Center for Public Humanities

Kathleen Pfeiffer, Director

Kathy is Professor of English and Creative Writing and she teaches courses in American and African American literature, biography, and memoir. Her creative nonfiction was awarded the Kresge Artist Fellowship in 2012, and  her memoir Ink won the Michigan Writers Chapbook Contest in 2018. Kathy also runs Oak Tree Book Arts, a bookmaking studio specializing in classical bookbinding techniques as well as experimental structures.

Bridget Kies, Associate Director

Bridget is an Associate Professor of Film Studies at Oakland University, where she also serves as the Assistant Director of the Women and Gender Studies program. She is the author of Murder, She Wrote (2025), a comprehensive study of the 1980s television series, and co-editor of Fandom, the Next Generation (2022), which examines generational fandoms of film and television.

Rachel V. Smydra, Associate Director

Rachel is an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Creative Writing, and Film. Her scholarly interests focus on stimulating curiosity, embedding active learning strategies, and improving student writing. She is currently working on a historical fiction novel that explores 20th century map-making.

Graham Cassano is an Associate Professor of sociology at Oakland University. He is an accomplished scholar, musician, and photographer, and he is the founder of the Pontiac Oral History Project. He has recently earned an MFA in Photography from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and his co-edited (with Teressa Benz) book, titled Urban Emergency (Mis) Management and the Crisis of Neoliberalism: Flint, MI, in Context, was published in 2021.

Mike Doan is a Canadian-born father, activist, and philosopher. He joined the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership in 2016 while working with Detroit Independent Freedom Schools and Detroiters Resisting Emergency Management. He is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Oakland University.

Todd Estes is Professor of History with a specialty in Early U.S. political history and political culture. He is the author of The Jay Treaty Debate, Public Opinion, and the Evolution of Early American Political Culture and many journal articles, book chapters, and essays. His latest work is Campaign for the Constitution: The Politics of Moderation in the Ratification Debates which is under contract with the University of Virginia Press. He is part of the Distinguished Lectureship program with the Organization of American Historians as well as the Civics Exchange program sponsored by the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic to provide historical perspectives on civic life, culture, and current events for journalists, civic organizations, and community groups. 

Greg Giberson, Project Lead, Pomeroy Living Centers

Greg is Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Oakland University and teaches first-year and upper-level writing courses. His scholarship focuses on the history and development of undergraduate Writing Majors, the history and reality of scholarly editing in the field of Writing Studies, and the corporatization of higher education. He is the founder and lead facilitator of the Pomeroy Senior Living Orion Discussion Group and Guest Lecturer Series.

Jessica Payette is Associate Professor of Musicology at Oakland University. Her scholarly interests address opera in Austria, fin-de-siècle Vienna and the emergence of Expressionistic music and choreographic music.

Galina Tirnanic is Associate Professor of Art History and Art History Program Director. Her research focuses on Byzantine visual culture, Constantinople’s public spaces, public punishment, representations of martyrdom, relics, mental images, Byzantine magic, Medieval Venice, monumental columns, and medieval representation of time.

Watoii Rabii is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, with research that focuses on Crime, Law, and Deviance; Race and Ethnicity; Immigration, and Urban Sociology.

Anne Switzer Zacharias is Associate Professor and Social Sciences Librarian & Outreach Coordinator. Her subject area specialties include Anthropology, Criminal Justice, Interdisciplinary Studies, Liberal Studies, Psychology, Religious Studies, Social Work, Sociology, and Women & Gender Studies.

The Center for Public Humanities is proud to partner with community organizations who support our mission and help us reach a wider audience. These include:

Rochester Hills Public Library 

Beginning in the summer of 2025, CPH and RHPL have joined forces to bring humanities programming out into the community, with events hosted in the Multipurpose Room at RHPL, while inviting the community onto the OU campus for programs designed specifically for our neighbors. Thanks to the leadership of our Advisory Board member Betsy Raczkowski and former CPH Director Dan Clark, this partnership has expanded our offerings, our reach, and our impact.

Pomeroy Senior Living

Since the summer of 2025, CPH Executive Board member Greg Giberson has created bespoke programming for residents at Pomeroy Living in Orion Township. Ranging from small creative writing workshops to book discussion groups to lectures by OU faculty, these events bring the scholarship, creative work, and teaching skills of OU humanities to our senior community members.

