October 2023 Connections

What would a world without soap operas look like? Barbara Irwin has been pursuing the answer to that question throughout her career. In a new interview, Irwin reflects on her role as a communications professor at Canisius University, as well as an audience researcher and author of books on the CBS daytime drama, The Young and the Restless.

Pioneering international research by College of the Holy Cross psychology professor Florencia Anggoro examines a critical question: Do religious beliefs shape how children think and learn?

In the new book, The Outsiders: Adolescent Tenderness and Staying Gold, Gonzaga University professor Ann Ciasullo mined her academic expertise to examine how the movie stuck out among 1980s films geared toward young audiences.

Two Le Moyne College professors who specialize in olfaction and inequality are using their research to make the world a better place.

Readers of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings now have the opportunity to record stories about their connections to the books, thanks to a new oral oral history project sponsored by Marquette University: home of the famed J.R.R. Tolkien Collection.

If the label on your lipstick reads “Lancôme,” are you more likely to be a feminist than if you wear Maybelline? As strange as it sounds, a Regis University assistant professor’s surprising research suggests that the answer may be yes.

Conspiracy theories, vampires, Barbies, and UFOS. What do they all have in common? The answer is Barna Donovan, Ph.D.: director of the graduate program in communication and public relations at Saint Peter’s University.

It’s natural that a Silicon Valley-based Jesuit university would offer classes like biostatistics, intermediate Latin, technology ethics, or artificial intelligence labs. But at Santa Clara University, tucked alongside such staples are niche offerings that might seem more like fodder for TikTok than a college classroom.

Two influential musical artists of the 21st century are the subject of new classes taught through Loyola Marymount University’s Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts and College of Business Administration.

From physics professor Nathaniel Frissell’s perspective, the quote attributed to St. Ignatius of Loyola to “go forth, and set the world on fire” is almost embedded in The University of Scranton’s DNA. Extending this effort to the community beyond campus seems like the natural next step to take—one that Frissell has undertaken in his space research over the past few years.