Four Wayne State University professors who have distinguished themselves with significant scholarly achievements were recently honored with the 2016 WSU Board of Governors Faculty Recognition Awards.

The awards are offered annually to full-time faculty members who make outstanding contributions to scholarship and learning. Each recipient receives a citation from the board, an engraved wall plaque and a monetary award.

This year's recipients are: 

Victor Figueroa, professor in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Figueroa was honored for the publication of Prophetic Visions of the Past: Pan-Caribbean Representations of the Haitian Revolution. His work focused on reading the Haitian Revolution and the literature it has inspired as a transnational dialogue, drawing on texts written in French, English and Spanish.

Ken Jackson, professor in the Department of English, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, for the publication of Shakespeare and Abraham. Jackson, of Bloomfield Hills, is recognized for offering a groundbreaking approach to longstanding scholarly debates over Shakespeare and religion, one of the most controversial topics in Shakespeare’s criticism. Shakespeare and Abraham provided a fresh perspective on perhaps the most-studied author of all time. 

Kate Paesani, professor in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.Paesani, of Royal Oak, is honored for the publication of A Multiliteracies Framework for Collegiate Foreign Language Teaching. In her co-authored book, for which she served as first author, Paesani provided a springboard for further research into the foreign language classroom and effective methods to promote second-language acquisition and cultural knowledge.

Ljiljana Progovac, professor in the Department of English, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Progovac, of Grosse Pointe City, is recognized for the publication of Evolutionary Syntax. She offers a novel gradualist account of the evolution of syntax, grounded in a thorough consideration of a range of linguistic phenomenon. By reconstructing a particular path along with syntax evolved, Progovac sheds light on crucial properties of language design itself, as well as on the major parameters of cross-linguistic variation.