Dr. John G. Garrard, Professor Emeritus and former Head of the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies, passed away in February. He was 91. 

A prolific scholar, Garrard published nine books and more than 60 articles on Russian/Soviet cultural history, World War II, the Holocaust and the Russian Orthodox Church. Garrard began at the University of Arizona in 1984 and retired in 2010. 

Born in 1934 in England, Garrard earned his B.A. in Persian and Turkish Studies in 1958 from Oxford University and a master’s degree, graduate certificate and Ph.D., in 1966, from Columbia University. He became a U.S. citizen on July 4, 1977 at Monticello. 

Prior to joining the U of A faculty, he taught at Dartmouth College, Indiana University and the University of Virginia, where he was Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies. 

Garrard served twice as a Senior Fellow by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a division of the Smithsonian Institute, in 2004-05 and 1984-85. His donated database, The Brest Ghetto Passport archive, is hosted by the Jewish Genealogical Society and contains 12,640 names of victims. In 2008, he was recognized for Distinguished Contributions to the Humanities. 

He is survived by his wife and co-author, Carol Garrard. 

The College of Humanities will host the Spring 2026 Undergraduate Research Symposium on Friday, April 3, featuring presentations from 14 students across a range of topics. 

The event was created and organized by Louise Taylor, a double major in German Studies and Political Science and the senator representing the College of Humanities in the Associated Students of University of Arizona. 

Taylor said research can be more easily understood for students in scientific majors, but students in the College of Humanities can be just as active as their peers in terms of research. 

“A lot of people underestimate the power of humanities research. I wanted to show the cool humanistic things the students are doing in their classes because we have such a diverse array of classes that you don’t see in other colleges,” Taylor said. “Showing that we’re producing research dealing with culture and society and the way humans live in society, and that it does benefit people, can make more people realize the importance and the value of the humanities, on a community scale and a nationwide scale.” 

The symposium is organized thematically, with four groups of students presenting around a general topic, moderated by a faculty member with related expertise. See the full schedule below. 

For Taylor and the participating students alike, the symposium is an opportunity to gain important experience. 

“Participating in a research conference or symposium is important to have on your resume. And for me, making the event has been a huge, huge learning experience. I’ve learned administrative tasks, logistical tasks and budget tasks. I’ve had to do a ton of coordination and talking to faculty and administrators, which can be intimidating as a student, but it’s been hugely beneficial for me to get out of my comfort zone and take charge,” she said. “I’m excited to see it come to life and I hope the students benefit from it as much as we expect.” 

Kristy Slominski, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, who will moderate a panel relating to culture and healthcare, said students will benefit from both sides of the experience, the research and the presentation. 

“The COH Undergraduate Research Symposium is such an important opportunity to showcase the range and depth of student research happening in the humanities. Sharing original research is an essential part of the research process, so this gives students the opportunity to engage with this core academic practice and to build their communication skills,” she said. 

Spring 2026 College of Humanities Undergraduate Research Symposium

Friday, April 3
Tucson Room (third floor), Student Union Memorial Center 

8:30-9:00 am Coffee and Bagels 
9:00-9:15 Opening Remarks by Dorrance Dean A-P Durand 

9:20-10:05 Panel #1: Innovation & Cultures of Care 
Moderator: Dr. Kristy Slominski, Religious Studies 
Presenters:
Fiona Liyanage 
Genevieve Kloch 
Marlie Nochomovitz 

10:10-11:10 Panel #2: Affect & Personal Experiences 
Moderator: Harriet Olulo, German Studies 
Presenters:  
Mia Romero 
Siobhan Leavy 
Andree Ader 
Gabriela Navarro

11:15-12:15 Panel #3: Cultural Studies 
Moderator: Dr. Matt Mars, Public and Applied Humanities 
Presenters:
Caitlin Campos 
Hanga Andras-Letanovszky 
Madelyn Miller 
Caroline Keller 

12:15 -1:15 Lunch (not provided) 

1:15-2:00 Panel #4: Women in History 
Moderator: Dr. Victoria Meyer, Interdisciplinary Studies 
Presenters:  
El Sterling 
Cassandra Quijada 
Mia Molina 

2:00-2:30 Closing Remarks by Associate Dean Chantelle Warner, Awards, and Reception

Even brief or limited exposure to a new language changes how people conceive of the world and their place within it, expanding students’ sense of possibility. 

