Into the COLAverse

Erika Bsumek, professor in American History and Eugene C. Barker Centennial Chair, shares her journey from histories shared across dinner tables as a child to become a scholar of environmental history, especially focused on consumerism, land resources, dispossession, race relations, and federal policy.

Kiril Avramov, professor in Slavic and Eurasian studies, discusses the relation between politics, information, and psychology, including especially information that’s weaponized in post-Soviet Russia in the 2000s as well as the use of counter digital measures deployed by the people to push back.

Deborah Beck, professor in the department of Classics, shares her journey from her childhood filled with reading Greek myths to her studies of speech and aesthetics in Greek poetry today, especially enriching understanding about how different storytelling devices that shape say the Homeric epic cue and trigger different emotion and thought processes in specifically directed […]

Heather Houser, professor in English, shares insights into her journey to become a scholar of literature and what environmental fiction and nonfiction can shed light on our climate crisis and open new pathways implementing solutions.

Elizabeth “Liz” Scala, professor in English and the Ellen Clayton Garwood Centennial Professor, discusses how her early fascination with the ornate illustrated novels along with Nancy Drew led her to become a scholar of early modern literature. We learn, too, why language, themes, and told-from-margins stories of Chaucer and Shakespeare among others continues to resonate […]