Society And Culture

Emmy Award–winning journalist Byron Pitts, co-host of ABC’s Nightline, will be the keynote speaker for Vanderbilt’s 2023 Martin Luther King Jr. Day commemorative event on Monday, Jan. 16, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at Blair School of Music’s Ingram Hall. Other activities planned for VU’s commemoration include a Joint Day of Service on Saturday, Jan. 14, and the Nashville MLK Day March and Convocation on Monday morning. Read More

The humanities, creative expression and artistic inquiry at Vanderbilt are poised to see new engagement, reach and impact spurred by increased investments through the university-wide Discovery Vanderbilt initiative. Read More

Allison Schachter, associate professor of Jewish studies and English, was awarded the Fenia and Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize in Yiddish Studies from the Modern Language Association of America. Read More

Tennessee Republicans favor Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over former President Donald Trump to be the party’s presidential nominee in 2024 by double digits, according to the latest statewide Vanderbilt Poll, which also found shifting public attitudes around access to abortion. Read More

A new co-edited volume by Vanderbilt researchers is a tribute to the late Katie Geneva Cannon, who in 1974 became the first African American woman ordained in the United Presbyterian Church. Cannon’s work lays the groundwork for continued discussions on moral thought among scholars today.   Read More

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recently appointed Associate Professor of Psychology and Human Development Lisa Fazio as a member of the Committee on Understanding and Addressing Misinformation about Science. Read More

Vanderbilt Blair School of Music’s Blair Big Band is among 10 outstanding college jazz orchestras from across the nation invited to participate in the third annual Jack Rudin Jazz Championship. The event, which will be Jan. 14 and 15 at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City, will include workshops, performances and a high-level collegiate competition. Read More

A $700,000 grant awarded to institutions that collaborate to administer the Engine for Art, Democracy and Justice program in Tennessee is designed to allow advancement of the program’s reach and enhance the visibility of the arts in Nashville and across the state. Read More

Stacey M. Floyd-Thomas, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor and associate professor of ethics and society, has edited and published Religion, Race, and COVID-19: Confronting White Supremacy in the Pandemic, an anthology exploring the countless challenges, racially charged acts, setbacks, triumphs and newfound hope through the eyes of individuals living through one of the most pressing, perplexing social crises in recent memory—the global COVID-19 pandemic.  Read More

At the coffee shop, we are asked to pay more, sometimes a lot more, for “quality.” But how do we determine the quality of a sensory experience? Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Anthropology Ted Fischer’s research examines the quest for quality among always-changing tastes. He discusses it in this Q&A—just in time for International Coffee Day on Oct. 1. Read More

The Vanderbilt Blair School of Music has secured $5 million in funding for the pilot phase of a comprehensive scholarship, the Blair Community Scholars Program, which will recruit highly talented students from underrepresented and vulnerable backgrounds. Read More

We Shall Overcome: Civil Rights and the Nashville Press, 1957-1968, a photography exhibition on loan to Vanderbilt Divinity School from the Frist Art Museum, illuminates key moments in Nashville’s struggle for racial equality, including the leadership of the Rev. James Lawson. Read More

Joerg Rieger, Distinguished Professor of Theology, Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair of Wesleyan Studies and founding director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice, discusses why Labor Day is an opportunity to reflect on the past and future of labor while examining economic inequalities that are still prevalent. Read More

Vanderbilt University faculty members Jane Landers, Alex Jahangir and Christopher Slobogin are scheduled to speak at “TEDxNashville: The End of Impossible” at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center Aug. 27–28. A limited number of free tickets are available, and Vanderbilt community members can get 25 percent off the price of individual general admission tickets to the event. Read More

A pair of U.S. Department of Education grants totaling $1.7 million awarded to Vanderbilt University’s Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies will allow for innovation in curriculum and promotion of public awareness about Latin America.  Read More

Associate Professor of Anthropology T.S. Harvey has been awarded a Ford Foundation Senior Fellowship—a first for a Vanderbilt faculty member—for his environmental justice and public health work in Guatemala. Harvey is one of only two 2022 recipients of the senior fellowship, which is intended to support research that advances and contributes knowledge to sciences, engineering and medicine. Read More

Governments of lower- and middle-income countries increasingly are turning to public-private partnerships to operate schools as an alternative to traditional public schools. Vanderbilt professors Felipe Barrera-Osorio and Andrew Dustan have received a one-year NSF grant in excess of $400,000 to lead an interdisciplinary study on the quality of these partnership schools in Bogotá, Colombia. Read More

Vanderbilt Blair School of Music and the Nashville Symphony have announced an expansion of their partnership in the Curb Youth Symphony. Beginning with the 2022–23 school year, Nashville Symphony Associate Conductor Nathan Aspinall will serve as conductor and artistic director of the ensemble.  Read More

Join Kendra Oliver, assistant professor of pharmacology and director and founder of ArtLab, for the next Lab-to-Table Conversation on Wednesday, July 27. The panelists will explore how a group of self-identified scientist-artists are embracing this particular duality.  Read More

Americans’ general faith and trust in democracy has stabilized in the first half of 2022, remaining relatively flat through the second quarter, according to the most recent Vanderbilt Unity Index. Read More