Division of Arts and Humanities

Weaving the rhythms of place and people

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 04 Sep 2025 19:41:55 +0000

Weaving the rhythms of place and people Rachel Sauer Thu, 09/04/2025 - 13:41

91ɫ�� Professor Marcia Douglas brings the images and memories that fill her writing, as well as her love of language and words, to The Ampersand

Listen to The Ampersand

On the days the book bus visited, Marcia Douglas waited anxiously outside her school in Kingston, Jamaica—a school that had no library—imagining the stories she’d discover inside, so different from the encyclopedias she had at home.

Even with her nose in the pages, she came to associate the delight of reading with her mother's voice, the neighbors laughing, reggae in the air, a dog's bark, the chatter and din that didn’t distract her but became the sounds that filled her well of language.

Now an award-winning author and hybrid artist, the intimacy with which Douglas writes about her childhood home of Jamaica—the Bob Marley rhythms, the taste of tamarind and saltfish fritters, the holiness of a shoeshine—doesn’t so much pull readers along as immerse them in the journey.

Marcia Douglas is an award-winning author, hybrid artist and a college professor of distinction in the 91ɫ�� Department of English.

For Douglas, a college professor of distinction in the 91ɫ�� Department of English, the words, the stories and the process of writing them are joy. While many authors talk about the isolation and loneliness of writing, Douglas sits at her desk in full community with ancestors, memories and the characters that she spins from these spaces.

Douglas recently joined host Erika Randall, 91ɫ�� interim dean of undergraduate education and professor of dance, on "The Ampersand,” a College of Arts and Sciences podcast. Randall and guests explore stories about ANDing as a “full sensory verb” that describes experience and possibility.

MARCIA DOUGLAS: As a writer, you plan certain things, and you have certain intentions of what you want to write. But in the end, I think that a lot of times, your characters emerge, and they tell you the story.

ERIKA RANDALL: They reveal.

DOUGLAS: Exactly. And that's part of the fun and the joy of writing a story—

RANDALL: Is listening to the story.

DOUGLAS: Right, listening to the story. Every day is a little bit of surprise when you return to it and you see where it's going, and that's how it emerges. That's how it comes along.

RANDALL: So, you've had this really incredible life with objects. And it feels primary in my research of you, and maybe not, but maybe-- because maybe it's one of the many threads of your stories. But I recalled you talking in an interview about how when you came from Jamaica to this country as a teenager, you had $10.

But what stood out to me was that your mother wrapped it in toilet paper. And it was the mention of the toilet paper that held me to your story and to the importance of what the thing was and what the thing wasn't. Can you talk to me about objects and their role in your life? And also, did you keep the toilet paper? You spent the $10. But the tissue—is it tucked in somewhere with the ticket, the return trip?

DOUGLAS: Right. I did not keep the toilet paper. The $10 got spent very quickly—

RANDALL: Yes, it did.

DOUGLAS: —because that's all that I had. I think her impulse to wrap it in the toilet paper had to do with the fact that at the time, there was some government regulation that you were only allowed to take $50 US out of the country. And she had $10 U.S. That's all she had in U.S. money. So, she wrapped it in this piece of toilet paper safely, and that's what I had. And the ticket, I still have.

RANDALL: You do. Where does it live in your life?

DOUGLAS: The ticket is housed in a little file with important papers. And that was meant to be my return ticket to go home. But I ended up not returning home, and I was an undocumented immigrant for many years.

I kept the ticket, though, and I still have the ticket. When you're undocumented, every little bit of paper is important somehow. At least that was my experience.

RANDALL: It felt like safety? It felt like identity?

DOUGLAS: Yeah, identity and this need to hold on to something that you might need, and that somehow is evidence of your existence, that documents you, that does document you in a certain kind of way. So, I think that was part of it, holding on to this ticket even long after it had expired.

But it also—if I'm to be my own psychoanalyst, I would say that it had something to do with a reminder of where I started, where I was from. And even though the ticket has long expired, also a reminder that you can always return, in some kind of way.

Marcia Douglas won a Whiting Award in fiction for her novel "The Marvellous Equations of the Dread: A Novel in Bass Riddim."

RANDALL: And you do, in memory and in word.

DOUGLAS: Yes.

RANDALL: Is it easy for you to return to the characters, to the clock tower, to the tree that was imagined or real, to the language, to the rhythm, to tone? Are there places in your body that you hold those stories or those memories that are easy to return to? Or do you have to really go into a state, or do you go-- do you go back to Jamaica, visit, take in and then return to the page? How does that live with you? How does your past stay in your present?

DOUGLAS: Yeah, it's easy for me to return. You can't always return physically. But home is a physical place, but also a spiritual place as well. And it's a place inside of you. So, I return in that way. And writing for me is also a way of returning home. That's how I return home. That's how I go back to Half Way Tree and interact with all of those characters. That's me literally going home.

RANDALL: So, thank you for taking us with you so clearly. I mean, I have never been to Jamaica. And many of the stories I've heard are from Midwesterners who take trips for spring break, and it's a very different reality. You tell a story that is—or stories, plural, in your "Electricity"—that was your dissertation-- "Comes?" Can you say that full title? That was—

DOUGLAS: No, that wasn't my—

RANDALL: That was your first book of poetry.

DOUGLAS: It was my first book of poetry, “Electricity Comes to Cocoa Bottom.”

RANDALL: So, there are stories there and poems there. And then in this, “The Marvellous Equations of the Dread,” that whole juxtaposition of a place and of home. So close that they are necessary, the beauty and the devastation that can come, the detail of what's left after a storm that makes one want to go, even though there's just been devastation. You hold all of those parts next to one another. Is that how it was for you growing up in Jamaica? That there's—everything is so close?

DOUGLAS: Growing up as a young person, I was always very observant, and--

RANDALL: You were a writer, or just a watcher?

DOUGLAS: I was a watcher, a writer in the making. I was a watcher. And I think—early on, you were talking about detail. And that's where my relationship to detail started, maybe, just by being a quiet child who would observe people and things and pay attention.

And so, I think that I was definitely a writer in the making because that's what you do as a writer, in part. You pay attention. That's really important. So yeah, that was my world. And I actually didn't grow up even with a lot of books.

RANDALL: You didn't?

DOUGLAS: No, I did not.

RANDALL: So, you didn't-- you mentioned in one interview, you didn't even know the job of being a writer was possible. You were pre-med, in your mind.

DOUGLAS: Right. Well, yeah, later on. But if I'm to push back further, to much younger days, I didn't grow up in a household with a lot of books. I remember we had a set of encyclopedias that my parents had bought, and I spent a lot of time with those encyclopedias.

RANDALL: That makes a lot of sense because you have this encyclopedic way of holding objects, story, detail, catalog. Did you just wear those out?

DOUGLAS: Yeah, those were my go-to spaces, the encyclopedias. And at the beginning of the school year, we always used to get a new set of books. And that always felt very precious, your new books at the beginning of the school year. But I didn't have a lot of just books around—

RANDALL: Fiction, story—

DOUGLAS: Yeah, that kind of thing. Every now and then, my parents might purchase a book for me or something like that. But I didn't have a lot of books. I remember when-- maybe from grade 1 through 3, I would say, or grades 1 through 4, I went to a school which didn't have a library, but what we had was—there was a mobile library truck.

RANDALL: Yes, I remember those. Yeah, we called it the bookmobile.

DOUGLAS: Yes. So, this was from the Jamaica Library Service, I suppose. And they came very intermittently, not very often at all, maybe once per term, as I recall. But it was always this big event. And you would get to pick out one book. The teacher would let you pick out one book.

RANDALL: How did you choose?

DOUGLAS: Yeah, but it was so exciting. And I also didn't feel deprived. I want to hasten to say that. I felt blessed and lucky that the library truck was coming and I would get to have a book. So that was one source of books for me. So, I didn't have a lot of reading material, but I loved to read, loved the language.

My other source of language for me would be from church. My father was a preacher, and he was also a roadside evangelist. And he would preach on street corners. And so I think listening to people like him was one of my language wells also. And all of this-- you don't know it at the time. But I look back.

RANDALL: Yeah, and then you go in and there it is.

DOUGLAS: Right, on my development of a writer. And that was definitely one of the pieces, listening to him read from the Bible. And he also wasn't a very good reader either. He used to struggle with it. But yeah-- so that was the writer in the making, I would say.

Listen to The Ampersand

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about English? Show your support.

