CAS in the national news, May 2022

Photo Credit: Newspapers
Fri, 06/03/2022 - 15:55

“An Orchestra of Minorities,” a novel by Chigozie Obioma, English, was highlighted in a May 3 Book Riot article titled “8 of the best Greek mythology retellings.” The novel reinterprets “The Odyssey” as a story about a Nigerian farmer.

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Daizaburo Shizuka, biological sciences, and Eli Strauss, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany, have co-authored a new study suggesting that wealth inequality in animals can shed light on social evolution. Stories on the research appeared in CosmosEarth.com, Phys.org, Scienmag and a few other media outlets.

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John Hibbing, political science, was interviewed for a May 10 Nebraska Public Media story on Nebraska’s Republican gubernatorial primary. The story was picked by more than two dozen NPR stations across the country.

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Dawn O. Braithwaite, communication studies, was interviewed for a May 11 Huffington Post article on what parents should consider when introducing their children to a new dating partner. “While there are exceptions, most scholars have found that new partners can play a positive role in children’s lives but that they should go slow and act as a friend for children rather than overstepping and acting in ways that are confusing or inappropriate for children,” she said.

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Q&A featuring Casey Kelly, communication studies, was highlighted in a May 17 NPR story on how the “replacement” theory has gone mainstream on the political right. Kelly is the author of “Apocalypse Man: The Death Drive and the Rhetoric of White Masculine Victimhood.”

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Kwakiutl Dreher, English, and William G. Thomas III, history, were interviewed for the May 19 episode of WYPR’s “On the Record” program about their new film “The Bell Affair.” The film, which chronicles an enslaved family’s fight for freedom, makes its public premiere June 2.

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Margaret Jacobs, history, director of the Center for Great Plains Studies, was interviewed for a May 25 ABC Online story on the search for the remains of Native American schoolchildren at the former Genoa Indian Industrial School. Jacobs is the co-director of the Genoa Indian School Digital Reconciliation Project.

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Noori Choi, a recent doctoral graduate of Nebraska; Eileen Hebets, biological sciences; and colleagues have found that females of the Schizocosa stidulans spider seem to reward males that produce more complex mating signals. Stories on the research have appeared in the Daily MailEarth.comLive Science and ScienceAlert.

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William Belcher, anthropology, was interviewed for a May 31 Live Science article on the Indus Valley Civilization, one of the oldest civilizations in human history. “The Indus Valley Civilization, also called the Saraswati or Harappan civilization, is one of the ‘pristine’ civilizations on our planet,” he said. The civilization, which thrived from about 2600 B.C. to 1900 B.C., covered about 386,000 square miles, extending through northwest India, Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan, Belcher said. “This really makes it one of the largest ‘Old World’ civilizations in terms of geographic extent,” he said.