Division of Arts and Humanities

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholar examines Islam’s most controversial new movement

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 14:41:17 +0000

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholar examines Islam’s most controversial new movement Rachel Sauer Wed, 04/01/2026 - 08:41

Cody DeBos

Religious studies graduate student Shafiu Alidu went in search of West Africa’s boldest believers in the Yan Hakika Sufi sect

Shafiu Alidu grew up in a unique mixing pot of Islam, Christianity and Sufism in Accra, Ghana. Now a master’s student in the Department of Religious Studies at the �鶹��Ѱ��, he is shedding light on a bold, contested movement that has rattled northern Nigeria’s Muslim communities.

His research invites one to imagine standing in a crowded public celebration in Nigeria as someone nearby leans in and declares openly, and without apology, “Everything and everyone is God.”

For many onlookers, both traditionally devout Muslims and Sufi practitioners, the words might be considered heresy.

Shafiu Alidu, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder graduate student in religious studies, researches Yan Hakika, a Sufi movement that has only emerged in the last decade and a half in Nigeria.

This is the world of the Yan Hakika, a Sufi movement that has only emerged in the last decade and a half. Compared to Islam, a religion with more than a millennium of traditions and rules to follow, the Yan Hakika could hardly be more different. The evocative tension between spiritual daring and doctrinal boundaries is part of what drew Alidu to study the group.

“The Yan Hakika caught my attention because they are very bold, and quite controversial—even within Sufism,” he says. “It felt like studying something alive and unfolding right now, instead of just ancient history.”

A long road to Boulder

Alidu’s path to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder is itself a remarkable story. After completing his undergraduate degree in religious studies, he was awarded a full scholarship to pursue not one but two master’s degrees in Turkey.

It was there that his scholarly voice began to take shape.

“Turkey gave me excellent resources and real intellectual freedom, and it was there that I began publishing academic articles,” Alidu says.

He adds, “That experience deepened my fascination with how spiritual paths blend with local African cultures and inspired me to continue my studies abroad.”

His journey would then bring him to Boulder in 2024 for his third master’s degree, where he now works under the supervision of Aun Hasan Ali, associate professor and associate chair of undergraduate studies.

Alidu recently published a paper on the Yan Hakika in the Journal for the Institute of Sufi Studies.

Boulder, he says, has been the right place to do it.

“Boulder has given me a wonderful new environment to explore these topics even further while staying closely connected to my West African roots,” he says.

Turning up the volume

To understand what makes the Yan Hakika so controversial, one must understand what Sufism is.

Alidu describes it as “the mystical, heart-centered side of Islam,” adding, “Sufis focus on getting close to God through love, meditation, chanting and spiritual training rather than just following rules.”

At the core of Sufi thought is a concept known in Arabic as “Wahdat al-Wujud,” or the “oneness of being,” which holds that there is ultimately only one true reality, and that reality is God.

“The (Yan Hakika) movement attracts many people who feel that traditional religious practice has become too dry or rule-focused. They are drawn to the Yan Hakika’s promise of a more direct, ecstatic and personal experience of God,” says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholar Shafiu Alidu. (Photo: Fatima Yusuf/Pexels)

Alidu offers an elegant analogy.

“Everything else—the universe, the stars, the trees and even you and me—is like a wave on the ocean. The wave looks separate for a moment, but it is made of the same water as the whole ocean and will eventually return to it,” he explains.

Most Sufis hold this idea close, expressing it in private meditation and guarded spiritual language. The Yan Hakika say it out loud.

“It’s like they turned the volume way up on one of the deepest and most subtle ideas in Sufism,” Alidu says.

Heresy or awakening?

Being so forthcoming with their beliefs comes with consequences for the Yan Hakika.

“Both mainstream Sufi groups—especially within the Tijaniyya Sufi Order—and Salafi (strict literalist) Muslims have strongly criticized them, sometimes labeling their beliefs as heretical and even questioning whether they are true Muslims,” Alidu says.

Spilling into real-world actions, that backlash has led to heated public denunciations by prominent religious figures, social boycotts, ostracism and even arrests at social gatherings. And yet the movement keeps growing.

As Alidu explains, for many followers, the Yan Hakika movement offers something traditional practice does not.

“The movement attracts many people who feel that traditional religious practice has become too dry or rule-focused. They are drawn to the Yan Hakika’s promise of a more direct, ecstatic and personal experience of God,” he says.

“In this way, the movement both divides communities and offers some followers a powerful spiritual awakening,” Alidu adds.

This contradiction—threatening and beautiful in equal measure—makes the Yan Hakika impossible to look away from.

Catching smoke with your hands

Studying the Yan Hakika, however, is another matter. Alidu found early on that conventional academic methods go only so far in uncovering the depths of a religious movement steeped in the mystical.

“I was surprised by how much everyday conversation and oral stories—not just books—matter in understanding this group,” he says.

While preparing his latest paper, a turning point came when Alidu immersed himself in accounts of the Yan Hakika’s public gatherings.

“Everything else—the universe, the stars, the trees and even you and me—is like a wave on the ocean. The wave looks separate for a moment, but it is made of the same water as the whole ocean and will eventually return to it.”

“It helped me realize this isn’t just abstract philosophy, but a living, emotional, sometimes chaotic spiritual experience that deeply affects real communities,” he says.

The challenge, he admits, is holding two truths simultaneously. He’s learned to juggle both the scholar’s need for analysis and the community’s need to be understood on its own terms.

“Religious studies gives good tools, but studying something this fluid sometimes feels like trying to catch smoke with your hands,” Alidu says.

Still listening

As for what Alidu hopes to come from his research, the focus is all about people.

“I’m not trying to judge them. I’m trying to understand why their path makes sense to them. I hope they would feel I listened carefully and described their beliefs accurately and respectfully, even when I point out the controversies,” he says.

For readers outside the Yan Hakika, his hopes are broader.

“There is no single way to be Muslim; spiritual paths within the tradition vary widely across cultures and times. Second, even beliefs and practices that appear radical or shocking to outsiders can stem from a deep, sincere longing to experience God more directly and intimately,” he says.

Alidu believes the Yan Hakika movement is a reminder that even one of the world’s largest religions contains intricacies that rarely reach our collective consciousness.

