Challenge. Change. is a weekly news program featuring profiles on faculty research and expertise relating to current issues, alumni experiences and expertise, and student experiences on and off campus at Clark University in Worcester, MA. I created CC during my time as Director of Multimedia Storytelling at Clark. I co-produced, edited, and scored every episode.
Here are a few favorite episodes. Find more on Apple and Spotify.
“The circulation of grief and rage is a type of commentary on the state of affairs in the world. It’s what we express when we don't have the right words,” says Professor Hanley.
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 text.
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.
“Being open to the changing nature of language, identities, and the ways that we interact with the world is something I bring into our discussions of Shakespeare.”
Some people feel a tingle in their brain after watching someone whisper in a YouTube video. Hugh Manon, professor of screen studies, and Sho Niu, professor of computer science, study the social media phenomenon ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response.
“I think about the way structures of nutrition and structures of heteronormativity mimic each other — we're taught that we're supposed to eat certain things at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, all of which are culturally specific,” says Elizabeth Blake, Professor of English. “Similarly, our understanding of how sexuality operates is culturally specific and prescribed. What I'm interested in is the way modernist writers think about transgression in terms of eating, which invites us to think about transgression in terms of sexuality.”