Program for Writing and Rhetoric

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder poet kills her darlings ... and publishes them anyway

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 13:00:00 +0000

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder poet kills her darlings ... and publishes them anyway Rachel Sauer Tue, 10/06/2026 - 07:00

Hope Kerrigan

Program for Writing and Rhetoric Professor Jen Stewart wrestles with faith, motherhood, myth and the moon in poetry collection Darling Heresies

Jen Grace Stewart killed her darlings—and turned them into Darling Heresies, her new book of poetry.

It’s common advice in creative writing, the idea “to get rid of the stuff that you’re really attached to when it’s not serving you,” Stewart explains.

Jen Stewart is an assistant teaching professor in the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Program for Writing and Rhetoric.

Combined with “heresies”—a nod to her evolving systems of belief—the phrase captures what she describes as “ways of believing that are not orthodox, that are not appropriate, that you hold dear, even if they're not the best thing for you.”

Stewart, an assistant teaching professor in the �鶹��Ѱ�� Program for Writing and Rhetoric, recently released Darling Heresies as a “sister” to her debut, Madonna, Complex and in it wrestles with concepts of faith, motherhood and myth. The timing of the book’s release was planned to coincide with the beginning of the fall semester, which Stewart says feels like a great time to release work.

“There's so much phenomenal energy at the beginning of an academic year,” she says. “To me, it's better than New Year's.”

Capturing the heart of the moon

The journey into Darling Heresies begins at the cover, which features an illustration of a woman with her head replaced by the moon, a visual anchor further strengthened by the collection’s dedication to Endymion—the handsome figure from Greek myth who captured the heart of the moon.

“I really liked the idea that the Endymion figure is someone who witnesses the moon, who loves the moon, who sees her,” Stewart says.

Darling Heresies “represents a four- or five-year span of time that covered early motherhood, moving away from my faith tradition and going through a divorce,” she says. Stewart and early readers describe the throughline of the collection as “an argument with patriarchy,” challenging restrictive roles placed on women in marriage, motherhood, faith and landscape.

Jen Stewart explores faith, motherhood and myth in her poetry collection Darling Heresies.

“If my first book was a faith journey narrative with a particular arc, this is just the continuing of the journey,” Stewart says in comparing Darling Heresies to Madonna, Complex. “It's a little less certain about things. There's a lot more doubt in it.”

That doubt hasn't slowed Stewart down. If anything, it's pushed her toward balance — a discipline she practices even while keeping an extremely busy teaching schedule.

With Darling Heresies newly in print, Stewart is teaching a 4-4 course load in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric. “During the school year, it's difficult for me to get myself to the mental space that's open enough to receive poetry work—teaching and writing have to live in different spaces for me,” she says. She allows space for poetry to find her by spending time in art museums and nature, keeping analog journals, jotting notes-app entries and circulating drafts through an editing group's email chain.

Stewart credits her colleagues and students as major sources of inspiration. “My department is very collegial, very supportive,” she says. “There are a lot of us pursuing creative work who, even though that's not part of our job description... we're doing, we're teaching, we're writing poems.”

Offering advice for aspiring poets, Stewart says, “Poetry is a weird, niche space in the world, despite being ignored by most mainstream media. It's tiny, but it's also wide.” She encourages students to reframe how they think about poetry, emphasizing its communal aspect: “I want them to see poetry as less a precious artistic thing and more a communicative act that will connect them to other people—to listen and to be listened to.”

And even with a newly published book, Stewart is already considering what’s next. She hopes to explore fragmented essays, drawing inspiration from writers such as Maggie Nelson and Heather Christle. Her biggest upcoming project, though, is channeling creative energy into building class curricula and course readings. “I used to feel like poetry was being shut away,” she says, “and it's only been in the last five years or so that I've been able to say, no, class development is creative work too.”

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Program for Writing and Rhetoric Professor Jen Stewart wrestles with faith, motherhood, myth and the moon in poetry collection Darling Heresies.

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Scholar finds rhythm in rock and rhetoric

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 23:23:30 +0000

Scholar finds rhythm in rock and rhetoric Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/10/2026 - 17:23

“A rhythm is predictable, but what makes rhythms exciting sometimes is the fact that they do change… it’s the balance between the predictability and the spontaneity. That’s what makes life worth living,” says Steve Lamos. (Photo: Jesus Ortiz/@optimisticphoto)

Cody DeBos

As a founding member of influential band American Football, currently on tour, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Professor Steve Lamos blends music and writing in ‘resonant literacy’

Steve Lamos is relaxing at home during a brief pit stop after touring with his band for two weeks. By Friday, he’ll be on a plane to Japan. Somewhere in between, he finds time to lesson plan and grade papers.

This is normal life for Lamos, an associate professor in the �鶹��Ѱ�� Department of English and Program for Writing and Rhetoric.

Every so often, he trades the world of academia for a tour bus as the drummer and trumpet player for American Football, the influential Midwest emo and math-rock band he co-founded in 1997.

Steve Lamos is an associate professor in the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Department of English and Program for Writing and Rhetoric.

This spring, the band released its fourth studio album, “LP4,” its first in nearly seven years.

Now juggling his teaching career with his band’s busiest touring schedule yet, Lamos calls this summer “both a blessing and a little bit of a, wow, you know, be careful what you wish for.”

Hiatus to homecoming

American Football’s new record almost didn’t happen.

Between 2020 and 2023, Lamos stepped away from the band while serving as interim director of the Program for Writing and Rhetoric, a role he describes as a “24/7 type of job.”

Around the same time, unresolved tension within the band came to a head and Lamos was focused on managing more responsibilities at home after a family member fell ill.

“Stepping away was inevitable,” he says.

But as any musician knows, putting down your instrument often comes with a sense of nostalgia for what once was. So, it was absence that brought Lamos back to American Football—realizing that the weight of missing it was greater than "whatever things were demanding that I step away or more than I was aggravated by those things, that’s when I knew,” he says.

The circumstances surrounding his return are why this album means more to him than the three that came before it, including a genre-defining first record.

Want to see your professor on stage?

American Football will perform tour dates through summer and fall 2026, including Sept. 22 at Boulder Theater and Sept. 23 at Red Rocks Amphitheater.

Learn more

“It represents our ability to get back together and do new things. I’m probably the proudest of it of anything I’ve ever done,” he says.

The rhythm of resonant literacy

Lamos kept his two lives strictly separated for many years, but today he’s quite willing to bring them together.

While teaching an upper-division course called Writing with Music, he’s developed a concept he calls “resonant literacy.”

As Lamos explains, it all starts with rhythm.

Within his framework, resonance is what follows.

“Resonance is when rhythm in one body generates rhythms in one or more other bodies,” Lamos says.

Over time, he’s learned to apply the concept as readily to a drum set as to a well-written sentence or the back-and-forth of a good conversation.

Resonant literacy often manifests in Lamos’ classroom. In Writing with Music, students spend a semester narrating the feel of a favorite song, then write a research paper arguing why that feeling should matter to a specific audience.

“Like, what a useless thing,” Lamos says, only half-joking. “Except, if students are doing it right, I routinely get the best work I’ve ever gotten.”

But really, Lamos says the idea is less about music or writing than about how to live. Understanding the rhythms we both create and are subjected to offers us a richer viewpoint as we navigate life’s ups and downs.

“There are ways in which you can influence those rhythms, or even make yourself better at generating them, and then leaving yourself more and more open to the possibility that they resonate, ideally in some sort of transformational way that makes life more vibrant and exciting,” he explains.

Where two worlds meet

When looking for it, Lamos finds that resonance often shows up in unexpected places, too. That includes relationships formed in the classroom that have blossomed into new creative ventures.

Vidushi Goyal was a science-writing student in Lamos’ class about a decade ago. Years after graduating, and coincidentally at the same time as his hiatus from American Football, Goyal shared some of her music.

“Every piece she sent me, I was like, ‘Oh man, this is good. This is even better than the last one.’ So, I asked if she wanted to play with some live drums, and she was in. We did some stuff together and I still get to play with her as a two-piece now and then,” Lamos says.

More recently, �鶹��Ѱ��music student Max Adams organized a concert collaboration with Lamos this spring, arranging several American Football songs for a live ensemble.

Asked to describe it, Lamos’ face lit up.

“One of the cooler experiences I’ve ever had in my life,” he says.

‘ANDing’

For Lamos, making the most of a life defined by two wholly different paths comes down to a word the College of Arts and Sciences has embraced: “ANDing.”

“It’s this idea that part of what arts and sciences is about is this additive thing… taking two things that might seem disparate or even running at cross-purposes, and seeing what happens when you bring them together,” he says.

The label is fitting for a career built on the instincts of rhythm.

Resonance and “ANDing” are, in a sense, two names for the same idea that has carried Lamos from a grad school garage band to a tenured professorship and an international concert venues.

Whether you call it resonant literacy or borrow CU’s branding, the lesson is the same one Lamos wants to pass on to his own teenagers and to any student wondering whether a writing seminar and a rock band can not just coexist but become more than the sum of their parts.

“Do something practical, do something wholly impractical, and figure it out,” he says. “Figure out a way to bring them together, because you're only going to be happy in your life in the long term if you do.”

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As a founding member of influential band American Football, currently on tour, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Professor Steve Lamos blends music and writing in ‘resonant literacy.’

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Top image: Steve Lamos (left), Mike Kinsella, Nate Kinsella and Steve Holmes of American Football (Photo: Alexa Viscius)

Sometimes you just feel like a mango

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 14:48:12 +0000

Sometimes you just feel like a mango Rachel Sauer Wed, 04/15/2026 - 08:48

Rachel Sauer

In new mid-grade novel Confessions of a Mango, writing team Katheryn Lumsden and Nathan Pieplow explore the challenges of navigating middle school with a dyslexia diagnosis

Have you ever felt like the mango in a line of lovebirds? Sure, you look like you fit in—same general shape, same red, yellow and green coloring—but, well, you’re a mango and everyone else is a bird.

That’s how Ruby Emmerson feels at Benton Academy, where she’s starting sixth grade with her twin brother, Bryce. But while Bryce is an academic high achiever who likely will excel at the competitive charter school, Ruby’s diagnoses of dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia mean that reading, writing and math are tough for her.

And when she fails her first test at Benton, wow, does she feel like a mango. She even writes a brief blog post about it: “I dont belong at Benton Acadamy. I’m an imposter. I walk beside you in the halls every day. But I’m not smart enuff to stay much longer. Theres so much work. Im failing.”

Nathan Pieplow (left) and Katheryn Lumsden (right) are the authors of Confessions of a Mango, a new mid-grade novel that explores questions of belonging.

Except . . . so many of her classmates relate. Just as readers likely will.

Ruby’s are the confessions in Confessions of a Mango, a mid-grade novel published this week and written by Katheryn Lumsden, a �鶹��Ѱ�� molecular, cellular and developmental biology alumna, and Nathan Pieplow, an associate teaching professor in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric.

But for the purposes of this book, they are Kate and Nate, a writing team with way too many ideas and way too little time, and a shared passion for telling honest stories with humor and empathy.

“This is the first creative partnership I’ve been in that works,” Pipelow says. “We bicker like siblings, but the beautiful thing about writing with Katheryn is she’s an idea factory. She can write 2,000 words in an afternoon, then she sends them to me, and I don’t have to start with a blank page.”

“I’m the sloppy copy,” she says.

“I contribute ideas,” he says.

“He’s the atmosphere and the voice. Ironically, Mango didn’t have my voice until he added it.”

It just works, they conclude.

A writing partnership is born

Pieplow and Lumsden met, unsurprisingly, in a Boulder writing group six years ago. Lumsden, a pharmacist by profession, was a longtime group member who wanted a community of support to help her wrangle her boundless ideas. Pieplow, who had authored two field guides to bird sounds, wanted to delve into fiction writing.

“Everyone was like, ‘Why is he here? He doesn’t have plots,’” Lumsden recalls. “But I didn’t have pretty writing and he does, so I decided, ‘I’m gonna ask Nathan if he wants to meet'—for me it was so that he could teach me how to write better, and for him it was so I could teach him how to plot.”

Author event

Katheryn Lumsden and Nathan Pieplow will talk about Confessions of a Mango Thursday evening at Boulder Bookstore.

What: Book discussion of Confessions of a Mango

Who: Authors Katheryn Lumsden and Nathan Pieplow

Where: Boulder Bookstore, 1107 Pearl St.

When: 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 16

Reserve a spot

And so, a writing partnership was born. Their first book was a young adult historical fantasy that was good enough to get them their agent, Sarah Fisk, but it wasn’t bought by a publisher. The next novel wasn’t, either.

“If you want to be a fiction writer, you write several (books) and if one doesn’t get published, you move on to the next,” Lumsden says.

“(Confessions of a Mango) is definitely our debut,” Pieplow adds. “The first two were not quite at this level; with our first ones we were playing with form and voice.”

In fact, Fisk told them that the most important thing to get right when writing mid-grade or young adult fiction is the voice, Lumsden says, “and fortunately, voice has always been one of the things I do well.”

The idea for Confessions of a Mango germinated from many seeds. Lumsden grew up in Boulder with a twin brother who, like Bryce, was considered the “smart” one. Lumsden struggled with reading, and their mom, not wanting to make Lumsden feel bad, took both of them for dyslexia testing, explaining it away with “people are interested in twins.”

She did learn to navigate dyslexia, however, so when she was 12, her mom brought home a cake as a sort of “Congratulations for outgrowing dyslexia!” celebration. “Except it wasn’t until much later that I found out you don’t actually outgrow dyslexia,” Lumsden says.

She also read Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz and ideas began percolating. So, when Pieplow went on a birding trip for a month, Lumsden grew impatient waiting for his return and started writing a book.

Making it realistic and relatable

“Part of it was that I was so angry,” she explains. “So often, these kids (diagnosed with dyslexia) don’t know how smart they truly are, and that’s so unfair. Plus, they never see themselves in books because dyslexia just isn’t something that gets written about in mid-grade fiction.

Confessions of a Mango tells the story of Ruby Emmerson, a sixth grader at Benton Academy whose diagnoses of dyslexia, dysgraphia and dyscalculia make her feel like she doesn't fit in at the competitive charter school.

“So, when Nathan got back, I sent him what I’d started and he was like, ‘This is actually very good.’”

Lumsden had an advantage because when the two began writing Confessions of a Mango three years ago, her son was 10 and her daughter was 12—she had a front-row seat to the joys and concerns of children entering and navigating middle school.

Pieplow says it was important to them to write a book that was realistic and relatable: The parents may be occasionally clueless, but they want what’s best for their kids. The teachers and administrators at the school are supportive, and the other kids may be squirrelly sometimes, but they’re otherwise normal, decent kids.

“I grew up in Boulder and my husband and I are raising our kids in Boulder, and the parents here are fantastic, but sometimes there can be this feeling of life or death if you don’t do well (in school),” Lumsden says. “There isn’t a lot of room to fail, and people sometimes won’t even say the word ‘fail’ to kids. But it’s important that kids know sometimes they’ll fail and it’s not the end of the world.”

When Fisk began pitching their draft to publishers—after suggesting they excise this chapter and add that chapter, and put in more about Ruby’s quirky best friend, Thea—Little, Brown was the first to make an offer and was the publisher they ultimately chose.

Part of that decision, they say, was the kindness that Little, Brown staff showed them throughout the publishing process—how included they felt in every step and how Little, Brown representatives embraced the dyslexia angle of their story. In fact, Confessions of a Mango is printed in the Lexend font, which improves reading performance and reduces visual stress for people with dyslexia.

They even had a significant say in the vibrant book cover, which shows a girl seated in the shadow of a huge mango with a lovebird perched on its leaf. When they and artist Andy Smith settled on two cover finalists, they asked Lumsden’s son and his friends to vote for their favorite one.

Now, in publication week, a three-year process is finally tangible with the book in readers’ hands. It’s a book close to their hearts, Lumsden says, and they’re proud of the story it tells and the children to whom it gives a literary voice.

But, well, on to the next. They already have several books in progress, and “one of the things I love about working with Katheryn is that eventually we’re going to write something in every genre, because of the exploration of (writing) and how it’s like travel,” Pieplow says. “I love seeing new places, and that’s what I’m doing through the books we’re writing.”

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In new mid-grade novel Confessions of a Mango, writing team Katheryn Lumsden and Nathan Pieplow explore the challenges of navigating middle school with a dyslexia diagnosis.

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What’s that knocking in the trees?

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 21:44:37 +0000

What’s that knocking in the trees? Rachel Sauer Wed, 02/04/2026 - 14:44

Kayleigh Wood

In new book, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder folklorist Jack Daly bridges the gap between academic research and Colorado legend

It was well into the evening when Jack Daly and a small group of legend trippers, organized by the Sasquatch Outpost in Bailey, Colorado, made their descent into the forests just 30 minutes outside of town. Owned and operated by Jim and Daphne Myers, the site hosts numerous Bigfoot events, from meetings to night hikes led by Bigfoot researcher Jim Myers himself.

During these hikes, which occur about once a month, Myers serves as the outpost’s liaison into what the Sasquatch Outpost’s booking website describes as “the realm of the Forest People.” Here, visitors might experience numerous encounters with Bigfoot in the form of vocalizations, footprints, knocking on trees and airborne rocks thrown in the direction of the group.

Folklorist Jack Daly, an instructor in the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Program for Writing and Rhetoric, explores the supernatural, unexplainable and unnerving in his book Eerie Colorado: Mountain Folklore, Monsters and Tales of the Supernatural.

On that particular hike, deep in the forest, Daly and the group were startled—not by flying rocks or breaking branches, but by what he describes as “a giant silver orb just flying overhead, and we all saw it. We stopped, and it disappeared. There’s no flashing lights. It was not in, like, full orbit.”

This UFO encounter was notably different from the one he experienced in high school, when he and a friend witnessed a glowing blue orb hovering above a meadow, moving from one place to another at random intervals, for several minutes.

Daly shares this experience and more in his recently published book, Eerie Colorado: Mountain Folklore, Monsters and Tales of the Supernatural. Thursday evening, Daly will host an event at the Boulder Bookstore, where attendees will have the opportunity to learn more about Colorado’s supernatural folklore through the eyes of an expert.

Eerie Colorado

Jack Daly will speak about and sign his new book, Eerie Colorado: Mountain Folklore, Monsters and Tales of the Supernatural.

Where: Boulder Bookstore, 1107 Pearl St.

When: 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 5.

Learn more

In his book, Daly, a lecturer in the �鶹��Ѱ�� Program for Writing and Rhetoric, explores all things supernatural, unexplainable and unnerving in the Centennial State. Beyond simply organizing these legends in one volume, Daly grapples with the role supernatural folklore plays in the historical and contemporary culture of Colorado. Enmeshing his own personal testimony and the testimonies of the individuals he interviewed on his own with existing scholarly research, he divides his findings into two categories: the corporeal, which he describes in his book as creatures of “‘flesh-and-blood,’” and the incorporeal, referring to the entities that lack physical bodies.

Daly used ethnographic methods in his research, conducting interviews and documenting participant observation, a qualitative research method in which scholars immerse themselves in a setting and attempt to observe as many individuals as possible to draw conclusions about a specific culture. He uses the term “memorate” to classify the personal experience narratives throughout the book, including some of his own, as well as the experiences of his family members. Jim Myers of the Sasquatch Outpost shared a personal Bigfoot encounter for the book—a sighting that Myers dubbed as a Class A experience, which is an encounter at close range, where the viewer can confidently rule out all natural explanations.

Monsters, legends and the supernatural

Beyond the memorates, Daly’s fieldwork has taken him to as many of the sites featured in the book as possible for his research.

As a folklorist, Daly’s research focuses on monsters, legends and the supernatural. In 2023, he received the American Folklore Society’s Warren E. Roberts Prize in Folk Art and Material Culture for his piece “Devil in the Skies, Stars on the Barns: The Snallygaster, Hex Signs, and Barn Stars.” He earned a master’s degree in folklore and is currently pursuing a PhD in American studies at Pennsylvania State University, where he was a recipient of the 2022-23 University Graduate Fellowship.

In his book Eerie Colorado, author Jack Daly grapples with the role supernatural folklore plays in the historical and contemporary culture of Colorado.

Daly explains that his research champions scholarship while validating personal experience, noting that “people’s experiences with the supernatural are much more common than we give them credit for.” As a folklorist and scholar of belief, he says, he takes an “ethnographic, folkloristic [and] anthropological approach,” striving to avoid approaching all things eerie and inconceivable from “a position of disbelief in regards to the supernatural,” which he refers to in Eerie Colorado as a believer-skeptic binary.

In the book’s introduction, Daly makes clear that he is unconcerned with the reality of monsters, unexplainable phenomena and supernatural beings. He approaches his research from a place of neither belief nor disbelief, but with the aim of analyzing how these stories, which trend across time and place, function on a cultural and personal level.

Daly’s UFO encounter in the hills outside Bailey, which occurred only a couple of months ago, reinforces why his research approach for Eerie Colorado is helpful. Quite often, accounts of strange phenomena come from individuals who are skeptical themselves. Daly and the group simultaneously saw a silver orb enter their field of vision before it disappeared altogether; they couldn’t explain or verify it, but they all had the same experience.

Across the folklore field, Daly says, many scholars have begun to approach the supernatural through a similar, experience-based approach championed by David Hufford, a folklorist and ethnologist whose theories Daly draws from in Eerie Colorado. When Daly approaches legends, he says he strives to address them “more literally. As they literally happened,” adding that this approach “was heavily, heavily stigmatized for, you know, over 100 years when the processes of rationalism and empiricism and enlightenment [were] the overriding paradigms in academia and within intellectual culture more broadly.”

Yet the study of folklore appears to be changing, and Daly isn’t the only scholar in the field of belief studies who is interested in how legends function in a larger cultural context. He notes a newfound “openness that scholars are engaging with, in terms of thinking: This person literally did see a UFO. This person literally did see Bigfoot. This person literally did see a ghost, which is, I think, an interesting new movement that I want to keep on pursuing.”

Ready for a legend trip of your own?

Jack Daly uses the term “legend trip” in his book Eerie Colorado, which he describes as a visit to a site associated with a supernatural legend, where individuals often try to interact with a legend through rituals or “tests.” For those who want to get up close and personal with some of the local legends featured in Eerie Colorado, Daly has both visited and recommends these sites:

The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. For Daly, the Stanley is a prime example of “the transformative effect that the supernatural can have in reality.” Before The Shining, he notes, the site was “in disrepair. It was falling apart. People weren’t really going to Estes Park. Stephen King goes there, he has a supernatural encounter ostensibly. It causes him to write the book… the book turns into a movie… And then that literally transforms the culture surrounding both Estes Park and the Stanley Hotel. It was repaired. It is now a destination. It’s super, super nice.”

The Vampire Grave in Lafayette, where, according to legend, a tree grew from a stake used to kill a vampire. Check out Daly’s viral TikTok at the Vampire Grave at @thefolklord

The Molly Brown House in Denver, which is rumored to be haunted by both Molly and her husband.

The Denver Botanic Gardens October Ghost Tours

Cheeseman Park in Denver, which some consider one of the most haunted sites in Denver as it was built over the Mount Prospect Cemetery, where thousands are still buried.

For those interested in legends they can explore from the comfort of their homes, Daly recommends the Digital Folklore podcast, hosted by Perry Carpenter and Mason Amadeus. Described on their website as a “fusion of audio drama and narrative documentary,” the pair dive into internet legends, monsters and conspiracy theories “through the lens of academic folklore.” Like Daly, they strive to use these legends to draw broader cultural connections, rather than simply collecting and platforming them.

‘I know what I saw’

In the process of writing Eerie Colorado, Daly notes his attempts to balance academic scholarship and theory with folklore in an approachable way. Tapping into existing scholarship and attempting to draw conclusions about the role of the legend in Colorado culture, Eerie Colorado takes on a new perspective—one supported by research.

After reading some of the existing books about Colorado folklore, Daly noticed a trend: “They don’t cite their sources. They are clearly unfamiliar with the broader scholarship that would give them a much deeper level [of understanding].” In Eerie Colorado, Daly describes how many previous publications on Colorado folklore will present a story and let it speak for itself, without attempting to interpret the function these stories might serve to the local people. Daly sought to remedy this gap in the literature with his book, attempting to make meaning out of popular Colorado legends by situating them within a broader cultural context and tracing their developments across time and place.

“There’s one thing you notice with legends: They migrate,” says Daly. He argues that legends, even those that appear specific to Colorado, can often be situated in “a broader legend complex [tied] into other variants that we see across not just the United States, but the entire world.”

For example, the Phantom Jogger of Riverdale Road in Thornton, which Daly covers in Eerie Colorado, closely mimics the more commonly known story of the Vanishing Hitchhiker, which has been well documented by folklorists since the 1940s, Daly notes in his book. According to Thornton legend, a jogger was killed in a hit and run on Riverdale Road and left to haunt the site of the crash.

Daly sets the scene: “You’ll be driving along the road, and you’ll see this jogger, and sometimes they’ll ask you for a ride. They’ll get in the car, and then they’ll disappear. And so that’s a variant of the Vanishing Hitchhiker, but it’s a Colorado version because it’s athletic. It’s a jogger.”

In both cases, the disappearing hitchhikers and Thornton’s jogger often leave behind a mark of their presence. According to the local legends Daly documents in Eerie Colorado, those who are eager to drive down Riverdale Road and are brave enough to pull over may hear footsteps approaching them or fists banging against the sides of their car, or they may find handprints left on the outside of their vehicle.

Daly’s UFO sightings can also be linked back to popular legends of the past. When he was in high school, Daly and a friend “saw a giant blue orb flying over a field.” He details in Eerie Colorado that similar visual experiences are not uncommon and have been well documented across history, often known by a host of different names. “They’ve been connected with fairies,” Daly shares. “They’ve been connected with Bigfoot as well. They’re a common thing that people have described seeing.”

Throughout history and the contemporary era, countless individuals have witnessed strange phenomena in the skies that they cannot explain. Regardless of whether they interpret these sightings as flying saucers, massive fireballs or ships of fairies on the way to Magonia, Daly’s book guides readers through trends in firsthand accounts of the supernatural while tracking them across history. Popular creatures and entities that have taken on legendary status may be known by various names, but like the Vanishing Hitchhiker and the Phantom Jogger, the original legend and its local offspring often retain the same key attributes.

As for where he falls on the spectrum of belief in the supernatural, Daly says, “I do believe, honestly. And part of it has come from my own personal experience.” Recalling the silver orb in the skies near Bailey, he reflects, “I don’t know what it was, but I had that encounter. Like, I know that I know what I saw, and that’s what people say: I know what I saw. My experience was my experience, and that’s what I found in doing my fieldwork as well.”

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In new book, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder folklorist Jack Daly bridges the gap between academic research and Colorado legend.

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Top image: the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, with illustrative glow (Photo: Carol Highsmith/Wikimedia Commons)

The ‘happy haunting’ found in letting words lead

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 13:30:00 +0000

The ‘happy haunting’ found in letting words lead Rachel Sauer Thu, 07/24/2025 - 07:30

Cody DeBos

For poet Stephanie Couey, the inspiration for her new chapbook began with a walk

Some poems begin with grand ideas. Others start with a walk.

For Stephanie Couey, an assistant teaching professor in the �鶹��Ѱ��’s Program for Writing and Rhetoric, inspiration often strikes when her feet are moving. The rhythm comes first, and meaning follows.

For Stephanie Couey, an assistant teaching professor in the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Program for Writing and Rhetoric, writing inspiration often strikes when her feet are moving.

“Some cluster of words that feels good or rhythmic or perhaps gross in a good way comes to mind,” she says. “I’ll record it in my phone, and everything else usually unfolds outward from there.”

That’s how many of the poems in her latest chapbook, “Quiet Pulse,” began. Fragments of sound or texture unearthed through movement and slowly shaped into verse according to their natural rhythms.

Feeling the language

Rather than starting with a theme in mind, Couey trusts her internal response to language—how syllables feel in the mouth and rhythms pulse on the page—to guide the outcome. Couey’s is a deeply embodied approach to writing that treats poetry not just as a literary act, but also as a physical one.

“I approach the writing process as rooted in the body, which it is,” she says. “I write focused mainly on sound, but I’ll almost inevitably see narrative threads emerge in the process.”

This sensory foundation creates space for emotion, memory and meaning to filter in organically.

“I never set out to write a poem about, for instance, gendered violence, late-stage capitalism or the endangerment and loss of arctic wildlife. But if it’s whirring around in my mind, it will likely come through.”

As Couey penned the poems that would eventually become “Quiet Pulse,” she started to notice they shared textures, recurring images and a certain emotional tenor.

“I don’t know that there’s an originating story or idea in particular,” she says. “But as the writing of these poems happened, I started to see something that a grouping of them was doing that felt related.”

“The title is intended to reflect some of those threads,” Couey notes, “a state of being near death, of being underwater, and/or having the body be silenced—all of which are states the speaker of the poems inhabits throughout the project.”

No shortcuts

Despite their spontaneous beginnings, Couey’s poems are far from effortless.

“They all took a long time to shape, but some came out in draft-form much faster than others,” she admits. “I think it’s like running or any kind of exercise. Some days you are just faster or more efficient, even if you prepared in all the same ways. I wish I knew what made the difference!”

Her willingness to move at the poem’s pace, rather than forcing her own deadline or structure upon it, mirrors her approach to teaching.

“Hopefully these poems create an experience of both beauty and abjection that lingers. A kind of happy haunting,” says Stephanie Couey.

In the classroom, Couey encourages students to pay attention to what their writing is already doing rather than make it conform to a formula.

“When student writers put any amount of effort into their work, they are almost always doing something worthwhile, and I want them to see that and focus on that, then figure out how to move outward from there,” she says.

The same ethos guides her as a poet.

“I try to treat my own poems in the same way, asking: What is the work on the page already trying to do, and how do I make it do that thing more effectively?”

Couey and her students also share a practice that’s become one of her favorite parts of the writing process: embodied journaling. The exercise encourages students to write freely and regularly, without self-editing or judgment, while tuning in to their bodies and surroundings.

“They often speak to the value of writing unself-consciously and engaging with their bodies, their breath and their surroundings,” Couey says, “and of slowing down and truly processing their thoughts and emotions.”

This sentiment, which frequently appears in students’ end-of-semester reflections, reminds Couey to keep her own notebook handy to scribble a thought at the bus stop or capture a mid-walk rhythm before it slips away.

Happy haunting

When “Quiet Pulse” found a home with Dancing Girl Press, Couey was thrilled. Now that her chapbook has been published, she hopes readers walk away from it with a lasting impression, if not a fully definable one.

“Hopefully these poems create an experience of both beauty and abjection that lingers. A kind of happy haunting,” she says.

While poetry remains a core part of her creative practice, Couey is also working on a long-gestating essay project about grief, suicide and the ways stories take shape around loss. She isn’t in a rush to finish. Like her poetry, the project will take the time it needs.

For now, whether she’s drafting verse or guiding students through journaling, Couey will continue to let the writing lead.

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For poet Stephanie Couey, the inspiration for her new chapbook began with a walk.

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Working with Data for Social Change symposium set for March 14

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 18:15:53 +0000

Working with Data for Social Change symposium set for March 14 Rachel Sauer Fri, 02/28/2025 - 11:15

The all-day event will bring together local and national scholars engaged in digital public humanities projects to advocate for social change

The Data Advocacy for All project on the �鶹��Ѱ�� campus is sponsoring a one-day Working with Data for Social Change symposium March 14.

This all-day event brings together local and national scholars engaged in digital public humanities projects to advocate for social change and who have worked to strengthen ethical data humanities education in higher education, said Laurie Gries, associate professor of English and director of the Program for Writing and Rhetoric, who is spearheading the symposium.

What: Working with Data for Social Change symposium

When: March 14

Where: In-person at CASE KOBL 140 and online; register here

All faculty, staff and students who want to learn more about the data humanities are invited.

The symposium aims not only to demonstrate and underscore the value of data advocacy research for the humanities at large, but also to generate collective ideas as to how to data advocacy education can be enhanced across the disciplines in higher education, according to Gries.

She said she believes the symposium will be of interest to faculty, staff and students who want to learn more about the data humanities and, more particularly, about data advocacy as a focus of research and/or pedagogy. Those interested in attending in-person or via Zoom can register here.

The symposium will feature scholars and activists from around the country, including Melissa Borja, Nasreen Abd Elal and Sylvia Fernández Quintanilla, who have advocated with data for social change on projects including the Virulent Hate Project, Visualizing Palestine and Torn Apart/Separados, respectively. Additionally, Gries will talk about her data-driven project, the Swastika Counter Project, which was recently profiled in Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine.

Gries said the symposium also will feature scholars who have worked intently to build data humanities education within and beyond the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder campus. For instance, in addition to featured speaker Melanie Walsh discussing the Responsible Data Sets in Context project, David Glimp, Nathan Pieplow and other �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and �鶹��Ѱ��Denver professors will speak about their efforts to train students how to engage data through critical, humanistic frameworks and how to use data effectively to address matters of significance to them and their communities.

Speaking of Gries’ efforts to spearhead the symposium, Glimp said, “Laurie has assembled a terrific team of collaborators to develop her vision of not only cultivating data literacy among our students but also equipping students with the tools to argue with data. By ‘arguing with data,’ I mean both being able to identify and assess all the ways data-backed arguments can mislead or go wrong, and being able to craft effective, responsible arguments with data about matters of the greatest urgency for our world.”

The Data Advocacy for All project was the recipient of a $300,000 �鶹��Ѱ��Next Award in May 2022.

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The all-day event will bring together local and national scholars engaged in digital public humanities projects to advocate for social change.

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Swastika Counter Project launches

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 21:19:27 +0000

Swastika Counter Project launches Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/24/2024 - 15:19

Bradley Worrell

Public advocacy website envisioned by �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder associate professor Laurie Gries tracks swastikas across the U.S. and offers resources to counter those hate-filled incidents

In the months leading up to Donald Trump’s election in 2016, Laurie Gries, director of the �鶹��Ѱ�� Program for Writing and Rhetoric and associate professor of English, became increasingly concerned about almost-daily news reports of swastikas—sometimes accompanied by hate-filled messages—showing up in public spaces across the country.

“This was the same time when various sources were reporting rising incidents of hate and bias in the United States, when Donald Trump and his racist and divisive rhetoric was just coming into political power, and when white nationalist organizations seemed to be coming out of the woodwork,” she says.

Laurie Gries, director of the �鶹��Ѱ�� Program for Writing and Rhetoric and associate professor of English, became increasingly concerned about almost-daily news reports of swastikas—sometimes accompanied by hate-filled messages—showing up in public spaces across the country.

Determined to address the issue of the swastikas head on, Gries began working on a project with a team of interdisciplinary scholars with expertise in visual communication, critical geography and social justice education. Their aim was to identify how and where swastikas were placed, who they targeted, what messages they conveyed and how communities responded. The coordinated results of that five-year effort—which document 1,340 swastika incidents in total—recently went live on The Swastika Counter Project website.

Recently, Gries spoke with Colorado College of Arts and Sciences Magazine about the Swastika Counter Project. Her answers were lightly edited for style and condensed for space limitations.

Question: How did the swastika project come together and why did you decide you needed to address this issue?

Gries: When Trump first came onto the political scene, I started hearing about increased incidents of hate and violence, and as a visual rhetoric scholar, I began noticing more and more reports of swastikas showing up on the streets of the United States.

On the day that Trump was elected, I woke up deeply concerned and asked, ‘What if I tracked these swastikas? What if I took the digital research method called iconographic tracking that I worked for 10 years to develop and applied it to this particular case? What might we discover?’

I didn’t really start tracking swastikas on that day; I just made the commitment because I had long wanted to use my scholarship for public humanities research. I guess, then, one might say that Trump was the motivator, but really it was fear. At the time, a lot of people—the FBI, the Southern Poverty Law Center, journalists and scholars—were attributing a rise in antisemitism and violence to his rhetoric. It was my fear that if that’s the case, those incidents were surely only going to be amplified as he rose to power.

I don’t have any comparative data (i.e., data on swastika incidents) prior to Trump’s arrival on the political scene to confirm whether that’s true or not, so I’m very careful to say that the data we collected can’t really be used as evidence for that claim, but in our data, we certainly can see that there are a lot of associations that people are making between swastikas and Donald Trump and white nationalism.

Question: Was no one else tracking and compiling these incidents in which swastikas were being placed at houses of worship, schools and other sites?

Gries: Actually, there are quite a few projects that have tracked antisemitism, and even swastikas, but they have been constrained in various ways. Some sites only track antisemitism that happen on college campuses. Some track antisemitic events that happened all over the world. Then there are sites like ProPublica, whose tracking projects were limited to a particular year. So, I wanted to create a project that would transcend some those constraints.

Question: What are some of the top findings of your research as it relates to swastika placement, any language accompanying the swastikas, maybe any surprises your research uncovered?

Data analysis by The Swastika Counter Project found at least 1,300 documented incidents of swastikas in the United States between Jan. 1, 2016, and Jan. 20, 2021.

Gries: I think it’s important to note that the swastika incidents we discovered occurred in all 48 contiguous states and in the District of Columbia, so this is a national problem. Of course, they were showing up more in cities with large populations, which is to be expected. But we were surprised that according to our data, swastika incidents most often surfaced in schools, and almost equally in K-12 and higher education settings. We thought swastikas might mostly show up on the exterior of religious institutions, and particularly Jewish religious institutions, but that wasn’t the case.

We also were surprised to discover so many swastikas surfacing in private spaces. Of course, a lot of swastikas were spray painted on the exterior of buildings in urban spaces. But our data discloses how swastikas were often drawn on people’s cars, on their homes, on the dorm doors of students, and in some cases, on the interior walls of people’s homes that had been broken into and, in one case, lit on fire.

I think the other most surprising finding was just the horrific language that was showing up alongside swastikas—from racist and homophobic appeals to white nationalism to implicit threats of surveillance and violence to direct threats of genocide. And also that such threats were directed at not only Jewish community members; a lot of Black American, Latinx, LGBTQ-plus community members and immigrants were also commonly targeted. It was just overwhelming—the multi-directional hate and very graphic violence.

Question: How did Colorado compare to other parts of the country when it came to swastika incidents?

Gries: For Colorado, there were 30 reported incidents in our data set. So, I would say it’s not uncommon in Colorado for these swastikas incidents to occur, and I’ve had a lot of people tell me about swastikas they witnessed that aren’t even in our data set.

We know, for instance, that Colorado State University in Fort Collins has had so many swastika incidents that they recently created an antisemitism task force. One of our (Swastika Counter Project) advisory board members is actually heading up that task force because antisemitism on that campus has become such a serious problem.

In contrast to the incidents of public swastikas that The Swastika Counter Project tracks, some cities worldwide have also seen anti-swastika graffiti. (Photo: Cogiati/Wikimedia Commons)

Question: Beyond tracking incidents of swastika placement around the country, what other kinds of information can be found on the Swastika Counter Project website?

Gries: Part of our challenge was figuring out how to present the data in ways that would be useful for a variety of community stakeholders—people who are dealing with swastika incidents in their communities, such as school administrators, teachers and parents, the local police force, and local and national politicians. We wanted to create a swastika tracking project that has a strong civic component to it, which I think makes this project a bit unique. So, we created an interactive map that can be filtered in different ways; data visualizations that can be easily downloaded; and educational resources and lesson plans for teachers at various levels. We also generated two different reports, one of which describes and analyzes how different communities have responded to swastika incidents, so that stakeholders can read those accounts and learn from them. That’s especially important, because in our research we found that the various stakeholders often worked in isolation in responding to swastika incidents.

Question: The Swastika ‘Counter’ Project—is it fair to say the name is a play on words?

Gries: Yes—it’s a double entendre. The goal is to both count and counter the contemporary proliferation of swastika incidents in the United States. And in that sense, the Swastika Counter Project is very much a scholarly activist project.

When we first began tracking swastika incidents, we planned to simply report our data and let the evidence speak for itself. And to a great extent, the data still does do that. Our findings report, for instance, is largely descriptive. But the longer we worked on the project and discovered the gross horror of violence that was ensuing, the more we felt compelled to also take more concerted action by building out the educational component of the website. So today, I don’t pretend that the data advocacy website isn’t motivated by my own desire to try to address some very real, pressing problems and to use my scholarship to try to create a more just world. This is very much a project where I’m wearing my activism on my sleeve.

Question: What kind of assistance did you have when it came to tracking and compiling data, creating visual representations, developing a website, etc.?

Gries: The central work of tracking, coding, and analyzing was done by myself and Kelly Wheeler (assistant professor at Curry College), but we soon realized we needed more help. I reached out to Morteza Karimzadeh in the geography department here at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, and he and his former student, Jason Miller, ended up doing all the amazing work with the mapping part of the project.

Residents of Eugene, Oregon, responded against swastikas found in a city neighborhood in 2017. (Photo: SBG Photo)

I am also really proud that we received a lot of help from various students at and beyond CU. For instance, an undergraduate computer science major at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, worked on the data visualizations with us, while graduate students from that same institution helped to create some of the lesson plans. Here at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, a team of undergraduate students enrolled in a technical communication and design class in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric did a user-centered study for us to help develop a website that would be easy to navigate and comprehend for a public audience. And then another group of tech comm students helped us figure out how to invite community participation through features under the Contribute tab of the website. In this sense, the Swastika Counter Project is really exemplary of the immense value that data humanities and public humanities education can have for both undergraduate and graduate students. I am really excited about that.

Question: People who commit several years of their life to a project will often call it a labor of love. Is that how you would describe this project?

Gries: For me, I don’t think it was about love so much as it was about committing to do social justice work and really trying to walk the walk. I mean, as you might imagine, it was not fun to track so many incidents of hate and violence around the country. …

It’s also just been a beast in terms of labor. I tell people that this project was probably more intense work than my first 350-page monograph because I had to teach myself so many new skills, not only in terms of research, but also guiding and managing team projects, doing data advocacy, and developing web content skills. I am so glad I did this project, but for the last eight years, it’s just been very intense.

Question: If former President Trump is elected to a second term in November, do you think you would take up this project again?

Gries: I’m really, really torn. Part of me wants to try to secure some national funding and put together a larger team. If I did, I would also want to research (swastika incidents during) the Biden administration, and then start tracking in the present time, too, because I think that longitudinal study would help us address certain questions that we weren’t able to address in this project.

