{"id":1060,"date":"2017-01-04T21:14:54","date_gmt":"2017-01-04T21:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/?page_id=1060"},"modified":"2017-01-04T21:14:54","modified_gmt":"2017-01-04T21:14:54","slug":"december-2016","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/inthenews\/december-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"December 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

Defining Place<\/strong><\/a>
\nOn Art and Aesthetics<\/em>
\nFundamentally, we humans are a \u201cplace-loving and place-making\u201d species, observed Alastair Bonnett, professor of Social Geography at Newcastle University, in his 2014 book Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies<\/em>. \u201cPlace\u201d \u2013 we inhabit it and need it and create it. But what does the term mean? How should we define it? Tim Cresswell<\/strong><\/a> (@CresswellTim), a human geographer by training and currently a professor at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut explored the concept in detail in his wide-ranging study Place: An Introduction<\/em>, first published in 2004 and re-issued in 2014. This rich inter-disciplinary discussion includes topics such as landscape, mobility, sexuality and memory.
\nIn the following paragraph from the introduction, Cresswell highlights the many different ways in which the word \u201cplace\u201d is used in everyday speech. The referent could be physical or psychological in nature: \u2018Think of the ways place is used in everyday speech. \u201cWould you like to come round to my place?\u201d This suggests ownership or some kind of connection between a person and a particular location or building. It also suggests a notion of privacy and belonging. \u201cMy place\u201d is not \u201cyour place\u201d \u2013 you and I have different places.\u2019 \u2026 Learn more in this fascinating video<\/a> in which Tim Cresswell discusses the role of movement in the modern age.<\/p>\n

From Jamaica to Puerto Rico: The Caribbean and How it\u2019s Shaped Our Region and World<\/strong><\/a> [podcast]
\n“Where We Live” – WNPR
\nThe Caribbean — its islands, its history and its people — has had a profound influence on communities around the globe — including Connecticut. This hour, we talk with author Joshua Jelly-Schapiro about his new book, Island People: The Caribbean and the World<\/em>. We learn more about the culture — beyond the great music and food that add Caribbean flare to New England\u2019s snowiest communities. We explore the history of migration from the islands with the director of the new Center for Caribbean Studies at Trinity College. And we hear from community leaders with roots in Jamaica and Puerto Rico about the challenges Caribbean people have faced as they adapted to a Connecticut way of life.
\nGUESTS: Joshua Jelly-Schapiro – Author of Island People: The Caribbean and The World<\/em>; Leslie Desmangles<\/strong><\/a> – Professor of Religious Studies and International Studies at Trinity College. Director of the Center for Caribbean Studies; Reverend Dr. Damaris Whittaker – Senior Minister of the First Church of Christ in Hartford; Karraine Holness – President of the Jamaican American Connection in New Haven, Chair of the Caribbean Heritage Festival in New Haven and Sistahs Jammin’, an annual women\u2019s retreat in Jamaica.<\/p>\n

We Never Left Laramie: White LGBTQ Consciousness Post-Election 2016<\/strong><\/a> – By Jack Gieseking<\/strong><\/a>
\nThe Sociological Review<\/em>
\nSince the election, many friends and colleagues have turned to me. They ask what I thought was next for LGBTQ people under the forthcoming Trump administration. They ask this of me because I am writing a historical geography of lesbian-queer New York City in the contemporary era. I presently do research on transgender youth use of Tumblr, and I write queer theory about the political economy of data and mapping. I\u2019ve also helped to write and review documents that will serve as the basis for the U.S. National Parks Service to create the first national LGBTQ monuments. Unsurprisingly then, what I think about queer U.S. futures lies heavily in the past. If you do not live a queer life, know that queer lives are often fragmented, uprooted, violated, unrecognized, and\/or rendered invisible. So I offer you the fragments of how I got to this idea, through what this idea feels like. The idea is this: in everything I have read and seen in the news and through the lens of my research, it is clear to me that in the long arc of queer history, we never left Laramie.
\nNovember 9th, 2016, Hartford, CT: The day after the election, I was on a panel at my home institution: a small, elite liberal arts undergraduate college in New England, Trinity College. A colleague invited actor\/director Stephen Belber, an alumnus of the college, to come and speak about his role in writing, producing, and acting in the play The Laramie Project<\/em>. Belber and his colleagues in the Tectonic Theater Project had gone to Laramie, Wyoming in 1998, immediately after the brutal beating and murder there of a young, white, blue-eyed, blond-haired man named Matthew Sheppard. Sheppard\u2019s death made national news, inspired an international outpouring of grief, and was a key event that led to the creation of U.S. hate crimes laws. The Project conducted hundreds of interviews with residents and pieced together their words into what would become the play. In the decade after its first performance, The Laramie Project<\/em> has been taught and performed in thousands of high schools across the U.S. and touched the lives of multiple generations in this country and abroad. As we were doing our introductions for the panel, suddenly in a sharp intake of breath sitting on the stage in front of our Dean, staff, students, and other faculty, I was 21 again and I can\u2019t breathe\u2026<\/p>\n

