Episodes
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As Clark conferred 1,376 degrees to the Class of 2024 on Monday, May 20, at the DCU Center in Downtown Worcester, student speakers recalled the compassion and community found among peers on campus.
"Being a part of a diverse community has taught me so much because it has allowed me to see the world through the lens of other people," graduate student speaker Gabe Spindel ’23, MBA ’24, told the thousands in the arena.
Undergraduate student speaker Laila El-Samra ’24 encouraged her peers to think about the impact they can have on others.
"Start small, maybe just one good deed a day," she said. "Together we possess the compassion, resilience, and determination needed to create a brighter future for ourselves and those around us."
Geography Professor Rinku Roy Chowdhury read a commencement address from Dr. Robert D. Bullard, “the father of environmental justice” and the Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University.
“I am driven by, and I am happy to be able to pass the baton to, the up-and-coming generations of environmental justice advocates who will continue with the same resilience that so many involved in the journey have already shown," Bullard wrote.
Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
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What makes a great sentence? It’s something English Professor Jeff Noh and his creative writing students could debate for hours.
“A sentence is often a temporary place you visit on your way to the next sentence,” says Noh. “Some writers certainly are obsessed with the sentence and think about it as an enormous, capacious kind of thing. I think it's more the case that we think of sentences in their relationship to other sentences.”
Sentences can be complex or simple. Unconventional or original. Succinct or meandering. On this episode of Challenge. Change., Noh, Kaleigh Gibbons ’24, and Juliana Hall ’24, among the first students to graduate with a new creative writing major, share their favorite sentences and break down what makes the structures special.
Do you have a favorite sentence? Please share it with Melissa Hanson at [email protected].
Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Episodes manquant?
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Below the surface of the soil, a diverse community of microbes — living organisms like bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protozoa — interact and play a significant role in breaking down organic matter and cycling nutrients. These microbial interactions can improve or, in some cases, impair the health and growth of plants.
Although they cannot be seen with the naked eye, microbes could help solve a vexing problem exacerbated by climate change: By 2050, scientists and policymakers fear, farmers may not be able to produce enough food to feed the world’s growing population.
“Even if we could feed the world right now, 20 years from now, we won't be able to — unless we make some significant changes,” says Chandra Jack, professor of biology.
By studying how microbe interactions affect plant traits, Jack hopes to contribute to the development of new, more sustainable ways to increase food production. Her research is funded by a $453,000 grant from the National Science Foundation and a $420,000 grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“Researchers want to use microbes to replace synthetic fertilizers,” Jack says. “But we know what they can do in the lab. We don’t know what they can do in the wild or in the field.”
Microbes can “fix” atmospheric nitrogen, turning it into a component found in chlorophyll, which plants need for photosynthesis.
Legumes have a close, symbiotic relationship with microbes, according to Jack. “The microbes will enter the plant tissue and form this mass on the roots. It’s called a nodule where the nitrogen fixation happens,” she explains.
Cereal crops such as wheat and barley do not have such a relationship with nodule-forming microbes. However, Jack is examining whether “free-living nitrogen fixers” — bacteria present in the surrounding soil — could “have a tighter association with the cereal crops so that the nitrogen can be applied to those plants without having to apply fertilizers.”
Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Tools help us save time, freeing up mental space so we can accomplish more. But, the assistance of technological tools can become problematic, suggests Professor Eduard Arriaga-Arango, chair of the Department of Language, Literature, and Culture. We expect devices like Alexa and Siri to respond to our every command, which can replicate slavery.
“Slavery is a structure that considers human beings machines, or less than human,” says Arriaga, who cautions people to think intentionally about their use of technology. “We think we’re just inputting prompts, getting the results, and nothing more. But what are all the implications of that?”
As artificial intelligence enters the mainstream, Arriaga is part of a growing ethical discussion about the language we use with technological tools.
“Language has a set of values,” he says. “What values are behind the construction of these tools, which have been designed in a way that continues to perpetuate deficit elements from our society — racism and a patriarchal vision.”
Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Sometimes app developers create sneaky strategies to keep you on your phone longer. Other times, they create tools meant to help consumers protect their data or accomplish tasks. These mechanisms are at the heart of research by computer science Professor Peter Story and Becker School of Design & Technology Professor Kat Andler.
The tools developers use to hook consumers are called dark patterns and can include tactics to keep a person playing a game longer, therefore seeing more advertisements and making the developers more money.
“It brings out the passion in people because if you feel like you have been manipulated, you’re going to be pretty upset about that,” says Andler, who prepares her students to recognize dark patterns and think up alternative designs. “You have to know what’s bad to avoid it in the future.”
Thankfully, there are light patterns, or nudges, a tool meant to assist the average person with helpful reminders.
“People live busy lives. They can’t be thinking carefully about every decision every day,” Story says. “The idea is for people with authority to help people make the decisions that are in their best interest.”
Story has studied nudges that encourage people to use protective technologies such as Apple Pay, a mobile payment system that is more secure than using a debit card.
“The protection motivation theory is one type of nudge that provides high-quality information about what you want protection from and what you can do,” Story explains. “I think there’s a lot of strong evidence that that works well.”
Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
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A moment of serendipity led Brian Woos ’16 to his career. During a student internship at a film company in New York, Woos walked into a room and saw a panel replete with buttons and wheels. Sitting at the panel was a colorist, finessing with shadows, highlights, and luminosity to ensure everything looked seamless on the big screen.
At the time, Woos didn’t know the colorist role existed. Now, he’s the one sitting at the panel, carefully tweaking elements like brightness and texture. “One of the most underrated parts of the job is seeing the creative changes,” says Woos, who works as a colorist for PostWorks New York. “When you work on a movie or TV show, you see like 30 different versions of it before it comes out — alternate endings, beginnings, and middles.
“The colorist is at the delivery stage for the final visual effects,” he continues. “You color-grade in real-time, watching through a projector the way people are going to be seeing it in the theater.”
Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Sculpture Professor James Maurelle doesn’t work on one project and then move on to the next. His process flows freely. “I surround myself with materials and objects and work on them all at the same time. I’m like the eye of the hurricane. That's how I've developed over the years,” he says. “It's the closest thing to freedom that I've embodied in my entire life.”
Maurelle, Clark’s first full-time sculpture professor, explains why he’s passionate about using recycled objects and the magic of keeping child-like play in artistry.
Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Award season is upon us, and three screen studies professors are sharing their favorite films of 2023 ahead of the Oscars.
“The Killer,” “Bottoms,” and “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning” were last year’s cinematic standouts for professors Hugh Manon, Jed Samer, and Soren Sorensen. The three are hosts of the Clark podcast “Recommended For You,” and bring their film expertise — and opinions — to this episode of Challenge. Change.
“I was coming into this call being like ‘Bottoms’ and ‘Mission Impossible’ are the same movie,” says Samer. “Maybe the truth of 2023 is that we are not going to the movies for the plot.”
“If you don't like ‘Bottoms,’ you might need to investigate whether you have a sense of humor. It's the same thing with ‘Mission Impossible,’” adds Manon. “If you don't like this, then maybe you don't like movies.”
The Oscars air on Sunday, March 10, at 7 p.m. EST on ABC. “Mission Impossible” has been nominated for Achievement in sound and Achievement in visual effects.
Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Listen to episodes of RFU on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
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High school students have been told time and time again that they need consistent good grades and a host of extracurriculars to stand out in the college application process. This mindset, however, can lead students to fixate on quantity over quality and miss out on experiences that help develop character and values.
This is why the Making Caring Common project wants to infuse messages about the common good into the college admissions process. Making Caring Common, a project of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, works with families, educators, and communities to develop children’s gratitude and sense of care for others.
Emily Roper-Doten, vice president for undergraduate admissions and financial assistance, and Brennan Barnard, the college admissions program advisor of Making Caring Common, discuss the role of compassion in college admissions. Barnard thinks a shift toward mastery over traditional grades could help. Mastry learning is a strategy at the Khan Lab School, where Barnard is the director of college counseling and alumni.
Roper-Doten asks Barnard what he believes students lose when they solely focus on bulking out a resume. “They're thinking more about outcomes than they are process,” he says. “It’s dichotomous thinking rather than contemplating ‘who am I’ and ‘who could I be in a community?’”
Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Throughout decades of studying relationship health, psychology Professor James Córdova has learned that couples often wait five or six years to seek help addressing difficulties in their partnership. This delay runs contrary to the attention most people give other aspects of preventative care such as annual physical exams and regular dental cleanings. Córdova wants more people to learn that relationship quality has an intrinsic impact on physical health. Distressing feelings cause a physiological response as stress hormones are released into one’s bloodstream.
“One of the most significant sources of stress in our lives is a relationship that isn't going well,” he says. “People who are in really distressed relationships are aging faster and they're sick more often.” Even limited preventative care can make a lasting difference. To that end, Córdova created the Relationship Checkup, previously called the Marriage Checkup, 25 years ago. It’s a proactive model applied during couples counseling that identifies partners’ strengths and leverages them to reduce stress within the relationship.
“We know from 25 years of research that the effect is sustainable,” he says. “A checkup once a year is sufficient to improve the quality of relationship health, both in the short term and for the long term.”
Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
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If love is a battlefield, evolution has given animals and insects the tools for competition. Peacocks boast flashy tails and birds sing to capture the attention of mates, meanwhile, elks and dung beetles use antlers and horns, respectively, to fight off other males during courtship.
These traits, which can vary widely within the same species, have long fascinated biology Professor Erin McCullough. “Sexual selection, or competition over mates, is responsible for many of the biggest, flashiest, most colorful, and conspicuous traits that we find in the animal kingdom,” she says.
What’s puzzling, however, is that these traits can make species more susceptible to predators, seemingly at odds with natural selection “Reproduction is the currency that really matters,” says McCullough. “It doesn't matter if an individual lives forever — or if it lives a whole lot longer than its peers — if it never succeeds in attracting a mate, because then it won't leave any of its genes to the next generation.”
Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Many people consider masculinity an inner essence or set of specific personality traits that define manhood. Psychology Professor Michael Addis has a different understanding. His research indicates masculinity is a performance one makes to reinforce gender in alignment with societal and cultural norms.
“There's no doubt that many of the things that boys and men have been taught to do to perform their masculinity can be harmful to themselves and to people of other genders as well,” says Addis.
Men who avoid being vulnerable in their relationships to appear masculine can live for decades with no emotional support, he says. Increased isolation could contribute to rising suicide rates among U.S. men ages 40 to 55.
“There's a whole range of positive experiences related to emotional awareness, intimacy, and connections with other people,” says Addis. “All of these things are helped by letting go of the pressure to be a certain way because of your gender.”
Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
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At his family’s Chinese restaurant, a young Curtis Chin was encouraged to talk to strangers. The Detroit eatery, called Chung’s, was founded by Curtis’s great-grandfather in 1940 and drew diners from all walks of life, including then-Mayor Coleman Young, Hollywood stars, drag performers, and sex workers.
Chung’s closed in 2000, but the restaurant comes back to life in Chin’s memoir, “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant.” The author-filmmaker shares the joys of being a “Chinese restaurant kid” during a discussion with Associate Provost and Dean of the College Betsy Huang, English Professor Jeff Noh, Chloe Yau ’24, a Community, Youth, and Education Studies major, and Zabrina Richards ’25, a political science major.
“Everybody goes to a Chinese restaurant. It’s one of the places where you can go and see people from a different race, socioeconomic background, class background, religious background, sexual orientation,” Chin says. “As a kid, I got to see all of Detroit. It was wonderful as a writer, as a creative person, to have that shape me as a kid.”