On the other hand, I started this project in early 2017, and it became a large part of my life. My husband would tell me that on days I was doing the researching and the coding that I was affectively different. I was angry. I was upset. I was impatient.

I honestly don’t know if I want to put myself through that again on a personal level. I truly believe that more arts and humanities faculty need to be doing this kind of work, as I think we can bring an important perspective to data-driven research that addresses pressing socio-cultural problems. And maybe if I had the funding and could put together a large enough team where I didn’t have to bear so much of the burden I would consider it, but right now I just don’t know.

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Public advocacy website envisioned by �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder associate professor Laurie Gries tracks swastikas across the U.S. and offers resources to counter those hate-filled incidents.

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Project aims to help students harness data for the greater good

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Oct 2022 22:53:26 +0000

Project aims to help students harness data for the greater good Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/10/2022 - 16:53

Bradley Worrell

�鶹��Ѱ��Next Award grant will fund initiatives to teach �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder students to use data to address pressing issues related to climate change in Colorado

While �鶹��Ѱ�� students have long been exposed to the technical aspects of data science, using data for advocacy purposes has not been a formal part of this instruction.

However, thanks to a $300,000 �鶹��Ѱ��Next Award grant received in May, the Data Advocacy for All project will soon provide students with the opportunity to learn how to ethically and effectively use data to raise public awareness and drive social change, according to Laurie Gries, associate professor of writing, rhetoric, and communication.

“I am absolutely delighted that the university thought that a project grounded in data justice and data literacy was important enough that they are willing to put quite a bit of money behind it,” says Gries, who spearheaded the grant application process for the �鶹��Ѱ��Next Award, which was created in 2021 to bridge the gap for individual faculty seeking additional resources to innovate courses and programs.

At the top of the page: A flooded Highway 34 in Big Thompson Canyon (Dennis Pierce). Above: Laurie Gries spearheaded the grant application process for the �鶹��Ѱ��Next Award.

In this case, the �鶹��Ѱ��Next Award provides funding for the establishment of educational modules designed to assist students as they define relevant data, assemble data, evaluate data, map data, publish data and persuade with data—with a particular focus on that last item, Gries says. This data will then be used to explore how climate change is affecting vulnerable Colorado communities.

“We wanted to choose a social issue that was of pressing significance to Colorado,” Gries explains. “We also chose that issue because we have a lot of climate scientists here on campus who are working on that issue.”

As part of the grant, students at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and �鶹��Ѱ��Denver will collaborate on a data-advocacy website about climate hazards in Colorado. The content students produce in the courses will take many forms, including text, videos, audio recordings and graphics, all of which will be accessible on a public, University Libraries’ site called �鶹��Ѱ��Scholar.

“We’re going to make the website as interactive as possible,” Gries says. “For instance, to help identify climate risks, we will create geographic maps with filters so people can see how it (climate change) is impacting their communities. We will also create stories from data using audio and video elements.”

Gries says the eight educational modules she and her team are developing for the project will help teachers incorporate them into myriad classes, such as writing and rhetoric, political science, history or data science. And thanks to minimal computing software and open-source tools, Gries says students won’t need special computer-coding skills, and no course prerequisites will be required.

Data Advocacy for All will immediately contribute curricula to multimedia composition and technical communication courses that count toward an English writing, rhetoric and technology major at �鶹��Ѱ��Denver and a new writing and public engagement minor at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder.

The project’s eight modules will be taught in the fall 2023, spring 2024 and fall 2024 by Nathan Pieplow in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and John Tinnell in English at �鶹��Ѱ��Denver. Gries says a diverse advisory board that includes faculty, scientists and community stakeholders will evaluate the modules and could offer helpful suggestions.

Assuming the project lives up to its expectations, Gries says it could be possible to win funding from the Mellon Foundation or other grant sources to provide continued funding beyond 2024.

She says the idea for the project was inspired partly by her own experiences with data advocacy. She is working with a team to create a public-facing website called The Swastika Counter, which offers reliable data about the rise of swastikas on the streets of America and in social media during the Trump administration.

We really want to think about data from a rhetorical, ethical perspective, so that students understand that data is power. We want students to be able to harness that power so that they can advocate in ways that actually have potential to bring about the social change that they are fighting for.

“As I was embarking on this project, I started to think about what a curriculum would look like that actually trains students to identify pressing social matters, to learn how to work with data from the ground up in terms of collecting, organizing, interpreting, communicating, persuading and visualizing” Gries says.

“I was really interested in asking: What would a curriculum look like to prepare students to do this work?”

Other considerations included a desire by fellow grant team members to create a more interdisciplinary curriculum, with a particular focus on data humanities—which is defined as the intersection of the humanities and data science.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder team members include David Glimp of English, Nathan Pieplow of PWR and Virginia Iglesias of Earth Lab, while �鶹��Ѱ��Denver colleagues include John Tinnell of English and Cameran Blevins of history. Team members from University Libraries and the Center for Research Data and Digital Scholarship (CRDDS) are Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara, Aditya Ranganath and Thea Lindquist.

Yet another factor was conversations with �鶹��Ѱ��colleagues in the CRDDS and in information science about the need for coursework that can help students communicate with data effectively and persuasively, according to Gries.

“I think the one phase of data-advocacy education that often gets shortchanged is communicating and persuading with data,” she says. “We really want to think about data from a rhetorical, ethical perspective, so that students understand that data is power. We want students to be able to harness that power so that they can advocate in ways that actually have potential to bring about the social change that they are fighting for.”

�鶹��Ѱ��Next Award grant will fund initiatives to teach �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder students to use data to address pressing issues related to climate change in Colorado.

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New seminar series explores the nexus of art and activism

Anonymous — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 16:05:16 +0000

New seminar series explores the nexus of art and activism Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/12/2022 - 10:05

Activism and Engaged Humanities Event Series will last throughout the year, with the first presentation on Sept. 21

From musical performances and poetry to speeches and printmaking, the Art, Activism, and Engaged Humanities series highlights how artistic achievements and performances synergize art and activism.

The series seeks to inspire and encourage participation both in and outside the �鶹��Ѱ�� community in the engaged humanities, a cross-disciplinary effort to make the humanities more accessible to the public.

“Too often in the humanities, we fail to make visible why and how our research and teaching matter to public life,” says Laurie Gries, an associate professor in writing and rhetoric and communication at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder and one of the series’ organizers.

Starting late September and lasting through spring, the series will host a range of performances, talks, workshops and community collaborations. These events will bring together students, faculty, staff and local Boulder community members to see, hear and experience various forms of art and allow them to join discussions about community involvement, activism and social issues.

Participants will discover how “to talk about pressing social matters and explore how art, in a broad sense, can work toward social justice in powerful publicly engaged ways,” says Gries.

Events included in the series are as follows:

A two day event on hip hop and social justice

The Politics of Race, Rap and Incarceration: A Conversation with Mark Katz and Mariah Parker aka Linqua Franqa

Date and Time: Sept. 21, 3:30 – 5 p.m.

Location: Center for British and Irish Studies room, Norlin Library, M549

This event is being organized by the Center for Humanities & the Arts and American Music Research Center.

A Musical Performance with Linqua Franqa

Date and Time: Sept. 22, 7 p.m.

