A&S in the News: March 20-26, 2022

Succulent Poaching

‘Crime against nature’: The rise and fall of the world’s most notorious thief: The Guardian (U.K.) – March 20

… Early discussions about plant poaching had been full of “stereotypes and tropes” about an “Asian super-consumer”, motivated by vague “east Asian cultural traditional practices”, said Jared Margulies, a political ecologist at The University of Alabama.
Yahoo! News

Ukrainian Refugees

Calling Ukrainian refugees more ‘civilized’ than Syrians requires willful amnesia: The Washington Post – March 22

By Elif Kalaycioglu, Lina Benabdallah and Oumar Ba… Elif Kalaycioglu (@elifkalay ) is assistant professor of political science at The University of Alabama. The opinions expressed in this article are her own and do not represent the position of her employer.

CRT Debate

‘A political process’: How Alabama’s CRT debate echoes past battles about state history textbooks: Al.com – March 25

… “I learned way more than I ever wanted to learn about textbooks, and way more than I ever wanted to learn about Alabama politics,” said Robert Norrell, a former University of Alabama history professor and textbook publisher… According to Hilary Green, an associate history professor at The University of Alabama, some Alabama teachers at the time had practiced “fugitive pedagogy,” meaning they built classroom libraries or came up with alternative assignments to teach Black history and other topics that were ignored or misrepresented in state-approved textbooks.
The Hechinger Report

Alabama Healthy Homes

Black Belt leaders say demand for healthy home repairs higher than current project funding: Montgomery Advertiser – March 25

The University of Alabama and the state public health department has officially launched a project to repair 150 homes in the Black Belt. The Alabama Healthy Homes program will devote $2 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to improve the quality of living conditions in the region over the next two years. But some in the affected communities say the money won’t go far enough… “We have limited resources. We can’t change that right now,” director of the UA Life Research Institute Sharlene Newman said. “But we’re not walking into this community and then walking away. Our goal is to really do what we can do in these communities in the long term and develop long-lasting relationships in the community every year.”
The Tuscaloosa News

Uncivil Religion

Look who’s blowing shofars: Moment – March 25

Evangelical and far-right circles are engaging in ‘spiritual warfare.’… The shofar blowers were likely not Jewish, writes Sarah Imhoff at “Uncivil Religion,” a digital resource documenting religion and January 6, a joint project of The University of Alabama and the Smithsonian.

Empty Bowls Fundraiser

Empty Bowls fundraiser highlights food pantry’s efforts: WVUA – March 25

The professor of a truth, ethics and deception class at The University of Alabama offered students a look at art in action Thursday with help from a not-so-surprising source.

American Fashion

Fashion, Literature, An Icon & Pela: 88.5 WMNF – March 26

Lauren S. Cardon, an Associate Professor of English at The University of Alabama has taken her passion for her chosen field to explore an American trajectory in fashion. The result is, Fashioning Character – Style, Performance, And Identity In Contemporary American Literature, an engaging book examining works by Sylvia Plath, Jack Kerouac, Toni Morrison, Sherman Alexie, and Aleshia Brevard, among others. Lauren Cardon shows how we become what we wear.