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Category: Arts & Humanities

MadHatters final performance of the spring happening this Friday

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NBC 15

he MadHatters, an a cappella group at UW-Madison, will be performing their final show of the spring semester on Friday, May 1.

The group consists of 14 performers, using just their voices to sing and dance for performances.

“We really try and bring the energy so the crowd can feed off of that, and it can be this really fun night,” Kevin McNeil said. “Everybody just has fun, even apart from all the music, we’ve got some video skits with a little bit of dancing in there. We make our fair share of jokes, and we just really try to make sure everyone has a good time.”

Wisconsin’s 28 Most Influential Native American Leaders for 2026, Part 2

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Madison 365

Dr. Lauren W. Yowelunh McLester-Davis is a Research Fellow in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and on the advisory council for the Native American Center for Health Professions.

Dr. Jeneile Luebke is an assistant professor in the School of Nursing at UW-Madison and an enrolled member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. Her research focuses on gender-based violence in the lives of Indigenous women, using community-engaged and Indigenous-specific research methodologies.

Tara Tindall, an enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, is the Native American teacher leader for the Madison Metropolitan School District, where she oversees the Native American Education Program and the federal Title VI program serving Native students from pre-K through 12th grade.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in history from UW-Stevens Point and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from UW-Madison.

UW-Madison’s budget cuts force Space Place closure

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Wisconsin State Journal

UW-Madison is closing its astronomy outreach center, UW Space Place, this spring after nearly 36 years, citing budget cuts.

Over the last three decades, the astronomy department has run Space Place as a hub for guest lectures on space and astronomy research, as well as for programming for Madison-area schools and families that teaches about UW-Madison and Wisconsin’s impact in the field.

“Space Place was the primary way of satisfying that sort of demand for the community for decades,” said Jim Lattis, UW Space Place’s longtime former director, who retired last May after more than 30 years and who has continued to volunteer there post-retirement. “So that’s going to go away. The astronomy department is going to do their best, but there’s no longer anybody who is specifically dedicated to doing astronomy outreach in those forms.”

Wisconsin launches film office and tax credits to boost local productions

Posted on
Channel 3000

Aaron Greer, an independent filmmaker and University of Wisconsin-Madison professor who has championed film incentives for years, said without an incentive projects would often look elsewhere.

“There’s an old saying in Hollywood, it takes ten years to become an overnight success. There’s a way it feels like that with this,” Greer said.

Is Dr. Fred Mohs Wisconsin’s ‘least known famous native’?

Posted on
The Cap Times

A roadside sign that welcomes drivers to Burlington notes that the Wisconsin city was the boyhood home of Tony Romo, a former Dallas Cowboys quarterback and current television commentator.

There is no mention of Frederic Edward Mohs, born there in 1910, the visionary physician who invented a skin-cancer procedure bearing his name that has benefited millions.

Women’s History Month: Honoring Vel Phillips, a Wisconsin trailblazer

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WMTV - Channel 15

A statue of Vel Phillips stands at the corner of Main and Carroll streets in Madison — the only statue of a Black woman on the grounds of the Wisconsin State Capitol.

Phillips, who became the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s law school in 1951, built a career defined by historic firsts in Wisconsin politics and civil rights.

Former Milwaukee-based artist creates installation for Obama Center

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Before she was commissioned by the Obamas, she made her mark in Milwaukee contributing work to Shepard Fairey’s “Voting Rights are Human Rights” mural on the north side of the Colby Abbot building, 759 N. Milwaukee St.

In 2010, she received her master’s in fine arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Two years later, she became the first Black woman to win the Mary L. Nohl Fellowship for individual artists. In 2015, she won the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Love of Humanity award.

Wisconsin Film Festival features ‘September’ songwriter documentary

Posted on
The Cap Times

“The World According to Allee Willis” will be screened as part of the Wisconsin Film Festival on April 10 at the Chazen Museum of Art. Fenton, an award-winning creative visualist and writer (she’s won three Emmys and a Grammy) and Willis’ longtime partner, will lead a discussion after the screening.

Willis grew up in Detroit in the 1950s during the height of Motown and was heavily inspired by the music coming out of the city. She studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before moving to Los Angeles.

Prescribing improv to improve patient-doctor relationships

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Wisconsin Public Radio

Amy Zelenski, associate professor and director of Education Innovation and Scholarship at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, teaches an elective class in improvisational theater.

She recently visited WPR’s “The Larry Meiller Show” to discuss the relationship between improv and improving health care.

