UT Liberal Arts

The College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin

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Walter Buenger History Summerlee Foundation Chair in Texas History Barbara White Stuart Centennial Professorship in Texas History

“The course I’ve enjoyed teaching the most over the last four or five years is a graduate class called 'Southwest Borders.' I simply look at borders and how they affected the people of Texas and the greater southwest in three ways. 

“One, the geographic borders which are the lines on a map – how you cross, how trade crossed and how people crossed back and forth on lines on a map. Two, the borders between cultural groups – how Tejanos were changed by encounters with the Anglos and African Americans were changed by encounters with Anglos and how Anglos were changed by encounters with African Americans. The final border I like to examine with graduate students is a border between past and present. Your present is shaped by how you think about your past.”

People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences.

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Tyler Cohen Human Dimensions Organizations Junior

“My biggest struggle in school was focusing my career path and my interest and finding a symbiosis in between those two. Finding a career path that involved my interest, was monetarily satisfying and challenged me every day.

“I went to my advisor and she talked to me about HDO and told me it focuses on human interaction, interactions within the workplace and interactions with clients. It sounded like something I was interested in because I love interacting with people and talking to people every day, completing projects and hanging out with my friends. I feel like choosing a major that focuses on human interaction and qualitative results based on those interactions was something that matched up with my interest."

People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences.

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Madison E. Hise Human Dimensions of Organizations Senior

“I'm a transfer student and people couldn't be more welcoming. I am grateful for how inviting the community has been to me. There is a place for everyone on campus, it's just opening yourself up to find it.

“I chose HDO because it was diverse. It didn't tie me down to one career, it opened up a number of doors to whatever I decide to do."

People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences.

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Laura Dixon Communications Director Population Research Center

“I am passionate about being a voice for research that can help people by reducing health disparities, educational inequality and more. The Population Research Center houses the Texas Policy Evaluation Project, the place I spend a lot of my time helping spread the word about the impact of reproductive health policy in Texas.

“The Dream of a Common Language has had a great impact on my life because it was one of the first books I read that explores the intersections of academic thinking, feminism, activism and poetry. I didn’t know one book could do that!”

People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences.

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Benjamin Caudill International Relations & Global Studies Army ROTC

"I chose [IRG] because I was interested in the global sphere. I am in ROTC and I want to join the military, so I figured that would be a helpful degree. Not only that but I am also interested in global politics, how people work together and how their cultures interact.

“ROTC is a lot of fun. Three times a week we do PT starting at 5 in the morning. There are a bunch of different activities like the ranger challenge [which focuses on tactical skills, like plan navigation] and different teams we participate in. I am on the 'run team,’ so we compete in local races. On Thursdays, we have labs where we go out to Camp Mabry and climb in the bushes for four hours.”

People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences.

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Julia Pollard-Grayson Linguistics and Sociology Austin, Texas

“I think my biggest accomplishment has been figuring out who I am and being able to understand my limits in all aspects of life while accepting them. I have a twin brother and so we are constantly competing. We both go to UT and we're always trying to be the better one. At a certain point, I just realized where my limit stops. 

“Currently, I am trying to branch out and join more clubs in different colleges that are specialized for different people. Finding different communities of people that have the same idea of what's fun, but have a different way of seeing the world is my piece of advice to anyone in college.”

People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences.

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Tom Palaima Classics Robert M. Armstrong Centennial Professor Director, Program in Aegean Scripts and Prehistory

“The music of Bob Dylan is inspiring. Students agree that he's looking around him, whether he's writing something about war and love, the economic conditions of society or just about what’s going on in his life at the moment. It’s all very clear and insightful, sort of non-dogmatic. He's just saying, ‘Well, look at things this way, or find another avenue.’

“‘Desolation Row,' which is about Dylan looking at the poorest and most outcast members of society and giving us a way of placing them in context and giving us reasons to question why society is set up at is. 

“Plato says that music allows important thoughts to seep into the soul and good literature does that as well. A great novel is so great because it allows you to see yourself in other circumstances and think outside the book of your own life. If I were forced to mention books that inspired me, I would say books like ‘Slaughterhouse Five’ by Kurt Vonnegut, or ‘1984′ by George Orwell.”

People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences.

