Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences outstanding faculty in our eight academic departments and numerous interdisciplinary programs support innovative curriculum, cutting-edge research, and public programming to ensure that the arts, humanities, and social sciences remain the distinguishing component in every student’s education. This spring, the Wilkinson College faculty listed below were recognized with promotions, honors, and awards. Congratulations to all our faculty for an amazing academic year!

Faculty Tenure and/or Promotion

The following faculty have been reviewed by their peers and their administrators during 2023-2024 and have been awarded tenure and/or promotion effective at the beginning of the 2024-2025 academic year.

  • Ashley Kranjac
    Awarded Tenure and Promoted to Associate Professor of Sociology
  • Kelli Fuery
    Promoted to Full Professor of Creative and Cultural Industries

2024-2026 Wang-Fradkin Senior Professorship

The Wang-Fradkin professorships are named in honor of Hua-Cheng Wang, a distinguished political scientist and diplomat, and Dr. Cheng-Mei Wang Fradkin, who was professor of biology and chair of the Division of Natural Science until her death in 1983. Originally founded by Dr. Fradkin as a fellowship in 1982 in honor of her father, the University in 1996 changed the award to a professorship and added the name of Dr. Fradkin to honor both scholars. Today the Wang-Fradkin Professorship recognizes exceptional merit in scholarly and creative activity.

2023-2024 Unit Faculty Excellence Award

Unit Faculty Awards are peer recognition of exceptional contributions in the areas of teaching and/or scholarly/creative activity and/or service to the university. A $1,000 award accompanies this recognition by faculty colleagues.

2024-25 Sabbatical and Development Leave Awards

  • Dr. Mark Axelrod, Professor, English
    Dr. Mark Axelrod (English) has been awarded a Sabbatical Leave Award for the 2024-2025 academic year. Dr. Axelrod’s sabbatical project is to complete a new novel entitled “Malarkey, Lost Among the Greeks.” This is part of a longer-term continuous project as Dr. Axelrod has produced five previous Malarkey novels or novellas in this series, the most recent published title Diary of Malcolm Malarkey, in June 2023.  The project extends the author’s work into experimental fiction as opposed to his more traditional fiction.
  • Dr. Ian Barnard, Professor, English
    Dr. Ian Barnard (English) has been awarded a Sabbatical Leave Award for the 2024-2025 academic year, specifically Fall 2024. Dr. Barnard will complete a co-edited volume titled “Trigger Warnings: Teaching Through Trauma,” consisting of 26 chapters organized in five sections: Pedagogical Context, Frameworks, Practices; Theoretical Reflections, Mediations, Interventions; Queer Feminist Intercessions, Ruminations, Desires; Political Predicaments, Entanglements, Perspectives; Media Engagements, Negotiations, Considerations. This timely intersectional and interdisciplinary volume on trauma and trigger warnings, a controversial and politicized topic, will be an important contribution to educational literature on the subject.
  • Dr. Lori Cox Han, Professor, Doy B. Henley Chair of American Presidential Studies
    Dr. Lori Cox Han (Presidential Studies) has been awarded a Sabbatical Leave Award for the 2024-2025 academic year, specifically Spring 2025. Dr. Lori Cox Han will advance multiple projects while on sabbatical including a book entitled “Driving the Narrative: How the State of the News Industry Shapes Presidential Communication,” complete a chapter for “The Politics of Expediency: Bill Clinton and the Defense of Marriage Act,” complete the manuscript “Hate Speech and Free Speech: Examining the Facts” already under advanced contract with Bloomsbury, complete a manuscript of “Political Representation in America” (co-authored with Caroline Heldman), also under advance contract; and to work on a fourth edition of Presidents and the American Presidency.
  • Professor Micol Hebron, Associate Professor, Art
    Professor Micol Hebron (Art) has been awarded a Sabbatical Leave Award for the 2024-2025 academic year, specifically Spring 2025. Professor Micol Hebron will create a new body of artwork and essays that address gender bias and affect in artificial intelligence. This project builds on her previous expertise as a feminist artist and researcher regarding gender issues in the art world and promises to create a new body of work that underscores the novel creative potential of AI. In her proposed project, she intends to test AI’s limits of decision-making and explore how artists can coerce the platform to create images that are often the target of censorship. She intends to use AI to create 20-50 prints, collage, video, and animated images, augmented reality images, and other objects.  In addition, she will write essays to accompany her work discussing the philosophy of AI.
  • Professor Claudine Jaenichen, Professor, Art
    Professor Claudine Jaenichen (Art) has been awarded a Sabbatical Leave Award for the 2024-2025 academic year, specifically Fall 2024. Professor Jaenichen will plan and prepare her second book “People, Places, and Things: Design Perspectives on Evacuation Privilege.” Professor Jaenichen is a nationally recognized design expert on issues of emergency, evacuation, and public safety. This new project takes into consideration the concept of “design privilege” where disaster disproportionately affects populations based socioeconomic status, education, access, etc. due to the inequities in how relief is communicated and understood.
  • Dr. Anna Leahy, Professor, English
    Dr. Anna Leahy (English) has been awarded a Sabbatical Leave Award for the 2024-2025 academic year, specifically Fall 2024. Dr. Leahy’s sabbatical project will begin a new multi-textual/media project of poetry. This project is part of a larger endeavor to investigate aspects of accessibility in visual poetry. During an artist residency, she plans to study widely across art, game design, AI and computing, and visual poetry, making this a truly multimodal project, and one that pushes her into new directions outside her previous comfort zone.
  • Dr. Wendy Salmond, Professor, Art
    Dr. Wendy Salmond (Art) has been awarded a Sabbatical Leave Award for the 2024-2025 academic year, specifically Spring 2025. Dr. Salmond will complete and submit her book manuscript “Russian Icons in America: The Fate of Orthodox Painting, 1917-1944,” for which she already has a book contract. Her manuscript tells the story of first-generation icons in the United States, focusing on their translation into various material cultural forms with shifting values that reflected the relationship between the US and Russia at pivotal historic moments. In addition, the project draws in aspects of the art market, heritage studies, the agency of art objects, and the ways in which value can be conferred or removed from objects based on everything from aesthetic value to celebrity provenance.

2024-2025 Award in Mentorship of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity

This prestigious award recognizes outstanding senior and junior faculty members whose exceptional mentorship has supported student research and creative activity, enriching undergraduate students’ lives in and beyond the classroom. These awards typify Chapman University’s mission to provide personalized education of distinction, and they honor faculty for providing high-impact learning experiences to Chapman University students.

(Pictured in header: Left to right: Faculty Unit Excellence Awards winners Dr. Stephanie Takaragawa (Sociology), Dr. Morgan Read-Davidson (English), Dr. Shira Klein (History), with Provost Norma Bouchard. Not pictured, Dr. Luke Nichter (History).)