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CLACX: A legacy and future of leadership and evolution

Apr. 5, 2024—For more than 75 years, Vanderbilt has been a pioneer in the study of the Americas, forging new paths to innovate, shape, and advance the field. Now, the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies (CLACX) once again finds itself at the forefront, driving important changes in education, research, and programming, both at the...

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Bridging the gap: Combining music and astrophysics to improve representation in science

Feb. 27, 2024—  As a child, Shaniya Jarrett was fascinated by space and science fiction, but didn’t believe that pursuing the big scientific questions of the universe was a viable career option. Now a second-year astrophysics graduate student in the Fisk-Vanderbilt Master’s-to-Ph.D. Bridge Program, Shaniya is creating opportunities for young women of color that she would have...

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First-gen college student prepares for grad school future focused on evolutionary biology research

Feb. 16, 2024—Credit: Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation/Kaerie Ray College of Arts and Science senior Sarah Hourihan is eagerly awaiting journal publication of a first-author manuscript featuring results of research on the dark-eyed junco songbird completed as a Beckman Foundation Scholar. The paper, available as a pre-print on bioRxiv, signals the end of work on one research...

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Hananeel Morinville, BA’25, selected for highly competitive leadership program

Feb. 15, 2024—Hananeel Morinville, a history major in the College of Arts and Science, was named to the next class of the John Robert Lewis Scholars & Fellows Program for 2024-2025. The program is run by the Faith and Politics Institute. Comprising student leaders and changemakers from 17 universities across the country, the newest cohort of scholars...

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Cycling for Solidarity: Navigating Gender Inequality through Urban Mobility

Jan. 31, 2024—Julie Gamble, assistant professor of gender and sexuality studies, shares her experience biking through Quito, Ecuador with a women’s cyclist group to understand first-hand how urban mobility and infrastructure can help reduce gender inequality.

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Unsung Stories: Revealing the History of Black Country Music

Mar. 2, 2023—Alice Randall, Andrew W. Mellon Chair in the Humanities and writer-in-residence of African American and Diaspora Studies, discusses the untold stories of Black country music in Nashville and its roots that stretch back more than 100 years ago.

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New research uncovers crucial role of activist lawyers in expanding women’s rights

Mar. 8, 2021—The history of women’s rights in the United States is inextricable from the history of social movements. In the nineteenth century, married women fought for legal personhood and the right to own property independent of their husbands. In the early 1900s, women mobilized for the right to vote. And beginning in the 1960s, “second-wave” feminists...

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Love of Hebrew and Yiddish leads Allison Schachter to hidden stories of women authors

Mar. 2, 2021—Allison Schachter, an associate professor of Jewish studies, English, and Russian and East European studies, never intended to end up in her current field. After studying French and Hebrew as an undergraduate, she entered graduate school for comparative literature and planned to focus on seventeenth-century drama. But her love of learning new languages repeatedly drew...

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Tiffany Ruby Patterson: Raising the voices of the unheard

Feb. 17, 2021—From a young age, Associate Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies Tiffany Ruby Patterson loved to learn. She read voraciously throughout her childhood: a set of World Book encyclopedias purchased by her uncle, an entire library left behind by the former owner of her family’s apartment building. That early love of books continued into...

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Renã Robinson: Helping others through the power of research and representation

Feb. 11, 2021—For Associate Professor of Chemistry Renã Robinson, science has long been about helping people. She was an avid scientist-in-training throughout her childhood and went to college intending to become a cardiac surgeon. But when she got close to the end of her undergraduate career, she said, “I realized I just didn’t have another 12 years...

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