On September 15, four scholars gathered at UT Austin for a roundtable discussion on the history and continued impact of the 1922 Colorado River Compact.
Blog
The Powerful Message of “Murder Most Foul”
Classics professor Tom Palaima on Bob Dylan’s epic and the 60th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Freeman Scholarship Empowers Cross-Cultural Exploration in Singapore
UT student Whitney Nwaneri was planning a study abroad stint in Lisbon, Portugal. Then she received a Freeman Scholarship and changed her plans.
Extra Credit: Location, Location, Location
Dr. Amy Thompson talks settlement archaeology, the Classic Maya, and what your neighborhood can — and can’t — say about you.
The Economics of Education, or Exploring the Multiverse
Rich Murphy studies the life paths created by our educations and asks, what if?
Extra Credit: Lessons in Monkey Studies, or, a Q&A with Anthony Di Fiore
In the first-ever Extra Credit Q&A, anthropology professor Anthony Di Fiore talks spider monkeys, sloth attacks, and a historic vote in Ecuador.
A Lager Beer Revolution: The History of Beer and German American Immigration
German-American immigrants triggered a lager beer revolution during the second half of the 19th century, fundamentally changing US drinking culture.
LLILAS Director Fosters Transformation via Internationalization
Adela Pineda Franco’s love for language, culture and literature dates back to her childhood in Puebla, Mexico. Now, as the director of the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies, she’s bringing that same passion to the Forty Acres and beyond.
Building a Sense of Belonging: Q&A with Stephanie Holmsten
The word “mentorship” conjures an image of a seasoned professional taking a novice under their wing. But Stephanie Holmsten’s primary focus is on creating communities where faculty of all experience levels can learn from each other.
Global Virtual Exchange Professor Elevates YouTube with International Education
University of Texas at Austin psychology professor Michael Domjan has embarked on a mission to make psychology concepts more accessible and engaging for students. Thanks to grants from the Texas Global’s Virtual Exchange (GVE) program, he has launched a successful YouTube channel that does just that.
Watch Roger Reeves Accept 2023 Griffin Poetry Prize
Roger Reeves, English professor at UT Austin and poet extraordinaire, has won the 2023 Griffin Poetry Prize for his book Best Barbarian. The world’s largest international poetry award for a book written or translated into English, the Griffin comes with $130,000 in prize money.
2023 Keene Prize in Literature Winners
The Scholarship Committee of the College of Liberal Arts has completed the judging for the Keene Prize in Literature and is pleased to announce the 2023 Keene Prize goes to Reena Shah, for the fiction entry, “Every Happiness.”
To Do Justice
Federal prosecutor Heidi Boutros Gesch (Plan II and Government ’04) is on the case.
At Winedale, The Show Goes On
Students in UT Austin’s famous Shakespeare at Winedale program often push theater’s “the show must go on” maxim to the edge. Now director James Loehlin faces an offstage challenge, but his commitment to Winedale isn’t wavering.
Kamran Asdar Ali links UT Austin to Global Asia
Kamran Asdar Ali, chair of UT’s Department of Anthropology, just finished his term as president of the Association for Asian Studies. His goal? Expanding how we think about Asia.
“Defining Freedom” Dialogue Features Range of Voices, Perspectives at UT’s College of Liberal Arts
On February 16, two distinct voices from different academic disciplines and positions on the political spectrum met for a moderated dialogue about how they define freedom.
Sparking joy through entrepreneurship: Q&A with COLA student Haley Jústiz
COLA student Haley Jústiz, a partner in the Austin-based startup FreeWater, talks about her journey from book blogger to entrepreneur and what she thinks the liberal arts can bring to business.
Iran and Back Again: Talking with Nahid Siamdoust
Nahid Siamdoust left Iran with her family toward the end of the Iran-Iraq War, after an Iraqi bomb hit her elementary school, killing a number of students. In the decades since, she has lived a truly global life.
Why is a love poem full of sex in the Bible? Readers have been struggling with the Song of Songs for 2,000 years
Many Americans have heard the expression “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine,” but perhaps not all of the quotation’s admirers know that its origins lie in a biblical text: the Song of Songs.
Bloody History, Historical Recovery
In The Injustice Never Leaves You, published in 2018 by Harvard University Press, historian and MacArthur “genius” fellow Monica Martinez documents the disturbing history of anti-Mexican violence during a period of rapid growth and economic transformation for the Lone Star State.
Bringing the Liberal Arts to Texas Prisons
The Texas Prison Education Initiative offers college-credit courses to incarcerated students in the Austin area. The courses, which span subjects from physics to philosophy, are taught by volunteer instructors and offered at no cost to students. Since it began in 2018, the program has served some 230 students in over 400 classes. But there’s still far more demand than they can meet.
This is the Work: Nine Things to Know About Amira Rose Davis
An assistant professor of sociology, Davis specializes in 20th-century American history with an emphasis on race, gender, sports, and politics. But there’s a lot more you should know about her.
Signs of Community
Deborah White and Michael Wynne see themselves and the ASL program they are building at UT Austin as about more than just language. They are a bridge between the Deaf and hearing communities. Their identity as part of the Deaf community is integral to the way that they teach American Sign Language, which is just as much about understanding Deaf culture as it is about vocabulary, syntax, and grammar.
Black Women’s Academic Work is Not for the Taking
From its start at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference in 2018, Cite Black Women has developed into a movement. As founder and COLA professor Christen Smith has said, “I’m not fighting to be on someone’s bibliography. I’m fighting to have my intellectual self respected, and the intellectual work of my foremothers respected, the intellectual work of my sisters and friends respected.”
Black Health Matters
Christy Erving has taught about the sociology of health in general for several years, but it was the realities of life during COVID that steered her to design her new course, “Black Health Matters,” specifically focused on the health of Black Americans. It debuts this fall.