Congratulations Corner

Soaring Beyond in Excellence

At Georgia Southern, we celebrate the achievements that inspire us to reach new heights. The Congratulations Corner is your space to spotlight the incredible work happening across our campuses—whether it’s earning accolades, publishing impactful research, or receiving noteworthy appointments.

Let’s continue to soar together! Share your success stories with Mary Kate Allen at mallen@georgiasouthern.edu to be featured in the next newsletter.

These are the successes highlighted in the latest edition of Excellence in Action.

Publications

WCHP/COE/CAH/JPHCOPH/University Libraries

Brady, Anna (COE), Botnaru, Diana (WCHP), Alt, Kasie (CAH), Moldavan, Alesia (COE), Mesenbrink-Sainz, Jacquelyn (JPHCOPH), Nafziger, Bailey (COE), Reagan, Kevin (University Libraries), Rich, Leigh (WCHP) published the article  ”Understanding the Influence of Intelligent Agents on Students’ Sense of Classroom Belonging, Engagement, and Academic Performance in Online Classes” in the American Journal of Distance Education

CAH

Hendricks, Chris.  The Colonial Towns of Piedmont, North Carolina.  Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2024.

Hendricks, Chris.  “The Multicultural Nature of Eighteenth-Century Cooking in British America: The Southern Rice Pie.”  Carolina Currents: Studies in South Carolina Culture 1 (2024): 28-43. 

Parten, Ben.  “Cyrena Stone’s Civil War: The “Miss Abby Diary” and the Collapse of the Confederate Homefront” American Nineteenth Century History (June, 2024)

Parten, Ben.  “The Refugee Crisis of Sherman’s March: Savannah, Port Royal, and the Transformation of the Sea Islands,” Civil War History (2024) Vol. 70. No. 1. 
Pirok, Alena, ““Despicable and disgusting”: Emotional Labor, and the Fear of Dark Tourism” in Ed. Anitasha Sharma, et. al Critical Theories in Dark Tourism: Issues, Complexities and Future Directions (De Gruyter, 2025), 163-180.
Swanson, Drew. “Catch & Release: How Georgia’s White-Tailed Deer Came Back from the Dead,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 108, no. 4 (2024): 342-377.
Swanson, Drew, et al. “Humans and Other Species,” АНТРОПОЛОГИЧЕСКИЙ ФОРУМ (Forum for Anthropology and Culture) 62 (2024): 11-224.
Tatlock, Jason. “Water Rites and Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Mediterranean World.” World History Bulletin 40 (2024), no. 1:9-19.
Dr. Amanda Konkle’s article, “Woke Women of the ‘90s Return: Toxic White Feminism and the Murphy Brown and Roseanne Reboots.” was published in The Journal of Popular Culture, 2024. This article discusses how both reboots addressed the post-2016 election context. 


Dr. Amanda Konkle gave two conference presentations related to her current book project on adaptations of Marilyn Monroe: “Seen and Unseen in the Roman (and Film) à Clef: A Case Study of Thinly Veiled Marilyn Monroes.” South Atlantic MLA Annual Conference, Jacksonville, FL, November 16, 2024, and “Empathy for the Blonde: An Oppositional Reading of Andrew Dominik’s Blonde.” Literature/Film Association Annual Conference, York, PA, September 27, 2024.


Dr. Amanda Konkle served a second year as President of the Literature/Film Association and presided over the 2024 Literature/Film Association Conference. 


Dr. Amanda Konkle received a Fall Faculty Service Award from the Senate Faculty Service Committee. This award will support travel to the spring Society of Cinema and Media Studies Conference, where Dr. Konkle will serve as a co-chair of the Performance & Stardom Scholarly Interest Group and a member of the Fieldnotes committee, which records and archives interviews with notable film and media scholars.


Prof. Ben Jackson’s short story “Midnight at the General” appeared in Consequence Vol. 16 Issue 2. Consequence Forum. November 2024. Set in a small Veterans Administration hospital, this story focuses on three veterans in different stages of life and their processing of service-related trauma.


Dr. Julia Griffin gave two conference presentations: one jointly with Emeritus Professor Linda Rohrer Paige at the Popular Culture in the American South Conference in Greenville, SC, on the Netflix show “Baby Reindeer” (October 17th) , and one at the Sixteenth-Century Studies Conference in Toronto on historical and literary representations of the relationship between Thomas Cromwell and Anne Boleyn (November 1st).  She continues to publish poems wherever.


Dr. Carol Jamison’s  article “Chivalric Choices in Malory’s ‘Balin, The Knight with the Two Swords,’” was accepted for publication in Studies in Philology 122.4. It will appear in the Fall, 2025 issue.

