Challenge. Change.

A little bit electronic, with a touch of world music, and a whole lot of Latin jazz. This is the music of  Omar Sosa , a Grammy-nominated Cuban composer and pianist and the subject of a  feature-length documentary  by Clark  screen studies  Professor  Soren Sorensen . The film is a project 10 years in the making, and over time, Sorensen and Sosa developed a friendship...

Jonathan Hack ’09, director of content and strategy for the Justice, Health, and Democracy Impact Initiative at Harvard University, sees a juxtaposition when comparing the current Supreme Court to the Supreme Court of Earl Warren, who served as chief justice from 1953 to 1969. In the 50s and 60s, the court expanded rights in America, including the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. Las...

Ed Greig ’23, MFA ’24, an interactive media major in the Becker School of Design and Technology program, attended the PAX East gaming convention on a mission: to find out how gamers, developers, and students define a great game. Greig roamed the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center with a recorder in hand, determined to find an answer. One developer insisted the best games are ones that try s...

Screen studies  Professor  Rox Samer  constantly crosses the boundary between consuming media for research and for fun. Patricia Highsmith’s novels, like “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” and their film adaptations fall into that category. Highsmith balked at being labeled a suspense or mystery writer, but “The Price of Salt” was her only novel that did not contain a murder. Thriller or no...

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education bill, also known as the Don’t Say Gay bill, into law last year, researchers and the public were largely focused on the legislation’s effect on youth and teachers. Clark  psychology  Professor  Abbie Goldberg  wanted to learn how the new law was impacting LGBTQ+ parents.     The law prohibits c...

When Betsy Huang , an English professor and Clark’s Andrea B. and Peter D. Klein ’64 Distinguished Professor, picked up J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” at age 12, Bilbo Baggins’ adventure to lands vastly different than his comfortable home in the Shire felt relatable. It was just two years after Huang immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan. Huang began to study science fiction as a scholar, analyzing...

Robert Goddard , M.A. 1910, Ph. D. 1911, had big dreams of going to Mars years before he launched the first liquid-fueled rocket on March 16, 1926. Ninety-seven years after that historic launch, Charles Slatkin ’74 has his own dreams about inspiring the next generation of scientists and space explorers.  Slatkin — who, like Goddard, was a Clark professor after graduating — purchased Goddard’s...

History Professor Nina Kushner asks her students to study who determines what activity is deemed illicit. Kushner developed an interest in this area after watching her mother, a Rhode Island legislator, lobby for bills to support gay rights and reproductive rights.  “Sometimes the history of sexuality is backward, right? So things actually get more strict, not less strict. We always assume th...

Music Professor John Freyermuth has a hectic schedule, split between recording studios and classrooms. As a music engineer, Freyermuth takes recorded songs and ensures each disparate element sounds like a cohesive piece. He’s also worked in songwriting and music production. Freyermuth has collaborated with a range of talent, from Drake to Angel Olsen, and from Methyl Ethel to the emerging artists...

When  English  Professor  Dianne Berg  read news about a Duxbury, Massachusetts, mother accused of killing her three children, she thought immediately of two cases from her research. Berg studies representations of domestic violence and the literary appropriation of real stories about death, murder, and infanticide.  She’s analyzed the discourse and press coverage of ...

Clark  education  Professor  Raphael Rogers '94 teaches aspiring teachers. That means he helps students learn how to discuss difficult topics in the classroom, including racism and slavery. This work comes as people across the country — from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to parents in Massachusetts towns — challenge whether uncomfortable parts of American history belong in schools.&nbsp...

Seeing the growing popularity of artificial intelligence like  ChatGPT , a chatbot launched by OpenAI in November, Rabbi Joshua Franklin ’06, M.A. ’07, engaged his congregation in a quirky, but poignant, experiment. Franklin asked ChatGPT to write a sermon based on a Torah portion about the idea of vulnerability and  read it to his congregation . No one could guess who authored the...

