Life & Letters • Fall 2019

MAGAZINE FOR THE COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

Fall 2019

P.2 4

Understanding Our World Through Film Studies

Issue No. 33

Color Complex Last summer, an international relations and global studies senior was awarded the experience of a lifetime when her student research team received the UT President’s Award for Global Learning. Christina Cho and a team of three other undergraduates traveled to Accra, Ghana, for 10 weeks to research colorism and how to mitigate its effect on mental health.

Cho and her fellow researchers conducted interviews with African American and Asian American women in Austin and Ghanaian women and men to understand their different experiences with colorism, specifically skin bleaching and hair perming. The project, titled “The Color Complex,” was advised by Kevin Cokley, director of the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis.

The Color Complex’s undergraduate research team: Timia Bethea (top left), Christina Cho (top right), Rebecca Chen (bottom left), Vida Nwadiei (bottom right).

A smock maker in his shop in Tamale, northern Ghana.

Photos courtesy of Rebecca Chen

Jamestown, a fishing community in Accra, Ghana.

CONTENTS FALL 2019 College of Liberal Arts Dean Ann Huff Stevens Director of Public Affairs David A. Ochsner Editor Michelle Bryant Art Direction & Design Allen F. Quigley Copy Editor Adam Deutsch

Wyatt McSpadden

Contributing Writers David Birdsong Michelle Bryant Emily Nielsen David Ochsner Alexandra Reshanov Kaitlyn Trowbridge Rachel White

24 COVER FEATURE

DEPARTMENTS

It’s More Than a Movie

02 Dean’s Message

Understanding Our World Through Film Studies There is so much to be learned from film — about ourselves and the world around us — if we view it through a liberal arts lens.

14 BOOK FEATURE

03 Knowledge Matters A look at the college’s top news, research and achievements.

18 Books 20 Events

The Taco Truck

A sampling of notable happenings in our campus community.

Author Takes His Research to the Streets

22 Moral Fuel

Robert Lemon examines the evolution of taco trucks and how it transforms U.S. cities.

36 Q&A

Pro Bene Meritis Meet the 2019 recipients: architect and law professor Sara C. Bronin, historian Brian P. Levack and retired foreign service officer J. Thomas Ward.

Energizing a New Internship Program Students explore work and social justice through Jewish teachings.

42 Commentary Getting Ahead with World Languages

Contributing Illustrators Abriella Corker Michelle Kondrich Thuy Nguyen Contributing Photographers Brian Birzer Wyatt McSpadden Robert Lemon Kaitlyn Trowbridge Visit us online at lifeandletters.la.utexas.edu Printed by Horizon Printing Need to update your contact info?

Visit us at uyi.connect.utexas.edu/update Or email us at changinglives@austin.utexas.edu

Learning another language provides career advantages.

44 Stress Tips Three questions to ask when you’re stressed out.

On the cover: Donna Kornhaber, Sabine Hake and Paola Bonifazio. Photo by Wyatt McSpadden. Back cover: People of Liberal Arts; Sophia Guirola, International Relations and Global Studies senior. Photo by Kaitlyn Trowbridge.

Follow us facebook.com/UTLiberalArts twitter.com/LiberalArtsUT instagram.com/LiberalArtsUT

Wyatt McSpadden

DEAN’S MESSAGE

Let’s Talk About the Liberal Arts

2

Choosing a path — or a major — in today’s world is not easy. Social, cultural, economic and technological changes seemingly happen overnight, making it difficult for a student to predict what career opportunities will look like after graduation, let alone in 10 or 15 years.

Students of the liberal arts, however, are uniquely prepared for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

They explore knowledge and ideas across many disciplines, applying what they learn in the classroom to real life experiences: internships, study abroad, student leadership and community service. Their classroom learning is also enhanced through intensive research projects, where undergraduates participate in the discovery of new knowledge by collaborating with talented faculty and graduate students in labs, libraries and in the field.

Through a robust relationship of classroom and experiential learning, our students develop a variety of skills that are foundational for virtually any profession, even those that have yet to be invented.

They gain the ability to think critically and independently, and they learn how to write, reason and communicate clearly.

They learn new technologies, working alongside faculty in the humanities who are creating and using digital archives in new ways. They develop a set of ethics, the ability to adapt and a desire for continued learning that will serve them well throughout their lives and careers.

These opportunities are central to liberal arts but are not exclusive to liberal arts majors. They are available to all UT Austin students who explore the humanities and

Support the College of Liberal Arts giving.utexas.edu/supportcola

social sciences as part of their required core curriculum; and as the worldwide demand for bilingual workers continues to rise, students can augment their skills through one or more of the 33 languages offered by our college.

A major challenge for our college, and for the liberal arts in general, is the persistence of a stereotype that characterizes our majors as uncompetitive in the job market, when in reality the opposite is true. Although starting salaries for liberal arts majors are, on average, a bit less than STEM counterparts, by mid-career they catch up and even exceed their peers from the professional, scientific and technological fields. The uniquely human qualities developed in a liberal arts education are now highly sought in all fields of the digital economy — creative and critical thinking, adaptability and effective leadership — skills that will not be replaced by robots anytime soon.

As society becomes more globalized, more diverse and more technologically advanced, teaching and research in the humanities and social sciences will be indispensable. Our alumni and friends can help us tell the world that a liberal arts education at a public research university has tremendous and unlimited economic potential, while also contributing to the health and vitality of our social, cultural and civic life.

Ann Huff Stevens Dean, College of Liberal Arts

KNOWLEDGE MATTERS

Drawing Inspiration ENGLISH

By Alex Reshanov Illustrations by Edward Carey

E

dward Carey’s office is filled with fanciful artwork, including several large drawings of the gloomy-eyed characters who inhabit his books. But the item that immediately catches the eye is a bowl of small, cylindrical objects that at first glance appears to be an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts.

Old painting of Pinocchio.

3

KNOWLEDGE MATTERS

These, it turns out, are pencils, worn down to the nub, that the author used to illustrate his most recent novel, Little. A fictionalized account of the life of the woman who would become wax museum pioneer Madame Tussaud, Little, like much of Carey’s writing, is interwoven with his drawings.

“For me, the act of doing drawings is a way of fully immersing myself in the world,” says Carey, an associate professor of English at UT Austin. “And sometimes the drawings contradict the writing, and then I play around with it, but they have to come into existence together.”

There’s much back and forth between Carey’s drawing and his storytelling. Drawings often take unexpected turns, pulling the narrative into new directions.

The process, it seems, might go on indefinitely if not for words and images being captured in printed books. Art for his forthcoming novel about Pinocchio craftsman Geppetto’s stint in the belly of a giant shark already has been exhibited in Tuscany, but the text is still working through its transformations.

Both the drawings and narration in Little are from the perspective of protagonist Marie Tussaud (born Marie Grosholtz), thus the humble pencil in which the illustrations are rendered.

Carey combed through countless drawings from the period to create a more realistic style than 4

Heap House, home of the Iremonger family, surrounded by the great rubbish heaps of London from The Iremonger Trilogy.

RECOMMENDED READING Little: A Novel Riverhead Books, Oct. 2018

By Edward Carey

Lucy Pennant from The Iremonger Trilogy.

he employed in previous books, as well as crafting some of the objects that appear in the story — a wax mask, a wooden doll Marie carries with her throughout her life — in order to get a better understanding of the character’s world.

Finding the narrative voice for a character based on a historical person had its own challenges.

For this, Carey drew inspiration from fiction as much as fact, partly because fiction is his trade but also, he notes, “There have been various nonfiction biographies of her, but they’re not very exciting, which seems extraordinary given who she was. But the reason they’re not is because Marie Grosholtz,” and here he

Larry D. Moore

Edward Carey at the 2018 Texas Book Festival

“For me, the act of doing drawings is a way of fully immersing myself in the world. And sometimes the drawings contradict the writing, and then I play around with it, but they have to come into existence together.”

Edward Carey

drops his voice to a whisper for effect, “told a lot of lies.”

Grosholtz, he explains, in addition to being a survivor of the French Revolution who touched history through her wax sculptures, was a smart businesswoman who knew when to embellish her own history to draw in audiences.

So, while the novel is extensively researched, Carey opted to leave in some of his protagonist’s tall tales, allowing her to become the folkloric figure he first encountered while working at Madame Tussaud’s in London after finishing college.

It took 15 on-and-off years for Carey to complete Little, and he 5

KNOWLEDGE MATTERS

The Slurk, one of the embodied maladies from Careyʼs forthcoming book.

might have abandoned the project completely had it not been for a career detour into writing books for young adults. Creating The Iremonger Trilogy, a series set in a stylized old London featuring talking objects and other fantastical elements, proved a turning point for Carey.

“It totally reset me as a writer,” he explains. “It made me remember the joy of fiction, and I’d kind of lost it a bit.”

Writing in the spirit of old-school adventures such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island and allowing his imagination to roam into unfamiliar worlds was freeing, even if the speed at which he needed to complete the second and third installments was brisker than his usual pace (no one ages faster than young readers).

Ultimately, the experience persuaded him to revisit Little from a less conventional angle.

“Writers need to remember to give ourselves permission to go to places we want to go to,” Carey notes. “Not to places we feel we have to go to.”

Although the Iremonger series was written with a younger audience in mind, Carey has reservations about compartmentalizing books solely by age or readership. He was recently awarded a Guggenheim fellowship that he will use to write a new book set in a children’s hospital, but the story will probably fall somewhere in between literature for children and grown-ups. “I’m 6

“Writers need to remember to give ourselves permission to go to places we want to go to, not to places we feel we have to go to.”

Edward Carey

going into it with an open mind,” he says.

The new novel was inspired by an actual children’s hospital in Florence, Italy, where Carey was a writer in residence, a wonderful place with a dedicated and brilliant staff. But realism not being his area of expertise, Carey is taking a different approach.

