Challenge. Change.

Screen studies Professor Rox Samer constantly crosses the boundary between consuming media for research and for fun. Patricia Highsmith’s novels, like “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” and their film adaptations fall into that category. Highsmith balked at being labeled a suspense or mystery writer, but “The Price of Salt” was her only novel that did not contain a murder. Thriller or not, Highsmith’s stories have repeatedly made their way to the big screen. 

“Something about Highsmith’s writing, including her approach to queer representation, was really profoundly influencing the history of cinema, starting with Alfred Hitchcock’s immediate adaptation of her first novel, ‘Strangers on a Train,’” Samer says. 

Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts

When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education bill, also known as the Don’t Say Gay bill, into law last year, researchers and the public were largely focused on the legislation’s effect on youth and teachers. Clark psychology Professor Abbie Goldberg wanted to learn how the new law was impacting LGBTQ+ parents.  

The law prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity before the fourth grade. Goldberg interviewed 113 Florida LGBTQ+ parents about the bill’s impact on their families. Of the parents surveyed, 56% are considering moving out of Florida and 21% are less out in their communities. Goldberg says parents are questioning if their children will receive an equal education. 

“The bill affects children’s ability to talk openly about their families and potentially complete assignments about their families, like writing about their family vacation with two moms or two dads,” she says. “Some of my participants pointed out that the naming of the bill, Parental Rights in Education, refers to certain parents' rights. They asked, ‘What about our rights?’” 

Goldberg’s research, conducted with the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, is the first to examine the impact of the bill. She continues to research ramifications for families.  

Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. 

When Betsy Huang, an English professor and Clark’s Andrea B. and Peter D. Klein ’64 Distinguished Professor, picked up J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” at age 12, Bilbo Baggins’ adventure to lands vastly different than his comfortable home in the Shire felt relatable. It was just two years after Huang immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan.

Huang began to study science fiction as a scholar, analyzing everything from the harmful racist tropes included in early works to the more progressive novels that arrived halfway through the 20th-century. Right now, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories are abundant, from the HBO series “The Last of Us” to AMC’s “The Walking Dead.” Huang says these tales about immense loss are not as progressive as some may think. 

“Whether we are aware of this or not, what we want when we watch those shows is a return to what we have now,” Huang says. “We want to see more nuanced science fiction that helps us think through what it is that we're doing today and offers practical solutions for mitigating all of our bad behaviors.”

Huang recommends authors Ted Chiang, Ken Liu, and Octavia Butler to anyone interested in science fiction.

Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

Robert Goddard, M.A. 1910, Ph.D. 1911, had big dreams of going to Mars years before he launched the first liquid-fueled rocket on March 16, 1926. Ninety-seven years after that historic launch, Charles Slatkin ’74 has his own dreams about inspiring the next generation of scientists and space explorers. 

Slatkin — who, like Goddard, was a Clark professor after graduating — purchased Goddard’s childhood home in Worcester when it went on the market in 2021. He imagines the home could host think tanks about space and science and be a destination for school field trips, celebrating Goddard's achievement and encouraging the so-called Mars generation to make the next big discovery. 

“There's this misconception that space is all about space tourism and that it's a waste of time when there are so many troubles on Earth,” Slatkin says. “Most space exploration these days involves remote sensing, monitoring climate change, telecommunications, the internet. We wouldn’t have the connectivity we have, and we wouldn't have the sense of planet that we have without space.”

Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

History Professor Nina Kushner asks her students to study who determines what activity is deemed illicit. Kushner developed an interest in this area after watching her mother, a Rhode Island legislator, lobby for bills to support gay rights and reproductive rights. 

“Sometimes the history of sexuality is backward, right? So things actually get more strict, not less strict. We always assume that we're getting more and more progressive and we're not.”

Kushner recommends Notches, an international history of sexuality blog, to anyone interested in learning more.

Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

Music Professor John Freyermuth has a hectic schedule, split between recording studios and classrooms. As a music engineer, Freyermuth takes recorded songs and ensures each disparate element sounds like a cohesive piece. He’s also worked in songwriting and music production. Freyermuth has collaborated with a range of talent, from Drake to Angel Olsen, and from Methyl Ethel to the emerging artists in his classrooms.