Expectations may vary for college students who are learning a second language, but it’s important to remember that while nobody will sound like a native speaker after a couple semesters, they can pick up the foundations necessary to communicate strategically in a new language, as well as the capability to reflect on how different language systems make sense of the world in different ways, said Chantelle Warner, Associate Dean for Academic and Faculty Affairs and a Professor of German Studies. 

“Adult learners are much better at some of the sociolinguistic and symbolic aspects of language, the ways in which the words we speak always say more than their direct meaning. They are also excellent at learning vocabulary and reflecting on the untranslatables in new languages,” she said. 

Educators often talk about a new language as a tool or a skill, but that framework doesn’t apply to how people experience the languages they grow up with. 

“If we think back to the children's books we were read as children, a time when someone called us a name that hurt us, or the feel of the lyrics to our favorite song when we sing along, we know that language makes us feel things—joy, pain, connection. Studying a language, even for a year or two, is a way to step outside one’s normal thought patterns and recognize that,” Warner said. “Ultimately this helps students to be more effective and also more thoughtful in how they communicate in general, whether in that newly learned language or the one they’ve always spoken.” 

Suzanne Panferov Reese, Professor in the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching program and Director of the Critical Languages Program, said knowing even a few basic words in another language can open doors for travel, relationships or appreciating culture like art, music or film. 

“Having a little bit of the language and being able to use it to connect with people is the absolute best,” Panferov Reese said. “It takes semesters of study to make a lot of gains in proficiency, but if you’re able to connect to people because you have a little bit of the language, that already opens doors that would not be open to you if you were a monolingual tourist with no connection.” 

About 150 students each semester take classes through the Critical Languages Program, which focuses on “less commonly taught” languages. Current offerings include Cantonese, modern Greek, Hindi and Urdu, Igbo, advanced Korean, Kurdish, Norwegian, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. 

“With Critical Languages, a lot of our students have a family connection or cultural connection with the language and this is their first opportunity to study the language. It’s often a generational gate that allows them to connect to a grandparent, or an older aunt or uncle, somebody who’s a generation above them who may not have come to the United States or doesn’t speak English,” Panferov Reese said. “That gives them really amazing opportunities.” 

Teachers don’t have an expectation that all students in a 101 class will develop advanced proficiency, said Janice McGregor, Associate Professor of German Studies. But they make their classes accessible to everyone who’s curious and wants to learn. 

“Taking a language class is a cornerstone of being a human,” McGregor said. “The goal doesn’t have to be high levels of proficiency. Everyone should try it out. It makes you better able to navigate different contexts and share knowledge with different people. You never know who you’ll come into contact with and you might end up bonding with someone over shared knowledge. These are all parts of who you are and make you interesting to other people.”  

For anyone who shies away from trying a new language because they won’t become fluent, McGregor says her response is “Who cares?” 

“Think about all your hobbies – are you trying to be a perfectionist? Or are you doing it for enjoyment? Maybe there’s a small percentage of things we hope to have a mastery of, but we wouldn’t say those other things we do for fun or skill development weren’t worth it or valuable or become a part of who we are,” McGregor said. “Everything you do matters for your overall well-being.” 

Language is about communication and studying a language makes people better able to work together and find commonalities. McGregor tells her students it’s OK to sound like a kindergartener because language learning can be humbling. 

“The best way to learn is to stumble though it. It can be frustrating, but it’s also very rewarding,” she said. “When you are aware of the words you use, and their historic trajectories, it just makes you a more careful reader because you have a better understanding of words and their meaning.” 

We are pleased to announce our 2025-2026 Humanities Fearless Scholars (listed with their majors)! 

