Skip to main content

Category: Arts & Humanities

Congregation at the oldest building on Capitol Square raising money for new roof

Wisconsin State Journal

“It’s an absolutely gorgeous church (with) great historic distinction,” said Barbara Copeland Buenger, a member of the church’s roof committee and a professor of art history emerita at UW-Madison. “To have something of such beauty and historical value is really magnificent given the modern character of the city.”

Creating Mexican Fiesta at Summerfest grounds is labor of love, in just 3 days. Take a look inside

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Also installing his art that day was Victor Hugo Jimenez, 22, a recent University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate. He will be displaying his pieces in a new merchandise area near the Generac Stage, where people can buy T-shirts and baseball caps to commemorate the festival with motifs such as Our Lady of Guadalupe, retro cars and cowboy boots.

Hip-hop’s role in today’s classrooms

USA Today

“The reason why it resonated with students … is because it felt like an opportunity for them to be met on their own ground and to have a kind of shared ground with which to meet instructors or meet ideas,” says Nate Marshall, award-winning poet and assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Ultimately, like, the role of an educator is to connect the students in order to serve the students. So, if that’s not your way to connect with them, that’s cool. You find other ways.”

UW-Madison researchers find automation apps can enable dating abuse

WKOW - Channel 27

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that automation apps, like iPhone’s ‘shortcuts’, can be a vehicle potential abusers use to control their partner’s activities on their mobile device.

Rahul Chatterjee, an assistant professor of computer science at UW and founder of the Madison Tech Clinic, said Madison Tech Clinic helps individuals who have been virtually stalked or harassed by their partners.

Lifelong Learner: Lifelong learning helps seniors age joyfully

Wisconsin State Journal

Embracing an attitude of lifelong learning can help seniors combat the effects of aging and find meaning in every day. In a study by Scientific American, seniors who regularly engaged in learning over three months performed similarly to adults 30 years younger on cognitive tests.

Whether it’s online learning, art classes or stargazing in Wisconsin state parks, educational opportunities can help make your golden years shine.

Educator’s book ties personal history and the Black experience

Wisconsin Examiner

Brown has critiqued some of the ways DEI has been carried out. When he read an audit of Universities of Wisconsin DEI programs conducted by the Legislative Audit Bureau on behalf of the Legislature, he was struck that there seemed to be no consistent definition throughout the system for DEI.

But he also considers the anti-DEI wave a backlash to the protests in 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd. “That woke up the world,” Brown says. “There was a coming together, and it wasn’t even politicized like that.”

UW-Madison grad comedian Hannah Berner talks shop ahead of Wisconsin tour

Wisconsin Public Radio

Hannah Berner never set out to be a comedian.

The 33-year-old stand-up originally had her sights set on tennis. She played all four years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After graduating, Berner gravitated towards making funny videos on social media. From there, she eventually found a passion being on stage and making people laugh.

A ray of hope for public broadcasting

The Cap Times

While at NPR, Jack Mitchell co-created the long-running afternoon news program “All Things Considered” and was its first producer and newscaster.

Mitchell’s retired now as emeritus professor at the UW School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where he taught after stepping down as WPR’s director in 1997. In the meantime, he’s authored several books, including my favorite, “Wisconsin on the Air: 100 years of public broadcasting in the state that invented it.”

Jack a few days after the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced it was closing its doors after Congress took away its $1.1 billion annual funding (about $1.60 per person.)

UW exhibit asks ‘What If Everything Turns Out OK?’

WORT FM

The world is a terrible mess right now.  Climate change, government upheaval, warfare have many of us on edge and filled with anxiety about the future. The University of Wisconsin-Madison Nancy M. Bruce Center for Design and Material Culture asked its Design and Innovation graduate students to contemplate the question, “what if everything turns out OK?”

Middle-earth comes to UW-Madison

Wisconsin State Journal

In a sunlight-dappled room in UW-Madison’s Science Hall, between historical maps from around the planet, rests a world unlike the others: the fantasy land of Middle-earth.

Curated by Mark Fonstad, the exhibit showcases the hand-drawn maps, writing tools and stories behind the atlas depicting the “Lord of the Rings” realm his mother Karen Wynn Fonstad created.

New UW-Madison lab creates ‘Green Book’ for city’s Black residents

The Cap Times

Launched this spring, The SoulFolk Collective is the first research lab to be housed in UW-Madison’s Department of African American Studies. The group is made up of about a dozen undergraduate and graduate students and is led by Jessica Lee Stovall.

“As a Black studies professor,” Stovall said, “I’ve been really interested in the ways that we can create learning and research environments that are Black affirming, that center Black joy and Black liberation, Black organizing.”

The ‘Love Island’ drama, allegations and when a friend group implodes

USA Today

We don’t always see this level of direct confrontation when a group member is accused of being dangerous, according to Jessica Calarco, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin.

“Most will tend to continue the friendship,” Calarco said. “This is because when someone close to us – or even similar to us – engages in violent or toxic behavior, we’re less likely to blame them for their actions than we would be if we saw the same behavior from someone to whom we’re not close.”

