FACULTY & STAFF On April 12, 2026, during Lycoming College’s annual Honors Convocation, the Plankenhorn Alumni Award for Faculty Excellence was presented to Amanda Horn Gunderson, D.M.A., associate professor of music. Marisa C. Sá nchez, Ph.D., assistant professor of art history, was awarded the Junior Faculty Teaching Award. Kira Braham, Ph.D., assistant professor of English, was the recipient of the Dr. Meghan C. Andrews Research & Professional Enrichment Award, and Christopher Pearl, Ph.D., professor of history, received the Mary Sieminski Endowed Humanities Research Award. Tenure has been granted to John Capo, assistant professor of communication and media studies, Kim Kohler, Ph.D., assistant professor of education, and Krish Pillai, Ph.D., assistant professor of computer science. Tenure with promotion has been granted to April Drumm-Hewitt, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology, and Allison Saunders, Ph.D., associate professor of biochemistry. Laura Seddelmeyer, Ph.D., has been promoted to associate professor of history. Promotion has also been granted to Jacob Berger, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, Betty McCall, Ph.D., professor of sociology, Elizabeth Moorhouse, Ph.D., professor of economics, and Christopher Pearl, Ph.D., professor of history. Cullen Chandler, Ph.D., Frank and Helen Lowry Professor of History, presented a paper at the International Medieval Congress (IMC) hosted by the University of Leeds in England. The IMC is the largest and most important annual gathering for medieval studies in Europe. His paper, “For everything there is a season: Food for Thought about Time in the Carolingian Age,” was part of a group of research presentations under the heading Temporalities of Taste, organized by and featuring scholars from several countries. Also at the IMC, Chandler moderated a roundtable dedicated to the Namen, Personen und Personengruppen des Mittelalters (NPPM) Database at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen in Germany. After sessions ended each evening, he could be found watching the FIFA World Cup with his international colleagues at The Old Bar on campus (pictured above). Sascha Feinstein, Ph.D., Robert L. & Charlene Shangraw Professor of English, published six poems — “Accidental Mouth,” “Azubah’s Funky Sun,” “Cherished,” “Driftwood,” “Foreign Burials,” and “Wandering Deziah” — in the winter edition of The Missouri Review. These are part of his book project titled “Winged Skulls.” Feinstein also published a multi-sectioned poem, “Into Obscurity,” in Syncopation Literary Journal. The poem is a series of imagined monologues that take place on March 13, 1963, by musicians who would soon disappear (in one way or another). His latest book, “Writing Jazz: Conversations with Critics and Biographers,” earned him bronze for the 2025 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Performing Arts & Music category. Submissions to the 41st Annual Educational Advertising Awards earned Murray Hanford, director of visual communications, gold for the 2025 President’s Report and bronze for the Fall 2025 issue of Lycoming College Magazine. In the 2025 Collegiate Advertising Awards, he earned gold for Lycoming’s mascot promotions and silver for the College’s holiday e-card in the Special Video Production category. Jessica Munson, Ph.D., associate professor of anthropology and archaeology, is co-author on a paper published in Science Advances titled “The Distribution of Power and Inclusiveness across Deep Time.” The research team examined archaeological and historical evidence from 31 ancient societies across Europe, Asia, and the Americas and found that shared, inclusive governance was far more common than once assumed. While traditional narratives point to Greece and Rome as the origin of democratic institutions, this research shows that many societies around the world developed strategies to limit the power of rulers and give ordinary people a voice in decision-making and participating in government. The Coalition for Archaeological Synthesis, the Amerind Foundation, and the Field Museum of Natural History provided funds for the research team to hold project meetings at the Amerind Foundation in Dragoon, Ariz., which were essential for the collaborative work. The research has been featured in numerous news outlets worldwide including NPR, El País, the Times (London), and BBC. In April 2026, Maybel Mesa Morales, Ph.D., assistant professor of Spanish, presented at the I Symposium of Latin American and Caribbean Cinemas, coorganized by the College of the Holy Cross and Le Moyne College. This inaugural international gathering convenes scholars of regional cinema for critical discussions on contemporary audiovisual production and cultural transformation. She presented her paper, “Maternal Marronage of the Archive: Intermedial Resistances and Non-Normative Motherhood in Afro-Cuban Women’s Cinema,” which explores how Afro-Cuban women filmmakers reimagine motherhood and reclaim marginalized histories through feminist and intermedial cinematic practices. The presentation is part of her ongoing research on contemporary Cuban women’s cinema, memory, and alternative audiovisual archives. 20 LYCOMING COLLEGE 2026 FALL MAGAZINE
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