Evelyn Aceves Galindo (Major:  Applied Humanities)        
Andree Ader (Major:  Interdisciplinary Studies)        
Mckenzie Airhart (Major:  Spanish)        
Marah Alokla (Major:  Interdisciplinary Studies)        
Danitza Barra (Majors:  Spanish; Criminal Justice Studies)
Katarina Baum (Majors:  East Asian Studies; Business Management)    
Oreoluwa Bello    (Major:  Interdisciplinary Studies)        
Audrey Bitikofer (Majors:  French; Law; Computer Science)
Trajan James Carpenter    (Majors:  German Studies; Political Science)    
Blaise Carrozzino (Majors:  French; Creative Writing)    
Anna Fahl (Major:  East Asian Studies)        
Zachary Ryan Foss (Major:  Interdisciplinary Studies)        
Jordyn Aliya Fullerton (Major:  East Asian Studies)        
Mihika Gadagkar (Majors:  French; Business Management; Political Science)
Xaviera Garcia (Majors:  Spanish; Elementary Education)    
Elizabeth Ghartey (Majors:  French; Biochemistry; Mathematics)
Catherine Griffee (Majors:  French; Nursing)    
Chloe Harrison (Major:  Applied Humanities)        
Madeline Harter (Majors:  French; Veterinary Science)    
Milton Hernandez (Major:  Applied Humanities)    
David Hernandez (Majors:  French; Ecology & Evolutionary Biology)
Liam Holton (Majors:  French; Global Studies)
Madeleine Housh (Major:  Spanish)        
Chihiro Kazui (Majors:  East Asian Studies; Political Science)
Melanie Leary (Major:  Spanish)    
Valeria Leon (Majors:  Spanish; Business Management)    
Marguerite LeRoux (Majors:  French; Political Science; History)
Selena Leyva (Majors:  Spanish; Business Management)    
Sam Lingerfelt (Major:  Applied Humanities)        
Fiona Liyanage (Majors:  Religious Studies; Physiology & Medical Sciences)    
Claire Lloyd (Majors:  Spanish; Astronomy; Planetary Geoscience)
Antonio Maldonado (Major:  Interdisciplinary Studies)        
Brianna Medina Marquez (Majors:  Spanish; Psychology)
Kimberly Meyer    (Major:  Classics)        
Quincy Mouzet (Majors:  French; Architecture)    
Andrea Ochoa (Major:  Applied Humanities)        
Teagan Opry (Majors:  Classics; Psychology)    
Sophia Pomeranz (Majors:  French; Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences)
Emily Razo (Majors:  Spanish; Business Management)
Keresha Richards (Major:  Interdisciplinary Studies)        
Molly Richardson (Major:  Spanish)        
Emily Siems (Majors:  Spanish; Architecture)
Xaria Skinner (Majors:  Africana Studies; Environmental Science)
Ailani Stafford (Major:  Applied Humanities)    
Nahla Anahi Vargas (Major:  Spanish)    
Jacque Villalba-Larson (Major:  Interdisciplinary Studies)        
Alexandra Vogelsberg (Majors:  East Asian Studies; Business Management)    
Stephanie Warnes (Majors:  Religious Studies; Physiology & Medical Sciences)    
Maverick L. White (Major:  East Asian Studies)        
Cade Young (Majors:  German Studies; Architecture)    
Maria Ziebell (Majors:  East Asian Studies; Veterinary Science)

 

The College of Humanities is proud to announce the following recipients of the Spring 2026 Fearless Inquiries Abroad Scholarships

Each of the following students will receive $2,000 to participate in a College of Humanities Study Abroad program. Please join us in congratulating them on their outstanding achievements!
 

