English

Happiness in literature isn’t entirely a matter of chance

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 15 May 2026 18:19:24 +0000

Happiness in literature isn’t entirely a matter of chance Rachel Sauer Fri, 05/15/2026 - 12:19

Alexandra Phelps

Which is why readers and storytellers continue turning to Jane Austen, says ��Ƶ scholar Nicole Mansfield Wright, considering why this enduring proto-feminist writer still holds a place in the classroom

Last week, The Other Bennet Sister debuted on BritBox, allowing U.S. viewers to enjoy the latest reworking of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice—this time telling the story of the often-overlooked Bennet sister Mary.

The series, based on the novel by Janice Hadlow, first debuted in the United Kingdom on the BBC and arrives in what would have been Jane Austen’s 250th birthday year (her birthday was Dec. 16). Known for her ability to capture the beauty of the ordinary lives of everyday people, Austen wrote novels that remain relevant centuries later. In the opening lines of Mansfield Park she declares, "Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery," revealing that as a writer, she strived to depict joy and community within the lives she created in her novels.

Yet even in developing happy and uplifting plotlines, Austen didn’t refrain from commenting on the social pressures and shortcomings of her society. Two and a half centuries later, the strength of this proto-feminist icon still remains in classrooms as students discover through Austen how gender, choice, relationships and power interact with one another.

Year after year, says ��Ƶ scholar Nicole Mansfield Wright, students are surprised by Jane Austen, connecting to her writing in ways they didn’t think they could.

Nicole Mansfield Wright, an associate professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder, has seen Austen’s power firsthand. As a scholar of late 18th- and early 19th-century British literature, she notices that students often presume Austen’s writing will be prim, proper and unrelatable to their own lives. Year after year, though, students are surprised by Austen, she says, connecting to her writing in ways they didn’t think they could.

On a broader level, Austen resonates with people even though our political structures are different from hers, says Wright, who received international coverage for an op-ed she wrote on Austen's political relevance today, “Alt-Right Jane Austen.” On a personal level, Wright explains that Austen “resonates because she’s both relatable and profound. She speaks to situations we recognize, like having a sister whom you’re really close with or not being able to suss out what a crush thinks about you. These are really relatable situations, but she takes them seriously. She’s not just sensationalizing it.”

When teaching Austen, Wright encourages students to look through various lenses at the elements that make her novels so complex. Although Austen published just four novels while she was alive—two more were published posthumously—her limited body of work still captures the dynamics that exist within a wide range of social classes and experiences. These experiences are what allow students to connect to her work. “She’s into exploring our everyday experiences and helping us think through: ‘What kind of person do I want to be in the world?’” Wright remarks.

In Wright’s course “Developments in the Novel,” she includes Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. In one scene, Elinor Dashwood, the eldest Dashwood sister, has a conversation with Colonel Brandon, a suitor of Elinor’s sister Marianne. Brandon mentions the sadness and loss when young people sacrifice their own ideas and originality for conformity, observing, “One is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.” Wright uses moments like this to help students understand the importance of advocating for their own ideas.

Recalling a phrase from Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which she encountered when she was a college student herself, Wright says, “One thing I really find important to my pedagogical strategy is that I don't think about education as ‘banking knowledge.’ I’m not dispensing information and then students store it in a bank and don’t question it. It’s about giving students a toolkit to decide how they’re going to operate out in the world. To be informed so that when they come across these ideas especially in this world of misinformation, they can be knowledgeable and they can come to the table with their own ideas.”

Publishing anonymously

Although today Austen’s novels—Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey—are widely read, she didn’t publish under her name during her lifetime. Wright explains that female authors were often viewed as scandalous. “If you published a novel as a female author, you had to seemingly disavow your authorship. During her lifetime, Jane Austen’s name was not emblazoned on the covers of her books; one novel was attributed to ‘A Lady,’ for example.” During Austen’s life, the literary canon was overwhelmingly male, and women who wrote instead of keeping to the domestic sphere were often seen as morally suspect.

Austen’s legacy exists partially because of the way she centers and distributes power to female protagonists, says Nicole Mansfield Wright. (Photo: actress Ella Bruccoleri as Mary Bennet in The Other Bennet Sister. BBC/Bad Wolf)

Today, that canon has expanded to include a broader range of writers and stories, and there are ongoing discussions about what works deserve recognition. “There’s this idea of scarcity; that there’s only a set amount of attention. If we give this attention to new authors, is it taking away from honoring the authors who have stood the test of time?” Wright asks. “I would retort something along the lines of ‘Why do we have to choose?’” Literature, she argues, continues to offer new ideas and important insights, especially for students who are learning how to engage with the world around them.

Despite Austen’s limited catalogue, Wright resists naming just one novel as important to read. Instead, she approaches them “in an apothecary way. There are different Austens I can prescribe based on what malady you have.” For students and those reading for pleasure, there are different novels that can speak to universal feelings, she says. “If you’re worried about not getting started in life right and it seems like everyone is moving ahead of you, [pick up] Persuasion. If you’re an awkward person and you feel like you’re an outlier from others and that you’re not valued, [read] Mansfield Park. If you just want a good laugh, [choose] Pride and Prejudice. There are definite advantages to choosing each; it’s hard to choose just one.”

Austen’s legacy exists partially because of the way she centers and distributes power to female protagonists, Wright says, adding that Austen’s novels importantly “sustain a dialectic—a debate—rather than settling it,” and allow characters to exist beyond categories such as good or bad. Wright explains that more broadly, “novels remind us that our individual choices cumulatively can operate for or against justice. They make us feel less helpless. I have had situations where I think back to what this character would do in this situation.”

For students and readers navigating their own uncertainties and decisions, Austen’s novels offer an enduring possibility—a way to see themselves in characters who, despite being written centuries ago, were also questioning their belonging, identity, and power.

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Top photo: A scene of the five Bennet sisters from The Other Bennet Sister (Photo: BBC/Bad Wolf)

Telling stories of The Garden

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 13 May 2026 22:12:42 +0000

Telling stories of The Garden Rachel Sauer Wed, 05/13/2026 - 16:12

Rachel Sauer

In recently published book The Garden, ��Ƶ poet Julie Carr explores themes of time, war, Jewishness, memory, techno-biology, friendship and grief

Paradise is only ever a thought.

Julie Carr pauses for a moment, remembering what led her to The Garden. It was 2021, and there had been several shootings at or near Denver’s East High School—one in the building, one in front of it and one half a block away. Carr’s daughter was a student there at the time.

Carr had written about shootings before, attempting through poetry to understand the incomprehensible, but that wasn’t the topic she wanted to focus on this time.

��Ƶ Professor Julie Carr explores themes of time, war, Jewishness, memory, techno-biology, friendship and grief in her book The Garden.

“Of course it was terrifying and tragic and awful, but I was feeling, as many people are feeling right now, this kind of block against what to do,” explains Carr, professor of English and creative writing and chair of women and gender studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. “We protested, we’d written laws . . . but everything felt like a dead end.

“In that moment, I had a friend say, ‘You’re not just having a political problem here, you’re having a spiritual crisis.’ It’s this question of what do we do with violence? What do we do with our feelings of paralysis?”