“I want to write almost an antithesis of what that hospital is,” he says. “I’ll make a monstrous hospital.”

He means this rather literally and is already sketching the beastly embodiments of diseases that will haunt the institution’s

halls.

It’s hard to believe that Carey once felt he was losing his sense of the joy of storytelling. His love of literature is unmistakable as he discusses his favorite books, the abundance of excellent new writing coming out every year, and the experience of working on his own projects.

“When you’re writing fiction, you can have the most enormous budget and as many characters and as many locations as you want,” he says, recalling the constraints of writing plays earlier in his career. “And it’s the most incredible freedom.”

ANTHROPOLOGY Recent primate research has had a heavy focus on a few charismatic species and nationally protected parks and forests, leaving some lesser known primates and their habitats at risk, according to anthropologists at UT Austin and Santa Clara University.

“With nearly a third of primate species listed as critically endangered and 60% of all primate species classified as threatened with extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the window of opportunity for conserving these mammals is quickly closing,” says the study’s co-author, Allison McNamara, a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at UT Austin. “To protect these species, we have to understand their biology, ecology, life history, behavior and evolutionary flexibility.”

The study, which appeared in Evolutionary Anthropology, examined more than 29,000 research articles published between 2011 and 2015. The researchers found that more than half of the 504 primate species were left out of the literature. And of the 240 species studied, 13% of the research was on chimpanzees,

Michelle Bezanson, Santa Clara University

The Protection of Being Known

compared with 3% of research that focused on the next most prevalent species, the Japanese macaque.

“There are a large number of primate species and populations that are being ignored, which has the potential to misrepresent primate patterns and influence primatological and anthropological theoretical frameworks,” says the study’s lead author, Michelle Bezanson, an anthropologist at Santa Clara University. “Additionally, not studying certain species makes it impossible to know what risks they face

“To protect these species, we have to understand their biology, ecology, life history, behavior and evolutionary flexibility.”

Allison McNamara

in their habitat, so that scientists can help inform conservation efforts.”

In examining the published works, McNamara and Bezanson were most surprised to find 31 primate habitat countries where no research was being conducted, including Guatemala, Trinidad, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Afghanistan and Singapore. Instead, most of the field work was conducted in national parks and protected areas of mainland Africa (35.6%), followed by North and South America (29.2%), Asia (25.1%) and Madagascar (9.9%).”

7

KNOWLEDGE MATTERS

A Matter of Life and Death

8

85.47 to 86.25 years. For black women, life expectancy increased across all levels of education, though those who had a college degree experienced the highest average increase of 1 year and 8 months, from 82.2 to 83.89 years, across all groups.

In considering the effects of specific causes of death, the researchers found that the average years of life lost due to smoking, cancer and circulatory diseases decreased since 2010 for all groups. However, drug use contributed to an overall increase in the average years of life lost, predominately in lower-educated groups of white men and women.

Life & Letters

Kaitlyn Trowbridge

Overall, life expectancy declined by an average of two months from 2010 to 2017.

Adobe Stock

SOCIOLOGY AND POPULATION RESEARCH CENTER In a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in August, sociologists Mark Hayward of UT Austin and Isaac Sasson of Tel Aviv University examined the intersection of education, cause of death and life expectancy across gender and race.

Overall, life expectancy declined by an average of two months from 2010 to 2017.

Though life expectancy increased among those with a college degree, it was counterbalanced by a decline for those without. The analysis suggests these educational differences could be linked to increased drug use in lower-educated populations.

For white men with a high school diploma or less, life expectancy declined by more than a year, from 74.52 to 73.47 years, compared with a 3.6 month decline among similarly educated black men, from 71.56 to 71.26 years. For white men with college degrees, life expectancy rose by 7 months, from 82.51 to 83.09 years, but did not change for black men.

Similarly, white women with a high school diploma or less lost more than a year in life expectancy, from 80.12 to 78.99 years, but those with a college degree gained about 9 months, from

University Excellence in Communications Awards 2019:

Photo courtesy of Alyssa Ashcraft

Truman #22 GOVERNMENT AND HUMANITIES Government and humanities senior Alyssa Ashcraft received one of the country’s premier graduate awards, which she will use to pursue a dual degree in law and public policy.

As a 2019 Truman scholar, Ashcraft received $30,000 toward graduate school and the opportunity to participate in professional development programming to help prepare for a career in public service leadership.

“Being a Truman scholar increases my capacity to make meaningful, impactful change in the world of education advocacy, and it will support me profession-

Alyssa Ashcraft in front of the Washington Monument on the National Mall.

Last spring, she spent a semester in Washington, D.C. as a Bill Archer fellow.

ally and financially as I pursue my graduate education,” Ashcraft says. “I will be part of a community of leaders who are dedicated to combating the world’s most complicated problems. I want to be a part of a movement to create better educational institutions, ones that fight inequity and promote economic mobility.”

Ashcraft was inspired to advocate for education equity as the daughter of two public school teachers. As a freshman, she founded the Campus Closet and obtained funding from the Office of the Dean of Students to provide professional clothing

“I want to be a part of a movement to create better educational institutions, ones that fight inequity and promote economic mobility.”

Alyssa Ashcraft

to low-income students. Now named UT Outpost, it has become a permanent campus resource, expanding to include a food pantry to address food insecurity.

UT Outpost has served more than 500 undergraduates so far.

Ashcraft was one of 62 Truman scholars named this year, selected from 840 candidates nominated by 346 colleges and universities, a record number of both applications and institutions. Since the program was established by Congress as the nation’s living memorial to President Harry S. Truman in 1975, 22 UT Austin students have been named Truman scholars.

9

KNOWLEDGE MATTERS

AMERICAN STUDIES Steven Hoelscher, an American studies professor, was not looking for lost works by Langston Hughes when he came across an unfamiliar essay by the author.

In it, Hughes recalls his encounter with an escaped prisoner from a chain gang while driving through segregation-era Georgia with an unnamed friend.

The young man describes the atrocious conditions of the forced labor system, revealing his intention to reunite with his wife in Atlanta. Hughes and his friend try to persuade the man to flee with them to the safety of the North and from there send for his wife, but ultimately, he opts to take his chances in Georgia.

There were few clues to the essay’s origins, but it appeared to be a foreword to a novel by journalist John L. Spivak, whose archive is partially housed at the Harry Ransom Center, where Hoelscher discovered the manuscript.

Hoelscher reached out to Hughes’ biographer Arnold Rampersad to confirm his theory that the unnamed friend was probably fellow author Zora Neale Hurston, with whom Hughes took a road trip through the South in 1927. Rampersad agreed that the manuscript could 10

Jack Delano, 1942. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Foreword Found

Langston Hughes, 1942.

be a foreword to Spivak’s book but was unaware of any such edition.

Digging deeper into Spivak’s documents, Hoelscher discovered that the essay was written for a Russian translation of the novel published in 1933 in the Soviet Union, where Hughes had ventured the previous year.

Hughes’ foreword to Spivak’s book is a reminder of the realities of life back home, where convict labor camps created a new kind of slavery and educated Northern blacks travelled through the

South at their peril.

“There is an emerging sense of the necessity to understand that period as critical to American race relations,” says Hoelscher, who views chain gangs of the Jim Crow-era South as essential to understanding our county’s current mass incarceration crisis.

“My hope is to make a small contribution to that historical project.”

The Langston Hughes essay, with an introduction by Hoelscher, was published in Smithsonian.

Kevin Rathge

Attitude Adjustment

PSYCHOLOGY AND POPULATION RESEARCH CENTER Boosting academic success does not have to derive from new teachers or curriculum; it can also come from changing students’ attitudes about their abilities, according to the latest findings from the National Study of Learning Mindsets published in Nature.

The experimental study involved more than 12,000 ninth graders from 65 public high schools across the United States.

It showed that two 25-minute online interventions that emphasize a growth mindset — the belief that intellectual abilities are

“A mindset intervention is like planting a seed; it grows to fruition in fertile soil.”

David Yeager

not fixed but can be developed — can improve key predictors of high school graduation and college success, especially when a school’s culture supports the treatment message.

On average, lower-achieving students who took the program earned 0.10 higher grade points in core academic subjects such as math, English, science and social studies. Additionally, the intervention reduced the proportion of these students with a D or F average in these courses by more than 5 percentage points. In mediumto low-performing schools with norms that encouraged students

to take on more challenging coursework, lower-achieving students who received the intervention improved 0.15 grade points in core courses and 0.17 grade points in STEM courses.

Researchers also found that the intervention increased the likelihood students took Algebra II or higher in 10th grade by 3 percentage points among both higher- and lower-achieving students.

“Motivation and learning don’t just happen in a student’s head; they depend on the resources and learning opportunities present in the school’s environment, including the extent to which challenging coursework is available to students,” says the study’s lead author, David Yeager, a UT Austin associate professor of psychology and Population Research Center faculty affiliate.

“A mindset intervention is like planting a seed; it grows to fruition in fertile soil. Now that we have shown this in a national study, it will propel us into a new era of mindset research. That era will focus on both the mindset of the student and the culture and climate of the classroom. We have our eyes set on preparing teachers to support students’ beliefs that they can grow and learn.”

11

Ancient Alteration GEOGRAPHY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, LLILAS New evidence in Belize shows the ancient Maya responded to population and environmental pressures by creating massive agricultural features in wetlands, potentially increasing atmospheric CO² and methane through burn events and farming, according to geographical research at The University of Texas at Austin published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We now are beginning to understand the full human imprint of the Anthropocene in tropical forests,” says Tim Beach, the study’s lead author, 12

who holds the C.B. Smith, Sr. Centennial Chair. “These large and complex wetland networks may have contributed to climate change long before industrialization, and these may be the answer to the long-standing question of how a great rainforest civilization fed itself.” Beach adds that “Even these small changes may have warmed the planet, which provides a sobering perspective for the order of magnitude greater changes over the last century that are accelerating into the future.”

