Ghose was the author of more than twenty-five books and his range was wide: fiction, poetry, and criticism. As a novelist, he challenged the limits of traditional realism with innovation in structure and language. But he’s also remembered by many as a generous and warm colleague and mentor.
Blog
Economics as Storytelling: Alumni Q&A with Kyle Kretschman
Now the Head of Economics for Spotify, Kretschman was once a doctoral student studying microeconomics at The University of Texas at Austin. One afternoon in October, we met over Zoom to discuss how he got from one point to the other and how he sees his liberal arts background affecting the work he does now.
In Memoriam: Joel F. Sherzer, Linguistic Anthropologist, Visionary Digital Archivist, and Pioneer of Speech Play and Verbal Art Studies
Sherzer joined the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin (UT) in 1969, and served as its chair from 1987 to 1995. He became a member of the UT Department of Linguistics in 1978. He was the recipient of National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships in 1975 and 1997–98; a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1978–79; and several grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities between 1975 and 2008. In 1989, he was named Liberal Arts Foundation Centennial Professor, a title he held until his retirement in 2008.
Why I teach a course connecting Taylor Swift’s songs to the works of Shakespeare, Hitchcock and Plath
Analyzing Swift’s writing will hopefully help my students recognize how certain poetic and literary devices operate in older texts – as much as those same books and poems from the past help them appreciate Swift’s art at a deeper level. Swift, like all artists, is part of a great tradition, and she calls upon it to create new works.
‘Much more than a surgeon’: Remembering David Genecov, MD, 1963-2022
David Genecov, a COLA alum, longtime Advisory Council member, and dear friend of the College, tragically passed away this November. He possessed a combination of innovative drive, intellectual curiosity, and an unyielding willingness to collaborate with others, and he will be missed by all of us at COLA.
The New Conversation with Lisa B. Thompson
A professor of African and African diaspora studies at The University of Texas at Austin and a celebrated author and playwright, Thompson is also a Presidential Visiting Scholar at The New School for 2022-23. The New School’s president Dwight A. McBride recently interviewed Thompson about her work as an artist-scholar and how she uses her teaching to give students creative liberty.
A Video Game produced by UT Austin’s JapanLab and Studio Unagi Immerses Players in the Turbulent World of Nineteenth Century Japan
A fully functional, historical video game, Ghosts over the Water: Changing the Tides of Japan’s Future, features an accessible visual novel framework and 130,000 words of researched text.
Heavy mercury contamination at Maya sites reveals a deep historic legacy
By Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach, Timothy Beach, Duncan Cook, Nicholas Dunning, and Simon Turner Story originally published on The Conversation. Mercury is a toxic heavy metal. When leached into the natural environment, it accumulates and builds up through food chains, ultimately threatening human health and ecosystems. In the last century, human activities have increased atmospheric mercury concentrations by 300-500% above […]
The Value of the Liberal Arts
Those of us who teach in liberal arts colleges are passionate about the value of a liberal arts education. But for those outside of academia – even for those who might have received a degree in UT’s College of Liberal Arts – the precise meaning of “liberal arts” can be murky. What, exactly, is meant by […]
Q&A with Celina de Sá
Celina de Sá, an assistant professor of anthropology and an affiliated faculty member in African and African Diaspora Studies and the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at UT Austin, is one of the College of Liberal Arts’ newer faculty members. Her research focuses on performance and race through grassroots social networks in […]
The Psychologist and the Firefighters
When Chief Ken Bailey, head of Travis County Fire Rescue ESD No. 11, realized his organization had a problem with staff morale and turnover, he turned to an unlikely place for help: UT Austin’s Applied Psychology Research Lab, led by assistant research professor Alissa Mrazek. Bailey’s district serves a wedge of Travis County that stretches […]
In Memoriam: Nora C. England, Visionary Linguist and Mentor
Nora England’s passion for linguistics was sparked during her undergraduate years at Bryn Mawr College. Almost on a whim, she enrolled in a linguistics field methods course. “That really got me going—actually hearing data from another language and paying attention to it,” she recalled in an interview. “It was the first course that I ever […]
A Love Letter to Black Austin
Interview with Lisa B. Thompson and Richard Reddick on Their New Black Austin Matters Podcast Black Austin Matters, a new podcast from KUT and KUTX Studios, aims to give voice to the daily experiences of Black Austinites, while deepening mutual understanding throughout the broader Austin community. We spoke to its hosts and co-producers, College of […]
Q&A with RANE Eurasia Analyst Matthew Orr
Matthew Orr is a Eurasia analyst at RANE, a risk intelligence company that provides geopolitical information and consultation to consumers and corporate clients with business interests around the globe. Prior to starting at RANE, Orr received dual Master’s degrees in Global Policy Studies and Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at The University of Texas […]
Q&A with Mykhaylo (Misha) Simanovskyy, Graduate Student and Donetsk Native
Misha Simanovskyy is a native of Donetsk, Ukraine and a first-year graduate student pursuing a dual master’s degree in Global Policy Studies and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies.
Fighting from Within
A Q&A with 2020 Diehl Prize winner and public school teacher Yulissa Chavez. A child of immigrants who had no formal education, Chavez has long been passionate about public education and combatting systems of oppression and poverty.
Turtle Pond Haiku Selected for Japanese Tea Bottle
Agnes Savich recently won an international poetry contest and her haiku was printed and translated on bottles of ITO EN green tea.
After Life: Remembering Don Graham
Don Graham took his last breath on Saturday, June 22, 2019, at 6:33 a.m., as I held his hand in mine in a narrow room at St. David’s Hospital in Austin. It had been a long time since I had seen a sunrise, and the gray outside his window was beginning to infuse itself with rose and gold.
Primary Source: Notes for a Napoleonic Scandal
In 1815, William Warden was surgeon of HMS Northumberland as it transported Napoleon Bonaparte to his second (and hopefully final) exile. Well aware that folks back home—or even, possibly, history itself—would be interested, Warden took notes in an old surgeon’s log.
A Language for Big Data Neuroscience
Imagine your brain activity displayed on a computer screen — multiple, bustling tabs open, some sparked by a fleeting thought, others derived from prior or underlying behaviors or features. Now imagine a scientist trying to make sense of that activity.
In Memoriam: Teresa Lozano Long
Beloved philanthropist and educator Teresa Lozano Long passed away peacefully on March 21, 2021, with Joe R. Long, her loving husband of 63 years, holding her hand. She was 92.
A Texas Politics Explainer
Many Texans learned a new word this year: quorum. And, no, it’s not the collective noun for a group of opossums. A quorum is the minimum number of assembly members that must be present in order to conduct business. For the Texas House of Representatives, that minimum is two-thirds of its members.
The Exhibition on Your Screen: Selected Images from “A New Spain, 1521–1821”
A New Spain, 1521–1821, an online exhibition, traces the cultural, social, and political evolution of the Viceroyalty of New Spain from the fall of Moctezuma’s Mexico-Tenochtitlán in 1521 until the rise of Iturbide’s Mexican Empire in 1821.
Biden Administration to Nominate Liberal Arts Alumna to Chair ACHP
President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Sara Bronin, a Plan II Honors and Architecture alumna from The University of Texas at Austin, as Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) chairperson.
The Body’s Real-Time Response to Racism
For the first time, researchers have recorded how the body responds when someone is confronted with racism or discrimination in the real world, providing new insight into health disparities in the United States and the stress experienced by students-of-color.