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.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The Lynnhaven River, in Virginia Beach, was once famous for the salty, fat oysters that grow in its waters.  Pollution brought the harvest of Lynnhaven Fancies to a near standstill over thirty years ago, though, and few people have tasted the local delicacy since. But, as Jesse Dukes reports from Virginia Beach, there’s new hope for Virginia’s most famous oyster.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download