UW Athletics coy about hosting more concerts at Camp Randall

The Cap Times

Given how well this summer’s concerts at Camp Randall Stadium were received, music fans might not have to wait another 28 years to attend another.

“The overall success of these shows demonstrates that we are capable operationally of hosting more shows and there is definitely an appetite and demand for more in the future,” said Mitchell Pinta, deputy athletic director and chief revenue officer for the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s athletics department.

Can A.I. help revitalize Indigenous languages?

Smithsonian Magazine

Like the Skobot, most new A.I. technologies developed by Native scientists are designed for a specific language community. Jacqueline Brixey, a computer scientist formerly at the University of Southern California and now joining the University of Wisconsin, created a chatbot called “Masheli” that can communicate in Choctaw. Drawing from a collection of animal stories, the chatbot can listen and respond to users in both English and the target language, helping conversational skills.

Henry Vilas Zoo host STEM camp for neurodivergent kids

WKOW - Channel 27

The camp is organized in collaboration with Dr. Michael Notaro, director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. With prior funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Notaro and his team have led similar camps in Beloit, Madison, and Wisconsin Dells.

However, future programming is uncertain. Federal support for the camps ended earlier this year when NSF grants were discontinued. While funding remains in place for this summer’s sessions, organizers are seeking alternative sources to continue beyond 2025.

Madison STEM camp for neurodivergent kids could see final year after funding loss

WMTV - Channel 15

Dr. Michael Notaro, director of the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, launched the program several years ago.

“I think that’s inspired by my son Hayden,” Notaro said. “He’s autistic and a wonderful boy. My wife is also autistic. And based on my desire to support and foster neurodiversity, we created three STEM camps.”

‘Invisible Cartographies’ lyrically excavates geographies both material and spiritual

Tone Madison

If there was a word to describe the essence of 2023 UW-Madison MFA graduate Meg Kim’s Invisible Cartographies, it would be lush: in language, in landscape, in memory, in longing. The winner of the 2023-2024 New Delta Review Chapbook Prize, Invisible Cartographies is rooted in place—geographies both physical and psychic made visible only by Kim’s careful practice of excavation, bred by her “mass of wanting.”

Fred Risser’s life is the story of Wisconsin politics

The Cap Times

Among his losing battles was the 1970s fight over merging the University of Wisconsin in Madison with other state campuses to form the UW System. He was against it, as were his constituents on the Madison campus. He fought enacting a state lottery and opposed building the so-called SuperMax prison that Tommy Thompson later admitted was a big mistake.

The enduring lessons of wages for housework

The Nation

Emily Callaci’s history of the international feminist movement examines the influence of their intellectual and political victories. The University of Wisconsin–Madison historian describes in “Wages for Housework: The Feminist Fight Against Unpaid Labor,” that modes of protest were part of an emerging, dynamic wave of left-feminist activism.

Callaci’s book marks a significant contribution to the new Wages for Housework literature and serves as a reminder of the campaign’s true aims. Weaving together capsule biographies of five of its founders, it offers a history that reflects Wages for Housework’s global scope and radical ambitions.

What were ancient humans thinking when they began to bury their dead?

New Scientist

All four of the anonymous researchers asked to assess its merit were sceptical. But Berger and his colleagues were undeterred. Earlier this year, they published an updated version of their study, offering a deeper dive into the evidence they had gathered from the Rising Star cave system in South Africa. The approach paid off: two of the original reviewers agreed to reassess the science – and one was won over. 

“You rarely see that in peer review,” says John Hawks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a member of Berger’s team.  

Coldplay’s Chris Martin gives shoutout to woman he met on the street in Downtown Madison

Wisconsin State Journal

Two Madison Area Technical College students had just left the Kollege Klub bar near the UW-Madison campus early Saturday when one of them thought she recognized Coldplay’s lead singer.

Coldplay’s sold-out Madison show at Camp Randall Stadium Saturday had about 58,000 attendees, according to a UW-Madison official. It was the latest stop in the band’s Music of the Spheres world tour, which began in 2022 and spans 225 nights in 80 cities across 43 countries.

Only two people arrested, and no others caught red-handed, at Coldplay concert in Madison

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

All in all, Coldplay at Camp Randall Stadium in Madison July 19 went off without a hitch — and without a viral moment.

There were only two arrests and no other ejections at the concert, according to Marc Lovicott, the executive director of communication for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department.

‘Queer people were living, loving, suffering, surviving – but invisible’: west Africa’s groundbreaking gay novel 20 years on

The Guardian

Ainehi Edoro, associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and founder of the literary blog Brittle Paper, says the novel marked a turning point. “For a long time, queer characters in African literature were either invisible or treated as symbols of crisis, like their presence was a sign that something had gone wrong,” she says. “So when Dibia wrote a novel that centred a gay Nigerian man as a full human being, that mattered. He pushed back against an entire archive of erasure.”

