Category: Desktop News

Articles featured in Desktop News, a monthly e-newsletter of the College of Arts and Sciences


UA Professor Wins International Classics Award

From the October 2020 Desktop News | Dr. Kelly Shannon-Henderson, an associate professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Classics, was recently awarded the C.J. Goodwin Award of Merit for outstanding publications for her book Religion and Memory in Tacitus’ Annals. The award comes from the Society for Classical Studies, an international organization dedicated to the research of Greek and Roman antiquity. The society grants three Goodwin Awards of Merit annually, each going to a distinguished publication appearing within […]

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Exploring the Worlds of Work: Researchers Help Shape Career Fair for Eighth Graders

West Alabama Works logo

From the October 2020 Desktop News | Two Arts and Sciences researchers are working to study the future of West Alabama’s workforce through Worlds of Work, an event which helps eighth grade students in the area to explore different work fields, careers, and technical training programs through their schools. Dr. Joan Barth, a senior research social scientist in the Institute for Social Science Research, and Dr. Pamela Young, Director of Community Engagement and Economic Development, partnered with the West Alabama […]

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A&S Grad Assisting With Saliva-Based COVID-19 Test

Anne working in the lab

From the October 2020 Desktop News | When Anne Watkins started her master’s of public health at Yale University, she never thought she’d work with any sort of sports team, let alone a whole league. Now, she and her colleagues are partnered with the National Basketball Association to create a new COVID-19 testing procedure that she hopes will make testing more accessible and affordable for all communities. Watkins, a 2019 graduate of UA’s Department of Biological Sciences, is working in […]

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Message from the Dean: Meet the A&S Diversity Committee

I am pleased to welcome the newest members of the A&S Diversity Committee. While the College has had a Diversity Committee since 2000, the service terms ended for many of its members this year. After receiving many thoughtful and solutions-oriented responses to my message from early June, I took the opportunity to expand the committee to encompass this eagerness and to better reflect the College as a whole. You’ll notice the addition of students and staff members to this group, […]

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Making a Polar Impact

A student standing in front of an iceburg.

From the September 2020 Desktop News | Asmara Lehrmann is deeply connected to all sides of her identity. A PhD student in geology at The University of Alabama with a passion for paleontology and climate change, her geologist father and Indonesian-immigrant mother both influenced the path she’s on today. “My mother’s family lives in Jakarta, which is a city on the coast that’s actually subsiding,” Lehrmann said. “The city is literally sinking, the sea level is rising, and I would […]

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Media and the Public Opinion of Torture

From the September 2020 Desktop News | According to Dr. Erin Kearns, an assistant professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at The University of Alabama, recent polls say that about half of adults in the United States think torture is acceptable in counterterrorism. The academic understanding is that torture is not effective, so why does the American public think this way? In her new book Tortured Logic, Kearns and her coauthor, American University professor Joseph Young, explore […]

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Department of Gender and Race Studies Recognized for Graduate Student Food Bank

From the September 2020 Desktop News | When COVID-19 hit the United States and temporarily closed many restaurants, bars, and stores in March, Dr. Utz McKnight realized that many graduate students in the UA community would lose their main source of income. Because of this, he wanted to find a way for faculty to give back to the graduate student community. “The project was created around an idea to try and commit faculty and staff at UA to the graduate […]

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UA’s Vote Everywhere Wins Chapter of the Year

A student helps another student register to vote at a table.

From the September 2020 Desktop News | The UA chapter of Vote Everywhere was recently awarded Chapter of the Year by the group’s parent organization, the Andrew Goodman Foundation, which advocates for young people to vote and be civically engaged with their communities. The Andrew Goodman Foundation was established in honor of Andrew Goodman, a college student who was part of the Freedom Summer 1964 to register African Americans to vote. On his first day in Mississippi, Goodman and two […]

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UA Professor Receives Grant from State Council on the Arts

From the July 2020 Desktop News | Grace Bumbry and Shirley Verrett are amongst the most impactful African American female voices in opera, both rising to esteem in the mid to late twentieth century. The two sopranos famously joined forces in 1982 to perform a recital to honor Marian Anderson, the first African American to perform a principal role at the Metropolitan Opera in 1955. An esteemed vocal performer herself, Dr. Luvada A. Harrison seeks to honor the women with […]

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