The Kendall College of Arts & Sciences faculty advance discovery and solve real-world problems while producing the next generation of leaders. They have published hundreds of books and thousands of articles and are internationally known for their scholarship and creative endeavors. Although we cannot begin to showcase everyone, here are a few faculty research project highlights.
Elana Newman
Sirens wail as a story of trauma unfolds, but before the ambulances arrive, journalists are already on the scene. Journalists are not traditional first responders, but during a tragedy, they are the eyes and ears of the community, which means they cannot look away. TU McFarlin Professor of Psychology Elana Newman is the research director at the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.
Ben Peters
As a universe of infinite exploration, the internet is the new world frontier, but America has merely skimmed the undeveloped potential of cyberspace. In his new book, How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet, Assistant Professor of Media Studies Ben Peters explains why America pioneered the internet before the Soviet Union, but he also highlights the Soviets’ innovative ideas that could reimagine the confines of the internet.
Miriam Belmaker
Miriam Belmaker asks questions. As an assistant professor of anthropology, she has dedicated her life to bold and intrinsic questions on human evolution. What makes us human? This summer, Belmaker traveled to Kazakhstan and South China in search of answers.
Joseph Rivers
E.W. Marland was a risk taker. From oil drilling to running for political office, Marland bid high and let fortune write his story. Seventy-six years after his death, TU’s J. Donald Feagin Professor of Music and Professor of Film Studies Joseph Rivers sets that story to music in the documentary “High Stakes: The Life and Times of E.W. Marland.”
Dennis Denisoff
How have humans understood their intimacy with nature? And how have they tried to explain its mysterious hold over us? In his most recent books, Decadent Ecology in British Literature and Art, 1860-1910 (Cambridge UP, 2022) and Arthur Machen: Decadent and Occult Works (MHRA, 2018), McFarlin Chair of English Dennis Denisoff brings the environmental humanities in contact with modern pagan and occult culture.
Gaurav Kampani
Gaurav Kampani does not like gaps in research, and with his 2017 Faculty Development Summer Fellowship, he seeks to fill in some answers by investigating the second nuclear arms race and India’s civil-military relations. “A lot of research comes out of the irritation of wanting to do something better or seeing something that needs to be fixed,” Kampani said.