Penn State's Sagan Friant, assistant professor of anthropology, recently answered some questions about the outbreaks, including how monkeypox is transmitted, how it’s different from COVID-19, and whether it could become endemic outside of Africa.

The Penn State University Libraries has selected the winners of the 2022 Whiting Indigenous Knowledge Student Research Awards, funded by the M. G. Whiting Endowment for the Advancement of Indigenous Knowledge. Applicants must be Penn State students planning to conduct research related to an approved topic for an undergraduate capstone course, honors thesis topic, master’s or doctoral thesis, or similar project.

Once humans discovered how to tame fire, they began using it for heat, for cooking, to scare away animals and to alter their environs, especially burning areas to plant and to restore grazing land. In Madagascar, scientists and conservationists have long believed that fire is a leading cause of high landscape degradation, but an international team of researchers has found that medium to large fires on the island are similar to other tropical locations.

The Penn State Consortium on Substance Use and Addiction hosted its second annual conference, “Community Approaches to Substance Use and Addiction” on May 3.  

Oliver-McCourtney Professor of History Laura Robson and a colleague from the University of Manitoba have joined forces to create Stateless Histories, a digital humanities project that explores the concept of statelessness and tells the little-known histories of people who have been denied or cannot claim citizenship or nationality in any country.

The Rock Ethics Institute will host the final lecture in the 2022 Expanding Empathy series on May 11, on Zoom. This panel will focus on the topic of empathy and prosociality, and feature Emma McClure, assistant professor of philosophy at St. Mary’s University, and Linda Tropp, professor of social psychology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Timeka Tounsel, an assistant professor of African American studies and media studies at Penn State, has written a new book exploring how mainstream brands and mass media companies have represented — and profited from — Black women throughout the years.

Students in ENGL 411 have the opportunity not only to read about Centre County but also engage with their coursework through field trips to the areas surrounding Penn State's University Park campus.