Like students who came before them, Mac Hudson and David Baxter found themselves enthralled by lessons about global genocide during classes taught by Clark  sociology  Professor  Shelly Tenenbaum . The difference is that Hudson and Baxter took their courses entirely inside one of the state’s medium security prisons, not on a college campus.  Tenenbaum teaches courses to incarce...

Max De Faria ’20 can remember what it was like to not have enough food at home as a child, an experience that has empowered them to dedicate their life to anti-hunger work. De Faria strives to create an equitable food system — the process from which food starts as a seed, ends up on your plate, and returns to the ground. This mission steered De Faria’s work last summer, when they interned at Harva...

Geography  Professor  Max Ritts  has listened to whale song on the north coast of British Columbia, using the sound to document species abundance and protect the area from the shipping industry. He’s gone behind the scenes with an indigenous heavy metal band, which used lyrics to address social, environmental, and political concerns in their community. Ritts discovered that acoustic...

Happy Holidays! We're taking a few weeks off to enjoy the Holidays and recharge. We'll be back in January for Season 3. Have suggestions for us? Is there story we're not covering? Reach out and let us know. Email producers Melissa Hanson and Andrew Hart with your feedback. Challenge. Change. is produced by Melissa Hanson and Andrew Hart for Clark University. Find other episodes wherever you listen...

Determining whether extractive industries are an opportunity or area of concern requires a social and political discussion. Anthony Bebbington, the Higgins Professor of Environment and Society at Clark’s Graduate School of Geography and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the   American Academy of Arts and Sciences, has spent years researching the gains and losses...

Clark entrepreneurship and innovation professor John Dobson believes entrepreneurship can break the cycle of recidivism. Nate Bethancourt is an example. Nate is taking classes at Clark as part of a new program called Liberal Arts for Returning Citizens. LARC is a tuition-free educational program for formerly incarcerated individuals to become Clark students with a chance to matriculate. Nate has f...

Mushrooms are having a moment.  Biology  professors  David Hibbett  and  Javier Tabima  say a desire to connect with nature is fueling a trend among young people who enjoy foraging for mushrooms and studying fungi. Hibbett and Tabima discuss the mysticism around mushrooms, why its unique to have two mycologists on a college campus, and the excitement of discovering a...

We're taking a two-week break and will be back in December with fresh, weekly episodes. TTYL! Challenge. Change.  is produced by Melissa Hanson and Andrew Hart for Clark University. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen and subscribe on  Spotify  or  Apple Podcasts .

In Professor Tyran Grillo’s classroom, students analyze Hollywood remakes of Japanese films from “Godzilla” to “The Ring” to “Shall We Dance.” They evaluate the ways these remakes erase Japanese culture or tokenize it with weak attempts to retain a connection to Japan. Grillo explains what makes a film adaptation worthwhile — or not.  “It’s more than simply looking at Hollywood as a profit-ma...

Setting children up for success starts before they’re even born. Ellen Darling, Ph. D. ’16, developed the Before Baby Relationship Checkup — adapted from the  Marriage Checkup  created by Clark  psychology  Professor  James Córdova  — to strengthen relationships between parents who are expecting a child. Darling explains how bettering a birthing parent’s mental health...

The economy and inflation are among the top issues bringing voters to the polls for the Nov. 8 midterm election amid a debate on whether democracy is in danger. Clark Political science  Professor  Robert Boatright  examines a link between polarization in Congress today and the political conflict of the late 19th century.    “That’s an era where the country is almost e...

Rachel Christ-Doane ’17 didn’t know much about Salem or witchcraft until she landed an internship with the Salem Witch Museum as a sophomore at Clark. Now, she’s the museum’s education director, and her research has led the museum to update content in its exhibits. Christ-Doane tells us about her recent discovery of a “treasure trove” of information about the youngest victim of the trials, 4-year-...

Clark geography  Professor  Florencia Sangermano  has spent the last few years strapping audio recorders onto trees in forests across Central Massachusetts, recording everything from chirping birds to traffic to rainfall. She’s monitoring the soundscapes of these areas to gauge the health of the ecosystem and determine the impact that humans and climate change are having on it. On t...