News

Congratulations to Dr. Gioia Woods, Professor of Humanities, on her AZ Humanities micro-grant to support the storytelling workshop Humanities in Action: Pandemic Stories! The micro-grant, awarded during the fall semester, supported a storytelling workshop designed to train community members to record one another's "pandemic stories." Panel participants included an archivist, a Navajo elder and storyteller, a journalist, and an historian. Through the workshop, the audience learned how to collect stories from their fellow community members--health care professionals, teachers, students, elders,…

Faculty News: CCS Professor Dr. Zsuzsanna Gulácsi will present the online lecture, Sideways-Oriented Images of Manichaean and Armenian Liturgical Books, on January 29, 2021. The event will be hosted by East of Byzantium, which is is a partnership between the Arthur H. Dadian and Ara Oztemel Chair of Armenian Art at Tufts University and the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross in Brookline, MA. This lecture will take place live on ZOOM, followed by…

Join the College of Arts & Letters for a conference exploring the impact of the pandemic in April 2021.   Resilience, Resistance, Renovation, and Rebirth Virtual Conference April 22, 23, 29, 30, 2021   What a year? SARS CoV-2 has hit us hard and forced us into a new normal. What is this normal now in the sciences, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics? What has happened to your work, research, and lives that would not have happened without the interruption…

Art History Professor Dr. Alexandra Carpino will present her research in Etruscan iconography at the Archaeological Institute of America's Annual Meeting on January 5, 2021. Her presentation, "Not a Taboo: Maternal Undress in Late Classical Etruscan Mirror Iconography," is part of the Nudity, Costume, and Gender in Etruscan Art Colloquium. Learn more about her presentation in the abstract below. The seminal work of Larissa Bonfante established that nudity not only signified a wide range of concepts in Etruscan iconography –…

Congratulations to Dr. Becky Pratt-Sturges on her chapter, "Visualizing the Medieval Park: Real Spaces and Imagined Places in Le livre de chasse," published this past fall in Reading the Natural World in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Perceptions of the Environment and Ecology (Brepols). From the publisher: From the late 600s to the early 1600s, medieval and early modern people engaged with nature in ways that shaped their sense of place, religion, literature, art, and more. Contributors to this volume…

Please join us in congratulating senior Megan Yurk on her award of Outstanding Senior for Fall 2020 for the department of Comparative Cultural Studies. Megan will graduate with an emphasis in Asian Studies and minors in Art History and the Comparative Cultural Study of Religions and served as a teaching assistant for REL 150 World Religions for several semesters. She was also previously awarded two departmental scholarships and received the Junior Book Prize for the Comparative Study of Religions and…

Please join CCS in congratulating Dr. Björn Krondorfer on the publication of his recent book, Unsettling Empathy: Working with Groups in Conflict, published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers in October. From the publisher: This book is an in-depth reflection and analysis on why and how unsettling empathy is a crucial component in reconciliatory processes. Located at the intersection of memory studies, reconciliation studies, and trauma studies, the book is at its core transdisciplinary, presenting a fresh perspective on how to…

In 2016, a box of photographs and memorabilia was donated to the Martin-Springer Institute of Northern Arizona University (NAU). The cluttered collection contained over 400 photographs and material items related to World War II in Europe. They belonged to U.S. Medical Corp. soldier, James P. Kuykendall. With little information about the contents of the collection and the photographer himself, the Institute created, funded, and supervised a team of NAU students to research and archive the collection.  Comparative Cultural Studies alumni…

During normal circumstances, our Outstanding Senior would be recognized at a banquet hosted by the College of Arts & Letters. We encourage you to recognize Emma's achievements on the CCS Facebook page since we cannot honor Emma at the annual banquet. We are very proud of Emma and all her accomplishments! The Public Humanities faculty nominated CCS major (emphasis in Public Humanities) Emma Parish for the CCS Outstanding Senior award for spring 2020. Dr. Gioia Woods writes "Emma exemplifies what…

