Society & Culture

Spending time alone isn’t necessarily bad, especially for first-year college students. A new study shows that having a positive motivation for seeking solitude can be a predictor for successful adjustment to college life.

The picture of the Middle Ages as "awful, smelly, stinky, [and] dangerous" is not accurate, says medievalist and University of Pennsylvania professor David Wallace, this year’s Ferrari Humanities Symposia visiting scholar.

The University's Susan B. Anthony Center has organized an initiative to mark Equal Pay Day, a national effort to promote pay equity for women of all backgrounds, and people of all races.

Late-night satire may be enjoying a heyday, but fools who speak truth to power are nothing new. In her latest book, professor emerita of history Dorinda Outram looks at how court jesters were much more than just a floppy hat.

The latest Rochester Women profile looks at the life of Mary Calderone ’39M (MD), a pioneering advocate for sex education who was both celebrated and vilified for her work during a time a great cultural division over sexuality and feminism.

In the final lecture in this year's Humanities Center series, UCLA law school dean Jennifer Mnookin discusses the troubling role faulty forensic science continues to play in the criminal justice system.

Julia Maddox, director of the University’s Barbara J. Burger iZone in Rush Rhees Library, talks about creating a safe space for students to try things, and fail, while reducing the pressure to have to succeed all the time.

In a study spanning the first 18 months of the Donald Trump presidency, the non-partisan Bright Line Watch research group found large areas of agreement as to what constitutes critical democratic principles, but little agreement over which have been violated.

Vera Micheles Dean served as the founding director of the University's Non-Western Civilizations program, one of the first such interdisciplinary programs for undergraduates in the country.

In a new study, Rochester psychologists found that mothers and fathers who were less capable of dampening down their anger are more likely to resort to harsh discipline aimed at their teens, and that fathers in particular were not as good at considering alternative explanations for their teens' behavior.

A collaboration between librarians and engineering students, the book wheel in Rossell Hope Robbins Library is a recreation of a 16th-century design, solving the problem of needing access to multiple books at the same time.

Three Rochester professors discuss the nature of America's political and social divide and offer ideas on how higher education might help bridge the widening gap.