Faculty Updates Summer 2026

Rebecca Andersen was interviewed by Adam Stevenson on the cultural landscape of the Mormon Suburb. That conversation can be found at The Utah Monthly.

Mustafa Banister and Fadi Ragheb’s edited volume From Cairo to Jerusalem and Beyond: Studies of the Later Islamic Middle Period in Honor of Linda Stevens Northrup was recently published by Brill. Included in this volume is Banister’s chapter, “Keeping up with the Abbasids: Toward an Economic and Urban Spatial History of the Cairo Caliphate (659-923/1261-1517)” Banister also published “Engaging the ‘Türkmen question’ in Ibn ʿArabshāh’s fifteenth-century sketch of east Anatolian relations with the Sultanate of Cairo (786–844/1385–1440)” in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 36, no. 3 (2026).

Chad Ford’s book Seventy Times Seven: Jesus’s Path to Conflict Transformation won the Association for Mormon Letters’ (AML) 2025 Religious Nonfiction Book of the Year Award. The AML award citation states, “Ford appeals to everyone from the academic scholars to the neighbor next door. The author’s eminently readable and persuasive manner builds trust, and that trust is redoubled because the text rings with honesty, grace, and realism.…” You can read more about the award and Ford’s book at the Association for Mormon Letters.

Susan Grayzel and Molly Cannon spent the summer traveling The Bringing War Home Exhibit to museums across Utah and Southern Idaho. You can learn more about this project at the Bringing War Home Project page.

Victoria Grieve’s book Labor Journalism, Labor Feminism: Women at the Federated Press was published by the University of Illinois Press in May.

James Patton was selected to participate in the Council on Foreign Relations 2026 Religion and Foreign Policy Workshop in New York. Patton will also be the Keynote Speaker for the 11th Annual International Conference on Ethnic and Religious Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding taking place October 19-22.

James Sanders published a Spanish edition of his book La vanguardia del mundo: Cómo América Latina creó la modernidad, la nación y la democracia en el siglo XIX translated by Felipe Escobar. Sanders also gave a presentation at the International Book Fair of Bogotá about this new translation: “Presentación del libro: La vanguardia del mundo: Cómo América Latina creó la modernidad, la nación y la democracia en el siglo XIX.”

Susan Shapiro’s article “Chilon of Sparta: Legend and Reality” was published in the Eirene: Studia Graeca et Latina LXI (2025) journal this Spring.