UNT CLASS Dean

Meet the CLASS Advisory Board Faculty Award Nominees

The University of North Texas College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Faculty Council has announced the twenty nominees for the 2023 CLASS Advisory Board Faculty Award.

All tenure-system CLASS faculty members are eligible, but previous recipients are not eligible for nomination during the five years following receipt of the award. UNT faculty must be nominated by their department chair, and each department may submit only one nomination per year.
The 20 finalists, as well as their department and titles, are listed below.

Undergraduate
1. Diego Esparza, Assistant Professor, Political Science
2. Brittany McElroy, Senior Lecturer, Mayborn
3. Rachel Moran, Associate Professor, History
4. Megan Morrissey, Associate Professor, Communication Studies
5. Caroline Najour, Senior Lecturer, World Languages, Literatures, & Cultures
6. Matthew Painter, Professor, Sociology

Graduate
1. Christophe Chaguinian, Associate Professor, World Languages, Literatures, & Cultures
2. Jeffrey Doty, Associate Professor, English
3. Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha, Professor, Political Science
4. Phoebe Ho, Assistant Professor, Sociology
5. Myungsup Kim, Associate Professor, Economics
6. Michael Wise, Associate Professor, History

Research
1. Adam Chamberlin, Associate Professor, Dance and Theatre
2. Jacqueline Foertsch, Professor, English
3. Ronald Kwon, Assistant Professor, Sociology
4. Joseph McGlynn, Associate Professor Communication Studies
5. Todd Moye, Professor, History
6. Terra Schwerin Rowe, Associate Professor, Philosophy & Religion
7. Christoph Weber, Associate Professor, World Languages, Literatures, & Cultures
8. Xi Yang, Assistant Professor, Economics

The field will be narrowed down to nine finalists from each of the three categories, which will then be presented to the CLASS Advisory Board who will review the finalists and select an honoree from each category.

Entering its sixth year, the CLASS Advisory Board Faculty Award reception is scheduled for Tuesday, November 7, 2023, from 5:30 p.m. in the UNT Union Ballroom 333. The event is free and open to the public.

The Advisory Board provides guidance and support to CLASS in its mission of transforming the lives of its students, advancing the boundaries of knowledge, and supporting the economic development of Texas.

Bernardo Vargas Awarded the Crossing Latinidades Mellon Humanities Fellowship

The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Latina/o and Mexican American Studies program awarded Bernardo Vargas and Vanessa Ramirez recipients of the Crossing Latinidades Mellon Humanities Fellowship.

Vargas a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Philosophy and Religion was nominated by the University of North Texas and was one of the 30 Crossing Latinidades Mellon Fellowship for the 2023-2024 academic year, which is part of the Crossing Latinidades Humanities Research Initiative directed by the University of Illinois Chicago.

Vargas, a current teaching assistant interests lies in Philosophy of Race, Decoloniality, Environmental Justice, Mexican-American Philosophy, Latinx Philosophy, and Social & Political Philosophy will receive a two semester and a summer term stipend totaling $30,000.

Bernardo earned his master's in philosophy from Houston Christian University and a bachelors in communication studies from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi

Crossing Latinidades is a cross-institutional and cross-regional comparative research training of doctoral students, and new scholarship in emerging areas of inquiry about Latinos.

Mayborn Alum Austin Hedgecoth Received National SPJ Excellence Award

The University of North Texas alum Austin Hedgecoth received the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) 2022 Mark of Excellence Award in the broadcast field after taking first place as SPJ’s best collegiate journalist in Region 8.

The recent graduate (May 2023) won the honor for Television In-Depth Reporting on Crypto's final frontier while a senior with North Texas Television (ntTV) housed in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS) Mayborn School of Journalism.

Hedgecoth held several posts with ntTV including broadcast equipment manager, multi-media journalist/producer, and rounded out as the director of news media content.

Hedgecoth has in-depth experience in writing, reporting, producing, filming, and editing for print, digital, and broadcast. He has covered primaries, midterms, state fairs, holidays, breaking
news, developing stories, and more.

The national SPJ honor recognizes collegiate work published or broadcast during 2022. This year, 61 students and staff from 37 universities across the United States and Canada are being recognized as national winners.

Hedgecoth will advance to the contest for the Mark of Excellence Awards (MOEy) Best in Show, SPJ’s top prize given to students who entered the 2022 MOE awards competition.

The MOEy and two Corbin Gwaltney Awards for Best All-Around Student Newspaper will be presented during the Sigma Delta Chi awards ceremony at 7 p.m. EDT on June 17. The virtual event can be viewed here.

