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Undergraduate Isabella Perrin named 2026 Cech Fellow

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 23:12:39 +0000

Undergraduate Isabella Perrin named 2026 Cech Fellow Rachel Sauer Wed, 06/03/2026 - 17:12

The newly established fellowship, named in honor of �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Professor Thomas Cech, gives students opportunities for research, professional mentorship and career exploration

Isabella Perrin, a �鶹��Ѱ�� undergraduate student studying molecular, cellular and developmental biology and public health, has been selected as one of 176 inaugural Cech Fellows by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

The fellowship, awarded to an inaugural cohort of undergraduates from 109 institutions in 36 states and territories, is named in honor of Nobel laureate Thomas Cech, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder distinguished professor of biochemistry, former HHMI president and current HHMI investigator.

The Cech Fellows will spend nine weeks conducting this summer conducting hands-on research with HHMI scientists at universities and research institutions across the country, as well as at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus in Virginia. They will contribute to research while gaining professional mentorship and exploring potential careers in biological and biomedical research.

"I’ve always believed that getting students into real research environments early is one of the most powerful things we can do for them and for science,” said Cech. “I’m deeply honored that this program carries my name, and I look forward to seeing what this first cohort of Fellows will go on to achieve.”

Leslie Vosshall, HHMI vice president and chief scientific officer, noted that a single summer in the right lab can kickstart a scientific career: “By asking real questions alongside scientists at the top of their fields, this year’s Cech Fellows will have the opportunity to see what a life in science actually looks like.”

Perrin, who is working with researchers at the University of California Berkeley this summer on immunology research about the pathways and mechanisms that relate to autoimmune and inflammatory disorders, has previously conducted RNA research with Robin Dowell, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, and Mary Ann Allen, a research associate professor with the BioFrontiers Institute.

“As a Cech Fellow, I’m honored and excited to join a diverse community with engaging and curiosity-filled science research,” Perrin says. “I value this opportunity not only to learn from mentors and peers about how to conduct meaningful research but also to engage in research that, at its core, is based in bettering individuals’ quality of life.

“I hope to learn and use new skills to contribute to the field in a rigorous manner, and to use a creative mindset to approach challenging questions. I love learning about the capabilities and quirks of the immune system and am thrilled to be a part of a lab that focuses on applying this work to human health conditions.”

Summer research experiences are “often where undergraduates discover their passion for scientific inquiry,” said Joshua Hall, HHMI lead senior director and scientific program officer at HHMI. “The Cech Fellows Program gives talented students direct access to some of the most exciting science happening anywhere in the country, and we’re thrilled to welcome this inaugural cohort.”

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The newly established fellowship, named in honor of �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Professor Thomas Cech, gives students opportunities for research, professional mentorship and career exploration.

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�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder debuts $33.5 million renovation to general chemistry labs

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 14:45:03 +0000

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder debuts $33.5 million renovation to general chemistry labs Rachel Sauer Tue, 06/02/2026 - 08:45

The recently completed project increases the number of labs from 12 to 14 and includes a multitude of modernization and safety improvements

The �鶹��Ѱ�� Department of Chemistry recently debuted a new suite of general chemistry teaching labs in the Ekeley Sciences Building, part of a $33.5 million renovation project.

While Ekeley has had some updates over the years, the building was originally constructed in 1898, and the general chemistry spaces needed many improvements related to modernization, eco-conscious updates and safety optimization, said Chris Marelli, director of the general chemistry teaching labs. Funding for the project came from a mix of sources including the President’s Initiative, campus cash reserves and bond debt.

Students participate in a chemistry class in one of the newly renovated lab spaces.

Designed with both functionality and flexibility in mind, these updated lab spaces blend advanced technology with intentional design, Marelli said. Technological upgrades include a video calling system that allows graduate teaching assistants a direct line to lab staff during emergencies, updated engineering controls for improved safety, new HVAC systems for increased air flow and new touch-control fume hoods for improved safety. Additionally, new lighting and new A/V systems with projectors and screens or widescreen TVs replaced chalkboards. These new A/V technologies bring more state-of-the-art teaching into the labs, Marelli said.

The addition of wheelchair-accessible workstations in seven labs creates spaces that are both adaptable and inclusive, while collaborative workstations further support active learning, Marelli said. Three adjacent help rooms were also added, which can be configured as separate spaces or combined into a larger instructional area to accommodate varying instructional needs.

“All of the remodeling was completed with the goal of creating a better learning experience for students,” Marelli said. “These updated facilities will benefit not just our chemistry majors but all arts and sciences students who enroll in an undergraduate chemistry lab.”

To support the goal of making hands-on general chemistry learning accessible to such a wide student population, the number of general chemistry labs was increased from 12 to 14 during the renovation, thanks to creative spatial redesigns, Marelli said. The renovation prioritized efficient usage of the existing building footprint while widening hallways for safer pedestrian traffic patterns during class changeover periods, relocating the three help rooms and integrating better storage solutions into the lab spaces.

“We were at maximum capacity in our labs before; we can now accommodate an additional 400 students, allowing room for us to continue to grow our program moving forward,” Marelli said. The renovated labs will be able to accommodate an additional 1,000 students each year, he added.

