Faculty Focus-January 27, 2026
Faculty members put their knowledge into action so students and others are able to benefit from it. Recently, faculty published in prestigious magazines, wrote groundbreaking book chapters, and were honored with international acclaim.
Paul Doty
Curator of Special Collections & University Archives Librarian Paul Doty has published a poem titled "The Gospel According to Alfred" in issue nine of Midnight Mind Magazine.
Alfred is a used car salesman in Toledo Ohio who has a vision of the Lord, which inspires him to a long journey through the Midwest and High Plains. Written with Jack Kerouac's book The Dharma Bums in mind, "The Gospel According to Alfred" is a narrative poem about solitary wandering and American literary traditions as worldly inspiration.
Doty has been a librarian at St. Lawrence for twenty years, and at various points in time was involved with library web development, public service, and Interlibrary Loan. Among his interests and plans for Special Collections is continuing the important work of acquiring and making available materials about the North Country and the Adirondacks. Along the way he has worked any number of campus committees, taught a variety of courses in St. Lawrence’s First Year Program, and published poems or essays in the Mississippi Review, the Great Lakes Review, Poetry Pacific, the Reference Librarian, and the Cortland Review.
Angela Sweigart-Gallagher
Associate Professor of Performance and Communication Arts Angela Sweigart-Gallagher has published a book chapter titled, "Puss' Hat: Taxidermized Excess in the Gilded Age and Internet Era," in the book Animal Fashions: Colonialism, Collecting, and Gender.
In this chapter, Sweigart-Gallagher analyzes a striking photograph of Gilded Age socialite Kate Fearing Strong taken at Alva Vanderbilt's infamous 1883 costume ball. In the image, Miss Strong appears in an extravagant costume, replete with a taxidermized cat as a hat. Sweigart-Gallagher discusses the costume and Strong’s photograph within its historical context, identifying how Strong and her costume performed a reversal of a Victorian/Gilded Age fascination with anthropomorphized nonhuman animals in favor of a zoomorphic use of taxidermy.
Sweigart-Gallagher argues that in our present moment, the cat’s body—quite literally a “pussy hat”—transforms Strong into a hypersexualized object (just another pussy on the web) and a sexually empowered woman boldly crafting her own image, particularly when considered alongside other elements of Strong’s costume.
Sweigart-Gallagher is a theatre scholar and practitioner whose work in both domains often focuses on political theatre and performance. She also specializes in applied theatre as a teaching and learning tool.
Anna Fahr
Assistant Professor of Digital Media and Film Anna Fahr has been named to the 2026 Director Market Accelerator, a national program presented by the National Directors Division of the Directors Guild of Canada.
Fahr was selected as part of a Canada-wide delegation of directors with feature film projects in development. Delegation benefits include a European Film Market badge, market preparation, access to panels and workshops, private networking with industry decision-makers, on-site support, and targeted promotion.
Her selected feature project, "Beirut in Between," follows an ambitious Iranian medical student bound for Canada who becomes stranded in Beirut, where she navigates uncertainty, a developing relationship with a Syrian photographer, and questions about her future.
The European Film Market will take place February 13–15, 2026, alongside the Berlin International Film Festival.
Fahr is an independent filmmaker, educator, and founder of Morning Bird Pictures, a Toronto-based production company dedicated to creating films with social impact that focus on the contemporary Middle East and its diaspora.
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