About Frank W. and Sue Mayborn School of Journalism CLASS Mayborn School of Journalism at the University of North Texas can help start you on the road to success, no matter where your future leads. We offer state-of-the-art technology in our studios and a wealth of opportunities for career advancement.

Chris Abani "Smoking the Bible" has won the 2023 UNT Rilke Prize

Chris Abani's Smoking the Bible (Copper Canyon Press) has won the 2023 UNT Rilke Prize. The $10,000 prize recognizes a book written by a mid-career poet and published in the preceding year that demonstrates exceptional artistry and vision. Abani will visit UNT in October 4-5, 2023 for a reading and book signing.

In his most recent collection, Smoking the Bible, Chris Abani memorializes--through the imaginative journey that poems so often take--a brother who has been given the diagnosis of "Terminal." Alongside this commitment to elegize a loved one is a second voyage. Often in brief portraits, poems diminutive as carved cameos, Abani writes of migrations to new countries and continents, of leaving behind a homeland that is both "wound and suture," a lost landscape whose "persistent aftertaste" follows the speaker everywhere he goes. Smoking the Bible is a book intent on understanding nostalgia, a word that burns with pain and grief, but one that also suggests the "flutter of release." Evocative, rich with sensory detail, Abani's poems transport the reader from Nigeria to America's Midwest, ranging between memory, dream, and revelatory vision. At its heart, Smoking the Bible worries about
acts of translation, how difficult it is to translate languages and cultures. And, beyond that, how we struggle to translate the past into present. "I promise / to walk with you as far as I can," the speaker tells his dying brother, the space between death and the living the most difficult translation of all.

Abani's other poetry collections are Sanctificum (Copper Canyon, 2010) There Are No Names for Red (Red Hen, 2010), Feed Me the Sun - Collected Long Poems (Peepal Tree Press, 2010), Hands Washing Water (Copper Canyon, 2006), Dog Woman (Red Hen, 2004), Daphne's Lot (Red Hen, 2003), and Kalakuta Republic (Saqi, 2001). His prose includes The Face, A Cartography of The Void (Restless Books, 2016), The Secret History of Las Vegas (Penguin, 2014) The Virgin of Flames (Penguin, 2007) Song for Night (Akashic, 2007), Becoming Abigail (Akashic, 2006), GraceLand (FSG, 2004), and Masters of the Board (Delta, 1985).

He is the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Beyond the Margins Award, the PEN Hemingway Book Prize, a Guggenheim Award, a Ford Foundation Artists Fellowship, a Middleton Fellowship, an Edgar Prize, a Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Award, a Finalist for the Dublin IMPAC Award, and Finalist for the PEN/Voeckler Award.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University where he directs the Creative Writing Program and the Program for African Studies.

The judges also selected three finalists for the 2023 UNT Rilke Prize: Dana Levin's Now Do You Know Where You Are (Copper Canyon Press), Victoria Redel's Paradise (Four Way Books), and Sean Singer's Today in the Taxi (Tupelo Press).

The UNT Rilke Prize, offered by Creative Writing and the Department of English, was founded in 2011. For more information about the prize and our previous winners visit: english.unt.edu

Christoph Weber Completes UNT Faculty Leadership Fellow Program

Dr. Christoph Weber with the Department of World Languages, Literatures, & Cultures with the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences completed the University of North Texas Leadership Fellows program.

The Office of the Provost hosted Dr. Weber and its six cohorts at a recent completion ceremony after completing the year-long program.

Since its inception in 2008, the UNT Leadership Fellows program support individual and organizational skill-building. The chosen fellows participate in various activities including meetings with senior-level administrators, professional conferences, conducting campus tours, receiving executive coaching, and self-reflection. The program helps identify, foster, and support emerging leaders as they prepare to further their leadership trajectory and offers cohorts the opportunity to engage with campus leaders in targeted discussions regarding current campus issues and build leadership skills.

Dr. Weber, an associate professor specializes in eighteenth and twentieth-century German literature and aesthetic theory, with a special interest in the cultural representation of nature in literature and fine arts. He is completing a book project on the literary representation of natural disasters in 18th-century German texts.

To learn more about the UNT Faculty Leadership Fellows program, visit: vpaa.unt.edu/fs/development/lf

CLASS Land Six Graduates on UNT's Spring Great Grads List

The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences received six University of North Texas Great Grads during its spring 2023 class.

During each semester, the program is led by the University Brand Strategy and Communications seeking nominations campus-wide for graduating students. Graduates that meet the requirements can be nominated by faculty, staff, and administration.

