GENERAL SOCIAL SCIENCES, POLITICAL SCIENCE – Alum Irisa Mehta '23 wanted to be a voice for others, to be a representative for those who face the educational barrier of understanding our criminal justice system. She took on two majors and two minors to make sure she was prepared for anything. She learned a lot academically and about how to have fun.

INDIGENOUS, RACE, AND ETHNIC STUDIES; NATIVE AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES - Kirby Brown, along with co-editors Stephen Ross and Alana Sayers, win the Modernist Studies Association award for Best Edited Collection for the "Routledge Handbook of North American Indigenous Modernisms."

INDIGENOUS, RACE, AND ETHNIC STUDIES; NATIVE AMERICAN AND INDIGENOUS STUDIES-In a special surprise delivered straight to their classrooms, eight professors learned they won a 2023 Distinguished Teaching Award. The Distinguished Teaching Awards recognize exceptional teaching that is inclusive, engaged and research-informed. This year’s winners are Jocelyn Hollander, Faith Barter, Alex Zunterstein, Kirby Brown, Robin Hopkins, Tannaz Farsi, Patricia Rodley and Michael Moffitt.

The UO’s Environment Initiative has awarded seed funding to five new teaching projects to support faculty members who have proposed innovative courses and dynamic classroom experiences. The funding supports both research and curricular projects and focuses the intellectual energy and work of faculty, students and community partners on a just and livable future through transdisciplinary research, teaching and experiential learning.

With research showing that young people are increasingly stressed by the effects of climate change, an expert on how to ease that anxiety will speak at the UO as this year’s Kritikos Lecturer. Author and researcher Britt Wray will share practical tips and strategies for productively dealing with emotions, living with climate trauma, and strengthening communities.

THEATRE ARTS - Although schools had been desegregated since the 1954 landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling, the law had been largely ignored in Durham, North Carolina — until 1971, when a Black community activist and a Klansman were thrown together to find a solution. The stage is the setting for their epic confrontation in University Theatre’s upcoming production “The Best of Enemies.”

THEATRE ARTS, ANTHROPOLOGY, CINEMA STUDIES - March into spring with an array of events sure to inspire and speak to your inner artist. Learn about the history, symbolism and process of creating pysanka, one of the most recognizable folk art forms for celebrating Easter in Ukraine. Or take in one of the many programs in the music and dance departments at the School of Music and Dance.

Faculty members have until March 27 to submit letters of intent for the 2023 Incubating Interdisciplinary Initiatives award program, which funds new, multidisciplinary research projects. Past recipients of the award, known as I3, have successfully leveraged the funding to build foundations for long-term progress and new areas of research.

COMPUTER SCIENCE, ENGLISH, HISTORY - Six UO faculty members were selected for Fulbright Scholars awards, helping the University of Oregon earn recognition as a top Fulbright producing institution from the U.S. Department of State the 2022-23 academic year. Four of the six Fulbright Scholar recipients have accepted placements for the 2022-23 academic year.

The College of Arts and Sciences faculty are engaged in a great number of research projects across our three divisions, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities. Across our college’s more than 50 departments and programs, over $75 million in grant dollars are at work uncovering answers to some of the world’s most pressing questions.

February is Black History Month, and many special events are planned on campus. A variety of film screenings include titles such as “Black Orpheus,” “Talking Black in America,” James Blue’s award-winning film “The March,” and Duck After Dark’s screening of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”

ENGLISH - Two University of Oregon faculty members received the 2022 Presidential Fellowship in Arts and Humanities. Each recipient will receive a $25,000 award to support their creative and scholarly work.

THEATRE ARTS - “It’s about soccer; there’s plenty of soccer in the play,” said director Tricia Rodley, an instructor in the Department of Theatre Arts, “but it’s also about the conversations these young women have.”

ENGLISH - Helen Southworth was awarded a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant of $180,000 (2018-2023) and, more recently, another from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (230,000 Pounds (2021-2024), which allows her to continue to work on her collaborative digital humanities project called the Modernist Archives Publishing Project (MAPP).

ENGLISH, CREATIVE WRITING - Turns out that even in space, politics feel just like they do at home. Partisan tribes living on a moon of Jupiter shout at one another in the sci-fi world of Invisible Things, the new novel by Mat Johnson, an author, screenwriter, and Philip H. Knight Chair at the University of Oregon.