College of Humanities Fearless Inquiries Abroad Scholarships
HannahLynn Anderson | Majors: French; Fashion Industry's Science and Technology
Luis Barraza | Majors: Spanish; Criminal Justice Studies
Katarina Baum | Majors: East Asian Studies; Business Management
Audrey Bitikofer | Majors: French; Law
Victoria Cortez | Majors: Spanish; Film and Television
Claire De Leon | Majors: East Asian Studies; English
Aryaman Elayadom | Majors: French; Neuroscience & Cognitive Science
Mariska Flores | Majors: Italian; Biochemistry
Leslie Fraijo | Major: Spanish
Anna Gahr | Majors: French; Economics; Psychology
Alexa Garcia | Majors: Spanish; Psychology
Elizabeth Ghartey | Majors: French; Biochemistry; Mathematics
David Hernandez | Majors: French; Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Jacob Holland | Majors: Classics; Creative Writing
Liam Holton | Majors: French; Global Studies
Madeleine Housh | Major: Spanish
Lena Hubbard | Majors: Italian; Neuroscience & Cognitive Science
Marguerite LeRoux | Majors: French; Political Science; History
Dylan Lisanti | Majors: Italian; Business Management
Lillie Nieves | Majors: Applied Humanities; Public Health
Estrella Ruiz Romero | Majors: Spanish; Medicine
Evangelia Sai Pen | Majors: French; Biochemistry
Mikayla Stafford | Majors: Spanish; Design Arts & Practice
Rhonda Timpany | Major: Interdisciplinary Studies
Gael Tinoco | Majors: Spanish; Political Science
Emely Trujillo | Majors: Spanish; Elementary Education
Nahla Vargas | Major: Spanish
Alexandra Vogelsberg | Majors: East Asian Studies; Mathematics
Maverick White | Major: East Asian Studies
Cade Young | Majors: German Studies; Architecture

Professor Lillian Gorman is now a triple award winner for her first book Zones of Encuentro: Language and Identities in Northern New Mexico, collecting two early 2026 prizes after a 2025 New Mexico Book Award. 

Gorman, Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Director of the Spanish as a Heritage Language Program, published Zones of Encuentro with the Ohio State University Press Global Latin/o Américas series in October 2024. 

In January, Gorman received notification of the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education’s Book Award in the Mid-Career scholar category. In February, the Latinx Studies Section of the Latin American Studies Association announced Gorman as the winner of the Book Award in the Humanities category. 

The two new awards follow the October announcement of Gorman receiving the New Mexico Book Award in the Multicultural category and being named a finalist in the categories of First Book and BIPOC Author or Subject. 

“I’m honored for the awards and I’m proud for where each of these awards come from,” Gorman said. “They speak to different areas the book is being read and recognized.” 

Zones of Encuentro builds on work Gorman began in her dissertation, studying Spanish-speaking and bilingual communities in northern New Mexico, where her family is from. 

“There wasn’t a lot of research on northern New Mexico that really teased out the heterogeneity of Latino identity,” she said. 

The book is an in-depth look at the cultural and linguistic interactions between two distinct Latina/o/x communities in the region: Nuevomexicanos, families with historic roots in the region, and first-generation Mexicano immigrants. Nuevomexicanos have historically spoken Traditional New Mexican Spanish, while the recent immigrants tend to speak Mexican Spanish. 

Gorman examined the everyday lived language experiences and ethnolinguistic identities of Mexicanos and Nuevomexicanos together, specifically through the case of mixed Mexicano-Nuevomexicano families. The book analyzed the language ideologies, identity formations, and language practices in relation to the complex encounters between the Mexicano-Nuevomexicano families. 

Gorman says the New Mexico Book Award was the best she could have received because New Mexico is the first place she wanted the book to be recognized. 

The American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education was an entirely different audience for the book. “It’s speaking to how these issues of language and identity connect to broader issues of Latinos and higher education. I’m glad the association saw the importance of the book,” Gorman said. 

In the Humanities category, the jury for the Latinx Studies Section award wrote that Gorman’s book is “an original and vital contribution to the field.” 

“This book makes a timely and conceptually innovative contribution to Latinx Studies by introducing ‘zones of encuentro’ as a framework for understanding intra-Latinx tensions and solidarities,” wrote the jury. “Its interdisciplinary and transparent design—combining interviews, pláticas, and linguistic ethnography, with appendices featuring bilingual guides and supporting tables and figures—provides a rigorous and accessible model for sustaining its central arguments.” 

The American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education award will be presented the last weekend of March. 

Also, the AAHHE’s Book Award in the Senior Scholar Category will be presented to fellow University of Arizona faculty member Nolan Cabrera, Professor of Educational Policy Studies and Practice, for his book Banned! The Fight For Mexican American Studies in the Streets and the Courts, written with Robert S. Chang, Professor of Law and Sylvia Mendez Presidential Chair for Civil Rights at UC Irvine. 