CLASS graduates Skyla Love Acrey (Integrative Studies), Khatib Lyles (Psychology), Aza Pace (English), Noah Ray (Geography & the Environment), Riley Sprowl (Integrative Studies and Sociology), and Victoria “Tori” Stewart (Journalism) were named to the list of 34. The recent CLASS alumni shared their achievements, and stories in hopes to inspire and encourage others to strive for success of their own.

This year’s class of Great Grads marks the largest number of honorees named to the list since its inception in the Spring of 2018.

To read their story visit class.unt.edu

UNT IAA Fellows Professors Crafting New Music, Art Inspired By Historic Events

From a multi-suite musical work based on the historical events of 2020 and an exhibition on the bolo tie to a project documenting the story of Denton through a community-designed performance, three University of North Texas professors will be pursuing creative research projects in the next year as the 2023-24 Institute for the Advancement of the Arts Faculty Fellows.

UNT is committed to fostering creativity and launched the IAA in 2009 to support and advance excellence in the visual, performing, creative and literary arts. Each year, the university selects professors to be part of the Faculty Fellows program, which enables UNT faculty to focus on creative endeavors for a semester and then bring their enhanced perspectives to teaching.

The 2023-24 IAA Faculty Fellows are:

Quincy Davis | Music inspired by COVID-19 and George Floyd

Davis, an associate professor of percussion in the College of Music Division of Jazz Studies, will create a new musical composition for a large ensemble called Empathy Suite, which is influenced by the confluence of two world events in 2020 that have affected everyone in some way – the COVID-19 pandemic and the death of George Floyd. Once complete, the multi-suite work will be performed by students and faculty musicians on the UNT campus and potentially at other venues.

“The ideas, melodies, grooves, and sounds of Empathy Suite were born directly from the realization that often music is a healer. It can help people come together and truly see one another in a more compassionate and empathetic way,” Davis says.

Davis is a jazz drummer, composer and educator who has extensive experience writing for large ensembles, including two original arrangements performed by UNT’s own One O’Clock Lab Band. Over the years, he has toured and played on numerous albums from the jazz industry’s top musicians. In addition to his work as an educator, Davis continues to perform both locally and internationally.

Ana M. Lopez | Bolo tie art and exhibition

Lopez, an associate professor in the College of Visual Arts and Design Department of Studio Art, will explore the expressive potential of the bolo tie, its history in relation to marginalized communities and current relevance as a gender-neutral form of adornment. Background research will be conducted in Phoenix, Arizona, in the Billie Jane Baguley Library and Archives at the Heard Museum, which houses a collection of bolo ties and extensive records relating to their makers. This research will bring about a new art piece as well as be the basis for Everybody’s Bolos, a traveling exhibition of contemporary interpretations of the bolo tie along with an accompanying catalog essay.

“On a deeper level this exhibition is about recognizing stereotypes, exploring them, and expanding beyond their limitations through the agency and inclusivity of craft,” Lopez says.

Lopez is a metalsmith, educator, and decorative arts scholar. Her creative work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum in Mesa, Arizona, and the National Ornamental Metal Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. She is the author of the reference book Metalworking Through History: An Encyclopedia as well as numerous other scholarly articles. Previously, she served as a member of the Fulbright Specialist Roster and was selected for a 2019 Maker-Creator Fellowship at the Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library.

Priscilla Ybarra | Telling stories of city and place in Denton

Ybarra, an associate professor in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Department of English, will design a public humanities project integrating the local community around UNT to tell the story of the city and of the place. This includes documenting histories of beauty — the rivers and creeks that feed the soil, the variety of birds who migrate through the skies and the people who create networks of care and communion. The work also will reckon with histories of violence that shape the place and tell the stories of the many peoples who have inhabited the Denton area, including documenting the little-known histories of the Black, Indigenous and Latinx populations. Oral histories, collaborations with community groups and community meetings will help determine the narratives that will be emphasized in a community-designed performance envisioned for Spring 2024.

“We have a lot of stories to tell in this community, and I suspect we will not get to share as much as we would like with this first community-led performance, but I hope we can continue the work in the following years,” Ybarra says.

Ybarra specializes in contemporary Chicana/o literature and ecocriticism. Her award-winning book, Writing the Goodlife: Mexican American Literature and the Environment, is the first study to engage a long-range environmental literary history of Chicana/o writing. In 2021-22, she was named the Clements Senior Fellow for the Study of Southwestern America as well as a member of the inaugural class of the Rethink Outside Fellowship, which elevates and supports leaders and storytellers who transform the outdoor equity narrative.

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