The Academic Minute for 2022.09.26-2022.09.30

The Academic Minute from 09.26 – 09.30

Monday, September 26th
Frank McAndrew – Knox College
Is Physically Risky Heroism a ‘Guy Thing’?
Frank McAndrew is the Cornelia H. Dudley Professor of Psychology at Knox College, a blogger for Psychology Today Magazine, and an elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and several other scholarly societies. He is an evolutionary social psychologist who studies gossip, aggression, and creepiness. Consistent with his long tenure at a liberal arts college, McAndrew is also an award-winning teacher who is particularly proud of the fact that more than 110 of his former students have gone on to complete a doctoral degree in psychology or a closely related field.

Tuesday, September 27th
Magnus Course – University of Edinburgh
The End of Purgatory
Magnus Course is senior lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. His books include Becoming Mapuche: Person and Ritual in Indigenous Chile (2011) and the co-authored Fluent Selves: Autobiography, Person, and History in Lowland South America (2014). He is currently working on a book provisionally titled Leaving Purgatory: the Afterlives of an Afterlife.

Wednesday, September 28th
Aram Goudsouzian – University of Memphis
Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution
Aram Goudsouzian is the Bizot Family Professor of History at the University of Memphis, where he teaches courses on modern American history, with a particular focus on race, politics, and culture. His most recent book is The Men and the Moment: The Election of 1968 and the Rise of Partisan Politics in America (University of North Carolina Press, 2019). His book Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014) won the McLemore Book Prize from the Mississippi Historical Society. He is also the author of two biographies of significant popular culture figures during the civil rights era: King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution (University of California Press, 2010); and Sidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon (University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

Thursday, September 29th
Timothy Hampton – University of California Berkeley
Cheerfulness, Then and Now
Writer, scholar, teacher, and translator Timothy Hampton teaches at the University of California at Berkeley.  Primarily a student of the Romance languages and of the early modern period, he has written widely on literature and culture across languages and media.  His most recent books are Bob Dylan:  How the Songs Work (Zone Books, 2019), and Cheerfulness:  A Literary and Cultural History (Zone Books, 2022).  He is currently working on two projects:  a memoir/essay about social inequality and the study of the humanities, and a book about Leonard Cohen.

Friday September 30th
David Richardson – University of California, Irvine
The Effects of Lung Cancer and Radon in Uranium Miners
David B. Richardson, PhD, associate dean of research and professor of environmental and occupational health at the University of California, Irvine Program in Public Health, is an internationally recognized researcher and expert in occupational health. With this background, his work involves designing studies that allow researchers to explore potential occupational.