February 13, 2012|Podcasts
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Father Robert Barron uses new media to tell a 2000-year-old story.
Barron is a Catholic priest of the Chicago archdiocese, and he preaches from an extraordinary pulpit. His podcasts, tweets, online videos and 10-part television series Catholicism, which ran on many PBS affiliates last year, are part of his mission “to reach out to the culture” to communicate his faith’s message. Barron has been called a successor to the pioneering mid-20th century Catholic televangelist Bishop Fulton Sheen. But in this edition of the Quick Studies podcast series, Barron acknowledges that he is working in the midst of the greatest crisis in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States.
January 17, 2012|Podcasts
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Ask Elmhurst students which of their classes made the biggest impact on them, and you likely will hear about a course that Michael Lindberg teaches each year during the College’s January Term. Called “Facing History and Ourselves,” the course connects historical episodes of racism and intolerance with the everyday ethical decisions that students make in their own lives. In this edition of the Quick Studies podcast series, Lindberg, chair of Elmhurst’s geography and geosciences department and director of the College’s First Year Seminars, explains why so many of his students call the class a life-changer.
November 29, 2011|Podcasts
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Every January for the last twenty years, Professor Judy Grimes has been leading groups of Elmhurst students on two-week trips to Jamaica. But this is no midwinter vacation. Grimes and her students work in the impoverished schools around Montego Bay, teaching music to Jamaican children and donating instruments and school supplies that have helped launch and sustain band programs there. The trip is part of Grimes’ popular January Term class, “Educational Experiences in Jamaica.” In this edition of the Quick Studies podcast series, Grimes talks about how the annual trips change lives in Montego Bay and in Elmhurst.
October 25, 2011|Podcasts
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When author and social critic Naomi Wolf spoke at Elmhurst as part of the College’s Democracy Forum on October 20, she told students that it was “time for Americans to start acting like Americans again.” For Wolf, that means organizing “to stand up for your rights” and “demanding transparency” in government.
Wolf’s 1991 feminist classic, The Beauty Myth, was hailed by The New York Times as one of the most important books of the 20th century. Her 2007 book, The End of America, warned of a “fascist shift” in the United States. In the latest edition of the Quick Studies podcast series, Wolf discussed threats to American democracy and the hope offered by activist movements on the left and right.
September 22, 2011|Podcasts
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They may sound like they’ve been lifted from the pages of science fiction, but a new generation of brain-scanning technologies and other neuroscientific advances are playing a role in determining guilt or innocence in criminal courts. They also may change the way we think about age-old questions of justice and personal responsibility.
In the first installment of the Quick Studies podcast series, we talk with Katrina Sifferd, an assistant professor of philosophy at Elmhurst. Sifferd, an attorney and a scholar in the emerging field of neuroethics, unravels some of the ethical and legal questions posed as advances in brain science find their way into courts.