Construction on the renovated lab spaces began in December 2025 and was spearheaded by Adolfson & Peterson Construction (A&P). Marelli and two of the general chemistry lab coordinators, Avery Hatch and Estrella Lastre, participated in meetings with A&P to provide insight into how students would use the lab spaces and helped guide project decisions for the renovation.

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The recently completed project increases the number of labs from 12 to 14 and includes a multitude of modernization and safety improvements.

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Some still like it hot

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Some still like it hot Rachel Sauer Mon, 06/01/2026 - 07:00

Cody DeBos

On what would have been her 100th birthday, Marilyn Monroe still defies the image society gave her, says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder film historian Clark Farmer

Platinum blond hair framing red lips parted just so. A white skirt flapping over the grate of a subway. Her image, the portrait of 1950s Americana, is instantly recognizable.

Marilyn Monroe, born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926, died at age 36. Today, a century after her birth, Marilyn Monroe remains one of the most iconic stars in American cultural history.

But how well do we actually know her? More importantly, what does it mean that we know the image so much better than the woman beneath?

Clark Farmer, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder assistant teaching professor in the Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts, encourages students to look closer at film and the cultural machinery responsible for our favorite on-screen stories.

Clark Farmer, an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Cinema Studies and Moving Image Arts at the �鶹��Ѱ��, has spent his career teaching students to look closer at film and the cultural machinery responsible for our favorite on-screen stories.

On what would be Monroe’s 100th birthday, Farmer offers a nuanced perspective of her mythos.

A star is built

The Monroe the world knows was as much discovered as she was constructed. When Norma Jeane entered the film business in 1946, the Hollywood studio system was already adept at creating personalities for its stars.

“Studios had a vast machinery to manufacture personas for their actors, but the performers were able to contribute to the process,” Farmer says.

That was something Monroe took seriously. She collaborated with her personal makeup artist, Allan “Whitey” Snyder, to develop the signature look she debuted in Niagara.

“This is the look that people who have never seen a Monroe film still recognize. The look immortalized in Andy Warhol’s silkscreens,” Farmer says.

Of course, studios also controlled which roles stars were cast in, giving them an outsized say in how they were seen. From the start, Monroe was handed “dumb blonde” parts and spent years fighting to be seen as something more.

More than glamour

Hollywood had no shortage of glamorous women before Monroe arrived on set and has had no shortage since. Rita Hayworth set hearts alight and Betty Grable smiled her way onto wartime pinups.

However, when Monroe broke through in 1953, starring in Niagara, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire, the cultural shock was palpable. That same December, the first issue of Playboy hit newsstands with Monroe starring in its centerfold.

“She wasn’t simply glamorous or alluring,” Farmer says. “She was sexuality personified.”

Unlike earlier Hollywood sirens who projected power and control, Monroe came across unguarded, almost innocent.

“Monroe seemed softer and more vulnerable, even to some extent damaged. Men might project on to her fantasies of an unthreatening partner who didn’t demand anything from them,” Farmer says of the way Monroe’s sexuality was coded.

That image only deepened her allure. After her untimely death, the idea of Monroe as a beautiful victim became a permanent part of her star persona.

During the 1950s, though, her status as the “ultimate sex symbol” was cemented in the zeitgeist. It was widely accepted during a time when cultural gender roles were incredibly narrow.

A year after her death in 1962, the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique would help launch second-wave feminism. This was the start of an evolution in how society viewed Monroe and helped pave the way for wider appreciation of the actress, not just the image.

“I think that the true legacy of Monroe is in her performances, where you can see her as a great talent that transcends just being an image,” says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder film historian Clark Farmer. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

“I think it is a better world where a woman isn’t reduced to being just sex and nothing else, and we can instead see their sexuality as part of their complete humanity,” Farmer says.

The actress behind the archetype

While studios and many fans were content to enjoy the eye candy, Farmer is quick to point out the seriousness with which Monroe approached her craft. From 1947, she trained in Method acting, first at the Actors' Laboratory Theater and later at Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio in New York.

Her 1956 film Bus Stop, filmed under a new contract that gave her more creative control, was a turning point. Monroe took on an Ozark accent and stripped away her signature glamour to deliver a performance that garnered a positive critical reception for her acting chops rather than her looks.

However, Farmer says dramatic work wasn’t where Monroe’s talent was greatest. He suggests comedy was where her star shined brightest.

“Critics and audiences often underestimate how much skill goes into comic acting,” Farmer says. “In part because ‘serious’ acting is associated with dramatic roles. But playing a ‘dumb blonde’ who secretly isn’t so dumb is actually very challenging.”

In films like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot, Farmer sees an actress using irony, comedic timing and quiet intelligence to subvert the stereotypes she’s performing.

“Today I think we recognize the immense skill in her comic roles,” he says.

A lasting image

More than six decades after her death, Monroe’s image has grown only more vivid. That is no accident.

“James Dean and Marilyn Monroe are encased in the amber of film at the moment of their peak popularity. We don’t have to let a pesky thing like aging get in the way of fantasizing about them,” Farmer says. “Monroe will never be older than 36.”

Earlier Hollywood sex symbols didn’t fare as well. Many saw their stars rise and fall with their eras. Others found themselves embroiled in controversy, forever tarnishing once glamourous personas.

