ph.D. in creative writing in Michigan, while Shannon relocated to Austin with her husband Dana. Honors also welcomes Lucy M. Bonner as Dean Bill Monroe’s executive assistant. Lucy returns to the Houston area with degrees from The University of Texas and the University of York.