“Even a strutting exhibitionist has something to hide: certain diary entries, genetic predispositions, financial mistakes, medical crises, teenage embarrassments, antisocial compulsions, sexual fantasies, radical dreams,” writes Randolph Lewis. “We all have something that we want to shield from public view. The real question is: Who gets to pull the curtains? And increasingly: How will we […]
Winter 2018
Sick: The Poetics of Modern Health Care
…And all the while, I kept thinking about that great old Whitman poem… ‘When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.’I…I don’t know it.Anyway…Well, can you recite it?Pathetically enough, I could. With some encouragement from Walt, Gale continues:When I heard the learn’d astronomer,When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,When I was shown the charts […]
Tropical Storm: How Cuba Sent Revolutionary Waves Around the World
When it comes to staging a revolution, timing is everything. In 1959 an island nation of 7 million revolted against its U.S.-backed dictator, and with its subsequent export of revolution to Latin America became a major driver of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. In a story as compelling as it is complex, Professor […]
Where India Goes
UT Austin economist Dean Spears and sociologist Diane Coffey founded the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics (r.i.c.e.) in 2011 with the goal of improving health and well-being in India. They focus on an important driver of economic development: the health of children. Despite rapid economic growth, India’s infant and under-five mortality rate continues to be […]
The Journey Continues: Rapoport Scholars Fulfill a Commitment to Community and Civic Life
It began with a daring escape from Siberia that involved walking more than 600 miles. After five years of exile, a Russian revolutionary named David Rapoport found refuge in Belgium, and in 1913 he immigrated to a new life in San Antonio. It was from this man, his father, that Bernard “B” Rapoport drew his inspiration. […]
Damning the Amazon?
Hundreds of built and proposed hydroelectric dams may significantly harm life in and around the Amazon, according to research led by UT Austin scientists recently published in Nature. To meet energy needs, economic developers in South America have proposed 428 hydroelectric dams, with 140 currently built or under construction, in the Amazon basin — the largest and most […]
Fashion Meets Function
Though an avid cyclist, Gloria Hwang was never a fan of helmets, referring to them as “sci-fi” nuisances. But after losing a friend through a cycling accident, her perspective changed. Hwang, a psychology alumna, says her mission in founding and launching Thousand, a new brand of cycling helmets, was to save lives, noting that there are […]
An Education Like No Other
An education at a Research I university is like no other in that it gives undergraduates a unique opportunity to learn from and even work alongside some of the world’s top faculty researchers. A great example in our college is psychology professor Marc Lewis, who along with his wife Elizabeth Crook created the Eleanor Butt […]
Reckoning the Haint
Drea Brown made UT Austin history during the spring as the first doctoral candidate to defend a dissertation in the Department of African & African Diaspora Studies. The department, founded in 2010 under the direction of associate professor and chair Edmund Gordon, was the first doctoral program in black studies in the southern U.S. Brown’s dissertation, “Hush […]
Doing the Right Thing
The Pro Bene Meritis award is the highest honor bestowed by the College of Liberal Arts. Since 1984, the annual award has been given to alumni, faculty members and friends of the college who are committed to the liberal arts, have made outstanding contributions in professional or philanthropic pursuits or have participated in service related to the college. […]
Telling a Good Story
The Pro Bene Meritis award is the highest honor bestowed by the College of Liberal Arts. Since 1984, the annual award has been given to alumni, faculty members and friends of the college who are committed to the liberal arts, have made outstanding contributions in professional or philanthropic pursuits or have participated in service related to the college. […]
An Educated Decision
Voter turnout in the U.S. is below turnout in most other advanced democracies, with only about 60 percent of eligible voters participating in the past four presidential elections and about 40 percent participating in midterm elections. While prior research indicates that those with higher levels of education are more likely to vote, new research shows […]
The “C” that Changed the Constitution
It took two centuries and one mediocre grade to ratify the 27th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In 1982, Gregory Watson stumbled upon a 200-year-old proposed amendment, written by James Madison, while researching a paper for his sophomore government class. It read: “No law varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives […]
Funding the Future
A $1.5 million gift will fund seven scholarships and contribute to the Marilyn Ann White Endowed Discretionary Fund, or “the tutoring fund,” for students in all three branches of the UT Austin Reserve Officers Training Program. The gift provides additional funding for the Lt. Col. Herbert C. White Jr. Leadership and Scholarship Fund, awarded to […]
U.S. Interests Hurt By Withdrawal From UNESCO
“Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” So begins the preamble to the Constitution of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). They were words written in 1945 by the American poet and playwright Archibald MacLeish, who […]
Predators Turned Prey
Shark Week brings all sorts of shocking—and horrifying — spectacles to viewers. This year, audiences were promised the first-ever man versus shark swim off, where 23-time gold medalist Michael Phelps will face off against “one of the fastest and most efficient predators on the planet,” a great white. But, perhaps, what’s more shocking is the […]