Those questions led her down wandering paths of mystical tradition, of memories of her uncle, of dreams of fire in the dry Colorado grass, of imaginings like fragments of broken glass. And she arrived at The Garden, her recently published book that weaves fractured narratives into reoriented themes of time, war, Jewishness, memory, techno-biology, friendship and grief.

In the end, as at the beginning, I just wanted to think about the woman smoking on the planter’s edge.

If she can point to a beginning, it was when she began reading the writing of 12th-century Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides. What she found in her reading was unsettling, “in this way in which the questions that we have are the questions humans have always had—questions with no answers, questions about the origins of evil, questions about what it means to be part of a community. But it was helpful to write in conversation with this central medieval thinker.”

On a parallel path to these questions with no answers was Carr’s longtime passion for theoretical physics, which grew during her undergraduate education studying with the philosopher and feminist physicist Karen River Barad. Carr began seeing similarities between the world of thought embedded in quantum field theory and the worlds of thought embedded in Jewish mysticism—“this sense that the world is not as it seems, that there are multiple ways of knowing,” she says.

“I’m interested in different ways of writing: a narrative mode, a more philosophical mode and a more lyrical mode, and how these different approaches can circle around some of the same concerns, the same histories, the same unanswerable questions,” says Julie Carr. (Back cover of The Garden showing artwork by Tony Robbin)

She thought of her uncle, the artist Tony Robbin, who was fascinated with the ideas of four-dimensional space and geometry, which is and isn’t a real thing, Carr explains. The fourth dimension is a mathematical concept that can be played out in the world of math and the world of computer-generated imagery, “even though when we look at the world there’s no fourth spatial dimension that we can see,” she says.

Since the early 19th century, mathematicians and philosophers have theorized about the fourth dimension, ideas that held equal fascination for Cubists like Picasso and other European modernist artists.

“They were interested in the idea of fourth-dimensional space for the same reason I became interested in Maimonides or River Barad was interested in quantum field theory: When you accept quantum theory or 4-D, you begin to understand that empirical reality is only one version of this universe.

“These modernist poets and painters who were interested in the fourth dimension, it gave them a sense of the possible. If you’re looking at (Guillaume) Apollinaire coming out of World War I, writing about `the beyond of this earth’ (in the poem ‘War’), or at Tony (Robbin) trying to describe fourth-dimensional geometry to me over and over when I was a child, you can sense the dynamism, which is so alive in his paintings. They just evoke an endlessness of possibility.”

Once, twice, dozens of times throughout my late-cold-war childhood, my uncle, the painter of the fourth dimension, had stood before me in the fluorescent light of his studio speaking of the universal failure to perceive things as they really were.

It quickly became clear as Carr wrote into these themes that she was writing in multiple different ways—memories of bombs falling that weren’t hers but felt like they were. Holocaust histories pressed against the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, pressed against the Gaza war. Strange images, such as a finger tracing the edge of an oxygen tent, a scholar wearing a stained red sweater, her friend the arborist asking her, as they walk toward “a tree blooming bedspread pink,” whether she ever hears ghost stories. Not all of these images could appear in one book.

“It became the idea of writing a trilogy,” Carr says, explaining how The Garden is the first of three, the second of which, Turning, will be released next year. “I’m interested in different ways of writing: a narrative mode, a more philosophical mode and a more lyrical mode, and how these different approaches can circle around some of the same concerns, the same histories, the same unanswerable questions.”

But it seemed to me then and seems to me now that the best books are the ones that are never done. Even if bound and published, even if lauded and canonized, the greatest books carry a sense of incompletion. More: a sense of having been abandoned.

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In recently published book The Garden, ��Ƶ poet Julie Carr explores themes of time, war, Jewishness, memory, techno-biology, friendship and grief.

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Top image: "Lobofour" by Tony Robbin, 1982

Historical novel marks latest chapter for ��Ƶ alumna

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 20:21:46 +0000

Historical novel marks latest chapter for ��Ƶ alumna Rachel Sauer Mon, 04/13/2026 - 14:21

Megan Clancy

Author Rebecca Rosenberg’s latest book continues her literary work highlighting the often-overlooked stories of remarkable women

With the release of her newest historical novel, University of Colorado Boulder alumna Rebecca Rosenberg (Engl; Psych'76) is adding another chapter to a writing career focused on uncovering the lives of extraordinary women that history has often overlooked.

The award-winning novelist’s latest work, Silver Echoes, tells the story of Silver Dollar Tabor, the daughter of Elizabeth McCourt Tabor, better known at Baby Doe Tabor. This newest historical novel builds on Rosenberg’s first book, Gold Digger, the rags-to-riches-to-rags story of Baby Doe, who navigated the worlds of wealth, power, politics and scandal in the wild days of western mining.

��Ƶ alumna Rebecca Rosenberg with her historical novel Silver Echoes, which is based on the story of Colorado's own Silver Dollar Tabor. (Photo: Rebecca Rosenberg)

��Ƶ laid foundation for writing career

Rosenberg credits growing up in Colorado and her time spent at ��Ƶ with nourishing her interest in the American West, particularly stories about pioneers in the Centennial State.

“I grew up in Colorado,” says Rosenberg, “and being in Boulder and in Hallett Hall, looking out at the mountains all the time, it was just really inspiring in terms of just living in Colorado and the pioneers and the people that came before us there and their incredible stories.”

Rosenberg was a theater and psychology major while on campus but was drawn to classes in multiple departments.

“I loved my humanities courses. I got a bigger perspective,” she says. “I think that got me excited about the whole world and the stories of the world. And pretty soon I realized that people don't tell stories about women. They tell stories about men. So that's where I got my inkling that I would like to tell those stories.”

After graduation, Rosenberg continued to feel the pull toward story. She eventually found her way to a two-year novel-writing course at Stanford University, where she learned how to combine her interest in storytelling and her background in psychology.

“A novel is always about conflict,” she says. “Every scene is what is the conflict and what does each character want? What do they desire? So yeah, psychology is instrumental in that.”

From her time at Stanford, and the work of 10 years after, came her first book, Gold Digger, which brought to life the story Baby Doe Tabor, a beautiful young woman who married the son of a wealthy miner in 1878 to save her family from poverty. The book won plaudits for its mix of historical detail and fiction, with the Historical Novel Society calling it “a gripping story of female grit and resilience.”

Since then, Rosenberg has gone on to win accolades for her novels The Secret Life of Mrs. London, Champagne Widows and Madame Pommery. Rosenberg and her husband, Gary, are lavender farmers in Sonoma Valley, California, and they are co-authors of the nonfiction pictorial book Lavender Fields of America: A New Crop of Farmers.

In Silver Echoes, ��Ƶ alumna Rebecca Rosenberg (Engl; Psych'76) continues the Tabor story she began in her novel Gold Digger, based on the rags-to-riches-to-rags story of Baby Doe Tabor.

