Issues: Fall 2022
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Dean’s Message
A liberal arts education is both a practical preparation for a flourishing career and an immersion in the big questions of life and the world. It’s the right answer to…
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The Bell Tolls for WHOM: The complicated fate of the stuffiest object pronoun
Whom is dying out … mostly. As an essential part of grammatical English, that stuffy, old-fashioned object pronoun is declining in usage, and has been for more than a century.…
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K-Drama, K-Pop, K-Places: The Research of Youjeong Oh
Oh investigates how Korean cities and regions use popular culture, particularly television dramas and K-pop, to promote themselves to an expanding audience of ardent fans. But pop culture is always…
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The Way of Roger
Roger Reeves’ latest poetry collection, Best Barbarian, is part jazz song, part fever dream, part mythic reimagining. “For me, the barbarian is the achievement of something that is recognizably outside…
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Spreading the Fever: Arianna Avalle wants everyone to read Elena Ferrante
One of the French and Italian department’s Italian Civilization courses, Avalle’s class gives students a tour of Ferrante’s “My Brilliant Friend” and its Neapolitan context. But more importantly, Avalle says,…
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The Rise of Open Source Foreign Language Learning
In 2010, with funding from the U.S. Department of Education, Carl Blyth launched COERLL. One of 16 National Foreign Language Resource Centers (LRCs) funded by the federal government, COERLL’s mission…
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Creating Human Nature: Government professor Benjamin Gregg delves into the fraught politics of genetic engineering
For Benjamin Gregg, professor of government at The University of Texas at Austin and author of the new book Creating Human Nature: The Political Challenges of Genetic Engineering, the potential…
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Beyond Zoom: The College of Liberal Arts is reimagining online teaching
Since it began producing online courses, LAITS has worked with seven colleges and 45 departments, resulting in more than 135 unique undergraduate courses and more than 20 master’s degree courses.…
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Huge in Nigeria: Q&A with Abimbola Adelakun
In the U.S., Abimbola Adelakun is a respected junior academic, first a graduate student and now an assistant professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at The…
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How Populism Dies: Political scientist Kurt Weyland sees a bright-ish future for liberal democracy
A longtime scholar of democratization and its discontents, Kurt Weyland’s work over the past few years has focused on explaining in detail why we are not, despite some appearances, in…
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#PRADAMARFA
For better or for worse, Marfa is a city defined by artists. In his new short documentary, “Prada Marfa? A Film about a West Texas Icon,” American studies professor Randy…
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The Turnaround: COLA’s UTurn program helps struggling students get back on track
UTurn offers academic coaching, peer mentoring, and a dedicated space where students in the program can study, socialize, and support each other. “Most 18–20-year-olds have been almost programmed to think…
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Peace in the Middle East…ern Studies Department
Over 20 years ago, UT Austin’s Department of Middle Eastern Studies (MES) was characterized by intense volatility and internal conflict. After re-structuring itself around the principles of transparency, democracy, and…
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The Taylor Swift Songbook Course Swiftly Makes Over English 314
Professor of English Elizabeth Scala teaches a lower-division course in Liberal Arts Honors, E314L: “Literary Contests and Contexts,” nearly every fall. For fall 2022, Scala decided to structure the course…
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Keeping it in the (Liberal Arts) Family
All three of the front-desk staff members in the Dean’s Office in Gebauer Building are alumnae of the Cellege of Liberal Arts. We spoke to Kaley Aguero, Richelle King, and…
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Antiquities Road Show Busts Its Way to UT
In October of 2018, Austin-based antiques dealer Laura Young purchased a marble bust at Goodwill for $34.99. Suspecting that the sculpture might be a much greater find, Young reached out…
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Teaching Brazilian Portuguese to the World
It is not a stretch to say that Orlando Kelm, an associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese at The University of Texas at Austin, is one of the most popular…