News
A Grain of Salt: A Black History Month Show
The second annual Black History Month show A Grain of Salt took place at 8pm, Friday the 24th, bringing together a creative fusion of music, dance, poetry, and drama. The performance, organized by the Lebron-Wiggins-Pran Cultural Center and co-sponsored by Office of Multicultural Education and Office of Student Development, took place in the Red Barn and featured ten thought-provoking performances by students addressing stereotypical images of black people in society. In the program, director Tashal Brown wrote that the problematic “examples of these images include the savage, coon, jezebel, mammy, brute, welfare mother, and the Black Body as hypersexual,” which “portray black people in a limited scope and perpetuate the idea of racial inferiority.” A Grain of Salt featured the message that more exposure does not mean better quality. Focusing on an often glossed-over idea, the show presented a wide scope of ideas and opinions that both recognized the importance of the subject and raised questions for further discussion. Read More
Censorship, China, and Google News
China currently has more than 100 million Internet users and this number is expected to rise dramatically. To gain access to this rapidly growing market, Google has agreed to adhere to the Chinese government’s free speech restrictions. If a user searches a term that is restricted, Google informs them, “In accordance with local laws and policies, some of the results have not been displayed.” Google is the only major search engine operating in China to explicitly inform users when search results are blocked or hidden. Read More
Intelligent Design Debated at UMass
Anyone who has ever tried to get a comprehensible sentence out of Babel Fish will understand the difficulties inherent in translation. While I can get this simple online program to tell me how to say “El Clímax es el mejor periódico,” anything longer becomes hopelessly convoluted and inauthentic. The problem becomes even more complicated when you need to know not just how to fudge your Spanish homework, but how to deal with the challenges of negotiating multiple languages in the different domains of life.. Read More
'I Believe': Mike Ford's Spiritual Journey
“This is gonna be strange, but that won’t surprise ya,” Mike Ford, the retiring dean warned as he began addressing the students and faculty gathered in the Merrill Living Room to hear about his spiritual journey. Read More
The Search for an Assistant Professor of Asian Religions Continues
Members of the Asian religion search committee in the school of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies held two more campus presentations for finalists applying for the position of assistant professor of Asian religions. William Chu gave the first talk on February 14 entitled, “Mahakasapa, the Woman-Hater? Academicians as Theologians and the Liberalization of the Taiwanese Nun Order.” “Is there a measurable ‘observer’s effect’ in religion studies just as in the physical sciences? Can what religious historians do in universities affect the way living religious communities develop in and adapt to modern contingencies?” Chu asked. Modern Buddhology in East Asia has given “birth to whole generations of ‘scholar-practitioners,’ who used their supposedly less ‘fallible’ academic methods (in contrast to faithful reliance on the increasingly problematized sectarian myths and scriptural histories) to subvert and reinterpret some of the most revered and idiosyncratic aspects of traditional Buddhism,” Chu stated. Chu received his Ph.D. (with distinction) from the program in Buddhist studies at the University of California, LA in 2005; an M.A. (with distinction) in East Asian languages and cultures; and a B.A. in psychology also from the University of California, LA, where he is currently a teaching fellow. His dissertation is entitled “A Buddha-Shaped Hole: Yinshun’s Critical Buddhology and the Theological Crisis in Modern Chinese Buddhism.” Read More
New Professor Teaches Middle Eastern Studies
Upon walking into the first class of a new semester, spotting the professor is usually a simple task. You can bet they’ll be middle-aged, maybe have on a buttoned-down shirt or a v-necked sweater. You can typically count on their only piercings residing in their ears…or can you? Read More