Telling the overlooked story of Silver Dollar Tabor

In Silver Echoes, her most recent novel and Gold Digger’s sequel, Rosenberg uses her psychology background even more extensively, finding the story she wanted to tell through a discovery about one of history’s most misunderstood women, Silver Dollar Tabor. Silver Echoes is told through a dual timeline, following Silver Dollar, Baby Doe’s daughter, in 1920s Chicago and Baby Doe in 1930s Colorado searching for answers to her daughter’s disappearance.

“It's really an intense novel because I feel like Silver had DID, or dissociative identity disorder, what used to be called split personality,” Rosenberg says. “I found that in my research of the letters between mother and daughter, how dissociated Silver was from several realities. Every time she'd write a letter, she'd write about a whole different reality in her life.”

For her first novel, Rosenberg studied Baby Doe's diaries and the letters between her and Silver Dollar, who was in Chicago in the speakeasies and an actress in movies. She noticed the mother’s worry over Silver and knew there was a story to tell there.

“I was reading these letters and I saw that Silver Dollar was asking her mother to write her a letter under a different name to a different address in Chicago every other week. And so I thought, ‘What is going on there?’” says Rosenberg. “Nobody had really explored that. Everyone was saying that she just fell into being a prostitute. But I didn't see that. I saw that she was telling her mother that she was going to open a flower shop with this girlfriend and that she was working for Marshall Fields. And then she was a hat check girl at a speakeasy and all these different things. And then she would be engaged to one guy and she was going to get married and then you never heard about him again.”

Rosenberg started studying what Freud and Jung wrote about multiple personalities. She noticed that all of Silver’s inconsistencies—paired with a childhood filled with multiple traumas—pointed to DID. With that diagnosis, Rosenberg proceeded to tell the story of Silver Dollar Tabor with new insight and creativity.

“I always do really extensive author's notes, telling exactly what's true and not true and where I'm making a leap,” she says. “No one ever diagnosed Silver Dollar as having DID because they hadn't even identified it then. But throughout the book, I have segments of what Sigmund Freud says during that time and what Jung says about women that sound exactly like her. I made the leap that she had that. And that's definitely a leap. No one has ever said it before.”

It's these deep dives and creative exploration of story that Rosenberg enjoys most about writing historical fiction. Finding the unknown stories and uncovering what’s remained untold until now.

“I will always write about extraordinary women,” she says. “They fascinate me. The research takes me a long time. I have to read a lot of books about their background before I can even start on a project. It's a very fun and very satisfying kind of work if you love to research and telling stories.”

Rosenberg’s newest book, License to Thrill, is set for release this month. Another dual timeline novel, the book tells the story of Lily Bollinger, the “Dame of Champagne,” who refused to surrender to the Nazis during WWII and to other enemies for decades more.

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Author Rebecca Rosenberg’s latest book continues her literary work highlighting the often-overlooked stories of remarkable women.

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The real Regency: What history says about Bridgerton

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 15:18:56 +0000

The real Regency: What history says about Bridgerton Rachel Sauer Tue, 02/24/2026 - 08:18

��Ƶ scholar Nicole Mansfield Wright notes that Bridgerton demonstrates how fantasy can illuminate real history

With part two of Bridgerton’s fourth season arriving on Netflix this week, fans are once again swooning over romantic duels, dramatic ballroom vistas and whispered scandals.

But beneath the spectacle, many viewers wonder how much of the world on-screen comes from real history and how much is dressed up in empire waistlines for our streaming pleasure?

For Nicole Mansfield Wright, an associate professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder, that question is more than an idle inquiry. A scholar of British literature from the “long 18th century” (roughly 1688 to the 1830s), she specializes in understanding how literature and other imaginative media can help people either reinforce or question their beliefs about society.

Nicole Mansfield Wright, a ��Ƶ associate professor of English, is the author of Defending Privilege: Rights, Status, and Legal Peril in the British Novel.

Her verdict on Bridgerton?

“Bridgerton is a ‘Disney-fied’ version of history. Historical accuracy isn’t the point of the show—it’s escapist by design. Yet, its packaging as an escapist diversion makes its moments of tacit political critique all the more potent,” Wright says.

The real Regency

The British Regency era in which Bridgerton is set was a time of both grandeur and unrest.

“For Britain, the Regency period was an era of rejuvenation: the Prince Regent took the place of his father, King George III, who was no longer fit to govern,” Wright explains. “Great Britain was ascendant after Napoleon was vanquished. With its military might, it continued to expand its empire as a world power.”

However, it also was a time of deep inequality.

“Much like today, there was increasing resentment over inequality. The most elevated members of society reveled in opulence and conspicuous consumption, which was made possible by the desperate poverty and deprivation of rights for others,” Wright says.

Pressure for reform was growing. Labor movements gained traction. Most concerning, although the transatlantic slave trade had been abolished in 1808, was slavery’s persistence in the British colonies.

What the show gets right

Bridgerton’s aim isn’t to capture gritty realism, but within its stylized depiction of the Regency era, it occasionally lands close to emotional truths about the period.

“Some of the portrayals of gender dynamics are among the most faithful elements of the series,” Wright says.

She points to a moment when Lady Featherington and her daughters wait in silence for suitors who never come. (When some young men finally arrive, they are calling on the girls’ cousin instead.)

“In its representations of race, the series indulges in fantasy. At a time when diversity is decried as ‘woke’ and the numbers of students of color are plummeting at some colleges, Bridgerton dares to persist in envisioning a thoroughly integrated world,” says Nicole Mansfield Wright, a ��Ƶ associate professor of English. (Photo: Liam Daniel/Netflix)

“The bright chatter that pervades the rest of the episode lapses into heavy silence; and the composition of the shots seems cramped and restrictive, as opposed to the joyous ballroom panoramas from earlier in the episode,” Wright notes.

“At such points, the series suggests, the mothers’ concern is not trivial. The mothers want the best for their daughters. Marrying well—or marrying at all—could mean the difference between comfort and constant struggle.”

Even seemingly small moments, like when a young woman is told to stop reading because it will “confuse your thoughts,” have historic precedent.

“It reflects actual 18th-century hostility to women’s supposed susceptibility to being misled by fiction,” Wright adds.

But what about the fashion?

Bridgerton has been praised for its stunning on-screen visuals and lavish costumes. Wright says that, although most of the colors and costumes are chosen for their “pop” on screen, and a number of styles are taken from other eras, some elements are faithful to Regency history.

“Some looks, including empire waists, align more with the styles of the era.”

The fantasy behind Bridgerton’s world

The show’s multiracial aristocracy, egalitarian romances and modern slang might be a far cry from what history buffs hope for in a period piece. However, Wright sees them as deliberate choices that add meaning to the story being told.

“In its representations of race, the series indulges in fantasy,” she says. “At a time when diversity is decried as ‘woke’ and the numbers of students of color are plummeting at some colleges, Bridgerton dares to persist in envisioning a thoroughly integrated world.”

She points to how the show “defamiliarizes” issues of race and often gender. In presenting them this way, it allows viewers to think more critically by decoupling them from today’s headlines.

“The first season of Bridgerton aired in 2021, at the dawn of a different federal administration. For the primary demographic the show reaches—young women—the national mood was hopeful,” Wright says.

“Now, watching the show feels different in an era when Black history is being erased and the lives of people of color are at risk.”

“I’m in favor of showcasing history and literature via pop culture. To make a case for why our research matters, a key step is convincing non-academic audiences to care about our research and the history.”” says ��Ƶ scholar Nicole Mansfield Wright. (Photo: Liam Daniel/Netflix)

In this light, Bridgerton’s cultural impact isn’t thanks to perfect authenticity. Rather, mingling with the show’s entertainment value is an imagining of the kind of harmonious world that could have existed at the time and, albeit with much fewer corsets, still could today.

Pop culture as a gateway to scholarship

Despite its liberties with historical accuracy, Wright believes Bridgerton and other popular period dramas can serve as important entry points to a deeper understanding of history.

“I’m in favor of showcasing history and literature via pop culture,” she says. “To make a case for why our research matters, a key step is convincing non-academic audiences to care about our research and the history.”

She’s not alone in this belief.

“Bridgerton can be a gateway for students to become more interested in historical scholarship. I just heard this yesterday when I attended a webinar on ‘Teaching the 18th-Century Beyond the Academy’ by the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies,” she says.

Scholars at the event shared how even loosely accurate portrayals like Bridgerton can open doors for rich classroom discussions. In modern academia, where curriculum cuts and attacks on the humanities are becoming more common, those conversations matter more than ever.

Stories still untold

When asked if she could suggest a future Bridgerton subplot, Wright’s mind didn’t venture to more galas or scandalous letters. She’d like the show to dig into one of the Regency’s darker truths: military impressment, which had ramped up from earlier times.

“This was a violent Regency-era military recruitment method. Men were ‘pressed’ into service, or forced to join the British Royal Navy, through physical attacks and intimidation,” she says. “Focusing on impressment would be a good way to explore more intensively the valuation of self-determination vs. the (supposed) greater good that’s at play even in some of Bridgerton’s frothier storylines.

“As a bonus, seafaring vignettes would be a refreshing change of scene and would furnish some large-scale vistas of the kind that make the show a feast for the eye.”

As Wright sees it, whether in Bridgerton’s ballrooms or a future epic on the high seas, popular storytelling doesn’t have to choose between fantasy and critique. In fact, when done well, she says, the fantasy itself can be the critique.

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��Ƶ scholar Nicole Mansfield Wright notes that Bridgerton demonstrates how fantasy can illuminate real history.

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Top photo: Liam Daniel/Netflix

Exhibit celebrates Black Panther Party in stories and portraits

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 22:52:38 +0000

Exhibit celebrates Black Panther Party in stories and portraits Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/22/2026 - 15:52

The documentary exhibit “Revolutionary Grain,” open now through March 15 in the Macky Gallery, highlights the stories of former Black Panther Party members and ongoing struggles for racial justice

This spring, the University of Colorado Boulder Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS) and the Department of History, together with the Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History, present the traveling exhibition “Revolutionary Grain: Celebrating the Spirit of the Black Panther Party in Portraits and Stories” in the Macky Gallery.

The exhibition, open now through March 15, was created by California-based artist and photographer Suzun Lucia Lamaina and honors the legacy of one of the most influential movements in Black American history.

As part of Black History Month programming, the exhibition will be accompanied by a panel discussion with former Black Panther Party members Gayle Dickson, Aaron Dixon, Ericka Huggins and Billy X Jennings, alongside Lamaina and CAAAS Director Reiland Rabaka, on Thursday, Feb. 12, at 7 p.m. in the Norlin Library Center for Global British and Irish Studies Room (M549). The discussion will focus on the history and legacy of the Black Panther Party and its relevance in today’s political climate.

Living history

Hear firsthand accounts of the history of the Black Panther Party and the 1960s Black Freedom Struggle—along with their legacies in Trump's America. The program is part of the accompanying events for the traveling exhibit "Revolutionary Grain: Celebrating the Spirit of the Black Panther Party in Portraits and Stories" that is on display through March 15 in the Macky Gallery.

What: A panel discussion with former Black Panther Party members Gayle Dickson, Aaron Dixon, Ericka Huggins and Billy X Jennings, alongside CAAAS Director Reiland Rabaka and photographer Suzun Lucia Lamaina.

When: 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 12

Where: Norlin Library Center for Global British and Irish Studies Room (M549)

Learn more

Additional programs featuring former Panthers will take place throughout that week on campus.

The “Revolutionary Grain” exhibition features a social-documentary photographic essay of portraits and personal narratives from more than 50 former members of the Black Panther Party. Lamaina spent five years traveling across the United States to interview and photograph participants, offering them the opportunity to tell their own stories.

“This work is meant to spark conversation,” Lamaina explained of the project, noting that the exhibition coincides with the 60th anniversary of the Black Panther Party’s founding and ongoing struggles for racial justice in the United States. The exhibition situates the movement’s history in what Lamaina describes as a new phase of the Black Freedom Struggle in contemporary America.

Founded in October 1966 in Oakland, California, by Bobby Seale and the late Huey P. Newton, the Black Panther Party initially focused on addressing police violence in Black communities. By the late 1960s, the party had become a national and international symbol of resistance, establishing nearly 50 chapters across the United States and an international presence in Algiers, North Africa.

“Putting on the Black Panther uniform and committing our lives to the liberation struggle changed the purpose and meaning of our entire identities,” Dixon wrote in his 2012 memoir My People Are Rising: Memoir of a Black Panther Party Captain. “It was a liberating experience. Societal restriction and conformities dropped by the wayside, leaving a fearless, defiant, powerful human being. We no longer looked at ourselves in the same way, nor did we look at the system and its representatives in the same manner. We were the freest of the free.”

In addition to its revolutionary political stance against capitalism, imperialism and fascism, the party launched “survival programs” that provided free breakfasts, medical services and other essential resources to thousands of Black Americans. Despite its community-based activism, the Panthers were frequently targeted by federal authorities, with the Nixon administration labeling the party “the greatest danger to the internal security” of the United States. A number of its members, among them Fred Hampton in Chicago, died at the hands of police officers.

The exhibition seeks to counter decades of misrepresentation by bringing first-person accounts from former members to the foreground, connecting their experiences to present-day debates over racism, police violence and political organizing.

“At a time during which the Trump administration and its supporters are rewriting history and representing versions of the past that downplay or even erase the critical significance of the Black Liberation Struggle of the 1960s and 1970s—of which the Panthers were an integral part—it is all the more important to shed light on the movement’s complexities and give our students, faculty and the community one more opportunity to engage with aging Panther members in meaningful ways," says Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, a professor of history and the Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History. "This is a university campus, and it is a celebration, but also a reappraisal, with the help of key actors, of a complex struggle that has also problematic chapters. History is messy, but our students deserve better than what many in Washington have in store for them.”

The exhibition is co-sponsored by the departments of English, Ethnic Studies and Women and Gender Studies and the Center for Humanities and the Arts.

All events are free and open to the public. No tickets are required. For more information, contact Thomas Pegelow Kaplan at thomas.pegelow-kaplan@colorado.edu.

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The documentary exhibit “Revolutionary Grain,” open now through March 15 in the Macky Gallery, highlights the stories of former Black Panther Party members and ongoing struggles for racial justice.