“Understanding groups like them can help us become more open-minded about the rich variety of human spiritual experience in our complex world,” he adds.

Alidu plans to develop his research into a PhD dissertation and, eventually, to teach and write books that make African spiritual traditions and their intersection with Islam more accessible to a wider audience.

In the meantime, he believes that, in a world inclined to flatten Islam into a single story, understanding the intricacies of why people believe what they do is never wasted work.

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Religious studies graduate student Shafiu Alidu went in search of West Africa’s boldest believers in the Yan Hakika Sufi sect.

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When napping in nature becomes art

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 23:55:15 +0000

When napping in nature becomes art Rachel Sauer Thu, 03/05/2026 - 16:55

Cody DeBos

�鶹��Ѱ��alum Rick Silva finds meaning in the stillness of the natural world

Rick Silva (MFA’07) is lying still in the frame, perched on a rocky outcropping overlooking azure ocean waves. He’s sound asleep.

That’s one of 46 places you’ll find him taking a snooze in his new video art piece, Dirt Nap.

As he describes it, “Dirt Nap is composed of one-minute excerpts from 46 naps Rick Silva took in nature across the Western United States between September 2024 and January 2026, sequenced in the order they were recorded.”

“The project has some heavier personal meanings for me, but I also think it touches on broader themes of loss related to landscape in the 21st century, whether that’s the precarity of protected lands or ongoing threats from climate change,” says Rick Silva (MFA ’07) of his new video art piece, Dirt Nap.

The project’s structure is simple, almost stubbornly so. But the simplicity of one-minute naps, repeated 46 times, has a way of becoming something else—a question that challenges notions of patience and what it means to rest.

Taking a rest

The project began in 2024, a time marked by both grief and physical strain for Silva.

“My uncle-in-law died in a ski accident the previous year, and that late summer we hiked into the Grand Tetons to spread his ashes,” he recalls.

That same summer, Silva was dealing with severe migraines that forced him to retire to a dark room, sometimes for the entire day, just to ease the pain.

“The idea for Dirt Nap emerged during a lull in the pain of a migraine,” he says.

From the start, Silva knew the project needed to unfold over time. As the idea of deliberately resting in nature took hold, he started thinking of locations. Some had personal meaning. Others he hadn’t yet experienced but wanted to.

“There was a balance between planning and spontaneity throughout the process. I created a loose set of rules around framing and duration, then pushed against those rules through location, weather and light,” he says.

The title carries its own gravity. Often a dysphemism for death, the phrase “dirt nap” invokes images of a body being returned to the ground for its final rest.

Silva acknowledges the double meaning.

An ‘in-action’ sport

Prior to Dirt Nap, Silva spent years immersed in outdoor action sports culture, especially snowboarding. Video is a powerful medium for showcasing the pulse-pounding motion and spectacle of athletes carving through exotic terrain at high speeds.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alumnus and artist Rick Silva created his video piece Dirt Nap from 46 naps he took in nature across the Western United States between September 2024 and January 2026.

Dirt Nap inverts the formula.

“There’s definitely a connection between Dirt Nap and that lineage of sport and nature filmmaking,” Silva says, “except here I’m doing ‘nothing’ in the landscape. It’s a kind of in-action sport focused on recharging and recovering.”

For Silva, shooting videos lying down instead of airborne while capturing exotic vistas across the Western United States is something of a return to his roots.

“My MFA thesis work at �鶹��Ѱ��was a video art piece in which I filmed myself in nature, sort of DJ-ing various landscapes,” he says.

A �鶹��Ѱ��foundation

Silva traces much of his foundational approach to filmmaking to his time in �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder’s MFA program.

“I was exposed to many different approaches to working with moving images, including experimental film, video art, performance and new media,” he says.

Just as influential was the support he received along the way.

“My professors encouraged me to follow my own path through those techniques and conceptual strategies, especially around time, presence and process.”

That trio anchors Dirt Nap.

“I think meaning emerges through the variation and duration of the project. It’s a very simple act, but multiplied to this extent it becomes something more epic, or perhaps absurd. I hope viewers oscillate between those readings,” says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alumnus Rick Silva.

Silva also found inspiration for the meditative quality of his footage from artists like Roman Signer and Ana Mendieta. While filming, he learned about the early works of Laurie Anderson, another artist who captured herself napping in public.

“I’m a longtime fan of her work and felt connected to her through our napping projects,” he says.

For current students, Silva offers some practical advice rooted in his own trajectory.

“If you can make it financially feasible, I highly recommend taking on an ambitious, self-driven creative project during a summer break.”

He points to an example close to home.

“The creators of South Park made Cannibal! The Musical during a summer break while they were students at CU.”

Ambitious early projects, he says, often echo through the careers of their creators for years.

Learning to look longer

As for Dirt Nap, the cumulative effect of 46 one-minute excerpts challenges viewers with one request: patience. It’s a hard ask in a world consumed by short-form videos and a never-ending tide of “the next big trend.”

Silva often finds himself returning to a quote from composer John Cage: “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”

“That quote took on even more meaning for me during this project, which was both born from and made within that zone of observation and reflection,” Silva recalls.

While appreciating Dirt Nap, viewers start noticing the little things. The flicker of shadows across Silva’s face. The rhythm of his breathing. Grass, trees and water responding to the wind. From one minute to the next, a person lying down outdoors runs the gamut of looking peaceful to looking exposed.

What first appears to be “doing nothing” becomes a sustained practice of attention born from grief and structured by repetition. The act is quiet, even vulnerable, and for Silva, it’s a reminder that nothing is ever truly still.

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�鶹��Ѱ��alum Rick Silva finds meaning in the stillness of the natural world.

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All photos courtesy Mario Gallucci

�鶹��Ѱ��librarian curates philosophy collection to elevate women’s voices

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 21:28:56 +0000

�鶹��Ѱ��librarian curates philosophy collection to elevate women’s voices Rachel Sauer Mon, 03/02/2026 - 14:28

Cody DeBos

Who is remembered in philosophy? A University Libraries project asks anew

Frederick Carey couldn’t ignore the pattern.

As an assistant professor and the history and philosophy librarian at the �鶹��Ѱ��, Carey frequently finds himself helping students dig into texts for class discussions. But repeatedly, even in expansive anthologies or collections covering centuries of thought, he’s noticed some voices are missing.

“I was drawn to this work after repeatedly seeing how women’s philosophical contributions were either absent or difficult to find in standard collections—even though students wanted to engage with them,” Carey says.

Frederick Carey, an assistant professor and the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder history and philosophy librarian, is curating a collection of works by women philosophers spanning centuries.

Hoping to change that narrative, Carey is now curating a collection of works by women philosophers spanning centuries. Eventually, he hopes the project will reshape how students and scholars approach philosophy.

Missing pages in the canon

Carey describes the initiative as “a sustained, intentional collection of works by women philosophers to address historical gaps in the philosophical record and improve access for teaching and research.”

The implications of having such a database available are massive.

For centuries, women’s voices in philosophy have been misattributed, ignored or erased entirely. By working to rebuild that record, Carey is shining much-deserved light on thinkers left in the margins.

In doing so, his work challenges the very structure of the philosophical canon.

“The goal isn’t to create a separate or marginal collection, but to meaningfully integrate these voices into the core philosophical record,” he says.

Curation as practice

Carey’s curation process draws on his background in medieval philosophy—particularly metaphysics. The discipline requires close attention to things like attribution and the historical context in which ideas are shaped and recorded textually. He’s found those same challenges emerging time and again while excavating the history of women in philosophy.

“I guide selection through a mix of scholarly relevance, curricular needs and equity-minded collection principles,” he explains.

Celebrate Women's Herstory Month

Since 1981, Women’s Herstory Month has been recognized in the United States, along with recognition of International Women’s Day on March 8. This is a time to celebrate women's contributions to history, culture and society. Many �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder departments have events this month for Buffs to gather, learn and celebrate together.

Learn more

That includes prioritizing works from a broad range of eras and schools of thought. The curation is made up of primary texts, critical editions, translations and influential secondary scholarship.

“My criteria emphasize significance to philosophical inquiry, evidence of scholarly engagement, instructional usefulness and how well a work helps broaden representation within the collection.”

In addition to consulting canonical texts, Carey is also working closely with faculty, academic bibliographies and scholarly networks to find philosophers whose ideas have often gone unacknowledged.

Some of the most telling examples, he notes, are figures whose intellectual labor was historically overshadowed by their male collaborators.

Harriet Taylor Mill, for instance, co-developed many of the ideas that appear in the famous works of her husband, John Stuart Mill. Yet her writings are frequently read as background rather than as theories in their own right.

Harriet Taylor Mill (right) co-developed many of the ideas that appear in the famous works of her husband, John Stuart Mill (left). Yet her writings are frequently read as background rather than as theories in their own right. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

“Because her ideas were so closely intertwined with John Stuart Mill’s work, her independent writings are often overlooked,” Carey says. “Many ideas in Mill’s major works emerged from an ongoing philosophical partnership, which Mill himself acknowledged, but the texts were largely published under his name.”

Who gets remembered?

Sadly, stories like Mill’s aren’t exceptions to the rule.

“One pattern I’ve noticed is that women’s philosophical contributions were often either anonymized, published under a male relative or mentor or framed as supplementary commentary rather than original thought,” Carey says.

When, rarely, their ideas were published, many were selectively preserved or excluded from the mainstream discourse. The result is a philosophical canon that tells a much narrower story than reality.

Carey’s curation calls attention to the mechanisms at play behind this trend. Power, name recognition and cataloging decisions have all played a role in deciding what work survived.

Recovering the voices lost to time means revisiting assumptions about whose ideas matter and why.

While that process can’t fully reverse the fallout of centuries of exclusion, Carey hopes it can open new doors for philosophical exploration.

“Recovering her contributions is likely an impossible task,” he says of Mill, “but attempting to do so challenges how credit and authority have been assigned in the canon.”

Including women philosophers in the core curriculum also does much more than diversify the reading list. Being exposed to a wider range of voices influences how students engage with the discipline.

“Engaging with these works helps students develop a more complete and nuanced understanding of philosophy and its history. It exposes them to a wider range of perspectives, ideas and approaches to key questions, which strengthens their critical thinking and analytical skills,” Carey says.

“Including these voices broadens and complicates our understanding of major philosophical movements,” he explains. “It challenges the traditional narrative that ideas emerged solely from a small, predominantly male canon, showing instead that women were active participants, critics and innovators.”

Beyond classroom learning, this more inclusive lens transforms philosophy into an urgent force for good in the real world.

“When we center voices that have historically been silenced or ignored, philosophy becomes more inclusive, relevant and socially engaged,” Carey adds.

A record worth rewriting

Ultimately, Carey hopes the collection will inspire conversations across disciplines about who shapes knowledge and how we define credibility on the path to building a more equitable academic tradition.

“I hope this collection project sparks conversations about representation, authorship and diversifying materials,” he says. “Within the �鶹��Ѱ��community, I hope it encourages faculty and students to integrate these voices into their teaching and research, rethinking whose ideas are centered and why.

“It’s only through broad collaboration that these voices and perspectives will get the attention they deserve.”

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Who is remembered in philosophy? A University Libraries project asks anew.

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"Aspasia Surrounded by Greek Philosophers," by Michel Corneille the Younger, ca. 1670s

Art historian walks into the Middle Ages

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 22:27:17 +0000

Art historian walks into the Middle Ages Rachel Sauer Wed, 02/25/2026 - 15:27

Clint Talbott

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Professor Kirk Ambrose set out to better understand art, doubt and medieval pilgrimages, but his 800-mile walk has modern implications

At some point during his trek, Kirk Ambrose felt that walking was “too fast.” Days stretched and the small loomed large. He and his wife would stop to admire a spider, then just talk about it.

“It really did change my perceptions,” he says. And that was kind of the point.

Kirk Ambrose (right), a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder professor of classics, walked nearly 800 miles along medieval pilgrimage routes, joined for part of the journey by his wife, Kim Dickey, a professor of art and art history. (Photo: Kirk Ambrose)

Last summer, Ambrose, a professor of classics at the �鶹��Ѱ��, walked nearly 800 miles along medieval pilgrimage routes—much of it on the Via Jacobi, the Way of St. James, which threads through France toward Santiago de Compostela in Spain. His wife, Kim Dickey, who is a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder professor of ceramics, joined him for part of the walk.

Ambrose trained for the trek, but the goal was not athletic. It was scholarly. The long walk served as research for a book he’s writing about art and doubt in the 11th and 12th centuries.

“I wanted to get a sense of, as much as is possible in the modern day, what these experiences were like,” he says. “Pilgrimage has been a framework for understanding medieval art—especially the 12th century—and I wanted to probe that from the ground.”

He approached the journey with “a healthy dose of skepticism.” The romantic picture of pilgrims dutifully trudging from shrine to shrine, he argues, owes much to early 20th‑century American portrayals of pilgrimages.

Ambrose cites Arthur Kingsley Porter, a wealthy American scholar who toured Europe by chauffeured Rolls‑Royce and helped popularize the idea of being on the road as a way to understand the spread of medieval art. Porter’s writings reflected a privileged and American way of moving through the world, Ambrose suggests, adding that Porter’s perspectives differed from those of most Europeans.

The road and its surroundings

The walk itself focused Ambrose’s attention on the social fabric that makes pilgrimages possible. “What interested me, perhaps more than the pilgrim, was the whole support network,” he said. He met volunteers who cleaned bathrooms and retirees who opened bedrooms—chambres d’hôtes—and cooked dinner for strangers.

Many of these workers had left urban careers after the pandemic, moved by a desire to be close to a journey even if they could not make one themselves. “Again and again, I heard a version of the same idea: ‘I travel through the people I encounter, even though I’m staying in the same spot.’”

The observation seemed timeless. Medieval monks, often prohibited from physical travel, were encouraged to undertake “spiritual pilgrimages”—imagined journeys toward the divine. The modern hosts Ambrose met felt like their analogues, he said.

Ambrose trained for a year—backpack full of books—before setting out; he finished the walk in just over two months without a blister. But the physical feat was secondary.

One observation about pilgrimages, he says, is “how much time you are not in churches.” Most days were focused on ferns, salamanders, hunger and the logistics of the next bed. Sacred sites punctuated but did not define the experience.

Scholarship in motion

Kirk Ambrose's journey took him along Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. (Photo: Kirk Ambrose)

Some scholars have argued that artistic styles spread via pilgrim highways. Ambrose suggests otherwise.

“There’s an increasing body of scholarship that challenges the idea that artists simply ‘followed’ pilgrims,” he says. “Institutional affiliation and alliances often explain transmission better—monasteries, chapters, reform movements—networks that stretch across regions through personal relationships, not roads.”

The variety he encountered along the way—the “dizzying” mix of styles and architectural solutions—underscored that point.

He offers a contemporary analogy: Rather than assuming ideas spread evenly across a state, think of a university department with deep ties to a lab in the Netherlands—ideas may travel faster via that friendship than along any map. The medieval equivalents—papal circles, Cluniac reform, houses of canons—made and remade aesthetic choices at large scale and across geography.

Ambrose also questions the notion of the Middle Ages as just an “Age of Faith.”

“I’m trying to complicate the emotional landscape,” he says. “Doubt is a primary motivator.” In the 12th century, commentaries on the Book of Job—which wrestles with faith and doubt—were among the most copied texts.

Ambrose notes that art from this period confronts doubt, raising questions such as: Which relic is genuine? Is the Eucharist literally the body of Christ or a symbol? What do I treat as true when I’m surrounded by competing claims?

Even images of damnation—liars punished, tongues ripped out—suggest a culture trying to distinguish fact from fiction. Today, humans face similar questions, he observes.

Ambrose speaks with delight about the people he met on the walk. “There’s a saying on the route that the kingdom of pilgrimage is 2,000 miles long and 5 feet wide,” he says. On that path, one might find an octogenarian walking from Budapest to Santiago—eight or nine months out and back—or a group of students between semesters, or a CEO on sabbatical. Most of the walkers he met weren’t religious.

He says the experience evoked what cultural anthropologist Victor Turner called the liminal experience—a phase between two stages of life, states of being or locations. “I met people from 18 to their 70s. We were all pilgrims together, regardless of motivation.”

Scenes from a (very long) walk

St.-Privat-d’Allier in France.

A fire salamander on the trail near Espalion, France.

The rooftops of Ste.-Foy, Conques in France.

Lungerersee in Switzerland.

View of Fribourg, Switzerland.

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�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Professor Kirk Ambrose set out to better understand art, doubt and medieval pilgrimages, but his 800-mile walk has modern implications.

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Top photo: Kirk Ambrose on the trail. (All photos courtesy Kirk Ambrose)

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

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder 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 �鶹��Ѱ��, 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 �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder 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 �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder 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 �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder 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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�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholar Nicole Mansfield Wright notes that Bridgerton demonstrates how fantasy can illuminate real history.

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Top photo: Liam Daniel/Netflix

Looking at the big picture (book) of East Asia

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 20:36:45 +0000

Looking at the big picture (book) of East Asia Rachel Sauer Thu, 02/12/2026 - 13:36

Alexandra Phelps

An innovative project in the Program for Teaching East Asia brings culture and history to Colorado K-12 students

Colorado students don’t need to book a flight or get a passport to experience East Asia, because a program from the �鶹��Ѱ�� is bringing the region’s culture and history to them.

For the past two spring semesters, students participating in a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder outreach program to K-12 classrooms have been using a favorite childhood medium: picture books.

The program is coordinated by Lynn Kalinauskas, director for the Program for Teaching East Asia (TEA); Catherine Ishida, assistant director for Japan and Korea Projects; and Christy Go, the program’s graduate student assistant. They have varied their program to involve many East Asian countries, yet the central goal of their program has always been to develop students' cross-cultural understanding.

Lynn Kalinauskas (left), director for the Program for Teaching East Asia (TEA), and graduate student assistant Christy Go (right), along with colleague Catherine Ishida, assistant director for Japan and Korea Projects, coordinate a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder outreach program to K-12 classrooms that uses a favorite childhood medium: picture books.

Building a program

Three years ago, Kalinauskas, who is also the co-director of the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia, envisioned a new classroom outreach program that would bring East Asia into K-12 Colorado classrooms via picture books.

In spring 2024, with funding support from the Office for Public and Community-Engaged Scholarship and the Freeman Foundation, the program used books that taught elementary and middle school students about natural science. Books in the program, such as Moth and Wasp, Soil and Ocean and When the Sakura Bloom, allowed students to see agriculture and plant cycles within an East Asian context.

“Picture books offer a wealth of information. You can look at an image and learn so much,” remarks Kalinauskas. Go noted in an article about the first run of the program that teachers were receptive to the medium that offered a beautiful window into another culture. One educator who is grateful for what the program has done for their classroom said, “The carefully chosen picture book prompted interesting reflections and questions. The artifacts enhanced children's understanding and appreciation of the topic. I appreciated how the presenter drew connections between the children's lives and the experiences of the protagonist of the story.”

As the program progressed, Kalinauskas and her colleagues expanded its scope to cover a new topic. In spring 2025, students learned about the geography of East Asia, and the spring 2026 semester will center on learning about the contributions of famous Japanese people.

Pictures of East Asia

The process of choosing which picture books will be used involves a number of factors. At �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, the Program for Teaching East Asia is a coordinating site for the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. This national organization administers the Freeman Book Awards that recognize quality books for children and young adults that contribute meaningfully to an understanding of East and Southeast Asia. Many of the books chosen for the project have won the Freeman award.

Excellence in Civic & Community Engagement Programming Awards

The Teaching East Asia through Picture Books program recently received an Excellence in Civic & Community Engagement Programming Award from Campus Compact. The award recognizes the many forms that effective on-campus civic and community engagement can take to address areas of need and make deep and long-lasting positive change.

In the spring 2025 semester, the five books chosen were The Ocean Calls: A Haenyeo Mermaid Story by Tina Cho, Warrior Princess: The Story of Khutulun by Sally Deng, The Sound of Silence by Katrina Goldsaito, Rice by Hong Chen Xu and Mommy’s Hometown by Hope Lim.

A book such as Rice can be an important addition to the curriculum as it highlights agricultural practices in southern China, informing the reader about the impact geography has on people’s daily lives, their environment and cultural practices.

Students teaching students

Organizers note that the program is innovative not because it teaches students through picture books, but because it gives an internship opportunity to �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder students of all disciplines and brings these new interns into Colorado classrooms.

Every fall, TEA staff begin recruiting for the spring outreach. Applicants have to submit short essays and participate in an interview. It is important that students selected be excited to teach about East Asia.

The process of working with the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder students is individualized and collaborative. Go says she works as a mentor for the students, adding that the staff work with student interns on multiple levels from how they should dress when presenting in classrooms, school procedures and what to expect when teaching children. Students work with the staff to identify the important characteristics of their assigned book and develop a lesson plan. Because students may visit different grade levels, they also learn to adapt their lessons to different age groups.

Teachers participating in the program often try to align the book selection with the material they’re already teaching. “We had kindergarten and second grade classrooms that were learning about the life cycles of plants, so they chose When the Sakura Bloom because they wanted to talk about the connection (between the East Asian representation and their science),” reflects Go. “Tracing the life cycle of the Sakura (cherry blossom) tree in the story not only reinforced student learning of the plant life cycle but also engaged students in discussing cultural events inspired by these natural processes through the presentation of hanami (cherry blossom–viewing picnic events) in the story.”

Lily Elliott (EBio, AsianSt'25) reads Rice to elementary school students. (Photo: Christy Go)

In the classrooms, �鶹��Ѱ��student interns provide background information for students. The �鶹��Ѱ��interns each read aloud while pointing out cultural representations, key characters and concepts, location, relationships between characters and relevant context related to the themes, science or geography. One �鶹��Ѱ��student teaching The Ocean Calls introduced different sea life and later asked students while they were reading to point out the animals. This is followed by a lesson plan and an interactive activity. For one student teaching Sound of Silence, a book about a boy trying to find silence in the city of Tokyo, “our student found sound clips of different places in Tokyo and had students listen and guess where they were,” remembers Go. “Students loved it!” The presentations are like “a traveling show,” says Kalinauskas, who oversees each step of this process.

Beyond their involvement in coordinating with teachers, choosing books and mentoring student interns, staff take their commitment to the program one step further by driving student interns to schools all around Colorado.

More than a cup of noodles

In the first year, 64 classrooms participated; the following year, interns presented in 49 classrooms. The classes are usually in the Denver-Boulder metro area but have reached as far as Greeley. While mainly aimed at elementary classrooms, program organizers have also brought their �鶹��Ѱ��interns to middle schools and one high school classroom. Additionally, if a school is too far to be reached by car, like one school in Grand Junction, interns have done interactive Zoom presentations.

This program has been enriching for Colorado K-12 students while simultaneously being a great educational experience for the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder student interns. Kalinauskas and Go have found that through this program, many students have gained professional skills and experience that have expanded their career pathways. Two former graduate students in education are now teaching in local schools. Another student intern, who taught a book on Korea, was so inspired that she moved to Korea to teach English.

"Picture books offer a wealth of information. You can look at an image and learn so much."

For Colorado teachers, the program doesn’t end when interns leave their classroom. Although the presentations cover only one book, each classroom receives a copy of every book in that semester’s program for students to read for years to come. Teachers also receive cultural information and teaching resources to engage students in learning about all the books in the program. TEA also hosts a fall in-person workshop for Colorado teachers focused on the same books. Kalinauskas and Go note that although they aim to expand their program to many new classrooms, some teachers love it so much they have participated in multiple semesters.

TEA is bringing its program into Colorado schools next spring. The focus for Spring 2026 will be on the biographies of famous Japanese people and Japanese culture. The program features the story of a young female artist in Japan during the Edo period, the first woman to summit Mount Everest and a story about how Momofuku Ando created one of the world’s most popular foods, instant ramen.

“The picture book Magic Ramen not only teaches us about how instant ramen was created but takes us back in time to Japan post-World War II, where a young man was trying to feed people in Osaka,” says Kalinauskas. “We don’t always think about that historical context when we are just having our cup of noodles.”

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An innovative project in the Program for Teaching East Asia brings culture and history to Colorado K-12 students.

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Top image: Isaac Kou (CompSci, EBio'25) reads "The Sound of Silence" to first-grade students. (Photo: Christy Go)

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)

Exhibit invites participants to imagine worlds

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 21:16:08 +0000

Exhibit invites participants to imagine worlds Rachel Sauer Tue, 02/03/2026 - 14:16

Fairy Tales and the Power of Wonder: Imagining Worlds, opening Thursday at the �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum, celebrates how these magical stories take us beyond 'Once upon a time...'

Of all the phrases in art and life, perhaps none is so magical as “Once upon a time…”

They are world-opening and world-building words, an invitation to exploration embodied in the fairy tales they begin.

Exhibit opening reception

What: Opening reception for new exhibits Fairy Tales and the Power of Wonder: Imagining Worlds and [Face] Value

When: 4-6 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 5

Where: �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum

Learn more

That magic and mystery is celebrated in Fairy Tales and the Power of Wonder: Imagining Worlds, a new exhibit at the University of Colorado Art Museum debuting this Thursday, Feb. 5, with a reception from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. The exhibit will open alongside [Face] Value, a new display curated by �鶹��Ѱ��graduate students in a curatorial practicum class held at the museum last fall.

Fairy Tales and the Power of Wonder: Imagining Worlds will be on display through May. It was co-curated with Suzanne Magnanini in the Department of French and Italian and is coordinated with upcoming exhibitions at the �鶹��Ѱ��Museum of Natural History and Norlin Library. Rebecca Davis in the Division of Arts and Humanities provided curatorial support.

The origins of many fairy tales can be traced as far back as ancient Greece, Rome and China, Magnanini previously noted, which speaks to their ability to not only to help people of particular times and places explore their anxieties and questions, but to address the feelings that have been central to the human condition throughout history.

“When I think about fairy tales, I think about a number of characteristics that make them really appealing across time and space,” Magnanini said. “If you think about it, the protagonists are almost always young people heading out into the world—much like our students are heading out—leaving home behind, having to make their way in the world, facing challenges. That experience can be very transformational, so in a way these stories are all about metamorphosis and change.”

The exhibit highlights how “fairy tales help us imagine new worlds where everyday problems find magical solutions. Their characters and stories ask us to examine with fresh eyes our relationship to the natural world and with one another. Filled with optimism, fairy tales remind us that change and transformation can help us overcome obstacles and find a hopeful ending, no matter the struggles we face,” according to exhibit curators.

[Face] Value

Opening alongside Fairy Tales and the Power of Wonder and on display through March 16 is [Face] Value, an exhibit curated by �鶹��Ѱ��graduate students in a curatorial practicum class held at the museum last fall. The exhibition offers an unconventional and sometimes critical look at the genre of portraiture. Students in the course selected and researched artwork in the collection, wrote interpretive labels and contributed to the gallery layout.

“We were excited to partner with Professor Magnanini and highlight her research," says �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum Director Hope Saska. "This exhibition allows us to consider artwork in our collection through the lens of fairy tales, opening new possibilities for interpretation. The idea for an exhibition shared across multiple campus collections was initiated by Dulce Aldama in the University Libraries and many of the rare books on view were coordinated with their support. We’re delighted about the conversations this will spark and have some exciting programming in store.”

The artworks, books and maps featured in the exhibit bring to life the stories and themes of fairy tales, which are often shared across fables, myths and saints’ legends. The exhibit includes maps of Fairy Land that trace pathways and meandering routes through landscapes described in these stories. Open volumes reveal illustrations that interpret fairytale settings and scenes, while other art works feature the magical beings that are the typical characters of fairy tales—animals, humans and unearthly creatures.

The exhibit and related programming are supported by �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Student Arts and Cultural Enrichment fees. The exhibition team includes Dulce Aldama, Sean Babbs, Rebecca Davis, Suzanne Magnanini, Kathy Noonan, Hope Saska and Nancy Stevens. �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum staff contributed to the exhibit, including Pedro Caceres, Elizabeth van der Marck-Gregg, Stephen Martonis, Maggie Mazzullo, Hope Saska and a team of museum attendants.

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Fairy Tales and the Power of Wonder: Imagining Worlds, opening Thursday at the �鶹��Ѱ��Art Museum, celebrates how these magical stories take us beyond 'Once upon a time...'

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Scholar studies humanity through skin and ink

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 17:51:52 +0000

Scholar studies humanity through skin and ink Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/29/2026 - 10:51

Chris Quirk

In his new book Indigenous Tattoo Traditions, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alumnus and Tattoo Hunters host Lars Krutak highlights traditional techniques that sometimes date back millennia

Lars Krutak is not the kind of scholar who is content to simply write about his field. Krutak, a 1993 �鶹��Ѱ�� graduate in art history and anthropology, is an internationally recognized researcher of the history and culture of tattoos and has about 40 of them himself. He even went under the knife for his research—a scarification ritual of the Kaningara people of Papua New Guinea, during which an elder made more than 400 incisions in his skin.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alumnus Lars Krutak (left) has studied with indigenous artists around the world, including Pius (right), one of the last Makonde tattoo masters of Mozambique. (Photo: Lars Krutak)

“That technique of incision tattooing where they cut you to create a scar and then they rub in the pigment is by far the most painful,” he says. “You're getting cut open like a piece of chicken, and then you're just bleeding all over place. It's hard.”

It’s one of the traditional techniques described in his recent book, Indigenous Tattoo Traditions: Humanity through Skin and Ink, lauded as a best science pick in the journal Nature.

The author of four books on tattooing and host of the Tattoo Hunters series on the Discovery Channel, Krutak became fascinated with the art and custom of tattoos 20 years ago. After completing his bachelor’s degree at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder, Krutuk began work on his master’s degree in anthropology and archaeology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “I moved there in January of 1996,” he says. “When I got off the plane it was minus 55 degrees.”

Krutak was walking across the Fairbanks campus one day and saw a woman with three chin tattoos. “I didn't have any tattoos. I didn't know anything about tattoos. I didn't know indigenous people had tattoos,” Krutak recalls. “I could recognize that she was indigenous, and I got to know her later on, but that moment opened my eyes.”

His scholarly interest piqued, Krutak began digging through the university’s archives and extensive collection of artifacts. “I quickly realized that basically every indigenous society across the circumpolar north, from East Greenland to Siberia and seemingly everywhere in between, had a tattooing tradition at one time or another, but almost all I could find were records from 100 years ago and a few things from the 1950s.”

Krutak resolved to change that. “My main goal when I started doing this research was to preserve a history. No one in academic circles seemed interested in studying indigenous tattooing,” he says. “There were a lot of stigmas attached to tattooing at that time, and there are still some to this day. But I always felt that this was a significant part of the world's cultural heritage, and it was vanishing rapidly around the world, with no one going out there to document it.”

Permanent records

After learning about the tattooing tradition of the Yupik people of St. Lawrence Island in the northern Bering Sea, Krutak wrote to village councils and received permission to visit. What he found was that tattooing was on the wane among the Yupik, with just a small number of women who were in their 80s or 90s sustaining the custom.

In his recent book Indigenous Tattoo Traditions, author and �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alumnus Lars Krutak highlights work from indigenous artists around the world.

But he also found that the tradition went back about 2,000 years. The Yupik had, for two millennia, created anthropomorphic dolls, carved out of walrus ivory, that most likely represented ancestral personages. And the dolls had careful renditions of Yupik tattoos.

The significance of tattoos, for the Yupik people and for other cultures across the globe that Krutak has since visited—more than 40 to date—can be widely varied.

“If there is something that needs to be permanently recorded, tattoos can do that,” he says, adding that a tattoo can function as a record of hunting prowess, tally enemies killed in warfare or identify a person as a member of a particular clan or family. There are tattoos that denote a rite of passage, tattoos that invoke ancestral spirits and tattoos that relate to medicinal purposes, Krutak says.

One important meaning that bearers of tattoos have cited, across many cultures, is to identify the person in the afterlife, he says. In the case of the Yupik people of St. Lawrence Island, there are tattoos to help ancestors recognize the person so they can enter the sanctity of the afterlife. “I've been told, by many elders, that they would not be recognized as a true person from their culture without certain tattoos,” Krutak says. “This is one of the most common beliefs and purposes for tattoos across the indigenous world.”

‘Ancient marks of humanity’

What began with that serendipitous moment in Fairbanks has turned into a lifetime pursuit and a synthesis of two threads of Krutak’s interest that he cultivated at �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder as an undergraduate: art history and anthropology. “I had two very formative professors,” he says. “Roland Bernier encouraged me to explore more deeply the connection between anthropology and art history, hence my double major. John Rohner was in charge of the museum studies program and introduced me to what a career in the museum field would look like.”

In some of Krutak’s travels, including his experience with the Yupik, he has encountered some of the last people in the culture who had or could share the history of tattoos in their culture, which increases his sense of urgency. “I firmly feel that indigenous tattooing deserves our attention, because it speaks volumes about what it means to be human,” says Krutak. “I think we can learn a lot about each other by studying and appreciating these ancient marks of humanity.”

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In his new book 'Indigenous Tattoo Traditions,' �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alumnus and 'Tattoo Hunter' host Lars Krutak highlights traditional techniques that sometimes date back millennia.

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Filmmaker charts path from rented cameras to Hollywood marquees

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 22:35:57 +0000

Filmmaker charts path from rented cameras to Hollywood marquees Rachel Sauer Tue, 01/20/2026 - 15:35

Bradley Worrell

On campus on Wednesday for a screening of his movie Roofman, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alum Derek Cianfrance praises the professors who mentored him and talks about what motivates him today as a filmmaker

From making short films as a teenager to sitting in the director’s chair today for Hollywood marquee films, Derek Cianfrance’s path to professional filmmaker has been anything but conventional.

Long before he directed films such as Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines, Cianfrance was a kid growing up in Lakewood, Colorado, who turned birthday parties into movie sets. At age 13, he was shooting short films on a rented video camera—driven by a sense of play that he says still fuels his work today.

In a recent, candid conversation with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine, Cianfrance reflects on the formative years that shaped his vision, the mentors who guided him at the �鶹��Ѱ�� and the persistence—and rejection—that defined his rise from short home films to Hollywood movies.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alumnus Derek Cianfrance directed films such as Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines, in addition to his most recent, Roofman.

Question: What’s it like for you to come back to Boulder now? And what are your plans while you are here?

Cianfrance: It’s always amazing coming back. Boulder shaped me as a filmmaker. I had transformative experiences there—with mentors like Phil Solomon, Stan Brakhage, Bruce Kawin, Don Yannacito and Jim Palmer. Some aren’t around anymore, but they left a mark.

On Wednesday evening, at the Muenzinger Auditorium, I’ll be screening my most recent movie, Roofman, and I’ll probably do an intro and a Q&A.

I’ve been back to Boulder many times since leaving college—and some of my most important relationships came from there. Every time I return, I enjoy getting to see the next generation of students and teachers carrying on that tradition.

Question: You started experimenting with film and other media as a teenager?

Cianfrance: Earlier, actually. At age 6, I borrowed my older brother’s tape recorder and used it to make skits, fake movie trailers and to do interviews. At 13, I rented a video camera from my school librarian at Green Mountain High School and made The Bat Movie, which was about this rubber bat that attacks people. The movie was 15 seconds long, four shots, and it was from the point of view of the bat. It was actually kind of funny and ridiculous. …

From then on, I kept making little films. It was play for me—like a sport. Even now, in my 50s, I feel connected to that 6-year-old—it’s still play at its best moments.

And, I have to say, my parents were very supportive. I feel very fortunate. They dealt with me putting a camera in their face, filming birthday parties, turning the birthday party into a set for my movie. If they hadn’t supported that, I don’t know if I would have had the confidence to keep going. My parents were awesome that way.

And I immersed myself in film. I grew up on VHS and Hollywood movies—Martin Scorsese and George Romero. I had a picture of Scorsese over my bed.

Question: Many aspiring filmmakers set their sights on NYU or UCLA. Why did you choose �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder?

Cianfrance: I wanted to attend UCLA, USC or NYU as well. When I was in high school, I was obsessed with the film school generation back in the 1990s, but those schools were cost-prohibitive. I ended up going to �鶹��Ѱ��because I knew they had a film program and Boulder seemed like a great place to be. I didn’t know what to expect, but it was transformative.

At CU, my professors deconstructed cinema. Stan Brakhage showed us films out of focus to study shadow and light, and very quickly I learned I was getting a unique education. It was avant-garde, experimental. I learned aesthetics and formalism differently. Bruce Kawin taught screenplay structure; Jim Palmer taught thematic analysis.

When I showed my student films at festivals, I realized just how unique my education was. NYU students had huge budgets; mine cost $1,000 and was shot on 16mm Bolex. �鶹��Ѱ��taught me to embrace limitations. That has shaped everything I do.

If you go

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alumnus Derek Cianfrance will be present for a screening of Roofman at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 21, and will participate in a Q&A after the film.

What: International Film Series screening of Roofman with writer and director Derek Cianfrance

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 21

Where: Muenzinger Auditorium E050

Admission: $8 students/$10 general admission

Learn more

Question: What year did you graduate?

Cianfrance: Well, I didn’t actually graduate. I spent five semesters at CU. At the time I entered film school, Trey Parker and Matt Stone (later of South Park TV series fame) had just graduated and made Alfred Packer: The Musical. I was watching that from afar, as this young, ambitious film student, and so by the time I was a junior, I decided I was going to make a feature, too.

I dropped out for what I thought at the time would be a semester, raised $40,000, and shot Brother Tied. It took four years to finish, and it went to Sundance in 1998.

I spent a year on the road with that film. I had no money. I was literally living off of hors d’oeuvres from film festivals. I was like Ratzo Rizzo from Midnight Cowboy at the film festivals, just stuffing my pockets with food. The movie went to about 30 festivals and it won a handful of awards.

I got a lot of business cards, and I met a lot of people in the industry while I was doing that. I was writing Blue Valentine at the time, so I started sending out scripts for Blue Valentine—and I got a lot of rejections. Just non-stop rejections, but I just kept working on it.

It was far from an instant success. From when I first started writing Blue Valentine it was 66 drafts and 11 years later that I shot it.

Question: After leaving CU, did you move to Hollywood?

Cianfrance: No, I moved to New York in 1999. I lived on couches, edited tribute videos for TV award shows and worked enough to buy time back to write. That leapfrogging lasted 10 years until I made Blue Valentine.

Derek Cianfrance's (striped jacket) most recent film, Roofman, is about a convicted spree robber who hides out in the roof of a Toys R Us after escaping from prison.

Question: Blue Valentine was praised by critics and received multiple award nominations. Did you feel like you had ‘arrived’ as a director after it debuted?

Cianfrance: I don’t believe in arrival points. It’s a journey. That hasn’t changed for me. That’s why I feel so connected to my 6-year-old inner child—because I’m doing the same process I’ve done forever.

When you experience success, it removes barriers, which can be dangerous. Resistance and rejection are blessings—because they force growth. Blue Valentine took 11 years because I needed that time. By the last draft, I was married with kids, so I could tell the story authentically.

Question: Many people aspire to become a screenwriter or director but success eludes them. What do you believe helped you break through?

Cianfrance: Focusing on the work—not ego. I never cared about seeing my name on a marquee—only the movie’s name. It’s about staying true to your inner voice. Success and failure both come, so keep swinging.

Question: Even today, rejection comes with the territory as a recognized director?

Cianfrance: That’s the life of a filmmaker. You’re just knocking on doors and saying, ‘Do you want to buy this idea that I have?’

No one’s ever asking for those (films). Like, no one was asking for Blue Valentine. No one was asking for Roofman. Those were things where I found myself in a story and then you have to get excited about them.

I always feel like making movies is like the energy source. It’s the sun. When I see an energy source that I’m attracted to, I start orbiting it. And my job is to pay so much attention to it that other people start to pay attention to it as well, because you can’t do it alone.

It’s not like being a painter or a writer. You can write all by yourself, but to be a filmmaker, you need so many people. It costs so much money and there’s so many different elements involved.

That process has not changed at all for me. Roofman, Brother Tied, Blue Valentine—every movie I’ve ever made is pretty much the same. What has happened to me, though, is actors like Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams believed in me—and because they believed in me, with the performances they delivered in Blue Valentine—that meant other actors would then trust me. And so, I think a definition of my work has really been about the quality, the vulnerability and the courage of the performances.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alumnus Derek Cianfrance (right) praises the vulnerability and courage of the performances from actors with whom he's worked (including Kirsten Dunst, left, in Roofman).

I don’t want to say I’ve arrived as a director, but that’s been the thing that allowed me to make the films that I’ve been able to make. Without my actors, I’m nothing.

Question: Today, what attracts you to a movie project?

Cianfrance: Family stories. Movies feel voyeuristic—about secrets, flaws and relationships. I’m interested in impossible choices and consequences. My films reflect my life: Blue Valentine came from being a child watching my parents’ marriage; Roofman reflects on being a father.

Question:Can you name a creative decision that you made as a director that scared you at the time but that you’re proud of now?

Cianfrance: Roofman, as a whole. It pushed me out of my comfort zone—I aimed for a tone that was sad and sweet, not just dark. It was terrifying but rewarding.

Question:If you had unlimited resources and no commercial expectations, what kind of movie would you make?

Cianfrance: Honestly, I’ve had that once, with HBO’s I Know This Much Is True. But limitations often create magic. Throwing money at problems isn’t always good.

Question:Are there any film genres you’d still like to explore?

Cianfrance: Horror. That’s how I got into movies—Creepshow was my first VHS obsession. Horror allows limitless experimentations in form. That excites me. You can go anywhere with a horror movie.

Question:If you could give two or three bullet points of advice for today’s �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder film students, what would it be?

Cianfrance: Stay close to your friends. Help each other make things—you can’t do it alone. Get comfortable with rejection—it’s 99% of the process, so learn from it without losing your voice. And have a life—movies about movies aren’t enough.

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

On campus on Wednesday for a screening of his movie Roofman, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder alum Derek Cianfrance praises the professors who mentored him and talks about what motivates him today as a filmmaker.

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Top photo: Derek Cianfrance (right, baseball cap) on the set of Roofman with actor Channing Tatum (in orange). (All photos courtesy Derek Cianfrance)

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