Introducing Our New President Rebecca Heimel Rebecca taught for a decade at Cambridge College in Boston, ending her time there as the Elizabeth J. McCormack Chair of Humanities. She is currently the Dean of Teaching and Learning at MassBay Community College. Rebecca holds a PhD in Cultural Studies and is an active scholar in the field. What first brought you to NEPCA? Honestly, an economic treatise. Just kidding, kind of. In Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970), Albert Hirschman d

Introducing Our New Executive Secretary Hannah Sophie Schiffner Hannah spent a significant part of her life in New England. She took classes at the Rhode Island School of Design to build her art portfolio, before pursuing cultural studies at Zeppelin University. Today, Hannah is completing her PhD, where she explores heroic narratives in children’s and teen media. What first brought you to NEPCA? Being the only PhD student at my university working on popular culture, I was lo

Interview by Hannah Sophie Schiffner Giacomo Calabria, writing under the pseudonym “Jacopo della Quercia,” is an award-winning educator, essayist, novelist, and taught as a scholar with Humanities New York across a decade. His novels include License to Quill , “a James Bond-esque spy thriller starring William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe during history’s real life Gunpowder Plot,” and The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy , a “historical thriller” with

An interview with our NEPCA member and Jane Austen scholar Dr. Zsòfia Anna Tóth Interview by Hannah Sophie Schiffner What draws you to Jane Austen’s work? I think Jane Austen managed to write about universal truths concerning life, existence as well as human nature in a way that makes all this accessible with a timeless appeal as well as in a transcultural manner. She is read and understood globally even today. Apparently, she was writing about only a handful of people who