Evidence acquired from 250 square kilometers of high preci-

Image courtesy of Tim Beach, UT Austin

KNOWLEDGE MATTERS

A lidar-derived model of the Birds of Paradise ancient Maya wetland field system and parts of the nearby Maya sites of Gran Cacao (bottomleft) and Akab Muclil (top-left) in Northwestern Belize.

sion laser imagery combined with excavation data showed that the Maya faced environmental pressures, including rising sea levels in the Preclassic and Classic periods — 3,000 to 1,000 years ago — and droughts during the Late/Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic periods — 1,400 to 900 years ago. The Maya responded to such pressures by converting forests to wetland field complexes and digging canals to manage water quality and quantity.

Similarly, the researchers posit the Maya responded to large population shifts and changing demands for food production during the Late Preclassic to the Early Postclassic — about 1,800 to 1,000 years ago — by expanding their network of fields and canals in areas accessible by canoe to the broader Maya world.

Within the fields, the researchers uncovered evidence of multiple ancient food species, such as maize, as well as animal shells and bones, indicating widespread protein harvesting.

The researchers hypothesized that expanding the wetland complexes added atmospheric CO², through burning events; and methane, through the creation of wetland farming. Indeed, the largest premodern increase of methane, from 2,000 to 1,000 years ago, coincides with the rise of Maya wetland networks, as well as those in South America and China.

Popularity Isn’t Everything POPULAR VOTE MARGIN 30% Geruso, Spears, Talesara (2019) “Inversions in US Presidential Elections: 1836-2016”

ECONOMICS The presidential elections of 2000 and 2016 were controversial, in part, because the candidate who won the popular vote did not win the presidency.

In 2000, Republican George W. Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore by 5 electoral votes after losing the popular vote by about 540,000. And in 2016, Republican Donald Trump garnered 27 more electoral votes than Democrat Hillary Clinton but lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million.

What are the odds of this happening?

Higher than you probably think, say UT Austin economists Michael Geruso and Dean Spears, whose paper on these electoral “inversions” was released by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The paper is part of the University of Texas Electoral College Study and was co-authored by Geruso, Spears, and economics and math undergraduate Ishaana Talesara.

According to their work, inversion elections are very likely in close elections. Although they’ve only happened four times in U.S. history — 1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016 — the researchers say there’s at least an 80% chance

No inversion Inversion

20%

10%

HAYES 0 1825

1850

1875

that another slightly less popular candidate will win the presidency in the next 60 years if elections continue to be as close as they have been during the past several decades.

In fact, the researchers estimate that if someone loses the popular vote by within 1%, or 1.3 million votes, he or she has a 45% chance of winning the election. It has nothing to do with who the candidates are, the researchers emphasize, but the trend favors

BUSH

HARRISON 1900

1925

1950

1975

TRUMP

2000

ELECTION YEAR

There’s at least an 80% chance that another slightly less popular candidate will win the presidency in the next 60 years.

Republicans, who are estimated to benefit from future inversions 77% of the time.

“Ultimately, each American needs to decide these issues for themselves,” Geruso says. “But we don’t think anyone should make that decision without first understanding just how likely it is that if nothing changes, we will experience more and more mismatches between the popular vote and the Electoral College outcome.”

13

BOOK FEATURE

THE TACO

La Reyna, Tulsa, Okla.

14

Watch the video featuring The Taco Truck author, Robert Lemon youtube.com/LiberalArtsUT

TRUCK

By Rachel White Photos by Robert Lemon Much like the government, the railroads, farmland and cities, the United States food truck industry was built on the backs of immigrants.

“The Mexican food truck changed how we looked at our cities,” argues Robert Lemon, an expert in urban geography with a bachelor’s and doctorate from The University of Texas at Austin.

Lemon’s book, The Taco Truck: How Mexican Street Food is Transforming the American City, examines the evolution of the taco truck, from its humble beginnings as fast food for the immigrant working class to today’s millennial-driven, multibillion-dollar mobile food industry.

It is a culmination of five years of research on taco trucks and insightful interviews with taqueros, or taco chefs, and communities across the U.S. While that may sound delicious, Lemon’s interest in the subject actually piqued after a taco truck in Columbus, Ohio, left a bad taste in someone’s mouth.

“Some people saw them as eyesores, claiming they would attract crime,” explains Lemon, who worked with Columbus neighborhood services while earning his master’s at Ohio State University. “Taco trucks can spark a range of debates, from cultural perceptions of how public and semi-public space should be used to aspects of restaurant

Author Takes His Research to the Streets

RECOMMENDED READING The Taco Truck: How Mexican Street Food Is Transforming the American City University of Illinois Press, May 2019

By Robert Lemon

competition.”

To help incorporate the trucks, Lemon began visiting and getting to know their immigrant owners, how they were adapting to life in the U.S., and, most importantly, why they chose to sell tacos.

Through his research, he unraveled the ethnic, class and cultural threads woven into the taco truck’s history and the public spaces they occupy across the U.S. “Food has no meaning; the people

around food give it meaning,” he says.

“Our sociology around food shapes our cities — who our populations are, what they eat, how they talk about it. Those perceptions shape policy. They change who can eat what, where.”

TACO ’BOUT HISTORY The taco truck first arrived on the American scene by way of migration — Mexican laborers traveling to regions such as Los Angeles in the early 20th century. Taking notes from mobile food vendors that came before — chuck wagons serving cowboys on cattle drives; lunch trucks serving workers at construction sites — the taquero would drive around to agricultural sites, serving up quick, affordable eats to laborers in the field.

“In this way, the trucks exemplify an aspect of foodways; estranged emigrants search for fond memories of home through food and through the taquero, who knows how to make such food,” Lemon explains.

Over time, the cost for taco delivery — gas, maintenance, driving time — began to add up. So, trucks began settling within and near California’s Latino neighborhoods, a change welcomed by working-class immigrants familiar with the idea of street food and hungry for a taste of home.

“Taco truck owners have produced a space to provide inexpensive comfort cuisine to an immigrant clientele. In so doing, they have found an economic avenue to tap into,” Lemon writes. “The taco truck’s design and function allows it to seamlessly integrate into the social fabric of Mexican immigrant communities.”

He adds: “Unfortunately, its practice does not always fit into the ways that many Americans wish to perceive their neighborhood spaces.”

15

Los Potosinos, Columbus, Ohio.

San Antonio Light Photograph Collection, MS 359, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections

Tacos Sinaloense, Sacramento, Calif.

“We’re seeing this renaissance, or resurgence, of people wanting to use their streetscapes.”

Robert Lemon Chili stands, Haymarket Plaza, San Antonio, Texas, 1933.

A BEAUTIFUL CITY Street food has been a part of Mexican lives for centuries, with roots as far back as the market of Tlatelolco in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) where ancient people munched on tamales while sipping pulque — booze made from agave sap.

And although street food was widespread throughout the American Southwest in the 18th and 19th centuries, the U.S. has a long history of pushing out informal commerce. In his book, Lemon points to the San Antonio “chili queens” — “the most mystical Mexican street food vendors in the United States” — as a prime example.

In the late 1800s, a group of Mexican women cooked up some of the best chili around, dishing it out to crowds of tourists in downtown San Antonio. As their popularity grew — wide enough to be featured at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair — so 16

did the efforts to disband them through excessive health regulations and criminalization. Eventually, “eating Mexican chili in front of the Alamo was deemed an indecent practice.”

“Cities sought to sanitize things,” says Lemon, describing the City Beautiful Movement, when city planning became more orderly and grand in hopes of promoting civic virtue.

Street vendors, however, had no place among the aesthetic: “Street food was a little bit of a mess — cluttered, busy, maybe a little unsanitary too. So, instead of regulating, they just wiped it out.”

Highways paved over slums, car traffic replaced foot traffic, and cities built treelined baroque boulevards to drive up property values and create the perception of a high quality through order and control. The practice was reinforced in 1982 by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling’s “broken windows” theory, which postulated that

minor forms of disorder, such as broken windows or informal commerce, underwrite neighborhood decline and reduce quality of life — a notion city officials have followed blindly without consideration as to what quality of life could mean for different people, Lemon argues.

“For most Mexican immigrants, traditional street food practices represent who they are as migrants from the developing world trying to make ends meet in a capitalism-driven society,” Lemon writes. “At the same time, vending tacos from a truck along the street may be seen by community members as threatening their own social identity. It is ultimately a cultural debate, and almost always an uneven one.”

FOLLOW THE FOOD Like the chili queens, taco trucks became subject to a variety of rules, regulations and requirements in an effort to push

Camioncito de Sabor, Columbus, Ohio.

them out of the city. At one point, Sacramento and Los Angeles required trucks “stay mobile” and move a half-mile every half-hour. Failure to do so would result in a fine or even jail time.

Though stringent for immigrant taco truck owners who were already feeling economically pressed and socially ostracized, these regulations created a unique opportunity for a younger generation looking to leave their mark on the streets.

Enter Kogi, a Koreatown-born food truck business that fought against the discriminatory regulations with Twitter and trend-hungry millennials. At the end of its first year in 2008, Kogi grossed $2 million in sales by tweeting the truck’s location and dishing out hybridized Korean barbecue tacos to its tech-savvy clientele.

“People really took to it. They thought it was so cool to find and follow their favorite truck,” says Lemon. “This is how the food trucks could resist being zoned

out of the city.”

While taco truck owners didn’t follow suit due to lack of technology and funds for more expensive, trendy foods, Kogi improved the food truck’s overall image, paving the road for the gourmet food truck movement. According to Forbes, the size of the food truck industry in the U.S. alone is estimated to grow up to 20% in 2019.

