Open a newspaper or turn on the TV today, and the topic of racism is as prominent as it has ever been, despite the fact that open expressions of hatred have become relatively uncommon. Anthropology Professor Sabiyha Prince works to make meaning of this paradox: In her classes, she teaches about how power relations and [...]

AU’s second-longest teaching faculty member is retiring at the end of this year. Charles R. Larson is a pioneer in the study of African literature in the Western world. Chris Lewis, AWOL editor-in-chief and former Larson pupil, sat down with him to discuss his storied career. Next semester Larson will teach “The African Writer” — [...]

Junior Tom McNutt experiences fraternity life at AU a little differently than most of his brothers. McNutt, a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon, is part of an increasingly noticeable group of AU students who have not historically been known to join the fraternity ranks, at least openly: gay men. “There were some awkward conversations in [...]

As I fumbled through the day’s lesson plan, I realized I wasn’t going to fill enough time. “Uh, all right,” I said in Spanish, “Now we’re going to play a game. I’ll draw an animal on the board, and you all raise your hands if you know its name in English.” Here I was in [...]

Not long ago, the Davenport Coffee Lounge received a dubious donation from AU’s University Communications and Marketing (UCM) office: coffee mugs, painted with white block capital letters. They read “KNOW,” and underneath, “WONK.” Dr. Teresa Flannery, UCM’s Executive Director, said the mugs were intended to give faculty “who don’t tend to wear t-shirts” a chance [...]

Eric Sheptock is a homeless, homeless advocate based in Washington, D.C. The feature above is the result of three days following Sheptock along his daily routine, from the shelter to Facebook to Twitter. Social media is his platform for pursuing “revolutionary change” in the way society views housing. He almost certainly has more Facebook friends [...]

Viñales Valley, Pinar del Rio. Cuba: The island 90 miles south of Florida is an alluring mix of tropical heat, fine cigars and bearded revolutionaries. The nation is shrouded in mystery for most Americans, but a study abroad license allows a handful of AU students to visit for a semester. Here, Che Guevara is universally [...]

Across the Hudson River from the World Trade Center’s twin towers, on the Stevens Institute of Technology campus where he studied engineering, he watched plumes of smoke billow from gaping openings where the planes had just hit. All at once, he was overcome by the realization of life’s fragility. “What if tomorrow’s not promised for [...]

Critically recognized as one of the most abstruse and exasperating books ever written, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is arguably the most challenging text in modern philosophy — even for AU’s ace philosophy majors. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, when a course on the book appeared on AU’s Spring 2009 course catalog, its waitlist [...]

It was an unusual winter in Washington, D.C. While the city was buried beneath the area’s largest snowstorm in recorded history, AU students relished a week without classes and witnessed the collapse of the Mary Graydon Center canopy as it succumbed to the weight of over two feet of snow, falling to the ground with [...]