Chin also shared musings on family, identity, coming out, and getting famous during a conversation with the wider campus community. The visit was part of Chin’s national book tour.
Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
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During their first year at Clark, political science majors Ruthie Brian ’24, Beiyna Chaparian ’24, and Anna Walker ’24 took a course that called for comic books rather than textbooks. In the First-Year Intensive course Comic Books and Politics with Professor Ora Szekely, students used superhero tropes as a vehicle to analyze historical and contemporary politics.
The course made such an impression on Brian, Chaparian, and Walker that the three took the concept and created an independent study for their senior year. They’ve been poring through comics and watching the latest superhero movies, exploring how the plots engage with global and national issues such as racial justice and immigration. As women and people of color portray more superheroes, a larger audience can see their lives reflected in the storylines, Chaparian says.
“Having depth in characters and representation is important,” she says. “Watching ‘Ms. Marvel,’ I saw things that I could relate to in terms of what my family looks like and how my culture affects my identity.” Despite progress in representation, comics still contain disparities. The students have found that women superheroes typically have endured more trauma than their male counterparts, Walker says. Even the battle scenes display a gender imbalance.
“The idea of who has the right to violence is very fascinating to me,” Walker says. “Women's violence is often on a smaller scale, or more social, compared to the massive wipeout of cities that we see in comics and movies like ‘The Avengers.’” These combat scenes are an avenue for the trio to analyze the motives behind war. “No one considers themself evil,” Brian says. “People are going to justify their actions with either religion or another belief they hold.”
Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
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We're taking a winter break and will return with new episodes in January. We hope you have a lovely and bright holiday season. As always, thank you for listening, and don't forget subscribe!
See you in 2024.
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While English Professor Dianne Berg analyzed true crime’s portrayal of mothers, sociology Professor Shelly Tenenbaum taught courses on global genocide in prison classrooms, leading ethical debates amongst her students.
As Rabbi Joshua Franklin ’06, M.A. ’07, challenged his congregation to guess who wrote a sermon he delivered (answer: Chat GPT) and debated whether artificial intelligence can comprehend empathy, philosophy Professor Wiebke Deimling went to the movie theatre to see “Barbie” and unravel why a fictional doll was having “irrepressible thoughts of death.”
It all happened in 2023. The Clark community has chronicled research, passions, and discoveries on Challenge. Change. On this episode, co-producers Melissa Hanson and Andrew Hart share clips of intriguing interviews recorded throughout the year.
Episodes featured include:
Debate and Discourse in the Prison Classroom with Professor Shelly TenenbaumRabbi Joshua Franklin ’06 on Artificial Intelligence and EmpathyThe Portrayal of Mothers in True Crime and Popular Media with Professor Dianne BergSci-fi, Immigration, and Representation with Professor Betsy HuangEd Greig '23 vs. PAX East 2023Professor Cailin Marcel Manson and the Collective Power of PerformanceComing of Age Stories and Confronting Divided Loyalties with Professor Spencer TrickerBarbie's Existential Crisis and the Philosophy Behind it with Professor Wiebke DeimlingQueerness and Food are an Edible Delight for Professor Elizabeth BlakeTo Teach or Not to Teach Shakespeare with Professor Justin ShawListen and subscribe on
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Turn on the TV or open a podcast app and you’re likely to find true crime. Americans have a morbid fascination with these stories — The Pew Research Center reports that true crime is the most common topic of top-ranked podcasts in the U.S. As a trio of scholars consumed this content, they noticed a pattern: Stories about LGBTQ+ people, as perpetrators or victims of crime, were told less frequently and in a different tone than that of their cisgender and heteronormative peers.
“The (Mis)Representation of Queer Lives in True Crime” is a new book co-edited by Abbie Goldberg, professor of psychology at Clark; Danielle Slakoff, professor of criminal justice at California State University, Sacramento; and Carrie Buist, professor of criminology, criminal justice, and legal studies at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. The volume analyzes the intersection of LGBTQ+ people and crime, including the treatment of queer people in the criminal legal system, how the mass media delivers such stories, and which details are emphasized or erased in the dominant narrative.