Risky behavior declines with age, and gray matter may explain why<\/strong><\/a>
\nThe Washington Post<\/em>
\nOlder folks tend not to engage as much in risky behavior as teenagers and young adults do. You might call that wisdom or learned experience. But this also may be a result of older brains having less gray matter in a certain spot, according to a new study. Researchers found that adults who were less inclined to take risks had less gray matter in the right posterior parietal cortex, which is involved in decisions that entail risk.
\nIn the study, the researchers asked volunteers ranging in age from 18 to 88 to play a game involving risk. The participants were allowed to choose between a guaranteed gain, such as pocketing $5, or an uncertain gain, such as a lottery to earn between $5 and $120 with varying chances of winning or losing. As the researchers expected, those participants who chose the guaranteed gain \u2014 that is, no risk \u2014 tended to be older than those who opted for the lottery. It wasn\u2019t a perfect correlation, but it was close. One could call this old-age wisdom. Yet when the researchers analyzed brain scans of these volunteers obtained through an MRI technique called voxel-based morphometry (VBM), they found that lower levels of gray matter, even more than age, best accounted for risk aversion. \u2026 Michael Grubb<\/strong><\/a>, first author on the new study \u2014 who at the time of conducting it was at New York University and is now an assistant professor at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. \u2014 said the research team had only just begun to scan the brains of adolescents, and it was not yet clear how levels of gray matter affect their affinity for risk…<\/p>\n

Archdiocese plan could close 2 borough churches<\/strong><\/a>
\nRepublican-American<\/em> (via Citizen’s News<\/em>)
\nAt least 38 churches, including two in Naugatuck, across the Archdiocese of Hartford are being considered for closure and another 60 parishes to be limited to worship sites as leaders seek to consolidate and strengthen the shrinking faith. A document recently obtained by The Sunday Republican details a recent draft of the Archdiocese\u2019s evolving plan for its 212 parishes.
\nUnder the draft plan, churches that remain open would be reorganized into new \u201cpastorates\u201d \u2014 often sharing a common pastor and lay leadership. … Andrew Walsh<\/strong><\/a>, associate director of Trinity College\u2019s Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, said religious and American civil law give bishops ultimate authority to dispose of parish properties.
\n\u201cThere may be parishes that hold the deed, but they hold it for him,\u201d Walsh said. \u201cSo he can say, in the final analysis, buy or sell.\u201d
\nBishops also hold another major lever of control. They can assign or withdraw priests, Walsh said. While enormous power is vested in bishops, Walsh doesn\u2019t expect Archbishop Leonard Blair to undertake the consolidation in a heavy-handed manner. \u201cArchbishop Blair doesn\u2019t seem to be anxious to portray himself as a \u2018my-way-or-the-highway\u2019 guy,\u201d Walsh said. The current archbishop is a sophisticated figure. Like many he\u2019s trying to live in the age of (Pope) Francis. This kind of consultation is what the Pope is asking for.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Defining Place On Art and Aesthetics Fundamentally, we humans are a \u201cplace-loving and place-making\u201d species, observed Alastair Bonnett, professor of Social Geography at Newcastle University, in his 2014 book Unruly Places: Lost Spaces, Secret Cities, and Other Inscrutable Geographies. \u201cPlace\u201d \u2013 we inhabit it and need it and create it. But what does the term […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1424,"featured_media":0,"parent":683,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1060"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1424"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1060"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1061,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1060\/revisions\/1061"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/facultyhighlights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}