Dr. Carol Jamison was an invited guest panelist on  “Hot D: A House of the Dragon Podcast: Electric Bookaloo Sansa V, A Clash of Kings,” hosted by Dr. Anthony le Donne.

Professor Christina Olson served as the poet-in-residence at PaleoCon at the Western Science Center in Hemet, CA, where she led local sixth graders in a poetry writing workshop and gave a reading from her poetry chapbook The Last Mastodon (Rattle, 2019). 

Professor Christina Olson’s poem “Reptile House,” from her full-length poetry collection The Anxiety Workbook (Pitt Poetry Series, 2023), was featured on Poetry Daily.

Professor Christina Olson gave a reading at Mercer University in September as the featured visiting writer in the Third Thursday Reading Series. 

Professor Benjamin Drevlow published two books: a collection of stories, Honky (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2024) and the poetry chapbook In Praise of the Swayze (Alien Buddha Press, 2024). He gave an invited reading at Cloudland Studios in Minneapolis, MN, in October.

 
Dr. Joanna Schreiber’s article “What is Technical about Technical Editing?” has been published in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication.  

Dr. Joanna Schreiber’s book chapter “Beyond Audience Analysis: Three Stages of User Experience Research for Technical Writers” has been published in Technical Writing Spaces, edited by Pavel Zemliansky and Kirk St.Amant.

Dr. Annie Mendenhall and Professor Chris Cartright led an invited workshop, “Leveraging Student Self-Assessment to Enhance Writing Programs,” for the Council of Writing Program Administrators on November 15, 2024.

Dr. Jinrong Li‘s co-authored research report “Comparability of IELTS academic writing tasks and graduate-level multimodal writing tasks at universities in Türkiye, UK, and USA” has been published in IELTS Research Reports Online Series, No. 3/24. British Council, IDP IELTS, and Cambridge University Press & Assessment. Available at: https://ielts.org/researchers/our-research/research-reports

Senior Lecturer Chris Smith had a series of five poems picked up by The Cove Review and will be forthcoming in their inaugural edition.

Dr. Lindsey Chappell published her book, Temporal Forms and the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean: Writing British Heritage in Ancient Lands, with Cambridge University Press.

Dr. Lindsey Chappell gave two conference presentations: “Telling Time, Telling Empire: Poetry, Revolution, and the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean” at the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism conference and “Reading the Museum in the British Literature Classroom” at the North American Victorian Studies Association/Victorians Institute joint conference.

Dr. Mary Villeponteaux gave two conference presentations:  “The Failure of Knowledge in Measure for Measure” at the Southeastern Renaissance Conference in Charleston, SC, and “The Trauma Gap:  What Happened to Amoret?” at the Sixteenth Century Society Conference in Toronto.

Dr. Michael Pemberton published “Text Recycling in the Writing Center: Some Ethical Guidelines for Tutors” (with Susanne Hall) in WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship. 

Professor Laura Valeri gave two conference presentations: “Literary Experiments in AI and Implications for the Creative Writing Classroom” and “English in the World: Shining the Light on Undergraduate Majors” for SAMLA 96 in Jacksonville, Florida.

Professor Laura Valeri published a short story in the Lunar Journal. 

Professor Laura Valeri was an invited speaker for a creative nonfiction course at the University of Washington in St. Louis to discuss the course’s assigned book, After Life as a Human.

Dr. Kendra R. Parker was the keynote speaker for the Octavia E. Butler Virtual Lecture Series hosted by the Department of English and First Year Writing Program at Howard University. Her keynote was titled, “We Will Shape Spaces: Legacy, Imagination, and Community.”

Dr. Kendra R. Parker was a guest on the podcast Dear Vampire Diaries: https://dear-vampire-diaries.castos.com/episodes/a-conversation-with-dr-kendra-r-parker-tvdu-spoiler-inclusive


Dr. Kendra R. Parker began her service as a member of the Executive Committee of The College Language Association. In her role as English Area Representative, she has compiled the draft program for the 2025 CLA Convention which will be held in Vancouver, WA, April 23-27.

Dr. Kendra R. Parker was interviewed for and quoted in the “The enduring allure of Black vampire stories,” written by Kalyani Saxena and published in The Washington Post on October 26, 2024: https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/10/26/black-vampire-novels/ 

Dr. Lisa Dusenberry gave two conference presentations: “Digital Pedagogy and Habits of Mind: Pre- and Post-Covid Comparisons” for Computers and Writing 2024 (virtual/Ft. Worth, TX) and “Looking Back to Look Forward: Reflective Portfolios and Career Prep in an English Senior Portfolio Course” for SAMLA 96 (Jacksonville, FL).

Dr. Lisa Dusenberry was named a Career Champion for 2024 by the Office of Career and Professional Development for her work with the Ready Day 1 career readiness program.

