About the Council of Endowed Chairs
The Council of Endowed Chairs (CEC) seeks to promote and advance recognition of Monmouth University as a center for excellence in teaching and research through heightened commitments to the scholarship of presentation, publication, and public engagement. Its members hope to serve as resources for other scholars at Monmouth, both students and faculty, as well as provide expertise to regional and national audiences. The ideal of interdisciplinary collaboration guides the activities of the Council of Endowed Chairs. Members of the Council represent and work across diverse majors and Schools in order to undertake the scholarship of discovery and the creation of new knowledge as they seek to strengthen communities of learners.
Founded in Fall 2018, the CEC highlights the work of its members through on-campus lectures, talks, and workshops scheduled at least once a semester. The founding Chair of the Council of Endowed Chairs Dr. Kristin Bluemel welcomes all inquiries at kbluemel@monmouth.edu.

Professor
Endowed Professor of Marine Science

Professor

Professor of English
Wayne D. McMurray and Helen Bennett Endowed Chair in the Humanities
Graduate Faculty

Professor
Freed Endowed Chair in Social Sciences

Associate Professor
Director, Sociology Program
Helen Bennett McMurray Endowed Chair in Social Ethics

Professor
Pozycki Professor of Real Estate at Monmouth University

Professor
Jules Plangere, Jr., Endowed Chair in American Social History
LISTEN: Prof. Scott on “Risk of Ruin” Podcast
February 18, 2023
An episode about the ever elusive idea of winning at craps using physical skill, aka dice control. Guests: Advantage player Frank B., PhD economist Robert Scott, and special guest Richard Munchkin
Prof. Bluemel Publishes on Claire Leighton For “R.A.W.: Rediscovering Art by Women”
February 7, 2023
Kristin Bluemel, professor of English and Wayne D. McMurray Endowed Chair, recently published an article on the English artist and writer Clare Leighton for RAW – Rediscovering Art by Women: The Radical Art Website. Titled “Clare Leighton and the Fine Art of Mass Reproduction,” Bluemel’s article introduces Leighton as a protofeminist socialist writer and wood…
Professor Bluemel Presents Leverhulme Lecture March 10
March 9, 2022
Kristin Bluemel, Ph.D., professor of English and Wayne D. McMurray Endowed Chair, will deliver a lecture, “Green worlds in black and white: women artists, children’s books, and the 1930s wood engraving revival,” on March 10 at 12 p.m. (Eastern Time). The lecture is part of the Stirling Maxwell Centre for the Study of Text/Image Cultures…
LISTEN: Professor Bluemel Interviewed for Podcast Stories from the Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945
October 28, 2021
Professor Kristen Bluemel’s audio interview about “Gwen Raverat and Interwar Wood Engraving” was released on Apple, Stitcher, and Spotify on 15 October 2021. You can hear Bluemel talk with Space Between scholar Michael McCluskey about her current research on Gwen Raverat and other women artists who led the wood engraving revival in 1920s and 1930s…
Professor Bluemel Delivers Invited Talk to University of East Anglia’s Twentieth-Century Research Seminar
October 27, 2021
Professor Kristin Bluemel was the featured speaker at the University of East Anglia’s Twentieth Century Research Seminar, presenting her paper “Theorizing Rural Modernity: New Modernist Encounters with Geography.” An intervention in the emerging interdisciplinary field of rural humanities, Bluemel’s paper called upon new modernist scholars of literature, art, and book history to enrich and correct…
Recent Works from Council Members
Climate Change and the Voiceless: Protecting Future Generations, Wildlife, and Natural Resources
By Randall S. Abate
Future generations, wildlife, and natural resources – collectively referred to as ‘the voiceless’ in this work – are the most vulnerable and least equipped populations to protect themselves from the impacts of global climate change. While domestic and international law protections are beginning to recognize rights and responsibilities that apply to the voiceless community, these legal developments have yet to be pursued in a collective manner and have not been considered together in the context of climate change and climate justice. In Climate Change and the Voiceless, Randall S. Abate identifies the common vulnerabilities of the voiceless in the Anthropocene era and demonstrates how the law, by incorporating principles of sustainable development, can evolve to protect their interests more effectively. This work should be read by anyone interested in how the law can be employed to mitigate the effects of climate change on those who stand to lose the most.
Rural Modernity in Britain: A Critical Intervention
Edited by Kristin Bluemel and Michael McCluskey
Rural Modernity in Britain argues that the rural areas of Britain were impacted by modernisation just as much – if not more – than urban and suburban areas. It is the first study of modernity and modernism to focus on rural people and places that experienced economic depression, the expansion of transportation and communication networks, the roll out of electricity, the loss of land, and the erosion of local identities. Who celebrated these changes? Who resisted them? Who documented them? Essays in this collection investigate five main cultural areas: Networks, Landscapes, Communities, Heritage, and Wars. Together they make the case that the rural means more than just the often-studied countryside of southern England, a retreat from the consequences of modernity; rather, the rural emerges as a source for new versions of the modern, with an active role in the formation and development of British experiences and representations of modernity.
Women at the Wheel: A Century of Buying, Driving, and Fixing Cars
By Katherine J. Parkin
Ever since the Ford Model T became a vehicle for the masses, the automobile has served as a symbol of masculinity. The freedom of the open road, the muscle car’s horsepower, the technical know-how for tinkering: all of these experiences have largely been understood from the perspective of the male driver. Women, in contrast, were relegated to the passenger seat and have been the target of stereotypes that portray them as uninterested in automobiles and, more perniciously, as poor drivers. In Women at the Wheel, Katherine J. Parkin illuminates the social implications of these stereotypes and shows how they have little basis in historical reality.