Monroe’s untimely death froze her popularity at its height, and her image would go on to inspire everyone from Madonna to a generation of filmmakers who never met her.

Still, most people, including the students in Farmer’s classes, know Monroe’s image from a distance, but have never actually watched her work.

“They are often surprised by her singing ability, her comic timing, and her obvious intelligence,” Farmer says.

On Monroe’s 100th, perhaps the most fitting tribute is to not just admire the icon, but to watch her films with greater appreciation for the woman smiling behind the cherry lipstick.

“I think that the true legacy of Monroe is in her performances,” Farmer says, “where you can see her as a great talent that transcends just being an image.”

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On what would have been her 100th birthday, Marilyn Monroe still defies the image society gave her, says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder film historian Clark Farmer.

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Live from the Octagon with Michel Jarjour

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 26 May 2026 18:48:54 +0000

Live from the Octagon with Michel Jarjour Rachel Sauer Tue, 05/26/2026 - 12:48

Kayleigh Wood

Undergraduate student balances passion for high-risk combat sports with neuroscience studies, aiming to make mixed martial arts safer for all fighters

Michel Jarjour knows what it’s like to love something that could hurt him. Even after years of avid mixed martial arts (MMA) fandom, the third-year undergraduate student at the �鶹��Ѱ�� still finds the UFC scary. “You look at these fights, and they’re getting kicked and punched to the head. It’s terrifying.”

Though an active participant himself in both Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Muay Thai at the �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder Rec Center, Jarjour insists that a career in professional fighting is off the table. “You’re putting your body through hell and back. You’re taking so much damage,” says Jarjour. “I’m not willing to give my life to that… My brain is a little important [to me].”

A junior on the pre-health track, Jarjour is pursuing a degree in neuroscience with minors in Spanish, sports media and biochemistry. He balances his studies and involvement in the Miramontes Arts and Sciences Program with his passion for high-risk combat sports, which he shares with listeners in a live monthly radio show on Radio 1190, Join the Octagon. “There is something so beautiful, something so adrenaline-based about the live commentary that I absolutely love,” he says.

Michel Jarjour is a rising senior on the pre-health track, pursuing a degree in neuroscience with minors in Spanish, sports media and biochemistry. (Photo: Michel Jarjour)

Beyond the octagon

Since Fall 2024, Jarjour’s radio show has covered main card, pay-per-view UFC events that occur roughly once a month. In January, the UFC removed traditional pay-per-view events and ended its partnership with ESPN, relocating its live broadcasts to the streaming service Paramount+. Jarjour shares that these changes have led to scheduling disruptions that have put Join the Octagon on a temporary pause. “It’s unfortunate,” he says, “and it’s also made me recognize that I want to do more with the Join the Octagon brand.”

Jarjour credits the leadership skills he has gained as director of �鶹��Ѱ��GOLD with helping him guide Join the Octagon in new, expanded directions. �鶹��Ѱ��GOLD, which stands for “Gaining Opportunities through Leadership Development,” is a free leadership development program that is open to all �鶹��Ѱ��students. Beyond events and conferences, the program provides both introductory and advanced leadership courses.

After leading a group of over fifteen people at �鶹��Ѱ��GOLD, Jarjour says he is confident that he can effectively manage a team and delegate tasks. With a recently assembled team of like-minded volunteers tackling everything from marketing to betting analysis to social media, an official Join the Octagon website is now under construction, and plans for a research-backed podcast are in the works.

With the new, extended platform, Jarjour strives explore UFC events through the lens of his others passions: “I would love to combine my love for neuroscience with my love for UFC and MMA, and the best way I’m going to that is either by have a conversation [and] putting it into the show, the podcast, the radio show, social media, whatever, and [then], by becoming a sports neurologist.”

'I want to become a sports neurologist'

The UFC, which was founded in 1993, is still a relatively new organization. For MMA fighters, medical practitioners and combat sports enthusiasts alike, growing fears parallel the growing awareness of the long-term effects of brain damage.

Jarjour, who has been tuned into the UFC for years, addresses the difficulty of watching a former MMA fighter’s health deteriorate in real time: “You can just tell [something is wrong by] the way they’re talking and acting, and it’s scary… UFC fans are seeing [the] news and are generally worried.”

As a sports neurologist, Jarjour says he hopes to help UFC fighters recover from persistent symptoms associated with traumatic brain injuries. While some medical doctors for the UFC serve ringside, making calls on whether a fighter is stable enough to compete and continue a fight, Jarjour stresses that his pursuits transcend octagon-side intervention.

“It’s not just a split-[second] decision that I want to make. It’s an ‘I want to be able to be in your life and help you out and make sure that you’re living a long and healthy life’ [kind of thing].”

Michel Jarjour rappels down the side of a skyscraper. (Photo: Michel Jarjour)

In addition to his interest in sports neurology, Jarjour is minoring in Spanish, with the hope of connecting with more of his patients on a deeper level: “I would love to be a Spanish-speaking doctor who can help not only English-speaking patients, but also immigrants from Hispanic countries and Latino countries, to be able to make them feel more comfortable throughout the entire medical process.”