Dr. Lisa A. Costello published an article: Costello, L. A., Van Willigen, M., & Walsh, C. “Do Y’all Say Gay or Trans?: The Impact of Gender and Sexuality on College Students’ Experiences in the Rural South.” Journal of Homosexuality, 1–26 (Fall 2024). https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2024.2396353

Dr. Lisa A. Costello published an article: Costello, L. A. Gender in the Archive: The Dialogic Potential of Public Memory in the  Outtakes from Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah. Critical Gender Studies Journal. 1:2. (2024) DOI: https://doi.org/10.21659/cgsj.v1n2.02.

Dr. Lisa A. Costello presented on a panel:  WGS Programs and General Education Requirements, Program Administration and Development (Georgia Southern), pre-Conference at NWSA, Detroit, MI, November 13-16, 2024. 

Dr. Lisa A. Costello was awarded and managed a Germany on Campus Grant, $4,100, to fund research in ENGL 7239 Holocaust and Gender course. Funding September through December 2024, awarded by the Germany Embassy.

Prof. Sheila Nielsen published a chapbook in November 2024 with Bookleaf Publishing titled Come to the Garden.

Dr. Salena Anderson gave the following conference presentations: “Assessing GenAI Literacy in Writing” at the CCCC Fall Virtual Institute (October 2024), part of a roundtable; “Stylistic Impacts of Generative AI Use on Multilingual Student Writing: Two Case Studies” New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV, November 2024),a poster; and “Promoting Metacognitive Practices on Generative AI Use in First-Year Writing” (SAMLA, November 2024), a panel presentation.

COE 

Gupta, D., Hinchman, T., Manuel, A., Lopez, M., & Hood, J. (2025). Play-Based Learning Through Think & Learn Code-a-Pillar Twist. Texas Mathematics Teacher Journal, 70(2), 16–19.

Hinchman, T. (2024). Holy contributing to the delinquency of minors! Using Batman ’66 villains to inspire problem-based learning. International Journal of Science and Research Archive, 13(2), 3361-3375.

Cain, E. J., Knox, P. N., Valauri, A., Perry, J. R., & Deloach, A. (2025). “You’re gonna do somethin’ great”: Parental involvement in rural students’ educational pathways. In M. Williams-Johnson & N. P. Rickert (Eds.). Critical analyses of parental involvement in school: Working with families across sociocultural contexts. Routledge.

Kopcha, T. J., & Ocak, C. (2024). Embodied learning in the schools: Designs that link brain, body, and technology in K-12 classrooms. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003385875

Casler-Failing, S. L., & Smithey, M. (2024). How do non-traditional grading practices promote student learning? Perspectives from two mathematics teacher educators. International Journal of Changes in Education. https://doi.org/10.47852/bonviewIJCE42023868

Disney, A., Eisenreich, H. A., Fisher, K. M., & Serianni, B. (2025, Winter). Building bridges in math: The CRA instructional model explained and modeled across grade levels. Utah Mathematics Teacher

Serianni, B. (2024, Fall). Embracing generative AI in the classroom: Five practical tips for teachers. TCARE Newsletter, 17, 8

Shannon-Baker, P., Fisher, K., & Greer, K. (2024). Reflections on conducting team-based qualitatively oriented mixed methods research about students with disabilities in STEM clubs. In Á. M. Humble & M. E. Radina, How qualitative data analysis happens (2nd ed., pp. 199–217). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003254041-13

Gutierrez de Blume, A. P., Ross, S., Shannon-Baker, P., & Weaver, J. (2024). Public education as a contested site of struggle. The Journal of Educational Foundations, 37, 2–20.

Shannon-Baker, P. (2024). A Wynterian reading of educational research master narratives and imagining an Other-wise. The Journal of Educational Foundations, 37, 92–104.

Brady, A. C., Botnaru, D., Alt, K., Carroll, G. D., Moldavan, A. M., Mesenbrink-Sainz, J., Nafziger, B., Reagan, K. J., & Rich, L. E. (2024). Understanding the influence of intelligent agents on students’ sense of classroom belonging, engagement, and academic performance in online classes. American Journal of Distance Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/08923647.2024.2430766

Gurlea, M., Fitpatrick, C., van Hover, S., & Cornett, A. (2024). “I just kind of guessed”: Student constructions of knowledge in AP microeconomics. The High School Journal.

Gregg, D., Hill, D., Thompson, J., Wofford, R. (2025). Guidelines for Implementing  Educator Preparation Rule 505-3-.65 School Librarian Program. Georgia Professional Standards Commission.
https://www.gapsc.com/EducatorPreparation/Resources/Downloads/Guidance_School_Librarian_Program_v1_January2025.pdf

Beauchemin, F., Krone, B., Machado, E., Qin, K., Valauri, A., & Hartman, P. (2025). Toward a theory of transgressive classroom language. Linguistics and Education, 85, 101356.

Piedmont, E., Cornett, A., Allen, A., Zilliox, T., Doornbos, L., Hobson, V., & Edwards, L. (2024). Reimagining Thanksgiving lessons through “many voices, many stories” in the elementary classroom. Presented at the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) annual conference, Boston, MA.

Piedmont, E., & Cornett, A. (2024). Critiquing curricula for anti-oppressive social studies in elementary teacher education. Presented at the College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA) of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) annual conference, Boston, MA.

Obenchain, K.M., & Broome, J. (2024). How do preservice teachers construct and understand counter narratives as part of an elementary social studies curriculum? Presented at the College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA) of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) annual conference, Boston, MA.

Whitlock, A., Cornett, A., Piedmont, E., Tirado, J., & Demoiny, S. (2024). Place-based teacher education symposium: Learning about place while learning to teach in place. Presented at the College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA) of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) annual conference, Boston, MA.

Williams-Johnson, M., Muhammad, E. A., Gilchrist, A. (2024). The intersection of parental involvement and racial realism in educational policy. In Williams-Johnson and Rickert (Eds). Critical analysis of parental involvement in schools: Working with families across sociocultural context. Taylor and Francis Publishing.

Dogan, S., Nalbantoglu, U. Y., Celik, I., & Agacli Dogan, N. (2025). Artificial intelligence professional development: a systematic review of TPACK, designs, and effects for teacher learning. Professional Development in Education, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2025.2454457

Presentations & Accolades

WCHP

Brandonn Harris, Ph.D., was recently interviewed by ESPN for a piece on the Minnesota Vikings’ head coach, Kevin O’Connell, and O’Connell’s methods of coaching modern professional athletes; read the entire article here 

CAH

Batchelor, Robert. (December 2024) “The Compass and the Question Concerning Technology in China: Reading the Shunfeng Xiangsong (顺風相送) Alongside the Selden Map of China.” [罗经与中国的技术问题：读顺风相送与中西洋航海图有] Sun Yat Sen University, Guangzhou, China.

Batchelor, Robert. (December 2024) “Artfulness as Infrastructure: Colour Printing and Visualizing Landscape on the Guangdong Quansheng tushuo (廣東全省圖說 ca. 1739)” French School of Asian Studies (EFEO) Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Burson, Jeff. (September 2024) “The Long and Fading Shadow of Humanism & the Confessional Crises: Reflections on the Long, Entangled Emergence of Catholic Enlightenment.” Presented by invitation at the Symposium: “The Catholic Enlightenment in Europe, the Americas, and Australia (1700-1840),” St. Louis, Missouri.

Denmark, Lisa. (October 2024) Award for Excellence in Research Using the Holdings of Archives, Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council (GHRAC)

Swanson, Drew. (October 2024) “Golden Threads: Flows of Gold-Mining Expertise in Appalachia,” Keynote Address to the Appalachian/Carpathian International Studies Conference, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Swanson, Drew. (January 2025) “Georgia Grown Deer: A History of the State’s Deer Problems (and Hope for the Future?),” Georgia Grown Innovation Center, Metter, Georgia.

COE 

Piedmont, E., & Cornett, A. (2024). Critiquing Curricula for Anti-Oppressive Social Studies Studies in Elementary Teacher Education. College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA). Boston, Massachusetts.

Whitlock, A., Monreal, T., Cornett, A., Piedmont, E., Demoiny, S., & Tirado, J. (2024). Learning About Place While Learning to Teach in Place. College and University Faculty Assembly (CUFA). Boston, Massachusetts. 

Piedmont, E., Cornett, A., Allen, A., Hobson, V., Doornbos, L., Zillox, T., & Edwards, L. (2024). Reimagining Thanksgiving Lessons Through “Many Voices, Many Stories” in the Elementary Classroom. National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS). Boston, Massachusetts.

Serianni, B., & Fisher, K. M. (2024, November). Practical tips for the ethical use of generative AI in teacher preparation  [Conversation Session]. Council for Exceptional Children, Teacher Education Division Annual Conference and Expo, Pittsburgh, PA, United States.

Serianni, B. (2024, November). Practical uses of generative AI in teaching. [Poster Session]. Georgia Educators Technology Conference, Atlanta, GA.

Appointments

COE 

Greg Chamblee was appointed to the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators CITE-Math Editorial Panel beginning in February 2025 (three-year term).

CAH

Haberland, Michelle. (January 2025) President, Southern Association for Women Historians (SAWH)