“I started my career working with medical residents, and I realized that they could say the words, but they were struggling with the connection piece,” Zelenski recalled.

American Family Field may go second straight year without big concert

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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The dry spell is a swift reversal from back-to-back blockbuster years for concerts at American Family Field in 2023 and 2024.

It’s also happening as another Wisconsin stadium has entered the concert picture.

Camp Randall Stadium, home of the University of Wisconsin Badgers football program, hosted its first concerts since 1997 last year with Wallen and Coldplay, and has an AC/DC concert scheduled July 19. On top of that, Lambeau Field is back in the live music business – hosting its first concerts since 2019 with Luke Combs May 15 and 16 – with the Green Bay Packers’ new CEO and President Ed Policy vowing to book more events.

How UW-Madison’s WSUM became the best campus radio station in the country

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Wisconsin State Journal

On Feb. 21, the station took home one of the highest awards in college journalism: the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System named WSUM the best college station in the nation.

Kelsey Brannan, the director of student radio at WSUM — one of the station’s two full-time employees — said WSUM’s students provide listeners with authentic shows and music that aren’t replicated on other stations or streaming services.

“You’re hearing students bring in music that you’re not hearing anywhere else,” Brannan said. “They’re telling news stories from their perspective that you’re not getting from the national news or even local outlets — it’s a really unique perspective. You’re hearing sportscasters who are students who are calling the games that their peers are participating in. There’s something really special about that.”

New professorship recognizes Frank Lloyd Wright’s legacy

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Madison Magazine

Anna Andrzejewski, an art historian who arrived at UW–Madison in the early 2000s, is the first holder of the Wright professorship, which was inaugurated on July 1, 2025.

Andrzejewski has taught a course on Wright’s architecture and writings since 2016. The endowed professorship — which she calls “utterly transformative and inspiring” — will enhance and expand Andrzejewski’s Wright-related teaching and research while supporting student field trips to Wright-designed buildings in the region.

Book Review: ‘The Opinionated University’

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Inside Higher Ed

“As I argue in a new essay for Inquisitive magazine, institutional neutrality as originally formulated by the University of Wisconsin in 1894 is a concept that protects academic freedom by prohibiting colleges from punishing or condemning faculty for their political views. The issue of affirmative institutional statements is a much later, and more minor, concern. But when a university condemns certain political stands, it inevitably creates the danger of suppressing those ideas.”

“Universities ought to return to the 1894 University of Wisconsin approach to the opinionated university, where academic freedom is so important that even denouncing a professor violates standards of neutrality. But when the concept of institutional neutrality is abused by politicians and administrators to silence faculty, then it becomes a cure worse than the disease. Soucek’s book recognizes these dangers and provides a thoughtful approach to trying to address the problems inherent in the inevitable opinions of a university.”

 

UW-Madison dance major — the first in the nation — turns 100

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

University of Wisconsin-Madison President Edward Birge did not want the university to be known as a dancing school.

But after physical education instructor Margaret H’Doubler began teaching dance classes in 1918, that’s the direction things were headed. Hundreds of students signed up each semester, and H’Doubler and her students were being invited to colleges and universities across the country to share their methods.

Birge took away H’Doubler’s travel privileges, to no avail.

“It was too late. Other institutions were inviting H’Doubler all the time, and if she couldn’t come to them, they would come to her,” said Andrea Harris, professor of dance history and Buff Brennan faculty fellow in dance at UW-Madison. “The interest outweighed any pushback that there was at that time.”

The Politics of Forgetting: Jorell Melendez-Badillo on Puerto Rico and Bad Bunny

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The Badger Herald

On Feb. 25, UW Madison assistant professor of Latin American and Caribbean History Jorell Melendez-Badillo shared his research on Puerto Rico for UW’s premier history honor society, Phi Alpha Theta.

Puerto-Rican superstar Bad Bunny understands the importance of Puerto Rican history and is incorporating it into his music, which is currently the most streamed in the world. Melendez-Badillo’s study of Puerto Rico is so comprehensive that Bad Bunny himself reached out for assistance for his Grammy-winning album “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” after reading his work.

Melendez-Badillo shared how he was asked to provide a historical lens for the album as a public historian. His main task was to create 17 historical narratives to accompany the songs’ YouTube visualizers, from “conquest to present.” These videos reached a massive audience, with the video for the “DtMF” alone reaching 115 million views.