Under normal circumstances, the department of Comparative Cultural Studies honors its scholarship recipients and winners of the Junior Book Prize in a ceremony during the spring semester. We are incredibly proud of our students and invite you to congratulate them on their awards on our department Facebook page. Dominic Counihan CCS major (emphasis Comparative Study of Religions) Dominic Counihan will receive the Lakeview United Methodist Scholarship. He is from Tehachapi in California and is also pursuing a major in Military…

Humanities West in San Francisco invited Dr. Carpino to speak at their 2020 series Etruscan Italy: Life and Afterlife. An internationally recognized expert in Etruscan art, Dr. Carpino will present "Quintessentially Etruscan: Art and Architecture from the Villanovan to the Etrusco-Roman Period" on February 29, 2020. Her talk will explore how analysis of Etruscan art reveals a remarkable Mediterranean culture. From the 9th century on, Etruscan and immigrant artists and craftsmen created temples, tombs, vases, jewelry and more for individuals eager to communicate…

It is never too early to decide to advance your degree progress by taking summer courses offered by Comparative Cultural Studies!

The NAU Aspirations website features the hopes, dreams, and goals of Lumberjack students, faculty, and staff. Comparative Cultural Studies Professor of the Comparative Study of Religions and director of the Martin Springer Institute Björn Krondorfer frequently provides students with opportunities to participate in public humanities projects focused on original research. During spring 2020, undergraduate and graduate students began archiving a box of World War II photos donated to the Martin Spring Institute under the direction of Dr. Krondorfer. Learn more…

It is never too early to decide to advance your degree progress by taking summer courses offered by Comparative Cultural Studies!       

Congratulations to CCS Art History alum Margaret Sheble, recipient of the 2020-2021 Helen Ann Mins Robbins Fellowship in Medieval Studies at Rochester University! Margaret Sheble is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Purdue University. Her dissertation project, “Arthurian Women and the Autonomy of Suicide,” argues that suicides in “Arthurian texts reflect wider concerns of ideal heteronormativity, gender roles, and one’s faithfulness to the Arthurian community.” Her investigation of medieval attitudes toward suicide incorporates texts and images from the English, French,…

Lecturer Dr. Becky Pratt-Sturges will be speaking at Arizona State University on October 8 on different kinds of careers for art historians as part of an invited alumni speaking series hosted by the School of Art in Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

Congratulations to Comparative Study of Religions Lecturer Dr. Diana Coleman on her recent article, "El Sur También Existe: Imagining futures" in Cultural Dynamics Volume 31 Issue 4!   Abstract: Guantánamo is infamous as a site of extra-legal detention in the wake of 9/11; more than a single site, it is part of a web of the United States’ militarization operating in the Global South. An area of the military base is now being revitalized as a new camp for climate…

Congratulations to Public Humanities Lecturer Dr. Patrick Pynes! He received the Arizona Forward 2018 Crescordia Award for Environmental Excellence for his collaborative work with the Northern Arizona Pollinator Habitat Initiative (NAPHI). NAPHI won the award for Site Development and Landscape for their innovative work in support of endangered pollinators, such as monarch butterflies, native bees, and honeybees. NAU staff, students, and faculty worked together for two years to support NAPHI's commitment to create, protect, and register pollinator habitats across northern…

Congratulations to art historian Dr. Tara Kohn! She received an honorable mention award for her Fall 2018 essay, "Elevated: Along the Fringes of 291 Fifth Avenue", in the Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art Panorama  in the competition for the Director's Essay Prize at the National Portrait Gallery.    

Congratulations to Public Humanities Professor Gioia Woods on her recent publication Left in the West: Literature, Culture, and Progressive Politics in the American West (University of Nevada Press, 2018)! In this edited collection, Dr. Gioia Woods and her contributors bring together histories, biographies, close readings, and theories about the literary and cultural Left in the American West—as it is distinct from the more often-theorized literary left in major eastern metropolitan centers. Left in the West expands our understanding of what constitutes the literary…