Rural areas seemed immune as the coronavirus spread through cities earlier this year. Few rural cases were reported, and attention focused on the surge of illnesses and deaths in the big metro areas. But that false sense of safety is now falling apart as infection rates explode in rural areas across the country. Iowa State University…
Religious communities have been forced to find alternative ways to worship together during the coronavirus pandemic. For some that has meant going online, but others have turned to a distinctly non-digital practice steeped in the history of the American religious experience: outdoor worship. Prayer sessions in parking lots and services in green spaces formed part of…
One hundred years ago, the 19th Amendment enfranchised millions of women across the United States following a seven-decade campaign. The struggle to expand voting rights to women resonates today as the country continues to debate who should vote and how. As scholars of civic engagement and women’s suffrage, director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics Karen…
“Home” is not a word typically associated with prison environments. People living inside prisons must endure isolation, tight spaces, loss of identity, and separation from loved ones. But Iowa State University associate professor of landscape architecture Julie Stevens, and a design-build team made up of design students and incarcerated women and staff at the Iowa…
The COVID-19 pandemic is disrupting daily routines around the world. Overwhelmed hospitals, desolate schools, ghostly towns and self-isolation echo a campy horror flick, but an all too real one. Companies are laying people off by the thousands, the service industry is teetering on the brink of collapse, and socialist ideas suddenly don’t sound so bad to an average…
What does it mean to serve the United States, and who should be required to do so? The question of service gained renewed relevance in late 2015 after then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced that all military jobs – including combat specialties – would be open to women, essentially negating the Supreme Court’s 1981 rationale for excluding…
The novel coronavirus has shocked the world’s economies. The virus has spread to more than 100 countries and many U.S. states, rattling global stock markets and plunging the Dow more than 2,000 points on March 9 – the biggest one-day drop since the 2008 Great Recession. Concerns about potential global economic decline has made implementation of the U.S.-China phase one trade deal uncertain. This…
Most people associate the 1960s, when the Vietnam War was raging, with draft resistance. By 1972, rumors about the lengths to which men would go to fail their pre-induction physicals had become common enough that scholars of folklore had noticed. Reports of men tattooing obscenities on their bodies, traveling to Tijuana for surgery to ruin rather…
Every day, we make important choices – about whether to feast on fries or take a brisk walk, whether to spend or save each paycheck, whether to buy the sustainable option or the disposable plastic one. Life is made up of countless decisions, and the idea of nudging people in the right direction, instead of…
December is a prime time to fundraise for children’s hospitals and other charities, as many people want to give back and help sick children throughout the holiday season. But for children who live with chronic health problems, their issues extend beyond the holidays. And, just as the kids have medical needs, their parents have needs…