“Although queer and trans people are disproportionately affected by crime, the majority of true crime podcasts, documentaries, and so on focus more on cisgender, heterosexual folks — often young, white folks,” Goldberg says. “A lot of media content creators are heterosexual and so they're often creating content that matches their own identities.”
Slakoff says the media’s depiction of queer people, especially trans women, often paints a picture of hypersexual, deceptive people. “If that is what's portrayed in the media, that is what people begin to believe — or they internalize those ideas,” she adds. It’s one factor that makes the queer community less likely to report a crime, according to Buist.
“LGBT folks are often blamed for not only their own victimization,” Buist says, “but for their existence.”
Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Amid an intense combat scene in the 2019 film “Avengers: Endgame,” a group of female superheroes work together to pass the infinity gauntlet across a chaotic battlefield in a desperate attempt to defeat the villain Thanos and prevent worldwide destruction.
Political science Professor Ora Szekely suspects filmmakers intended that scene to be an empowering visual of women heroes supporting one another. To Szekely, something else stood out: The women heroes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe could easily fit together on the screen in unison. She says it’s an example of the imbalanced depictions of male and female fighters in the first three phases of the MCU.
“I remember watching this and thinking, there are hundreds of male heroes fighting in the background, and they managed to get all of the female heroes in one power shot,” says Szekely. “I think it doesn't necessarily send the message they were going for.”
This fictional world is under the microscope in “The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” a book in which 25 scholars provide an expansive analysis of messages about government, public policy, and society within the first three phases of the superhero movie franchise. Two Clark professors contributed to the book.
In the chapter “Female Combatants in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” Szekely explores how women heroes are portrayed differently than their male counterparts. The movies reflect gendered ideas about why women partake in combat — ideas that are often inaccurate, she says.
Political science professor Danielle Hanley examines the Avengers as a departure from the nuclear family unit in her chapter, “Avengers, Assemblage.” Hanley argues that the Avengers are more than just a group of superpowered colleagues.
“I'm arguing that the Avengers is a family and I'm using a lot of queer theory and feminist theory to do that,” she says. “I’m thinking about the objects and the structures and the institutions that exist and are part of informing what a family is. I argue that Thor's hammer and non-human characters are a part of the family assemblage.”
Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
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The word “utopia” comes from the Greek words for “no” and “place.” So, geography Professor Deborah Martin is intrigued by the frequency with which urban planners use utopian thinking when such a place, by definition, does not exist. In trying to create idyllic cities, planners overlook that urban areas have no singular use. Martin feels the best urban designs are the ones that don’t prescribe how a space should be used.
“What's utopian for one person, what makes the world work well, might not work for everybody else. When we think we know what people need, such as green space, then we prescribe green space in a certain way,” says Martin. “You end up having a lot of potential conflict over what people might think is good for everyone. It gets complicated pretty quickly.”
In this episode, Martin explains how urban designs reflect our values, the challenges of building for the 21st-century, and why one space can have different uses for different people.
Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Grief and rage are at the center of political science Professor Danielle Hanley’s research. She’s working on her first book project, an examination of those two emotions in the context of Greek tragedy and contemporary protest movements. In “Medea,” a play written by Euripides in 5th-century BC Greece, the titular character seeks vengeance on her husband Jason as he leaves her for a Greek princess. A chorus of women initially rally in support of Medea.
Hanley describes this as a form of “affective solidarity,” which grows out of the circulation of emotions that magnetically pull other people in — specifically emotions calling out an injustice. This also happens in 21st-century social justice movements, she notes.
“The circulation of grief and rage is a kind of commentary on the state of affairs in the world. It’s what we express when we don't have the right words,” says Hanley. “One of the things I'm thinking about is how to balance the different obligations we have to one another with our own liberation.”
Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.
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