Norman Sims in an Honors Professor in Commonwealth Honors College. He previously taught in the Journalism Department and was chair of the department for 12 years. He has a Ph.D. in communications from the University of Illinois Urbana, a master’s degree in American history, and a B.S. in journalism. He has taught at UMass Amherst for more than 30 years, along with short stints at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and the University of Colorado. His classes include literary journalism, freedom of the press, the history of American journalism, and nonfiction writing. He is teaching an Honors Seminar 2 that includes a trip to Cuba in January, is working with Chancellor’s Scholars, and will be teaching a capstone class. In recent years, Norman has presented research papers (in English) at international scholarly conventions in France, England, Belgium, Denmark, Portugal, and Italy. In 2014, he will become president of the International Association for Literary Journalism Studies. He has published two anthologies of literary journalism, a collection of scholarly articles titled Literary Journalism in the Twentieth Century (Northwestern University Press, 2008), and a history of the form titled True Stories: A Century of Literary Journalism (Northwestern University Press, 2007). His current cultural research involves the history of the North American canoe.