News

SOAN major, GWSS minor, and Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow Juan Garcia Reyes ’26 has been accepted into the 2025 American Sociological Association (ASA) Honors Program. This program introduces exceptional undergraduate sociology students to the professional life of the discipline through participation in special activities at the ASA Annual Meeting.

GWSS, AMST, and CCST alum Kao Kalia Yang ’03 has won three Minnesota Book Awards in the categories of memoir, children’s literature, and middle grade literature. She is the first person to ever win a trio of prizes at one Minnesota Book Awards ceremony.

GWSS and AMST alum Esmé Schwall ’97 has earned a 2025 Christopher Award for her book The Ballerina of Auschwitz, co-authored with La Jolla-based author and Holocaust survivor Dr. Edith Eva Eger. The book for young adults is one of 12 winners for adults and young people as the Christopher Awards program marks its 76th year.

The Christopher Awards celebrate authors, illustrators, writers, producers and directors, whose work “affirms the highest values of the human spirit” and reflect the Christopher motto, “It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”

GWSS, AMST, and CCST alum Kao Kalia Yang ’03 was named Artist of the Year by The Minnesota Star Tribune for 2024. In the piece announcing her achievement, Yang mentions the honorary degree she received from Carleton during the Class of 2024 Commencement ceremony.

Read the full piece in the Star Tribune.

GWSS alum and Minneapolis City Council member Robin Wonsley ’13 has been announced as the keynote speaker for this year’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Celebration, hosted by the Northfield Human Rights Commission. The theme of this year’s event is “Mission Possible: Protecting Freedom, Justice, and Democracy in the Spirit of Nonviolence 365.”

Read the full announcement on KYMN.

GWSS and Psychology major Annanya Sinha ’25 was featured in the September 2024 Student Life Newsletter in the “Staff and Student Highlights” section for being Carleton’s Mortar Board Chapter co-president and National Council Student Representative at-large.

GWSS, AMST, and CCST alum Kao Kalia Yang ’03 was featured in a Star Tribune piece titled “Four Minnesota writers each have 3 (or more!) books out this year. How did they do it?”

GWSS, AMST, and CCST alum Kao Kalia Yang ’03 was featured in the Carleton News for her class of 2024 commencement address. Yang is a Hmong writer who holds the distinction of authoring both the first Hmong American memoir published with national distribution about the history of Hmong people and the first Hmong story adapted to opera. An honorary doctoral degree was conferred to her during the ceremony, and she gave an inspiring and heartfelt address about the power and history of her family, herself, and the Hmong people.

Anna Moltchanova, director of gender, women’s & sexuality studies and David and Mary-Alice Sipfle Professor of Philosophy at Carleton, was awarded a 2024 Curriculum Innovation faculty grant from Ethical Inquiry at Carleton (EthIC) to develop a new course, American Pragmatism, which rectifies the traditional omission of pragmatism’s Indigenous roots, Black predecessors, and feminist contemporaries.

SOAN major and GWSS minor Moe Kojima ’24 presented before a national panel of adjudicators at the American College Dance Conference, held this year at St. Olaf, with the Carleton Semaphore Repertory Dance Company. The company performed in the adjudicated concert with works by guest artist Elayna Waxse and by senior dance major d’Auria. Kojima performed an original solo in the Informal Concert.