Emily Burke never expected she would get the chance to speak directly to Pope Francis. But there she was last month, face-to-face with the Pontiff—virtually, at least, over Zoom–suggesting ways in which the Catholic Church …
College of Letters and Science
L&S Experts on Ukraine
Experts from UW–Madison are available to discuss the latest situation in Ukraine with the news media. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy declared a state of emergency after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered military operations, hitting cities …
UW-built spectrograph en route to South Africa
A near-infrared spectrograph—an instrument that splits light into its individual colors, or wavelengths, to form a spectrum like a rainbow—will soon be shipped to South Africa from UW-Madison. The next-generation instrumentation, custom-built by staff in …
Gold’s Price: Meeting demand for gold comes at a high cost to the environment
If you’re wearing gold jewelry right now, there’s a good chance it came from an illegal mining operation in the tropics and surfaced only after some rainforest was sacrificed, according to a team of University …
Game On: Scott Mellor leverages a popular videogame to engage students in a first-year medieval studies course
It took awhile for Scott Mellor to realize he was teaching his class backwards. For years, Mellor, a distinguished teaching faculty member with the Department of German, Nordic and Slavic+ Studies, would begin his popular …
War is misery: A new book by distinguished history professor Mary Lou Roberts explores the visceral suffering of soldiers through their diaries
“Dogfaces.” “Dough feet.” “The poor bloody infantry.” Soldiers in Europe during the second World War called themselves a range of names, and neither knew nor cared much about their generals’ plans. But they filled their …
The Ubuntu approach to research
As a first-generation college student in a new country, there were so many unknowns with respect to culture, conduct, academics, interests, foods, accents and more. However, these pale in comparison to navigating a colossal college …
Civilizing Influence: Kathryn Ciancia explores how “civilization” has been used to include and exclude certain groups.
Kathryn Ciancia’s fascination with how people have historically mobilized the idea of “civilization” began with the stories her Polish grandfather shared. As a child growing up in a town near Liverpool in the United Kingdom, …
Beth Nguyen in TIME Magazine: The Comfort of a Lunar New Year in Isolation
Professor of English shares her memories of celebrating the Vietnamese holiday as a child. “Lunar New Year might bring to mind festivals and fireworks, but I’ve always associated it with a kind of isolation. Long before …