NEPR College Connection: Recent Episodes

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Daniel Lieberman, a paleoanthropologist and biology professor at Harvard University, spoke about his work studying human athletic behavior and performance. He said in developed countries there is currently an “exercise paradox”: Although humans evolved to become athletes, few in these countries are adequately physically active. This, Lieberman said, was because we evolved both to be athletes, but also to avoid unnecessary activity.

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Lectures and panel talks from colleges and universities from Western New England, particularly from the Five Colleges in Western Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst College, Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, and Hampshire College. This forum provides an opportunity for listeners to engage with researchers, intellectuals, poets and authors active within our academic communities.

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Waksman, Professor of Music and American Studies at Smith College, gave a historical view of the movement of jazz from “lowbrow” popular music, to “highbrow symphonic art”. Waksman focused on the people that influenced this movement, and how it changed cultural perceptions and expectations of jazz.

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Dennis Childs at UMass Amherst speaks on US Neoslavery: A History of the Prison Industrial Present. Childs, associate professor of African American literature and an affiliate faculty member of the department of ethnic studies and critical gender studies at the University of California, San Diego, spoke about the past and present incarceration of the poor and people of color as a continuation of the modern practice of slavery in the U.S.