BU Arts & Sciences prepares students for any future that they choose. Our students learn to engage with complicated issues and different perspectives, to ask tough questions, to gather and analyze evidence, to make persuasive arguments, to put facts and figures in context, and to master a subject or subjects while honing critical thinking and analytical skills. Here are some spaces where our students, alumni, and faculty are taking arts and sciences into action.
Protecting the Vote
Christine Slaughter and Max Palmer want their students to know that voting rights are complicated—and that progress is rarely linear. Palmer, an associate professor of political science, and Slaughter, an assistant professor of political science, study who participates in the political process, and why. In a new course they co-taught in Spring 2024—Voting Rights (PO 336), BU’s first undergraduate course on the subject—the pair covered voting rights’ complex history.
Germinating Family Seeds in the Mediterranean
Caterina Scaramelli, a senior lecturer in the departments of Earth & Environment and Anthropology, has turned to practices of cultivation and seed-saving, examining how the preservation of local varieties of crops in the Mediterranean — including tomatoes, pumpkins, and other fruits and vegetables—affect families and communities. Saramelli’s newest project, “What Seeds Carry: Sprouting, Keeping & Exchanging Locality in Turkey”—which was awarded the Post Ph.D. Research Grant by the Wenner-Gren Foundation—uses interviews, observations, and archival research to document the cultural significance of seeds in Turkey.
Investigating Newport’s Ties to Slavery
Social historian MaryKate Smolenski (GRS’27), a PhD student in American and New England studies, redesigned the tour of a historical home, unearthing stories of the enslaved people and free people of color who had lived there.
Keeping BU’s Researchers Safe Under the Waves
BU’s dive safety officer Lizzie McNamee (CAS’10) trains students to do underwater marine science research. McNamee started her diving career as an undergraduate in BU’s Marine Science program. She graduated and moved to Florida, where she got her captain’s license while working as an educator at the MarineLab Environmental Education Center in Key Largo, and later earned two master’s degrees from Florida Atlantic University—one in environmental science, and one in education, a seemingly perfect blend of her two passions.
Tracking responses to the MBTA Communities Act
Since its inception in January 2021, the MBTA Communities—which requires towns and cities with public transportation to change their zoning laws to allow multi-family housing around transit stations and in other dense areas—has caused turmoil among housing advocates and opposition groups fearful that such development will change the character of their communities. In “CAS PO 519: Inequality & American Politics,” students were assigned to figure out why.
New BU Course: A Deep Dive into the History of the Academy Awards
A new American & New England Studies class—which quickly filled its 15 spots—examines how the awards ceremony, and the Academy, operate, the types of films and genres usually favored by Academy voters, and how the annual Oscars show has become a cultural ritual and a platform for social change.