SyndicateMizzou Video Podcast

SyndicateMizzou Podcast: Michael Ugarte - African influence in Spain

Wed, 17 May 2006 19:49:49 GMT

Ugarte discusses the relationship of various ethnic groups in Spain throughout history and how the African "Other" is absorbed in the consciousness of Spaniards.

SyndicateMizzou Podcast: Timothy Langen - Why study the humanities and Russian literature?

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:37:46 GMT

Langen highlights three major reasons to study Russian literature and humanities more deeply than for simple enjoyment.

SyndicateMizzou Podcast: Timothy Langen - Langen’s research process

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 15:41:36 GMT

Teaching a general course on Russian civilization has helped Langen’s research process by allowing him to connect literary studies to other aspects of Russian life.

SyndicateMizzou Podcast: Daniel Hooley - How the classics have influenced our culture

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 20:21:58 GMT

For a long time the classics were thought of as foundational texts of western culture. Hooley sees the role of classics now as “one body of relatively coherent, related texts that constitute a tradition in themselves.” He says they have become the intellectual currency of our culture and are “great to think with.”

SyndicateMizzou Podcast: Daniel Hooley - Fostering the human spirit with satire

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 20:22:59 GMT

While Hooley’s first book focused on Latin translations, his second book, _The Knotted Thong: Structures of Mimesis in Persius_ (1997), is a study of Roman satire—namely of Persius, one of the three major Roman satirists. Hooley was drawn to this man and his work partly because Persius was considered such a “strange guy.” Satire, Hooley says, “fosters all those things that are healthy for the human spirit—it makes us laugh at silly things and sometimes makes us laugh at things that are egregious and wrong.”

SyndicateMizzou Podcast: Daniel Hooley - “Funnily critical, or critically funny?”

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 21:22:22 GMT

Most recently, Hooley has completed an introductory book on Roman satire. It covers the historical development of satire, explaining the genre as inherently human: “It’s in our blood; it’s hardwired into our brains.” Satire carries a very broad definition: it is partly a reaction to power and a way of expressing resistance, but at other times it provides a vehicle to poke fun at things.

SyndicateMizzou Podcast: Daniel Hooley - Hooley’s personal philosophy about studying the classics

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 20:25:14 GMT

Through Hooley’s work in classical studies he has developed a philosophy about why one should study the classics: “Classics is just good material. The historical distance makes it more refreshing because you see the difference and how we’re the same animals. These texts don’t dictate our ethics and laws, but help our imaginations, which I think is a good reason to study them.”

SyndicateMizzou Podcast: Nancy M. West - West’s first book, Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia (2000)

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:26:20 GMT

The fact that Nancy M. West finds herself focusing so heavily on the visual in her research and teaching may at first seem to be “a sort of a curious thing,” but for the associate professor of English this fascination for photographs, and especially snapshots, extends all the way back to a childhood devoid of photographs. Traveling to Rochester, New York, home of the George Eastman House, West spent a week digging through boxes of advertisements (both published and unpublished) and documents ranging in date from 1888 to 1932. Her research eventually resulted in _Kodak and the Lens of Nostalgia_ (2000), an interdisciplinary study that examines the advertising campaigns of the Eastman Kodak Company and reveals certain key fascinations in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century American culture.

SyndicateMizzou Podcast: Peace Corps Fellows - Training

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:38:35 GMT

Peace Corps volunteers are trained for about three months before being set loose in their assigned countries. The first step involves staging, which offers a general orientation and a place to meet the other volunteers in their group. “You get your first round of shots and this really quick and dirty cultural training,” Kate Fjell explains. Then they go to the assigned country, where they train intensively for three months. “You learn a lot about the culture, how to fit in, basically, and important cultural clues you should know about,” Julie Feeney laughs, “so you don’t end up getting married by accident!”

This phase is sometimes referred to as “the honeymoon stage,” says Nick Spina. “Everything’s new, everything’s exciting, every experience is the first time. You laugh a lot. You joke a lot because you don’t know how to communicate, so you use a lot of sign language, and you just try whatever you can to get across to people,” Spina recalls. “It’s challenging too, because they dump you with a host family immediately, and you are automatically in a situation where you are completely out of your element for the first time.”

For most of the volunteers, the language training is intense, covering every conceivable topic—“from how to buy things from the market to how to greet people, how to tell people you don’t feel good, and then how to have a conversation about AIDS.” Of course, language learning doesn’t end there. Once the volunteers arrive at their assigned site, the training continues. For instance, Spina had a language tutor, with whom he met once a week: “I would continue memorizing vocabulary and practicing my speaking skills with her, and I steadily improved. Some people work harder at the language than others, and some people learn it better than others. By the end of my service I could communicate whatever I needed to. I could have meaningful conversations. In hindsight, I’m proud of how much I accomplished, but it was a struggle. I mean, Armenian is not a language they teach you in schools, so learning it from scratch was a hard thing to do.”

Beyond language training, which is crucial to the survival of the volunteers, the technical training is also indispensable. “While you’re there, there may be ongoing training that happens throughout the service, depending on your project,” Craig Hutton says.

“We would go on fieldtrips and learn about the soil and different trees,” Matt Rysavy recounts. “We’d talk to different professionals in the government to get their feedback and see how systems worked, to make sure we were on a good starting page, so when we got to the village we knew we had a good background of their local customs, their local culture, and how we were going fit into the bigger national scene.”

“The technical portion was really good, especially for me,” recounts Fjell, “because I had an archeology degree coming out of college. I had done some work in the HIV/AIDS field, and knew the basics, but I didn’t feel very confident teaching about AIDS. The technical training really helped. “