Society & Culture

“Proximity is usually associated with intimacy, and distance with strangeness,” explains Rochester anthropologist Robert Foster. “The public challenge at the moment is that we must learn to express our care and concern by maintaining distance, which is counter-intuitive.”

The $2 trillion stimulus plan working its way through Congress likely won’t be adequate to save the US economy from recession in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, says University of Rochester economist Narayana Kocherlakota.

While social distancing is key to slowing the spread of coronavirus, people can combat the isolation with technology, say two Rochester psychologists.

Ella Salome Wilcoxen, Class of 1901, was in her mid-30s when she applied, and a special faculty committee had to be formed to approve her request. She went on to become a teacher.

By the time of her death at age 103, Olivia Hooker ’62 (PhD) was an early witness to devastating acts of racist violence, the first African-American woman to serve in the Coast Guard, and a prominent psychology professor.

“It’s in our best interest to make sense of the US and Mexico as places that receive and places that send—that goes for both countries,” says associate professor of history Ruben Flores, who will host acclaimed writer Valeria Luiselli in the latest Humanities Center Public Lecture Series.

A Rochester study is the first to describe caregiver strategies for self-care and the obstacles and barriers parents face in raising children struggling with developmental, cognitive, and behavioral problems associated with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.

With an outbreak of coronavirus making for an unusual travel season, Rochester faculty describe the traditions—and logistical challenges—as more than 1.3 billion Chinese go on vacation at the same time to mark the new year.

This tiny book was acquired by the Smithsonian in 1925. It’s made up of 147 folios of parchment, or treated animal hide, stitched together. The “over text”—the visible text—is of an Armenian prayer book, suspected to date from the 15th century. But there is also an “under text”—a work that was erased to recycle the parchment for the over text. The Smithsonian has turned to University of Rochester professor Gregory Heyworth and his Lazarus Project to help solve the mystery of what that long-ago effaced text might be.

Teenagers in the US don’t get enough shut eye, and the consequences of this epidemic of sleep deprivation are extensive. But researchers at the University of Rochester have found that a simple solution yields solid results: setting a bedtime and sticking to it.

Rochester professor of economics Narayana Kocherlakota expects to be disappointed this week, as the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee has signaled that it will make no changes to an eight-year-old policy statement for meeting inflation and unemployment goals.

For the last three summers, Rochester undergraduates have worked to analyze and preserve the ancient forts along the coast of Ghana, while exploring the historical and cultural context of the structures they study.