Location: The Dairy Arts Center, Gordan Gamm Theatre

This concert (followed by Q&A) is being organized by The American Music Research Center and The WRITE Lab/Program for Writing and Rhetoric. Tickets are free, but registration is required. Please click on this link and click on "Tickets" and fill out all necessary information.

A Workshop with Mariah Parker on Artmaking, Activism and Political Engagement

Date and Time: Sept. 22, 11 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

Location: UMC Room 247

For this event, organized by the WRITE Lab/Program for Writing and Rhetoric, Mariah Parker will speak about the process of becoming politically engaged through the art-making process.

Workshop max: 40 participants. Workshop registration required.

A panel and workshop on fighting for reproductive rights and justice

Virtual Panel of Community Organizers, Lawyers, Scholars, Activists

Date and Time: Oct. 27, 3:30 – 5 p.m.,

Location: Zoom (Registration Required)

Moderator: Samira Mehta (assistant professor, Jewish studies and women and gender studies)

Participating organizations, scholars and community members: Alexis Moncada (outreach coordinator of COLOR: Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights), Arianna Morales (policy manager of New Era Colorado), Dr. Warren Hern (Boulder Abortion Clinic), Jennifer Hendricks (professor of law) and Chenthu Jayton (executive director of Equity Labs).

Workshop with New Era Colorado on Reproductive Rights Advocacy and Organizing in Storytelling

Date and Time: Oct. 27, 5:30 - 6:30 p.m.

Location: Hellems 241

Facilitators: Aaron Lombardi and Kate Kelly, New Era Colorado

This interactive workshop will dive into the history of organizing in Colorado and the role storytelling has played within the reproductive-rights movement. Participants will explore different mediums of storytelling for advocacy and discuss tools and/or resources to become an advocate in one’s community.

Workshop registration required. Workshop is limited to 30 participants. Organizers will email you to confirm registration and communicate any necessary instructions.

2022 Kwanzaa Celebration

Date and Time: Dec. 1, 2022, times TBD

Location: TBD

Kwanzaa is a week-long holiday from Dec. 26 through Jan. 1 that celebrates the African diaspora, family and community contributions. To celebrate Kwanzaa and to demonstrate its potential for the engaged humanities, the Center for African and African American Studies is hosting a two-part event. Using the seven principles of the Ngozu Saba, a speakers event will feature presentations and performances from students and faculty in �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder community related to research, entrepreneurship and activism. Directly following the event will be a karamu, or feast with traditional foods found in the Black community, which is an essential cultural practice of the holiday.

Printmaking as Activism

The �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum is hosting a two-day event in February, opening with a lecture by a printmaker or artist whose practice works toward social justice, followed by Q&A and discussion. On the second day of the event, the museum will lead a hands-on workshop on poster making and activism with opportunities for students to participate in art making. The invited artist will be selected from the museum’s current exhibition, Lasting Impressions. Potential artists are Delita Martin, Alison Saar, Rose B. Simpson, Dyani White Hawk and William Villalongo.

More than Words—A Digital Performance Installment

This virtual installment will explore the theme "More than words." Curated by Donna Mejia (associate professor, theatre and dance and Inaugural Chancellor's Scholar in Residence at the Renee Crown Wellness Institute), this program will feature visual and performing artists who use multiple formats of communication, incorporating or expanding beyond words in their activism and public works. This presentation will explore what is conveyed, transmitted and exchanged through art when words may not be enough, or can be augmented by nonverbal intelligence with the same precision as the written word.

Audience members will be invited to engage and open to duende (Spanish): the experience of being moved deeply or activated by the expressive arts.

Note: This event may be followed up by an experiential dance workshop.

Speaking Out against Gun Violence

Edna Lizbeth Chavez is a social justice activist, supporter of immigrant rights, and a survivor of gun violence. In 2018, she headlined and delivered a powerful speech at the March for our Lives rally in Washington, D.C. Chavez has lost many loved ones to gun violence and has become a leading gun control advocate and student voter registration organizer.

For this event, Chavez will give a talk, followed by a workshop for students on Using Voice for Social Justice.

This event is sponsored by the WRITE Lab/Program for Writing and Rhetoric, the English department and the College of Arts and Sciences’ Office for Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

The event series is hosted by the College of Arts and Sciences' Office of Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, the WRITE Lab within the Program for Writing and Rhetoric, the Department of English, the Division of Student Affairs, the School of Music, the �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum, the Department of Ethnic Studies, the Center for Arts and Humanities and The Center for African and African American Studies.

Activism and Engaged Humanities Event Series will last throughout the year, with the first presentation on Sept. 21.

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Grant to develop humanities, data-science courses

Anonymous — Wed, 13 Apr 2022 19:03:14 +0000

Grant to develop humanities, data-science courses Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 04/13/2022 - 13:03

Interdisciplinary, cross-college team at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder wins National Endowment for the Humanities Award

An interdisciplinary team from two colleges and the libraries at the �鶹��Ѱ�� has won a $150,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the organization announced today.

The project, called “Integrating Humanities and Data Science Education,” aims to provide an example of how the humanities can help equip 21st century learners with the intellectual resources they will need to inhabit a world being remade by data.

The winning team that has won a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities includes: top row, from left, Jane Garrity, Eric Vance, Rachael Deagman-Simonetta and David Glimp; bottom row, from left, Vilja Hulden, Henry Lovejoy, Brett Melbourne and Nathan Pieplow.

They’ll do this by designing eight courses that promote experiential learning, as well as opportunities to foster engagement with humanistic questions in the context of a quantitative inquiry. Additionally, they’ll work with �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s Center for Teaching and Learning to cultivate local and national conversations about best practices for teaching data science and the humanities.

The winning team includes faculty from the College of Media, Communications & Information (CMCI) and from the Center for Research Data & Digital Scholarship (CRDDS), which is a collaboration between the libraries and Research Computing. Additionally, the team includes faculty affiliated with the ASSETT (Arts & Sciences Support of Education Through Technology) Innovation Incubator.

The winning team includes Project Director Jane Garrity (English), Project Co-Director Robin Burke (CMCI lead), Project Co-Director (STEM lead) Eric Vance (applied math), and co-PIs Rachael Deagman-Simonetta (English), Nickoal Eichmann-Kalwara (CRDDS), David Glimp (English), Vilja Hulden (history), Thea Lindquist (CRDDS), Henry Lovejoy (history), Brett Melbourne (ecology and evolutionary biology) and Nathan Pieplow (Program for Writing & Rhetoric).

This work builds off a previous grant, which created the introductory course Interdisciplinary Data Science for All (AHUM 1825), launched by Garrity, Vance, Glimp, Hulden, Melbourne and Pieplow in 2021. This course allowed students to learn how to analyze not just numbers, but also their human contexts and consequences; how to prevent intentional or unintentional misuse of data science; and how to communicate the findings of data analysis effectively.

That set of competencies is called “data acumen.”

The course provided majors in science, technology, engineering and math with qualitative reasoning skills that are traditionally taught in the humanities; future humanities majors with an on-ramp to further study of data science in courses developed via the newly funded NEH grant; and all students with critical, statistical and computational skills they can apply in future courses and in the workforce.

Interdisciplinary, cross-college team at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder wins National Endowment for the Humanities Award.

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