College of Humanities & Earth and Social Sciences

Hollywood writer and producer Calvin Brown Jr. is serving as the 2017 Africana Studies Artist-in-Residence from March 13-March 23, 2017. Brown, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduate and native Charlottean, Brown will guest lecture in classes, meet with students in a brown bag question-and-answer session, and work with select students to produce a short film on the history of the Africana Studies Department.

For his leadership in foreign language education throughout North Carolina and nationally, UNC Charlotte’s Bobby Hobgood has received a “lifetime achievement award” as the recipient of a Foreign Language Association of North Carolina Honorary Life Member Award.

Nancy Gutierrez, dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at UNC Charlotte, has been named a trustee of the North Carolina Humanities Council for a three-year term. The organization provides ways for North Carolinians to engage with one another through the humanities. All the programs support lifetime learning in North Carolina through the humanities, especially literature, history, art, music and philosophy.

Allison Stedman, associate professor of French at UNC Charlotte, has received a prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship to complete a book project with relevance for understanding mind-body connections, the history of medicine, miracles, mysticism, holism, and metaphysical theology. The year-long fellowship will support the outcome of in-depth research to be conducted at the Arsenal Library and the French National Library in Paris, France for a book she is writing.

Drug use is the main motivation for women who burglarize, while money ranks as the top motivation for male burglars, new UNC Charlotte research has found. The study, published in the January 2017 Journal of Drug Issues, was led by Criminal Justice and Criminology Professor Joseph B. Kuhns and is one of the few that interprets data from both male and female burglars.

A Confucius Institute will open at UNC Charlotte in summer 2017 to broaden the University’s outreach and support for language instruction and cultural opportunities in the Charlotte community. UNC Charlotte will establish the Confucius Institute within the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences in the Department of Languages and Culture Studies.

UNC Charlotte alumna Brenda Tindal, who is Levine Museum of the New South staff historian, sees history as a way to build community, while deepening our understanding of the past’s persistent influence. Tindal takes seriously her role as one of the most prominent public historians in the Charlotte region and the role the Levine Museum plays in community conversations.

Navigating the world’s oceans of data can prove daunting. It is not enough to simply amass and access vast quantities of data; researchers have learned the importance of understanding and using data in purposeful ways. To make the most of these opportunities, the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences earlier this year joined the UNC Charlotte Data Science Initiative.

The ancient texts that tell their secrets to UNC Charlotte researcher John C. Reeves inhabit the twilight realms of cosmic arcana, apocalyptic fervor, and religious dualism of Late Antiquity and the Medieval Era. “It’s really the thrill of solving mysteries that keeps me going,” says Reeves, UNC Charlotte Blumenthal Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies.

The days and weeks following the September 20, 2016 police shooting of African-American Charlottean Keith Lamont Scott saw peaceful protests on campus and research- and scholarship-driven responses by faculty, alumni and students at UNC Charlotte. Among those responses, UNC Charlotte researchers Cherie Maestas and Sara Levens are exploring how the emotions of members of the community translated to action following news of the shooting.