Faculty Experts Roundup

• Jess Baldwin, assistant professor of instruction (voice), performed in the sold-out "Dylan Goes Acoustic" benefit for the Parkersburg Art Center. The evening brought together leading Appalachian artists for intimate, acoustic re-interpretations of Bob Dylan’s songs. In addition to Baldwin, featured performers included Mike Morningstar, Mountain Stage’s Larry Groce, Donnie Davisson and Chris Davisson of the Davisson Brothers Band, Jake Eddy, OYO, and Nick Davisson.
• Wade Elkins, interim music director in the School of Theater, is performing as Harry Heywood in Milwaukee Rep’s production of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” a live radio play. Two OHIO alumni join Elkins on this show: Jonathan Hetler (MFA '19) is the director and Bentley Heydt (MFA '19) is the lighting designer.

• Associate Professor John Brobst contributed an invited chapter entitled, "Mackinder’s Game, Mahan’s Rules: Classical Geopolitics and the United States Navy in the Cold War," to “Geopolitics and War,” edited by Jeremy Black (Rome: Società Italiana di Storia Militare, 2025). This volume brings together 19 diplomatic and military historians from across Europe and the United States to mark the 120th anniversary of Halford Mackinder’s seminal paper, “The Geographical Pivot of History.”
• Ed Chang, associate professor in English, published:
  • “Video Games, Literature, and Close Playing: A Practical Guide,” co-authored with Timothy J. Welsh, Routledge, 2025.
  • “Roll with Advantage: Creative, Collaborative, and Critical Responses to Dungeons & Dragons,” edited by Suzanne Richardson, Play Story Press, 2025.
• Mariana Dantas, associate professor in the Department of History, presented a paper on “Black Women, Property Ownership, and Generational Wealth in the Early Modern Portuguese Empire” at the Global Urban History Project Conference in Berlin. As a member of the conference program committee, Dantas also helped organize the event, which took place July 10-11, at the Center for Metropolitan Studies of the Technische Universität Berlin. The conference represents the culmination of work she and her fellow GUHP colleagues have been doing since the pandemic supporting young scholars in the field of global urban history. The conference included presentations from some contributing authors to the forthcoming “Oxford Handbook of Global Urban History” that Dantas is co-editing with Carl Nightingale (University at Buffalo) and Alexia Yates (European University Institute).
• Assistant Professor Emerita Miriam Hart and Samuel and Susan Crowl Professorship in English Literature Linda Zionkowski’s book “Women and Music in the Age of Austen” (Bucknell/Rutgers University Press, 2024) has won the 2025 Ruth A. Solie Award from the American Musicological Society for “a collection of musicological essays of exceptional merit edited by a scholar or scholars.” International in focus, the AMA is the premier society of musicologists in the United States. Read an interview with the authors.
• Gary Holcomb, professor of African American Literature, published “Letters in Exile” (Yale University Press) with co-author Brooks E. Hefner. The book is a collection of private correspondence from one of the Harlem Renaissance’s brightest and most radical voices, the Jamaican-born, queer author Claude McKay. LitHub included “Letters in Exile” on its Most Anticipated Books of 2025 list.
  • Holcomb’s history of McKay scholarship goes back a long way. Find out more
• Alec Holcombe, associate professor and director of the Contemporary History Institute, and  Chester Pach, professor in the Department of History, published essays in the three-volume “Cambridge History of the Vietnam War” (2025). Pach’s essay, "The US News Media and Vietnam" analyzes "a war within a war," the conflict between journalists who reported about the problems with the US war effort and officials in the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations who considered those stories inaccurate, sensational or malicious. Holcombe’s chapter, "Building Socialism in North Vietnam After Geneva," examines state construction in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam during the late 1950s. The publication of the Cambridge history coincided with the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.
• Nancy Manring, associate professor and director of the Environmental Science and Sustainability program, published “A World of Wounds: Rebuilding a Bipartisan Environmental Movement and Cultivating Authentic Hope” (Stanford University Press). The book explores the history of the environmental movement in the United States and “maps out realistic strategies for rebuilding a bipartisan environmental movement.”
• Jaclyn Maxwell, professor and chair of the Department of History, traveled to Göttingen, Germany in June to give an invited paper at a conference organized by the Georg-August Universität. The conference focused on one of the most important texts from Late Antiquity: “The Life of Antony” by Athanasius the bishop of Alexandria. Maxwell’s paper examined the influence of this text on a lesser-known ascetic who established a monastery outside of Constantinople in the early fifth century.
• Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of History Paul Milazzo was an invited participant in May in a roundtable on "Teaching Conservatism in the University Classroom" at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. His was the closing session of a week-long seminar on "The Conservative Intellectual Tradition" attended by over 20 faculty members from across the country. As part of the program, he shared his syllabus for HIST 3106, "The History of American Conservatism" and wrote a 1200-word essay based on his presentation that will be published on AEI's website.
• Associate Professor of History Miriam Shadis organized and presented at a Symposium in Honor of Marie M. Kelleher, held at the Palau de Lloctinet (the old Crown of Aragon Archive) in Barcelona, on July 3.
• Kirstine Taylor, associate professor in political science and the Center for Law, Justice & Culture, published “Sunbelt Capitalism and the Making of the Carceral State” (University of Chicago Press). The book tells “the story of how the American South became the most incarcerated region in the world’s most incarcerated nation.”