While Jarjour says his interest in the medical field in general began in middle school, the choice to pursue higher education was solidified in the summer after his senior year of high school. In the middle of the night, he recounts waking up to a knock at the door and the sight of his distressed neighbor. “[I’d] never interacted with her in my life,” he says, “but she’s clearly in a state of panic, and she’s like, help. Please, help. My husband is on the ground, I have no idea what to do… so I go over to the house, call 911, make sure that he’s comforted, okay and breathing and all that.”

Around twelve hours after the paramedics arrived to take Jarjour’s neighbor to the hospital for treatment, Jarjour and his mom went to check in. He recounts that moment in the hospital: “I sit down with him and talk with him for a while, and I hear about his life story and the experience and all that. And then a few weeks later, I go to his house, and I find out that he's been consistently going to the hospital ever since that moment, and [he] told me that he trusted me more than the doctors that he's been going and talking to. And I told him, well, you still need to trust your doctors. I'm not a doctor. Don't listen to me entirely. Go listen to the medical professionals.

“But at the same time, there was something about that. He basically said that I'm taking the time to listen to him and connect with him and understand what he's going through, and the fact that he said that– [it] was the last, final pillar that I needed to reassure myself, especially before going into university, a big, pivotal moment of my life, it was the last pillar that reassured me that medicine was for me.”

A surge of adrenaline

In high school, Jarjour spent two years on the Arapaho Rescue Patrol, a team of volunteer high-school students that responds to emergency calls in the Front Range. While Jarjour says the patrol teaches very basic medical knowledge, on that night when his neighbor was in need, it was more than helpful.

“I found myself realizing consistently that the medical component of the patrol was one of, if not my favorite, part of the patrol,” says Jarjour. “I love the rescuing; I love the searching. I love the hiking and camping and all that. But the medical component was always what drew me in.”

Beyond helping others through medical intervention, he admits that he loves the adrenaline rush. “I think I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie… Any time that [search and rescue] alarm goes off, you are just pumped with adrenaline, and it’s something I’ve always appreciated.”

Michel Jarjour (front, black cap) with colleagues recording a program for Radio 1190. (Photo: Michel Jarjour)

That ability to respond to pressure at a moment’s notice has been essential for his duties as an RA. In his experience, Jarjour has found that “a lot of people don’t like the ‘responding to incidents’ component of the position because it’s stressful, it’s tiring. You know, it could be the middle of the night, and you don’t want to be doing that.” Yet Jarjour says he appreciates the call to action: “I love [getting] the phone call… there’s something going on, please respond. I do appreciate that adrenaline rush. And, obviously, I want to make sure everyone’s safe. I’m not wishing for anyone’s downfall… I do like helping people out. It’s a very fundamental value of mine, just helping people out. And so, that’s what I’ve loved about the RA position–I’ve been able to do that.

“I’ve responded to poop on the floor, I’ve responded to residents vomiting, I’ve responded to people dead in the mountains. Especially since I want to be a doctor, I’m probably going to see the worst of the worst issues.”

'My love, my life, my hobby'

A key to navigating his very full calendar and the high-intensity situations to which he is drawn has been an awareness of and care for his mental health. “One thing that I tell people when they ask me (how I do it) is, find your Thing.” For Jarjour, the one activity that makes it all work for him is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. “I’ve been doing it for 11 years of my life, and it is [the Thing]. It’s never going to end. I tell myself all the time,” says Jarjour, “Jiu-Jitsu is the one thing that I will do until the day I die. It’s my love, it’s my life, it’s my hobby.”

A hobby with risks…

At the age of 11, during a practice with the adult class, Jarjour learned how risky. “Someone rolled me, placed my hand on the mat, just [acting on] instincts, and crack, crack, crack.”

The aftermath was four broken fingers on his right hand, which he recalls were “floppy” and extremely painful. Yet, after about four months of healing, Jarjour was back in the gym with his parents’ full support: “I’ve just been a very athletic and energetic kid my entire life… [my parents] never really told me, like, hey, you’re not going back. They loved the community; they loved the gym.”

With support from his parents, Jarjour continued to immerse himself in Jiu-Jitsu: “The beauty of Jiu-Jitsu,” says Jarjour, “is that you think you learn it, you know a technique, and you know all there is behind one position and then boom, there’s about 700 million other techniques just for that one position alone. And then you find out there’s hundreds of positions that you can be in.” He likens the sport to a game of chess: “You have to be able to move your piece, know what each move could do, and at the same time, predict what your opponent’s going to do.”

These mental gymnastics happen every moment throughout a fight. Yet, within the confines of the controlled, regulated gym space, Jarjour finds the high-intensity sport relieving: “I’ve gone back through my middle school and high school years, [and] all that stress would have really put a toll on my mental health, as well as the fact that I’ve gone through traumatic events, tough moments with the patrols, for example, all of these super high-stress, impacting events. And the reason why I am able to sit in front of you right now, and [say], I’m more than okay and I’m happy in life is because I found my Thing.”

He adds that it may be the sport, it may be the community, it may be a blend between the two, “but I know for a fact that I will never leave that sport because of how much it’s impacted my life. I’ve walked into the gym, and I felt terrible. I’ve walked in saying I don’t want to go. I’ve walked in with tears in my eyes. I’ve walked in having experienced–I’ll get real with you for a second–a school shooting, and I’ve come out every time from those experiences feeling so much better.”