Statement of Solidarity and Commitment to Anti-Racism

The Center for Public Humanities acknowledges the pain and loss that Black and brown citizens disproportionately endure due to racist violence and police brutality. The activism in response to the murder of George Floyd and other Black Americans has been precipitated by the ongoing systematic manifestation of anti-Black violence. The Center commits to a steadfast position of anti-racism to support our students, staff, faculty, and community members. We support journalists and all citizens who exercise their freedom of speech to expose and oppose institutional racism to build a more just society. We continue to seek and support conversations across campus and the region to strengthen our position against racism in all its forms.

Land Acknowledgment

Niinwe nmiigwechendaanaa maanda aki.
Maanda Oakland University teg.
Pane gwanda Ojibwek, Odawak miinawa Bodwe’aadamiinhak.
Giibidaawok maanpii.

We acknowledge that the land on which Oakland University stands is the ancestral land of the Ojibwa, Ottawa, and the Potawatomi Nations.

A land acknowledgment offers a way to open a dialog. We at the Center for Public Humanities see this acknowledgment only as a beginning—we recognize that the arts and humanities have been practiced in Southeast Michigan long before the arrival of Europeans. As we learn how best to serve residents of the Tri-County Area, we pledge to be a positive voice to celebrate past achievements and amplify present and future contributions by Indigenous and Native American artists and humanists in this region.

We extend our sincere gratitude to Kenny Pheasant of the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians for translating the land acknowledgment into Anishinaabemowin.

Stephanie Arwady is a public historian who earned her BA and MA in History at Oakland University. She’s worked as an historic interpreter and Adult Programs Director at the Troy Historic Village. She currently works for the State of Michigan as an Historian and serves as a volunteer on the Oakland County Historical Commission.

Piper Carter is a Detroit-based organizer and the Environmental Justice Coordinator for the Detroit Black Community Food Sovereignty Network (DBCFSN). At the intersection of Afro-Indigenous practices and grassroots feminism, she works to secure food sovereignty and climate equity for Black communities.

Piper serves as the Midwest Convener and a founding member of the Black Caucus for the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), as well as a leadership team member and Mutual Aid Resource Chair for the National Black Food and Justice Alliance.

As a Hip Hop Activist and cultural trainer for Detroit Action, she utilizes arts-culture organizing to build community power and dismantle systemic inequities. Her work focuses on the just transition, building towards Black Liberation and environmental justice, ensuring that the frontline voices of Detroit are central to and leading the global climate conversation.

Daniel Clark is a historian whose research involves oral history, interviewing people about their experiences. He is the author of Like Night and Day: Unionization in a Southern Mill Town (University of North Carolina Press, 1997), Disruption in Detroit: Detroit Autoworkers and
the Elusive Postwar Boom (University of Illinois Press, 2018), and Listening to Workers: Oral Histories of Metro-Detroit Autoworkers in the 1950s (University of Illinois Press, 2024). He also enjoys raising vegetables in a community garden and running on trails.

The Rev. Dr. William J. Danaher is a catalytic and compassionate leader whose career spans religious, nonprofit, and higher education settings. He currently serves as Rector (Senior Cleric) of Christ Church Cranbrook, where he leads a dynamic, thriving, and inclusive congregation of more than 2,600 members.

Rev. Danaher has also founded and directs several nonprofit initiatives, The Cranbrook Project, and the Interfaith Dental Clinic. He is also the founder of the Institute for Advanced Pastoral Studies, a deliberately diverse and intentionally ecumenical network of continuing education for pastors and religious leaders in Detroit and Atlanta. His newest project, Faith in Detroit, is working to gather and share stories of faith from the people of Detroit. The project’s goal is to build a comprehensive storytelling ecosystem that will find and share compelling and true stories of faith.

Dr. Danaher received a MBA from the University of Michigan (highest distinction), PhD from Yale University in Religious Studies, and M.Div. From Virginia Theological Seminary. Prior to coming to Christ Church Cranbrook, he was a chaired and tenured professor at universities and seminaries in Canada and the United States.

Brandon R. Grafius is professor of biblical studies and academic dean at Ecumenical Theological Seminary, Detroit. His work explores the intersection of religion, horror, and politics, and has been widely published in both academic and popular spaces, including Salon, The Christian Century, and The Metropolitan Review. His recent book, Scared by the Bible: The Roots of Horror in Scripture, was published in 2025 by Morehouse publishing. Concerning Dust and Ashes: Affects of Horror in the Hebrew Bible, is scheduled for publication in 2026 by Oxford University Press.

Betsy Raczkowski (she/her) is the Head of Communications and Engagement at Rochester Hills Public Library. She has a B.A. in English from Oakland University and a Master's in Library and Information Science from Wayne State University.

