Syllabus Week

Introducing Extra Credit

Extra Credit is a newsletter from The University of Texas at Austin’s College of Liberal Arts highlighting the best thinking, writing, and research from our corner of the academic world. That’s not at all to suggest that it’s a newsletter only for COLA faculty, staff, students or alumni — though it certainly is for all those audiences, too. Rather, Extra Credit is a newsletter that aims to highlight the most interesting aspects of our college’s academic life and work that aren’t easily covered in a press release or magazine story (both of which we regularly publish already!) and like all the best products of the university, it’s meant for everyone, no longhorn affiliations required. 

But what do we mean by “most interesting aspects of academic life”? What will an issue of the newsletter look like? And how often should you look for us in your inbox? All good questions. Let’s review our syllabus. 

Description: Extra Credit is a bi-monthly newsletter from COLA’s Office of Public Affairs composed of interviews, essays, and clips from new and upcoming research, and that’s just for starters. Future issues will include book recs from National Book Award finalists, original podcast episodes and deep dives, and anything else that we know will be worth the read.  

Recommended Reading: If you aren’t familiar with COLA’s publications (or even if you are), we recommend reading up on our latest news and flipping through our college magazine, Life & Letters. A few recent highlights to give you a taste of what’s to come: 

• A look at how cheap paperbacks can tell us more about Jane Austen’s incredible popularity than any clothbound limited edition

• From Jaws to Moby Dick, Coyote Shook explores the “blue humanities” in an essay-cum-comic-book

• One species’ poo is another’s breakthrough research project as UT researchers use monkey droppings to explain mating behaviors in endangered muriquis 

Assignments: As our name suggests, everything to and from Extra Credit is for, well, extra credit. But we do want to hear from you. Have a burning question you’ve always wanted to ask an anthropologist? Haunted by a historical puzzle and want to hear an explanation? Don’t understand the latest psych paper but want to? Let us know at colapublicaffairs@austin.utexas.edu and we’ll put a lesson plan together.

Grading: Have you read this far? A+. Want more Extra Credit? Subscribe now and we’ll see you in a couple weeks.