How does he do it?

In his own words, Michel Jarjour’s “system is systeming.” From hosting a radio show to directing �鶹��Ѱ��GOLD to peer mentoring for both the Miramontes Arts and Sciences Program (MASP) and the math department, not to mention responding to incidents around the clock as an RA and much, much more, it is fair to wonder if Jarjour sleeps at all. Here are just a few of the things that work for him:

Giving yourself grace

Jarjour stresses that comparison is unproductive: “Don’t compare yourself to me, and the reason I say that is because we all have different limitations. We all have our limits. We all have our aspirations, goals, values, etc., and that is a huge determinant on what you should be doing and how much you should be doing.”

Google Calendar

“People look at my Google Calendar and have a heart attack,” says Jarjour, and, yes, his Google Calendar is an explosion of overlapping color at seemingly all available hours of every single day, but it’s a system, it’s reliable and it works for him.

“It’s even like, if I literally just need to shoot [someone] an email, I will put it in my Google Calendar. [If] I need to call someone, put it in my Google Calendar… I have every single thing that I can possibly need to know in that Google Calendar, so that way, I’m always on top of it.”

ANDing

“ANDing is something that �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder actually taught me,” says Jarjour. “The whole concept of ANDing is that you literally take two things, or a couple of things that you’re passionate about, and you bridge the gap between those two. So, for me, that’s neuroscience slash medicine and sports, and that’s why I ANDed them together.”

Jarjour says that many people are already ANDing subconsciously, but finds “when you make it a known thing, you can actually go and seek it a little bit more. . . . Now I know that I can go do these things on a more consistent basis, and it’s allowed me to combine so many of my fields of study, my interests [and] my hobbies.”

Finding your “Thing,” finding a community

For Jarjour, training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is the key to managing his busy lifestyle. He urges others to find the “Thing” that makes it all worth it, one that is tailored to each individual’s personal interests. With so many ways to get involved, Jarjour says it would be impossible for him to champion a single program above the rest. Regardless, whether it’s all things media, music and entertainment at Radio 1190, or what he describes as “the most amazing, tight-knit community I’ve ever been a part of in �鶹��Ѱ��GOLD,” Jarjour remains adamant that mental health flourishes when individuals actively engage with their own communities, pursue personal interests and, as he puts it, find their Thing.

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Undergraduate student balances passion for high-risk combat sports with neuroscience studies, aiming to make mixed martial arts safer for all fighters.

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Top photo: Michel Jarjour leads a �鶹��Ѱ��GOLD activity. (Photo: Michel Jarjour)

‘Every novel is an experience’

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 22 May 2026 12:30:51 +0000

‘Every novel is an experience’ Rachel Sauer Fri, 05/22/2026 - 06:30

Clay Bonnyman Evans

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholar Helmut Müller-Sievers’ recently published book makes the case for a new way of reading—and teaching—novels

Helmut Müller-Sievers has an idea to help reignite students’ interest in taking literature courses: Rather than teaching novels as a source of knowledge, academics should encourage young readers to pay attention to the experience of reading.

“Every experience is novel, and every novel is an experience,” says Müller-Sievers, professor of Germanic and Slavic languages and literature at the �鶹��Ѱ��.

“Every experience is novel, and every novel is an experience,” says �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholar Helmut Müller-Sievers.

In his new book The Novel Experience (Cornell University Press, 2026), Müller-Sievers follows the lead of three thinkers with “radical” notions about experience—the third-century Mahāyāna Buddhist monk Nāgārjuna;19th-century philosopher and psychologist William James; and19th-century German philosopher and writer Friedrich Nietzsche—and draws on his own experiences of reading.

“Fewer and fewer people are taking literature courses. We foolishly try to counter this loss by emphasizing what kind of knowledge students get from reading,” he says. “Because we are so focused on knowledge, we eliminate and, in a sense, prohibit the expression of the experience of reading novels.”

What was it like to read the book?

Rather than presenting a novel as something to be interpreted and or critically examined, the idea is to encourage readers to observe and communicate what it was actually like to read the book: Why did they choose the book? How difficult was it? How long did it take? Under what conditions—place, time, surroundings—did they read the book? Were they drawn to or distanced from the different characters? Did they enjoy it? Did anything stick with them when finished? How did the protagonist’s experience relate to their own?

In emphasizing knowledge to the exclusion of experience, the Western academy has promoted “an atrophied, mutilated sense of what experience is,” Müller-Sievers says. “We think there is a self . . . that is predicated on a division between the experiencer and what is experienced. James, Nāgārjuna and Nietzsche are radical critics of that idea.”

“The academy is deeply uncomfortable with the idea that novels should entertain. But entertainment and being entertained are deeply human activities and might even be uniquely human,” says Helmut Müller-Sievers.

Where Western thought from time immemorial has argued that there exist stable, individual human “selves” that go through life almost as if watching a movie, distinct from their own experiences, Buddhist thought argues that separation between consciousness and experience is a delusion.

Müller-Sievers doesn’t dispute that there is knowledge to be found in literature or that it requires knowledge to understand and teach it in certain ways. But focusing almost exclusively on knowledge ignores the primary motivations most people who read novels: experience and entertainment.

