With Good Reason

Eleven women have been put to death for murder since the United States reinstated the death penalty in 1976. In her book, Wretched Sisters, Mary Atwell (Radford University) offers an analysis of the circumstances that determined how these eleven came to be subjected to the ultimate punishment. Also featured; The gun-toting woman holds enormous symbolic [...]

Winner of the 2009 Gabriel Award for “News/Informational Radio Programming – Markets 1-25,” designed to honor works of excellence in broadcasting which serve viewers and listeners through the positive, creative treatment of concerns to humankind. Roberta Culbertson (Center on Violence and Community at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities) looks for ways to mitigate the [...]

The National Endowment for the Arts is encouraging all of us to read or re-read Harper Lee’s 1960 novel, that presents the Jim Crow south through the eyes of a young girl. Gary Edgerton (Old Dominion University) and Ted McCosky ( Radford University) explain why the film that came out just two years after the [...]

The contributions that Irish nuns made to help destitute immigrant Catholic children in New York City were instrumental in developing modern American social institutions like foster care and welfare. Before the nuns aided these children, they were being sent to live with Protestant families, often never seeing their parents again. Maureen Fitzgerald (College of William [...]