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Top image: Former Black Panther Party members Emory Douglas (left), Kathleen Cleaver (center) and Barbara Easley Cox (right). (Photos: Suzun Lucia Lamaina)

Why a boy and his tiger still matter

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 18:44:15 +0000

Why a boy and his tiger still matter Rachel Sauer Thu, 12/18/2025 - 11:44

Bradley Worrell

Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson’s beloved comic strip, ended three decades ago this month, yet its magic endures, says William Kuskin, ��Ƶ English professor and expert on comics and graphic novels

When teaching his popular course on comic books and graphic novels, William Kuskin’s classroom represents a microcosm of the university, where engineering majors sit alongside business students and aspiring writers.

In that mix, the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, which debuted in November 1985, sparks an enthusiasm across students—even though the comic strip ended its syndicated run in December 1995, before most of those students were born, says Kuskin, a University of Colorado Boulder Department of English professor and department chair.

“Students will march down at the end of class and gush about Calvin and Hobbes,” he says. “It’s not just nostalgia; there’s an ongoing love for it in this generation.”

William Kuskin, ��Ƶ department chair and professor of English, teaches a course on comics and graphic novels that draws students from disciplines across the university.

That love often comes with a personal twist.

“A lot of dads and kids sat around reading comics together,” Kuskin explains. “Students tell me this course brings them closer to their dads. There’s a comic culture out there that spans generations.”

While no new Calvin and Hobbes comic strips have been produced since 1995, author Bill Watterson authorized the publication of 18 books between 1987 and 2005 that reprinted comic strips from various years. In honor of the publication of the three-volume The Complete Calvin and Hobbes in 2005, re-runs of comic strip were made available to newspapers from Sept. 4, 2005, to Dec. 31, 2005.

Kuskin says the beloved comic strip is not just a relic of the bygone newspaper era—it’s a shared language of humor and imagination between generations.

Describing Calvin and Hobbes to a newcomer

How does one describe what Calvin and Hobbes is about to the uninitiated?

Kuskin says the task is not as easy as it sounds, because the comic transcends its characters. On one level, it’s about Calvin, a mischievous 6-year-old boy who enjoys undertaking adventures with his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, who seemingly comes to life with biting humor when alone with Calvin. Beyond that, Kuskin says, it’s about the endless possibility of childhood, served up with doses of humor, philosophy and whimsy.

He identifies two endearing qualities that he says gives the comic strip its remarkable staying power. The first is its balance of cynicism and sentimentality.

“Calvin and Hobbes critiques the world but ends with love and warmth,” he says. “As cruel as the outside world is, they still have time for a hug. Our world needs that—maybe now more than ever.”

Kuskin says Watterson’s work reminds its audience that skepticism doesn’t have to cancel tenderness. He notes that Calvin’s sharp observations about consumerism or dreary school regimen coexist with moments of pure joy—snowball fights, sled rides and bedtime musings.

Calvin and Hobbes invites readers to slow down, to imagine, to laugh—and perhaps to question what really matters, Kuskin says.

“Our culture promotes avarice and excess over happiness and personal expression,” he says, quoting Watterson: ‘To invent your own life’s meaning is not easy, but it’s still allowed, and I think you’ll be happier for the trouble.’”

Kuskin says the second appeal of Calvin and Hobbes results from the comic strip’s role as a portal to the imagination.

“Hobbes himself is a gateway,” he says of Calvin’s stuffed tiger. “He’s both real and imaginary. That ambiguity invites readers to participate in the magic.”

The Exploring Calvin and Hobbes exhibit will be open to the public through Dec. 31 at the Fenimore Art Museum in New York City. (Screengrab: Fenimore Art Museum)

From cardboard-box “transmogrifiers” to intergalactic daydreams, Kuskin says the comic strip celebrates childhood imagination. Hobbes—neither fully stuffed nor fully alive—embodies that space where fantasy and reality blur, Kuskin says.

Comics as high art

Kuskin says the recent Calvin and Hobbes exhibition at the Fenimore Art Museum in New York underscores the comic strip’s artistic stature, which he sees as part of a broader movement to elevate comics.

“Comics have a fundamental tension,” he explains. “They don’t belong comfortably to any one discipline. They’re literature, but they’re also visual art. And they’re tied to franchise culture.”

That tension creates a spectrum—from mass-market superhero films to avant-garde graphic novels. Watterson, like Art Spiegelman (author of Maus), staked out the high-art end of that spectrum, resisting the strong pull of merchandising, Kuskin says.

“He stood by his principles. He made his art. It’s beautiful and lasting,” he adds. “There are many ways to make comics, but Watterson’s way—purity of vision, resistance to exploitation—defines a kind of artistic practice that’s very beautiful.”

Art over commerce: Watterson’s high road

Unlike many cartoonists who embraced merchandising, Watterson famously resisted commercialization. Thus, no Hobbes plush toys and no animated specials. Kuskin sees that as a principled stand.

“Watterson fought hard for artistic control,” he says. “He framed his work as art, connecting back to early innovators like George Herriman (Krazy Kat) and Winsor McCay (Little Nemo). Comics often straddle art and commerce—Watterson pushed toward high art.”

That decision was not without cost. While Peanuts became a multimedia empire—complete with beloved TV specials—Calvin and Hobbes remained confined to the printed page. That purity may be why the strip feels timeless rather than dated, Kuskin says.

“Would the world have been better for a few more Hobbes stuffed animals snuggled in at night?” he muses. “Watterson thought not. He believed the work should speak for itself.”

The cultural company Calvin and Hobbes keeps

Will ��Ƶ students still be talking about Calvin and Hobbes in another 10 years?

“Calvin and Hobbes critiques the world but ends with love and warmth,” he says. “As cruel as the outside world is, they still have time for a hug. Our world needs that—maybe now more than ever.”

Kuskin doesn’t hesitate in his response: “Absolutely. Parents and grandparents will keep sharing it. And it’s entered that rare cultural space—like Spider-Man, Batman or even Marilyn Monroe. It’s iconic.”

That “iconic space” includes other comic strips that transcended their medium: Peanuts, Krazy Kat and Little Nemo. Like them, Kuskin says, Calvin and Hobbes combines accessibility with depth—simple enough for children but layered enough to be appreciated by adults.

“The best comics have always transcended age,” he says. “They’re not just for kids. They explore fantasy, philosophy—even avant-garde art.”

And while Calvin and Hobbes often gets mentioned in the same breath as Peanuts, Kuskin says featuring cute kids and animals is not a prerequisite for a comic strip having enduring appeal.

“Will Dilbert ever go away? I can’t imagine—it nails corporate life,” he says.

Endings as beginnings

For Kuskin, Watterson’s final comic strip—with Calvin and Hobbes sledding into a snowy landscape—is a farewell, but also a reminder that imagination is infinite.

“It’s about endings as beginnings,” he explains. “The snow becomes a metaphor for possibility. Watterson’s goodbye is a clean start—not an end.”

The dialogue is simple: “It’s a magical world, Hobbes, old buddy … let’s go exploring.” But Kuskin says its resonance in the comic panels is profound: the blank whiteness of snow mirrors the blank page—a canvas for imagination.