Margaree Little, a poet and translator pursuing a master’s degree in Russian, has been named as a finalist for the 2026 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. 

Little’s translation, At the Edge: Selected Political Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, was published in November by Green Linden Press, highlighting an overlooked side of one of Russian’s best-known 20^th century poets. 

“I came to her poems first in English translation, and the poems which have been translated into English are mainly her love poems,” Little said. “She had a very tumultuous, complicated personal life and those poems have been emphasized in English. I started to read her work that way, but there would be small excerpts of a poem here or there that were more political, so I began to be curious about that. Looking at the original work, she wrote a lot in this vein, but her poems that speak to these huge historical events she was living through had largely been neglected.” 

When she first began reading Tsvetaeva, Little didn’t know the Russian language at all. Later, she started teaching English at the University of Arizona and enrolled in undergraduate classes to begin learning. Last fall, she enrolled in the master’s degree program to gain advanced Russian proficiency. 

“The poems made me want to learn the language,” Little said. “As with any poet, the language of Tsvetaeva’s poems is distinctly her own. The way she uses the language is very compressed. It’s not conversational.” 

Born in 1892 to a wealthy family, Tsvetaeva lived most of her life in poverty and exile, following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Moscow Famine. She wrote about the personal as well as the political, extensively, until her death in 1941. 

At the Edge focuses on Tsvetaeva’s experiences living through turbulent history, including the poetic sequence that Little first worked to translate in 2016, written in response to the Munich Agreement and the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. The parallels between Tsvetaeva’s experiences in the first half of the 20^th century and world events today make the poems powerful, Little said. 

“They’re specific to the events they’re talking about, but at the same time, they have a resonance where many of them feel as though they could be written today,” she said. “Many people have pointed out the historical parallels between those events and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the failure of the Western democracies to prevent this full-scale invasion. There are parallels to what we’re seeing now in the United States, with the rise of fascism and nationalism, and I think for many people, values that we may have assumed we shared as a society, seeing these values torn apart.”

Little is interested in continuing to translate Tsvetaeva’s poetry, as well as the work of Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam, contemporaries who also wrote about living through the revolution and the rise of Stalinism and whose work was censored or disappeared in their lifetimes. And Little’s goal isn’t just to focus on work that hasn’t been translated to English, but to revisit poems for more accurate translations. 

“When I was looking these poems up word by word and trying to understand the etymology, the grammatical structures, the cultural references, it became evident to me that her work has been mistranslated and misrepresented,” Little said. “People have taken significant liberties with poems and actually changed them in English, often with certain ideas the translators may have had of the poet, the stereotype of a doomed hysterical woman. Many people just accept these translations as Tsvetaeva, but they’re not that close to the original poems. So, I also felt an ethical imperative to translate the poems as closely as possible to the originals.” 

In particular, At the Edge represents a side of Tsvetaeva’s work that’s similar to Little’s own poetry. Her book REST (Four Way Books, 2018), winner of the 2018 Balcones Poetry Prize and the 2019 Audre Lorde Award, emerged from work she was doing in the borderlands of Southern Arizona, working with No More Deaths to provide direct aid to migrants in the desert. 

“I was with a group of volunteers who found the remains of someone who died in the desert and has never been identified. My book emerged out of that experience and is a series of poems thinking about who this man was and what it means to care for or respect another human life when there’s so much we don’t know,” she said. “There are themes that connect my own poetry with the translation work I’m interested in, themes of violence or erasure, but also a sense of survival and resistance and memory.” 

Little said she feels fortunate that the University of Arizona provides her with an opportunity to explore those important themes in different ways. In addition to coursework and pursuing translation, she co-teaches Intermediate Russian, which provides a different perspective on the language. 

“The Russian and Slavic Studies Department is wonderful and has been so supportive of my path with learning the language, and why I ended up deciding to pursue the graduate program. I’m happy to have the book come out at a time I’m able to be a part of the department,” she said. “The College of Humanities has also been wonderful, and it feels like an intellectual home for my work.” 

As far as the PEN award, which will be presented at the Literary Awards Ceremony on March 31 in New York, Little said being in a group of finalists whose work presents translations from Spanish, Arabic and Chinese is a gratifying endorsement of the art of translation itself. 