“We’re seeing this renaissance, or resurgence, of people wanting to use their streetscapes,” says Lemon, describing how taco trucks continue to reflect and contribute to the evolving character of their neighborhoods.

“The taco truck’s spontaneity makes the street a serendipitous urban landscape that harks back to the ways city streets originally functioned, before the advent of the car,” Lemon writes. “The street becomes pedestrian again, ironically through the socio-spatial practices of a motorized truck. But the taco truck’s

nonconforming uses, its unpredictable qualities, and the chaos it supposedly induces disrupt, disturb and challenge the contemporary conformist concepts of the street and to whom the street belongs.”

Recognizing the value of such spaces, today’s city planners have begun “manipulating things to their advantage” by planning pockets of perceived spontaneity where food trucks can operate legally and attract free-flowing capital, while still maintaining control through heightened permit costs and increased regulations.

“Foodways, which were traditionally sluggish processes of social integration, are quickly becoming ways to sell a city as a multicultural playground,” Lemon writes. “Now that urban developers and city councils select culinary narratives to sell their communities, city planners and elected officials must be mindful for whom these narratives benefit.”

17

BOOKS

Air: Pollution, Climate Change and India’s Choice Between Policy and Pretence HarperCollins, June 2019

By Dean Spears, assistant professor, Department of Economics A million people in India are killed each year by the world’s worst air pollution. This book combines statistical evidence, economics and stories from fieldwork in north India, where pollution threatens the health and economy of future generations.

Bring Your Brain to Work Harvard Business Review Press, June 2019

By Art Markman, professor, Department of Psychology 18

Much of what you need to know in order to succeed at work you do not learn in school. In this book, Art Markman highlights research from cognitive science that supports strategies to help readers get a job, to succeed at that job once they get it, and to best enhance their career by getting the next job.

Unwanted Witnesses: Journalists and Conflict in Contemporary Latin America Pittsburgh University Press, Sept. 2019

By Gabriela Polit Dueñas, associate professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese This book analyzes the work of journalists from Mexico, Colombia and Argentina, combining ethnographic observations of their work with textual analysis and theoretical reflections on ethical dilemmas. It looks at the emotional

A sampling of new and forthcoming titles from our college community.

challenges and the traumatic conditions faced when reporting on trauma and violence, and the limits of our democracies.

with its continued impact on the instability, volatility and unsettledness of race and slavery.

Slave Sites on Display: Reflecting Slavery’s Legacy through Contemporary “Flash” Moments The University Press of Mississippi, Aug. 2019

By Helena Woodard, associate professor, Departments of English and African and African Diaspora Studies Woodard examines how certain modern-day slave sites — a renovated slave fort, a slave burial ground, a reconstructed slave ship and the Bench By the Road Project slave memorial near Charleston — are especially readable through contemporary “flash” moments: specific circumstances and/or seminal events that bind slavery’s historical resonance

Hebrew Gothic: History and the Poetics of Persecution Indiana University Press, Sept. 2019

By Karen Grumberg, associate professor, Department of Middle Eastern Studies Grumberg illustrates how modern Hebrew literature has regularly appropriated key gothic ideas to help conceptualize the Jewish relationship to the past.

Comparatively reading Hebrew, British and American texts, the study engages Hebrew literature globally and sheds new light on tensions that continue to characterize contemporary Israeli cultural and political rhetoric.

The Lost Books of Jane Austen Johns Hopkins University Press, Oct. 2019

By Janine Barchas, professor, Department of English This book aims to shift institutional collecting practices to include the cheapest categories of Austen’s early reprintings. Many inexpensive Victorian reprints, the stuff bought by working-class readers at railway stations and book stalls for six pence or a shilling, have gone unrecorded by bibliographers, uncollected by major libraries and unremarked by scholars.

Yet, these books did the heavy lifting of raising Austen into the canon and spreading her fame.

Dreams of El Dorado: A History of the American West

Basic Books, Oct. 2019

By H.W. Brands, professor, Department of History Brands tells the thrilling, panoramic story of the settling of the American West — from John Jacob Astor’s fur trading outpost in Oregon to the Texas Revolution, from the California gold rush to the Oklahoma land rush. Migrants’ dreams drove them to feats of courage and perseverance and to outrageous acts of violence against indigenous peoples and one another.

Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US-Mexico Divide University of Texas Press, Oct. 2019

By C.J. Alvarez, assistant professor, Departments of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, and History This book is the first and most comprehensive history of construction projects on the U.S.-Mexico divide.

Spanning more than 150 years, the narrative traces the accumulation of fencing and surveillance infrastructure on the land border and hydraulic engineering projects on the river border. It includes dozens of never-before-seen blueprints, maps and photographs.

The Ambivalent State: Police-Criminal Collusion at the Urban Margins Oxford University Press, Nov. 2019

By Javier Auyero, professor, Department of Sociology; and Katherine Sobering, Plan II ’09 and Ph.D. Sociology ’18 This book offers an unprecedented look into the clandestine relationships between police agents and drug dealers in Argentina.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and documentary evidence, including hundreds of pages of wiretapped

phone conversations, the authors analyze the inner workings of police-criminal collusion and how it shapes drug markets, policing and life at the urban margins.

Religion Around Bono: Evangelical Enchantment and Neoliberal Capitalism Penn State University Press, Nov. 2019

By Chad E. Seales, associate professor, Department of Religious Studies U2’s Bono is an icon of both evangelical spirituality and secular moral activism. This book examines the religious and spiritual culture that has built up around the rock star over the course of his career and considers how Bono engages with that religion in his music and in his activism.

19

EVENTS 1 Gone to Liberal Arts COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS Dean Ann Huff Stevens meets with students during Gone to Liberal Arts at the Turtle Pond on Aug. 27.

2 American Center in Moscow CENTER FOR RUSSIAN, EAST EUROPEAN AND EURASIAN STUDIES In Mezes Hall, from left, Marcus Golding, John Gleb, Thomas Rehnquist, Rachel German, Ashlyn Hand, Ernesto Bilbao and Michelle Daniel answer questions from Russian college students as part of an inaugural webinar with the American Center in Moscow in the U.S. Embassy on Sept. 13.

3 Academy of

Distinguished Teachers UT AUSTIN From left, Maurie McInnis, executive vice president and provost; Kevin Cokley, professor, colleges of Liberal Arts and Education; Keffrelyn Brown, professor, colleges of Liberal Arts and Education; Ramesh Rao, professor, McCombs School of Business; Desiderio Kovar, professor, Cockrell School of Engineering; Julie Hardwick, professor, College of Liberal Arts; and Gregory L. Fenves, president of UT Austin, attend the annual Academy of Distinguished Teachers ceremony at the president’s office on Sept. 26.

20

4 Liz Carpenter

Lecture with Samantha Power

PLAN II HONORS Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power and retired Adm. Bobby R. Inman, the LBJ Centennial Chair in National Policy, at a reception at the Thompson Conference Center on Oct. 1. Power was the 2019 Liz Carpenter Lectureship speaker.

5 Liberal Arts Career

Services

COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS Xuechun Wang (right), an economics graduate student, visits with a representative from Amazon during the Fall Career & Internship Fair at the Shirley Bird Perry Ballroom in the Texas Union on Oct. 2.

6 Charles White and the Legacy of the Figure ART GALLERIES AT BLACK STUDIES A guest views the Sound of Silence, 1978 Lithograph, during the Charles White and the Legacy of the Figure: Celebrating the Gordon Gift reception at the Christian-Green Gallery on Sept. 19.

Credits: 1: Phil Butler., 2: Bryce Seifert / LAITS, 3: UT Austin, 4: Matt Valentine, 5: Kaitlyn Trowbridge, 6: Justice Madden

21

Moral Fuel

Energizing a New Internship Program

22

Rabbi Neil Blumofe, senior rabbi at Agudas Achim, leads students on a tour of the synagogueʼs sanctuary, telling stories of each of the Torahs in the collection at the Sukkah for Social Change on Oct. 22.

Photo courtesy of Suzanne Seriff

By Emily Nielsen There’s an intangible drive that keeps us going when things seem hopeless, even after giving it our all. It’s this “moral fuel,” a term coined by UT Austin student Allison Essington, that stands at the heart of a fledgling internship program from the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies.

During one of the program’s weekly classes, guest speaker Del Garcia, director of international projects at the Migrant Clinican’s Network, told students about her struggles with “moral injury” in her work — the pain caused by recognizing that, despite our best efforts, there are times when we are unsuccessful in achieving what is necessary for those who need it most. Essington asked Garcia about its inverse — what she called moral fuel.

“The simple but profound concept of ‘moral fuel’ became a touchstone for all of us throughout the rest of the semester as we discussed both the difficulty of the work that we were all doing in the social justice arena and the things that compel us forward and give us energy,” says Suzanne Seriff, director of the Internship Program in Jewish Studies and senior lecturer in

anthropology and Jewish studies.

In class, students are invited to consider social justice issues such as health care, poverty and hate speech through the lens of Jewish teachings, such as tzedakah (giving) and tikkun olam (repair of the world).

“The sweet spot of this program — unique among Jewish studies internship programs throughout the country — is the trifecta of the internship experience (10 hours per week), Jewish textual study and personal experience from community leaders like Del Garcia in the nonprofit sector who join our class each week and help us focus on broad social justice issues through a personal lens,” Seriff says.

The internship program is open to liberal arts students of all faiths and majors, so the first two weeks of class serve as an introduction on how to study Jewish texts and the fundamentals of Jewish law and tradition, taught by a local rabbi, Neil Blumofe. During the program’s inaugural semester in spring 2019, with just nine students, the religions represented included Islam, Buddhism, Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism. This fall, the class again has nine students, who have a mix of distinct faith traditions.

“Even though these numbers may seem small, the program is purposefully capped at 15 per semester in order to maximize the personal attention and internship opportunities for each student,” Seriff says.

The types of internships students take vary depending on individual interests. Internships in this program have involved a wide range of local

“To have so many people from so many backgrounds talk about their struggles and triumphs — their beliefs and their passions — ignites a fire in you like no other.”

Savannah Anderson-Knight

Photo courtesy of Suzanne Seriff

organizations that do everything from teaching classical guitar to underserved populations, to coordinating health services for migrants, to recording the oral histories of those affected by structural violence in Texas. And because not all internships are paid, the Schusterman Center provides some scholarship support to ensure that people of all backgrounds are able to participate.

“My internship has allowed me the opportunity to work directly with the homeless population —therefore, from the moment I began my internship, my opinion of homelessness rapidly began changing,” says Essington, a Human Dimensions of Organizations sophomore who interned at Art from the Streets. “I soon was able to understand the complex similarities that I shared with all of the artists — we are all human.

This may seem like a very obvious aspect, yet it is one that I find too frequently forgotten.”

The culmination of the spring semester was a Passover Seder service at Austin synagogue Agudas Achim led by Rabbi Blumofe and attended by the students, their internship supervisors and the guest speakers from throughout the semester. Students shared a short statement about their internship experience that related to the Passover topics of liberation, enslavement or quests for freedom and justice. The rabbi wove their stories into the service as they shared a four-course meal of matzoh ball soup, salad, baked chicken and vegetables, and a variety of desserts, including the favorite — chocolate-covered matzoh.

“Perhaps the most valuable part of this class was the community it built, and this was beautifully shown at our Seder,” says Savannah Anderson-Knight, a government and anthropology junior who interned at the Texas After Violence Project. “Hearing how touched everyone was by the class and seeing how a room of social justice leaders interacted with one another was uplifting, and a great way to start finals season. To have so many people from so many backgrounds talk about their struggles and triumphs — their beliefs and their passions — ignites a fire in you like no other.”

Passover happens only once a year, but students

The culmination of the spring semester was a Pass­over Seder service at Austin synagogue Agudas Achim on April 24 attended by the students, their internship supervisors and the guest speakers from throughout the semester.

in the fall participated in a “Sukkah for Social Change” dinner at Agudas Achim during the annual Jewish harvest holiday of Sukkot. One of the festival’s central tenets is welcoming guests, especially the most vulnerable among us.

There is one other notable adjustment in the program’s format for the fall semester. It’s a change that was unanimously recommended by the spring interns: more time together. Seriff has extended the length of the weekly evening classes by 30 minutes to allow more time for discussion and reflection, taking the 90 minute sessions to 2 hours.

“In over 30 years of teaching, that’s a first!” Seriff says. “Students are hungry for a safe place to explore their ethical role and sense of responsibility in the wider world, and this class seems to provide that for them.”

23

24

Understanding Our World Through Film Studies

By David Ochsner Photos by Wyatt McSpadden

25

COVER FEATURE

Skirball Productions, Universal Pictures

AT FIRST GLANCE THE TOWN LOOKS LIKE A NORMAN ROCKWELL PAINTING COME TO LIFE. IT’S RATHER CORNY, THIS ANYTOWN USA, A PLACE WHERE AUNT BEE BAKES APPLE PIES AND ANDY HARDY FALLS IN LOVE. BUT TAKE A CLOSER LOOK. THERE IS EVIL AFOOT.

An adoring niece (Teresa Wright) greets her favorite uncle (Joseph Cotten) in 1943’s Shadow of a Doubt.

26

The town is Santa Rosa, California, chosen by director Alfred Hitchcock to serve as the setting for his 1943 psychological thriller, Shadow of a Doubt.

It was a deliberate choice, this idyllic town where Hitchcock introduces us to the wholesome Newton family and their bored teenage daughter, Charlie, namesake of her beloved uncle, Charles Oakley.

Young Charlie is thrilled when her charming, worldly uncle pays a visit, but as the story unfolds, she soon discovers that her sleepy little town now harbors a heartless killer — her dear Uncle Charlie.

One could watch this film as an entertaining thriller and leave it at that. But there is so much more to be learned — about ourselves and the world around us — if we view it through a liberal arts lens.

Donna Kornhaber, an associate professor of English at UT Austin and a nationally recognized Academy Film Scholar, recalls a scene in Shadow of a Doubt in which Uncle Charlie, portrayed by Joseph Cotten, reveals his true nature and all but confirms to his niece that he is the “Merry Widow Murderer” sought in a nationwide manhunt.

Skirball Productions, Universal Pictures

At the dinner table Uncle Charlie describes rich widows as “useless…you see them in the hotels, the best hotels, every day by the thousands. Drinking the money, eating the money, losing the money at bridge. Playing all day and all night. Smelling of money. Proud of their jewelry but of nothing else. Horrible, faded, fat, greedy women…”

Kornhaber observes that during this speech the camera slowly moves from a wider shot to a closer shot of Uncle Charlie, and then stops. At this point young Charlie, off camera, interjects, “They’re alive. They’re human beings!”

Turning his face directly to the camera, her uncle coolly responds, “Are they?”

The camera cuts back to the niece. The uncle continues: “Are they human or are they fat, wheezing animals, hmm? And what happens to animals when they get too fat and too old?”

The words are chilling, but understanding the context of the film — when it was made, who wrote the script and why the director chose a certain camera shot — reveals layers of deeper meaning that are beyond words alone.

“Hitchcock makes sure we’re looking directly at Uncle Charlie in this moment. It’s for a reason,” says Kornhaber. “A lot of film classes or textbooks will note how the scene shows Hitchcock focusing our attention…well yes, but why? It has to do with history, literature, sociology, psychology…there are so many aspects of the liberal arts that actually plug into that

Beloved Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton) reveals a more sinister side in this close-up from Shadow of a Doubt.

Poster for Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943).

moment. With a liberal arts education, you are well equipped to really unpack and unlock that moment.

“If you think about the conversation that the film is having, and think about how Hitchcock later filmed the Nazi characters in Notorious — revealing an outright barbarism in characters who seem pretty civilized on the surface — there’s a whole discussion to be had around what true depravity can look like, and what it means to dehumanize other people…That conversation is happening cinematographically in Hitchcock, but you have to understand the context to really see it. You have to have some literacy in Hitchcock, you have to understand it’s 1943 and you have to understand that Uncle Charlie is, metaphorically, a Nazi.”

As Kornhaber points out, it helps to know that Shadow of a Doubt was written by Thornton Wilder, who also wrote Our Town, a play that ends with a monologue from a young woman who sees life differently after she dies: “We don't have time to look at one another…All that was going on in life and we 27

COVER FEATURE

never noticed.”

“Hitchcock amends that to say, ‘Well, if you really stop and look at your Uncle Charlie’…he literalizes that process, understanding that we’re not going to like what we see,” says Kornhaber. “It’s something he learned from the expressionists. We stop and look at Uncle Charlie, and Uncle Charlie looks right back at us. We cannot avoid looking at him in this terrible moment, and it’s for a reason.”

While a war against the Nazis raged in Europe, Hitchcock reminded moviegoers that the same evil could exist in our own seemingly safe communities. Kornhaber references the detective at the end of Shadow of a Doubt, who tells young Charlie, “Sometimes [the world] needs a lot of watching. Seems to go crazy every now and then. Like your Uncle Charlie.”

WHY FILM MATTERS What students can learn through deep study of such a film is almost limitless. They can explore moral and 28

Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) was the first blatantly anti-Nazi film produced by a major Hollywood Studio.

societal issues, such as the nature of evil, how to recognize it and how to address the complexities of confronting it. The film itself is an artifact of history, offering insights into how a person during the war years of the 1930s and ’40s might have come to understand fascism, or the dehumanization of certain populations.

“With a liberal arts education, you have a lot of tools that you can use to approach film and to analyze the meaning of the filmic image.

Students can unpack a film’s visual construction, explore its genealogy and implications, and draw conclusions as to its social, historical and intellectual resonances,” says Kornhaber.

“They are able to engage in ways that leverage what they’ve learned in other liberal arts classes, and in so doing come to better understand visual storytelling,

“With a liberal arts education, you have a lot of tools that you can use to approach film and to analyze the meaning of the filmic image.”

Paramount Pictures

Donna Kornhaber

Most of the anti-Nazi films produced by Hollywood during and after World War II were of the B-grade variety, including 1944’s The Hitler Gang. From left, Luis Van Rooten as Heinrich Himmler, Martin Kosleck as Joseph Goebbels, Robert Watson as Adolf Hitler, Victor Varconi as Rudolph Hess, and Alex Pope as Hermann Göring.

recognizing what it is that you can do in film that you cannot do in literature. You can study film by identifying shots all you want. You can do the anatomy of film forever, but students who draw from the liberal arts are especially well equipped for getting to the meaning, to the ‘why’ behind those shots.”

More than a dozen scholars across the College of Liberal Arts are delving into the “why” of films in a variety of disciplines including English, history, government, languages, area studies and ethnic studies.

What they do differs from film academies that teach students how to make films. Rather, Kornhaber and other liberal arts scholars study films critically as the major art form of the 20th and 21st centuries — not unlike the study of literature in the 19th century. For a liberal arts student, and any college student for that matter, an understanding of our visual culture and its origins is indispensible in this global age.

Sabine Hake, professor and Texas Chair of German Literature and Culture in the Department of Germanic Studies, has examined how film helped usher in the global age in the 20th century and cites as an example Ernst Lubitsch, who starred in and directed dozens of films in Germany before heading for Hollywood in the early 1920s.

“What attracted me to Lubitsch was how he represented a trans-Atlantic, transnational perspective in the study of culture,” says Hake. “If we look at how culture developed in the 20th century, it was really the end of a national framework for everyone. Film, and specifically silent film, was international. Few even knew where these films were made.”

She says there was considerable optimism that this young medium could even promote world peace and understanding, not unlike the optimism people felt about the internet at the end of the 20th century, when it was viewed as a tool of empowerment for previously marginalized groups.

“The internet is almost a replay of what happened with early film, or with early radio, and the relationship between technology and democracy and the question of who owns the channels,” says Hake. “That’s a good reason why we need to study 29

COVER FEATURE

Romolo Marcellini

film, and especially the beginnings. Beginnings are always fascinating because they always raise the same hopes and fears.”

In following the trajectory of film development, one can actually gauge the ebb and flow of nationalistic and other political movements in the 20th century and beyond. “There was a turn to a more national perspective during the interwar years, which corresponds to political developments,” observes Hake.

“Then after World War II, Hollywood became the most important weapon in the Marshall Plan and in the democratization of Europe.”

CHANGING HEARTS AND MINDS Paola Bonifazio, an associate professor in the Department of French and Italian, says there was an overwhelming production of short films after the war aimed at promoting a certain idea of modernity and industry to Europeans. In her book, Schooling in Modernity: The Politics of Sponsored Films in Postwar Italy, she examines how the Marshall Plan — through which the U.S. provided billions of dollars in economic assistance to help rebuild postwar Western European economies — directly aided the production of films that promoted the positive aspects of modern industry and individual freedom to Italian workers and citizens. There were two primary government agencies that produced films for Italians — one from the U.S. and one from Italy — but the same private Italian producers worked for both.

Although these films were state-sponsored, Bonifazio sees them as educational rather than as a form 30

Funded by the Marshall Plan, the film Leaving is a Bit Like Dying (left) used humor to promote freedom of trade and movement in postwar Europe. It featured famous Italian comedian Peppino De Filippo, pictured here at a passport window as he endures a number of misadventures while crossing the Italian border.

At right, government-sponsored short films often resembled neorealist cinematic works such as 1948’s The Bicycle Thief.

Produzioni De Sica, Ente Nazionale Industrie Cinematografiche

of indoctrination. “In the transition from fascism to democracy, it is precisely about the way we should understand the power of these films on people,” she says. “The sense is that you don’t want to indoctrinate, you want to educate. But education is fundamentally a way to create a power relationship with the audience.

The films gave a role to the viewer, one of participation rather than simply absorption of information.”

Although economic revival and democratization were goals shared by American and Italian authorities, the films also reveal the social and cultural differences of the two societies.

“Overall, the films are homogenous in promoting modernity as a way to better the country and the individual, and since all the films were produced by Italian companies, they look very much the same at the surface,” observes Bonifazio. “But if you look carefully, American-sponsored films promoted an idea of modernity that was rooted in the idea of self-help, of the self-made man, a very American ideology.” On the other hand, Italian-sponsored films — even if they were directed by the same people who worked for the Americans — emphasized the state as the main entity responsible for the betterment of the citizen, she says.

The films had a big influence in modernizing Italian society, as did early television commercials in the late 1950s and early 1960s that mimicked the style of the Marshall Plan films. Bonifazio makes her point with a simple bouillon cube.

“Modernization took place especially in terms of lifestyle. The changes happened at both the structural and cultural levels,” she says. “You have a commercial for broth in a cube — no one in Italy would have dared

“The films gave a role to the viewer, one of participation rather than simply absorption of information.”

Paola Bonifazio

make broth from a cube before the war, but in the commercial it is attached to a certain lifestyle, which makes you, using the cube, not some bad housewife who is not able to make her own broth, but some glamorous woman who doesn’t have the time to do it.”

MOVING IMAGES What the bouillon cube demonstrates in its small way is the very large effect moving images have played in our lives during the past century. In her book, Screen Nazis: Cinema, History and Democracy, Hake points out that the 20th century was the century of film “and the kind of mass mobilizations that gave rise to fascist movements as well as modern democracies.” She writes that “the emotions engendered by film have

31

COVER FEATURE

been used throughout its history to build and maintain support for dictatorial regimes and their oppressive policies…yet the same strategies — of course, employed more subtly — can be found in stories, sounds and images created to defend and promote democracy.”

Indeed, as Bonifazio observes, the short films produced by the Allies under the Marshall Plan share similarities to those produced under the Italian Fascists. “They used some of the same directors that had worked with (Benito) Mussolini,” she notes.

“In comparing the films you can see continuities between the idea of a welfare state before and after the fall of the regime, and the way in which the state is behind individual betterment. Visually they are very similar, like the muscular worker in the factory, and armies of marching workers.

Through these images they made a transition from warfare to workfare.”

The Nazis used the moving image to great effect before and during the war, most notably Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will — a 1935 propaganda film that highlighted a massive Nazi Party Congress rally in Nuremberg. “It scared the hell out of me,” remarked Hollywood director Frank Capra. “It fired no gun, dropped no bombs, but as a psychological weapon aimed at destroying the will to resist, it was just as lethal.” Triumph would eventually inspire Capra to produce a seven-part Why We Fight film series aimed at persuading Americans to support U.S. involvement in the war.

During and after the war Hollywood produced a slew of mostly B-grade anti-Nazi films that forcefully affirmed American values. “On the most basic level, the anti-Nazi films represent Hollywood’s response to what the Nazis in 1933 had announced as a fundamental new approach to politics as a series of tightly 32

“[Students] need to be trained to see how images communicate feelings, tell stories, organize identifications. Being visually literate is absolutely essential to function in our world.”

Sabine Hake

Fiat

Large corporations also funded short films that promoted modernity and industrialization in Italy, including this one from Fiat about a vocational school for boys.

Walt Disney Productions, RKO Radio Pictures

scripted media events and highly emotional mass experience,” writes Hake in Screen Nazis. “As the most visible manifestation of such uncanny effects, the antagonistic figures of Nazi and anti-Nazi became the central organizing principle in the self-representation of American democracy during WWII.” Hake notes that some films used humor to mock Nazi leaders, most notably Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940). Humor was also deployed in animated shorts such as Disney’s Der Fuehrer’s Face (1942), in which Donald Duck has a bad dream about being a Nazi armament worker (Kornhaber discusses The Great Dictator in her first book, Charlie Chaplin, Director, and she covers Donald’s wartime adventures and many other types of war-related animation in her upcoming third book, Nightmares in the Dream Sanctuary: War and the Animated Film).

Films are the most powerful way to define how we feel about being part of a country with a particular history, observes Hake. “Literature used to have that function for an educated elite in the 19th century, but in film we have all the important connections between narrative history, nationalism, patriotism,

Donald Duck confronts fascism in 1942’s Der Fuehrer’s Face.

globalization. It is important to teach film because students need to be visually literate. They need to be trained to see how images communicate feelings, tell stories, organize identifications. Being visually literate is absolutely essential to function in our world.”

UNDERSTANDING YOUR MOMENT “When you learn the language and the vocabulary of film, and when you come to understand that there is such a thing as visual grammar and visual diction, then you have real power, because you can begin to understand how images are operating on you…and that power is not just available to you as a spectator: You can carry that literacy into your life, into your profession, into your citizenship,” says Kornhaber.

“Once you’ve gained that power of visual literacy, you never lose it. And that’s incredibly important, especially now, when everybody has something flashing at them at all times from their phone or their watch or a billboard or computer.”

Understanding narrative from the inside out is a critical asset in today’s world across multiple professions, she adds. “When you learn how to close read a film, you’re not just learning how a particular director is communicating. You are also learning how you yourself can communicate visually and how to understand and articulate what you see in visual culture.

As in all the liberal arts, you are put into conversation 33

COVER FEATURE

with great minds, with a variety of people who have something important to say — they’re just saying it visually, cinematographically. Once you know how to approach it, studying film can really test you and help you to grow, to empathize, to better understand history and to better understand your moment right now.”

That also applies to the short educational films Bonifazio has studied. “Some of these short films are strikingly similar to the neorealist films of the time,” she says. “By teaching other cinema — that is, non-commercial cinema — in relation to fiction-based cinema of the same period gives a different perspective not only on the historical meaning of a film but also on the history of film itself.”

Understanding our moment through the history of visual media is of utmost importance to students, says Hake.

“This is our culture today. It is important students know how it came about.

It’s important to know how it situates the United States, the vision of America, in the world. And it has an incredibly important economic dimension; because the media landscape is global, we are no longer in the Hollywood-dominated century, and so despite globalization, national differences remain.”

She says there is a “groundswell” of frustration with globalization these days, as people seek a return to closed borders and a new embrace of ethnic identities.

“Even from the political perspective, it is really important to see how films will Top: Reichsparteitag-Film, Universum Film AG. Bottom: Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox validate that,” Hake says, observing that The infamous 1935 Nazi propaganda film Triumph of the Will (top) in her own home country she sees an increasing scared the hell out of American director Frank Capra (and many others), rejection of American films and television series in but it was also widely praised for its innovative camera techniques. favor of storytelling based in Germany and on GerBelow, Triumph is referenced by 1977’s Star Wars. man themes.

“The study of film through the liberal arts will be indispensible to students who will need to interpret and navigate this new world,” says Kornhaber.

34

“Studying literature or photography can also do these things, but film is narrative through imagery, photography plus time. It can speak through a visual vocabulary that can, in the best cases, communicate in ways that exceed words and language. Film offers an amazing gateway into a deeper understanding of our larger contemporary cultural moment.

“If the purpose of the liberal arts is to submit to disciplined inquiry all the facets of human culture

Donna Kornhaber, Sabine Hake and Paola Bonifazio.

and society, then the liberal arts cannot exist without the study of film, lest it wish to become a study only of human culture as it existed in forms that predate the year 1895,” concludes Kornhaber. “Students come to college to try to better understand the world they are about to enter as postgraduate adults, and to learn the skills of analysis and interpretation that will help them navigate that world.”

