Life & Letters • Fall 2014

Food for Thought P. 28

The Road to Gender Equity P. 32

Life & Letters College of Liberal Arts Magazine 路 Fall 2014

Each year, 20 UT Austin students of different backgrounds and majors are selected to study the causes, conduct, consequences and contemporary representations of World War II. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Frank Denius Normandy Scholar Program (NSP), which was established in 1989. To date, more than 500 undergraduates have benefited from this once-ina-lifetime opportunity.

Normandy Scholars receive an intensive and comprehensive education on the origins and history of WWII. During the spring semester, they take five upper-division history classes, attend weekly film screenings and have frequent guest speakers who have firsthand experience of the war—including veterans and Holocaust survivors.

Following their semester of study, students travel with NSP faculty members to Europe for a three-week tour of WWII-related sites. They visit the Normandy region, and cities such as London, Berlin, Cracow and Warsaw.

In addition to the knowledge they gain, NSP participants form lifelong friendships and experience great personal development and intellectual growth.

TOP: Composite image contrasts the Omaha Beach site in the Normandy region of France on D-Day, June 6, 1944, with a view of the same site on May 7, 2014. Operation Overlord, known as D-Day, was the largest seaborne invasion in military history. ABOVE: Omaha Beach.

RIGHT: Frank Denius, U.S. Army 30th Infantry Division, WWII era.

Above photo: Peter Macdiarmid / Getty Images Beach photo: Courtesy of Not Even Past Denius photo: Courtesy of the Frank Denius Normandy Scholar Program

Normandy Scholars Celebrate 25th Anniversary

Life & Letters

Contents Fall 2014 Departments 2

Dean’s Message

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Knowledge Matters

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

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From Bryan to Sicily

Public scholars work to connect academy to community.

Cover Story

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22 Keeping a Pulse on Population Health A new medical school is changing the way we look at health care.

It builds upon a 44-year history of Mexican American Studies at UT.

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Campus Life

A look at some of the notable happenings across campus.

Features

Food for Thought Government professor uses the topic of food to teach about the political system.

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Two Cultures, One Conversation Liberal Arts Studio hosts UT’s first Afghanistan Crosstalk.

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New Department Focuses on Latino, Mexican American Experience

The Road to Gender Equity

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Historian’s new book explores a founder’s views of Islam and civil rights for Muslims.

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Books

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Pro Bene Meritis

Q&As with our 2014 recipients of the college’s highest honor for outstanding service and contribution.

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Researchers discuss some of the roadblocks to achieving equal pay and possible solutions.

Pulitzer Finalist Tells Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary People

History Department Chair Jacqueline Jones earns her second career nomination.

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Op-ed: Pakistan Exchange Benefits Global Scholarship

South Asia Institute Director Kamran Ali touts curriculum that promotes participatory learning and respecting differences.

ON THE COVER: Keeping a Pulse on Population Health. Illustration by Brad Amorosino.

BACK COVER: Skybridge connecting the College of Liberal Arts Building to the Student Activity Center.

Photo by Casey Dunn.

Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an

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Inside the Baroque

A glimpse from the exhibit on view at the Benson Latin American Collection through January 2015.

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Dean’s Message

Life & Letters The College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin publishes Life & Letters for its community of scholars, alumni and friends.

College of Liberal Arts Dean Randy L. Diehl

We hear a lot these days about the challenges facing college students, from loan debt to an uncertain job market. The College of Liberal Arts has consistently taken the lead in creating innovative solutions for these and other challenges, and our efforts are paying off.

The university has sought our college’s leadership on a number of student success initiatives. In 2011 we led a task force on improving undergraduate graduation rates, prompting major changes in areas such as student advising and orientation and leading to the appointment of Senior Vice Provost David Laude as a “champion” for improving graduation rates.

Last spring UT Austin posted the highest retention rates ever recorded for an entering class, thanks in part to our college’s role in implementing task force recommendations. Laude and Psychology’s David Yeager were also prominently featured for their student success efforts in a New York Times Magazine cover story, “Who Gets to Graduate?”

In addition, Marc Musick, our senior associate dean for student affairs, led two major task force initiatives: the reorganization of New Student Orientation, with greater emphasis on academic preparation; and the creation of the Texas Recruitment and Interview Service— located in the Student Services Building to directly connect students to prospective employers and other opportunities.

At the college level, we introduce students to college life through Liberal Arts 101, an online class that prepares them for rigorous study and gets them thinking from Day One about life after graduation.

When students struggle, we help them avoid academic dismissal with

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UTurn, an innovative program created by our college in 2009. Data indicate that UTurn students are 25 percent more likely to avoid academic dismissal compared to students who forgo the program, which recently received an Outstanding Advising Program Award from the National Academic Advising Association.

Government junior Sherwin Calderon says UTurn mentors helped him overcome bad habits, learn how to study effectively and manage his time efficiently.

Now Calderon is paying it forward by serving as a mentor himself.

In addition to UTurn and other services, our college promotes student success through experiential learning— encouraging students to become involved in campus life as leaders of student organizations, researchers in our labs, and volunteers in our neighborhoods and communities.

We also help students get their first taste of the job market as interns in a variety of businesses and organizations, and we encourage them to gain a global perspective through many study abroad opportunities.

If you engage students early and often, they will stay in school and succeed.

And if you reach them in ways that offer a variety of life experiences, they will also see far beyond graduation day, and the limitless possibilities that only a liberal arts education can deliver.

Randy L. Diehl, Dean David Bruton, Jr. Regents Chair in Liberal Arts

Editor Michelle Bryant Art Direction and Design Allen F. Quigley Contributing Writers Kamran Asdar Ali Alicia Dietrich Sarah Muthler Emily Nielsen Jordan Schraeder Jessica Sinn Contributing Photographers Brian Birzer Sarah Lim Emily Nielsen Contributing Illustrators Brad Amorosino Yevgenia Nayberg

Visit us online at lifeandletters.la.utexas.edu Or email us at cola.alum@austin.utexas.edu Postmaster Send changes of address to: Life & Letters College of Liberal Arts 116 Inner Campus Dr., Stop G6000 Austin, TX 78712-1257 Follow us facebook.com/utliberalarts twitter.com/LiberalArtsUT youtube.com/LiberalArtsUT Printed by Horizon Printing

Photo: Emily Nielsen

Championing Student Success

Director of Public Affairs David A. Ochsner

Life & Letters Fall 2014

Knowledge Matters

From Bryan to Sicily Public Scholars Join Academy to Community Anthropology / American Studies

Photos: Randy Lewis

BY ALICIA DIETRICH In her most recent study, anthropologist Circe Sturm returned to her own backyard in East Texas.

Sturm’s family hails from Sicilian roots, specifically a cluster of more than 1,000 Sicilians who settled in Bryan, Texas, around the turn of the 20th century. This enclave has managed to preserve many Sicilian traditions, including an annual ritual in which a single Sicilian-Texan family hosts 800 guests in honor of St. Joseph.

An altar to the saint is filled with elaborately decorated cakes and pastries, and participants recite prayers in Sicilian.

In addition to writing traditional journal articles about this religious celebration imported from Sicily, Sturm and American Studies Professor Randolph Lewis, both from The University of Texas at Austin, partnered to create the ethnographic documentary Texas Tavola: A Taste of Sicily in the Lone Star State that a general audience could appreciate.

They interviewed grandmothers who could switch effortlessly from an East Texas drawl to a fluid Sicilian dialect. They captured not only the weeks of preparation and pastry-making, but also had intimate access to the religious rituals as the families honored the saint. The duo even traveled to Sicily to film the three now-abandoned villages where the celebration originated.

Sturm and Lewis both come from non-academic families, and this background is a big driver of their passion for public scholarship.

“Randy and I have always tried to create work that has an impact as scholarship and is also accessible to broader publics,” Sturm says. “Even with book writing, we’re both committed to writing about complex ideas in such a way that anyone can read it and that the communities that we write about will want to

TOP: Community altar honoring Saint Joseph, new Poggioreale, Sicily, March 2014. LEFT: Public sculpture in Piazza Elimo, located in the ruins of the old town destroyed in a 1968 earthquake, old Poggioreale, Sicily, March 2014. BOTTOM: Old movie flyer for the Teatro Communale on display in make-shift community museum, old Poggioreale, Sicily, March 2014.

WATCH TEXAS TAVOLA AT: folkstreams.net/film,206

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Knowledge Matters

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in a way that’s really expansive and productive,” says Robin McDowell, an MFA candidate in the design program who took the class. “You don’t have to keep having the same conversation within your discipline or within your industry.

You can put those out on the table and have five completely different answers from what you’ve been hearing for the past eight years of your life.”

Lewis says the class was one of the most positive teaching experiences he’s had in years: “Somewhere deep within me, it’s a course that elicits a moral clarity.

With some of the other work I do, I hope it’s complex and it’s important, but it’s hard to understand if this has any impact in the world. Public scholarship is an engine for pure good and real meaning and relevance.”

Meanwhile, Texas Tavola continues to connect with new audiences. The subjects of the film are delighted that this tradition has been documented and preserved for future generations, and copies of the film continue to circulate to family members inside and outside of Texas. Sturm and Lewis traveled to Sicily to screen the film, and they’ve been surprised and encouraged by how Sicilian audiences have embraced it.

“As we went through these smaller towns going back to the town where it originated, we would have people come up and cry and hold our hands and say, ‘I truly believe that people who don’t know their past don’t have a future. And you have a future,’” Sturm says.

“ Public scholarship is a broader thing that’s trying to transcend this inward-looking model of higher education and really connect with different kinds of publics and communities out there.”

Randy Lewis, professor of American Studies

ABOVE: Texas relatives learning to make ornamental roses from artichokes at the Fazzino family altar, new Poggioreale, Sicily, March 2014.

(From left) Circe Sturm, Vancie Todaro and Graceanne Smith.

Photo: Randy Lewis

read it and engage with it.”

Public scholarship is intellectual work done with a non-academic audience in mind. It can take many forms, from digital humanities and online journals to books and documentary films created for a general public.

“Public scholarship is a broader thing that’s trying to transcend this inwardlooking model of higher education and really connect with different kinds of publics and communities out there,” Lewis says. “How do you convert or translate [your academic research] into something that resonates with the people who are actually paying for the University of Texas?”

In addition to three academic books and a range of journal articles, Lewis has a long history of projects aimed at a broader audience, from documentary films to The End of Austin, an online journal that brings together academic, artistic and activist voices to explore the shifting cultural identity of Austin through essays and articles, photography, art, video and music.

Lewis’ work on The End of Austin and Texas Tavola led Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies Esther Raizen to ask him to teach a graduate seminar on public scholarship this past summer.

“One of the many ways for the university to fulfill its mandate of creating ‘a disciplined culture of excellence,’ to quote the Commission of 125, and allow this culture to impact the State of Texas as well as the campus community, is public scholarship,” Raizen says. She notes faculty, staff and students work with a variety of community partners in a broad range of areas that encourage innovation.

“Our emphasis on public scholarship represents a drive to highlight what we already do in this area and expand our integration as a public university into the communities that we wish to serve,” she adds.

In this pilot version of the class, Lewis invited many guest lecturers who work in the public scholarship arena— from UT professors to curators, historians and public affairs professionals. The five students in the class gained handson experience in using non-traditional mediums—podcasts, editorial op-eds, online journals—to share their academic work. Raizen and Lewis hoped that the class would both spark more projects in the public scholarship arena and help open up avenues for students who decide to pursue careers outside of traditional academia.

“When you’re in a room with five new people who are coming from completely different places, anything is fair game

Life & Letters Fall 2014

Keene Prize for Literature English

Defending Artistic Expression

Illustration: Allen F. Quigley

Philosophy Following is an excerpt from an essay by Michael Adams that won first prize in the Spring 2014 Freedom of Speech Essay Contest. Adams, a Plan II Honors junior majoring in Asian Cultures and Languages and Biology, penned his winning essay in response to this question: Should artistic expression receive the same degree of legal protection as other types of speech, such as political, religious, commercial or educational speech?

“In the modern day and throughout recent history, the question of the distribution of liberty among the forms of speech and expression has driven contention, debate, and friction among the factions desiring complete artistic freedom, and those desiring to limit it… the complete freedom of speech, be it political, religious, or artistic, is a cultural anomaly; many societies find themselves mired in abstractions of censorship preventing free artistic expression at the expense of cultural development.

The controversial Chinese artist Ai Weiwei represents one individual in the fight for free artistic expression in the world today. He intentionally provokes the Chinese government as well as the READ THE FULL ESSAY AT: lifeandletters.la.utexas.edu

Chinese populace in order to make a statement demonstrating the suppression occurring as a result of Chinese government policies.