91ɫ�� Professor Marcia Douglas brings the images and memories that fill her writing, as well as her love of language and words, to The Ampersand.

Traditional

White

We’re still tasting the spice of 1960s sci-fi

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 13:00:00 +0000

We’re still tasting the spice of 1960s sci-fi Rachel Sauer Fri, 08/29/2025 - 07:00

Bradley Worrell

With this month marking Dune’s 60th anniversary, 91ɫ��’s Benjamin Robertson discusses the book’s popular appeal while highlighting the dramatic changes science fiction experienced following its publication

Sixty years ago this month, a novel about a galactic battle over a desert planet valued for its mystical spice forever altered the face of science fiction.

Authored by Frank Herbert, Dune would go on to sell more than 20 million copies, be translated into more than 20 languages and become one of the bestselling science fiction novels of all time, spawning several sequels and movie adaptions that have further boosted its popularity.

Benjamin Robertson, a 91ɫ�� associate professor of English, pursues a research and teaching focus on genre fiction.

In retrospect, it’s hard to quantify how important Dune was to the genre of science fiction, says Benjamin Robertson, a 91ɫ�� Department of English associate professor whose areas of specialty includes contemporary literature and who teaches a science fiction class. That’s because the status Dune attained, along with other popular works at the time, helped transition science fiction from something that was primarily found in specialty magazines to a legitimate genre within the world of book publishing, he says.

Robertson says a number of factors made Dune a remarkable book upon its publication in August 1965, including Herbert’s elaborate world building; its deep philosophical exploration of religion, politics and ecology; and the fact that its plot was driven by its characters rather than by technology. Additionally, the book tapped into elements of 1960s counterculture with its focus on how consuming a spice harvested on the planet Arrakis could allow users to experience mystical visions and enhance their consciousness, Robertson says.

Journey beyond Arrakis with a different kind of dune

“There’s also the element of the chosen one narrative in the book, which is appealing to at least a certain segment of the culture,” he says. The book’s protagonist, Paul Atreides, suffers a great loss and endures many trials before emerging as the leader who amasses power and dethrones the established authorities, he notes.

While Dune found commercial success by blending many different story elements and themes in a new way that engaged readers, it’s worthwhile to consider the book in relation to other works of science fiction being produced in the 1960s, Robertson says. It was during that turbulent time that a new generation of writers emerged, creating works very different from their predecessors in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, which is often considered the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

Whereas many Golden Age science fiction writers tended to set their tales in outer space, to make technology the focus of their stories and to embrace the idea that human know-how could overcome nearly any obstacle, Robertson says many science fiction writers in the 1960s looked to reinvent the genre.

“The 1960s is probably when, for me personally, I feel like science fiction gets interesting,” he says. “I’m not a big fan of what’s called the Golden Age of Science Fiction—the fiction of Asimov or Heinlein. The ‘60s is interesting because of what’s going on culturally, with the counterculture, with student protests and the backlash to the conformities of the 1950s.”

New Wave sci-fi writers make their mark

In 1960s Great Britain, in particular, writers for New Worlds science fiction magazine came to be associated with the term New Wave, which looked inward to examine human psychology and motivations while also tackling topics like sexuality, gender roles and drug culture.

“This new generation of writers grew up reading science fiction, but they were dissatisfied with both the themes and the way it was written,” Robertson says. “One of the New World’s most notable writers, J.G. Ballard, talked about shifting away from, quote-unquote, outer space to inner space.

“That dovetailed with other writers who weren’t necessarily considered New Wave but were writing soft science fiction that was not focused on technology itself—such as space ships and time travel—but more about exploring the impact of technologies on humanity and on how it changes our relationship with the planet, the solar system and how we relate to each other.”

New Wave authors also wrote about world-ending catastrophes, including nuclear war and ecological degradation. Meanwhile, many British New Wave writers were not afraid to be seen as iconoclasts who challenged established religious and political norms.

“Michael Moorcock, the editor of New Worlds, self-identified as an anarchist, and Ballard was exemplary for challenging authority in his works. He was not just interested in saying, ‘This form of government is bad or compromised, or capitalism is bad, but actually the way we convey those ideas has been compromised,’” Robertson says. “It wasn’t enough for him to identify those systems that are oppressing us; Ballard argued we have to describe them in ways that estranges those ideas.

“And that’s what science fiction classically does—it estranges us. It shows us our world in some skewed manner, because it’s extrapolating from here to the future and imagining …what might a future look like that we couldn’t anticipate, based upon the situation we are in now.”

American science fiction writers might not have pushed the boundaries quite as far their British counterparts, Robertson says, but counterculture ideas found expression in some literature of the time. He points specifically to Harlan Ellison, author of the post-apocalyptic short story “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” who also served as editor of the sci-fi anthology Dangerous Visions, a collection of short stories that were notable for their depiction of sex in science fiction.

Robertson says other American sci-fi writers of the time who embraced elements of the counterculture include Robert Heinlein, whose Stranger in a Strange Land explored the concept of free love, and Philip K. Dick, who addressed the dangers of authority and capitalism in some of his works and whose stories sometimes explored drug use, even as the author was taking illicit drugs to maintain his prolific output.

“Dune definitely broke out into the mainstream—and the fact that Hollywood is continuing to produce movies based upon the book today says something about its staying power,” says 91ɫ�� scholar Benjamin Robertson.

Meanwhile, Robertson notes that science fiction during the 1960s saw a more culturally diverse group of writers emerge, including Ursula K. Le Guin, the feminist author of such works as The Left Hand of Darkness and The Lathe of Heaven; Madeliene L’Engle, known for her work A Wrinkle in Time; and some lesser-known but still influential writers such as Samuel R. Delaney, one of the first African American and queer science fiction authors, known for his works Babel-17 and Nova.

At the same time, even authors from behind eastern Europe’s Iron Curtain were gaining recognition in the West, including Stanislaw Lem of Poland, author of the novel Solaris, and brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky in the Soviet Union, authors of the novella Ashes of Bikini and many short stories.

Impact of 1960s sci-fi remains long lasting

As the 1960s and 1970s gave way to the 1980s, a new sci-fi genre started to take hold: Cyberpunk. Sharing elements with New Wave, Cyberpunk is a dystopian science fiction subgenre combining advanced technology, including artificial intelligence, with societal collapse.

Robertson says the 1984 debut of William Gibson’s book Neuromancer is widely recognized as a foundational work of Cyberpunk.

While works of 1960s science fiction are now more than five decades old, Robertson says many of them generally have held up well over time.

“Dune definitely broke out into the mainstream—and the fact that Hollywood is continuing to produce movies based upon the book today says something about its staying power,” he says. “I think the works of Ursula K. Le Guin, particularly the Left Hand of Darkness, is a great read and a lot of fun to teach. And Philip K. Dick is always capable of shocking you, not with gore or sex but just with narrative twists and turns.”

If anything, Dick is actually more popular today than when he was writing his books and short stories back in the 1960s, Robertson says, pointing to the fact that a number of them have been made into films—most notably Minority Report and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which was re-titled Blade Runner).

“At the same time, I think one of the dangers of science fiction is thinking what was written in the 1960s somehow predicts what happens later,” Robertson says. “It can look that way. But, as someone who values historicism, I think it’s important to think about cultural objects in the time they were produced. So, the predictions that Philip K. Dick was making were based upon the knowledge he had in the 1960s, so saying what happened in the 1980s is what he predicted in the 1960s isn’t strictly accurate, because what was happening in the 1980s was coming out of a very different understanding of science, of politics and of technology.

“What I always ask people to remember about science fiction is that it’s about more than the time that it’s written about—it’s about what the future could be, not about what the future actually becomes.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about English? Show your support.

With this month marking Dune’s 60th anniversary, 91ɫ��’s Benjamin Robertson discusses the book’s popular appeal while highlighting the dramatic changes science fiction experienced following its publication.

Traditional

White

Top illustration: Gary Jamroz-Palma

Renowned German-Jewish scholar to speak at 91ɫ�� Sept. 2

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 20:44:14 +0000

Renowned German-Jewish scholar to speak at 91ɫ�� Sept. 2 Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/28/2025 - 14:44

Michael Brenner, an American University distinguished professor of history, will present ‘When Democracy Died in Darkness: German-Jewish Responses to Hitler’s Rise’

A pre-eminent scholar of German-Jewish studies will present a lecture Tuesday focusing on democracy and the German-Jewish responses to Adolf Hitler’s rise.

Michael Brenner, a distinguished professor of history and the Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies at American University and the Chair of Jewish History and Culture at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, will present “When Democracy Died in Darkness: German-Jewish Responses to Hitler’s Rise” at 5 p.m. Tuesday in the Norlin Library’s Center for British and Irish Studies Room; tickets are not required. The presentation will also be streamed on Zoom. For more information, email Eli Sacks.

Brenner’s visit is co-sponsored by the 91ɫ�� Center for Humanities and the Arts; the departments of German and Slavic Languages and Literatures and History; the Program in Jewish Studies; the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization; 91ɫ�� Hillel; and the Louis P. Singer Chair in Jewish History.

His lecture will address the different ways in which German Jews of all shades responded to the revocation of their equal rights of being German citizens, answering the questions: What were their expectations as 1933 began; how did they react to the rapidly changing circumstances after Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933; and what is the relevance of these events in the light of present threats to American democracy?

Brenner was born to Holocaust survivors in Germany shortly after the war and genocide. He has received many prizes and fellowships, including the Baron Award for Scholarly Excellence in Research of the Jewish Experience. He is the author of 10 books that have been translated into more than a dozen languages. His latest are In Hitler’s Munich: Jews, the Revolution, and the Rise of Nazism and In Search of Israel: The History of an Idea.

Brenner also will present a special research colloquium for students and faculty on various aspects of his work at 8 a.m. Tuesday in E250 at the Center for Academic Success and Engagement (CASE). For more information email Thomas Pegelow Kaplan.

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about arts and humanities? Show your support.

Michael Brenner, an American University distinguished professor of history, will present ‘When Democracy Died in Darkness: German-Jewish Responses to Hitler’s Rise’

Traditional

White

New exhibit celebrates ceramics at 91ɫ��

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 23:09:59 +0000

New exhibit celebrates ceramics at 91ɫ�� Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/27/2025 - 17:09

Rachel Sauer

Opening Sept. 5 at the CU Art Museum, ‘Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020’ focuses on themes including the environment, domesticity and rituals of home and material connections

The joy—and sometimes frustration—of ceramics may be found in its contradictions: its fragile strength, its rough refinement, its elastic rigidity. Drop it and it might shatter, or it might survive millennia.

“It’s a material that’s about so much transformation,” says Jeanne Quinn, a 91ɫ�� professor of art and art history. “It goes from being very plastic and malleable to something that’s more like stone. And embedded in ceramics is all kinds of material meaning. Our students who are trained in ceramics are really trained to dig into technical mastery with the material but also dig into how you find meaning in the material itself, how you’re using the material as metaphor.”

Myers Berg Studios, United States, …in plain sight, 2025, ceramic, maple, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec.19, 2025. (Photo Rachel Sauer; © Myers Berg Studios)

For students in the 91ɫ�� ceramics program, the material also represents connection to an artistic lineage that has grown in breadth and renown through successive cohorts. It is a lineage nurtured by ceramics faculty Quinn, Scott Chamberlin and Kim Dickey, who have been teaching together and broadening the program for 25 years.

It is the length of those associations, in fact, that planted the seed of what has grown into the exhibit “Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020,” kicking off with an opening celebration Sept. 4 at the CU Art Museum and opening to the public Sept. 5.

“CU has a really long history of investing in ceramics and having a very strong ceramics program,” Quinn explains. “Kim (Dickey) had this idea that it’s our silver anniversary of teaching together, we have this incredible group of alumni, so many amazing artists who have come through, as undergrads, as post-bacs and as grad students, so we should create an exhibit to celebrate that.”

A ceramic tradition

91ɫ�� has long championed the arts and supported artists, including ceramic artists who have created a student-focused program that prioritizes learning, technical mastery and artistic exploration. The ceramic program was significantly bolstered by Betty Woodman, an internationally renowned artist whose 2006 retrospective show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City was the first such show by a living female ceramicist, and who taught at 91ɫ�� for 30 years.

Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020

What: The 91ɫ�� ceramics program is celebrating its history with faculty Scott Chamberlin, Kim Dickey, and Jeanne Quinn. To honor the achievements of artists who graduated from this program, faculty curators are partnering with the CU Art Museum to present a retrospective exhibition.

When: Opening celebration Sept. 4 from 4–6 p.m.; exhibit opens to the public Sept. 5-Dec. 19. There will be an all-day symposium celebrating the exhibit Sept. 5.

Where: CU Art Museum

Learn more

Chamberlin was a colleague of Woodman, and Quinn was a student of both Woodman and Chamberlin before joining the ceramics faculty in 1997.

“In this program, there is a real commitment to ceramics and its incredibly rich history,” Quinn says. “Every civilization from the beginning of time has had ceramics, so it’s an incredible kind of medium to work with and have the opportunity to reference all that. But I also feel like we have a very non-dogmatic approach to teaching—there’s so much history, but also so much space for experimentation and invention.

“Ceramics is a very demanding material. Anybody who’s ever sat down and tried to throw a pot on the wheel realizes oh, you don’t just toss this off. Every step requires real skill, real technical skill, but we’ve worked to build a program where students receive this amazing education in learning how to learn and learning how to grapple with the material and how the material can offer so many different avenues of expression.”

Erica Green, a post-baccalaureate student in the program between 2011 and 2013 and one of the exhibit’s 30 featured artists, credits the ceramics program’s emphasis on exploration with helping her forge her path as an artist.

“Ceramics is always my first love, but the nice thing about this department is you’re encouraged to follow the idea and not just the material,” Green says. “One of my professors in the program suggested I set clay to the side and focus on fiber and being more in tune with the material.”

Green’s work in the exhibit, “California King,” centers on a bed covered in a blanket of knotted felt and wool-blend fibers. “I work a lot in knots as a metaphor for mending and repair and healing.”

Artist Lucero Aguirre, who earned an MFA in the ceramics program, created the quilted tapestry “Mije” to include thousands of iridescent ceramic sequins—bringing together “the spaces of brownness and queerness in its sequined message,” Aguirre explains. “The term ‘mije’ is a gender-neutral version of the often-used Spanish term of endearment ‘mija,’ or daughter.”

In transforming “mija” into “mije,” Aguirre considers the “affective labor of navigating brownness as a queer subject. The piece responds to the way that intimacy is often gendered in Mexican and Latine spaces, leaving queer Latine bodies at once inside and outside.”

Erica Green assembles her work "California King" (2022, knotted fibers on mattress) for the "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020" exhibit opening Sept. 5 at the CU Art Museum. (Photo Rachel Sauer; © Erica Green)

‘You can do anything with clay’

Quinn emphasizes that even though the exhibit celebrates the ceramics program, it also includes textiles, video works, photography, live performances and other media. “(The exhibit) runs the gamut of materials, but the unifying piece is that you can see that sense of commitment to the craft, to really handling a material with authority and also expressing something beyond the material.”

The hardest part, she adds, was choosing exhibit participants “because we’re in touch with all of these alumni, we’re following what they’re doing, they’re sending us updates.”

At the same time the exhibit participants were being chosen, Quinn and her colleagues were working with CU Art Museum staff to envision and plan the exhibit—a time-intensive but rewarding process, says Hope Saska, CU Art Museum acting director. Saska also partnered with Quinn, Dickey and Chamberlin to organize an all-day symposium September 5 celebrating the exhibit; it will include performances, conversations and in-gallery artist talks.

“You say ceramics and people have this idea of, ‘Oh, you’re making pots on the wheel,’” Quinn says. “And ceramics certainly fits in this kind of lane, that is absolutely part of what we teach. But you also have an artist like Casey Whittier, who made thousands of ceramic beads and then strung them together into this gorgeous textile piece that hangs on a wall. Casey has taken ceramics, which you might think of as fixed and static, and then created this piece that hangs and moves and is as much a textile as it is ceramics.

“So, we want people to come to the exhibit, and especially we want students to think, ‘Oh, you can do anything with clay.’”

Lucero Aguirre, mije, 2024, handmade and lustered ceramic sequins, thread and batting and fabric, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer; © Lucero Aguirre)

Linda Nguyen Lopez, United States (1981), Gummy Worm, Ombre Dust Furry, 2021, porcelain, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer, © Linda Nguyen Lopez)

Joanna Powell, United States (1981), Flower Vessel no. 1, 2019, earthenware, majolica, gold luster, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo Rachel Sauer; © Joanna Powell)

Sandra Trujillo, United States (1967), Mosaic - Yellow, 2024, Mexican Smalti (glass), Wedi (polystyrene board), wood, steel, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer; © Sandra Trujillo)

Julie Poitras Santos, United States (1967), The Conversation, 2019, single channel video, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer; © Julie Poitras Santos)

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about art and art history? Show your support.

Opening Sept. 5 at the CU Art Museum, ‘Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020’ focuses on themes including the environment, domesticity and rituals of home and material connections.

Traditional

Matthew McConnell, United States (1979), Didn’t Miss a Thing, 2023, dark stoneware, twine and twist ties on steel panels, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo Rachel Sauer; © Matthew McConnell)

White

Top image: Matthew McConnell, "Didn’t Miss a Thing," 2023, dark stoneware, twine and twist ties on steel panels, "Shaping Time: CU Ceramics Alumni 2000–2020," CU Art Museum, Sept. 5–Dec. 19, 2025. (Photo: Rachel Sauer; © Matthew McConnell)

Prof focuses on the brothers behind the fairy tales

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 21:37:22 +0000

Prof focuses on the brothers behind the fairy tales Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/25/2025 - 15:37

Clint Talbott

91ɫ��’s Ann Schmiesing, professor of German and Scandinavian Studies, publishes first English-language biography in more than five decades on Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Once upon a time, a professor volunteered to develop a college course on German fairy tales. She did as she promised, but that was not the end.

“Once I prepared the course and began teaching it, I was just smitten,” says Ann Schmiesing, professor of German and Scandinavian studies at the 91ɫ��, now a world-renowned scholar of the Brothers Grimm.

91ɫ�� scholar Ann Schmiesing is author of The Brothers Grimm: A Biography, published last year to wide acclaim and reviewed in publications from The New Yorker to The Times of London.

Schmiesing has written two books on the Brothers Grimm. The most recent, The Brothers Grimm: A Biography, was published last year to wide acclaim and reviewed in publications from The New Yorker to The Times of London. It is the first English-language biography in more than five decades on Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, whose first names (and life stories) are less well-known than their usual moniker, the Brothers Grimm.

Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859) are widely known as collectors of fairy tales, but they were also mythographers, linguists, librarians, civil servants and philologists who, among other things, strove to preserve key elements of German culture.

They produced a vast body of work on mythology and medieval literature, launched on a monumental German dictionary (which they had completed through the letter F by the time they both died), and made groundbreaking linguistic discoveries.

“By and large, people don’t know a whole lot about the Brothers Grimm, and that was one of the reasons why I wanted to write the book,” says Schmiesing, who is also the senior vice chancellor for strategic initiatives at 91ɫ��.

While teaching the course on the Grimm fairy tales, she noted that students were often familiar with some version of the tales, principally through Disney versions or other contemporary retellings of stories like Snow White.

Teaching moral lessons

The Grimms released seven complete and 10 abridged versions of the tales, and the brothers revised the tales over time. Starting with the second edition, for instance, doves peck out the evil stepsisters’ eyes in Cinderella as a punishment for their wickedness. Violence in the tales is rarely gratuitous, Schmiesing says, but in Cinderella and other tales, the Grimms sometimes added violence to teach a moral lesson.

As they edited and revised the tales, she adds, they mediated among different versions and revised them to reflect 19th-century bourgeois norms. For instance, female characters in some tales contribute less dialogue in later editions, Schmiesing says: “Their thoughts are simply paraphrased.”

Similarly, the Grimms adjusted “Hansel and Gretel” to reflect then-contemporary notions of women. In an earlier version, the culprit was their biological mother but in a later version of this tale, a stepmother abandons the children.

“They change that because they feel like they can’t possibly suggest that a biological mother would abandon her children,” Schmiesing says, adding, “Again, that's playing into their 19th-century ideas of women and motherhood.”

The Brothers Grimm: A Biography by 91ɫ�� Professor Ann Schmiesing is the first English-language biography in more than five decades on Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, whose first names (and life stories) are less well-known than their usual moniker, the Brothers Grimm.

Additionally, some female characters are initially more independent than they appear in later editions, “so the Grimms kind of lessened their independence and increased their dependence on male characters,” Schmiesing says.

Over time, the Grimms also made the tales folksier, adding rhymes and idioms. And the Grimms did not think the tales were just kid stuff. They saw the tales as being interesting to all ages and relevant to German culture, Schmiesing says.

Germany in the Grimms’ lifetime was not politically united, and it was wracked by the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Their own part of Germany was occupied by the French for a time, and “so they see collecting and publishing fairy tales and other texts . . . as a way forward for Germany,” Schmiesing says.

In the Grimms’ view, if Germans could appreciate their cultural heritage, perhaps they’d be able to assert themselves as a politically united entity: “So it might seem to be naive, but they really thought that their scholarly works, their collections, would also be a path out of the wars,” Schmiesing says.

Asking deep questions

Their scholarship was even broader, however. The brothers were interested in deep questions, such as how languages developed over time, how customs developed over time, how literary texts developed over time, “and that to them is all interwoven.”

Jacob Grimm, in particular, devoted much of his scholarly life not only to literature, but also to legal customs, linguistic study and his German Grammar, which includes his discovery of what is now called Grimm’s Law.

“It’s been said that Grimm’s Law was as important to the humanities as Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is to the sciences,” Schmiesing says.

They did all of this on top of full careers as librarians, university professors, and, in Jacob’s case, a civil servant.

“It’s just extraordinary, the volume of scholarship that they produced,” Schmiesing says, noting their “sheer accomplishments” of “incredible breadth.”

Of the tales themselves, Schmiesing says Rumpelstiltskin is among her favorites. “It is one of the most enigmatic tales in the Grimms’ collection.” The tale can be viewed as being about the forced labor of female characters, disease and disability, or the meaning of spinning straw into gold.

In addition to these and other possible meanings, the tale changes significantly between versions, she notes. In an early version, the woman despairs not because she can’t spin straw into gold, but because she wants to spin yarn but can spin only gold.

“Also, who is Rumpelstiltskin, and what does he represent?”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about Germanic and Slavic languages and literatures? Show your support.

91ɫ��’s Ann Schmiesing, professor of German and Scandinavian Studies, publishes first English-language biography in more than five decades on Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

Traditional

White

Top illustration: by Walter Crane from "Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm" (1886).

Up, up and away … to another Superman movie

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 13:30:00 +0000

Up, up and away … to another Superman movie Rachel Sauer Wed, 07/09/2025 - 07:30

Bradley Worrell

91ɫ��’s William Kuskin, who teaches a course on comics and graphic novels, considers Superman’s enduring appeal as Hollywood debuts a new adaptation about the Man of Steel

A new Superman movie arrives in theaters Friday, raising the question: Will American moviegoers turn out in large numbers to watch it?

Some recent superhero-themed films from Marvel and DC Comics have underperformed at the box office, prompting a debate about whether moviegoers are suffering from superhero fatigue. However, there’s some reason to believe Superman will prevail against lethargy thanks in part to a dedicated, supportive fan base, says William Kuskin, 91ɫ�� Department of English chair, who teaches a popular course on comics and graphic novels and whose expertise includes popular culture and film.

“The comic shop boys I hang out with have been talking about this film for a bit now. To normal mortals, we’re probably all exhausted with the latest summer blockbuster movies, but I think there are going to be a good number of fans who will go see it,” he says.

91ɫ�� Professor William Kuskin, chair of the Department of English, notes that the new film Superman may prevail against "superhero fatigue" thanks in part to a dedicated, supportive fan base.

Even beyond those most ardent of Superman fans, Kuskin says he believes the Man of Steel continues to enjoy approval in popular culture in part because he uses his superhuman powers to fight for “truth, justice and the American way”—making him a symbol of unity in a time when the country is deeply divided.

Additionally, Kuskin says that with this new film, DC Comics has signaled it is turning away from the dark, gritty tone that permeated its previous superhero films, most notably the Batman trilogy directed by Christopher Nolan and the 2021 Zack Snyder Justice League movie, where Batman has a dark vision of Superman being controlled by the supervillain Darkseid. Kuskin says he believes such a move could help broaden the film’s appeal as DC seeks to relaunch the franchise.

“I think the goal with the new movie is to be not so dark; it’s to brighten him (Superman) up and in some ways bring us back to the model that (Superman actor) Christopher Reeves set in the 1970s,” he says. “I think that’s also reflected in the choice to have James Gunn direct, as they (DC Studios) were looking for a director who could bring some joy to the franchise. ”

Gunn previously directed several Marvel films, including the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy, where he earned a reputation for bringing some charm and levity to the franchise, Kuskin says. As just one example, he points to Star-Lord’s extended disco-dance scene to the tune “Come and Get Your Love” in the opening of the first film.

What’s old is new again

While DC Comics may be looking to get audiences back into theaters by recreating Superman’s positive, wholesome appeal in movies from the 1970s and 1980s, Kuskin says it’s important to note that Superman’s persona—and his superpowers—have evolved since he first debuted in Action Comics in 1938.

Upon his introduction, Superman was remarkable for being “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive (and) able to leap tall buildings at a single bound.” However, as Kuskin notes, Superman couldn’t actually fly in the beginning, and many of his other powers were added over time to make him more formidable.

Perhaps even more notably, Kuskin says Superman could be an antagonist if the situation called for it.

“The very first Superman story has him saving a woman who has been falsely accused of murder. Superman has to break down the governor’s door and insist in no uncertain terms that the governor rescind her sentence,” he says. “His message is that the ethical choice is always obvious—even if it means turning against the government, which makes him a figure, essentially, of anarchy.

Superman debuted in Action Comics in 1938. (Art by Joe Shuster and color by Jack Adler)

“The story conveys that it takes someone with real guts to right those wrongs; it’s a really powerful message.”

As Superman entered the World War II years, Kuskin says, he joined the pantheon of superheroes who battled the Axis powers in the pages of comic books. Around that time, Superman took on the qualities of not just a hero but an American savior, Kustin adds—even though his well-known origin story has him being born on the planet Krypton.

“With the embrace of ‘truth, justice and the American way,’ that’s how Superman transforms from something of an anarchist to this figure of Americanness,” Kuskin says.

He notes it was also during that time period that Superman came to be defined as a contrast to DC Comics’ other main hero protagonist—Batman. Whereas Superman embraces authority and represents a figure of absolutism, Batman tends to operate outside of the law. In fact, in Batman’s formative years in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he used guns and operated “as a masked vigilante seeking to make (Gotham) city safe for commerce,” Kuskin says.

At the same time, Kuskin adds, with no superpowers to speak of, as a practical matter, Batman was forced to rely on his intelligence, his cunning and his gadgets.

Meanwhile, Kuskin says it’s worth noting that Batman and Superman are derivative of earlier comic book heroes, particularly Olga Mesmer, a superhero from Venus whose superpowers roughly mirrored those of Superman, including super-strength and X-ray vision, and Lee Falk’s The Phantom, who was a somewhat wealthy costumed crime fighter with no superpowers, akin to Batman, who relies on his intelligence and skill with his two handguns.

Masking and unmasking

Kuskin says one of the more interesting aspects of Superman and Batman relates to masking and unmasking, and what it means symbolically to their roles as heroes.

“Superman is a figure of extroversion, so for him it’s all about unmasking. It’s about going from glasses—which indicate a studious nature and a monastic sensibility—to no glasses,” he says. “My read of Superman is that the glasses are a signal of allowing himself a release, while Batman is the opposite. He goes from no glasses to putting on a mask, so it’s a signal of masking and turning inward.

“To put it another way, Superman is the extrovert who can’t wait to shed his suit and tie and leap out the window and proclaim his affinity for humanity with all his boundless energy. Batman is the exact opposite,” Kuskin says. “He needs to hide his external nature to deal with the world, not as himself, but as the truly dark version within himself. That expression is not very healthy, but it’s the only way he can really make a difference in the world. It’s effective, but it’s not a celebration in any way; it’s more of a revelation.”

In the end, Kuskin argues, all superheroes fall into one of those two molds, as an extrovert or the introvert. If that’s the case, it begs the question: Which one does Kuskin prefer?

“Well, I have Batman tattooed on my arm, and I don’t have one of Superman, so that probably tells you something,” he says with a laugh. “For one thing, Batman has the narrative constraint of not using guns because of his ethical position. It’s also a constraint that makes it even harder for him to be victorious, and yet Batman never loses. And then there’s the whole issue with his traumatic childhood, so he’s not even playing on a level playing field. He’s got problems and he has to deal with those, too.”

Meanwhile, back at the cineplex

While superhero movies have enjoyed a mixed reception as of late, Kuskin says he believes a lot of that has to do with the quality of the storytelling (or lack thereof) rather than audience support for the superhero genre. He gives special credit to the Marvel franchise for the strong continuity of its storylines across multiple films, and particular kudos for the storytelling in its Avengers Infinity War and Avengers Endgame movies.

“I loved Endgame and Infinity War. I thought they were wonderfully crafted and heartfelt,” he says. “After that, I didn’t find much joy in either Marvel or DC offerings. I did really like Robert Pattinson’s rendition of Batman. I felt he captured the sense of introversion that lies at the heart of Batman. And there’s a scene where he makes a public appearance as Bruce Wayne and he’s so beaten and so broken. That is the reality of Batman, so I really enjoyed that movie.

“Will I go see this new Superman movie? The jury’s still out,” Kuskin says. However, after watching the 7-minute movie trailer, he says he’s a bit underwhelmed, based upon what he sees as an over-reliance on CGI effects and slow-motion punches—seemingly at the expense of a compelling story.

“I still think Batman is king. Society has become despairing and Batman’s despair speaks so powerfully,” he says. “Still, Superman is a tremendous property, so we’ll see what DC studios can do.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about English? Show your support.

91ɫ��’s William Kuskin, who teaches a course on comics and graphic novels, considers Superman’s enduring appeal as Hollywood debuts a new adaptation about the Man of Steel.

Traditional

White

Actor David Corenswet plays Superman in the film being released July 11. (Photo: Warner Bros)

The ‘Forgotten War’ asks to be remembered

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 19:25:31 +0000

The ‘Forgotten War’ asks to be remembered Rachel Sauer Tue, 06/24/2025 - 13:25

Cody DeBos

On the 75th anniversary of the United States entering the Korean War, 91ɫ�� war and morality scholar David Youkey discusses the cost of the ‘forgotten war’

Seventy-five years ago this month, on June 27, 1950, President Harry S. Truman ordered U.S. troops to the Korean Peninsula. North Korea had invaded the South just two days earlier, and with that decision, the United States entered a conflict that would claim millions of lives on its way to fading from the collective memory of the American public.

The Korean War, often called “The Forgotten War,” rarely features in Hollywood productions or history classrooms. But David Youkey, a 91ɫ�� associate teaching professor of philosophy who teaches the course War and Morality, believes it deserves a closer look.

“Being eclipsed by Vietnam is a major factor (in why the Korean war is often overlooked), but I’m not sure it’s the whole story,” he says.

David Youkey, a 91ɫ�� associate teaching professor of philosophy, studies applied ethics, including war and morality.

What makes a ‘just’ war?

In Youkey’s class, students examine centuries of moral and philosophical reasoning about when it is permissible to go to war and how wars should be conducted. One key concept, the just war theory, traces back to ancient philosophy, but its definitions were sharpened in the 20th century by the horrors of the world wars and the Geneva Conventions.

“Concerning justice of war, the idea is that only wars of defense are justified,” Youkey says, “and just war theory tends to define ‘defense’ very narrowly.”

This idea looks beyond the events preceding a conflict.

Youkey explains, “Within just war theory there is a basic distinction between justice of war, and justice in war. That is to say, the war itself might be just, but behaviors within the war might be unjust.”

Even a war that begins for morally sound reasons can turn morally questionable when boots—or bombs—hit the ground. Take the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II or the firebombing campaigns that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in the preceding days. These actions may have helped end the war, specifically one the U.S. was “justly” involved in after Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, but they raise enduring moral questions.

“The most important idea is that civilians are off limits,” Youkey says. “There will be accidental civilian casualties in any war—that’s acknowledged. But civilians cannot be directly targeted, and the warring parties should do what they can to minimize civilian casualties.”

A morally gray conflict

So, how does the Korean War measure up under the framework of just war theory?

“I’d say, if we narrowly focus on South Korea defending itself from the North, that’s justified by just war theory. But the larger context is this Cold War element,” Youkey says.

North Korea’s invasion was a clear act of aggression, he notes. Therefore, South Korea’s response can be seen as just. But when it comes to U.S. intervention, the lines begin to blur. At the end of WWII, the Korean Peninsula was divided at the 38th parallel not by the Korean people, but by external powers—namely the United States and the Soviet Union.

“Were we in Korea to defend the universal human rights of the Korean people, or were we there because we didn’t like the ideologies of the Soviets and the Chinese?” Youkey asks. “Some of both, probably, but just war theory would only support the first.”

Then there’s the matter of how the Korean war was fought.

Soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 34th Infantry Regiment, 35th Infantry Division take cover behind rocks to shield themselves from exploding mortar shells, near the Hantan River in central Korea. (Photo: Library of Congress)

“Apparently, McArthur gave the order to burn North Korea to the ground, and the same firebombing tactic used against Japan in World War II was imported to Korea. Again, from the point of view of just war theory, civilians are off limits,” Youkey says.

He adds, “It’s hard to understand how to interpret the scorched earth strategy used against North Korea except as an atrocity.”

What forgetting costs us

Youkey is less interested in labeling wars as “good” or “bad” than he is in encouraging critical moral reflection. Such introspection becomes even more imperative when a war fades from public memory.

“The U.S. military is currently, and has for a long time been, involved in conflicts all over the planet, and few civilians pay attention,” he says.

“How many military conflicts have we been involved with recently in Africa where the average American citizen has no idea? That’s not history. It’s stuff going on right now.”

That same forgetfulness—or perhaps willful ignorance, Youkey says—helps explain why the Korean War receives so little attention in our national memory despite its massive human and political costs. Remembering Korea only as a footnote to Vietnam or the Cold War limits our ability to engage with its moral complexity—and to question the long-term consequences of outside intervention.

“There are plenty of movies out there about the heroic deeds of U.S. troops in World War II. And there certainly were a lot of heroic deeds. But we also intentionally murdered hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians during the firebombings, a strategy we later exported to Korea and then to Vietnam,” Youkey says.

He argues that when wars are remembered selectively, often highlighting heroism while omitting brutality, our understanding of history becomes distorted.

Memory and maturity

If there is a lesson to draw from the Korean War 75 years later, reflecting on just war theory alone won’t teach it. Rather, Youkey says he hopes to see a collective cultivation of the moral maturity needed to seek peaceful solutions before conflict happens.

“I do believe there is such a thing as just war. And the world would be better off if more of its nations paid attention to just war theory,” he says. “But we really ought to be moving toward a world where diplomatic solutions are the focus.”

Realizing that vision requires a seismic moral shift in how Americans think about global conflict, he adds. Remembering wars like Korea—those living in shadows of more iconic battles—pushes us to look beyond easy right-versus-wrong debates. It reminds us that even wars waged with justification leave behind legacies of destruction.

As Youkey suggests, the burden of memory is not to glorify the past but to help us imagine a better future where we don’t repeat—or forget—our mistakes.

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about philosophy? Show your support.

On the 75th anniversary of the United States entering the Korean War, 91ɫ�� war and morality scholar David Youkey discusses the cost of the ‘forgotten war.’

Traditional

White

Top image: Father Emil Kapaun (right) and Capt. Jerome A. Dolan (left), a medical officer, help an exhausted GI off a battlefield in Korea. (Photo: Catholic Diocese of Wichita)

Artist features the beauty of nature on a 140-foot canvas

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 20 Jun 2025 15:21:21 +0000

Artist features the beauty of nature on a 140-foot canvas Rachel Sauer Fri, 06/20/2025 - 09:21

Rachel Sauer

‘The Tender Hand of the Unseen,’ an immersive video installation by 91ɫ�� artist Molly Valentine Dierks, is featured through June on D&F Tower in downtown Denver

It happens most often in autumn and winter, when large flocks of starlings roost in protected spots like woodlands, marshes and even buildings. Before settling for the night, often in the gloaming twilight, they sometimes paint the sky in formations called murmurations.

Hundreds—sometimes thousands—of starlings dance in undulating, ever-shifting shapes, a spontaneous choreography that fills the sky like the liquid fall of silk.

One day after class while she was earning her MFA at the University of Michigan, Molly Valentine Dierks saw a murmuration of starlings. She pulled out her phone to capture it—footage that wasn’t as good as she’d like it to be but that nevertheless captured a transcendent moment of ephemeral sculpture in the sky.

Molly Valentine Dierks is an assistant teaching professor in the 91ɫ�� Department of Art and Art History.

Memories of that murmuration guided her in creating “The Tender Hand of the Unseen,” an immersive video installation that is a featured work through June on D&F Tower in downtown Denver, part of the Night Lights Denver program.

For Dierks, an assistant teaching professor in the 91ɫ�� Department of Art and Art History, her work represents a confluence of many influences, musing on the nature of time and referencing periods of growth and rebirth.

As a sculptor and interdisciplinary artist, “and also a nature geek—I’m really interested in the idea of this physical sculptural performance in the sky,” Dierks explains. “They’re stunning, the patterns are beautiful, the way that they change is really gorgeous, plus there’s something about the idea of moving intuitively as a group that I think as human beings we don’t have or we’re not comfortable with. This society of beings is so in sync with one another that they can move as a fluid unit, and it’s also performance and also art.

If you go

What: "The Tender Hand of the Unseen" immersive video installation

Where: D&F Tower, 1601 Arapahoe Street, downtown Denver

When: Evenings through June

Learn more

“As an artist and educator, particularly in the classroom I really encourage my students to get in touch with their intuition and develop spiritual understanding of who they are. For me, as an artist, there’s something about looking at big flocks of birds that gets me in that state. We’re all so comfortable looking at screens, for example, but as a society we’re not really encouraged to just look at sky. (This piece) is an excuse to encourage people to look at sky, even though it's a screen that is sneakily subverting that tension.”

A 140-foot canvas

Public, site-specific art and installations are defining aspects of Dierks’ practice for their ability to foster healing, stillness and growth, she explains. So, when a friend told her about the Night Lights Denver program, she contacted the curator, David Moke, with her idea for a large-scale installation focused on starling murmurations.

When her proposal was accepted, the work of art began. The murmuration she recorded in Michigan didn’t work—there were a lot of trees in the way—so she worked with footage shot in the Netherlands that would be crisp and clear when projected onto the side of D&F Tower, a 140-foot canvas.

Molly Valentine Dierks' immersive video installation "The Tender Hand of the Unseen" will show on D&F Tower in downtown Denver through June. (Photos: Molly Valentine Dierks)

She manipulated and sculpted the footage on her computer, then did test projections from the parking garage near the tower that houses the Night Lights Denver projection center.

“I would bring a thumb drive with an hour-and-a-half of tests, and I just sat there and took a bunch of notes to figure out the best settings,” Dierks says. “(The footage) was taken at different times of day and in different weather conditions, so I could start to see that if the background was too dark or too blue or too purple, I couldn’t see the starlings as well as I wanted.

“I played with timing as well, slowing the footage down in spots and thinking about grains of sand or sand in a timer. I was looking for crescendos—not just contrast and brightness, but does it feel like a piece of music?”

The tender hand

The name of the work is a line from the poem “On Pain” by Kahlil Gibran, which also says:

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

“We all go through difficult times: we go through grief, we go through breakups, and I found poetry kind of a resting spot for me,” Dierks explains. “I could read a poem and get outside the nuts and bolts and bureaucracy of everyday life and get to the heart of what I feel, after a while I started naming my pieces after lines in poems that spoke to me about certain stages in my life.”

In describing the work, Dierks wrote, “The work is my way of confronting a socially fractured landscape, where screens more frequently mediate our understanding of self … overshadowing more embodied connections to each other and the natural world.”

The piece is Dierks’ first large-scale projection, and although there’s really nowhere to hide with a 140-foot public canvas, Dierks says she wouldn’t want to. “There’s something really nice when you install in public, outside of the art world, (where) people don’t have to go to a gallery … I prefer it in a lot of ways.

“(D&F Tower) is in this beautiful area on 16th Street and there’s a park so people can walk around and look at it. When I did the first test last August, I could see people stopping and looking at it, looking at these beautiful formations, these birds in flight—just taking that moment to stop and look.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about art and art history? Show your support.

‘The Tender Hand of the Unseen,’ an immersive video installation by 91ɫ�� artist Molly Valentine Dierks, is featured through June on D&F Tower in downtown Denver.

Traditional

White

What’s more hardcore than history?

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 22:24:13 +0000

What’s more hardcore than history? Rachel Sauer Wed, 06/18/2025 - 16:24

91ɫ�� alumnus Dan Carlin brings a love of history and a punk sensibility to a new season of The Ampersand as he discusses his hit podcast, Hardcore History

Listen to The Ampersand

There are a lot of places to experience punk: in the dim, smoky basement of Club 88 in Los Angeles in 1983, listening to a then-little-known band called NOFX, but also on the ancient battlefields of Britannia, where Briton warriors drew their swords against the invading Romans.

In the first scenario, Dan Carlin was actually there wearing his signature black T-shirt and Orioles cap. The battlefield? He visits it in his vivid imagination (still in a black T-shirt and ball cap)—drinking in the details and drawing a sensory-rich narrative from historical texts and records.

91ɫ�� history graduate Dan Carlin brings a punk sensibility to his wildly popular podcast, Hardcore History.

Carlin, a 91ɫ�� history graduate, is something of a journalist of the past—a punk rock kid who became a punk rock adult who brings that counterculture ethos to Hardcore History, among the most popular podcasts in the United States with millions of downloads per episode.

He recently joined host Erika Randall, 91ɫ�� interim dean of undergraduate education and professor of dance, to kick off a new season of "The Ampersand,” the College of Arts and Sciences podcast. Randall joins guests in exploring stories about “ANDing” as a “full sensory verb” that describes experience and possibility.

Their conversation covered everything from creativity to punk rock to a dog named Mrs. Brown.

DAN CARLIN: So, what makes the past interesting is not so much that it's just, oh, here's a wild story from the past. It's that even though—what did Shakespeare say? Right, "All the world's a stage, and all the people merely players"—the people in the story are people just like we are.

And so, the ability to touch base with something that is otherwise impossible for us to relate to, right, the past is a foreign country, as the saying goes. They do things differently there. Trying to imagine living in a society where they perform human sacrifice, for example, is not possible for us. But you can start to realize that the people in the story are the same as we were.

And if you took a human infant out of the incubator at your local hospital, put them in a time machine, sent them back in the past to a time where people enjoyed visiting public executions, and that child was raised in that culture, they, too, would enjoy going to public executions. So, genetically speaking, we're the same people. And I think that's the end toward understanding the past. I mean, if people ever end up on Mars someday, we might not be able to imagine what it's like to be on Mars. But we can imagine what it's like to be people, even on Mars.

ERIKA RANDALL: I teach dance history, and it really, to me, is about the people and then the context, right, and the people who are next to the people, and how going to see a World's Fair was akin to having access to the world wide web because you suddenly got to be in a moment in time. In the 1900s, all these people came together, and then the forum changed.

So, to say that with just dates and facts but not to go, “Imagine that in this moment Loie Fuller is there with Marie Curie at the same event, running into each other. And look at what that did to dance. Look how technology and art, creativity and science came together because of that confluence of human people at an event.”

And that helps to get students excited versus, “This is the kind of piece that was made at this time on this date,” but to really get into the storytelling. And then the letters, the archives, the archival material that actually brings those humans to life, I find, oh, I want students to get as excited about that as I do. What do you think we do in this generation of people who are learning with so much information that they maybe don't read the bylines perhaps the way you and I did or dive into the works cited to get into the detail of, like, what can make me feel here?

CARLIN: There's a lot to unpack in that question because I think it touches upon a lot of things that I think about but don't have any answers for. I think this is self-evident and obvious, but we're involved in a mass giant human experiment right now. And anybody who's raising kids, even my kids are late teens, early 20s, so, I mean, but they're not really kids anymore.

Dan Carlin's "The End Is Always Near" explores some of the apocalyptic moments from the past as a way to frame the challenges of the future.

But this is all part of this generation, as I tell my oldest, that cropped up literally right after she was born. I mean, once the iPhone comes around, and we're walking around with—what did Elon Musk say? We're all cyborgs now, right? Once we enter that world, we firmly leave the analog world behind.

And what I mean by that is I try to explain to people that the entire history of humanity up until about the 21st century, maybe the very, very end of the 20th, that's an analog world, right? So, if you grew up, as I did, in a pre-computer world, you lived in the same world that the people in ancient Assyria lived in, right? I mean, they came home when the metaphorical streetlights went on, just like we did, right? No way to call mom, no tracking.

But the point is so, all of a sudden, now we enter into a world where we don't know how this plays out because there hasn't been enough time. What's more, unlike ancient times, where the pace of change was slow, so that even if there was some revolutionary new discovery, right, a brand new plow is invented that's going to change the entire world, you would probably have several hundred years to incorporate that new technology and see what that was going to do to society. Even movable print, which shook up the whole world, is nothing compared to what we have now because what we have now, if you said nothing's really going to change for another 50 years, then we could sit there and try to incorporate what's happened, right?

So, there's the ability to absorb and sort of make it a part of. In other words, society redirects around the inventions so that it then becomes the society plus those inventions. But what I think we're all aware of now is that the pace of change is so quick that by the time we would incorporate, oh, my gosh, what is the world plus Facebook like…

RANDALL: It's already moved on.

CARLIN: We're off of Facebook. Yes! And so, the ability to ever get to the absorption phase is gone. What that does for society is a big unknown.

So, the question is often brought up about things like the ability to think deeply or to contemplate. Or, I mean, do people get bored without their cell phone for two minutes? Does that rob us of the ability that ancient thinkers used to have to just sit out in the open air amongst the trees and think? Or as one person pointed out—and I think there's real benefit to this, too—the counterreaction to boredom, right, what boredom makes us do.

RANDALL: Yes.

CARLIN: To not be bored ends up being…

RANDALL: It sparks creativity. It actually lights us up.

CARLIN: Yes. The games you have to invent as a kid because there is no easy access to something else, right?

RANDALL: Yeah.

CARLIN: I don't know what that means for society. I tell my kids all the time that if you happen to be somebody who bucks that trend, it reminds you of the line, "In the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king," right? I mean, if you can do math and nobody can do math anymore, that's an advantage, right? So, I always try to turn it into, well, if you're one of the few who reads, that's going to help you.

I think doing the show when you're doing five hours of history podcasting sometimes, and that there's an audience for that, helps you go, oh, well, good. There's still that out there. But when you have more than a billion people as your potential audience, getting a few million here or there that are interested in your little niche thing is not necessarily reflective of broad societal trends.

So, I don't know that our audience is representative, and I'm not sure I can draw many conclusions from that.

RANDALL: But it doesn't make you want to go get those other billion. It makes you—like, you don't want to have to necessarily adapt your path towards those folks who want the quick flip and quick hit.

Dan Carlin has hosted Hardcore History since 2006.

CARLIN: I wouldn't do that. No, I wouldn't do that for several reasons. One, there's people who have that lane—lots of people who have that. It’s an easier lane, to be honest. But also, because it's the same thing with why I'm following the Baltimore Orioles when I live in Los Angeles, and I've never been to Baltimore. I mean, this is—I was a punk rock person. I'm a Generation X person.

There's a whole bunch of things in my biography where you just go, oh, this guy is going to do it differently. My wife would say, you just have to be different, don't you? And, yeah, I think that's what it is. So, I don't want those other people. I kind of take pride that the audience invented a name for themselves. They call themselves the "hardcorps," C-O-R-P-S.

RANDALL: Oh, I love that.

CARLIN: This is how I always was as a kid, too. It's not that I'm different and bad. I'm different, and I'm going to take pride in that. And I want my several million, instead of the billions, because it's us, right? It's our own private "hardcorps" club.

RANDALL: In the basement.

CARLIN: We're doing our own thing. You can go enjoy your 30-second TikTok pieces of entertainment.

RANDALL: I can't imagine you in that ball cap and black T-shirt as a punk rock guy. Like, who were you listening to? Were you pierced? What are we talking about? Did the visual change, or were you a contrarian there, too, when you rolled up with your Orioles cap into the basement with people with mohawks?

CARLIN: Well—and I'm speaking to people who were there now in your audience who remember—punk is a caricature of what it was then. It's hard to describe what it was like in '79 or '80 or '81.

RANDALL: In L.A., right?

CARLIN: Yeah. I mean, listen, I remember John Doe, who was the lead singer of X. He had a great line. He said punk was wearing black jeans and having a normal haircut—what we would call a normal haircut today.

If you had short hair in 1978, people would yell out the car. You know, he said people would yell out the car and yell Devo at you because that was contrary. He said, “All I had was a normal American haircut, but that was a statement in 1978.”

So, we looked more normal. A lot of times, we had a lot of hair colors. But with me, if you saw me at CU, I didn't look… I had long hair at CU.

RANDALL: Were you punk? Were you punk at CU?

CARLIN: I was always punk.

Click the button below to hear the rest of the conversation.

Listen to The Ampersand

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about history? Show your support.

91ɫ�� alumnus Dan Carlin brings a love of history and a punk sensibility to a new season of The Ampersand as he discusses his hit podcast, Hardcore History.

Traditional

White

We still need a bigger boat

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 17:02:38 +0000

We still need a bigger boat Rachel Sauer Tue, 06/17/2025 - 11:02

Rachel Sauer

Fifty years after ‘Jaws’ made swimmers flee the ocean, 91ɫ�� cinema scholar Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz explains how the 1975 summer hit endures as a classic

On June 19, 1975, it wasn’t such a terrible thing to feel something brush your leg while frolicking in the ocean. It was startling, sure—humans’ relationship with the ocean has long harbored a certain element of fear, says 91ɫ�� Professor Andrew Martin—but the rational mind could more quickly acknowledge that it was probably seaweed.

That changed the following day, when a film by a young director named Steven Spielberg opened on screens across the United States. On June 20, 1975, to feel something brush your leg in the ocean was to immediately think, “SHARK!”

Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz, a 91ɫ�� professor of cinema studies and moving image arts, regularly teaches "Jaws" in Introduction to Cinema Studies.

Are sharks really as scary as their reputation?

In the 50 years since “Jaws” made people flee the water for fear of sharks, the film has become widely recognized as a cinematic landmark.

“’Jaws’ is a movie I teach regularly in Introduction to Cinema Studies—yes, it’s that important,” says Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz, a 91ɫ�� professor of cinema studies and moving image arts, adding that “Jaws” also is an important case study for misconceptions, including the evolution and de-evolution, of the term “blockbuster.”

A disaster-horror movie

The cinematic landscape in which “Jaws” arrived was one of greater daring and a transition away from the focus on producers in the classical Hollywood era to a focus on a new cohort of directors—“mostly men, mostly white,” Acevedo-Muñoz acknowledges—who studied cinema in college and were greatly influenced by the French New Wave.

“With the collapse of the Hollywood studio system, suddenly there’s more opportunity for creativity, for edgy content,” he says. “In the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, you have some movies that really were trailblazers in what’s unofficially called the American New Wave. ‘Bonnie and Clyde,’ 1967, comes to mind—nobody had seen that kind of romanticization of violence and graphic violence before.”

Young directors like Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese were more in touch with the counterculture of the time, and old-guard producers, recognizing these young mavericks might be lucrative, green-lit projects like “The Godfather,” “Mean Streets” and “Jaws,” Acevedo-Muñoz says.

“There’s incentive to be risky in that juncture of the ‘60s to the ‘70s,” he notes. “Then to that context you add the economic crisis of the early 1970s, the recession and unemployment, plus the end of the Vietnam War, heads are getting hot and people are angry.

Creating doom in two simple notes

It’s possible for a universe of dread to exist between two notes: duu-DU … duu-DU

Just two notes, played with increasing urgency and speed, let moviegoers know that a shark is coming, and fast.

An element of the genius of John Williams’ Oscar-winning score for the film “Jaws,” released 50 years ago Friday, is how much it conveys in just those iconic two notes.

“Williams layers melodic tension in these notes with an increasing rhythmic motion—he accelerates the speed in which we hear the notes, and he accelerates their frequency,” says Michael Sy Uy, a 91ɫ�� associate professor of musicology and director of the American Music Research Center. “When you combine that with the emotions attached to the fear, anxiety and dread of being attacked by a shark, then we start to feel how this music is living with and entering our ears, and it makes us feel actual anxiety or dread.”

The two notes of duu-DU are separated by the closest interval in Western musical notation that our ears are trained and socialized to hear, he adds—a half step—that, when played in succession, can help listeners feel a sense of melodic tension.

In the case of the “Jaws” soundtrack, it can help listeners feel a deep dread. In fact, some scholars argue that “Jaws” would not be the cinematic landmark it is without John Williams’ score.

“It’s hard to imagine movies today and over the past five decades without their soundtracks,” Uy says. “We make music a part of the storytelling because music can add an extra layer of meaning. It can contradict what is happening in a scene between actors, or it can validate what they’re saying. Music can tell the story even when words don’t.”

Learn more about 91ɫ��'s film and television soundtrack connections in the American Music Research Center's Dave Grusin collection. Grusin is a Grammy-winning composer, contemporary of John Williams and 91ɫ�� alumnus.

“The crises of the 1970s are one of the reasons why we have the flourishing of the disaster film at that time. I would point first to ‘The Poseidon Adventure,’ which is the best of them all, and ‘The Towering Inferno,’ ‘Earthquake.’ And to a certain extent, ‘Jaws’ is a hybrid of the classic horror monster movie and the 1970s disaster movie.”

The dire economic background of the early 1970s was important to “Jaws” and other disaster films, Acevedo-Muñoz says, because “a disaster movie, like a horror movie, tells us we are going through a really rough time, but if we all work together and we make a few sacrifices, we’re going to get out of this OK. If we follow the lead of Paul Newman or Steve McQueen or Gene Hackman, we’ll eventually get out of this all right.”

Driving the buzz

“Jaws” is often called the original summer blockbuster, but relentless repetition of this idea does not make it true, Acevedo-Muñoz says: “There’s no one movie we can point to as the original summer blockbuster.”

In fact, he adds, the term “blockbuster” really refers to the end of a classic Hollywood distribution and exhibition practice called block booking: If theaters wanted to show big-draw feature films, they also had to book smaller, cheaper, shorter films that came to be known as “B movies," which "were made quickly by 'B units' that often reused sets or even costumes from the big movies to cut costs. But scholarship on B movies has argued that because the studios weren’t paying too much attention to those units, some of the B movies were rather edgy and interesting."

Block booking meant that the producers and distributors controlled a lot of what was in exhibition venues, "but there were occasionally movies that may have broken that pattern, and those were in some ways the original blockbusters—as in busting the block of block booking practice," he says.

While “Jaws” did break box-office records of the time, it’s also noteworthy in cinema history as one of the first miracles of marketing, he says. It was based on a mega-bestselling book by Peter Benchley, one that was optioned for film while still in galleys, and the film marketing piggy-backed on the name recognition of the book.

Further, “Jaws” was one of the first films to intentionally create buzz as part of the overall publicity and marketing plan, including strategically leaked tidbits from the film’s set on Martha’s Vineyard.

On its June 20, 1975, opening day, “Jaws” was one of the most prominent films to benefit from a practice called “front loading,” which meant making more prints of the film and showing it in as many theaters as possible, rather than the previous practice of rolling openings from largest to smallest markets.

“The marketing and distribution team of Universal Pictures also decided to take a front-loading approach with ‘Jaws,’ so that it was playing everywhere,” Acevedo-Muñoz says. “Or almost everywhere. It still took months to get to my hometown, but we knew it was coming, and that anticipation was building.

“So, ‘Jaws’ is important because it was this consolidation of these different practices of marketing, creating buzz, creating anticipation, creating tie-ins—it put all these things in one place that were practices that had been around before the summer of ’75 but afterwards became the model.”

As for the film’s effect on moviegoers and their summer vacation plans? “I know a lot of people,” Acevedo-Muñoz says, “who refused to go swimming after they saw ‘Jaws.’”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about cinema studies and moving image arts? Show your support.

Fifty years after ‘Jaws’ made swimmers flee the ocean, 91ɫ�� cinema scholar Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz explains how the 1975 summer hit endures as a classic.

Traditional

White

Division of Arts and Humanities

Weaving the rhythms of place and people

Related Articles

We’re still tasting the spice of 1960s sci-fi

Related Articles

Renowned German-Jewish scholar to speak at 91ɫ�� Sept. 2

Related Articles

New exhibit celebrates ceramics at 91ɫ��

Related Articles

Prof focuses on the brothers behind the fairy tales

Related Articles

Up, up and away … to another Superman movie

Related Articles

The ‘Forgotten War’ asks to be remembered

Related Articles

Artist features the beauty of nature on a 140-foot canvas

Related Articles

What’s more hardcore than history?

Related Articles

We still need a bigger boat

Are sharks really as scary as their reputation?

Related Articles