’How is love the solution?’: Black History Month keynote speaker leads ‘Black love’ workshop

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The Daily Cardinal

Award-winning writer, healing justice practitioner and yogi Yolo Akili Robinson hosted Black Love as A Practice: A WorkShop to Help us Embody The Love We Desire Wednesday night, an event planned  by the Black History Month Planning Committee (BHMPC) and the Black Cultural Center (BCC) where students rethought Black love not just as a feeling, but as a practice and a behavior.

The ancient US discovery predating the pyramids

Posted on
BBC

Beyond Lake Mendota, Ho-Chunk ancestors left their mark on the landscape through a massive collection of effigy mounds used for gathering, ritual and burial, with at least 4,000 remaining throughout Wisconsin. Today tourists can visit the roughly 200 mounds in Madison, and take the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s First Nations Cultural Landscape Tour – a walking tour that explores upwards of 12,000 years of human history (running between 1 March and 30 November).

“I think the tours are so important for campus,” said Omar Poler, an Indigenous education coordinator in the Office of the Provost and a member of the Sokaogon Chippewa Community. “They’ve changed the way that UW-Madison sees and understands its own place,” Poler notes, adding that this is especially true of the tour guides.

Ho-Chunk sculptor Truman Lowe honored in Smithsonian retrospective

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

For most of his career, Lowe taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he received his Master of Fine Arts in 1973. After more than two decades of teaching sculpture and American Indian studies, he moved to D.C. in 2000 to take a job as the first curator of contemporary Native art at the National Museum of the American Indian — the same museum now honoring his work.

Global Impact Musician program brings East African players to Madison

Posted on
The Cap Times

Music educator and violinist Zeynep Alpan believes music is more than entertainment — it teaches “life.”

Alpan, who works on music education programming with the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center, is the co-founder of Global Impact Musician (GIM), a nonprofit based in New York and partnered with the University of Wisconsin-Madison that works with young professional musicians in East Africa.

How Bad Bunny took Puerto Rican independence mainstream

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NPR

How Bad Bunny became the global voice of a generation in crisis — and what it means when resistance becomes profitable. Includes interview with Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, a professor of Puerto Rican, Caribbean and Latin American History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He’s the author of Puerto Rico: A National History. He is also the author of  the history visualizers for Bad Bunny’s DTMF album.

UW-Madison hosts traveling euchre competition

Posted on
WKOW - Channel 27

The University of Wisconsin-Madison hosted a stop on a traveling euchre competition, bringing players together to celebrate the popular Midwest card game.

Campus winners received $1,000 in scholarship funds and will advance to regional competition for a chance to qualify for the 2026 World Euchre Championship in New Glarus, Wisconsin.

Skip the grocery store flowers wrapped in plastic. Valentine’s Day advice is here

Posted on
CNN

Many people think that the amount they spend on a gift is directly associated with how much the receiver will appreciate it. But as long as it meets reasonable expectations, the people you are gifting are unlikely to care too much about how you spend, said Dr. Evan Polman, professor of marketing at Wisconsin School of Business at University of Wisconsin, Madison. He also focuses on gift-giving decision-making.

The goal of gift giving should be relationship maintenance, especially on a holiday so focused on love, and gifting an activity or experience you and your loved one can do together is a great way to spend quality time together while communicating your level of care, Polman said.

Hip hop exhibit expands at Wisconsin Historical Society for Black History Month

Posted on
Channel 3000

The Wisconsin Historical Society has reopened and expanded its hip hop exhibit for Black History Month, offering visitors a deeper look into more than five decades of hip hop culture in Wisconsin.

Phase two of the “Lead Between the Rhymes” exhibit now includes recognition of University of Wisconsin artists, students, professors and student organizations that partnered with Madison’s hip hop scene. These collaborations helped organize events including the “Hip Hop as a Movement” conference and other significant cultural gatherings.

Medieval monks wrote over a copy of an ancient star catalog. Now, a particle accelerator is revealing the long-lost original text

Posted on
Smithsonian Magazine

The scribe who copied Phaenomena, which details how various constellations rise and set, onto the parchment integrated descriptions of the stars’ positions that were probably based on Hipparchus’ work. The celestial objects’ coordinate system and accuracy align with references to the ancient astronomer’s writings, reports Science News’ Adam Mann. “There’s an appendix which includes coordinates of the stars discussed in the poem, and then little sketches of the star maps,” Minhal Gardezi, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who is working on the project, tells the outlet.

