This week on Intersection, we talk with three MU professors about their teaching and research in and outside of the classroom. From the First Amendment and social media to what superheroes can teach us about American history, we're learning from some of our region's fascinating educators.
Listen to the full show here:
Assistant Professor Brett Johnson teaches courses on mass communication law. Johnson’s research focuses on the First Amendment, the wide protections the press enjoys in the United States and how the public interacts with those rights - including on social media.
“What we're looking at is how various media organizations have conceived of Facebook as this new powerful player. Does it have a duty to protect people from harmful speech because it is so easy there's such a low cost to say such horrible things online? Or does it have a duty to promote a robust marketplace of ideas, to be to kind of be more laissez faire?"
Here, Johnson talks about the First Amendment.
Juanamaría Cordones-Cook is a professor of Romance Language and Literature. She brings her knowledge of Afro-Latino artists from the books and documentaries she's produced into the classroom.
"I have brought quite a few of Afro-Cuban artists here and these students have absorbed this with tremendous interest, because I think that here in the United States we always talk about the Harlem Renaissance and in my understanding what happened in Cuba after the revolution was very similar and I call it the Havana's Black Renaissance. So students are introducing into this world and I feel that they are very interested and fascinated they love meeting these artists and writers and it's a way of enriching their experience and they absorb it very happily I think.”
Through her travels and research Cordones-Cook has been able to develop close relationships with the writers and artists she works with.
Assistant visiting professor Jonathan Root specializes in 20th-century American religious and cultural history. This semester, he’s teaching a class called “The Superhero in American Culture.”
“In many ways it’s a survey of American 20th-century history, but I’m doing that through the lens of superheroes. So if you look at the time period, how do superheroes reflect that time period? And how do they help shape that time period? How do they shape generations?”
Here Root talks about the birth of Captain America.
Intersection's producers are Claire Banderas, Kelly Palecek and Abby Ivory-Ganja.
