Greetings from the Dean 2018
By Kevin J. O'Brien
Dean of Humanities
Each year, the PLU Division of Humanities puts together a collection of stories into Prism, offering a few reflections of the great work our faculty do in classrooms and beyond.
This year’s stories will introduce you to a new Philosophy professor, a Nordic Studies professor who returned to teach at his alma mater, and our new Director of the Scandinavian Cultural Center. You will get to know faculty scholarship as it happens on twitter and in the archives of Yale, and read about a student-faculty collaboration focused on ultrarunning and religion. You will read about the political work of some of our English faculty and their families, and you will learn from a conversation about teaching between two of our Language instructors. Finally, you can read my update on our Classics program.
A new aspect of Prism this year is that our students have taken a larger role in producing it. Most of the stories were written by students who studied Creative Nonfiction with Professor Wendy Call in ENGL 320 and ENGL 425. The digital layout and publication of each story was handled by Matthew Salzano, a Student Assistant in the Division and a tutor in our Digital Humanities lab. Like everything we do, Prism is an explicit collaboration between faculty and students. We are so proud of their great work, and so grateful for the excellent people we have the privilege of working with.
I hope you’ll enjoy these glimpses into what the PLU Division of Humanities has been up to. And I hope you’ll follow up with me (obrien@plu.edu) if you have any updates about how these stories strike you or how you yourself are using the skills you learned at PLU.
All best,
Kevin J. O’Brien
Dean of Humanities