Bipartisan antisemitism bill draws controversy over free speech

Posted on
The Daily Cardinal

Tensions rose in discussion over a bipartisan bill that would require state agencies, including the University of Wisconsin System, to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism for any “law, ordinance or policy” when evaluating possible discriminatory intent at a Jan. 28 public hearing.

Daniel Hummel, a research fellow with the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert on U.S. relations with Israel, said there has been increased “antisemitic rhetoric around campus” since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.

43rd annual Wonders of Physics show returns to UW-Madison

Posted on
The Daily Cardinal

Clint Sprott, a UW-Madison physics professor who retired in 2008, started the show in 1984 as a free, public lecture. He still attends the show every year.

“[My] most favorite is seeing the smiles and enthusiasm of the audience,” Sprott said. “The show was a major part of my life for 40 years, and it is certainly fun to be something of a celebrity.”

UW-Madison alumni group kicks off Black History Month with community celebration

Posted on
Channel 3000

The Wisconsin Alumni Association’s Black Affinity Group launched Black History Month with Legacy and Libations, an event celebrating the Black community in Madison.

This year’s theme, “Taking Flight,” highlighted UW-Madison student projects and alumni-owned businesses. The event featured the SoulFolk Collective, a recently established research department at UW-Madison focused on documenting Madison’s Black community stories through research.

How to improve your vocabulary as an adult

Posted on
The New York Times

As it turns out, expanding our vocabulary as adults doesn’t work as it did when we were children in school, said Kelly Wright, an assistant professor of language sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Young people can learn new words by doing reading exercises, acing vocabulary quizzes or listening to the grown-ups around them. But as we get older, we have to approach it differently.

“Our vocabulary grows to a certain point, but then there is something that turns off, in a similar way in which we grow from a child height to an adult height. Something kicks on in our femur, but we don’t end up 11 feet tall, and the same thing happens with our language system,” Prof. Wright said. “It doesn’t mean we can’t learn new things, but after you get past that point, you have to do it actively. Say ‘Hey mind! Wake up a little!’”

PBS Wisconsin honored with national Public Media Award for innovation

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PBS Wisconsin

The award honors PBS Wisconsin’s station-wide culture of innovation – from immersive storytelling and collaborative experimentation to cross-departmental strategies that reimagine how public media can serve, engage and evolve. The award recognized a range of projects that have expanded the organization’s reach, deepened its engagement and sparked new collaborations across platforms, including:

  • Partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Computer Sciences department. Over the past two years, PBS Wisconsin has partnered with student teams to prototype tools that enhance how it serves and engages audiences. These include a personalized recommendation engine, augmented reality experiences and an AI-assisted caption-to-transcript tool currently in development for public launch.

The film students who can no longer sit through films

Posted on
The Atlantic

Everyone knows it’s hard to get college students to do the reading—remember books? But the attention-span crisis is not limited to the written word.

Professors are now finding that they can’t even get film students—film students—to sit through movies. “I used to think, If homework is watching a movie, that is the best homework ever,” said Craig Erpelding, a film professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “But students will not do it.”

Why Bad Bunny won’t get paid for the Super Bowl Halftime Show

Posted on
Forbes

“I think that there was absolutely a market decision behind selecting Bad Bunny,” says Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, a professor of Latin American studies at the University of Wisconsin who has collaborated with Bad Bunny to incorporate Puerto Rican history into his shows and music videos. “The NFL wants to expand internationally, so they are looking to target a broader market beyond the United States. He has a huge following in the United States, but this stage will also be amplified internationally by having someone like him.”

With Netflix Miracle on Ice doc coming, Mark Johnson had star role

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Miracle on Ice” remains a lingering light over any American triumph in the winter games. A Netflix documentary called “Miracle: The Boys of ’80” debuts Jan. 30 to again stir up the emotions of that incredible victory for the USA men’s hockey team over the Soviet Union in the medal round of the 1980 games.

It’s a triumph that almost certainly doesn’t happen without major contributions from Wisconsin.

Photo of the day: Quilt exhibit

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Wisconsin State Journal

Tarah Connolly, a PhD student at UW-Madison, looks at a quilt from the 1870’s that is on display at the “Find Your Quilt” exhibit in the Ruth Davis Design Gallery in Nancy Nicholas Hall at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wis. Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026.

