First impressions count, maybe now more than ever. But what if those impressions are based on lies?
People’s willingness to believe even the most outrageous “information” they get is so remarkable that researchers have been studying this phenomenon — more recently given the current political divide in America — and trying to explain why facts don’t sway people’s beliefs.
Though illustrations have been used to convey ideas and information since before language existed, after Benjamin Franklin published the world’s first editorial cartoon in 1754, comics emerged a distinct avenue for visual storytelling.
Now, comic art has come into classrooms at UC Merced and abroad, as educators are using illustrations in new ways — to teach complex concepts and assess whether students grasp those lessons.
A new Pew Research survey shows that one-third of Americans have trust in a higher power or spiritual force, whether they call it “god” or not, and two new studies show that people who think they have that force in their corner feel empowered in battle.
UC Merced Interdisciplinary Humanities doctoral students made a splash in Spain this summer, presenting papers at the XXXV International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) in Barcelona.
Three enterprising Global Arts Studies Program (GASP) students saw the empty UC Merced Art Gallery on campus and, worried the space would be reallocated, wondered why they couldn’t volunteer to run it.
So they started the Young Artist Movement (YAM) — a “guerilla” group that expanded through word of mouth to 17, then bloomed to more than 50 members. YAM was a finalist for the Division of Student Affairs’ Best New Club or Organization award.
Violet Barton remembers her teenage years doing quadratic equations by candlelight to a soundtrack of bombs and bullets as the Salvadoran Civil War raged around her.
She was forced to migrate to the United States 36 years ago but will go back to El Salvador later this year as a UC Merced graduate student and a Fulbright scholar.
Interdisciplinary Humanities Professor Arturo Arias was recently selected to edit a series of indigenous-studies books for the State University of New York (SUNY) Press.
That makes him the first UC Merced professor to be named editor of a book series for a major university press. He said it is an honor and a credit to the university and UC Merced programs that are meriting national recognition.
Professor Whitney Pirtle recently became the first researcher to win the prestigious Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship while employed at UC Merced — a grant that will help her finish writing a book and move her closer to gaining tenure.
“It’s a really big honor,” Pirtle said. “It comes at a great time in my career.”
Professor Irenee Beattie and graduate student Melissa Quesada have been awarded a $40,000 research grant from the California Teacher Education and Research Improvement Network (CTERIN) to study the factors associated with teacher retention in underserved schools.
“April ... hath put a spirit of youth in everything,” Shakespeare wrote in Sonnet 98. He might as well have been writing about this year’s Shakespeare in Yosemite production.
With Friday’s premiere — attended by high school students from Mariposa and several children of park employees and El Portal residents and performed by a troupe of players ranging from those experienced and trained in Shakespeare to brand-new actors — the 420-year-old “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” seemed new again.