In another sphere, Miley Cyrus employs the idea of freedom of expression to its threshold, making statements ardently condemned by individuals who have different tastes and perhaps moral values…

The freedom of artistic expression should have extended to it the same degree of legal freedom granted to all other forms of speech; to forgo complete freedom of artistic expression would result in the suppression of human creativity as well as the suppression of the other types of speech for the artistic tradition closely identifies with all of the other forms of free speech.”

The essay contest is organized in conjunction with the college’s Free Speech Dialogues, created to encourage thoughtful, informed discussion among students. Each semester, three nationally prominent panelists are invited to offer varying perspectives on free speech issues. The essay contest is open to UT Austin undergraduate students, with $1,500 awarded for first prize.

Mark Hitz, a first year graduate student in the James A. Michener Center for Writers, has won the 2014 Keene Prize for Literature for his two stories: “Shadehill” and “The Laws of Motion.”

“The jury found it hard to select the winners from among so many moving, exciting and beautifully written entries, but we were all compelled by Mark’s evocation of catastrophic situations disrupting apparently successful families,” says Elizabeth Cullingford, professor and chair in the Department of English.

Hitz received $50,000 as the top prizewinner. In addition, three finalists will each receive a $17,000 prize. Finalists include: Alen Hamza, M.A. ’14, for his collection of poetry, Twice There Was a Country; Rachel Kondo, first year student at the Michener Center, for her short story “Beverly;” and Corey Miller, M.A. ’14 and three-time finalist, for his collection of poems Onyxed Eden.

Established in 2006 in the College of Liberal Arts, the Keene Prize is named after E.L. Keene, a 1942 graduate of the university, who envisioned an award that would enhance and enrich the university’s prestige and support the work of young writers. Students submit poetry, plays and fiction or nonfiction prose.

Get the latest news from the College of Liberal Arts lifeandletters.la.utexas.edu

Life & Letters

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Knowledge Matters

Early Poverty Linked to Obesity in Women Sociology

“ Girls born into socioeconomically disadvantaged families are exposed from early life to an unfolding chain of lower socioeconomic status and higher body mass.”

Psychology A May 2014 New York Times Magazine cover story, “Who Gets to Graduate?” examined UT Austin’s efforts to increase student success and graduation and prominently featured the work of David Yeager, a UT assistant professor of psychology who is emerging as one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of education.

Yeager’s research and involvement with U.T. Mindset, an intervention that addresses students’ anxieties about ability and belonging, could improve the transition to college, especially for first-generation students. Due to the success of the pilot in 2012, it was introduced to 7,200 members of the incoming class of 2018.

Thanks to a one-time intervention that took 45 minutes to complete, possibly hundreds of first-generation students will graduate from UT who otherwise would not have graduated on time, if ever.

In addition to highlighting the good work on the Forty Acres, the photo shoot for the story was led by Bill McCullough, a 1986 Plan II graduate and Austin native.

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Adolescent girls who grow up in poor households are more likely than their male counterparts to become overweight or obese, according to a new study by Tetyana Pudrovska, assistant professor of sociology.

The study, published in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, shows long-lasting consequences of economic hardship in childhood for the risk of obesity in adulthood. The findings emphasize the need for programs and policies addressing the adverse health effects of socioeconomic disadvantage in childhood and adolescence, Pudrovska says.

Using data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, Pudrovska and her team of researchers tracked patterns of weight gain among more than 10,000 men and women from high school graduation in 1957 to later career stages in 1993. The findings show that economic disadvantage in early life is significantly linked to higher body mass at age 18 and a greater risk of obesity at age 54. This link is the strongest among women and absent or inconsistent among men.

In addition to health risks, obese and overweight women face multiple social and economic disadvantages, Pudrovska says. The study shows that obese women are less likely than their thinner peers to secure important social resources including education, occupational prestige and earnings. This socioeconomic disadvantage in adulthood further increased the risk of

obesity, suggesting a vicious circle of obesity and compromised economic resources.

According to the study, this effect was not evident among men.

“Girls born into socioeconomically disadvantaged families are exposed from early life to an unfolding chain of lower socioeconomic status and higher body mass,” says Pudrovska, who is a faculty associate in the Population Research Center. “Women are more strongly impacted than men both by adverse effects of low socioeconomic status on obesity and by adverse effects of obesity on status attainment.”

Why does obesity have such a strong and persistent adverse effect on women’s social achievement? The simple answer is that big is not considered beautiful, Pudrovska says.

“In our perpetual quest for female beauty, slenderness has become paramount,” Pudrovska says. “Physical attractiveness is more closely tied to thinness and more strictly enforced for girls and women than boys and men.”

To stop the cycle of poverty and obesity, Pudrovska urges the need for more public awareness of weight-based discrimination in the labor market.

“Because obesity is not a protected status under federal law, promoting legal protection of overweight and obese persons from unfair treatment in the workplace is important, especially among women,” Pudrovska says.

NYT Magazine cover: Bill McCullough Pudrovska photo: Claire Schaper

NYT Magazine Covers Yeager Research

Tetyana Pudrovska, assistant professor of sociology

Life & Letters Fall 2014

New Department Focuses on Latino, Mexican American Experience Building Upon a 44-Year History of Mexican American Studies at UT Mexican American and Latina/o Studies

Photo: Courtesy of the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies

BY DAVID OCHSNER A new academic department that takes a comprehensive look at the lives, cultures and histories of Mexican American and Latino populations has been established at The University of Texas at Austin.

The Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies (MALS) will ultimately offer undergraduate and graduate degrees that focus on the interdisciplinary study of people’s movement along the Mesoamerican migration corridor. The department’s curriculum will be a resource to students across many disciplines seeking to gain an in-depth understanding of the country’s changing demographic landscape.

The new department builds on the 44-year history of Mexican American Studies at UT Austin and will serve as the cornerstone of a three-part entity that will include the existing Center for Mexican American Studies and a planned Borderlands Research Institute that will support research and communitybased data-collection projects. All will be part of the College of Liberal Arts.

“UT’s Center for Mexican American Studies has long been a leader in the field,” says Bill Powers, president of The University of Texas at Austin. “Establishing an academic Department of Mexican American and Latino Studies will ensure that UT is the best place for Latino studies in the United States.”

Mexican American and Latino populations continue to grow in influence in both Texas and the United States.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 2013 marked the first time in the country’s history that students classified as Hispanic enrolled in college in greater numbers than non-Hispanic white students.

“The integration of Latina/o Studies into an already stellar Mexican American Studies academic curriculum is designed to prepare students to be Latino-serving professionals in a nation with vastly shifting demographics. With departmentalization, we can better serve our students with dedicated faculty, holding them to the highest standard of excellence in the classroom and beyond,” says Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernández, chair of the new department. “The value of a Mexican American and Latina/o Studies education is found in the ways we teach students to problem solve in a culturally competent and ethical manner.”

Currently, about 25 students major in Mexican American Studies. In the new department, the university hopes to double that number in a year and double it again the following year. The department is opening with six faculty members — including

“This department will be an invaluable asset to the state and nation as we face future challenges and opportunities that come with demographic change.”

Randy Diehl, dean and the David Bruton, Jr. Regents Chair in Liberal Arts

ABOVE: (From left) Domino R. Perez, director of Mexican American Studies; and Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernández, chair of MALS. 7

Knowledge Matters

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UT AUSTIN

C. Wright Mills on BMW motorcycle at Lagarto Ranch, 1958.

Sociology Celebrates 100 Years Sociology This year, the Department of Sociology celebrated its 100-year anniversary.

Looking back at the department’s many achievements within the past century, this is a milestone worthy of a big celebration.

In addition to its top national rankings, the department is home to an impressive number of eminent social scientists—from C. Wright Mills, whose seminal works The Sociological Imagination and The Power Elite advocated social change, to Ali al-Wardi, a renowned social history

scholar known as the “founding father of Iraqi sociology.”

In September, Terry Sullivan, president of the University of Virginia, joined the celebration at a campus event, where she shared her past experiences as a sociology professor and former vice provost at UT Austin. She is one of the many sociologists from the department who are exemplifying the university’s mission to change the world.

Rebhorn Translation Wins Prestigious PEN Award English Wayne A. Rebhorn, Celanese Centennial Professor of English, has won the PEN Literary Award for his translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s masterpiece The Decameron.

The PEN Literary Awards have honored and introduced some of the most outstanding voices in literature for more than 50 years. The awards will be presented at the 24th Annual Literary Awards Festival Nov. 11 in Beverly Hills, California.

“Professor Rebhorn’s translation of Boccaccio’s Decameron

is not only a scholarly triumph: its lively and flexible language gives contemporary readers a new chance to appreciate these fresh, funny sexy stories,” says Elizabeth Cullingford, professor and chair of the Department of English.

A leading scholar of Renaissance literature, Rebhorn has won numerous literary awards and prizes and has been invited to lecture at major universities throughout the United States as well as in France, Italy and Germany.

Rebhorn photo: Larry D. Moore Mills photo: Yaroslava Mills, courtesy of Nik Mills

some with degrees from top institutions such as Cornell, Stanford, the University of Chicago and UCLA — and it plans to add an additional six in three to five years.

“For more than four decades, Mexican American Studies has devoted itself to providing the very best disciplinary training possible concerning the history and culture of Mexican-origin people and Latinos, more broadly, who together presently make up 33 percent of the state’s population,” says Domino R. Perez, director of Mexican American Studies. “During the planning phase, we knew we wanted to implement a shared vision for the future of Mexican American Studies, one generated by UT students, faculty and staff that would benefit not simply one ethnic or racial group, but one that would help prepare the future leaders of the state and nation.”

The department will offer bachelor’s and master’s degrees this fall. Doctorates will be offered in 2016-17, pending approval by state higher education officials. With degree tracks in Cultural Studies, Policy, and Language and Cognition, MALS faculty members and affiliates are leaders in the study of immigration, race, gender, sexuality and social class. Students in UT Austin’s Mexican American Studies program have gone on to careers in the nonprofit, education, social service, governmental and academic sectors, all with an eye toward working with Latina/o populations.

MALS will work closely with UT Austin’s Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS), the Benson Latin American Collection, as well as with faculty members from the Departments of African and African Diaspora Studies, English, American Studies, History and Government, and the College of Education.

“This new department will bring together some of the nation’s finest scholars from a variety of academic disciplines and further advance our college and university as a national leader in the study of Mexican American and Latino populations,” says Randy Diehl, dean of the College of Liberal Arts. “This department will be an invaluable asset to the state and nation as we face future challenges and opportunities that come with demographic change.”

Mexican American Studies at UT Austin originated in the late 1960s following dialogues among students and administrators and activists from the community.

The Center for Mexican American Studies was launched in 1970 after students proposed the center to administrators with the help of faculty members Américo Paredes and George I. Sanchez.

Life & Letters Fall 2014

Ancient Girl Shares Genetic Lineage of Modern Native Americans Anthropology

Photo: Paul Nicklen, National Geographic

BY JESSICA SINN The ancient remains of a teenage girl found in an underwater Mexican cave establish a definitive link between the earliest Americans and modern Native Americans, according to a new study released in the journal Science.

The study was conducted by an international team of researchers from 13 institutions, including Deborah Bolnick, assistant professor of anthropology at The University of Texas at Austin, who analyzed DNA from the remains simultaneously with independent researchers at Washington State University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The findings have major implications for our understanding of the origins of the Western Hemisphere’s first people and their relationship to contemporary Native Americans.

The most ancient human remains in the Americas have baffled scientists because their skulls are narrower and have other measurably different features from those of Native Americans. Some researchers have hypothesized that these individuals came to the Americas from as far away as Australia, Southeast Asia or Europe.

Bolnick and her colleagues Brian Kemp of Washington State University and Ripan Malhi of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign analyzed the DNA from the tooth of the adolescent girl who fell into a sinkhole in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula more than 12,000 years ago.

The remains were found surrounded by a variety of extinct animals more than 130 feet below sea level in Hoyo Negro, a deep pit within the Sac Actun cave system in the Yucatán.

In three separate labs, the researchers independently examined the tooth’s mitochondrial DNA, which is maternally inherited (passed down from mother to child).