Not a shadow of a doubt about that.

RECOMMENDED READING Screen Nazis: Cinema, History, and Democracy Routledge, University of Wisconsin Press, Aug. 2012

By Sabine Hake

Schooling in Modernity: The Politics of Sponsored Films in Postwar Italy University of Toronto Press, May 2014

By Paola Bonifazio

Nightmares in the Dream Sanctuary: War and the Animated Film University of Chicago Press, Dec. 2019

By Donna Kornhaber

35

PRO BENE MERITIS The Pro Bene Meritis award is the highest honor bestowed by the College of Liberal Arts. Since 1984, the annual award has been given to alumni, faculty members and friends of the college who are committed to the liberal arts, have made outstanding contributions in professional or philanthropic pursuits or have participated in service related to the college.

The following are interviews with the 2019 recipients.

Building for the People Sara C. Bronin Interview by Alex Reshanov Photography by Brian Birzer Education: B.Architecture and B.A. Plan II Honors, The University of Texas at Austin; M.Sc., University of Oxford (Rhodes scholar); J.D., Yale Law School (Truman scholar)

I wanted to understand how successful places were made. I grew up in Houston, an endlessly sprawling city with no zoning laws. Houston has iconic buildings and magnificent parks juxtaposed with highway cloverleafs and soulless strip malls. You could spend a lifetime unpacking Houston’s contradictions.

Sara C. Bronin (formerly Galvan) is an architect, attorney and law professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law whose research focuses on property, land use, historic preservation and renewable energy. Bronin spearheaded the nationally recognized reform of Hartford’s zoning code and helps lead one of the country’s most active statewide preservation nonprofits.

How can planning help create great cities?

Planning should aim to create great neighborhoods — because from great neighborhoods come great cities. Walkable, dense neighborhoods, which allow people to get around without relying on cars, offer the best quality of life. That said, many of our most beloved neighborhoods — think Jane Jacobs’ Greenwich Village — developed organically over time, without a lot of top-down planning.

When did you first become interested in property and land use issues?

For as long as I can remember, I knew that

Is it important for people to get involved in planning efforts?

It’s critical for people who live and work

Hometown: Houston, Texas

36

in the community to be involved in a planning process. In Hartford, where I serve as chair of the Planning and Zoning Commission, we have just kicked off our decennial citywide plan. Hartford is a very diverse city, demographically and economically. We have started to get input from a broad range of residents, business owners, commuters, advocates and other stakeholders. Diverse voices will strengthen our plan and ensure our goals are truly shared.

Are planning goals of historic preservation and affordability at odds?

Not really! It is usually less expensive to rehabilitate an existing building than to build a new one. Those cost savings get passed on to end users. Moreover, historic neighborhoods are often denser than neighborhoods built in the 1950s and beyond. Greater density usually means more types of places to live and work — like carriage houses for an office or a third-floor unit as an accessory dwelling.

You’ve written about the ability of zoning to address climate change.

How so?

Zoning, as a regulatory tool, can address the root causes of climate change by ensuring that land redevelopment minimizes environmental harm. In Hartford, we’ve rewritten the zoning code to do this in a few ways. We’ve provided density bonuses for green roofs and renewable energy, and we’ve allowed urban agriculture citywide. We’ve required bicycle parking spaces, electric vehicle charging stations and native plants, and we have strict stormwater management provisions. We’re actually the first city in the country to eliminate minimum parking requirements citywide. It’s time to design our cities for people, not cars.

“People are willing to make radical change if they believe it will help achieve a broader goal.”

Sara C. Bronin

What have you been most surprised to learn during your work?

I’ve been most surprised to learn that people are willing to make radical change if they believe it will help achieve a broader goal. All of the zoning revisions I just described — even lifting the parking minimums — were unanimous and with full community support. People have more of a willingness to correct course than most policymakers realize.

What do you learn about your field when you travel?

Everything! When I was at UT, I benefited from travel grants from the Plan II Honors Program and the School of Architecture.

I had never really traveled anywhere except Latin America, but UT grants enabled me to do research in Spain, South Korea, Russia, Italy, Bosnia and Turkey.

On those travels, I realized how little I knew. At the same time, I realized that no matter where they live, people desire similar kinds of communities.

What architecture inspires you?

Buildings that respond to and affirmatively improve their environment inspire me — living buildings, buildings with net zero energy use, buildings that are embedded in the landscape in creative ways. I have loved seeing more stories about timber skyscrapers, vertical gardens and seawall publicscapes happening all over the world.

What do you most want to accomplish?

I have always wanted to preserve and enhance places people care about. I’ve been lucky to partly fulfill that desire already, and I hope to continue to positively impact more cities and broadly influence law and policy in the future.

37

Q&A

History Not on Repeat Brian P. Levack Interview by Alex Reshanov Photography by Brian Birzer Education: B.A. History ’65, Fordham University; and Ph.D. History ’70, Yale University Hometown: New York, New York Brian P. Levack is the John E. Green Regents Professor Emeritus in History at UT Austin, where he has taught for nearly 50 years while earning distinguished teaching awards. During his eight years as a department chair, he built one of the top history programs in the country.

Levack’s research focuses on the legal, political and religious history of early modern Britain. His books include The Civil Lawyers in England, 1603-1641; The Formation of the British State: England, Scotland, and the Union; The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe; Witch-hunting in Scotland: Law, Politics, and Religion; and The Devil Within: Possession and Exorcism in the Christian West.

What does the study of the past tell us about the present and the future?

A lot of people think that the past repeats itself, and that simply isn’t true. History does not repeat itself, but it instructs. It provides context and therefore the 38

background to understanding where we have come from, and that helps to determine where we might be headed. I don’t think history really teaches us lessons.

Maybe the only lesson you learn is that history is ironic in the sense that things do not turn out the way they were planned.

What qualities make someone a good teacher?

First, an enthusiasm for one’s subject, which is absolutely essential to conveying to the students that this is something that is important. An ability to express things in language that students can immediately respond to. Respect for students. Organization. When you go in there, the students need to know where we’re coming from, what we’re going to be doing.

Who has been the biggest influence in your life?

Two men in particular. The first was my father, an historian, who gave me a love of history. The second was Jack Hexter, my graduate school mentor, who taught me the importance of clarity, conciseness and rigorous argumentation in historical writing.

What is your proudest accomplishment?

The co-authoring of a textbook on Western civilization. It’s called The West: Encounters and Transformations. It’s an attempt to address the problem of Western civ texts that ignore the rest of the world. It was much more intellectually demanding than I ever thought. It took so much effort and so many years, but we got through it, and it’s in its fifth edition now.

You’ve written several books on the history of witchcraft and demonic possession. What first piqued your interest in these topics?

I started out as a legal historian, and I had a particular interest in criminal law. In my first year of teaching, I was asked to review a book on witchcraft prosecutions, and I agreed, even though I didn’t know anything about the subject. About the same time, I had a graduate student who wanted to write a paper on James VI of Scotland, who had written a treatise on witchcraft in 1597. I became so fascinated by the subject that two years later I decided to give a course on the subject, which I co-taught with that former student, Richard Kieckhefer.

What is it about the occult that so fascinates Western culture?

I guess it is an interest in and a curiosity about the functioning of the universe in nonrational terms. It’s possible that there is just a dissatisfaction with the rational scientific world view that doesn’t seem to respond to people’s needs. They can see it in religion, they can see it in mysticism, they can see it in the occult, but I think it’s the same impulse.

“History does not repeat itself, but it instructs.

It provides context and therefore the background to understanding where we have come from, and that helps to determine where we might be headed.”

Brian P. Levack

What are some of your most surprising discoveries from your book research?

The surprisingly large number of accused witches who not only maintained their innocence while being tortured, but who also criticized the authorities who prosecuted them. The resilience of these victims, especially those who came from the lower ranks of society, is remarkable.

Even more remarkable is the fact that a significant number of these accused witches were acquitted.

What books are you currently reading?

Napoleon: A Life by Adam Zamoyski. There have been over a thousand books written about Napoleon, and this is the best I’ve read. Napoleon is complex, and there’s a lot of Trump in him. And I’ve just started David Blight’s book Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Douglass is one of the most inspirational figures in American history. One of the things that’s been wonderful about retirement is I can read whatever I damn please.

39

Q&A

Solving the World’s Most Pressing Issues J. Thomas “Tom” Ward Interview by Alex Reshanov Photography by Brian Birzer Education: B.A. Government ’54, The University of Texas at Austin; and M.S. Educational Administration, University of Southern California Hometown: Austin, Texas Tom Ward is a retired foreign service officer formerly with the U.S. Agency for International Development, based in Washington, D.C. After serving in the U.S. Army, he worked in the Office of the Registrar at UT Austin before starting his career in the foreign service. Throughout his numerous global assignments and since retirement, he has remained a dedicated advocate for the university. He serves as a member of the Liberal Arts Advisory Council, the Department of History Visiting Committee, the Chancellor’s Council and the UT System Archer Fellows Program in Washington, D.C., where he is a trustee and mentor to student interns from several UT System campuses.

40

What inspired you to establish the J. Thomas Ward Chair in International Relations and Global Studies?

Our rapidly changing world requires a clearer understanding of other nations, cultures and religions. Training in the field of international relations and global affairs is critical in answering this challenge. We need more specialists in foreign relations, national security, international trade and foreign languages. While there are several disparate international relations courses available at UT Austin, they need to be better coordinated and emphasized. My hope is that a senior professor as chair in international relations can provide the leadership needed.

What are the world’s most pressing global issues?

First is the global assault on democracy worldwide by autocratic rulers. From World War II, the U.S. built a series of global alliances including the U.N., NATO, EU, economic and trade agreements that have served us well. They kept us safe during the Cold War. However, internationalism is currently under attack by a

so-called America First isolationism. That isolationism in an earlier time led to the rise of Hitler and us into war. The alliances we created helped counter this threat. It is important to reestablish these as well as international trade agreements for our security to be maintained.

