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.

RELIGIOUS STUDIES - A new award is shining a spotlight on the hard work of department leaders at the University of Oregon. The Office of the Provost is recognizing Mark Unno and Gretchen Soderlund as the Outstanding Department Heads of 2022. Both winners will receive a $5,000 award.

THEATRE ARTS - Before “Stranger Things,” there was “She Kills Monsters,” a 2011 coming-of-age drama-comedy brimming with Mind Flayers and Bulettes, also known as landsharks, and an array of other monsters and heroes drawn from the popular role-play game Dungeons & Dragons.

ENGLISH - Ben Saunders was voted best professor for the second year in a row. He is professor of Comics and Cartoon Studies.

ENGLISH - Ben Saunders has co-founded and directs University of Oregon’s minor in Comic and Cartoon Studies (the first undergraduate minor of its kind in the country), and he is a book editor, author and curator of numerous museum exhibits, including the latest hosted at OMSI.

ENGLISH - Life rarely follows a linear narrative. It zigs. Sometimes it zags. Just ask Lidia Yuknavitch—teacher, lecturer, and best-selling author of Thrust and soon-to-be feature film, The Chronology of Water—whose fierce and fragmentary form of storytelling took root at the University of Oregon.

LINGUISTICS - Two University of Oregon linguistics professors have received funding from the National Science Foundation for a collaborative seminar, Research Experiences for Undergraduates, to be conducted over three summers.

Seven faculty members have been recognized for their exceptional teaching with the 2022 Distinguished Teaching Awards. Recipients of the University of Oregon annual awards are tia north, Katie Lynch, Keli Yerian, Michael Aronson, Lara Bovilsky, David Steinberg and Tina Starr.

University of Oregon alumnae are changing the face of public service. We look to the women highlighted in this article to govern nations, lead at the highest level of the military, interpret the law, determine the constitutionality of the law, and apply it to individual cases, and serve the public in state and local government.

FOLKLORE - When folklorist Michael Atwood Mason walks into work each day, he’s greeted by the legendary Emancipation Proclamation room, where President Lincoln wrote his famous 1863 presidential speech. As CEO and executive director of the Lincoln Cottage, Mason plays a pivotal role in the operations of the National Trust for Historic Preservation site.