Each of the labs found that the ancient girl belonged to a genetic lineage

Divers Alberto Nava and Susan Bird transport the Hoyo Negro skull to an underwater turntable so that it can be photographed in order to create a 3-D model. shared only by Native Americans. This is the first time researchers have been able to match a skeleton with an early American (or Paleoamerican) skull and facial characteristics with DNA linked to the hunter-gatherers who moved onto the Bering Land Bridge (part of a region known as Beringia) from northeast Asia between 26,000 and 18,000 years ago, spreading southward into North America sometime after 17,000 years ago.

“The Hoyo Negro girl was related to living Native Americans and has ancestry from the same Beringian population,” Bolnick says. “This study therefore provides no support for the hypothesis that Paleoamericans migrated from Southeast Asia, Australia or Europe.

Instead, it shows that Paleoamericans

could have come from Beringia, like contemporary Native Americans, even though they exhibit some distinctive skull and facial features. The physical differences between Paleoamericans and Native Americans today are more likely due to changes that occurred in Beringia and the Americas over the last 9,000 years.”

The study was led by Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History, and coordinated by James Chatters, owner of Applied Paleoscience, an archaeological and paleontological consulting firm in Bothell, Washington.

The Hoyo Negro expedition will be featured in National Geographic magazine and on a National Geographic Television program airing on the PBS series “Nova” in 2015.

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Knowledge Matters

Investing in Global Leadership UT Global Initiative

BY JORDAN SCHRAEDER Austin is no longer simply the Silicon Valley of the Southwest—it's an international hub of entrepreneurial know-how. At its center: The University of Texas at Austin. And, true to its mission to change the world, the university is playing a key role in sharing that knowledge with Sub-Saharan Africa's best and brightest young entrepreneurs through the Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders.

Twenty-five Washington Fellows pose in front of the UT Tower on their first day on campus.

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Approximately 60 percent of Africa's population is younger than 35—a statistic that spurred the White House to pilot the Washington Fellowship program, President Obama’s signature effort to invest in the next generation of global leaders and further the growth, stability and prosperity of Africa. For its inaugural year, the program recruited 20 university campuses to host educational institutes on business and entrepreneurship, civic leadership or public management. More than 50,000 applications were whittled down to just 500, with 25 of Africa's most

talented entrepreneurs from 18 different countries landing at UT Austin this summer for six weeks of classes, community service, networking and more.

From one woman's desire to curb school absenteeism by providing sanitary pads to African girls, to another fellow's vision of creating more sustainable furniture out of bamboo, the projects and career paths of the fellows vary widely, but all share a common thread: the goal of fostering a more prosperous Africa. A curriculum on entrepreneurship, spearheaded

by UT San Antonio’s Anita Leffel and UT Austin’s Dorie Gilbert, an associate professor of Social Work and African & African Diaspora Studies, helped flesh out the fellows’ business plans in an effort to ultimately instigate global, social change in one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

During their time at UT Austin, the fellows did academic coursework, site visits, community service, cultural activities and leadership sessions led by UT's Global Initiative for Education and Leadership.

They met with U.S. Ambassador Penne Peacock, Texas State Representative Senfronia Thompson and the director of Africa Start Up and Google employee Christina Pate. They learned about the Texas legislative process at the State Capitol, explored the colorful history of Juneteenth celebrations at Austin's George Washington Carver Museum, and rubbed shoulders with leaders of the Texas Association of African American Chambers of Commerce. In the classroom, they practiced and refined their elevator pitches, received tips on grant writing, and even (sometimes unsuccessfully!) constructed towers out of marshmallows to learn the importance of teamwork in any entrepreneurial endeavor.

The fellows continued their journey with site visits to Google and Livestrong, volunteer outings to the Capital Area Food Bank, and classroom preparation for the end-of-institute pitch competition. In their free time, the fellows—many of whom have never visited the United States—had the opportunity to explore the sights and sounds of Austin.

Photo: JT Walford

UT Welcomes African Entrepreneurs to Campus

Life & Letters Fall 2014

Budding Economists Launch Journal Economics

Nothing Backward About Walking on All Fours

Illustration: Allen F. Quigley

Anthropology Anthropologist Liza Shapiro may finally have an answer for why members of a Turkish family walk exclusively on their hands and feet.

Contradicting earlier claims of “backward evolution,” Shapiro and her team of researchers found the group of siblings made famous by a 2006 BBC documentary, “The Family That Walks on All Fours,” have simply adapted to their inability to walk upright.

Shapiro’s study, published in PLOS One, shows that people with the family members’ condition, called Uner Tan Syndrome (UTS), do not walk in the diagonal pattern characteristic of nonhuman primates such as apes and monkeys.

The condition is named after Turkish researcher Uner Tan, who theorized that the quadrupedal family represented a human model for reverse evolution.

The researchers analyzed 518 quadrupedal walking strides from several videos of people with various forms of UTS,

including footage from the documentary.

They compared these walking strides to previous studies of the walking patterns of healthy adults who were asked to move around a laboratory on all fours.

According to the findings, published in PLOS One, nearly all human subjects (in 98 percent of the total strides) walked in lateral sequences, placing a foot down and then a hand on one side and then repeating the sequence on the other side. Apes and other nonhuman primates, however, walk in a diagonal sequence, placing a foot down on one side and then a hand on the other side.

“Although it’s unusual that humans with UTS habitually walk on four limbs, this form of quadrupedalism resembles that of healthy adults and is thus not at all unexpected,” Shapiro says. “As we have shown, quadrupedalism in healthy adults or those with a physical disability can be explained using biomechanical principles rather than evolutionary assumptions.”

The University of Texas at Austin is one of just four schools in the nation to publish its own economics undergraduate research journal.

The Developing Economist was founded by students at UT Austin and published its inaugural issue in the spring of 2014, though the process of creating it began much earlier.

Members of UT Austin chapter of Omicron Delta Epsilon (ODE), an economic honors society, conceived the idea in early 2013 after students saw the quality of undergraduate economics research being produced at the university.

The founders set out to provide a means for showcasing undergraduate research through a peer-reviewed publication.

Robert McDowall, an economics and mathematics alumnus, is a founding member of the journal and served as its chairman.

“The idea came about as our team recognized an opportunity to foster communication amongst our own students and faculty, while forming an avenue for the publication of undergraduate research across the nation,” McDowall says. “We hope the journal can inspire students early in their undergraduate careers to start thinking about pursuing their own research interests.”

The deadline for students to submit their research work in economics, mathematics, international relations, finance or public policy for consideration is Dec. 31.

Volume 2 of The Developing Economist will be published in the spring of 2015.

READ THE LATEST ISSUE OF THE DEVELOPING ECONOMIST: developingeconomist.com

11

Knowledge Matters

It’s Plainer to an Explainer Psychology Asking children to come up with explanations — even to themselves — enhances their cause-and-effect learning abilities, according to new research by Cristine Legare, associate professor of psychology.

The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, shows that young children who come up with explanations while learning are able to connect new ideas with prior cause-and-effect knowledge. By forming their own generalizations, learners can more efficiently understand novel information, Legare says.

In the study, Legare and her collaborator, Tania Lombrozo of the University of California at Berkeley, presented 182 preschoolers with a mechanical toy. After showing the children the basics of the toy’s moving parts, the researchers separated the children into two groups and asked them to either explain or observe the toy.

According to the results of both studies, the explainers across all age groups outperformed other children in understanding the cause-and-effect operations of the toy. They were also better at rebuilding the toy and transferring that new knowledge to other learning tasks. However, explaining does not improve — and can

even impair — memory for details, such as the toy’s size, shapes and colors.

So why do explainers do so well in understanding the toy’s functionality, but falter when it comes to memorizing specific details? One possibility, Legare says, is that explanation helps the learner focus more on understanding cause-andeffect mechanisms, but not so much on

the perceptual details.

“Understanding the ways in which explanation does — and does not — improve learning speaks not only to questions about the development of cause-and-effect knowledge, but also to questions about how to most effectively harness explanation for use in educational interventions,” Legare says.

Regents Honor Outstanding Teaching Four liberal arts professors received the 2014 Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Awards. They were among the 27 faculty award winners of the UT System Board of Regents’ highest teaching honor, which recognizes extraordinary educators from system institutions.

The awards program is one of

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the nation’s largest monetary teaching recognition programs in higher education, honoring outstanding performance in the classroom and dedication to innovation in undergraduate instruction.

The 2014 Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Awards recipients from the College of Liberal Arts are:

Kevin Cokley, director of the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis and professor of educational psychology and African and African diaspora studies Julie Hardwick, professor of history

Daron Shaw, University Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Government and Frank C. Erwin, Jr. Centennial Chair in State Government Sean Theriault, University Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Government

Illustration: Allen F. Quigley

College of Liberal Arts

Life & Letters Fall 2014

Psychology Professors Listed in Top 200

Edmund T. Gordon, African and African Diaspora Studies chair and professor, leads a tour of the racial geography and history of the UT campus.

Psychology

Gordon Receives Presidential Citation

Photo: Ty Hardin

African and African Diaspora Studies Edmund T. Gordon, chair of the African and African Diaspora Studies Department (AADS) in the College of Liberal Arts, was recognized on April 17 with a Presidential Citation from UT Austin President Bill Powers. As one of the university’s highest honors, this prestigious award was established to recognize the extraordinary contributions of individuals who personify the university’s commitment to transforming lives.

Gordon is also an associate professor of African and African diaspora studies and anthropology of the African diaspora at UT Austin. He has previously served as associate vice president of the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement and director of the Center for African and African American Studies at the university.

Gordon says his major concern as an educator is helping his students think about how the world operates and their place in it. “I hope my classes give students the facility to think critically and to understand the world for themselves,” he says.

Under his direction, AADS has quickly established itself as one of the top academic departments in the nation, housing one of only two doctoral programs in Black Studies

in the American South and Southwest.

AADS joins with the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies and the Institute for Urban Policy, Research, and Analysis to comprise UT Black Studies, which is committed to the study of the intellectual, political, artistic, and social experiences of people of African descent throughout Africa and the African Diaspora.

Of his legacy, Gordon says he wants to see the campus be more inclusive, both in terms of the students taught, the faculty that get the chance to teach, and the administrators who direct the programs.

“We have come a long way and will continue to press forward,” Gordon says.

Others receiving the citation were James Mulva, former president, chairman and CEO of ConocoPhillips, and his wife Miriam Mulva, whose $15 million gift supported the construction of the new Liberal Arts Building and its ROTC center; Charles W. Matthews Jr., former vice president and general counsel at ExxonMobil; and Shannon Ratliff, a leading attorney and former member of the University of Texas System Board of Regents.

Two University of Texas at Austin psychology professors, David Buss and James Pennebaker, are listed among the top 200 psychologists since World War II, according to a new study from the University of Virginia published in the journal Archives of Scientific Psychology. The list is based on the impact of research citations, the number of textbook citations and major scientific awards.

Buss, ranked at No. 143 on the list, is a leading scholar of evolutionary psychology. He conducts research on strategies of human mating, sexual jealousy, sexual motivation, conflict between the sexes, sexual predators, stalking and motives for murder. He is the editor of the Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology—the definitive text on the subject—and is one of the most widely cited psychologists worldwide.

Among his notable books are The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating and the first textbook on evolutionary psychology, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind.

At No. 153, Pennebaker’s wide-ranging research on self-disclosure, language use, symptom perception, and health has had a significant impact on the fields of personality and social psychology. His most recent research focuses on the nature of language in the real world. His methods for analyzing language use have been applied to everything from personal conversations and diaries to the full corpus of Shakespeare’s sonnets and plays. Among his many awards, his book The Secret Life of Pronouns won the 2012 Hamilton Book Award.

“I was both pleased and proud to learn the news, but I was not surprised. Both David and Jamie are longtime colleagues of mine in the Department of Psychology, and for many years I have admired the creativity and innovation they have brought to the field,” says Randy Diehl, dean of the College of Liberal Arts. “These rankings confirm what we have been saying all along: that The University of Texas at Austin is home to some of the world’s top researchers in the field of psychology, and that our department is among the best in the nation.”

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Knowledge Matters

Two Cultures, One Conversation International Relations

Liberal Arts Studio Hosts UT’s First Afghanistan Crosstalk

BY JORDAN SCHRAEDER When Vice Provost for International Programs Janet Ellzey wrapped up an appearance on the U.S. government’s external broadcaster, Voice of America (VOA), little did she know it would snowball into a new, never-before-attempted pilot project for The University of Texas at Austin—or that her time working with Voice of America was far from over.

Founded in 1942, Voice of America broadcasts news and information about the U.S. via radio, TV, mobile, and Internet to a global audience of 164 million. The largest international broadcaster in the United States, Voice of America transmits in 45 different languages and in many different countries, including Afghanistan, which was the target audience for the show on which Ellzey was featured November 2013.

Her interest piqued, Ellzey did some digging following the episode’s wrap, and was disappointed to learn that UT had only one student from Afghanistan enrolled that semester.

“Because of restrictions on travel, we have very limited ways of learning more about Afghan culture here in the U.S.,” Ellzey says. “I was fascinated by the idea that we could use technology to create a conversation between two very different cultures. So I wrote VOA a proposal that very next day.”

And a unique initiative, dubbed the UT-Kabul Crosstalk, was born. The premise: use videoconferencing to connect student leaders in Austin with student leaders in Kabul, Afghanistan, to help dispel stereotypes and enhance understanding between the two cultures. Through open discourse—moderated

by VOA hosts—the two sets of students would learn more about each others’ day-to-day lives on a university campus, civic engagement, post-college career prospects, and more. The show would be broadcast through a joint program between Channel 1 in Afghanistan, the second most popular channel in the region, and Voice of America in Washington, D.C. Five months later, Ellzey finally saw her idea come to fruition in the Liberal Arts Video Production Studio in UT’s Mezes Hall. Popular VOA host Sayed

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Zafar Hashemi was flown in from Washington, D.C., to lead the groundbreaking discussion from the UT side. According to Hashemi, this taping marked the first time VOA's Afghanistan Service has filmed an entire program on a university campus—which shows just how important they think the Crosstalk concept is.

“Problems arise when people act on perceptions and misperceptions,” says Hashemi, who hosts both radio and television programs for VOA. “An ordinary Texan doesn’t get the opportunity to talk to an Afghan farmer. All they hear are little soundbites in the news. Shows like this will bridge that gap that exists between ordinary people.”

An Afghan native, Hashemi knows a thing or two

BELOW: Students from UT’s Senate of College Councils: Lauren Mills, an international relations and global studies junior; Kiefer Shenk, a finance, business honors and sports management senior; and Christina Bae, a business honors junior, at a Voice of America taping in a LAITS studio May 1.

Life & Letters Fall 2014

Photos: Sarah Combs

about those “ordinary” people. After spending his childhood in Afghanistan, Hashemi wove carpets as a teenager to support his family while seeking refuge in Pakistan during the Taliban years. A prestigious Scripps Howard journalism fellowship eventually brought him to the U.S., and with him came a unique educational perspective that made him a perfect host for the Crosstalk: he has been enrolled in both Kabul University and two American higher-ed institutions, including the University of Maryland University College and Johns Hopkins.

“In Afghanistan, the education and curriculum are focused a lot on theories and reading, sort of Soviet

“ I was fascinated by the idea that we could use technology to create a conversation between two very different cultures.”

Janet Ellzey, vice provost for International Programs

Union-style,” Hashemi says. “Here, it’s focused on current events and exchanging ideas instead of theories. But they do have their similarities.”

To investigate what those similarities are, three students from UT’s Senate of College Councils were recruited to participate in the discussion: Lauren Mills, an international relations and global studies junior; Kiefer Shenk, a finance, business honors and sports management senior; and Christina Bae, a business honors junior.

Each was selected for their varying degrees of connection to Afghanistan. Mills has studied it in her global studies coursework, Shenk’s father was stationed with the military there, and Bae had very limited knowledge about the country and its culture.

“I haven’t had much exposure to the Middle East,” Bae said prior to the taping.

“I’m going to be the clueless one.

Aside from what I’ve seen on the news, I probably don’t know anything at all.”

That all changed when the recording light turned red, and the Longhorns had the opportunity to videochat with their counterparts at Kabul University, American University of Afghanistan, and the University of Afghanistan. With the help of a translator and two moderators (including Hashemi), the six students discussed extracurricular activities, challenges faced on campus, and the desire to make a difference in their respective communities. Hearing the Afghan students express their frustrations at their country’s struggling government and their hopes of helping to reform it, the UT students said, was an equally eye-opening and inspiring experience.

“I have been challenged by these students who are so driven to bring change and justice to their country,” Bae said immediately after the filming. “Here I am worrying about my grades and my future while these students are taking on such big responsibilities to restructure their country—on top of being such highachieving students.”

The UT-Kabul Crosstalk episode aired in Afghanistan in late May 2014. The hope is that this is just the first of many collaborations between The University of Texas at Austin and other higher-ed institutions across the globe.

“Our mission is to increase our understanding of the world and its understanding of us, and VOA helps us accomplish that,” Ellzey says. “This episode raised the curiosity of our students and provided a venue for them to ask questions. It’s a good start.”

15

Knowledge Matters

Campus Life Civil Rights Summit LBJ Presidential Library and the LBJ School of Public Affairs

Photo: David Hume Kennerly

President Obama speaks at the Civil Rights Summit at the LBJ Presidential Library on April 10. Members of the audience stood and linked arms during the playing of “We Shall Overcome” before the president’s keynote speech. A number of liberal arts faculty served as national media experts during the event.

Gone to Liberal Arts College of Liberal Arts Rachel Osterloh, president of Liberal Arts Council, talks to incoming students about getting involved at Gone to Liberal Arts on Aug. 26. The annual event is a celebration welcoming new students to the college. Held at the turtle pond, students enjoyed a barbecue dinner and live music by the classic country band Run of the Mill. Attendees also received a free t-shirt, entered to win door prizes and visited with faculty and staff.

Dean’s Distinguished Graduates Luncheon

Photo: Emily Nielsen

College of Liberal Arts

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On May 15, Dean Randy Diehl recognized 12 outstanding Liberal Arts students as 2014 Dean’s Distinguished Graduates (DDG).

Recipients are selected each spring on the basis of high achievements in scholarship, leadership and service to the college. The program was founded in 1980 and has honored 406 students to date. The luncheon’s guest speaker was Brian Haymon, a humanities alumnus and 1982 DDG who served on the Liberal Arts Advisory Council for 13 years.

Life & Letters Fall 2014

Commencement Naval Adm. William H. McRaven, the next chancellor of The University of Texas System, walks with President Bill Powers at the university-wide commencement ceremony on May 17.

McRaven is a UT Austin alumnus who was a member of the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) during his time on campus. After he graduated, McRaven gained more than 37 years of experience in the Navy and served as commander of the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command from 2008 until 2011.

He commanded Operation Neptune’s Spear, the operation that led to the death of Osama bin Laden. In his speech, McRaven encouraged students to find the courage to change the world.

Photo: Marsha Miller

University of Texas at Austin

George Takei

Photo: Emily Nielsen

Students enrolled in Professor Nancy Stalker’s course “Gender & Sexuality in Japan,” pose with actor and activist George Takei on March 25. Takei was in town to give a talk through the Student Endowed Centennial Lectureship and agreed to meet with students for an informal Q&A session beforehand. Topics he discussed included LGBT activism, Asian representation in the media and his musical about Japanese-American internment camps, Allegiance.

Photo: Steve Franklin

Asian Studies

Liberal Arts Undergraduate Research Reception Daniela Hernández, an anthropology senior from Caracas, Venezuela, talks to Dean Randy Diehl about her research project on the political polarization in her home country. Hernández was one of 11 students selected to present at the Liberal Arts Undergraduate Research Reception on April 15 as a part of UT Austin’s annual Undergraduate Research Week. The event was hosted by Dean Diehl and was attended by college directors, chairs, deans and faculty members.

Photo: Emily Nielsen

College of Liberal Arts

17

Knowledge Matters

What I Did Last Summer Economics

BY EMILY NIELSEN In November 2013, famed Polish economist Leszek Balcerowicz spoke on the UT Austin campus as part of International Education Week, which celebrates the enriching benefits of international education and exchange.

Those “enriching benefits” were not lost on one audience member, economics senior Hector Cantu from Monterrey, Mexico. After the lecture, Cantu introduced himself to Balcerowicz and spoke of his interest in conducting a research project on harmonization in the global economy. Balcerowicz was interested and, after reviewing a proposal and a faculty recommendation, invited Cantu to spend the summer in Poland as a visiting student researcher.

“He’s a legend in Poland because he was in charge of the transition between having a socialist and capitalist economy.

He applied very radical ideas that not many people were in favor of at the time.

But now Poland is one of the most economically developed countries in the

EU,” says Cantu, who served as a research assistant at the Civil Development Forum Foundation (FOR) think tank, which is chaired by Balcerowicz. Cantu also met with embassy representatives from around the world and worked on his thesis while in Poland.

A member of the influential Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty, Balcerowicz is also head of the Department of International Comparative Studies at the Warsaw School of Economics. Previously he served as deputy prime minister of Poland, minister of finance and the governor of the National Bank of Poland.

The College of Liberal Arts awarded Cantu an Undergraduate Research Scholarship to help cover the cost of his project.

The scholarship, along with savings from two jobs Cantu held the previous semester, were enough to pay for his trip.

Cantu arrived in Warsaw on June 1 and began work at FOR. The 21-year-old was the first international student to do research at the organization, working alongside seasoned Polish economists in creating policy recommendations promoting economic freedom in developing

LEFT: Polish economist Leszek Balcerowicz and Hector Cantu in Warsaw.

BELOW: The Palace of Culture and Science, Poland’s tallest building, was 10 blocks from Cantu’s Warsaw office.

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countries. He lived in the dormitories at the Warsaw School of Economics, which were occupied by Belarusian, Ukrainian and Polish students. Unfamiliar with the Polish language, Cantu relied on English, his second language, to communicate.

“They received me with open arms,” says Cantu, who quickly adapted to his surroundings. “They gave me resources that helped me learn about the EU in a way that is uncommon if you’re outside of the European Union. Poland has a lot of very bright, very intelligent people with important economic ideas.”

Cantu’s main focus during his stay in Warsaw was on harmonization between the United States and the European Union, particularly in tax law. This is the topic that Cantu first pitched to Balcerowicz, and he chose to write a thesis about it during his time in Warsaw. The paper, “Economic Growth with Labor Law, Corporate Tax Law and VAT Law Harmonization Between the United States and the European Union,” is 37 pages of intense research and analysis.

“For every good research paper, you need to have a lot of good background information,” Cantu says. “So for that we used a lot of statistics, a lot of research and a lot of comparison analysis.”

“Collaboration with Hector this summer has been successful, and he was a reliable and hard-working person,” Balcerowicz said in a letter to UT Austin discussing his research. “We hope to stay in touch with Hector and continue our cooperation in the future.”

Cantu is now working with UT Austin economics lecturer Wayne Hickenbottom on revising his thesis and plans to submit it to an economics research journal for publication.

In terms of post-graduation plans, Cantu says his dream is to work for the International Monetary Fund and help shape the global economy.

“I want to make changes in a macroeconomic perspective. That’s the most important thing that the Polish left me with,” Cantu says. “I want to make good relationships between the United States, between Mexico and the European Union. I want to extend the commerce and I want to open the market, cut the barriers. With a little good research, you can make great changes.”

Photos courtesy of Hector Cantu

Famed Polish Economist Invites UT Student to Think Tank

Books

Life & Letters Fall 2014

Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an History / Middle Eastern Studies

A Founder’s Views of Islam and Civil Rights for Muslims

BY ALICIA DIETRICH It was a chance discovery of a 1782 broadside— advertising a play performed in Baltimore about the Prophet Muhammad—that piqued the curiosity of Denise Spellberg, professor of history and Middle Eastern Studies. She wondered, why did Americans perform this play during the Revolutionary War? More importantly, the historian of Islamic civilization asked, what did early Americans know about Islam, and did their purview for political equality and citizenship include Muslims?

Over the next eight years, Spellberg uncovered founding debates about the inclusion of Islam, as an American religion, and declarations by a handful of pivotal founders who defended the civil rights of future Muslim citizens. Among this then radical cohort were Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and James Madison, as well as others who were less well known.

The results of her research became the core of her book, Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders, published by Knopf last year, and praised by The New York Times as “fascinating” and “revelatory.”

The book’s title references Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an, now held in the Library of Congress. Jefferson bought his Qur’an in 1765, 11 years before writing the Declaration of Independence. At the time, the 22-year-old law student probably perceived the sacred text as a book of law, a perspective common among Christians since the 12th century, when the Qur’an had first been translated into Latin. Jefferson, a bibliophile, had purchased books of British law at the time, but left only his initials in the Islamic sacred text, the first translated directly from Arabic to English.

“As a historian, I was frustrated and disappointed that for a man who took assiduous notes on much of what he was reading in the 1760s and 1770s, we have none of those notes based on his immediate reaction to the Qur’an,” Spellberg says. She adds that Jefferson lost all of his books and papers in a fire five years later, which may explain why his response did not survive, and prompts her to wonder if he purchased the Qur’an

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Books

Denise Spellberg, professor of history and Middle Eastern Studies

twice, a possibility that cannot be proved.

Spellberg explains that Jefferson, early on, criticized Islam in his 1776 debate notes as a religion that repressed what he termed “free enquiry,” a critique he also levelled against Catholicism. While the historian says that Jefferson received this mistaken precedent about Islam from the French philosopher Voltaire, she adds that such an assertion worked well politically for his exclusively Protestant audience in the Virginia House of Delegates. All Jefferson’s Protestant listeners would have held quite negative views of both faiths—and Judaism—at the time.

However, in that same year—just a few months after writing the Declaration of Independence—Jefferson recorded a critical passage from one of his intellectual heroes, the English philosopher John Locke: “[N] either pagan nor Mahometan [Muslim] nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of his religion.”

“So, we can see that he had a dual-edged view,” Spellberg says. “On the one hand, he had little that was positive to say about Islam at this early stage. On the other hand, what is interesting is that he could separate the idea of Muslims as future citizens of the United States, and he could conceive of their civil

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Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who in 2007 became the first Muslim elected to Congress, uses Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an as he takes the oath of office.

Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

“ [Jefferson] perceived a future state of inclusion for Muslims at a time then, as now, when there were many who were fearful of Islam and people from the Middle East.”

rights along with all other religious believers.”

Another crucial discovery for Spellberg was the detailed transcript of a 1788 debate about the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in North Carolina, which captures the reaction of Protestant delegates to the abolition of a religious test for federal officials, including the president, found in Article VI, section 3. “Early in the debate, it comes up that if there is no religious test, then maybe non-Protestants will get power, and among the people most feared on that day were Catholics, Jews and Muslims,” Spellberg says. “And so that’s the first time we see the question of a Muslim president arise in American political debate. And what’s particularly interesting is that the Federalists in support of the Constitution that day make a theoretical argument that says you can’t exclude anyone from political office, including Muslims.”

Spellberg points out that in such debates, Jefferson and his contemporaries were thinking about Muslims in America in a completely abstract and theoretical sense, as they mistakenly believed there were no Muslims yet in the United States.

However, historians believe that by Jefferson’s time, there would have been Muslim slaves in the thousands, if not the tens of thousands, because in North America some estimate that up to 15 percent of slaves from West Africa were followers of Islam. In fact, records show that George Washington owned at least two, and possibly four, Muslim slaves on his plantation. Records are not definitive on Jefferson, also a slave owner, though Spellberg notes it was certainly possible that he owned slaves of Muslim origin as well.

Spellberg says the tragic irony is that race and slavery meant the Muslims who were already in America at the time could never have exercised the civil rights that Jefferson and Washington envisioned for them in the future.

“Thomas Jefferson was a complicated character, but he was a visionary, and he perceived a future state of inclusion for Muslims at a time then, as now, when there were many who were fearful of Islam and people from the Middle East,” Spellberg says. “At the time, there were people who were fearful of the threat of Catholics and Catholicism, but he never operated from fear of any religion or any group of people. He was able really, in that sense, to separate this notion of what his country should be, universally inclusive of all its citizens, regardless of religion. And it’s the breadth of that vision that still takes my breath away.”

Life & Letters Fall 2014

Books Thunderstruck and Other Stories The Dial Press, April 2014

By Elizabeth McCracken, professor, Department of English

The Learned Ones:

Nahua Intellectuals in Postconquest Mexico University of Arizona Press, Sept. 2014

By Kelly S. McDonough, assistant professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese

National Book Award for Fiction Finalist

Ecosickness in Contemporary U.S. Fiction: Environment and Affect Columbia University Press (Literature Now series), June 2014

By Heather Houser, assistant professor, Department of English

The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature Oxford University Press, Aug. 2014 Edited by James H. Cox, associate professor, Department of English and Center for Mexican American Studies; and Daniel Heath Justice

Victorian Literature, Energy, and the Ecological Imagination Cambridge University Press, Sept. 2014

By Allen MacDuffie, assistant professor, Department of English

What I Found Out About Her:

Stories of Dreaming Americans University of Notre Dame Press, Sept. 2014

By Peter LaSalle, professor, Department of English

Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction

Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Law Cambridge University Press, Sept. 2014

By J. Budziszewski, professor, Departments of Government and Philosophy

Agitating Images:

Photography Against History in Indigenous Siberia University of Minnesota Press, Sept. 2014

By Craig Campbell, assistant professor, Department of Anthropology

The Shield of Nationality: When Governments Break Contracts with Foreign Firms Cambridge University Press, Nov. 2014

By Rachel Wellhausen, assistant professor, Department of Government and McCombs School of Business

On the Importance of Being an Individual in Renaissance Italy: Men, Their Professions and Their Beards University of Pennsylvania Press, Jan. 2015

By Douglas Biow, professor, Departments of French and Italian, and History; and director of the Center for European Studies

READ MORE ABOUT BOOKS AT: ShelfLife@Texas, UT Austin’s book blog

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BY SARAH MUTHLER ILLUSTRATIONS BY BRAD AMOROSINO

Life & Letters Fall 2014

and university leaders began to talk about the need for Austin to have its own medical school.

“It took a state senator with a passion and a vision to say we need a medical school in Austin,” says Dr. Sue Cox, referring to state Sen. Kirk Watson of Austin.

Cox is the executive vice dean for academics at the Dell Medical School.

Three years ago, Watson developed a list of 10 health care goals for Austin to achieve in the next 10 years, including the development of a medical school.

“Many of the things that he laid out are actually happening or completed,” Cox says.

The first phase of the medical school will include an education and administration building, a research building, a medical office building, and a teaching hospital run by Seton Healthcare Family.

“To be on this kind of campus, where the research is so phenomenal and the teaching is so phenomenal will benefit both the medical school and Austin,” Cox says.

Personalized Approach

A

few years ago, a Plan II Honors student in Marc Musick’s sociology lecture came to him with a question. Musick had been talking about the shortage of doctors in rural and inner city areas. The student had grown up in the Rio Grande Valley and hoped to go on to medical school. Why, he asked, did this shortage exist?

Musick asked all of the students who wanted to become doctors to raise their hands. About 75 percent of the class did. Then he told all of those who had been raised in suburban areas of Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio to put their hands down. Nearly everyone did. That, he explained to the class, is part of the reason why there are so few rural doctors. Students who grow up in cities usually want to continue living in cities.

The new Dell Medical School is expected to welcome its first class of 50 students in 2016. The work done at the medical school will inspire research and questions for faculty and students in the College of Liberal Arts. Those questions will include some that are similar to the one asked by the Plan II student. How can access to health care be improved, and is that health care effective? Administrators and faculty in the College of Liberal Arts are already considering ways to collaborate with the medical school to improve health care.

The Vision When The University of Texas was formed in the late 1800s, lawmakers who wanted to build the campus in Austin had to strike a compromise that would place the medical school in Galveston, the state’s largest city at the time. As UT and Austin grew, legislators

Professors in the College of Liberal Arts are similarly excited about the opportunities provided by the medical school.

Chris Beevers, psychology professor and director of the Institute for Mental Health Research, expects that the Dell Medical School will bring increased funding and visibility for research at the institute. He also hopes that he will more easily recruit patients for his studies, a time-consuming task.

“Without a medical school, there isn’t a strong network of clinicians,” Beevers says.

He is working on a pilot study to look at the effectiveness of psychotherapy over the Internet in treating depression. Several hundred patients are being recruited, and a saliva sample is being collected from each patient. Researchers have already found that genetics plays a role in the effectiveness of antidepressants, and recent research suggests they might find the same for therapy.

“Can we predict who’s going to respond particularly well to this treatment?” Beevers asks.

Some areas of medicine, such as cancer treatment, are becoming more personalized based on genetics, but psychology hasn’t reached that point yet, Beevers says. His hope is that someday a pre-treatment assessment that includes a saliva or blood sample could be used to immediately choose the best treatment for people suffering with depression, preventing months of trial and error.

The medical school might help with another challenge that psychologists face: disseminating their research to clinicians.

“Many of the treatments that are available today were guided by clinician insights and weren’t necessarily strongly grounded in basic research,” Beevers says. In many cases, research has led to the development of more effective treatments, but those providing treatment aren’t aware of it.

“Whatever the practitioner is familiar with is what you end up getting,” Beevers says, and in some cases, it isn’t the state-of-the-art treatment that might

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Keeping a Pulse on Population Health

Population Health Collaborations with the College of Liberal Arts will help support the Dell Medical School. The medical school will be focused on population health—a research area of strength within the college—looking at who in the population receives health care and the effects of that care.

“The Dell Medical School will be different, from how we engage students and weave technology and teamwork into the curriculum, to how we create new delivery models that are focused on value and better health outcomes,” says Dr. Clay Johnston, the dean of the Dell Medical School.

That focus on improving care, especially to underserved groups, should dovetail with work already being done by faculty members in the College of Liberal Arts. UT’s Population Research Center is focused on finding the root causes of problems for these underserved groups.

“We’re interested in the underlying etiologies of health problems,” says Mark Hayward, director of the Population Research Center.

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He provides childhood obesity as an example of a problem that researchers are exploring. They look at exposures in utero and during infancy that might influence obesity. They look at the role of poverty and family instability. Then they consider interventions.

“If you want the biggest bang for your buck, what do you change?” Hayward asks. Does changing the school lunch program lower obesity, or does intervention need to come earlier in children’s lives? Or both?

“Usually these problems are multi-factoral and complex,” he says. “They come from individuals. They come from families. They come from communities and the environment.”

To dramatically change health outcomes for a population, our country needs a continuum of efforts— improvements in family and community resources, a concerted effort on prevention, as well as resolving problems of health care access and improving health outcomes. A classic example is the battle to reduce smoking and smoking-related diseases such as lung cancer. Thanks to an array of public health policies that came into play at many levels over several decades, smoking rates plummeted in the United States, bringing improvements in life expectancy. A population health approach is tremendously important in improving the health of Americans.

He says the complexity of population health problems requires that people from different disciplines collaborate, and the medical school is a fundamentally

ABOVE: Rendering of the Dell Medical School as viewed from Waller Creek.

Building rendering courtesy of Page

be best for the patient. “Clinicians want to deliver optimal treatments to their patients—we simply need to do a better job of letting practitioners know about recent advances.”

Life & Letters Fall 2014

important part of the work already being done by the College of Liberal Arts.

“This is a missing piece, looking at specific community health issues in a large-scale way,” Hayward says.

“We will be measured not in the size of our buildings, but in the health of this community.”

Johnston photo: Courtesy of the Dell Medical School Illustration: Brad Amorosino

Clay Johnston, dean of the Dell Medical School

Access to Health Care One of the biggest problems facing Austin and the rest of the country is poor health care access and outcomes for low-income people.

“Our less-educated groups, in particular, are finding life increasingly difficult and appear to be experiencing declines in their health in recent decades,” Hayward says. He notes that adult life expectancy in the U.S. has been declining among people with less than a high school education, particularly women, while adult life expectancy for those with a college education has dramatically improved.

“This is a very troubling trend in the inequality of mortality that we’re seeing,” he says.

Immigrants may also see declines in life expectancy in the future, Hayward says, with multiple causes for the decline. A significant portion of Hispanic immigrants, for example, are undocumented.

This means that they and their families are less likely to receive health care than those here legally. This population also tends to work physically demanding jobs, and they are experiencing rapid increases in obesity and diabetes. UT will now have the resources to become a leader in research and health care for immigrant populations.

A new Community Care Collaborative was created to help administer the voter-approved funds— and to take advantage of federal money that those funds are helping to draw down for health care in Central Texas. The Collaborative augments the partnership between Seton Healthcare Family and Central Health, the organization that helps deliver care to low-income residents of Travis County. One of its goals will be to begin centralizing health records for many low-income residents—initially, this project will focus on settings in which care for underserved and vulnerable populations occurs most commonly.

“With our key partners, Seton Healthcare Family and Central Health, we are working together to identify priorities for improving the health of the people of Austin and Travis County, and particularly for the underserved,” Johnston says. “As I’ve said before, we will be measured not in the size of our buildings or our budgets, but in the health of this community.”

Medical Education The College of Liberal Arts has already hosted many health care leaders to discuss disparities and potential solutions. In April 2013, it welcomed Dr. Paul Farmer as its C.L. and Henriette Cline Centennial Visiting Professor in the Humanities. Farmer is a medical anthropologist and physician who cofounded Partners in Health, an advocacy group. He is also chairman of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

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Keeping a Pulse on Population Health

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wants students to consider the field that might allow them to make the biggest difference rather than the biggest paycheck.

Musick says that the Dell Medical School will provide new avenues for undergraduates to explore their career options.

“There will be volunteer opportunities; there will be opportunities to shadow people,” he says.

Those opportunities can help students choose a specialty and will improve their chances of getting into medical school, Musick says.

The Liberal Arts Difference Whichever health care specialty students choose, a background in the humanities can help them connect with patients.

“With my liberal arts education as a foundation, I’m equipped with the most powerful interpersonal tools of all: understanding, compassion and empathy,”

Illustration: Brad Amorosino

During his visit, Farmer met with students, faculty members, and medical professionals to discuss his work. Farmer researches the role of social inequality in disease distribution and treatment, and he seeks ways to treat infectious diseases in areas with few medical resources.

A September 2013 conference at UT explored ways that medical education can be improved to reduce racial and ethnic health disparities.

Deborah Bolnick, associate professor of anthropology, organized the conference after discussions with others in her field about how best to tackle racial health disparities. The colleagues agreed that changing medical education could have the biggest impact, but medical schools already had an established curriculum.

“It’s really difficult to change medical training programs once they are established,” says Bolnick, who is also a Population Research Center faculty associate.

With the Dell Medical School still in the planning stages, Bolnick saw an opportunity to inspire better training. During the two-day conference, speakers from both Austin and across the country talked about human diversity and the similarities and differences between various ethnic groups. They discussed how environmental and socioeconomic disparities and racial discrimination can affect health. Then, they talked about what can be done to improve health outcomes and developed specific recommendations for medical training that could be implemented at the Dell Medical School.

“In most cases, the disparities we see have less to do with genetic factors and more to do with the social environment that people live in,” Bolnick says.

“Many of these factors involve broader social or institutional patterns that are more difficult to address,” Bolnick says. “As a society, we haven’t tackled them as we need to.”

Liberal arts courses can be a starting point for tackling these problems, says Musick, who is associate dean for student affairs in the College of Liberal Arts.

Students who enter medical school need to understand that improving health care requires more than cutting-edge research and medication.

Musick says that many of his students insist that the United States has the best health care in the world because that is what they have heard from politicians or their parents. The United States spends more—by far—on health care than any other country, but health outcomes here are mediocre compared to other countries, he says.

“For many people, the world of health care is a very harsh place,” Musick says.

One role of a liberal arts education is to challenge these assumptions, to teach students to separate myth from reality. Musick strives to burst these myths in his lectures. He teaches students that access to quality health care is based largely on income and race. He encourages his pre-med students to think deeply about the area of medicine in which they will specialize.

“Students need to understand that they’re part of this process,” Musick says. Our society does not have to have such vast inequality in health care, he says. He

Life & Letters Fall 2014

Notable Alumni Advancing Health Care These UT alumni demonstrate how the insights gained from a liberal arts education translate into innovation and leadership in the medical field.

Dr. O. Howard Frazier, who received his undergraduate degree in history, went on to an acclaimed career as a cardiovascular surgeon, installing more heart assist devices and performing more heart transplants than anyone in history. He holds leadership positions at the Texas Heart Institute and St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital. Frazier has credited his undergraduate work with instilling in him a desire to identify and follow his passion. In 2012, he received the Pro Bene Meritis Award, the highest honor bestowed by the College of Liberal Arts.

Dr. Vivian Harris Porsche, who received her undergraduate degree in psychology, is now a professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She has said that her liberal arts education taught her how to be more approachable to patients and establish trust.

Dr. Alexander Eastman, a Plan II alumnus, was recently named an Outstanding Young Texas Ex. Eastman is both a lieutenant with the Dallas Police Department and an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Eastman, who saved the life of a SWAT team colleague by performing emergency surgery at the crime scene, says a liberal arts education builds solid analytical and critical thought skills across a broad variety of disciplines.

Frazier photo: Courtesy of Baylor College of Medicine, Porche photo: Courtesy of MD Anderson, Eastman photo: Courtesy of UT Southwestern Medical Center, Marrs photo: Whitney McKnight/Frontline Medical News

Dr. Caroline Carter Marrs, a Plan II alumna, is a resident at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. She has already published a significant paper on the rates of infection from C-section in morbidly obese women.

says Karin Zaner, a Plan II alumna who is a Dallas attorney specializing in health law at Kane Russell Coleman & Logan PC. Another Dallas-based Plan II alumnus, Dr. Alexander Eastman, says “liberal arts is about building solid analytical and critical thought skills across a broad variety of disciplines.”

Recently named an Outstanding Young Texas Ex, Eastman is both a lieutenant with the Dallas Police Department and an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He credits his education with allowing him to fulfill his childhood dreams of being a firefighter, doctor and police officer.

“These skills allow you to critically appraise a number of problems from a very learned, academic perspective,” says Eastman, who in 2007 saved the life of a SWAT team colleague—who had been shot in the neck—by performing emergency surgery at the crime scene. “Whether in the operating room or on the streets, critical thought skills are imperative

every day.”

Musick notes the many ways in which liberal arts courses can help doctors and others in health-related fields connect with their patients. History and sociology classes teach about people who have been mistreated or ignored by doctors, helping explain why some mistrust medicine today. Ethics classes consider social inequality and human rights, including the debate about whether society has a duty to provide health care. Ethnic studies classes offer insights into the immigrant experience, with immigrants continuing to be a population that is underserved by our health care system.

Without this grounding in the humanities, medicine would be solely a business transaction, Zaner says.

“While advances in medicine are making the practice of medicine more and more precise and efficient, technology mustn’t be the sole focus for physician education and training,” Zaner says.

“A patient is more than a list of numbers and clinical measurements.”

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Food for Thought

BY MICHELLE BRYANT PHOTOS BY SARAH LIM

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Life & Letters Fall 2014

G

overnment Professor Bartholomew “Bat” Sparrow first got the idea to teach a class about food from his wife, who had worked at Whole Foods for eight years. The result was an undergraduate course—“The Politics of Food in America”—that uses food as a lens through which to view the entire U.S. political system.

“The idea was to take a topic like food, that everyone can relate to, to look at public policy, and to investigate the different ways our political system routinely and systematically affects the choices we have as consumers on public health, ecological and environmental issues,” Sparrow says.

The course, launched in 2007, covers the fastfood industry, genetically modified foods, food trade, and the movement toward organic food and local eating. It also explores major features of the food system including government policies in areas such as trade, patents, subsidies and hunger.

Food Awareness

Molly Mandell, an American studies and photojournalism senior, sells produce at the UT Micro Farm Oct. 18. In the background, Katie Lewis, biology sophomore and farm manager, demonstrates how to harvest the okra for a group of volunteers.

Sparrow developed an early awareness about food and nutrition during his childhood in Annapolis, Maryland.

“My mother was kind of an organic food nut,” he laughs. “She had read Adelle Davis, whose basic line is ‘health through eating’ and ‘you are what you eat.’

When we were kids we never had sodas, she always baked her own bread, she’d shop at health food stores before there were all of these alternative sites.

“We kind of took that for granted, but missed the things that our neighbors and friends were having like Nilla wafers, watching television, and drinking Cokes, so we would take advantage of that when we were at our friends’ houses.”

It was during his college years that Sparrow began to realize that his good health was to a large extent due to his mother’s attention to nutrition.

Sparrow says his students today are coming to class more aware about food systems, and many have already established some type of position or philosophy in respect to food.

“I have vegans, vegetarians, people who will shop farmers markets as much as they can given the time and budgetary constraints that students have,” Sparrow says. “You certainly see this in the UT cafeteria system. They have programs to buy locally.”

Twenty-three percent of UT’s Division of Housing & Food Services’ $8 million food budget goes toward local, sustainable and organic food, a number that Hunter Mangrum, UT’s Division of Housing and Food sustainability coordinator, hopes will grow.

Food is sourced locally from Vital Farms (chick and egg farm), El Milagro (tortillas), as well as Green Gate and Lightsey Farms. UT Austin is also the Sustainable Food Center of Austin’s largest purchaser.

The university also grows its own produce in

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Food for Thought

The Food Journal An important part of Sparrow’s class is giving students the opportunity to research the origins of their food.

One of Kimberly Chiu’s most memorable experiences was keeping a food log. For 48 hours, Chiu and her fellow students recorded what they ate and then further examined 10 of those foods to determine their exact ingredients and their origins.

“The food tracking process was extremely intricate and eye opening,” says Chiu, a French senior. “I was able to find a ton of information that we as consumers normally never bother to think about.”

For example, she explored the concept of food miles (the distance a product travels from farm to consumer), parent companies of each product, the source of each listed ingredient, and the certifications behind them (e.g. Fair Trade, USDA Organic).

“It made me an even more conscientious consumer regarding food products, knowing how unnecessarily far many items travel just to make it to my plate, or just how concealed the supply chain information actually is,” Chiu says. “We all had a difficult time with 100 percent transparency throughout our tracking processes.”

Prior to the food tracking exercise, Sparrow says that “easily 80 percent” of the students weren’t aware of how the food system routinely affects their day-to-day lives.

“It’s an interesting exercise for them,” he says.

“They have to analyze and interpret the data they have in terms of what they’ve learned from the class. In this way they get a sense of how the food system affects them personally.”

For Chiu, taking the class led to a personal decision to reduce her meat intake in an effort to minimize her own carbon footprint. She says she was surprised to learn that a substantial amount of the world’s greenhouse gases are emitted by meat production.

The Cost of Food This year, Sparrow’s students are organized into research teams that examine food challenges, such as product labels, and then asked to offer possible solutions.

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Sparrow hopes food issues will gain immediacy with students and that they will consider how food issues are affected by Congress, by different companies and lobbying groups, and by the executive branch, federal regulators, and the courts.

“I want them to understand where we are today and how we got here,” Sparrow says. “We look where we are going and what is down the road.”

Part of understanding the food system is knowing how food is produced, and the costs that are not always accounted for in the price of food.

Sparrow gives the example of a pig farm. The unaccounted costs of a pig farm might include the creation of great manure lagoons that could potentially contaminate the ground water and emit smells that affect neighbors. There might also be questions about the ethical and humane treatment of the animals.

Certain kinds of calories are also cheaper and may result in people being overweight and obese— particularly when there is an option to “supersize” a meal. It is relatively inexpensive to buy a hamburger and French fries. But what is the health cost over the long term? Sparrow says externalities such as a person’s extra weight gain are rarely factored into the overall pricing system.

The sustainability of resources such as water and land are also major cost factors, whether it is aquifer depletion, agricultural chemicals affecting water quality, or the decrease in arable land caused by urban sprawl and growing populations.

CLOCKWISE: 1.

“Know Your Farmer” signage located at the UT Micro Farm, the first student-run farm on campus. 2.

Volunteer harvesting chard. 3. (Clockwise) Emily Ricklefsen, a corporate communications junior, Dominique Vyborny, a business senior, Taylor White, an athletic training sophomore, and Lauren Stacy, a marketing sophomore, work in the garden.

What Goes In Over the years, Sparrow has added to and revised the food course. He says it is both terrific and a little daunting to see the increase in the amount of writing on food since he first started teaching the course.

While the topic of food may be something that everyone can relate to, the academic approach offers a more disciplined and rigorous look at the subject through the lens of political science.

Most of the work is interdisciplinary, so there are many different perspectives by which to view the issue. In addition to political science, food issues bring together experts from such fields as nutrition, economics, sociology, American studies, geography, and journalism.

“What keeps the course interesting for me is that I have to figure out the best of the new work for my students to read,” Sparrow says. “How do I want them to engage the material in a way that allows them to sink their teeth into the matter, so to speak?”

“I think anyone and everyone can benefit from taking a course like this,” Chiu says. “It’s a topic that touches every individual since food is both a necessity and a consumer luxury, and I firmly believe in the importance of learning how to responsibly navigate our consumer-driven society.

“Consumers have way more power than most people realize, and each of us essentially votes with our wallets and where we decide to allow our dollars to flow,” she adds.

Photos: Sarah Lim

two campus gardens. Mangrum is particularly proud of these student-run operations, which are irrigated by captured rainwater and solar-powered pumps.

Students grow the produce, harvest it, work with UT chefs to prepare it, and serve it in the dining halls.

Another student-run garden, UT Micro Farm, also supplies fresh produce to the dining halls.

“Each semester we host a Harvest Meal highlighting local, sustainable and organic foods,” Mangrum says. “One hundred percent of what we serve at those meals falls into one of those three categories, and for many items all three are met. We incorporate interactive education on these days to connect students with what they are eating and where it came from.”

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Life & Letters Fall 2014

earlier representation.”

Despite the fact that women comprise more than half of the U.S. workforce, they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns, according to U.S. Census data.

The gap is even lower for women of color, who make about 70 cents for every dollar paid to men and just 64 cents for every dollar paid to white men.

Putting those statistics into perspective, when President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law in 1963, women made 59 cents for every dollar a man made. In half a century, women have only secured an additional 18 cents on the dollar.

There are plenty of exceptions. But on the whole, women earn far less than men—and the pay gap is even more cavernous at the upper echelons of the corporate ladder.

So what’s the holdup? In an age when women are outnumbering men in college and in the voting booth, shouldn’t they be making great strides in attaining equal pay? Seeking answers to these questions, researchers in the College of Liberal Arts are identifying some of the underlying reasons why gender inequality still exists today.

The Road to Gender Equity Still Under Construction

BY JESSICA SINN

ILLUSTRATION BY YEVGENIA NAYBERG

C

hristine Williams has heard her share of conflicting arguments about gender equality in the sociology course she’s taught for more than two decades at The University of Texas at Austin.

But there is always one question that gives her pause: “Women have achieved equality, so why is feminism relevant?”

“I’m always taken aback when students insist that we live in a gender-blind society,” says Williams, a professor in the Department of Sociology. “I assume people know that discrimination is alive and well in our culture, but clearly that’s not the case. It’s not like I’m making these facts up or that this research is biased; the hard truth is that gender equality has not been achieved in our society.”

Looking at how women are depicted in popular TV shows like CSI or Law & Order, it’s easy to surrender to the illusion of gender equality, Williams says.

However, national statistics paint a dimmer portrait of how far women have really come in the workplace.

“It’s a paradox,” Williams says. “In the 1950s, women were depicted as mothers and homemakers.

Now it’s swung too far the other way, where women seem to be navigating sexism without any problems standing in their way. That’s just as much a lie as the

Career Interrupted In many industries, both men and women enter the workforce on an equal footing. But once they reach their 30s and 40s, women lag behind. Sociologist Jennifer Glass attributes this problem, in part, to career interruptions such as maternity leave and child care.

“Deeply held stereotypes about women creep in subtly in the workplace,” says Glass, who holds the Barbara Pierce Bush Regents Professorship in Liberal Arts. “Mothers are seen as caregivers who will ultimately shirk work to spend time with family. It’s not uncommon to hear a CEO openly say something like, ‘once they have a baby, it’s all over from there.’”

The sad fact of the matter is that women eventually do get frustrated and quit, Glass notes.

“It’s a vicious cycle,” she adds. “Women who aren’t treated right will end up quitting at higher rates, and thus confirm their managers’ biased assumptions about women abandoning their careers to become housewives.”

So how can women—with or without children— keep stride with their male colleagues? Should they take a page from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In playbook and work harder, longer and faster

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The Road to Gender Equity than the average office employee? Should they go the extra mile to gain recognition for their tireless efforts?

Not necessarily, Glass says. In order to gain an equal footing, structural changes need to be made within the workplace.

“Rather than ‘leaning in,’ we need to think of the conditions that are keeping women from thriving,” Glass says. “That means new legislation, rethinking flexible schedules and rewarding people for their contributions rather than their amount of face time in the office. We need to look at the structures that are holding women back right now rather than acquiescing to them.”

Granting women more autonomy and work flexibility is a great place to start, Glass says. Not only would a flexible schedule improve their work-life balance, they would also have more opportunities to explore professional development activities. Yet companies offering these options—including telecommuting—often favor men.

According to Glass’ 2012 study titled “The Hard Truth about Telecommuting,” men in high-level careers are more likely to be granted these accommodations because employers assume women working from home will spend their office hours cleaning dishes and changing diapers. Glass also found that even female managers are suspicious of women who ask to work remotely, not trusting that they’ll be productive.

“The paradox is that the people who most need flexibility aren’t going to get it,” Glass says.

Economist Sandra Black says paid leave is essential to keeping women in the workforce. Beyond benefitting children, family-friendly policies, such as mandatory maternity leave and subsidized child care, will provide an economic stimulus by boosting labor force participation.

“I think a bigger problem in the U.S. is the absence of family-friendly policies,” says Sandra Black, who holds the Audre and Bernard Rapoport Centennial Chair in Economics. “Women lose in the workforce when they have children—this is a key difference between the U.S. and the Nordic countries.”

Ask a social scientist about progressive gender equality policies in other countries, and most likely they’ll point to the Nordic nations that are consistently standing out in the World Economic Forum’s annual Global Gender Gap Report. Norway, for example, made waves in 2003 when it implemented a gender quota that required hundreds of firms to raise female participation on boards to 40 percent.

To investigate the potential benefits of Norway’s gender quota law, Marianne Bertrand of Chicago Booth School of Business and Black conducted a 2014 study titled “Breaking the Glass Ceiling? The Effect of Board Quotas on Female Labor Market Outcomes in Norway.” Co-authors include Adriana Lleras-Muney of the University of California Los Angeles and Sissel Jensen of the Norweigian School of Economics.

They found this reform had very little discernable impact on women beyond placing women at the top.

And even at the upper echelons of the corporate sphere, men were still gaining salary increases at a faster rate.

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Need a Lift?

Even in female-dominated—or “pink collar” jobs—such as social work, teaching and nursing, a disproportionate number of men are rising to toplevel positions at a much faster clip than their female colleagues.

According to Williams’ 1992 study titled “The Glass Escalator: Hidden Advantages for Men in the ‘Female’ Professions,” the men who work in women-dominated fields have a way of gliding up to the top as if they are being lifted by an invisible force.

According to her study, in which she coined the term “glass escalator,” men entering female-dominated professions tend to be promoted at faster rates than women in the same roles. In fact, men in these occupations fare better than men in male-dominated jobs, and they typically earn higher salaries, receive more promotions and achieve higher levels within organizations than their female counterparts.

So why aren’t more male students applying to nursing schools in droves? Williams says that despite the potential for career advancement, men still face the scrutiny of taking on “women’s work.” Ben Stiller’s character in Meet the Parents is the perfect example of how male nurses are subjects for mockery. Clearly sexism is alive and well for both men and women in gender-based jobs. However, when it comes to tokenism in the workplace, women stand the least to gain, Williams says.

It's Not What You Know.

It's Who You Know As for women working in a “man’s world,” that glass escalator is apparently on the fritz. Rather than coasting up to the corner office, they’ll have to grab on to the rope ladder and embark on a rigorous climb.

Take for example venture capital, an industry dominated by males and specifically white men.

According to a 2014 Harvard University study co-authored by Emily Weisburst, an economics doctoral researcher at UT Austin, the few women working in this industry significantly underperform their male colleagues by about 15 percent.

Weisburst insists this is not a matter of Mars versus Venus. It’s more about mentoring. According to her study, women do not benefit from their male colleagues within their own firms. Weisburst suggests this effect is related to the differences in mentoring opportunities between men and women.

The good news is that women appear to be performing better in older, more established firms that employ more women. The findings offer some hope for future female moguls, Weisburst says.

“A mentor relationship is personal, so there’s a tendency for people to co-invest with individuals who are more like them,” Weisburst adds.

Maria Luisa “Lulu” Flores, a partner at Hendler Lyons Flores, knows how important mentors are to career success—especially if you’re a minority woman

Life & Letters Fall 2014

The Politics “ In the 1950s, women were depicted programs such as NEW Leadership™ Texas as mothers and homemakers. Now it’s National show great promise in supporting young women to pursue careers in politics. Yet the United States still swung too far the other way, where has far to go until women are proportionally reprein politics. women seem to be navigating sexism sentedWomen comprise about 18 percent of the U.S. Congress, according to statistics from the U.S. Census without any problems standing in their Bureau. This means more than 80 percent of men are voting on and passing every law regarding women— way. That’s just as much a lie as the and the population as a whole.

This includes the Paycheck Fairness Act, which earlier representation.” failed to pass the Senate again last spring, sparking Christine Williams, professor of sociology

working in a male-dominated field. Looking back at three successful decades of practicing law, she attributes her inspiration to her older sister, who is also a lawyer, and her former boss Irma Rangel, the first Mexican American woman elected to the Texas Legislature.

“Working for the first Latino woman in the Texas House was a big impetus for me to enter the policy arena,” says Flores, who received her law degree from UT Austin in 1977. “I could see there was a higher need for women in politics.”

To pay it forward, Flores serves as a mentor for UT Austin’s NEW Leadership™ Texas, a summer residential institute designed to educate female students from colleges across Texas about politics and leadership. During the six-day program, she met with a group of 25 students to answer questions and offer insights into the challenges they’ll likely encounter in the political arena.

Even if students aren’t charting out a road to the White House, the networking aspect of the program will undoubtedly help them in their future careers, says Nancy Ewert, program coordinator in the Center of Women’s and Gender Studies, which sponsors NEW Leadership™ Texas.

“In addition to meeting with several prominent women who are shaping public policy, participants will leave the program with a strong network of future leaders who share common interests,” Ewert says.

Recommended Reading Inside Toyland Working, Shopping, and Social Inequality University of California Press, Jan. 2006

By Christine L. Williams, professor, Department of Sociology and Center for Women's and Gender Studies

an election-year partisan fight over which policies are friendlier to women.

Had it passed, the bill would prohibit employers from paying a man more than a woman for the same job, and it would have stopped retaliation against workers for inquiring about wages of other employees.

Whether or not the bill would effectively bridge the wage gap remains to be seen, says Bethany Albertson, assistant professor of government. But if Texas passed a state-level version of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, it would set a new standard for the rest of the country to take gender discrimination seriously. ”I don’t understand why more politicians aren’t paying more attention to women’s voting potential.

On a national level, women outvote men,” says Albertson, who notes that voting in favor of gender equality can be a highly effective campaign strategy.

Finding Solutions Political agendas aside, Glass believes the Paycheck Fairness Act is a common sense fix to ending salary secrecy, empowering women to negotiate for the wages they deserve.

“We need new legislation like the Paycheck Fairness Act that can put a stop to gender discrimination in corporate jobs,” Glass says. “We need to move away from this pretense that the only way to get ahead is to continuously ask for a raise. When the power lies within the hands of the employers, there’s going to be unfair treatment. That’s just the way it is.”

Williams, however, believes that a long-term solution lies far outside the bounds of salary transparency legislation.

“To fill the gap, companies need to enforce good old-fashioned affirmative action programs,” says Williams, who recently won the Jessie Bernard Award from the American Sociological Association for her research on women and society. “We need to rehabilitate these programs that hold companies accountable with hiring guidelines and goals. That’s the only way to spread awareness about gender inequity—and to ultimately change discriminatory behaviors. Once behaviors change through corporate and government mandates, the values will follow.”

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INTERVIEWS BY ALICIA DIETRICH PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN BIRZER

The Pro Bene Meritis Award is the highest honor bestowed by the College of Liberal Arts at The University of Texas at Austin. First granted in 1984, it is given each spring to alumni, faculty 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.

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Creating Your Own Noble Purpose

Name: Robert Henry Dedman Jr., B.A. Economics ’79, The University of Texas at Austin; and MBA ’80 and J.D. ’84, Southern Methodist University Hometown: Dallas Robert Dedman Jr. is a steadfast supporter of liberal arts students through the Dedman Distinguished Scholars Program, a four-year, merit-based scholarship program that has funded 132 outstanding scholars at UT Austin since 1989. Dedman is president and CEO of DFI Management, Ltd. and general partner of Putterboy, Ltd. His company now owns Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina, which hosted the 2014 U.S. Open for both men and women. He lives in Dallas with his wife, Rachael, and his two children, Catherine and Nancy.

Why did you choose to endow a scholarship program in UT’s College of Liberal Arts?

Our family believes in the fundamental value of a liberal arts education that teaches you not what to think, or how to think, but most importantly how to think for yourself. A liberal arts education develops the skills to think critically, question everything, synthesize various perspectives, derive conclusions and then act on your convictions.

What qualities define a Dedman Scholar?

1. Insatiable curiosity in searching for the truth and its meaning.

2. A passion for challenging the status quo.

3. Servant leadership.

4. Makes time for family, friends and having fun.

What advice would you give to the incoming class of Dedman Scholars?

My advice would be to live a balanced life: have a plan, focus on lifelong learning, have an attitude of gratitude and create your own noble purpose by applying the four qualities above. As Mark Twain said, “The two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you figure out why you were born.”