Other global issues include nuclear proliferation, international and domestic terrorism, poverty, climate change and the prevention of war with adversaries such as Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. Cyberwarfare is a threat. Inequality in every society needs to be addressed.

Artificial intelligence will change our lives and needs to be better understood.

In what ways might a liberal arts education help to address these issues?

Liberal arts education provides us critical thinking and analysis to understand complex issues. Historians can help us know what has gone before, what was successful, what failed and why. Economists can explain why we have inflation, depressions and why trade wars are harmful. Psychologists and sociologists can help us understand each other.

Government and political science helps us understand domestic and international political systems and why nations go to war.

What advice do you hope to pass on to the students you mentor?

I primarily mentor UT System students in Washington, D.C., for one-semester internships with U.S. government agencies, think tanks, private volunteer organizations, etc., depending on their area of interest. I try to give them some idea

“Liberal arts education provides us critical thinking and analysis to understand complex issues.”

J. Thomas “Tom” Ward

about the problems they may face in their field of interest. How to deal, how to get along, what government service, particularly foreign service, is like. I encourage them to learn as much as they can, be flexible and work hard. Common sense methods.

What do you consider your greatest accomplishment?

Liberal arts at UT helped me to become a better human being, to have a global outlook and to care for others. My career was in a U.S. government agency focused on economic development in general and humanitarian assistance in particular. In so far as we were successful, I received great satisfaction.

41

COMMENTARY Getting Ahead with World Languages

By David Birdsong Photo illustration by Allen F. Quigley From Akkadian and Arabic to Yiddish and Yoruba: The University of Texas at Austin offers courses in dozens of world languages. But why does language learning matter? In today’s world of industry, science and politics, can’t people get by with knowing just English?

The answer is simple: If all you want to do is get by, then you might be content to be a monolingual English speaker. If, on the other hand, you want to get ahead — if you want to have a competitive advantage in your career, if you want to understand and communicate with people who are not like you (and who may turn out to be your rivals or your allies), if you want to participate in a community that reaches beyond the Forty Acres — then you should know more than one language.

Language learning confers cognitive benefits that tangibly connect to career advantages. For example, compared with monolinguals, multilinguals excel in attentional control, problem solving, abstract reasoning, analytic thinking, understanding math and perspective taking. Employers recognize that skills in these domains translate into superior performance in the workplace. Little wonder, then, that in U.S. companies and government agencies, employees who can put knowledge of world languages to use in their jobs receive significantly higher salaries than those who speak only English. Demand for multilingual employees is steadily increasing and is often unmet, with the result that some U.S. employers are experiencing a “language skills gap” that results in lost business opportunities.

For us as a nation, the language skills gap is consequential. As U.S. companies expand in the international 42

Photo by Kaitlyn Trowbridge

arena, their “English-only” employees find themselves competing with speakers of more than one language.

Our country is at a strategic economic disadvantage worldwide when more than 60% of adults in the European Union know multiple languages, while only 20% of the U.S. workforce can claim multilingual competence on their résumés.

For students at this university, opportunities and resources abound for closing the language skills gap.

In addition to learning languages on campus, students can take advantage of our extensive education abroad network. Each year, more than 4,400 UT students participate in some 400 education abroad programs in 103 countries.

Language learning and résumé building converge on internships abroad. UT students can select from internship opportunities in more than 100 programs worldwide. As with study abroad, UT internships carry course credits, and stipends and scholarships are available for qualified students. For example, the Freeman Scholars Program supports both undergraduate and graduate student internships in East and Southeast Asia, and the Department of French and Italian offers generous competitive scholarships for French majors who intern on the Institute for Field Education programs in Paris, Strasbourg and Brussels.

The most compelling endorsements of the career advantages of learning world languages come from UT alumni. For example, Juhie Modi, class of 2015, was a Rome Study Program participant and the recipient of a Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowship to further her study of Italian. Now a technical recruiter for Google in Austin, Modi writes: “In an increasingly globalized workforce, I find that my experience in Italian language studies gives me an edge because it demonstrates my ability to focus on learning a subject for multiple years, my passion for relating to people of different backgrounds, and my adaptability to different environments. I feel that without my background in Italian studies, I would not be where I am today.”

Keep in mind that the greater your linguistic skills, the greater your chances of career success. Attaining

high proficiency in a world language requires time and practice, so consider beginning or building upon your language studies during your freshman year at UT. Getting ahead means getting a head start!

David Birdsong is a professor and chair in the Department of French and Italian. He serves as co-chair of the college’s World Languages Task Force. His article “Ultimate attainment in second language acquisition” was included in the Linguistic Society of America’s Best of Language: Volume III, which is made up of the 20 most outstanding articles appearing in Language between 1986 and 2016.

GLOBAL TEXAS Find programs and learn more about course credit transfer with on-time graduation. global.utexas.edu/abroad

Demand for multilingual employees is steadily increasing and is often unmet, with the result that some U.S. employers are experiencing a “language skills gap” that results in lost business opportunities.

CAREER SERVICES Learn the career advantages of speaking multiple languages and being cross-culturally competent. bit.ly/2NNw35j 43

Three Questions to Ask When You’re Stressed Out

By Rachel White Illustrations by Abriella Corker and Thuy Nguyen From big class presentations and midterms to navigating the social scene and balancing a large workload, the school year — and life in general — brings on stress, but asking yourself three questions can help fight anxiety with curiosity rather than panic.

Jasper Smits, a psychology professor and director of the Anxiety & Stress Clinic at The University of Texas at Austin, has a stress-filled job teaching, researching and treating anxiety disorders. His clinic provides affordable services to the Austin community while training doctoral candidates in a clinical setting.

An overarching goal throughout his research, teaching and clinical efforts is to encourage healthy stress-response behaviors — especially when they can curb the effects of daily anxieties associated with school, work and life.

It takes just a little self-evaluation and a lot of courage exposing yourself to those fearful but otherwise safe situations, which you can work up to by asking yourself these three questions:

44

1) What is causing the stress?

Anxiety and fear happen when we’re faced with a threat that we don’t feel we have the resources to take on. These threats send signals to our brain via what we see and hear, and tap into our memory to reflect on what happened the last time we were in that situation. Most of the time these memories are not good, thus exciting our fear.

To ease your nerves, it’s important to identify what is triggering your stress before you determine how to handle it.

“The first question you may ask is: What triggered my reaction? Was it a person, a situation, a sensation or a thought or an image? Whichever it is, because I feel fear, I must be thinking that something bad is about to happen. What is my concern?” says Smits, who is also a faculty researcher in the Anxiety & Health Behaviors Lab. “The next question is: Is my concern valid?”

2) Is it a true alarm or a false alarm?

Once you have identified the culprit, it’s time to determine whether you’re overreacting — or “overestimating the consequences,” as Smits kindly phrases it.

To determine whether what you’re experiencing is a true or a false alarm, ask: “What is the danger? And, is it possible I am off in my predictions?”

The differences are striking. A true alarm is one that poses a real, intense threat. For example, if a bear is running toward you, your body will respond impulsively, sparking physical changes — heightened heart rate, heavy breathing — that prepare your body to either stay and fight or run for protection.

These panic, fight-or-flight responses are essential for survival. “We are still here as a species because of true alarms,” Smits says. But, they are not going to get you through your next history exam.

Anxiety disorders and most of the

stress we experience day to day are false alarms. Like true alarms, false alarms induce bodily sensations — suppressed appetite, increased heart rate — that can be dangerous to your health if experienced long term. False alarms, however, are unnecessary because they are a result of inaccurate predictions of harm.

“Stress sets in when we’re telling ourselves that something bad is going to happen — for example, when we focus on potential, major consequences of our perceived failure,” Smits explains. “We need to come up with ways to challenge those predictions.”

Taking the time to recognize “I could totally be wrong about this” will save you from dwelling on something that could happen and refocus your attention on what you can do to ensure it does not.

3) What can I do to fix it?

“Anxiety can be a motivator,” Smits asserts. “It helps us prepare, get into gear, and deal with future threats. But overcoming it takes courage.”

Anxiety is fueled by something we’re trying to avoid — whether that’s public speaking, awkward social encounters, writing a 15-page research paper or being

“Anxiety can be a motivator, it helps us prepare, get into gear, and deal with future threats. But overcoming it takes courage.”

Jasper Smits

graded on how well you understand the Pythagorean theorem. But there are ways to feel more at ease when facing these difficult situations.

It requires taking what you may feel are great risks.

“You have to get back into the situation if you want to start feeling more comfortable in it,” Smits points out. “It’s not the rationale people don’t get; it’s finding the courage to do it.

“So, if you find yourself willing to take a risk, you need a support system, and you need to set goals,” he adds, offering an example. “If presentations scare you, sign up for Toastmasters with a friend to practice public speaking. Then maybe after a few classes, you go without your friend to test the waters on your own.”

The ultimate goal is to become comfortable being uncomfortable in order to create a “memory of safety,” Smits says.

So, the next time you’re faced with a similar challenge, your brain can recall the dozens of positive, safe memories you’ve created associated with that situation, making you feel more prepared to take on the next.

“The first time is going to suck,” Smits says frankly. “Do it again, quickly and in succession. The more you do it, the better you get at it and the less anxious you’ll start to feel over time.”

45

NONPROFIT ORG. US POSTAGE

PAI D

AUSTIN, TEXAS PERMIT #391

Office of the Dean 116 Inner Campus Drive, G6000 Austin, TX 78712-1257

People of Liberal Arts Sophia Guirola International Relations & Global Studies senior, Director of the Liberal Arts Refugee Alliance People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences. Photo by Kaitlyn Trowbridge

Follow us instagram.com/LiberalArtsUT