Exploding tree videos go viral, but UW experts debunk AI-generated myths

Posted on
WKOW - Channel 27

“Cracks can happen at anything below the freezing temperature, so 32 degrees Fahrenheit or zero degrees Celsius,” said Scott Bowe, a professor and wood products specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Bowe clarified that the noises, known as frost cracks, are not caused by expanding sap.

“Some people have explained it as the sap is expanding like ice and causing the crack that actually is not what’s happening. It’s actually the drying of the wood that causes the crack to happen,” said Bowe.

Not all mindfulness is the same – here’s why it matters for health and happiness

Posted on
The Conversation

John Dunne, a Buddhist philosophy scholar at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, offers a helpful explanation if you’ve ever wondered why everyone seems to talk about mindfulness in a different way. Dunne says mindfulness isn’t one single thing, but a “family” of related practices shaped by different traditions, purposes and cultural backgrounds.

UW senior auditors program fosters lifelong learning, connections

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The Daily Cardinal

Through the Senior Guest Auditor Program, Wisconsin residents aged 60 and older take UW-Madison courses free of charge alongside students less than half their age. This fall, the program reached a record enrollment of more than 1,000 auditors, double the number enrolled a decade ago, according to program administrator Anne Niendorf. The program places older adults alongside traditional undergraduates in lecture halls across campus, creating multigenerational classrooms.

UW Cinematheque rolls out 2026 film lineup

Posted on
The Daily Cardinal

The Cinematheque, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s dedicated screening facility for international cinema history and fine films, returns this week for its 2026 slate — filling a niche since the 1990s by promoting movies audiences in Madison might otherwise miss.

“Sometimes good movies are brought to us through a proposed partnership with another campus department or community organization/concern,” said Jim Healy, Director of Programming at the Cinematheque. “Sometimes some movies are more relevant, like our screening of ‘Slap Shot’ last January in honor of Paul Newman’s centennial.”

Education has seen unprecedented changes in Trump’s second term

Posted on
Wisconsin Public Radio

Last year, just as she was finishing a teacher residency program through the University of Wisconsin-Madison, federal funding for the project was cut by the Trump administration.

“So we were in the spring semester and we were all like, are we going to be able to continue?” Lind said. “Are we going to still be able to get our teaching license? Are we going to have to pay this back?”

A new Humanities building and other developments UW-Madison has in the works this year

Posted on
Wisconsin State Journal

The doors of a new academic building will open, three-year-old scaffolding is expected to come down, and designs are being drawn up to revamp a historic site on UW-Madison’s campus in 2026.

Upcoming plans for development projects at UW-Madison signal another busy year of changes happening on campus. In 2025, UW-Madison notably opened a new building that houses its new College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence: Morgridge Hall, a privately funded $267 million, 343,000-square-foot facility.

Former Badger Freddie Owens reflects on basketball, Milwaukee roots in new memoir

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Madison 365

Former University of Wisconsin basketball player Freddie Owens is preparing to release a memoir next month that traces his path from Milwaukee’s North Side to the NCAA tournament and, eventually, a long career in coaching.

The book, “Echoes of Stark Park,” draws its name from the Milwaukee park where Owens spent much of his childhood and where he says basketball became both a refuge and a guide.

Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame to induct Lunney, McCaffery and Paine

Posted on
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

The Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame has selected William Lunney, Keith McCaffery and Neil Paine as its 2026 induction class.

Payne grew up in Sheboygan County and was the first of his family to graduate from college, earning a bachelor of arts in zoology in 1961 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, master of science from Virginia Tech in 1964 and a doctorate in wildlife science from Utah State University in 1975 (dissertation on beaver).

January 11, 1887- Aldo Leopold was born

Posted on
WMTV - Channel 15

Aldo Leopold was born in Burlington, Iowa and moved to Wisconsin in 1925. He taught game management at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, one of the first courses for it in the country. Leopold is best known for his collection of essays “Sand County Almanac” that explains the way the natural world works and ways conservation could be used to preserve it.

Twin brothers make “Money Magic:” UW professor & his financial adviser twin brother drop children’s book

Posted on
Madison 365

Quentin Riser pursued academia, earning a PhD and eventually joining the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s School of Human Ecology, where he studies child development and family outcomes. Quinlan went into the financial world, spending nearly a decade at Principal Financial Group before becoming a financial advisor and later leading an insurance business.

“It’s designed to be a two-generational book,” Quentin Riser said. “The kids are going to ask their parents, ‘Mom, Dad, what is estate planning?’ And if the parents don’t know, they’re going to have to go look that up.”