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Sarah Seraj Psychology graduate student Bangladesh

“I used to be a PhD student in civil engineering. I did not like it and I was about to quit, when I met with my advisor James W. Pennebaker and started doing research with him. It was a really good fit, so I switched over into the social psychology graduate program. 

“In our lab, we basically do a lot of big data analysis using language data from the real world. We pull it from places like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. We are trying to use language as a marker of different psychological phenomena. I think there are a lot of real-world applications for it.”

People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences.

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Hannah Martinez Psychology Senior

“I would say one of my greatest accomplishments has been my ability to use logic, knowledge and love to impact others to be greater and help change the world. We all have unique skills and talents; when we decide to join together and use our abilities for good, we begin to have an impact that turns the tide of history. 

“A book that has influenced me is The Veil by Blake Healy. The story opened my eyes to the possibility that we may not fully understand reality, and being open-minded and teachable is important for success and happiness.”

People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences.

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John Morán González Professor, Department of English Director, Center for Mexican American Studies

“A course that I very much enjoyed [teaching] has been a recent signature course that I developed called 'Immigration and the American Dream,’ which really speaks to a dynamic immigration that has been there from the beginning, and before there was a United States.

“The question, 'Who is a migrant? Who belongs here?’ In all kind of ways, ranging from the counters between indigenous people and European settlers, and going even at later moments to question the idea that the United States was specifically a nation of immigrants. ‘Immigrant’ in its conceptualization and origins has always been a central component of U.S identity that people have both embraced and rejected simultaneously. I think that’s that kind of contradiction we are still seeing very much today.”

People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences.

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Elizabeth Coon Psychology Junior

“From early middle school, I always found the brains and minds of criminals and serial killers very interesting, which is why I decided to major in psychology. I want to understand what happened to them that made them the way they are.

“For example, a lot of criminals and serial killers have similar backgrounds to others that don’t go out and kill 30 people. With my major, I hope to go in the field of behavioral profiling and eventually become a criminal profiler to understand why they do what they do.”

People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences.

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Elena Edwards Sociology Plano, Texas

“I chose [sociology] because I think it is really important to study society and its workings to help improve it. Specifically, I am interested in deviance in the criminal justice system, and I want to eventually go to law school.”

People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences.

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Randolph Lewis American Studies Interim Department Chair, Professor

“I am really interested in surveillance in the workplace and in medicine. There's this pill now that you can take and when it reaches your stomach acid it sends a Bluetooth pulse to your phone, which then sends to your doctor a notification that you took your meds. So this may be the future of smart medicine. It is great for people who are schizophrenic and the doctor needs to know that person is taking their meds, but on the other hand, it is kind of creepy if you think about it. What if the insurance company said, ‘We will not insure you unless we know you are taking this medication that this doctor said you should take,' and you’re like, ‘I don’t believe I should take it.’ So we kind of lose control over our own bodies.”

People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences.

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Jessica Tseng Psychology Junior

“A book that has impacted my life is ‘Becoming Attached: First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity to Love’ by Robert Karen. It was required reading for one of my classes, but I appreciated it because I learned concept about relationships and I apply them to my everyday life.”

People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences.

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Luisana Cortez English and Plan II

“My biggest accomplishment currently is that I’ve learned how to slowly get out of my comfort zone. For example, I love poetry and I’ve always wanted to do slam poetry, which is a competition where one performs their poems without any props or anything. I am not a super skilled public speaker, so the thought of it makes me nervous, but it is something that I want to try out. I feel like the initiative of trying is a big accomplishment for me.”

People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences.

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Rebecca Wright American studies, history Sophomore

“I was a transfer student so this still kind of my first year. I am actually going to be a FIG (freshman interest group) mentor next year, so my advice for first-year students would be that it’s okay to not be doing fantastic at everything all the time. There's tons of support on campus, so don’t be afraid of reaching out.”

People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences.

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Sanjana Mohanty Sociology minor Austin, Texas

“My goal in life is to become a doctor. I choose to minor in sociology because it captivated me. I think my biggest achievement so far has been volunteering at St. David’s, which is a hospital close to UT. I’ve never really had the opportunity to do any leadership positions before, so when I was given a position as lead department trainer for new volunteers, I was really happy.”

People of Liberal Arts is a feature showcasing students, faculty and staff members within the college and their diverse perspectives and experiences.