News Center Maine interviewed Bates Professor of Rhetoric, Film, and Screen Studies Jon Cavallero, along with students Shelter Gimbel-Sherr ’27 of Seattle and Nate Shore ’27 of Kennebunkport, Maine, about the 2026 Bates Film Festival. The festival ran from May 12 to 17 and was organized by Bates students in Cavallero’s Short Term course. “The basic idea is to have students involved in every aspect of the festival’s planning and execution,” Cavallero told News Center Maine, “and to create an event that’s free and open to the public.” This year’s festival featured over 45 films as well as panels of filmmakers, professors, and students, and included a focus on the work of Maine-based filmmakers and actors. 

The Portland Press Herald reported that Jessica Anthony ’96, senior lecturer in English, was one of three Mainers to win the Guggenheim Fellowship for 2026. Fellowships were awarded to 223 people working across 55 fields, according to a release from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Nearly 5,000 people had applied.

Jess Anthony is the author of four novels, including The Most, which was longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction in 2024.  Her 2020 novel “Enter the Aardvark” was a finalist for the New England Book Award in fiction. Anthony teaches introductory and advanced fiction and nonfiction workshops and advises students writing creative theses.

You can read more about Bates’ two faculty winners here.

For an opinion piece, headlined “Rural Students Made It to Campus. Now What?,” Inside Higher Education Editor-in-Chief Sara Custer drew inspiration from Professor of Education Mara Tieken’s work 

Tieken advocates for colleges to rethink how they support rural students once they arrive on campuses far from their homes, not just in terms of miles, but in cultural markers. “We don’t have that vocabulary for how geography matters,” Tieken told  IHE in its podcast The Key.

In a June 11 Education Week story headlined “Closing a School? Don’t Expect to Save Money, a New Study Warns,” Tieken said, “The assumption is just so baked into the logic of closure decisions that it’s assumed closures will save money, so it can be really hard for leaders to combat that thinking. This is a really important piece of evidence as districts navigate these conversations and decisions.”

Myronn Hardy, associate professor of English, was one of three Mainers to win the Guggenheim Fellowship for 2026 recently reported in the Portland Press Herald. Fellowships were awarded to 223 people working across 55 fields, according to a release from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Nearly 5,000 people had applied.

Hardy’s Guggenheim is a career prize, celebrating his body of work while supporting future endeavors. Hardy has published six volumes of poetry, most recently, Aurora Americana. His books have received numerous accolades including the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the Griot-Stadler Prize for Poetry. 

You can read more about Bates’ two faculty winners here.

Associate Professor of Physics and Chair of Physics and Astronomy, Aleksandar M. Diamond-Stanic was a guest  on Maine Calling for a show on “Winter Light” on Dec. 19, 2025 in advance of the winter solstice.

Diamond-Stanic, whose research focuses on the evolution of galaxies and the growth of supermassive black holes through cosmic time, was joined on panel by Sarah Tuttle, host and producer of Maine Public Classical and Jessica Miller, host of Weekend Edition and radio operations announcer for Maine Public. His job? Explaining the science.

But he also spoke on the way the approaching solstice is celebrated in his native Serbian culture. He described Slava as a way to celebrate something that we are all experiencing but do not have control over. “Coming together in moments of otherwise darkness to bring light is really human [tendency],” Diamond-Stanic says.