Blog
Why So Serious? How Mental Illness Became Laughable
Oct. 10, 2024—Sarah Hagaman, 2024-25 RPW Center Graduate Student Fellow. This year’s group is exploring the theme of Emerging Technologies in Human Context: Past, Present, and Future Can you laugh at jokes about mental illness—even a joke about suicide? Breakout standup comedian Taylor Tomlinson thinks so. Yet nervous audience laughter—the equivalent of a collective tee-hee or a...
Cognitive Biases in Large Language Models
Sep. 27, 2024—David Thorstad, 2024-25 RPW Center Faculty Fellow. This year’s group is exploring the theme of Emerging Technologies in Human Context: Past, Present, and Future It is often held that humans fall prey to a number of cognitive biases. For example, we may react differently to different framings of the same decision problem, or may anchor...
How did Nashville’s Youth (Re)Imagine the Future of Global Mall with Technology?
Sep. 6, 2024—Hannah Ziegler, 2024-25 RPW Center Graduate Student Fellow. This year’s group is exploring the theme of Emerging Technologies in Human Context: Past, Present, and Future As part of my ongoing work with the Teens (Re-)Storying the Creek with STEM (T-ReCS) project, I have been interested in exploring ways to capitalize on the pedagogical affordances of...
Life-Affirming Cycling Practices in Quito, Ecuador
Aug. 23, 2024—Julie Gamble, 2024-25 RPW Center Faculty Fellow. This year’s group is exploring the theme of Emerging Technologies in Human Context: Past, Present, and Future Daisi held her right arm in the air with a closed fist, a common signal for cyclists to use when coming to a stop. We stopped at her request and had...
Helping Nature Rebound: Enabling People to See The Invisible
Mar. 21, 2024—Andrew Kyung is a 2023-24 Humanities in the Real World Fellow. Human beings are impatient creatures. We seek immediate results when taking action, which may have benefited our ancestors millennia ago when harrowing problems necessitated a swift, gung-ho response. Our tendency to look for immediate and tangible results from drastic action persists today. In an...
Office of Postdoctoral Affairs Newsletter Features Helen Makhdoumian
Mar. 7, 2024—This post by Helen Makhdoumian (CHPP Fellow) is from the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs March 6, 2024 newsletter Walk by the Robert Penn Warren Humanities Center (RPW) on a sunny afternoon, and you’ll likely see a group of people eating at one of the tables outside and having a lively conversation. Odds are good it’ll...
Legal Career Boosted by Humanities Studies
Feb. 15, 2024—Matt Brolund is a 2023-24 Humanities in the Real World Fellow. This year’s undergraduate cohort are blogging their interviews with professionals who majored in the humanities. To Davis Shugrue, a lawyer trained in the humanities, debate is about far more than arguing for the sake of it. From his undergraduate studies to his current position...
The Human Aspect of the Humanities
Feb. 9, 2024—Armani Dill is a 2023-24 Humanities in the Real World Fellow. This year’s undergraduate cohort are blogging their interviews with professionals who majored in the humanities. As one of the first students to graduate from Vanderbilt with the interdisciplinary major of Law, History, and Society, Zachary Buchta is no stranger to uncertainty and unconventional paths...
Plastic and Rust: Memory Through the Lens of Early Videotape Psychotherapy Archives
Feb. 1, 2024—Carmine Grimaldi is a 2023-24 RPW Faculty Theme Fellow. This year’s cohort explores the theme of “The Place of Memory.” The Introduction of Videotape My research focuses on the early social history of videotape, when the electronic image crept into and profoundly reshaped the institutions and daily experiences of postwar America. In contrast to film,...
Indigenous Removals and Their Legacies: A Reading Guide to Start Campus Conversations
Jan. 18, 2024—Helen Makhdoumian is a Collaborative Humanities Postdoctoral Program Fellow with the Department of English. Last semester at Vanderbilt, I attended talks for “Cherokee and Chickasaw Students at Vanderbilt, 1885-1899,” a library exhibit organized by Professor Daniel Sharfstein, and the panel “The Land We Occupy: Vanderbilt Past and Present,” organized by the RPW Center’s Spatial Histories...