University of Alabama to hold third annual Hands-On-Family Night Saturday
Tuscaloosa News – Feb. 4
The University of Alabama will hold its third annual Hands-On Family Night from 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday at Smith Hall. The free event is open to students, faculty, staff and community members. Children and their families can explore the academic world through exhibits staffed by UA graduate students in biology, theater and dance, chemistry, anthropology, engineering, creative writing, finance, music, modern languages, social work, kinesiology, English, and human development and family studies. The exhibits will provide a wide variety of activities, including scientific experiments, creating book crafts and participating in theatrical skits and drumming circles. There will also be food and door prizes donated by local businesses.
New Exhibit Looks at UA’s Ties to Slavery
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Feb. 4 (No video available)
The University of Alabama is celebrating African-American Heritage Month. All month long there are special exhibits, speakers and programs, a new exhibit looks at the history of slavery at the university, it’s based on work by UA senior Benjamin Flax, who is researching UA’s ties to slavery. The exhibit includes materials related to the university’s history with slavery. It’s on display in UA’s Gorgas Library. History professor Dr. Josh Rothman supervised the project and told us what they have learned. “A lot of what we found are things like the university hiring slaves to help build the university to help service the buildings. We know that professors owned slaves. We know that students owned slaves and sometimes had them with them on campus, and really what we’ve got here is really just the tip of the iceberg.”
Undeterred after a stray bullet, the artist within is reborn
Bradenton Herald (Fla.) – Feb. 4
In the past couple of years, about 20 paintings by Mariam Pare have been reproduced and sold internationally. In February, she’ll be a featured artist in two shows. And, any day now, she expects to take a job that will pay her a comfortable salary to paint. Those are intoxicating developments for any artist, especially Pare. She paints with a brush in her mouth … “I heard the popping of the gun, and I saw the glass flying and it all happened really fast,” she said. “It was just noise and then I couldn’t move. I didn’t know I’d been shot. I just felt a kind of bolt of electricity behind me and a flash of heat.” She was 20 years old … About two months later, an occupational therapist put a pen in Pare’s left hand to write her name. She failed. The therapist suggested she try with the pen in her mouth, and Pare was astonished to find that her writing looked nearly the same as when she could use her right hand … Forging that path, as arduous as it was for Pare, is a “fascinating” property of the brain, said Dr. Daniel Potts, neurologist and associate professor at the University of Alabama. Founder of Cognitive Dynamics, an organization focused on expressive arts therapy for cognitive disorders, Potts noted that the brain’s capacity to generate art remains after a paralyzing injury. The issue becomes how to bring out that art. “When the end point of the normal motor pathway is taken away and the drive to produce art is still present,” Potts said, “the brain and motor system work to create a new mechanism for artistic production.”
Reframing justice: Scottsboro pardon changes future of US judiciary system
Crimson White – Feb. 5
“With liberty and justice for all.” Every day, most elementary and middle school children stand up and recite these words, hands over hearts. However, history has proven them to be a false promise for some Americans. For three of the nine “Scottsboro Boys,” a group of black men falsely accused of raping two white women in 1931 on a train in northeast Alabama, this promise was fulfilled about 80 years too late. All but the youngest, Roy Wright, were convicted by all-white juries, even in the face of evidence proving their innocence. An exhibit of the Fred Hiroshige photographs of the Scottsboro Boys will be on display at the Paul R. Jones Gallery until Feb. 21. There will be a reception Friday from 5 to 7:30 p.m., featuring a talk by Dan T. Carter, Author of “Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South.”
Students combat mental health stigma
Crimson White – Feb. 5
A group of student actors is raising awareness about mental health issues by performing a series of pieces written by students struggling with mental illness. The fourth annual Mental Health Monologues, sponsored by the Counseling Center and the University of Alabama chapter of the National Alliance for Mental Illness, are focused on erasing the stigma surrounding mental health issues. Eleven student actors will perform monologues submitted anonymously by students, covering topics such as depression, autism, social anxiety disorder and personality disorder. “I think it’s a great way to get the message out about mental health issues to see what other students might be going through,” said Becca Kastner, a graduate liaison for NAMI who brought the program to the University. “People are so willing to talk about physical health issues that they have, but mental health issues across the board in our society are still not talked about as often as they should be.”
Women’s resource center hosts brown bag lecture series
Crimson White – Feb. 5
The Brown Bag Lunch Series, which has been running for more than 17 years, highlights topics of feminist activism, scholarship, leadership, diversity and advocacy. The series has been jointly hosted and managed by the Women’s Resource Center and the department of women’s studies since fall 2008. Lectures have included a variety of topics, from fairy tales to quilting, but recently have shifted to include more feminist activism discussion. The WRC will host the next installment of the monthly series, “Feminism Spoken Here” Wednesday. Two lectures will be given during the hour-long presentation, which will take place in 115 Woods Hall at noon. The first lecture, “Gender Gap In Academia: Evidence from the U.S. and The University of Alabama,” will be presented by Viktoria Riiman, a member of the Socioeconomic Research Group in the Center for Business and Economic Research at The University of Alabama. … The second lecture, “We are All Imposters: Creating Affirming Spaces Through Shared Narratives,” will be presented by Maureen Flint, a graduate student studying higher education, in collaboration with Jason Garvey, assistant professor of higher eduction. The lecture will focus on the importance of sharing our personal stories and creating an environment that is accepting of those who feel like they cannot be who they truly are.
Rodgers Library to open lecture series with climate, bee talk
Crimson White – Feb. 5
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the bee population in the U.S. hit a 50-year low last May and continues to drop indefinitely. According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Association, nearly 64 percent of the world’s food is bee-pollinated and worth nearly $207 billion. This will be the topic of the first of four “lightning talks” on science topics held in February. “Environmental Stress in Nature: Case of Bumble Bees” will be hosted Thursday outside the Nightingale Room in Rodgers Library. This talk features Jeffrey Lozier, a researcher on bees and their adaptation to climatic change … All four talks will be held every Thursday in February at 2 p.m., covering topics as diverse as searching for earth-like planets to geological rock formations. The talks were designed by the head of Rodgers Libraries John Sandy.