This week, Freyermuth talks to us about his love of records, from electronic avant-garde compositions to the new tracks released each Friday on Spotify and Apple Music. Current trends are a central part of his Clark courses. “I love talking about making records. Talking about that and then going home to put those skills to practice allows me to speak in front of a class very confidently,” says Freyermuth, who often tells his students, “I'm going to go home and I'm going to do exactly what I just showed you to make some of your favorite records.”

This episode contains short clips of Beyonce, the Pixies, and current student, Luca Houtsmuller '25.

Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

When English Professor Dianne Berg read news about a Duxbury, Massachusetts, mother accused of killing her three children, she thought immediately of two cases from her research. Berg studies representations of domestic violence and the literary appropriation of real stories about death, murder, and infanticide. 

She’s analyzed the discourse and press coverage of Margaret Vincent, a mother of three who killed two of her children in 1616 because she believed that if the family didn't convert to Catholicism, they would all be damned, and of Andrea Yates, a Houston woman suffering from postpartum mental illness who drowned her five children in a bathtub in 2001 because she believed it would save them from hell. 

Berg examines the way these women are described in the media. There’s something different about the story of Lindsay Clancy, the Duxbury mother, compared to Vincent and Yates. Berg is noticing increased compassion and discussion of postpartum depression and psychosis.

“The push to raise consciousness about postpartum depression and psychosis at a sort of grassroots level is impressive,” Berg says. “More noise has to be made and more pressure has to be put on our lawmakers to address the woeful inadequacy of our healthcare system in this country.”

Berg recommends the book “Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers” by Sady Doyle to anyone who wants to read more about this topic.

Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

Clark education Professor Raphael Rogers '94 teaches aspiring teachers. That means he helps students learn how to discuss difficult topics in the classroom, including racism and slavery. This work comes as people across the country — from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to parents in Massachusetts towns — challenge whether uncomfortable parts of American history belong in schools. 

“If you look at the discourse around why teachers shouldn't focus on these issues in classrooms, there's a lot of talk about indoctrination,” Rogers says. “That type of discourse is out there, and it's used often. I shared with my students that folks who want to push back have to be in spaces where their voice can be heard.”

Rogers recommends watching The 1619 Project, a Hulu series that reframes the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery at the center of the national narrative.

Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

Seeing the growing popularity of artificial intelligence like ChatGPT, a chatbot launched by OpenAI in November, Rabbi Joshua Franklin ’06, M.A. ’07, engaged his congregation in a quirky, but poignant, experiment. Franklin asked ChatGPT to write a sermon based on a Torah portion about the idea of vulnerability and read it to his congregation. No one could guess who authored the text. 

Franklin believes artificial intelligence tools will have implications across all industries. Everyone from doctors to lawyers to rabbis will need to evolve and develop their skillset. One way they can start is by focusing on empathy and developing relationships — something ChatGPT can’t do better.

“I think when we have meaningful relationships and connections with other people, be it in a one-on-one relationship, a face-to-face encounter, or a communal encounter, we're able to experience some kind of divine spark,” Franklin says. “Those are very human things that can't be emulated in the digital realm.”

Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.

Like students who came before them, Mac Hudson and David Baxter found themselves enthralled by lessons about global genocide during classes taught by Clark sociology Professor Shelly Tenenbaum. The difference is that Hudson and Baxter took their courses entirely inside one of the state’s medium security prisons, not on a college campus. 

Tenenbaum teaches courses to incarcerated students through the Emerson Prison Initiative, which offers students at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Concord a pathway to receive a bachelor’s degree.                                                 “Teaching in prison, I learned what real serious intellectual engagement is,” Tenenbaum says. “Teaching in prison is really about the transformative power of ideas, confronting very serious ethical questions, grappling with morality, debates, and different perspectives.”

For Hudson and Baxter, the student experience strengthened their sense of identity.  “It was a test of our intelligence, and it was a way of validating that we can compete in society,” Hudson says. “Each class that went by, each time we passed, each grade we got, that was significant.”

Tenenbaum authored a chapter in “Education Behind the Wall: Why and How We Teach College in Prison,” a book edited by Mneesha Gellman, the founder and director of EPI. She is also a professor in Clark’s Liberal Arts for Returning Citizens program, which we featured in an episode last month.

Challenge. Change. is produced by Andrew Hart and Melissa Hanson for Clark University. Listen and subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Find other episodes wherever you listen to podcasts.