“The snow looks like snow because we invent it as snow in our imagination,” he says. “That’s the genius of Watterson—he makes us co-creators.”

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Grad’s work fuses the arts and sciences

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 20:14:26 +0000

Grad’s work fuses the arts and sciences Rachel Sauer Fri, 12/12/2025 - 13:14

Bradley Worrell

Olivia Neilly, who is earning a double major in English and molecular, cellular and developmental biology with a perfect 4.0 GPA, is named the college’s outstanding graduate for fall 2025

When Olivia Neilly stepped onto the University of Colorado Boulder campus four years ago, she thought she had her future mapped out.

“I really wanted to go to medical school,” she recalls. “I thought I’d keep my head in the books for four years and then move on.”

However, in pursuit of courses that would prepare her for the medical field, Neilly joined Professor Zoe Donaldson’s neuroscience lab in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology (MCDB)—and that one experience changed everything for her.

Olivia Neilly is the Fall 2025 College of Arts and Sciences outstanding graduate. (Photo: Julie Chiron)

“I discovered that research is not just about data—it’s about asking questions, embracing creativity and finding joy in discovery,” Neilly says. “It literally changed the trajectory of what I want to do with my life, and now I can’t imagine wanting to do anything else.”

Donaldson and Jenny Knight, professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, became important mentors for Neilly, whom she credits with fostering creativity and curiosity in the lab. Additionally, PhD graduate Mostafa El-Kalliny helped shape her thinking about research as well as issues outside of science.

“From day one in the lab I worked with Mostafa, who shaped how to think about science—and other subjects,” she says. “Our conversations weren’t just about experiments—they were about philosophy, literature and life.”

Embracing neuroscience with a passion

For her honor’s thesis, Neilly wrote a 71-page research paper investigating how a small part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens helps animals form close social bonds, research that has potential implications for humans. Her paper specifically explored the neuroscience of social bonding on prairie voles, a small species of furry rodents.

“We study prairie voles because they form lifelong pair bonds, like humans,” Neilly explains. “My project focused on nucleus accumbens, a brain region tied to reward. I used chemogenetics (a technique that makes use of engineered proteins) to turn off specific interneurons during bond formation. When those cells were silenced, voles couldn’t form pair bonds. This suggests one cell type can influence complex social behavior, which has implications for psychiatric disorders.”

Neilly began her lab work with the voles before the start of her sophomore year and spent two summers working full time in the lab. This past summer, she completed the experiment underlying her thesis and spent the school year analyzing the data and writing. While the work was very time consuming, Neilly adds, “It never felt like a burden—I loved the process.”

In addition to that work, Neilly authored a manuscript for the scientific journal Nature Communications as well as a second manuscript currently being considered for publication.

Earning high praise from faculty

Neilly was nominated for the outstanding graduate award by Christy Fillman, chair of the MCDB Honors Committee, and Donaldson, who praised her undergraduate student for her curiosity, intellect and strong work ethic.

“I would often find Olivia in the lab at all hours, eager to contribute and learn new skills. By this time last year, she was already operating at the level of a graduate student despite being only a junior. She accomplished this while also maintaining a 4.0 GPA in two majors and maintaining her involvement in other activities, including the American Lung Cancer Society Screening Initiative,” Donaldson wrote in her letter recommending Neilly for the outstanding graduate honor. Donaldson added, “She is the most impressive undergraduate I have had the chance to mentor or interact with across institutions I have worked at.”

Neilly says receiving the outstanding graduate award is both exciting and humbling.

“My mentor (El-Kalliny) hinted that I might get nominated, but honestly, I was so focused on graduating and finishing classes that I didn’t think much about it. When I got the email and Donaldson announced the award in our lab group chat, I was really touched,” Neilly says. “I’m emotional by nature, so it meant a lot that people I respect recognized my efforts. I usually just put my head down and work, not for recognition, so this felt validating. I was proud—and excited to tell my mom first.”

Olivia Neilly (second from left), Fall 2025 College of Arts and Sciences outstanding graduate, chats with, left to right, Daryl Maeda, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences; Irene Blair, dean of natural sciences; and Jennifer Fitzgerald, interim associate dean for student success. (Photo: Julie Chiron)

Balancing science and the arts

Neilly’s academic path has proven to be as unique as her research. Initially focused on MCDB, she opted to add an English degree to feed her artistic side.

“At first, I thought there was no overlap,” she recalls. “I started with MCDB for medical school or research but then added English because I missed my artistic side. Over time, I realized they overlap in surprising ways. In science, clear communication is essential—especially now, in a media environment riddled with so much misinformation."

As a creative writer and fan of modern fiction, Neilly applauds how people are pushing the boundaries of language in the same way that scientists are pushing the boundaries of scientific knowledge—celebrating the unbounded exploration of both art and science.

“Writing skills from English help me convey research effectively. Creativity is key in both fields. The best scientists are often the most creative.”

Life beyond the lab

Despite her demanding academic schedule, Neilly says she made time for extracurricular activities. She wrote articles for the online magazine Her Campus, attended film festivals and organized a lung cancer awareness event at Boulder’s historic Chautauqua Park.

She says she feels fortunate to have partaken in many cultural events offered by ��Ƶ and by the local community, and she encourages her fellow students to do the same, adding, “Connecting with your community matters as much as academics.”

As for any advice for incoming CU students, Neilly says, “Wherever you are, you can make the most of it if you put in the time and energy. Be willing to try new things and embrace discomfort—it’s how you grow.”

Right where she was supposed to be

Neilly says she’s grateful for her time at ��Ƶ and is now looking forward to what comes next as she prepares to embark on a scientific career. After graduating later this month, Neilly will join Stanford University as a research technician in Boris Heifets’ lab, where scientists study how psychoactive compounds can help treat severe psychiatric disorders.

“I’m passionate about improving mental health and social functioning, so this feels like the right next step before starting grad school,” she says.

Perhaps ironically in retrospect, Neilly says she wasn’t initially committed to attending ��Ƶ. She earned good grades in high school and had a number of options when it came time to select a university.

“I have a long family history with CU; my mom, sister and grandfather all have ties here. At first, I thought I wanted to break the pattern, but my mom reminded me that education is what you make of it,” says Neilly, who spent much of her childhood in Aurora. “CU ended up being the best decision. I found incredible mentors and research opportunities I wouldn’t have had elsewhere.

“I don’t regret a thing. I’ve used CU to the absolute ends of what it could offer.”

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Olivia Neilly, who is earning a double major in English and molecular, cellular and developmental biology with a perfect 4.0 GPA, is named the college’s outstanding graduate for fall 2025.

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Top photo: Olivia Neilly (second from left), Fall 2025 outstanding graduate, with, left to right, Daryl Maeda, interim dean of the college; Irene Blair, dean of natural sciences; and Jennifer Fitzgerald, interim associate dean for student success

All the world’s a stage for William Shakespeare

Kylie Clarke — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 21:32:57 +0000

All the world’s a stage for William Shakespeare Kylie Clarke Wed, 11/26/2025 - 14:32

Alexandra Phelps

With the Nov. 26 cinematic release of Hamnet, ��Ƶ scholars consider what we actually know about the famed playwright and why we’re still reading him four centuries later

Act One: Setting the scene

“Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.” The legacy and legend of William Shakespeare has expanded well beyond the open-air theaters of Renaissance London. Embedded in classrooms, films and novels, his plays and poetry have become universally known and loved. Before he inspired generations of artists, however, he was inspired by the art around him. Adapting the stories and dramas he observed and experienced, his storytelling has entertained viewers and readers for four centuries.

