Congrats to Dr. Sue Smrekar who received her Ph.D. in Geophysics from the SMU Department of Earth Sciences in 1990. She represented NASA last night at the Emmy's where they won 'Outstanding Original Interactive Program' coverage of the NASA In Sight mission to study Mars. READ MORE
DFW Child Originally Posted: September 3, 2019 Martha Satz, Assistant Professor in the English Department was interviewed for this article. Skyla is absolutely over the moon about princesses. The North Texas 5-year-old not only dresses up like the characters and enjoys the movies, but she has also attended parties alongside her aunt, a professional party entertainer who appears at events as princess characters. But type “princess culture” into Google, and you’re sure to find a slew of articles declaring how bad princesses are for kids like Skyla: “Why Disney princesses and ‘princess culture’ are bad for girls.” “Can Disney fix its broken ‘princess culture’?” “Study finds Disney princess culture magnifies stereotypes in young girls.” So are there really so many negative effects resulting from our kids’ obsession with princesses? INNER BEAUTY? When we show [...]
KERA Originally Posted: September 3, 2019 In the discussions about how to mitigate climate change, two important factors are largely ignored: migration and trade. Southern Methodist University professor Klaus Desmet talks to host Krys Boyd about the importance of strategizing long term solutions for commerce and conservation, which he writes about in The Catalyst. LISTEN
The Conversation Originally Posted: August 20, 2019 By: Jill E. Kelly, Associate Professor of History, Southern Methodist University Disclosure statement Jill E. Kelly's research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies (2015) and Fulbright (2010-2011, 2018-2019). The recently released report of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s advisory panel on land reform, and the latest efforts to force through two controversial traditional authority bills, point to the continued legacies of changes to the relationship between traditional leaders, their followers, and land in South Africa’s history. The panel calls for a resolution to the “contending philosophies around land tenure” — those of individual rights and those of communalism. But as traditional leaders fight to continue their control over communally held land, there also needs to be a [...]
D Magazine Originally Posted: August 16, 2019 You might recognize the name Roberto José Andrade Franco. He’s a Ph.D. candidate at SMU who has written a few stories for D Magazine. Roberto is from El Paso. He was there when a North Texas man killed 22 people in a Walmart. At the time, Roberto had an assignment from Deadspin to write about soccer in Juarez. There was no way he could write about the sport without addressing the violence. The result was quite something. A taste: I’ve made that drive so many times I’ve lost count. I know where to stop for gas and which bathrooms are clean. As you drive into that open west Texas land, hours pass between glimpses of even moderate-sized cities. [...]
Event Date: 09/06/2019 Location: Fondren Science 155 Time: 4:00pm Dr. Quintman will talk about his on-going Life of the Buddha project, which explores the connections between textual sources and the visual representation of the Buddha’s biography in a seventeenth-century mural in Central Tibet. Free and open to public. Contact: Steven Lindquist
August 26, 2019 For better or worse, we live in interesting times. As stressful as these days can sometimes be, lived as they are amid warring headlines, political factions, and the constant sensory assault of social media, I take solace in the timely value of the work of my colleagues and students in the philosophy department. In an era of rants and tweets, what could we need more than logic, critical reasoning and sustained, concentrated thought? In an age where people of opposing viewpoints rarely talk to one another, what could be more helpful than studying the arguments on both sides of important issues so that we become clearer not only about what we think, but about what others think as well? When what is [...]
Denton Record-Chronicle Originally Posted: August 3, 2019 When Rolling Stone magazine first wrote about Brave Combo in 1979, the reporter said the genre-bending polka band was from Austin. From there, it was repeated again and again. Almost any media outside of North Texas writing about the group credited Austin as their home, because writers couldn’t conceive that cool music came out of other cities in the state, band founder and lead singer Carl Finch said. And thus began a nearly 40-year tradition of announcing “We’re Brave Combo from Denton, Texas” during sets near and far — as the band resisted any pressure to be lumped in with Dallas or Fort Worth. “I think that we have been so long associated with Denton pride and carrying [...]
NBC 5 Originally Posted: August 8, 2019 Construction workers in Plano unearthed ancient marine fossils from a time when the city was under the sea. Crews found the fossils while working on the future Plano police substation at McDermott Road and Robinson Road. Steve Stoler, with the city of Plano, said crews only dug about seven feet into the ground before they found the fossils in a single 50-pound rock. "I don't know how many people realize this: in ancient times, this was an ocean. When you dig into the limestone shelf, it's not uncommon to find sea creatures and sea shells," Stoler said. "At the time these rocks were deposited, about 85 million years ago, Plano was submerged under a large inland sea," said [...]
Preston Hollow People Originally Posted: August 8, 2019 When SMU senior Page Hurley transferred to SMU in 2015, she didn’t know a soul, but she soon found new friends in her classes. Along the way, the psychology major found a topic for her senior research project – college friendship. Her research won the grand prize at SMU’s Research Day Colloquium, but the crowd of students and faculty members who gathered around Hurley to ask questions made it clear her research was more than academic. “Friendship is a personal topic,” Hurley said. “People can relate to it and apply the research to their lives.” With the help of Chrystyna Kouros, SMU associate professor of psychology, and her own research, here are Hurley’s five research-based tips for [...]