The Academic Minute

Each day of the first week of March 2021, a different member of the Spelman faculty was featured on "The Academic Minute," a production of WAMC National.

"The Academic Minute" features researchers from colleges and universities around the globe, sharing their groundbreaking research and explaining how it helps us better understand the world around us.

Using Media to Spur Entrepreneurship

Spelman College Week | March 1 Feature
Do the media impact the startup economy? Angelino Viceisza looks into the shark tank to find out.

Angelino Viceisza, Ph.D., is a Professor of Economics at Spelman College, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and a board member of the National Economic Association. During the 2020-21 academic year, he will be visiting the Hoover Institution at Stanford University as a W. Glenn Campbell and Rita Ricardo-Campbell National Fellow and the John Stauffer National Fellow.

March 1 | Dr. Viceisza's Academic Minute

Black Girls and Women in Mathematics

Spelman College Week | March 2 Feature
Black women majoring in math can feel very isolated. Viveka Brown explores why. 

Viveka Borum Brown, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Mathematics, has been teaching and tutoring mathematics since 2000. Her primary research focus looks at various equity issues in mathematics. In particular, she explores issues pertaining to Black females and mathematics. Dr. Borum Brown examines why there seems to be a dearth in the number of Black women who pursue the mathematical field.

March 2 | Dr. Brown's Academic Minute

Development of Coordinated Skill in Toddlers

Spelman College Week | March 3 Feature
No parent likes a toddler with a drum set. Karen Brakke examines the development of motor skills in toddlers.

Karen Brakke, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology. She has also served as chair of psychology (2008-2014) and as special assistant to the Provost (2014-2015).

A developmental psychologist by training, Dr. Brakke’s research focuses on the development of manual skill during infancy and toddlerhood. She is also active in the national teaching and learning community and has authored or co-authored several publications on the teaching of psychology.

March 3 | Dr. Brakke's Academic Minute

Race and How We Understand Color

Spelman College Week | March 4 Feature
How we perceive colors can have a big impact. Myra Greene explains this statement visually.

Myra Greene, a professor in the Department of Art and Visual Culture, uses a diverse photographic practice and fabric manipulations to explore representations of race. Greene is currently working on a new body of work that uses African textiles as a material and pattern as well as color as medium to explore her own relationship to culture. Her work is in the permanent collection of Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, the Princeton University Art Museum and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

March 4 | Green's Academic Minute

Benefits for Black Union Widows

Spelman College Week | March 5 Feature
Black Union widows had trouble claiming benefits after the Civil War. Brandi Brimmer discusses their post-war battle.

Brandi Brimmer, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of History, is a historian of slavery and emancipation interested in how Black people assert themselves in legal systems and within government agencies. Her first book, "Claiming Union Widowhood: Race, Respectability, and Poverty in the Post-Emancipation South" (forthcoming, Duke University Press), offers a new interpretive framework of emancipation and the freedom narrative. Dr. Brimmer chronicles the collective struggle of Black women seeking benefits from the U.S. government on the basis of their standing as the widows of men who served in the Union army during the Civil War. Their petitions and the first-person testimony of those who supported them paint a vivid picture of their lives and labors as free people in a society that continued to marginalize Black women on the basis of race and gender.

March 5 | Dr. Brimmer's Academic Minute