This month Nayyab Naveed, a current MFA Student at RISD, has partnered with Dr. Jane to tell a story about her eco-spiritual encounters with ants while growing up in Pakistan. My Nana Abu was a friend to the ants. Mama told me he left out granules of sugar for them near their doorways, and you […]
Ants in the City column celebrates one year with Motif. “Stick to ants” he cried, hiding behind a zoom chat rather than showing up to say it to me in person at an invited seminar I gave at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City earlier this year. After a year of […]
The genocide against the Palestinian people continues, and hundreds are dying from starvation as concentration camps are being built to move their remaining families. While it can be tempting to succumb to hopelessness, poet Mx. Yaffa recently implored us to ask, “Do you think your misery is the food people in Gaza are demanding?” This […]
In her book of ant poetry, Sawako Nakayasu, an artist and professor at Brown University, describes keeping ants close to her heart, from both metaphorical and literal perspectives. Ants have been close to my heart for years, and as we move through women’s history month, we wanted to highlight the work and legacies of some […]
When studying energy in biology, students learn that the mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell; about the many chemical reactions of glycolysis, the Krebs cycle, and the electron transport chain… but less covered is the great mystery of metabolism. We understand our pulse and that our beating hearts move resources around our bodies, but […]
For a love story, this one might not lead to a happy ending. But hours before it even began, as the rising sun warmed the bricks of PC’s Aquinas Hall, there was a flurry of excitement among all the sisters, and especially so for two of them. With a passing embrace, and a quick hug […]
“We must all learn to live together as brothers, or we will all perish together as fools. We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Over the last few weeks, the Providence […]
The Providence College Friars made headlines last week, not for an exciting win, but for the behavior exhibited by their fans. During a game with a team from Brigham Young University, students in the crowd called out shamefully offensive chants. They were allegedly stopped by a staff member who later said, “That does not represent […]
As the holiday season approaches, it’s common for families to come together. Some will gather with their family of origin, some with step-families, godparents, or in polyamorous units, and many from marginalized groups including veteran, patient, queer, trans, and nonbinary communities, will gather with found and chosen families. Ants in the city too, of course, […]
When Claudia De la Cruz spoke at the Southside Cultural Center a few weeks ago, she made the case that no matter which candidate wins, we will be marching in the streets and continuing to fight for collective liberation, just as much the day after the election as we have been leading up to it. […]