However, his dramas are mostly what we have left of him.

“The wealth of beautiful and deep feeling poetry and drama that Shakespeare left, contrasted with the poverty of documents that give us a sense of who he is as a person, is very intriguing” explains Dianne Mitchell, a University of Colorado Boulder assistant professor of English and Renaissance literature scholar. This poverty has led scholars and writers, including bestselling author Maggie O’Farrell, to imagine what the lives of Shakespeare and his family may have been like.

In her 2020 novel Hamnet, a film adaptation of which will be released in theaters today (Nov. 26), O’Farrell weaves a plot following Shakespeare and his wife – referred to in the novel and film as Agnes – and their children, twins Judith and Hamnet and their older sister Susanna, creating a domestic view of their lives in Stratford. Based on the sparse information about Shakespeare available through legal documents, O’Farrell spins a fictional tale of loss, love and the family of one of the world’s most influential playwrights.

Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare in Hamnet. Image provided by Focus Features

Meet the Shakespeare scholars

Scene One: Finding a love

Enter Dianne Mitchell, Katherine Eggert, Kevin Rich, Heidi Schmidt, & Amanda Giguere

At ��Ƶ, Shakespeare’s work is integral both in English classrooms and on stages. Scholars of literature and theater, as well as organizers of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival (CSF), found a love for Shakespeare’s work which now guides their professional careers.

Katherine Eggert

Katherine Eggert, a professor of English and vice chancellor and senior vice provost for academic planning and assessment, remembers, “I was going to study Victorian literature in graduate school, but then I took a class from Stephen Greenblatt, who is one of the world’s most famous Shakespeare scholars, and I knew that I could not leave the Renaissance behind.”

Eggert, drawing on her work on Renaissance epistemology – understanding how it is possible we know things and not others – and Renaissance history, explains, “We know a great deal about Shakespeare’s dealings in property, his legal involvements, we know whether he paid his taxes. We know the kinds of records that get kept in life. We do not have his diaries; we do not have his private remarks about what he thought about any given subject. What we do have is his literary work.”

Dianne Mitchell

For Dianne Mitchell, literary work and poetry of the Renaissance in particular spoke to her. “I had some great teachers when I was an undergraduate who really brought the 16th and 17th century literary world to life, especially poetry. I hadn’t realized how sensual and how deep the poetry felt.” Mitchell, among the other classes she teaches, developed an upper-level English course that is cross-listed with women and gender studies called Sex in Shakespeare’s Time. She reflects that students are “often surprised how up front both real women and imaginary women can be about what it is that they can and don’t desire.”

Kevin Rich

The stage is another way people find new ways to look at texts and themselves. For Kevin Rich, associate professor of theater and director of the Applied Shakespeare graduate certificate, theater offered him a place to conquer his fear of speaking. He remembers, “I was at a summer camp junior year of high school and they said do something that scares you, and I said acting scares me. I always wanted to be a teacher and once I found acting, I knew what I wanted to teach.”

Later, he saw a six-person production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It on a basketball court in New York City’s lower east side and “it was magical. It was awesome. Kids who were coming to play basketball saw that a play was happening and sat on their basketballs and watched it,” he recalls.

Heidi Schmidt

For Heidi Schmidt, a director and teacher with the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, it was the connections she made rather than the setting of a theater that drew her in. “I really liked theater people. When I started hanging around theater people there was this relief that I could just be more of myself than I was in the rest of my life.” Now involved in every aspect of the theater, she works alongside Rich and Amanda Giguere, CSF director of outreach, to develop the CSF school program.

Amanda Giguere

Amanda Giguere found theater at a young age at a Shakespeare camp: “It planted the seed and now this is my life’s work.” When she was choosing a graduate school, “I applied to one school, ��Ƶ, sight unseen … because of its connection to the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Twenty-one years later, I’m still here.” Her book, Shakespeare & Violence Prevention: A Practical Handbook for Educators, allows teachers all over the country to use CSF’s teaching and practices in their classrooms.

In the five years since its publication and adaptation to film, the novel has grown a wider audience interested in imagining who Shakespeare could have been. Although scholars often try – to varying degrees of success – to explain Shakespeare the person, it is often novelists and playwrights like Shakespeare who bring him most to life. Through his plays, Shakespeare has touched audiences by interpreting the world he experienced through his writing.

Many University of Colorado Boulder Shakespeare scholars and Colorado Shakespeare Festival (CSF) drama researchers are excited for the film adaptation of Hamnet. This film offers another insight into what Shakespeare could have been, beyond the dramas he created.

Act Two: Teaching Shakespeare

Enter ��Ƶ Dianne Mitchell, Katherine Eggert, Kevin Rich, Heidi Schmidt and Amanda Giguere

“Shakespeare’s plays can be a way to think through questions that students themselves are asking, and we don’t only need Shakespeare to help us answer these questions. But it’s funny how much he is wondering about some of the same issues many of my students are wondering about or exploring some of the same problems that beset them,” says Mitchell.

Part of Shakespeare’s brilliance is his ability to reach people at any age. Kevin Rich, an associate professor of Theatre at ��Ƶ, remembers seeing “a 4-year-old perform a Cleopatra monologue (from Antony and Cleopatra). You would think that’s too hard, but at that age, they’re not afraid of words yet – all words are new. This language was not intimidating and she killed it. She was so brave and let the words be as big as they were. That’s when I realized no age is too young to be introduced to these plays, and you’ll always learn more as you get older.”

Eggert emphasizes the importance of reading the text aloud in English courses: “I do ask students to read in class. I think it’s really important to hear Shakespeare and to hear the language coming out of your mouth and not just as a professional. When you read Renaissance literature – not just Shakespeare – and literature of any kind aloud, you understand it in your ear, even if you don’t understand every word on the page.”

Act Three: Favorite plays

Everybody reads Shakespeare differently, allowing for individuals to connect with his works in different ways.

Schmidt, for example, recalls a time at a camp where she was directing Measure for Measure. The play is about a duke who lets the affairs of state slide and instead of handling them, claims he’s going on sabbatical. However, he doesn’t and sticks around in disguise, observing as people get manipulated by his deputy.

“I said, ‘OK, let’s just agree as a group that tricking someone into having sex with someone they don’t want to is bad. Period, the end,’” Schmidt says. “The youngest kid in the class, 13, puts her hand in the air and shouts, ‘Consent is sexy!’ It was one of my proudest teaching moments.”

Giguere recognizes the power in drawing connections between historical events and the situations Shakespeare portrays in his stories.” Tyrant by Stephen Greenblatt is about the tyrants in Shakespeare’s plays. I’m on the section on Richard III, and I’m thinking about how it shows what happens when hate is allowed to grow and fester. It’s crazy that Richard III became king, that’s sort of baffling.”

Rich sees great power in how Shakespeare can capture human conditions in social and emotional situations, recalling, “I’ve had an inmate say to me, ‘Shakespeare had to have done time,’ because he cannot have written the prison scene in Richard II without having spent time in a cell himself. I’ve had veterans say he had to have been in war, because he cannot have possibly written about war like he does without having experienced it. So, maybe that’s true or maybe he was just that empathetic, that able to imagine perspectives other than his own.”

Mitchell reflects, “I’ve started teaching one of Shakespeare’s late plays — by which I mean a play that he wrote at the end of his dramatic career — both at the undergraduate and graduate level. It’s a play called Cymbeline. One of the reasons [I like teaching it] is that students have no expectations about the play and its characters when they come into my class. I like teaching it because you really see a Shakespeare at the end of his career who is so confident in his dramatic abilities that he starts breaking all the rules. It’s really fun to watch him discard habits that he practices in some of his more canonical plays.”

Eggert finds that familiarity can generate new insights. She says, “The play I most like to teach, that’s Hamlet. It’s infinitely rich and even if students have already read it before, there is so much to discover on the second, third and 20th reading.” Whether a student is completely new to a play or reading it again, there are so many meaningful ways for them to interact with the text.

Act Four: Hamnet as a novel and a stage play

Giguere and Schmidt both saw the first stage adaptation of Hamnet at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. Prior to seeing it, Giguere read the novel and was pleased that even though the novel takes a lot of liberties with who Shakespeare’s wife was, they are “beautiful liberties.”

O’Farrell’s novel, despite being about Shakespeare, leans more deeply into the lives of Agnes and his children than other novelists and scholars have. Often villainized in history, Agnes in the novel is shown in a new light. There is much speculation about the circumstances around her and William Shakespeare’s marriage, Eggert disputes some scholars’ insinuations that since she was older than he and was pregnant, she trapped him in a marriage that he didn’t want. This has led to a fictional narrative in which the two lived separate lives, and Shakespeare moved to London to escape her.

Eggert emphasizes that there is no evidence that supports this theory. In fact, she says, “just a few months ago, a scholar made a good case that a letter found in an old book that had been owned by an acquaintance of Shakespeare’s, used as part of the binding of this book, was written to Shakespeare’s wife, and the letter was to her in London. While this letter doesn’t indicate the entirety of their relationship dynamic, it displays that their lives weren’t as separate as some scholars would want them to be.”

Mitchell describes the importance of centering a story around women, especially beside a character as large as Shakespeare. Instead of imagining Agnes’ life as small in comparison to Shakespeare’s, “One of the things that I liked about the novel was that it’s not about Shakespeare and his rise to fame and success, but rather about the domestic life of the intelligent and deep-feeling woman he married. We don’t have diaries or letters, so fiction is doing the work (of defining) that (Agnes) wasn’t some small person who wasn’t cared for and who was just kind of caught up in the Shakespeare industry. She has her own important life.”

Mitchell explains that the villainization of Agnes’ character could possibly stem from a thoughtful act William Shakespeare and his wife did. Many scholars use the fact that the couple didn’t get married in the local parish church to diminish her character since this act was violating the religious conventions at the time. However, at the time they got married, Shakespeare’s father, John – a cruel character in the novel – was being pursued for his debts. Instead of getting married in the church, where people would have seen him and tried to collect, William and Agnes married elsewhere as a kindness to William’s father.

Act Five: Hamnet as a film

There are many films that have captured, or attempted to capture, the plays and fictionalized life of Shakespeare. Movies such as Shakespeare in Love offer viewers a way to enter his life, even if it’s heavily fictionalized. Films are often one of the most important tools used by professors, including Eggert. Films about Shakespeare or his plays allow viewers to better understand the content, through observing the choices actors and directors make.

“I show clips from films and theater adaptations; there are resources through the [University of Colorado Boulder’s] libraries where you can see how if something is performed slightly differently, it emphasizes an entirely different meaning to the text,” Eggert says.

Although there are fictionalized elements, the stage adaptation of Hamnet was another way for viewers to understand Shakespeare and England at the time. The stage adaptation included people of various ethnic and racial backgrounds, something Schmidt notes was a larger part of Shakespeare’s London than people often consider.

Colorado Shakespeare Festival remains popular

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival program has reached more than 140,000 Colorado students and continues to be an integral part of English courses in college. For this school cycle, Rich has adapted Hamlet into a digestible 30-minute and 45-minute play, depending on the student audience. Giguere and Schmidt’s work allows for teachers to prep their students on the plots, background and characters in the plays. Similarly to Rich’s opinion that anyone can interact with the material, Giguere states, “I don’t think you need to be a professional actor or violence prevention expert to use Shakespeare’s plays to think about patterns of violence. I think the plays unlock a lot about our own world and help us understand what it means to be human and what it means to live in a society.

“There is a lot of research that exists about how London, in particular, is a lot more diverse than we like to think it was – it was not all white. There were a lot of different people coming from all over the world and living in London and making their lives in London. I think [an all-white version of London] is an outdated and disproven illusion of what life looked like,” Schmidt says.

Rich adds that the landscape in theatre for interpreting Shakespeare has moved beyond a binary system of comedy and tragedy. “When I was first starting out as an actor, auditioning for companies, they would ask for two contrasting monologues – one comedic, one tragic. It seems that many have moved away from that because that creates a two dimensional view of his plays, which in reality are more than just two genres of comedies and tragedies. He finds levity in serious moments and he finds gravity in the funny moments.”

The film version of Hamnet continues to break down these binaries and established structures through its storytelling. The mysticism that Rich sees in Shakespeare’s work is what Giguere recognizes in O’Farrell’s novel. Some film viewers may recognize the mysticism of the novel while also seeing the humanity of Shakespeare and his family.

Some 400 years later, Shakespeare can connect with individuals on a number of levels. Hamnet’s release in theaters offers viewers a fictionalized way to see him as a person and one version of the life he could have led. However, the concrete things people know about Shakespeare’s storytelling and genius are found in his works. Giguere emphasizes that people should read “all of them. Truly, every Shakespeare play collides with you in different ways depending on where you are in life or what the world is doing. I say this in a tongue-and-cheek way, read all of them, watch all of them. Because that’s what baffles me about these works, is that sometimes you’ll collide with a play and it just hits you in the right way where, ‘Oh my goodness, this sheds light on this other aspect of my life.’”

They Exit (the movie theater)

With the Nov. 26 cinematic release of Hamnet, ��Ƶ scholars consider what we actually know about the famed playwright and why we’re still reading him four centuries later.

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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

��Ƶ 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 ��Ƶ Department of English.

For Douglas, a college professor of distinction in the University of Colorado Boulder 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, ��Ƶ 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

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

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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, ��Ƶ 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 ��Ƶ 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 University of Colorado Boulder 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 ��Ƶ 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, ��Ƶ Benjamin Robertson discusses the book’s popular appeal while highlighting the dramatic changes science fiction experienced following its publication.

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Top illustration: Gary Jamroz-Palma

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