“It’s wonderful that PEN has this award to recognize translation,” she said. “Sometimes in the U.S. we are in a little bit of a bubble as far as reading literature from other parts of the world and other traditions. All of the books on the list are remarkable and important. It’s wonderful to have access to that kind of work from all over the world and different periods of time.” 

Born in Tucson, Felipe Garcia grew up speaking both Spanish and English. When it came time to study a language in high school, he added French to the mix. 

Garcia is a student at the University of Arizona’s W.A. Franke Honors College pursuing dual bachelor’s degrees in political science and creative intelligence and innovation, along with a minor in French. He was appointed to the Arizona Board of Regents by Gov. Katie Hobbs in May 2025. 

In the first year of his two-year term, Garcia is focused on expanding opportunities for students in the Arizona-Mexico region and improving educational attainment, support services and development opportunities for students.

Garcia’s resume reflects a strong commitment to public service. He serves as a youth commissioner on Gov. Hobbs’ Commission on Service and Volunteerism, and was recently a Courage Fellow with GIFFORDS, the gun violence prevention group founded by former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. He previously served as undersecretary general of international coordination with Arizona Model United Nations and as the presidential chief of staff for the Associated Students of the University of Arizona. 

As one of two Student Regents, Garcia represents the nearly 250,000 students at U of A, Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University. As a trilingual speaker and a French minor, Garcia spoke to the College of Humanities about being an advocate for the humanities. 

Q: Why do you think the humanities are so important?

A: To me, the humanities are vital because time and time again they help us adapt to the times. Take artificial intelligence. As more tasks become automated, whether it’s writing or image creation, the question becomes how do we as humans continue to be a part of the force that’s driving the world? The humanities have that answer and guide how we realize the applications for AI. 

Q: What would you say to recommend to a student to major or minor in French, or any of the other Humanities disciplines?

A: For my degrees, political science and creative intelligence and innovation, I really looked at it as, ‘Where do I want to work, and how do I get there?’ For the humanities, it was switching that and saying ‘What are the skills I want to have?’ because that really opens your horizons and increases the opportunities you’re mentally prepared for. For French specifically, what I like about it is that it’s a U.N. language, and it’s adaptations are useful all around the world. For example, Québécois French is very different than the French spoken in Togo. Learning those differences, and really understanding the cultural and historical nuance behind them, is a very holistic opportunity. 

Q: As a trilingual student, how has language learning impacted your life? And why did you choose French?

A: I grew up speaking Spanish all my life, and then I learned English at an early age. I started to studying French in high school, and found that it’s very similar to Spanish, being a romance language, so I was able to pick it up pretty easily. I really wanted to continue learning the language here. Because there aren’t many Francophones in Arizona, I wanted to make sure I was able to maintain my knowledge of the language. It’s really opened a lot of doors for me. It’s really cool to be able to access a different part of the world. 

Q: As a minor in French, are you interested in studying abroad?

A: My fingers are crossed that I get to study abroad next summer. It’s one of the only times in your life when you get to go abroad with so much support and have a program that helps you get the most out of it. I’ve traveled a bit to France and other places, and the experiences that come out of that are a holistic educational experience. It’s not just the classroom, but the environment outside of it. I was on the streets of Lyon late one night, and a French woman flagged me down and asked for help parking. I didn’t know the word for steering wheel or wheels, but we figured it out. What I really learned was to communicate when I didn’t know the words, and that skill is useful anywhere. 

Q: The U of A ranks fifth in the country in producing graduates with language degrees – How does that set the university apart? What’s the importance of language studies, for majors and minors, but students of other majors as well?  

A: This designation really sets the U of A apart. Teaching languages produces really well-rounded students. Like the humanities in general, it teaches students not just the importance of being a member of a participatory democracy, but how to be global citizens. We have an increasingly global economy, and Arizona is so reliant on international investment, so it’s really important to have those language skill to be able to relate to business partners or employers. 

Q: Why is it important for alumni, majors and minors of advocate humanities and language studies to advocate for those programs? 

A: As students, it’s not always easy to see what’s in the realm of possibility and what’s out there. I just read an article about a U of A French graduate who works at Netflix. I never would’ve guessed you could land a job at Netflix. For things like that, it’s cool to know as a student that your education is giving you skills that are versatile wherever you go. That’s the best mindset to have. 

When we talk about applied humanities, alumni are the people who are applying those skills. That’s really where it’s happening. As a student, it may not always be easy to see how the skills you learn in a particular program will translate to the workforce. But as so many U of A grads have shown, a humanities degree or a language degree is applicable anywhere, not just in a geographic sense but also in a disciplinary sense. It’s really cool to see those graduates and those alumni applying their skills. In addition, from a practical perspective, it creates community. It’s great to hear about the success of U of A grads all around the world. 

Q: What are your own goals as far as a career or how do you see yourself combining your different areas of study? 

A: I wish I had a concrete answer for that, but I’m looking at international work. I did model United Nations in college and high school as well. The United Nations and its related nonprofits are incredible opportunities, maybe even the United States foreign service, or work here in Arizona through some Arizona-Mexico work. 

A new student club focused on the intersection of health and humanities launched this semester, giving students with a variety of majors and career interests an opportunity to collaborate on shared interests. 

According to its mission statement, the Health Humanities Collective is “a student-led organization at the University of Arizona that brings together students interested in exploring health, illness, and care through storytelling, ethics, creative practice, and interdisciplinary dialogue.” 

After gaining official recognition from the Associated Students of the University of Arizona, the Health Humanities Collective began meeting in February, drawing about 15 students to meetings as the fledgling club begins hosting activities and planning for the future. 

“The club is all about different dimensions of health and overall human well-being. We know the humanities are so expansive, we wanted something that was more accessible and could encompass all of health humanities,” said Mykelti Nuamah, a senior majoring in Religious Studies for Health Professionals and Physiology and Medical Sciences. 

The Health Humanities Collective grew out of the Health Humanities Hub Interdisciplinary Scholar program, which launched last spring to offer internships to students majoring in the College of Humanities who are interested in health-related careers.

Nuamah, who started as an H3 Interdisciplinary Scholar in the fall and is continuing this semester, said the scholars wanted a way to allow humanities students to be involved, without a full internship. Planning for the Health Humanities Collective extended across different cohorts of H3 Interdisciplinary Scholars and a funding opportunity presented itself in the fall, when the Center for Buddhist Studies created the new Integrative Well-Being Prize. 

Nuamah, founder and current president of the Health Humanities Collective, was awarded $1,000 in seed funding to start the group and support a retreat in the works for later this semester. 

Nuamah said that as he progressed through his two majors, he knew he couldn’t be the only student drawn to humanities approaches to health and well-being and now the Health Humanities Collective gives like-minded students a place to gather, collaborate and support one another. 

“At our last meeting, two students who hadn’t met before were both Religious Studies majors, but both had a completely unrelated second major. It was interesting to see how these fields interconnect and there’s a lot to learn internally from each other. Interdisciplinary collaboration among ourselves is important and seeing where other people are at can help gauge where you’re at too,” he said. 

The Health Humanities Collective is structured with an executive committee made of committee chairs, the first two focusing on community engagement and health and well-being. A committee on art and expression is under discussion. But the structure allows for students to pursue any topic of interest. 

“The sky is the limit,” Nuamah said. “No matter what interest a student has, they can come and make a committee or collaborate with an event.” 

Health Humanities Hub Coordinator Christine Hoekenga said she’s been impressed by the wide variety of interests and projects the H3 Interdisciplinary Scholars have brought, and their initiative to launch a student club will benefit many more students in the future. 

“The students' mix of fields and backgrounds is a huge strength of this group. This type of interdisciplinary dialogue doesn’t just happen and it’s refreshing to see students seeking it out and building something with intention,” she said. “I’m excited to see how this truly student-driven Collective will take shape. Offering a way for all students to engage with health humanities topics, including integrative wellbeing practices, is a service to our campus and ultimately to the future health professionals who will eventually care for all of us.”  

To join or learn more, email healthhumanitiescollective@gmail.com or follow on Instagram: @uahealthhumanitiescollective.