When you were a student, did you already have a strong vision for what you wanted to do with your life?

My vision at the time was to get the best possible education I could (including getting an MBA and law degree) that would expose me to ideas, opportunities and people regardless of my ultimate chosen field of endeavor.

How do you define success?

It is best captured by John Wesley’s admonition: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, at all the times you can, in all the places you can, for all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”

Who has been the biggest influence in your life?

My parents—my mother gave me unconditional love, and my father gave me unconditional coaching.

You’ve been named one of the most influential people in golf. What is your favorite course to play?

Pinehurst No. 2, especially after the restoration done by UT alumnus Ben Crenshaw’s firm Coore & Crenshaw. They captured the original design intent of Donald Ross and Mother Nature, which will position Pinehurst to host our nation’s championships for at least the next 100 years.

Photos: Brian Birzer

2014 Pro Bene Meritis

Robert Henry Dedman Jr.

Life & Letters Fall 2014

Q&A

Judy Perkins

Finding Joy in Life and Learning

Full name: Judith Watson Perkins, B.S. Education ’66, The University of Texas at Austin Hometown: Bay City, Texas A sixth-generation Texan, Judy Perkins is a longtime supporter and ambassador of the College of Liberal Arts. She serves as an active and passionate member of the College of Liberal Arts Development Council, the Liberal Arts Honors Campaign Committee and has been a driving force in support of the Shakespeare at Winedale Program. She has been involved in the education system throughout her life as a teacher, school board president and parent. She lives with her husband, Dick, in Houston, where she serves in many volunteer roles, including the Houston Junior Forum.

The Perkinses have established two endowments within the College of Liberal Arts, including one that supports student scholarships and a second that supports Shakespeare at Winedale.

You’ve been a generous supporter of the Shakespeare at Winedale program at UT. How did you get involved with this program, and what do you think students gain from participating in the program?

We became involved with Shakespeare at Winedale after attending a play—Romeo and Juliet. I think students gain lifelong friendships, confidence, an ability to overcome obstacles and a love of Shakespeare.

What do you think Shakespeare teaches us?

A love of the poetry of his day as well as the history of his day. He also teaches us how to write great romance and drama.

Do you have a favorite play?

Romeo and Juliet, Henry V and Hamlet.

When you were a student at UT, you studied education, history and government. Can you talk about the value of a liberal arts education in your life?

Liberal arts helped me learn the value of approaching life from many sides, to have balance and joy in learning and living.

What advice would you give your 18-year-old self, and by extension, current college freshmen?

Take advantage of all that UT has to offer. Join clubs, volunteer, take a semester abroad, travel, find a parttime job, make friendships with people from other parts of the world. Swim in Barton Springs.

You’ve spent many years involved in education at all levels—teaching in the classroom, serving on the board of trustees in Spring Branch ISD and giving back through philanthropy. What drives your passion for education?

Wanting to see children succeed. Thinking of every child as gifted. Knowing education is the key to the future of our country.

How do you define success?

Finding joy in whatever you are doing, for yourself and for others.

What do you consider your greatest accomplishment?

Our children, Keith and Stephanie.

Who’s been the greatest influence in your life, and what lessons have you learned from this person?

Amali Runyon Perkins, my mother-in-law. She taught me how to have faith, love large, laugh often, continue learning, that family is everything and to always think of others.

What books are currently on your nightstand?

Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell, The Last Lion: William Spencer Churchill Defender of the Realm by William Manchester and Tough Customer by Sandra Brown.

“Liberal arts helped me learn the value of approaching life from many sides, to have balance and joy in learning and living.”

Judy Perkins

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Jim Garrison

Inspiring Lifetime Readers Full name: James D. Garrison, B.A. English ’65, Princeton University; Ph.D. English ’72, University of California at Berkeley Hometown: Bremerton, Washington James Garrison is the Archibald A. Hill Regents Professor in American and English Literature and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at UT Austin. Garrison served as chair of the Department of English from 1994-2006, and is known for his dedication to the university and student success. He is author of numerous publications, including two books on the poetry of John Dryden. Garrison is an avid cyclist and has completed the 50-mile Hill Country Ride for AIDS for the past four years.

“Literature stretches our imaginations, invites empathy with others and encourages understanding of the full range of human possibility.”

Jim Garrison

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You’ve said that your goal is to encourage your students to share your own love of great books.

How do you define a “great book,” and how do you instill a love of them in your students?

I try to instill in my students a love for books that generations of readers have found compelling and rewarding, books that reflect—but also transcend— the time and place in which they were written. Don Quixote, for example, is the quintessential work of the Spanish Golden Age, but it has been translated into virtually every modern language because it speaks to something universal in the human condition—to our follies as well as to our aspirations and ideals. A book like Don Quixote is rewarding in another way, as well, in that it has inspired later writers—Flaubert in Madame Bovary and Dostoevsky in The Idiot, for famous examples—to address some of the same concerns. As students begin to see that reading one great book can put them on track for reading other great books, they are on their way to becoming lifetime readers—and that’s the real goal of all my teaching.

What can great literature teach us about the world?

One of my favorite passages in Tom Jones is the moment in an introductory chapter where Fielding imagines that long after he is gone he will be read “with honor” by those whom he would never know.

When I think about this passage, I can’t help but regard great literature as a kind of miracle, offering us access to the words, thoughts, ideas, values and lives of men and women from different times and places.

Sitting in our living rooms, we can open a book and be in the presence of another mind—that of John Milton or Samuel Johnson, for example, or experience another era—Virgil’s Rome, Dante’s Florence, Joyce’s Dublin. For this wonderful opportunity we should be very grateful because it provides us—not so much with knowledge of the world—but rather with an appreciation of how others have understood and experienced it. In this way literature stretches our imaginations, invites empathy with others and encourages understanding of the full range of human possibility. In my view, there can’t be anything more important than this.

You’ve been affiliated with UT for four decades now. What’s the biggest change you’ve seen at UT since you started teaching here?

I don’t see one big change so much as a number of small changes that have served to make the university a better environment for both teaching and learning than it was when I arrived on campus in 1973. Students come to UT as freshmen better prepared academically than I remember them from 40 years ago. They also benefit from more helpful orientation programs and from significantly better advising and mentoring.

Improvements in the design of academic programs (at least the ones I’m familiar with) have also helped to provide more coherence to the educational experience.

The curve, as I see it, is progressive, and I am very optimistic about the future of the university.

Photo: Brian Birzer

Q&A

Pulitzer Finalist Tells Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary People History

History Department Chair Jacqueline Jones Earns Second Career Pulitzer Prize Nomination

Jacqueline Jones is chair and professor of the Department of History.

Photo: Sarah Lim

BY EMILY NIELSEN The Pulitzer Prize nominating jury has named Jacqueline Jones, chair of the Department of History at The University of Texas at Austin, a 2014 Pulitzer Prize finalist in history for her book, A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race From the Colonial Era to Obama’s America.

The nomination surprised Jones, who didn’t know her publisher had submitted her work for consideration.

“When a colleague emailed me to tell me I was a finalist, it came as a complete surprise,” Jones says. “I was gratified to know that the Pulitzer jury thought my book deserved a wide readership. I think I speak for my colleagues when I say that we professors are always hoping to reach a wider audience outside of the academy.”

In her book, Jones examines the myth of race in America and considers the political and economic forces that produce the fiction that people are fundamentally different because of their race.

Jones, who grew up in the small, segregated town of Christiana, Delaware,

became passionate about the importance of history at a young age.

“As a child, I was always curious about the fact that the black children who lived near my school had to attend another school several miles away,” Jones says. “So when I was young I decided to find out how and why segregation came about, and what this invidious type of discrimination meant. I discovered the best way to do that was to study history.”

Jones became chair of the History Department in August and has been a professor at UT Austin since 2008. She teaches a variety of history courses— everything from first-year seminars to graduate courses—and American history is especially close to her heart.

“I think it’s essential that everybody learn about American history; it’s a story of great drama, and of course the past shapes who we are today,” Jones says. “I love introducing my students to the grand sweep of American history, and to fascinating individuals they may not

have heard about—ordinary people who changed history.”

Jones says history is important because it requires us to evaluate various kinds of evidence, think critically and write clearly—all skills integral to success not just in college, but also in the wider world.

“We can better comprehend our own families and communities, and the United States and its relations with other countries today if we know something about the past,” she adds. “Finally, history is fascinating! Anyone who loves a good story will love history, where the human experience in all its complexity is played out on a grand stage.”

Jones was first named a Pulitzer finalist in 1986 for her book Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women and the Family from Slavery to Present, which also won the Bancroft prize. Jones was also awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship (nicknamed the “genius grant”) in 1999.

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Op-ed

Pakistan Exchange Benefits Global Scholarship

BY KAMRAN ASDAR ALI

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STANDING, LEFT TO RIGHT: Shahla Tabbassum, an assistant professor in the Department of Gender Studies at FJWU; and Heather Hindman, an associate professor in the Department of Asian Studies at UT Austin, co-taught the course “Performing Gender” in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, May 2013. partnership has been to develop new teaching methodologies, curricula and educational materials at FJWU. It appears we are making strong progress toward that goal, as many of the Pakistani scholars are developing pedagogical skills that are benefitting students at FJWU. One scholar is assigning journal articles to her students and also inspiring other scholars to do the same. The scholars are also learning new assessment strategies, and they are moving away from formal lectures and adopting a freer, more participatory approach to classroom teaching. Several report that they have already taught or plan to teach new courses based on what they have learned at UT Austin.

As the exchange program approaches its end in 2015, we endeavor to create a sustainable collaborative initiative so we can continue to develop and introduce new teaching methodologies at FJWU. Toward this end, SAI is collaborating with

UT Global Initiative for Education and Leadership to develop a teacher-training program. We intend to train FJWU faculty on our campus in the coming months and also anticipate sending professional UT Austin trainers to FJWU to conduct teacher-training workshops.

The long term goal of SAI would be to assist FJWU in establishing a Center for Teaching Excellence in Pakistan that could benefit university teachers from the region in imparting advanced teacher training courses. In this process we understand that such undertakings must be embedded in the curricular practices of universities within the United States and South Asia. In our collaboration with FJWU, we ultimately seek to foster and instill an ideal we embrace at UT Austin: to respect difference, be it ethnic, gender or religious in nature.

Kamran Asdar Ali is an associate professor of anthropology and the director of the South Asia Institute at The University of Texas at Austin.

Pakistan photo: Courtesy of Kamran Asdar Ali Baroque photo: Carolyn Brown

With our knowledge of Pakistani society at the South Asia Institute (SAI) we understand that Pakistan faces vital social needs in education, health, rural and urban infrastructure and job creation. We are also acutely aware of the internal conflicts within Pakistani society based on ethnic, religious, gender-based and sectarian tensions. Yet we perceive such moments in a nation’s history as opportunities to rethink a range of options for the future.

One solution to the social problems faced by Pakistan would be the deepening of democratic values that emphasize tolerance and co-existence, coupled with the expansion of educational opportunities that promote these values. Hence we have created opportunities to work with our Pakistani counterparts to chart out a progressive post-secondary educational structure that focuses on the social sciences and humanities. In order to attain this goal SAI was awarded a major three-year grant by the U.S. Department of State that has enabled us to develop an exchange program with the Fatima Jinnah Women’s University (FJWU) in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

FJWU is a pioneer in women’s post-secondary education in Pakistan.

The majority of its students come from the Islamabad-Rawalpindi twin city area. The institution, as a microcosm, embodies the diversity of Pakistan’s social and cultural life, representing as it does the nation’s various ethnicities, religious backgrounds and sectarian groups. In our partnership with FJWU we explore how future graduates from Pakistani universities can acquire the necessary skills to promote respect for cultural difference, economic justice and civic liberties.

During the last two years SAI has hosted 16 scholars from FJWU for semester-long stays, and eight UT faculty and one independent evaluator have travelled to FJWU. One of the goals of this

Life & Letters Fall 2014

Inside the Baroque “Façade of the Seven Princes,” entryway to the chapel of the Virgin in the Church of the Carmen, San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

Photo: Marsha Miller

The “seven princes” refer to the seven archangels, who are represented as protectors of the Virgin Mary. Created in 1788, this splendid altarpiece-façade, decorated with intricately carved stucco, is a stunning example of the ornate late Baroque style known as Churrigueresque.

This and other photographs by Carolyn Brown are part of the exhibition, Inside the Baroque: The Legacy of Mexican Viceregal Arts and Culture, on view at the Benson Latin American Collection through January 2015.

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