Academics

Griffin Cobb chats with Bingham Diversity Scholar, Dr. Avery Tompkins about his research on gender and how it relates to issues at TU. Listen on Soundcloud Transcript [MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: Welcome to another Campus Conversation, discussions with Transylvania University faculty, highlighting their interests, passions, and pursuits. Here is Griffin Cobb. GRIFFIN COBB: I’m here with Dr. Avery Tompkins, who is the Bingham Diversity Scholar and an assistant professor of sociology here at Transylvania. And we’re going to talk about the role of gender at Transy as well as his research into gender in general. So the first thing I want to ask is, how do we define gender, and how should we? AVERY TOMPKINS: OK, so I think that this is a question that’s difficult to answer. So people in general would probably say that gender is social– there’s a social aspect to that– and that it encompasses things like how people see their own sense of self and then also how others perceive them. So people may choose their gender or feel that they are a gender that might be man, or woman, or trans, or genderqueer, or some other gender that probably people would loosely put under transgender, even if people do not necessarily use that word to describe themselves. But in general, gender’s just how people feel about themselves and then also how people perceive them. Usually, gender– like for cisgender people, non-transgender people– it’s like

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Tristan Reynolds ’19 talks “piano-side” with Transylvania University music professor, pianist-composer Dr. Gregory Partain. Listen on Soundcloud Transcript [PIANO MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: Welcome to another campus conversation, discussions with Transylvanian University faculty highlighting their interests and pursuits. Here is Tristan Reynolds. [PIANO MUSIC PLAYING] TRISTAN REYNOLDS: So I’m here with Gregory Partain in his office. And we’re going to talk about his career as a piano player, as a composer, and as a professor here at Transy. The piece you just listened to was Scarlatti’s Sonata in A Major. GREGORY PARTAIN: It was originally written for harpsichord, and he wrote 600 sonatas. There are a lot to choose from, but it’s music that translates extremely well on the piano. And the fast movements, the fast sonatas are just so vivacious, and they’re so much fun to play. Very difficult, too. But this particular one, there’s a famous recording by Vladimir Horowitz, the great 20th century pianist. And I remember listening to this a lot when I was young, that particular piece, and thinking, gosh, if I could ever play like that, how wonderful it would be. So in my adult years, when I was getting ready to make my second CD, I kind of thought it would be fun to go back to this old sonata and see how well I could do with it. TRISTAN REYNOLDS: You talk about picking out this piece for your second CD. When

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Brandon Trapp 19 Interviews Dr. Kerri Hauman Listen on Soundcloud Transcript SPEAKER 1: Welcome to another campus conversation. Discussions with Transylvania University faculty, highlighting their interests, passions, and pursuits. Here is Brandon Trapp. BRANDON TRAPP: So I’m here with Dr. Kerri Hauman. And we’re going to talk today about the digital liberal arts. So first I want to ask, what is digital liberal arts? KERRI HAUMAN: It’s a loaded question. Of course, academics never like to give straightforward definitions of anything. When I think about the digital liberal arts, I sort of think about it as almost a silly thing, like a silly title, because the digital is already in the liberal arts. And we’re not, like when we’re just talking about liberal arts education without any sort of adjective or other word tacked on the front there, I think the digital is already there. But I think we name it that, because the technology is often sort of invisible, right? There are different course management systems, like Moodle and other things, that are being used. And so the digital is there. But they sort of blend into the background of the larger activity of higher education. And they’re not necessarily the focal point of it. And so I think that’s part of the reason why we give it that full label of digital liberal arts to sort of call to attention the digital that’s there already. I think also,

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