With PBS funding cut, will the next generation be raised by ‘Skibidi Toilet’?

The Washington Post

Rebekah Willett, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who studies children and media, said she often hears from parents whose children run into upsetting content that’s recommended by YouTube’s algorithm. (One child, she said, looked up baby animal videos, which led to videos of animals giving birth, which led to videos of humans giving birth.)

Wisconsin State Journal

The sold-out Coldplay show coming Saturday to Camp Randall Stadium, like the two shows by country music superstar Morgan Wallen at the stadium three weeks earlier, is a game-changer for the city, said the president of Downtown Madison Inc.

Coldplay is coming to Madison’s Camp Randall Stadium this weekend. Here’s what to know about the concert.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Coldplay made Wisconsin history in October when it became the first concert announced at Madison’s Camp Randall Stadium in nearly 28 years.

Now, eight months later, the show is finally here — even though country superstar Morgan Wallen made sure the Chris Martin-led British band wasn’t the first to actually perform there. Wallen had two concerts, on June 28 and 29.

The legacy of Robert La Follette’s progressive vision

Time

In 1873, just before becoming a student at the University of Wisconsin, La Follette heard Edward Ryan, soon to become the state’s Chief Justice, give a commencement speech. Ryan bluntly defined the central questions of the coming era: “Which shall rule—wealth or man; which shall lead—money or intellect; who shall fill public stations—educated and patriotic freemen, or the feudal serfs of corporate capital?” This question would animate La Follette’s career as he tried to live up to UW president John Bascom’s insistence that students accept the obligations of citizenship and their duty to serve the state.

Y’all, we need to talk about ‘y’all’

NPR

“It feels like home when I hear it,” says Kelly Elizabeth Wright, an assistant professor of language sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who grew up in Tennessee. “It’s from where I was raised. But it makes me feel included and welcome. And I think that’s part of why people are embracing it, because it has this capacity to make others feel included and welcome.”

Madison Tibetans celebrate the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday

The Cap Times

Richard J. Davidson, founder of the University of Wisconsin Center for Healthy Minds, reflected on the Dalai Lama’s influence on neuroscience.

“When I first met His Holiness in 1992, there were three scientific papers published on the effects of meditation,” he said. “Now there are thousands. This has been a legacy that will live on for many, many years and has transformed our understanding of the human mind and the human heart.”

Column: Where are the shows about regular people fighting back?

Chicago Tribune

Author Kashana Cauley began her career as an attorney before shifting to writing for TV (including the animated Fox series “The Great North” and “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah”) and as a novelist.

“I’m a first-generation college student, so nobody in my family really knew what college was for, how to get there or what it is you might do with such a degree. I don’t think that’s uncommon among Black American families; only two or three generations of us have been going to college. So I did my undergrad in economics and political science at the University of Wisconsin, but I had no idea how you got a job because I didn’t know you were supposed to get jobs through your friends’ parents; my parents sent me to college so I didn’t have to work on the assembly line at General Motors like my dad, so I was completely confused.”

UW-Madison’s Black Males in Engineering Video Series wins prestigious Telly Award

Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

The Black Males in Engineering (BME) video series, led by UW-Madison School of Education faculty member Dr. Brian Burt, recently received a Silver Telly Award in the Campaign – Education & Training category. The honor recognizes non-broadcast video campaigns created for general educational purposes and underscores the series’ impact on addressing critical gaps in STEM education support.

Madison architect Kenton Peters dead at 93. Here are some of his best-known projects

Wisconsin State Journal

A UW-Madison alumnus and former Badgers football player, Peters began his career in Madison in the early 1960s and was a prominent figure in the city’s development scene into the 2000s. He designed and built two of the high-rise condominiums now overlooking Lake Monona, including the metallic Marina building, among numerous other distinctive projects Downtown, on the UW-Madison campus and throughout the region. Many are still standing — and standing out — today.

Madison musicians, artists collaborate at Next Wave

The Cap Times

On the last weekend in June, artist and recent University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate Ava Albelo organized “Cog in the Machine” at Next Wave Studios, a multimedia production space on Madison’s east side.

Albelo said she funded the project with a grant from the UW-Madison Art Department. She hoped younger people would come to the show “and be interested in the artwork and ask questions and enjoy the music.”

Here’s a sample of the common readers colleges are assigning this year

Forbes

Duke University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison are both assigning “James” by Percival Everett as their common reader. The novel is a fiercely satiric and darkly funny reimagining of Mark Twain’s American classic, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” told from Jim’s point of view. It won both the National Book Award for 2024 and the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

From Lainey Wilson to Megan Thee Stallion, best and worst of Summerfest 2025’s Weekend 2

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Summerfest’s talent team has been dealing with several cancellations (including from Whiskey Myers, Nessa Barrett, Nettspend, Bone-Thugs-N-Harmony and Milwaukee rap star Chicken P, who was arrested), and finding some solid last-minute replacements, including University of Wisconsin-Madison alum Yung Gravy and Bow Wow.