Global Reach

CLAS faculty members are leaders among those throughout UNC Charlotte who persevered during the pandemic to provide their students with global learning, partnering with the Office of International Programs to pilot a new initiative called Globally Networked Learning (GNL).

UNC Charlotte Africana Studies associate professor Oscar de la Torre’s first book continues to sweep book prize awards, now recognized with two best book prizes and one honorable mention award.

Tanure Ojaide, Frank Porter Graham Distinguished Professor of Africana Studies at UNC Charlotte, has received a Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship from the Institute of International Education to share his expertise with students and faculty in Africa.

For the first time, UNC Charlotte this fall will be a campus hub for the highly prestigious Millennium Fellowship program, with 20 undergraduates from across the university chosen as Millennium Fellows to implement their LIFE Skills Initiative. The university is one of just 69 – or 6% – named this year from over 1,200 applicant campuses from 135 nations and is the only one selected in North Carolina.

Researchers digging at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s ongoing archaeological excavation on Mount Zion in Jerusalem have announced a second significant discovery from the 2019 season – clear evidence of the Babylonian conquest of the city from 587/586 BCE.

In his 2017 memoir At Home, Away From Home, UNC Charlotte’s Tanure Ojaide speaks of the indelible impressions from his early years in Nigeria. In his words, “One does not forget what one yearns for at heart.” At age 70, many of his poems, short stories, critical essays, and books serve as activist works calling out for justice and fairness for the people and the ecosystem of the Niger Delta.

Bioarchaeologists like UNC Charlotte researcher Sara L. Juengst are part archaeologist, part biological anthropologist. They study human skeletal remains to learn about and tell the stories of past communities and cultures. While archaeologists more often study settlement patterns and artifacts like ceramics or stone tools from historical excavations, bioarchaeologists study burial sites, items found at burial sites, and bones.

For her transformational impact on international education at UNC Charlotte, Anabel Aliaga-Buchenau, associate professor of German, is the 2018 recipient of the International Education Faculty Award. Notable contributions include a keen focus on expanding opportunities for students to study, work and intern abroad, with a parallel focus on growing community partnerships to support students. She also has grown academic offerings and community outreach.

With his Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship, Africana Studies faculty member Honoré Missihoun will research and teach texts from Francophone countries in Africa, as he explores how the exploitation of women, land and natural resources relates to patriarchal and male-dominated societies. Missihoun will conduct research at the University of Jos, Nigeria, focused on eco-feminism and eco-criticism in the environmental literature of Francophone Africa and the African Diaspora.

The ancient texts that tell their secrets to UNC Charlotte researcher John C. Reeves inhabit the twilight realms of cosmic arcana, apocalyptic fervor, and religious dualism of Late Antiquity and the Medieval Era. “It’s really the thrill of solving mysteries that keeps me going,” says Reeves, UNC Charlotte Blumenthal Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies.