News

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

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)

91ɫ�� scholar helps unite Navajo culture and modern science

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 22:43:38 +0000

91ɫ�� scholar helps unite Navajo culture and modern science Rachel Sauer Tue, 08/26/2025 - 16:43

Cody DeBos

Kelsey John’s Navajo-centered Horses Connecting Communities initiative offers culturally relevant, practical education about horses

When Kelsey John left Oklahoma to pursue her PhD in New York, she quickly started missing a central piece of her lifestyle: horses. Raised in an environment rooted in horse culture, John’s life is deeply intertwined with the animals.

“I am a citizen of the Navajo Nation, and I am a lifelong horse person,” she says. “Both sides of my family had horses in their background, so I grew up with a lot of exposure to them and education about them.”

As she studied away from home, Kelsey John, a 91ɫ�� assistant professor of ethnic studies, felt a strong pull to return home and rediscover the close relationship with horses she once had.

As she studied away from home, John, a 91ɫ�� assistant professor of ethnic studies and Center of the American West affiliate, felt a strong pull to return home and rediscover the close relationship with horses she once had. That realization inspired her doctoral research and gave birth to a community organization centered on the profound bonds between humans, horses and the environment. Ultimately, it led her back to her community to spearhead a unique initiative called Horses Connecting Communities.

Blending cultural traditions and modern science

Originally started as a one-day conference, Horses Connecting Communities quickly became a cherished gathering, providing Navajo people with culturally relevant and practical education about horses.

“The goal was to kind of braid those things together and just make it a really Navajo-centered event for the needs of the Navajo people and their horses. That’s where it all started, and it’s grown since then,” John says.

Events hosted by the organization typically include speakers, demonstrations, and hands-on workshops on horse care, training and veterinary skills. They are often led by Navajo experts like John, who return to their community to share their specialized knowledge.

“We’ve also partnered with a different camp that’s been happening on the Navajo Nation for over 10 years now called Song of the Horse Camp, which is organized by the folks at the University of Arizona,” says John.

“Since we partnered with them, we’ve been able to introduce more equine facilitated learning, which helps either youth or adults with academic skills, life skills, personal communication, confidence building, body language awareness … all these different interpersonal and personal skills in a new and different way,” she adds.

Horses, land and Navajo identity

At the heart of Horses Connecting Communities is the understanding that horses, land and Navajo cultural identity are inseparable.

“Something really unique about horses is that, in order to have a relationship with them, you’re kind of inevitably having a relationship with the land as well,” says John. “Because we are an indigenous community, we have a deep relationship with our ancestral land.”

She also emphasizes how Navajo traditions and modern equine science are not opposing ideas, but natural complements to each other.

“There is a great effort among the horse community in the Navajo Nation to understand and integrate our cultural beliefs with the best and most current science,” John explains. “I’ve had the huge privilege of being able to work with lots of professionals who are also tribal members so they can personally and in a communal way integrate tradition with relevant science.”

“There is a great effort among the horse community in the Navajo Nation to understand and integrate our cultural beliefs with the best and most current science,” says 91ɫ�� scholar Kelsey John. (Photo: Kelsey John)

Working ‘with,’ not ‘on’

John’s approach to relationship building through Horses Connecting Communities emphasizes the ethical necessity of working hand-in-hand with indigenous communities rather than just researching them. Her organization exemplifies this with a collaborative and sustained partnership that is directly shaped by the Navajo people’s needs and aspirations.

“The idea is making your research relevant and useful to the community and keeping that ongoing relationship and ongoing presence,” she says.

But community partnerships can still be complex, John acknowledges.

“There’s always going to be a power differential between a university—even a university researcher such as myself—and a community. You’re always dealing with power and access to resources and sometimes even conflicting ideas of what’s beneficial.”

Yet, despite these challenges, the rewards of genuine community-based collaboration inspire John to keep coming back for more.

“It’s been almost nine years now since I started my research, but I still work with a lot of the same people that I worked with for the first Horses Connecting Communities event. We’ve brought in new people and changed our programming and are always evaluating if what we’re doing is relevant,” she says.

John adds, “But it always goes back to what I learned in that initial research about what the horse means to the people, what they want, and what are the challenges they’re facing, then finding ways to support that.”

Looking ahead

Thanks to recent support in the form of a 91ɫ�� PACES Grant, Horses Connecting Communities will further explore equine facilitated learning tailored to the Navajo community.

“We want to understand what the needs of the tribe are and if they can be met through this unique educational approach,” John says.

She is also excited about organizing specialized events for Navajo women that recognize culturally significant beliefs about their relationships with animals and the land.

John’s ultimate aspiration, however, goes beyond education and research. She hopes her initiative will inspire a deeper appreciation for horses, their care and the Navajo people’s enduring relationship with these animals.

“The big thing is to really be aware of the legacy and the significance of the horse and the people’s relationship with the horse—and the land, too,” she concludes. “There’s such a long history there, and I’m so glad to be a part of the larger narrative about horses.”

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

Kelsey John’s Navajo-centered Horses Connecting Communities initiative offers culturally relevant, practical education about horses.

Traditional

White

Couple helps send cyclists on a ride to remember

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 18:29:14 +0000

Couple helps send cyclists on a ride to remember Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/21/2025 - 12:29

Bradley Worrell

The Buffalo Bicycle Classic’s Little Buff ride is a family-friendly excursion that is notable for its aid station hosted by longtime volunteers Tyler and Marcia Forman

Just past the halfway mark on the 10-mile Buffalo Bicycle Classic Little Buff ride, as cyclists pass through a quiet residential neighborhood and turn a corner that leads to the next stage in the ride—this one running along South 91ɫ�� Creek—riders first catch a glimpse of the event’s aid station.

Marcia and Tyler Forman have sponsored the Little Buff ride aid station since the family-friendly route of the Buffalo Bicycle Classic ride debuted in 2007. The aid station is located next to the Forman’s home, which is at about the halfway point on the 10-mile ride.

But it quickly becomes apparent that this is not just any ride aid station. There is a parked Kona Ice van with helpers offering a dozen flavors of shaved ice to delighted young (and adult) riders, there is a face painter creating colorful works of art and there is a balloon artist festooning young riders with inflatable swords, oversized hats, giant butterflies or whatever creations riders can imagine.

“We decided that if we were going to do it, we wanted to make it memorable for kids and their families,” says Tyler Forman, who along with his wife, Marcia, has overseen the Little Buff ride aid station since the family-friendly ride was added to the Buffalo Bicycle Classic (BBC) lineup in 2007.

Although neither of the Formans attended the 91ɫ�� or work for the university, they say they were happy to help support an event that provides scholarships for CU students when their longtime friend and BBC organizer, Henry “Woody” Eaton, asked if they would consider volunteering. As it happens, their home in 91ɫ�� is strategically located near the halfway point for the Little Buff ride and relatively close to the campus, so the area behind their home worked as the perfect location for a rest stop, the couple says.

About the Buffalo Bicycle Classic

Year founded: 2003

Number of course rides offered: 7 road cycling courses; 2 gravel cycling courses

Courses offered: Little Buff: 10 miles; Mary’s Loop: 35 miles; Half Century: 50 miles; Carter Lake: 70 miles; Epic 75: 75 miles; Buff Epic: 100 miles; Century Foothills: 100 miles; Gravel Buff: 44.5 miles; and Gravel Epic: 53.1 miles or 59.2 miles

This year’s event: Sept. 7

Amount raised for scholarships since 2003: $3.9 million

BBC scholarships funded since start: More than 450 students

BBC scholarships: $4,000 to students, renewable if they maintain full-time status and a 3.0 GPA. Additionally, an endowment provides $10,000 annually to three third- or fourth-year students in the College of Arts and Sciences, also renewable under the same conditions.

Learn more about the BBC

“As Woody explained it to us, the aid station would include portalets and a water station, and it would be a place where the kids and their families could stop to rest and refresh,” Tyler says. “So, I said, ‘Woody, let Marcia and I noodle on this and see if we can come up with a way to make it more fun for the little kids.’ That’s truly how the thing started; it was just: ‘Let’s see if we can make more of it than just water and portalets.’”

All in for the Little Buff ride

The Formans immediately threw themselves into the endeavor: They engaged the services of a friend who does face painting; Tyler hired a balloon artist who he met by chance on the Pearl Street Mall, where the man was crafting balloon creations for mall pedestrians; and in the early days of the event, the Formans rented a small snow cone machine the day before the ride and stocked up with several bags of ice.

“In the early years, we made the snow cones ourselves, and it was fun, but it was a bit chaotic because it was just the two of us with one small snow cone machine and—having never made a snow cone in our lives—it probably wasn’t the best quality,” Tyler says with a laugh. “We’ve since found a commercial snow cone truck that shows up the day of the event, and they do a much better job. They have something like 12 flavors, and it’s great for the kids because they know what they’re doing.”

Why snow cones?

“With the event being in early September, it’s not always hot, but it’s warm enough, so we wanted to offer a nice treat, and it needed to be something we could pull off ourselves,” Tyler says. “It just seemed like a kid-friendly thing to do, along with having a balloon maker and face painter.”

Although the couple will miss this year’s Sept. 7 ride, because they will be celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary in Europe, they have already made arrangements for the aid station to be staffed. Historically, the couple have been on-hand each year to oversee the aid station, which typically draws between 125 and 150 riders, the couple estimates.

“Each year, we get a mix of riders; some brand new and some returning,” Marcia says. “Many times, the returning riders will say, ‘We’re so glad you’re here again,’ which is always nice to hear.”

The balloon artist is a favorite with small children, who eagerly ask him to create inflatable swords, oversized hats, giant butterflies or whatever other creations they can imagine. (Photo: Tyler and Marcia Forman)

“I’m out there taking pictures every year, and Marcia and I like to talk with the riders,” Tyler adds. “And while we probably don’t need to promote it any more than we do, I’m out there yelling, ‘Free snow cones!’ and encouraging people to stop.

“I get a kick out of the fact that the parents are often a little embarrassed to get a snow cone. I always try to encourage them. I’ll say, ‘When’s the last time you had a snow cone?’ and a lot of times they say, ‘Oh, it’s probably been at least 20 years.’”

The riding trail next to their house is also a popular walking trail, so Tyler says he makes it clear to any passersby that they are welcome to the hospitality offered by the aid station.

“Anyone who comes by is always welcome to help themselves,” he says. “I’m not going to try to monitor who helps grabs to a cool drink or a snow cone. Who cares?”

Aid station largely unchanged since inception

Other than upgrading from a snow cone machine they operated themselves to the one operated by Kona Ice, the Formans says their aid station has remained virtually unchanged over the years.

“It’s been so well received by the riders, so I don’t know what else we would add or change,” Marcia says.

The Formans say they enjoy talking with riders on the day of the event. In addition to expressing thanks for sponsoring the aid station, some cyclists will ask about the giant, 100-year-old cottonwood tree in the couple’s backyard, while others with knowledge of the area will inquire if they lived in the home several years ago when a 100-year flood overfilled the banks of the South 91ɫ�� Creek, swamping nearby homes. (They did live there at the time; they say the flood waters made their house uninhabitable for about six months until they could get the damage remediated.)

On occasion, the couple also get requests for Neosporin or Band-Aids from riders who took a tumble during the ride, so they always stock up on first aid supplies in advance of the ride.

Prior to each year’s Little Buff ride, Tyler says he typically spends a few hours coordinating with the Little Buff organizers to confirm details of the ride route and when to expect riders, while Marcia Forman spends about as much time making arrangements with the vendors who run the face painting, balloon making and Kona Ice truck operations.

The Formans pay for the services of the painter, balloon maker and Kona Ice truck themselves, but say it is small price to pay to support the event.

In addition to the aid station services offered by the Formans, students from the CU President’s Leadership Class staff a table at the ride station that provides other snacks, including breakfast bars, fruit and sports drinks.

Todd Gleason, 91ɫ�� College of Arts and Sciences dean emeritus and a BBC founding director, praises the Forman’s dedicated service to operating the Little Buff Ride aid station every year.

“Tyler and Marcia Forman have financially and logistically sponsored the Little Buff aid station adjacent to their home on Gapter Road since the addition of the Little Buff route in 2007,” he says. “Buffalo Bicycle Classic co-founder and A&S alum Henry ‘Woody’ Eaton developed the route and collaborated with fellow cyclist Tyler Forman to create what has become the most creative and family-friendly aid station of any bike ride that I know of.”

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

The Buffalo Bicycle Classic’s Little Buff ride is a family-friendly excursion that is notable for its aid station hosted by longtime volunteers Tyler and Marcia Forman.

Traditional

White

Video games don’t rot your brain—they train it

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 20:06:22 +0000

Video games don’t rot your brain—they train it Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/18/2025 - 14:06

Blake Puscher

91ɫ�� scientists find that playing video games comes with small but significant cognitive benefits

Ever since video games began to gain widespread popularity, some have questioned how playing them consistently affects people, especially mentally. Like with TV, the internet, social media and AI, the tendency has been to assume negative effects. However, a number of studies have suggested that playing video games can help strengthen people’s cognitive abilities.

Despite similar research findings, many of the studies disagree on the size of this effect and to which areas of cognition it applies—perhaps, in part, because of the limitations inherent to their typically cross-sectional approach.

A team of 91ɫ�� scientists including Shandell Pahlen, Anqing Zheng, Robin P. Corley, Naomi P. Friedman, Sally J. Wadsworth and Chandra A. Reynolds, all members of 91ɫ��’s team within the CATSLife project, aim to address these uncertainties with a longitudinal study on video games and cognitive health. CATSLife stands for Colorado Adoption/Twin Study of Lifespan behavioral development and cognitive aging.

Chandra Reynolds, a 91ɫ�� professor of psychology and neuroscience, and her research colleagues found small, positive cognitive benefits of playing video games.

“We can leverage the twins and siblings’ similarities and differences to understand aspects of behaviors and cognitive abilities,” Reynolds explains, a 91ɫ�� professor of psychology and neuroscience, “especially as they relate to how well people maintain their cognitive functioning, not only now, but eventually we hope to continue following them as they transition into midlife.”

Video games and cognitive health

Video games are an accessible way to engage one’s mind for several reasons. Like board games, video games do not require much in the way of physical ability, unlike sports and other such ways to exercise the mind. Additionally, video games are widely popular, with 2.7 billion gamers worldwide as of early 2025, according to Statista.

These traits suggest that video games could be used as a tool to support cognitive health, but this assertion raises some questions: What are the specific abilities that comprise generalized cognitive functioning, and how can scientists determine whether video games serve this purpose?

The study covered three important cognitive domains: processing speed, working memory and spatial reasoning. It included 1,241 individuals from CATSLife between 28 and 49 years old who had taken at least one of these tests. Some of the participants played video games and some did not, so the effects of playing video games were determined based on what video games they played. These games were categorized broadly into Action+, Puzzle+, and Other genres. The plus signs refer to the fact that the categories include genres that are not usually described with the base name, like life simulation games being included in Puzzle+ even though they aren’t puzzle games.

Reverse selection

One argument against prior studies suggesting that video games provide a cognitive benefit is the concept of reverse causation. In this case, reverse causation refers to certain people’s cognitive skills making them more likely to play video games, as opposed to playing video games causing an increase in cognitive skills.

Reverse causation is therefore part of the nature vs. nurture discourse, and as such, the point is not that engaging in an activity can’t improve people’s abilities, but that part of the correlation between activity and ability comes from those who already have above-average abilities choosing to engage in activities that take advantage of them. For example, a hypothetical study that compared Olympic runners with people who never run without accounting for reverse causation would overestimate the physical benefits of running, because a large part of the gap between the two groups is baked in: Most people can’t reach the level of Olympic athletes just by exercising.

This study factored in the participants’ baseline cognitive ability by looking at their adolescent IQ scores. “We’re fortunate that we had a longitudinal design,” Reynolds says, “and that we’ve assessed our participants multiple times over their earlier development into adolescence. Most studies of video games are cross sectional, and they don’t have indices of people’s cognitive performance at earlier ages.”

The researchers also considered several variables associated with performance on specific cognitive tasks. These included age, sex and educational attainment. The first two of these are especially important, because the genre of video games that people play varies within these demographics. Specifically, women and older adults are more likely to play Puzzle+ games, and men and younger people are more likely to play Action+ games.

91ɫ�� researcher Chandra Reynolds and her colleagues found that spatial reasoning benefited most consistently from playing video games. (Photo: Unsplash)

“There are some sociodemographic differences in what kinds of games people are playing,” Reynolds says, “and we wanted to account for that to isolate the differences that might arise from the gameplay itself.”

Increased processing speed

Spatial reasoning benefited most consistently from playing video games, with a significant effect measured in all three tests before and after adjustment for adolescent IQ, although the effect was about half as large after adjustment. There is also evidence that processing speed performance could increase after playing video games, as the results of one test remained significant even after adjustment. Working memory was the only domain that did not show evidence of improvement due to video game play, with non-significant numbers before and after adjustment.

Reynolds says that unimproved working memory results could be a consequence of the test used and the fact that only one test was used for this ability, compared to the three tests used for both processing speed and spatial reasoning.

“We can’t say a whole lot about working memory from one test,” he says. “In the future, we want to extend to other measures that would get more specifically at attention, working memory and other aspects of executive functioning.”

When video game play was broken down by the broad genre of game, there were some negative correlations: people who played Action+ games scored worse on processing speed, and those who played Puzzle+ games scored worse on spatial reasoning. However, these correlations were very small, and only statistically significant for one of the processing speed tests.

These results seem counterintuitive, which makes it particularly interesting to see if they will be replicated in other studies. As to benefits by genre, Action+ games had a particular association with spatial reasoning and Puzzle+ games had a particular association with processing speed.

According to the paper, the results for different tests may have been affected by how similar they are to video games. For example, with respect to spatial reasoning, Action+ gamers scored best on the Block Design test, which involves three-dimensional operations similar to those involved in playing many modern action games. By the same token, gamers may have performed worse on tests that were more divergent from video games due to their familiarity with related but substantially different tasks.

Future assessments

The researchers are currently collecting more data from the CATSLife sample, asking the same questions for further insight into how the observed effects change over the course of five or six years. “If people continue to play games, they’ll likely nominate newer games—it would be interesting to see if there is a long-standing influence or if new game play factors emerge,” Reynolds says.

Some changes could be made to the assessment of people’s gameplay to get more particular results. In the future, Reynolds says, “we would conduct more specific surveys of our participants: asking for more details about the games they play, the systems they use and how they approach gameplay. We asked questions that allowed us to get at the kinds of games they play, but not how they play them, and we’re making some inferences, so we’d want to dig deeper into that.”

“There has been some debate in the literature about the potential benefits or even detriments of video game play,” Reynolds explains, “but I think we found that, in a general sample that isn’t selected for pathological use or other characteristics related to playing video games, we found some salient, small positive effects.”

This brings up an important caveat, which is that even though there could be positive effects of playing video games, it is still possible to experience negative effects by engaging with them in a unhealthy manner. Because the positive effects are small, any negative effects due to playing video games irresponsibly, such as playing them for an excessive amount of time each day, are likely to outweigh the benefits.

“I think it will bear additional replication and future work,” Reynolds says, “but the benefits are quite interesting, and we’d like to see how this plays out with other kinds of activities as well.”

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

91ɫ�� scientists find that playing video games comes with small but significant cognitive benefits.

Traditional

White

Scholar dissects voter perceptions of transnational politics

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 21:24:57 +0000

Scholar dissects voter perceptions of transnational politics Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/14/2025 - 15:24

Bradley Worrell

91ɫ�� political scientist Jeffrey Nonnemacher asserts that Western European national political parties use their affiliations with party families to signal their own political viewpoints

In the 2013 German national elections, the upstart political party Alternative for Germany (AfD) failed to gain a single seat in parliament. Just four years later, the AfD won 97 seats and became the third-largest political party in Germany.

The AfD made its historic inroads in the 2017 German elections at the same time it transformed itself from a Euroskeptic but relatively moderate party into a political movement that became much more closely aligned with radical right parties in the rest of Western Europe, says Jeffrey Nonnemacher, an assistant teaching professor with the 91ɫ�� International Affairs Program, whose research focus is political parties and elections.

In particular, Nonnemacher points to a decision by AfD’s party leader, Frauke Petry, in 2017 to host radical right leaders from across Europe, including Marine Le Pen with the French National Rally, Geert Wilders of the Dutch Party for Freedom and Matteo Salvini of Italy’s Northern League. That decision effectively telegraphed to voters the party’s shift to the right and signaled its embrace of the transnational radical right party label, says Nonnemacher, who recently published a paper in the British Journal of Political Science about voter perceptions of transnational politics.

91ɫ�� scholar Jeffrey Nonnemacher is an assistant teaching professor in the International Affairs Program and the Arts and Sciences Honors Program and a lecturer in the Department of Political Science.

“My goal with this paper is to tackle the question of: Do voters care if the AfD’s leadership is spending a lot of time with France’s Marine Le Pen and the National Rally? Are voters getting some sort of information from the party family label attached to a party and the party’s relationship with that label?” he explains. In his paper, Nonnemacher contends that political parties in Western Europe are responsive to politics outside their home country—and that strategic choices to embrace a larger party family label, such as radical right in the case of AfD, do influence how parties are perceived by a country’s voters.

In a recent conversation with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine, Nonnemacher emphasized that a political party that embraces the party family signifies its commitment to the larger ideological goals associated with the party family, while parties that push back and work to distance themselves from their sister parties from other countries signal that they may not be credible champions for core issues. His answers have been lightly edited for style and clarity.

Question: Can you define what constitutes a transnational party family?

Nonnemacher: In political science—especially in comparative politics—one of the goals is to think about the ways we can compare political outcomes. One of the ways we do this is by looking at these so-called party families. These are basically categorizations of parties based upon shared histories, shared ideology and common networks of activists and leaders.

There are a whole host of party families. The largest families in Europe are the Social Democrats, which is your center-left, working-class parties, and the Conservatives, which are your traditional center-right parties. You’ve also got your Green parties, which are your environmental parties, among many other families.

These party families are now much more useful than what academics created them for, which was tools for comparisons. Today, parties within similar party families tend to behave the same, learn from each other and form groups that transcend national boundaries based upon shared ideologies.

Question: What motivated you to explore the topic of transnational parties as a source of voter perceptions?

Nonnemacher: The academic answer is that I felt there was a gap there. We know a lot about how voters in Europe today are concerned about integration and thinking about politics beyond their own borders. But we had not yet, as academics, come to terms with the consequences of this, for how they view their parties and the links between what information they’re getting and their political parties. That was the academic motivation.

The more topical answer was the rise of the radical right parties in these various countries and how these parties seemed to be learning from each other, copying each other and celebrating each other’s victories in a way that we hadn’t really seen before. You have Hungary’s Victor Orbán hosting CPAC (the U.S.-based Conservative Political Action Conference), and you have Marine Le Pen in France having these big rallies with other radical right leaders.

Hungary’s Victor Orbán hosts CPAC (the U.S.-based Conservative Political Action Conference). (Photo: Elkes Andor/Wikimedia Commons)

My motivation was trying to understand the consequences of this seeminginternationalization of right party politics especially, but also party politics more generally.

Question: What are some specific reasons why parties might choose to embrace a transnational party?

Nonnemacher: The argument I make in the paper is very much an electoral argument. Parties win elections when voters know what they stand for. That’s one of the big theories that we have about party competition, is that parties need to distinguish themselves from their competitors and be able to communicate to voters what they believe.

If a voter can’t tell the difference between one party and another, they’re unlikely to support them. And if a voter doesn’t know where the party stands, then they don’t know if they’re going to get what they want out of the party. So, parties need to distinguish themselves. They need to signal to voters what their positions are.

One of the motivations here for parties is: This label tells voters where I stand. If I’m seen alongside other Social Democrats, I can kind of bolster my credentials on being a Social Democratic Party.

The other electoral motivation is parties want to win elections, and they look to who won and say, ‘We should copy that.’ In 2021, when the Social Democrats won in Germany, Social Democratic parties across Europe all immediatelylooked to Germany and said, ‘What did they do? How did they win this election? What can we do to kind of copy that?’

Question: So, it’s not just radical right parties learning from radical right parties in other countries, but also leftist and centrist parties learning from their transnational sister parties?

Nonnemacher: Yes. One of the things I wanted to do in this paper was to make the case that it’s not just the radical right that’s doing this and benefitting from it. It’s the British Labour Party taking lessons from Germany’s Social Democrats, for example.

Green parties are an especially interesting transnational group, because inherently, they see fighting for the environment as a global issue. They view international cooperation and international learning as core to solving the problems that they are running on. Notably, almost all of them have ‘green’ in their name and almost all of them have the sunflower as their logo.

Question: What makes Germany’s AfD party a particularly noteworthy example of a national party forming associations with like-minded parties in Western Europe?

Nonnemacher: There’s probably two reasons for that. One is they exploded in Germany in terms of growing support from 2013 to 2017; the other is that by 2017, the radical right in Europe had exploded. There’s just a lot more attention on the far right, and it’s Germany, so whenever the far right does anything in Germany, people notice.

The AfD is an interesting case, because in 2013 they were not the far-right party that they are today. They have had a big transformation in the last 10 to 12 years. In 2013, they were really just angry about the European Union and the Euro crisis, and with Germany having to bail out the rest of the European Union. They were a Euroskeptic party first and foremost. They were anti-immigrant, but it wasn’t their main focus.

France's Marine Le Pen of the French National Rally has helped lead a far-right shift, particularly on immigration, in Europen politics. (Photo: Jérémy-Günther-Heinz Jähnick/Wikimedia Commons)

They had a disappointing election in 2013, where they barely missed out on getting seats in the parliament.Then by 2017, they shifted dramatically to the right on immigration. They really started to copy France’s Le Pen and other prominent, far-right leaders in Europe tobe this anti-immigrant party, just like the rest of these radical right parties, and that worked out really well for them. In 2017, they became the third-largest party in parliament, so it was a quite successful strategy for them.

By the elections in 2021, they plateaued a little bit, and then in February this year they became the second largest party in the Bundestag (the German parliament), and they’ve come to be embraced by the broader far-right movement.

Question: Why might a national party choose to distance itself from a sister party?

Nonnemacher: There are two family labels where this generally applies. The first is the radical right—or at least that was the case in the past—where if you were seen as too close to the radical right you were punished, because there was a lot of stigmas around being affiliated with that ideology.

With the AfD example, when they made the transition to embrace more radical right principals from other countries and hosted the rally with Le Pen, Wilders and Salvini to signal the AfD’s embrace of transnational radical right parties, this was incredibly controversial, both inside and outside of the party. It was a delicate balance, because there were some in the party who were very nervous that if they embraced the radical right movement they could face a backlash, because Germans are very conscious of their history. So, 10 years ago there was more hesitation about embracing their fellow party members abroad.

We see similar patterns on the left, especially when it comes to communism. Parties on the radical left are generally hesitant to embrace communists or things that look like communism because of the similar kinds of stigmas around that that exist in western and especially eastern Europe.

Question: Do you think voters are consciously recognizing these European family party associations and how their own parties are relating to sister transnational parties, or is it happening at a subconscious level?

Nonnemacher: We know from political psychology that voters rely on heuristics for a lot of things. So, just hearing the label—that a particular party is a radical right party, for instance, triggers for voters a set of assumptions about what a party stands for and what it’s leaders believe and what they are advocating for.

But I also believe that there is something much more active going on here, where voters start to make those kinds of connections between the party and the label and where voters deliberate what those labels mean in relation to their own politics.

Question: If a national party is not in alignment with its transnational party family on foundational ideological issues, does it cause voter distrust or just confusion?

Nonnemacher: I think it’s a bit of both. Definitely it causes confusion, because if you’re watching the news and you’re being told that Marine Le Pen is a radical right politician, but then let’s say you hear she is endorsing letting more immigrants into (Europe), you’re going to say, ‘Wait a minute; that doesn’t make any sense. How is she radical right, then?’

It also probably leads to distrust. If you see yourself as a Social Democratic voter and you believe in this center-left Social Democratic vision for Europe, but your Social Democratic politician is talking about de-regulating markets and shrinking the state, that’s probably going to make you say, ‘He’s not a Social Democrat. I don’t trust him to be an advocate for my goals.’

Question: Your paper focused a transnational politics in Western Europe. Do you think the paper’s findings have any relevance for the United States?

"Understanding how voters perceive their parties is a huge part of what makes democracies work. If voters don’t know what their parties are fighting for and don’t know where their parties stand, they check out."

Nonnemacher: I don’t know how well the paper’s findings travel to the United States. We have a very strong two-party system that doesn’t map as neatly to the multi-party competition in European elections. That being said, I think if we look at parties in the United States as factions of various ideological groups, we can see green factions of the Democratic Party, radical right and center-right Christian democratic factions of the Republican Party. I think for activists and people inside these parties, it matters a lot what kind of broader ideological movements that they are associated with are doing.

I’m skeptical that voters will derive the same utility, just because the labels don’t fit as neatly, and (American voters) tend to think we’re unique in our politics as voters, so we don’t tend to look abroad for political inspiration.

Question: Anything else relating to Western European voters and their perceptions of their political parties and transnational parties that you think is important to share?

Nonnemacher: I think understanding how voters perceive their parties is a huge part of what makes democracies work. If voters don’t know what their parties are fighting for and don’t know where their parties stand, they check out; they disengage, and we’ve seen that they become less satisfied with democracy.

I think anything that parties can do to really communicate their positions to voters and reaffirm for voters that they areserious about accomplishing their goals is important, because parties across Europe and the United States are having a credibility crisis right now.

What my paper does is highlight one such way that parties can go about communicating to voters what they stand for, which has a whole host of implications to address some of the big problems facing Western democracies today.

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

91ɫ�� political scientist Jeffrey Nonnemacher asserts that Western European national political parties use their affiliations with party families to signal their own political viewpoints.

Traditional

White

Raised with pets? Your immune system remembers

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 16:46:30 +0000

Raised with pets? Your immune system remembers Rachel Sauer Tue, 08/12/2025 - 10:46

Cody DeBos

91ɫ�� researchers, with an international team of colleagues, find that childhood pets are linked to healthier stress responses

If you grew up in a city and without a pet, your immune system likely developed differently than that of someone who shared their childhood with a dog or cat. That difference, new research from 91ɫ�� Professor Christopher Lowry suggests, could influence how your body responds to stress even decades later.

In a study published in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, an international team of researchers, including Lowry and 91ɫ�� PhD student John Sterrett, found that for people raised in urban environments, having regular contact with pets early in life may protect against harmful immune responses to stress.

91ɫ�� scientist Christopher Lowry and his research colleagues found that having regular contact with pets early in life may protect against harmful immune responses to stress.

“Being raised in a home with pets can provide protection against chronic low-grade inflammation, which we know is a risk factor for stress-related psychiatric disorders and more,” Lowry says.

The study adds to a growing body of evidence that our childhood environments can leave a lasting mark on our physical and mental health.

Our oldest friends

Lowry is a professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology at 91ɫ�� and has spent much of his career studying how the microbial world interacts with the human brain. It’s a fascination that traces back to the 1990s when he started exploring how soil microbes influence mood.

“For about 25 years, we have been interested in understanding how microbes found in our environment—in nature, soil, fermenting vegetable matter, and unpurified water—can signal from the body to the brain,” Lowry says.

Along with a research team directed by Stafford Lightman at the University of Bristol’s University Research Center for Neuroendocrinology, Lowry studied Mycobacterium vaccae NCTC 11659 (M. vaccae), a microbe commonly found in soil.

His lab found that exposure to M. vaccae in mice activated serotonin pathways in the brain and produced antidepressant-like behavioral effects.

“M. vaccae is representative of diverse microbes in nature that have the ability to promote immunoregulation and protect us from inappropriate inflammation,” Lowry explains.

The microbe soon became a model for studying what scientists now call “Old Friends”—the microorganisms humans co-evolved with and depend on for proper immune system development.

“Being raised in a home with pets can provide protection against chronic low-grade inflammation, which we know is a risk factor for stress-related psychiatric disorders and more,” says 91ɫ�� researcher Christopher Lowry. (Photo: Bonnie Kittle/Unsplash)

It’s thought that modern urban living, with its clean indoor environments and reduced contact with naturally occurring microbes, disrupts this relationship. In turn, people living in such environments have experienced a rise in chronic, stress-related disorders.

Pets as microbial messengers

In a previous study, Lowry and his colleagues showed that people raised on farms, with regular exposure to animals, exhibited lower inflammatory responses to psychological stress. But in that study, it was hard to separate the effects of rural living from contact with animals.

So, the team designed a new study to answer a more specific question.

“We designed the study to determine if having pets in the home could protect against inappropriate inflammation in individuals raised in urban settings,” Lowry says.

The team recruited healthy adult men who had been raised in cities either with or without household pets. The participants were then exposed to the Trier Social Stress Test, and measurements of their immune function and inflammation were taken both before and after completing stressful tasks like public speaking.

Compared to their pet-free peers, individuals who grew up with pets showed a more balanced immune response and better regulation of stress-reactive cells.

But what accounts for this striking result?

“Exposures to ‘Old Friends,’ which are thought to increase in homes with pets, interacts with our immune system to produce more regulatory T cells,” Lowry explains. “Without sufficient exposure to ‘Old Friends’ we have reduced capacity to produce these regulatory T cells, which leads to inappropriate or unresolved inflammation.”

In short, a four-legged friend in the house means more microbial diversity. That might be just what your immune system needs to stay in balance.

Something as simple as living with a pet could help buffer the long-term health risks of urban living, notes 91ɫ�� researcher Christopher Lowry. (Photo: Helena Jankovičová Kováčová/Pexels)

From theory to therapy

Lowry and his team’s findings are just the beginning. He is now involved in several projects exploring how they could be applied in the real world.

“We are interested in exploring if we can increase mental health outcomes by increasing exposure to ‘Old Friends,’” he says, pointing to clinical trials testing microbial supplements and high-diversity plant-based beverages, which contain diverse microbial communities.

He’s also a co-founder of a 91ɫ�� startup company Kioga, which is developing soil-derived microbiome-based nutritional supplements, food ingredients and therapeutics. Their goal is to improve mental health outcomes for anyone experiencing high levels of perceived stress, whether or not they have a diagnosed disorder.

What comes next?

Lowry also notes that more research is needed to explore if the recent findings hold true for women or people of different ages or backgrounds.

“This is an extremely important question,” Lowry says. “More work is needed to fully understand the importance of upbringing in rural versus urban lifestyles in females.”

Still, the implications are clear. Something as simple as living with a pet could help buffer the long-term health risks of urban living. Given that more people than ever today live in cities and stress-related conditions are on the rise, Lowry’s work offers a hopeful solution.

“Humans co-evolved with these microbes in nature, and our body depends on them for a normally functioning immune system,” he says.

So, the next time you’re scrubbing muddy paw prints off the floor, remember that your four-legged friend is just trying to help you stay healthier in the long run.

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

91ɫ�� scientist Christopher Lowry and research colleagues find that childhood pets are linked to healthier stress responses.

Traditional

White

Study: Using cannabis and psilocybin together may increase dependence

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 18:16:17 +0000

Study: Using cannabis and psilocybin together may increase dependence Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/07/2025 - 12:16

Bradley Worrell

91ɫ�� researchers studied cannabis-psilocybin co-users and cannabis-only users to look for similarities and differences between the two groups, including drug-use motivations

In November 2022, Colorado voters approved Proposition 122, decriminalizing the personal use of mushrooms containing psilocybin, a psychedelic substance. That followed a decision by Colorado voters in 2014 to legalize recreational marijuana use.

Cannabis and psilocybin are becoming more commonly used, but there is still relatively little research on what happens when people use both, says Maddie Stanger, a 91ɫ�� Department of Psychology and Neuroscience researcher whose area of focus is motivations behind substance abuse and how people use substances to cope.

A recently published research paper co-authored by Stanger examined differences in cannabis dependence and reasons for using among individuals who regularly use marijuana and psilocybin versus marijuana-only users. In this case, co-use could either be the simultaneous use of cannabis and psilocybin or concurrent use over the same time period, Stanger explains.

Maddie Stanger is a 91ɫ�� Department of Psychology and Neuroscience researcher whose focus is motivations behind substance abuse and how people use substances to cope.

Stanger says this research is valuable because assessing individuals’ reasons for using substances can provide insight into potential harms, such as addiction or mental health issues. This is because motivations are related to quantity and frequency of use.

The researchers used a previous, larger study by the Center of Health and Neuroscience, Genes and Environment within the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience that investigated the effects of different cannabis strains on metabolic processes and insulin sensitivity.

From that study, researchers drew a test sample that included 97 regular cannabis users (those who used marijuana more than seven times a month) in Colorado. About a third of those had used psilocybin in the past three months while the rest had not. The researchers compared these two groups to understand how psilocybin use might affect marijuana use motives and dependencies.

Study participants were, on average, about 35 years old, mostly male and white, healthy overall and predominantly from the 91ɫ�� area, with at least some higher education. They reported using cannabis 21.73 out of the previous 30 days.

The motivations of all participants were measured using the Comprehensive Marijuana Motives Questionnaire (CMMQ), which encompasses 12 possible motives, including enjoyment, coping, experiment, boredom, celebration, altered perception, social anxiety, sleep and availability. Participants were also assessed for cannabis dependence based upon an 11-item Marijuana Dependence Scale (MDS) scoring system, which asks users to self-evaluate if they believe their cannabis use is excessive.

Considering motivation

Stanger says she and her research colleagues hypothesized that recent psilocybin users would have higher MDS scores and more strongly endorse coping, expansion (also referred to as “altered perception”) and enhancement/enjoyment motives compared with non-recent psilocybin users. Additionally, the researchers hypothesized that there would be correlations between dependence and coping motives for both groups, but that these would be stronger for recent psilocybin users relative to non-recent users.

The prediction that recent psilocybin users would have higher dependence scores than non-recent users was borne out, Stanger says. As expected, the research data demonstrated that psilocybin users showed mild signs of marijuana dependence, while non-psilocybin users did not, she says.

“Interestingly, we found that recent psilocybin users had indicated they were more likely to use for enjoyment, boredom and availability—and boredom and availability are shown in previous literature to be linked to increased cannabis problems and mental health symptoms.”

Additionally, compared to cannabis-only users, Stanger says the psilocybin co-user group exhibited higher scores on the motivations of enjoyment, boredom relief and availability/access, which can be indicative of dependency problems.

“Interestingly, we found that recent psilocybin users had indicated they were more likely to use for enjoyment, boredom and availability—and boredom and availability are shown in previous literature to be linked to increased cannabis problems and mental health symptoms,” she says.

However, contrary to the researchers’ hypothesis, Stanger says there was no difference in coping motives between the two groups.

The researchers note that these findings should be considered within the confines of the study limitations. Specifically, Stanger explains that the data came from a preexisting study and that this analysis was not the primary purpose of the larger project. Thus, there is no data on the dose of the psilocybin used and no information as to whether cannabis and psilocybin were used simultaneously versus concurrently. Additionally, the study ideally would have involved a more diverse group of participants, Stanger adds.

Still, Stanger says she believes the research is timely and valuable, as more states have followed Colorado since 2014 in legalizing marijuana sales for medicinal or recreational purposes, and it’s conceivable that states will follow the Centennial State in legalizing psilocybin in the coming years.

In addition to Stanger, co-authors of this paper include Professor Angela Bryan and Research Assistant Professor Carillon Skrzynski, both with the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience; and Researcher Harmony Soffer with the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Center.

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

91ɫ�� researchers studied cannabis-psilocybin co-users and cannabis-only users to look for similarities and differences between the two groups, including drug-use motivations.

Traditional

White

Medical issues and neighborhood opportunity can affect infant development

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 20:21:30 +0000

Medical issues and neighborhood opportunity can affect infant development Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/04/2025 - 14:21

Sarah Kuta

91ɫ�� researcher Emily Yeo finds that some babies may benefit from more support and resources so they can grow up to lead long, happy and healthy lives

In an ideal world, every baby would be born perfectly healthy. Unfortunately, many newborns arrive prematurely or suffer from medical conditions that could hinder their future development.

Some of these high-risk infants live in neighborhoods with access to healthy food, low crime rates and affordable housing. Others, however, live in worse-off communities with limited access to quality education, health care, housing and jobs.

Now, new research led by 91ɫ��’s Emily Yeo explores how medical complexity and neighborhood opportunity might affect the development of high-risk infants.

Emily Yeo, a PhD student in the 91ɫ�� Department of Integrative Physiology, led research exploring how medical complexity and neighborhood opportunity might affect the development of high-risk infants.

The findings, recently published in the Journal of Pediatrics, suggest some babies may benefit from more support and resources so they can grow up to lead long, happy and healthy lives.

“What the study highlights is that there’s sort of a double burden on medically complex infants living in lower-opportunity neighborhoods,” says Yeo, a doctoral student in the Department of Integrative Physiology. “There needs to be a lot more research into how we can better support these infants, especially within the first couple of years of their lives, which are critical for development and when small interventions could have a huge, life-long impact.”

Studying high-risk infants in California

Public health professionals have long understood that social, environmental and economic factors affect human health and development. Everything from a person’s income and education levels to the purity of the air they breathe and their access to grocery stores can play a role in their well-being.

Against this backdrop, scientists wanted to understand whether there was a relationship between the complexity of infants’ medical conditions, their neighborhood opportunity and their developmental progress.

“To fully understand the developmental challenges these infants face, it is essential to consider how their medical conditions interact with the social and environmental contexts of their upbringing,” says Yeo.

The team studied 440 infants born in Southern California between 2014 and 2023. Doctors had deemed these babies “high-risk” because they were born prematurely, had very low birth weights or suffered from conditions that required treatment in a neonatal intensive care unit.

By reviewing the infants’ medical records, scientists were able to categorize them based on the seriousness of their situation. Infants with the highest level of medical complexity, for instance, had conditions like permanent brain damage or chronic respiratory issues. Those with the lowest level of medical complexity, meanwhile, had more easily treatable conditions, like acute lung or eye infections.

Researchers also assessed each child’s neighborhood opportunity level, based on their home address. For this, they turned to the Child Opportunity Index, a pre-existing, composite index that analyzes education, health, social and economic data from every census tract in the United States.

Some neighborhoods earn high scores, because the children who live there have access to quality schools, clean air, health care, playgrounds and other conditions that will help them grow up healthy and become thriving adults. Other neighborhoods, however, offer very few or none of these resources. Black, Hispanic and Native American children are more likely to live in very low-opportunity neighborhoods compared to their White peers.

For each child, researchers also collected developmental scores from standard tests conducted when they were between the ages of 4 months and 36 months old. The scores came from the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, which doctors consider the “gold standard” for evaluating infant cognitive, motor and language skills, the researchers write in the paper.

91ɫ�� researcher Emily Yeo found that childhood development is affected by both medical and social factors, which aligns with what pediatricians see in daily practice. (Photo: Emily May/Unsplash)

When the scientists analyzed all of the data they had gathered, some clear patterns began to emerge. Developmental scores got worse as medical complexity increased, meaning that infants with more severe and complicated health conditions had lower cognitive, motor and language scores. These finding are consistent with previous studies, says Yeo, which have found that infants with fewer medical complications are also likely to face fewer challenges achieving growth milestones.

The study also found that medical complexity had a more significant effect on developmental outcomes than gestational age, or how early a baby was born. This is an important takeaway for pediatricians, who have long used gestational age to predict potential developmental delays or issues, says Yeo.

“Gestational age might be useful for infants who are not medically complex, but if you’re looking specifically at those infants, we need a more granular tool,” she says. “With this group of infants, we saw that gestational age didn’t really play a huge role in deciphering differences in development, whereas their degree of medical complexity did.”

The researchers also found a correlation between lower neighborhood opportunity scores and decreased language scores, but not cognitive and motor scores. The reasons for this discrepancy are not clear. But, overall, this finding indicates that where an infant lives does seem to play a role in their development.

Importantly, the study also ruled out differences in development based on race and ethnicity alone. Black and Hispanic babies did have lower developmental scores than White babies, but the findings indicate those disparities resulted from differences in the infants’ socio-demographic and medical factors.

“The differences do not come from race and ethnicity itself—they come from other influential factors that tend to be worse in those groups,” says Yeo, adding that this finding aligns with the general shift from race-based to race-conscious medicine.

More social supports for development

Together, the study results align with what pediatricians see in real life—that childhood development is affected by both medical and social factors. The research also highlights the importance of early intervention programs and policies designed to help children succeed.

“It’s one more indication of how, if we really want to move the needle and improve the outcomes of these babies that are born with medical risk factors, we need to put as many social supports in place as we can to support their development,” says study senior author Christine Mirzaian, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and an associate professor of clinical pediatrics in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.

“It’s not just the child’s medical diagnosis that is going to impact their development—it’s also the neighborhood the child is brought up in, how much medical care their family is able to afford and other barriers.”

The study did not explore the possible mechanisms at play—that is, why medical complexity and neighborhood opportunity seem to be linked with development. But the researchers have a few theories.

For one, children with very serious health issues often need to use medical equipment that helps them breathe and eat—like feeding tubes in their stomachs or oxygen tubes in their noses. From a purely physical standpoint, these devices may make it difficult for infants to do “all the basic things babies do,” Mirzaian says, like rolling around or pulling themselves up to a standing position.

Another possible explanation is that a child’s appointments and treatments may leave little time for activities that promote development, like reading and playing with toys, Mirzaian adds.

Families living in neighborhoods with low opportunity scores, meanwhile, may be grappling with poverty—and having a baby with a serious medical condition likely only adds to their stress. Through no fault of their own, caregivers may need to focus more on basic needs—like how they’re going to pay next month’s rent or put food on the table—and less on their child’s development, says Mirzaian.

‘Medical Data Alone Does Not Tell the Whole Story’

Looking ahead, the co-authors hope other researchers will repeat and replicate the study, perhaps in other geographic locations or with slightly different populations. Future work might also involve following the same children as they grow up, to see whether and how their developmental outcomes change over time.

For now, though, the study is a good first step toward understanding the link between medical complexity, neighborhood opportunity and development. Zooming out, the findings also reinforce the idea that “medical data alone does not tell the whole story,” says Yeo.

“It’s important for researchers to consider social explanations to formulate a holistic picture of infant development,” she adds. “It’s not just the child’s medical diagnosis that is going to impact their development—it’s also the neighborhood the child is brought up in, how much medical care their family is able to afford and other barriers.”

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

91ɫ�� researcher Emily Yeo finds that some babies may benefit from more support and resources so they can grow up to lead long, happy and healthy lives.

Traditional

White

Top photo: Philip Mroz/Unsplash

News

Weaving the rhythms of place and people

Related Articles

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

Related Articles

New exhibit celebrates ceramics at 91ɫ��

Related Articles

91ɫ�� scholar helps unite Navajo culture and modern science

Related Articles

Couple helps send cyclists on a ride to remember

Related Articles

Video games don’t rot your brain—they train it

Related Articles

Scholar dissects voter perceptions of transnational politics

Related Articles

Raised with pets? Your immune system remembers

Related Articles

Study: Using cannabis and psilocybin together may increase dependence

Related Articles

Medical issues and neighborhood opportunity can affect infant development

Related Articles