Erin K. Schmidt is a practicing book artist and printmaker who creates small editioned and unique handbound artists’ books and zines. Among her awards are 2023 Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellowship and Sheffield International Artist’s Book Prize. Schmidt’s work has been exhibited and collected internationally, and can be found in private and public collections. She conducts book arts workshops and teaches at Oakland University. You can find her work at http://www.erinkschmidt.com/.

Mark Stryker is an award-winning author, journalist, filmmaker, and 2020 inductee into the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame. His 2019 book, Jazz from Detroit (Univ. of Michigan Press), was named Jazz Book of Year by the Jazz Times Critics Poll. He is also the author of Destiny: 100 Years of Music, Magic, and Community at Orchestra Hall in Detroit. He wrote and co-produced the 2025 documentary film The Best of the Best: Jazz from Detroit, which is streaming on Prime Video and other platforms.  Stryker was an arts reporter and critic at the Detroit Free Press from 1995-2016, covering classical music, jazz, and the visual arts.

Everyone’s been talking about the The Odyssey. From the ancient Greek epic to Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation, and from its episode on the children’s show Wishbone to Jorge Rivera-Herrans’ EPIC album cycle. To celebrate these conversations, Oakland University’s Center for Public Humanities will host a special Odyssey event on March 12, 2027.

In collaboration with OU Poetry Professor Katie Hartsock, we are also launching an Odyssey-inspired writing contest, and winners will be featured at the event.

Click here to enter

About the Contest:

Since antiquity, Odysseus, Penelope, and the poem’s amazing range of mortals, immortals, and monsters have inspired almost infinite further poems and stories. The ancient poem lives on through such retellings and responses; we invite you to add your voice to these tales. 

While there is a myriad of approaches your poem or flash fiction piece could take, you should not merely retell a scene from The Odyssey; instead, you want to craft a compelling interpretation or reimagine an ancient character in the modern world. The possibilities are endless, but your submission could do the following:

• Take the form of a persona poem or monologue in the voice of a character whose telling adds something new
• Make the old story relevant to our present moment in a revealing way.
• Choose a contemporary voice comparing or describing the old story in an previously untold way.

Poems and Prose Resources for Inspiration:

• The Odyssey, by Homer. Check out translations by Fagles, Wilson, Lattimore, Mendelsohn, and more) When you find yourself moved by a turn of phrase, a certain scene, or an echo within your own life or contemporary situation, write into your response.
• “ithaca” by Maria Zoccola (Zoccola will give the fall Maurice Brown Memorial Poetry Reading, free and open to the public, this fall at OU on Nov 10, 2026 – her work often draws from Homer, so come listen to her read to help develop your own ideas)
• “Ithaka” by Constantine Cavafy
• Circe, a novel by Madeline Miller
• “The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel,” by Nikos Kazantzakis
• “Telemachus’ Detachment” by Louise Glück
• “Polutropos,” by Amit Majmudar
• “At Ithaca,” by H.D.
• “Moly,” by Thom Gunn
• “An Ancient Gesture,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
• Many novelists have used the structure of Odyssey to tell modern stories, including James Joyce (Ulysses), Toni Morrison (Home), Rebecca West (The Return of the Soldier) and Cormac McCarthy (The Road).

Submission Guidelines:

Deadline: Friday, January 15^th, 2027, by midnight. 

Click Here to Enter

One submission per author will be either a poem, up to 40 lines long total (including spaces between stanzas), or a piece of flash fiction between 250 and 1000 words.

• Upload each submission as a Word file (.doc or .docx), with only the work’s title as its file name, in 12-point font, single spaced.
  
  
• Contest will be judged anonymously; do not include any personal information in the file name or in the document. Any submissions with personal information included are ineligible.
  
  
• Any work composed with the use of AI is ineligible.
  
  
• Select one of the following categories for your entry:

1. Current high school student
2. Current college student (undergraduate)
3. Current college student (graduate)
4. Community member. This includes writers of all ages and experience levels, from OU alums to anyone living in SE Michigan who is not a current student.

NOTE: OU faculty and staff are not eligible to participate.

• Winners for first and second place in each category will receive books as prizes. In some cases, third prize winners and honorable mentions may also be invited to read.
• The Google form will also ask you to confirm that, should your work be chosen as a winner, you can commit to attending the winners’ reading on March 12, 2027.

Questions? Email Professor Katie Hartsock at hartsock@oakland.edu