“When people who are not academics read a book, they are not primarily interested in knowledge, but rather in partaking of an experience,” he says. “The academy is deeply uncomfortable with the idea that novels should entertain. But entertainment and being entertained are deeply human activities and might even be uniquely human.”

Müller-Sievers sees no contradiction in reading for both knowledge and experience and argues that sharing the experiences of reading with others increases interest and enjoyment.

“So, rather than say, ‘Hey, let’s learn about Thomas Mann,’ it’s ‘Hey, let’s talk about the experience of reading about an experience. We can find common language that makes it exciting,” he says.

Müller-Sievers also sees reading for experience as a “civic virtue.” Humans can never have the experiences of another in the real world, but they can by reading novels. Reading novels can help students become more aware of their singular distinctness from others and their experiences.

And at a time when artificial-intelligence continues to insinuate its way into nearly every aspect of modern life, he detects a clear, inviolable distinction between human and machine intelligence.

“Only humans can have experiences. AI can only imitate experiences by looking back. It always looks back; it has to look back,” he says. “There is no way to distinguish between human and AI knowledge. But we can distinguish between deep human experience and the retroactive intelligence of AI.”

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�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholar Helmut Müller-Sievers’ recently published book makes the case for a new way of reading—and teaching—novels.

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Top photo: Bhautik Patel/Unsplash

Making a political turn in the fight for animal rights

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 21 May 2026 12:30:47 +0000

Making a political turn in the fight for animal rights Rachel Sauer Thu, 05/21/2026 - 06:30

Tiffany Plate

A new journal article by �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder PhD student Dayton Martindale argues that animal rights isn’t just about an absence of suffering—it’s about giving them agency

As a second grader, Dayton Martindale was pretty sure he knew what his career path would look like: He was going to be the host of a show on Animal Planet. It made sense, given how much he enjoyed being around animals and learning about them.

Around that time Martindale also started to understand that humans are mammals, just like many of the animals he loved. “I think that just stuck with me,” he says. “It affected how I looked at animals and saw them as more like myself.”

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder PhD student Dayton Martindale grew up with animals and knew from an early age that he wanted to work to protect them in some way. (Photo: Dayton Martindale)

That was the beginning of a lifetime of philosophical and moral explorations of animal rights, culminating in his current PhD work in environmental studies at the �鶹��Ѱ��. And he’s been especially prolific this year: He’s had six articles published since late 2025, all centered around two themes: How do we view animals as agents who desire their freedom, and how do we treat animal welfare as an object of public and political concern?

One article, which was published in March 2026 in the Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, pushes past the common thought that animal welfare simply means ending the most egregious animal abuses, giving farm animals more space to roam or taking captive animals out of small zoo enclosures—to the point of actually giving animals agency.

“This paper was meant to be a sort of stepping-stone,” says Martindale. “It’s building toward what I want to do for my dissertation, which is to reach conservation practitioners and policymakers and advocates, and to think about how non-human animals’ interests and agency can be listened to in decision-making spaces.”

The argument for agency

Martindale’s article, “Liberty, Equality, Animality: On Freedom and Nonhuman Agency,” was first drafted in his Conceptual Foundations of Environmental Studies class (taught by his advisor Ben Hale).

The argument confronts the question of whether animals care about having free will over their own lives. “In a lot of animal ethics conversations, there's a big focus on reducing animal suffering, without a positive vision of what a good life for animals actually looks like,” says Martindale. “Both in philosophy and in animal behavior and science, there is a lot of evidence that animals have interests in exercising agency and making choices.”

Scholar Dayton Martindale argues that freeing animals from captivity and a life of suffering is just the first step in giving them a good life. (Photo: Pexels)

One of the most common examples of this, Martindale says, is something called “contrafreeloading.” The concept is that many animals prefer to work for food rather than get it freely, and that they like to be actively engaged in their surroundings.

Contrafreeloading has been studied in a wide range of species—from dogs to chickens to human children—showing that they will often ignore a free bowl of food and instead choose to complete a task to get that food, Martindale says. “Scientists interpret this as there being some reward in doing the task itself.”

Martindale cites another study, in which researchers monitored giant pandas’ stress levels when they were confined to an exhibit area or given the choice to move between the exhibit or a private enclosure. “When the pandas had more freedom to move—even if they mostly stayed in the exhibit—just knowing they could move around reduced their stress levels,” Martindale says.

Experiments in other species show that other controls, like being able to change the lights in their enclosure, or to choose the order in which they completed a task, also seemed to make them calmer and happier, he says.

“I think there are limits on what can be accomplished in a zoo, especially for larger species,” says Martindale. “But what’s interesting about the framework in this paper is that it can provide a long-term aspiration—of no enclosures, or no cages at all—but it also can guide shorter term, small actions, whether in a zoo or in my house.”  

One way Martindale puts it into action in his own home is by delivering food to his shelter mutt, Geo, in a puzzle feeder, which requires him to work for his meals. Martindale also often lets Geo choose their route on a walk or takes him to parks and open spaces where he can be off leash.

Dayton Martindale and dog Geo take advantage of all of Boulder’s hiking trails, like this one in Eldorado Canyon State Park, but they especially appreciate areas where Geo has more freedom to roam off leash through the city’s Voice and Sight Program. (Photo: Dayton Martindale)

“What’s interesting is he's way better behaved off leash than on,” says Martindale. “On leash he’s always pulling. But off leash he can go sniff where he wants, but he'll also turn around whenever I call his name in a way that he doesn’t when he’s on a leash.” It’s almost as if Geo is reciprocating the respect Martindale is showing him by giving him his freedom.

A shift in the movement

The themes of the article parallel what Martindale describes as a “political turn” in the animal rights discussion in the last 15 years. Activists are now exploring how to establish institutions and infrastructure that can give animals, including wildlife and domestic pets, more agency.

“Traditionally, a lot of animal ethics was saying, ‘here's why you shouldn't eat meat, and why we shouldn't test on animals, and here's why we shouldn't have zoos,’” Martindale says, adding that 50 years of telling people to be vegan has had somewhat limited success. “The political turn is saying: That's all great, but what are the institutions that societies need to either achieve these goals or represent animals in some way?”

Martindale cites Boulder’s Voice and Sight Program, as well as its off-leash dog parks, as a good example of how we can institutionally support animal agency. Another instance, he says, is the New York City Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare, which administers programs that encourage co-habitation with wildlife or promote humane solutions for reducing community cat populations.

He hopes that his writing, both academic and non-academic, might reach policymakers who plan urban spaces for dogs, relax leash laws or even install wildlife crossings over busy highways.

Putting action into practice

Currently in the third year of his PhD studies, Dayton recently defended his prospectus, which will cover ethical and political relationships with wild animals.

Prior to his PhD work, Martindale spent years working as a journalist and writer, exploring the intersection of animal rights, politics and the environment. Post doctorate, he’s hoping he can continue writing in the area of policy or advocacy work. “I love all this research, but I want it to feel connected to, informed by and relevant to social change.”

“I think animals are really interesting, intellectually, philosophically and scientifically. But that's not why I'm in this. It’s because trillions of them are tortured and killed every year. And because humans are animals too, and our own well-being on this planet is tied up in sharing it well.”

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A new journal article by �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder PhD student Dayton Martindale argues that animal rights isn’t just about an absence of suffering—it’s about giving them agency.

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Scholars apply economic analysis to ecological research

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 20 May 2026 21:25:35 +0000

Scholars apply economic analysis to ecological research Rachel Sauer Wed, 05/20/2026 - 15:25

Rachel Sauer

In research published today, recent PhD graduate Asia Kaiser details how synthetic control methods estimated significant declines in bee observations when traditional analyses didn’t

Since it launched in 2008 as a UC Berkeley student’s master's project, the iNaturalist platform has been a source of both fascination and frustration for researchers.

The hundreds of millions of observations about the natural world logged by both professional and citizen scientists around the globe are a treasure trove of information about biodiversity. But is that data usable in research? The prevailing sentiment has veered toward doubt, skepticism or an outright “no.”

“I think the feeling has been, ‘Oh, because this data is just being collected opportunistically by nature enthusiasts and not in a standardized, rigorous way, it can’t be used in scientific research,’” says Asia Kaiser, who earlier this month earned her PhD in the �鶹��Ѱ�� Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. “If you haven’t planned out data collection in advance, a lot of researchers hesitate to use it.”

Recent PhD graduate Asia Kaiser studied how synthetic control methods estimated significant declines in bee observations when traditional analyses didn’t.

There had to be a way, Kaiser thought, to tap into the vast cache of information logged into iNaturalist without sacrificing scientific rigor, especially data collected in urban environments. The answer, it turned out, lay in economics.

In research published today, Kaiser and co-authors Julian Resasco and Laura Dee, both associate professors of ecology and evolutionary biology, detail how combining iNaturalist records with synthetic control methods, originally used in economics, estimated a significant decline in bee observations in Philadelphia during the two years following Hurricane Ida in 2021, while conventional ecological analyses didn’t detect the decline.

“Basically, the inspiration for this project was thinking about causal inference in ecology,” Kaiser explains. “When we have observational data, can we actually use that to ask questions about drivers of biodiversity?”

‘You can’t just go into people’s backyards’

These questions dovetailed neatly with Kaiser’s research focus, which is bees—specifically, how human land use affects different insect groups and, consequently, the ecosystem services they provide in coupled human-natural systems. Among her research aims is understanding biodiversity in urban environments, improving the resilience of urban agroecosystems, increasing equitable access to fresh produce and promoting environmental justice in cities.

However, monitoring biodiversity and evaluating drivers of change in urban environments is confounded by several issues: “Cities are mosaics of land-use types, including parks, private properties, buildings, roads and industrial zones,” Kaiser writes in the paper. “As a result, sampling efforts can be complicated by permission and safety issues, and leaving unattended sampling equipment in the field brings a higher risk of theft, tampering and vandalism in cities.

“Given these challenges, measuring biodiversity in cities requires different tools and data streams than those used in natural ecosystems. Participatory science data is a promising solution for monitoring biodiversity in cities; cities are the land use type with some of the highest upload volumes of data to participatory science platforms, largely because upload frequency is strongly influenced by population density.”

Despite the abundance of participatory science data in platforms like iNaturalist, researchers have hesitated to draw from it, relying instead on randomized, controlled and replicable experiments to identify and estimate causal relationships. That kind of science, Kaiser says, becomes more difficult in urban environments due to sampling challenges and historical legacies that shape different neighborhoods, among other reasons.

“If you’re studying a natural area, you could get a permit and go sample all over, but you can’t do that in a city,” Kaiser says. “Even if you get a permit, you can’t just go into people’s backyards.”

The idea of how to bridge the gap between the abundance of iNaturalist data logged in urban areas and the rigor expected in scientific research came to Kaiser when she was assigned to watch a lecture given by a Nobel laureate in economics. The lecture topic was synthetic control methods, which originated in economics as a way to create a nonexistent control group that allows for comparisons between real-world groups before and after an event or intervention.

One of the most famous uses of synthetic control methods in economics was in estimating the impact of Germany’s reunification after the fall of the Berlin Wall on the gross domestic product (GDP) of western Germany. Economists created a “synthetic” Germany from economic data to study GDP with and without reunification.

Though synthetic control methods hadn’t been widely used in ecology research, “I thought it could be adopted with iNaturalist data,” Kaiser explains. She was further interested in studying the effects of Hurricane Ida on her home city of Philadelphia, which included significant flooding.

“If you’re studying a natural area, you could get a permit and go sample all over, but you can’t do that in a city. Even if you get a permit, you can’t just go into people’s backyards,” explains �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scientist Asia Kaiser about the challenges of ecological research in urban areas. (Photo: Sandy Millar/Unsplash)

“Even though it didn’t have a huge impact on people per se, the effects of the hurricane were really dramatic. Looking at the water levels, the stream gauges had their highest values ever in the 100 years that they’ve been measuring. My feeling was that would have a pretty big impact on bees, because if you look at bee biodiversity, bees are pretty sensitive to precipitation and water. The ones that nest in the ground are really affected by huge flooding events.”

Declines following a hurricane

To apply synthetic control methods to ecological research, Kaiser and her colleagues drew data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, which collects research-grade iNaturalist data—that which includes, among other points, latitude and longitude, collection date and time and correct identification—as a proxy for bee abundance in Philadelphia.

They analyzed for bee population declines and, in addition to synthetic control methods, also performed the more traditional methods of interrupted time series regression, before-after control impact regression and before-after regression.

Kaiser and her colleagues found that synthetic control estimated a 15.5%—20.9% decline in bee observations in the two years following Hurricane Ida. In contrast, the three more common ecological analyses didn’t detect this decline.

“That was an amazing moment, seeing this decline in the data and better understanding how iNaturalist data may be able to help us look at the impact of unusual climate events—things that are happening more and more these days, like huge fires, huge floods, abnormally warm winters,” Kaiser says. “Unless you were already collecting data in a region before, you can’t really see the impact before the event, but synthetic control methods might be able to help us in those situations.”

Kaiser adds that this method also might be useful for looking at the effect of policy interventions. For example, the city of Boulder is establishing pollinator corridors, and Kaiser sees potential in using this method to draw from iNaturalist data in studying the outcomes of these corridors.

Scientists who reviewed the paper expressed excitement and skepticism about using synthetic control methods in ecological research, Kaiser says: “They asked questions about whether or not the decline I’m seeing is a true thing that’s happening or an artifact of the way data has been collected. iNaturalist is very sensitive to observers—wealthy neighborhoods have higher uploads, areas around research universities have higher uploads—but this statistical method can help control for those things.”

Thanks to the professional and citizen scientists gathering data and sharing it on iNaturalist, Kaiser says she sees potential to apply synthetic control methods to a range of ecological research. For example, “using the bee biodiversity that’s collected on iNaturalist, does that correlate with how well flowers are being pollinated? I think that’s something we’ll be able to study.”

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In research published today, recent PhD graduate Asia Kaiser details how synthetic control methods estimated significant declines in bee observations when traditional analyses didn’t.

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Top photo: Aaron Burden/Unsplash

Is it temple robbery? That depends on who is doing the taking

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 18 May 2026 19:15:43 +0000

Is it temple robbery? That depends on who is doing the taking Rachel Sauer Mon, 05/18/2026 - 13:15

Bradley Worrell

New book from �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholar Isabel Köster examines temple robbery and the ancient Roman politics of moral blame

Ancient Romans often plundered temples in their wars of conquest—sometimes openly and with astonishing scale. Large statues and famous works of art were carried away from foreign lands to Rome, treasuries were emptied and sacred spaces were stripped bare.

Yet, despite how frequently these robberies occurred, Romans still expressed sharp moral outrage about it—not for the plundering itself, but for particular individuals accused of committing it for the “wrong” reasons.

That contradiction lies at the heart of Stealing from the Gods, the new book by Isabel Köster, a �鶹��Ѱ�� associate professor of classics whose research focus is the history, religion and literature of the Roman Republic and the early Empire. Her book, which has its origins in her PhD dissertation, examines how Roman authors thought about sacred theft, imperial power and moral character.

Isabel Köster, a �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder associate professor of classics, notes that calling someone a temple robber became the ultimate character assassination in ancient Rome.

In a recent interview with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine, Köster discussed who was doing the robbing, explaining why temples were such tempting targets and why calling someone a temple robber became the ultimate character assassination in ancient Rome. