Stories Archive

Stories

Navigating the New Library

As a philosophy major studying the ethical issues surrounding emerging technologies, TETRAH CLARK ’24 grew to appreciate the role that the humanities could play in helping people become better digital citizens. “I think the humanities are more important than ever,” creating an academic rigor through which people can “think critically about the information and technologies…
Humanity’s Parable

In choosing a book for the Class of 2026 to read and discuss collectively during their first semester as Clark University students, Clark scholars selected Octavia Butler’s 1993 dystopian science fiction novel Parable of the Sower. Set in the year 2024, the book envisions a world beset by all manner of unrest generated by climate…
Yak and Hack

EDUARD ARRIAGA-ARANGO arrived at Clark just as his peers faced new challenges and opportunities posed by emerging technologies. The time was right. Arriaga studies how language, literature, culture, and technology collide and intersect. “Within digital humanities, we use computers and digital technology to explore questions in the humanities, and we also question technology,” says the…
Quenching the Inner Thirst for Knowledge

Professor OUSMANE POWER-GREENE doesn’t believe that the teaching and learning of college-level history should be contained only to a select few who can afford the privilege. This conviction leads him into neighborhoods in Springfield and Holyoke, where he engages students who are eager to access his expertise, but who, without a vital initiative supporting them,…
Fingerprints on the Keyboard

Amid technological advances like ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools, Clark’s faculty are examining how to prepare students for a fast-changing world while empowering them to move about in that same world with confidence, with empathy, and as critical thinkers. As humanists. “It’s an exciting time. As someone who is interested in technology and sci-fi,…
Tell Me How It Begins, and Ends

Storytelling lies at the heart of what makes us human, from primitive etchings on cave walls to tales of astronauts leaving footprints on the moon. It’s the thread running through the arts and humanities, according to Professor TERRASA ULM, director of the undergraduate program in interactive media in Clark’s Becker School of Design & Technology.…
A Legacy in Bloom

The Alice Coonley Higgins Institute for Arts and Humanities boasts a rich history and prepares for a robust future
Narratives of Nature

When STEPHEN LEVIN, associate professor of English, first offered Ecofictions: Literature and the Environment in fall 2023, the undergraduate course filled up quickly with highly engaged students. “It was one of the most exciting teaching experiences I’ve had in my career,” he says. As the world witnessed the damaging effects of climate change that year,…
The Fourth Is with Him

Musicologist Benjamin Korstvedt ’87 has recovered the legacy of composer Anton Bruckner by helping reclaim his “lost” symphony
iShakespeare

Why do the Bard’s works resonate in our modern age? Maybe because people still seek love. Go to war. Hunger for power. Have midsummer night’s dreams …