• Laura Harrison, department chair, Counseling and Higher Education, and professor, and Professor Pete Mather, collaborated as co-editors of the New Directions for Teaching and Learning Issue on Rehumanizing Higher Education.
  • Mather, Mychael Block and Augustine Gyekye co-authored “Teaching Appreciative Education” with Patton student Raghad Al-khazraji. The article was published in the Journal of Appreciative Education (Vol. 12, Issue 2).
• Stephen Harvey, professor in the Department of Recreation, Sport Pedagogy, and Consumer Sciences, presented a Science Explained session titled "Teaching Games for Understanding" for the FIFA Training Center in August. FIFA is the governing body for association football and is in charge of hosting major international competitions such as the World Cup.
  • Full Session
  • Part two Q&A
• Assistant Professor of Instruction in Counseling and Higher Education DeQuindre Hughes has been chosen as one of the North Central Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (NCACES) 2025-2026 Emerging Leaders.
• Medea Loibl, director of OHIO Career Ready Campus (Aspire), was selected as the winner of this year's Ohio Association for Adult and Continuing Education (OAACE) Member Scholarship. She also serves on the OAACE Board of Directors as the Special Interest Director for Adult Education.
• Jen Newton, associate professor, shared a recorded conversation about teacher preparation and the Department of Education, “Why We Need to Blend General and Special Education Teacher Training.”
  • Newton was the General Session Speaker at the annual Sharing a Vision 2025 conference that was held Oct. 8-10 in East Peoria, IL. Her talk was titled “Dismantling Barriers to Inclusion and Belonging.”
    • Session description: “We have a lot to unlearn about disability and ableist biases and beliefs. Inclusion with full participation in family and community activities begins with infants and toddlers. This presentation will provide vocabulary and strategies for unlearning deficit-based beliefs about disability and promoting environments and opportunities for full inclusion.”
• Marcquis Parham, assistant director of career and employer engagement, joined with Imants Jaunarajs to present "Brain-Based Career Development" for the Midwest ACE on Nov. 12. They shared a model that explores how our brains handle decision-making and action-taking—and how to avoid becoming overwhelmed by information overload.
• Associate Professor Jacqueline Yahn recently delivered a powerful presentation to the Ohio Education Policy Leadership Program Fellows during their multi-day study tour in Southeast Ohio. The session was titled “Bridging Rural Schools, Communities, and Universities,” and focused on building partnerships that connect education and employment across rural communities.

University Communications and Marketing is excited to introduce a refreshed approach to the Faculty Newsmakers honors that ensures the recognition is more timely, relevant and can highlight even more faculty. Each month, we will spotlight those, through social media and OHIO Today, who have made notable appearances in the news, culminating in a year-end recognition of all honorees.

September Faculty Newsmakers

October Faculty Newsmakers

November Faculty Newsmakers