1. Home ›
  2. Our Stories

Our Stories

For Ashlee Bird, digital culture scholar and Native American video game designer, better representation on screen fosters brighter future

Beth Staples

For decades, video game players have sat in front of TV and computer screens and used controllers and keyboards to kill Indigenous characters, regardless of their objective or importance to the story. While horrifying, it’s not surprising to Ashlee Bird, an assistant professor of American studies at Notre Dame. Indigenous characters have historically been represented throughout popular culture as a bloodthirsty...

Read More

Political scientist Rachel Porter earns award for best doctoral dissertation about American government

Beth Staples

The assistant professor analyzed text from more than 5,000 congressional candidates’ campaign websites in 2018 and 2020, and learned that while much of today’s politics is polarized and nationally oriented, theories of strategic candidate behavior also need to reflect locally oriented campaigning. “So, for instance, I find that candidates are a lot more likely to talk about local issues, district...

Read More

Family guy: Notre Dame anthropologist Lee Gettler broadens perspectives on fatherhood, raising healthy children

Beth Staples

In his Hormones, Health, and Human Behavior Laboratory inside Corbett Family Hall, Lee Gettler has freezers full of saliva samples (as well as fingernail clippings) from people from around the world. By studying the chemical composition of these specimens, the associate professor of anthropology has developed several groundbreaking studies that have focused attention on — and reframed perspectives about —...

Read More

Q&A: History Ph.D. student Grace Song Swihart examines visual culture to better understand U.S.-Korea relations

Beth Staples

For Grace Song Swihart, learning helps her understand life’s complexities. She’s used photographs, flags, and other visual sources in her research, teaching, and an internship at Notre Dame’s Snite Museum of Art to show how cultural representations have impacted foreign relations between the U.S. and Korea, as well as Americans’ understanding of Koreans. Comprehending the cultural history of the U.S-Korea...

Read More

A&L language majors, minors flip for fully funded Foreign Language Internship Program

Beth Staples

Victoria Gordon-Brown, a junior Italian and biochemistry major from London, studied climate change in Italy. Reid Ragsdale, a junior Spanish and Arts & Letters pre-health major from Nashville, Tennessee, interned with a physician in Costa Rica. Through the Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures' inaugural Foreign Language Internship Program (FLIP), they and nine of their Notre Dame peers...

Read More

History major and Latino Studies Scholar wins Fulbright to attend summer technology, innovation, and creativity institute in Scotland

Beth Staples

Connor Kaufmann was selected for the program based on academic excellence (3.7 minimum GPA), a focused application, extracurricular and community activities, ambassadorial skills, and a plan to give back to his home country. “I strongly felt that it would give me the opportunity to foster my creativity in a unique, robust, and international way,” he said. “This would, in turn,...

Read More

Africana studies professor’s book, detailing how slavery’s influence survived emancipation, wins Paul E. Lovejoy Prize

Beth Staples

Zach Sell’s book Trouble of the World: Slavery and Empire in the Age of Capital has won the 2022 Paul E. Lovejoy Prize from the Journal of Global Slavery for its excellence and originality in a major work related to global slavery. The panel of judges unanimously awarded the prize to the assistant professor in Notre Dame’s Department of Africana...

Read More

Romance languages and literatures professor’s book about undocumented migration wins Caribbean Studies Association’s most prestigious prize

Beth Staples

Notre Dame professor Marisel Moreno’s book about the largely unknown and dangerous phenomenon of undocumented sea migration within the Caribbean region has won the Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Book Award, the Caribbean Studies Association’s most prestigious prize. In Crossing Waters: Undocumented Migration in Hispanophone Caribbean and Latinx Literature & Art, Moreno seeks to lift the veil of invisibility around...

Read More

Notre Dame economist Jing Cynthia Wu wins Richard Stone Prize in Applied Econometrics 

Beth Staples

Notre Dame economist Jing Cynthia Wu’s paper that details a new model to examine economic effects of unconventional monetary policy in the Euro area has won the Richard Stone Prize in Applied Econometrics from the Journal of Applied Econometrics. The journal awards the prize every two years for the best paper with substantive econometric applications. Econometrics uses economic theory, mathematics,...

Read More