Humanities Feature Bureau

For a global generation, climate change is a hot field. It’s drawing students in record numbers to classrooms where global warming and sustainability are taught. Their interest has prompted colleges across the country, including George Mason University in Northern Virginia, to re-design their curricula to meet this growing demand. Danielle Karson reports.

Southwest Virginia’s Carter Family made their first country music record in 1927. But favorites such as “Keep on the Sunnyside of Life” are still popular 81 years later, thanks mostly to the devotion of fans who preserve and adapt the Family’s tunes. But what is it about the Carter Family’s music that draws in such a loyal following? Reporter Beverly Amsler reports from this year’s Blue Ridge Folklife Festival in Ferrum, Virginia.

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If you take a bus ride this holiday season, it’s probably just to get where you need to go. But when Kath Weston travels on buses,  it’s usually part of her work as an Anthropology professor at the University of Virginia.  Ten years ago, she started researching poverty in America – a topic many academics study.  But Weston chose to set her book on cross country buses so she could write about poverty through a series of real life stories.  The book is called “Traveling Light: On the Road with America’s Poor.” Reporter Jesse Dukes has more.

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Downloadable movies on your IPod, Blu-Ray Discs and DVDs delivered to your door… In an age of new media, the Library of Congress recently opened a facility in Culpeper devoted to preserving and presenting the history of film. Martha Woodroof visited the Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation and filed this report.

Visit the Library of Congress Audio-Visual Preservation Website

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With the growing interest in eating locally-produced and sustainable foods, some true believers think the timing is just about perfect for Virginia apple cider to make a come-back. Reporter Nancy King attended a cider-making workshop recently at Monticello.

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At a recent Richmond block party, Main Street looked like a scene from Sao Paolo, Brazil. Inside a circle of onlookers, two men played a Brazilian marshall art called Capoeira – a blend of theatre, dance, folklore and self-defense.  Peter Solomon reports.

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Last month, archaeologists discovered the remains of George Washington’s Boyhood home. They also uncovered truckloads of artifacts—half-a-million and counting. Reporter Danielle Karson recently visited the lab where these pieces of history are being studied.

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The Barter Theatre in Abingdon Virginia is nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, hours from cities usually considered meccas of the arts. But each year the theatre proves the quality of locally produced work through the “Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights.” Nancy King dropped in on a rehersal and filed this report.

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85 year-old Ashley Bryan, as a person of color, had to charge through a lot of racial barriers to become a published illustrator of children’s books. Bryan, who’s always creating something, was in Warm Springs last week to help a huge crowd of fans open a rare exhibition of his paintings at the Warm Springs Gallery. Reporter Martha Woodroof was there.

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A pop culture icon in his own time, Edgar Allan Poe has found a new audience among fans of comic books and graphic novels.  Reporter Nancy King checked out a new exhibit at the Poe Museum in Richmond.

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For centuries, the  Al-‘Sanah Bedouin ranged between the Gaza Strip and the Negev Desert, herding animals and living in tents. Then the creation of Israel and the increasingly contentious nature of Gaza put an end to their nomadic life. These days this once proud people,  now reduced to poverty, live in a few designated Bedouin towns in the Negev region of Southern Israel. Martha Woodroof reports on one Charlottesville resident who’s partnering with Bedouin women in making an economic comeback.

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Virginia’s Latino population has tripled since 1990, to nearly 480-thousand—two thirds of whom live in northern Virginia. With the illegal immigration controversy dominating the news, there’s a lot the public isn’t hearing about the Hispanic community; such as 35-percent of Latinos earned a college degree in 2006. Danielle Karson reports.

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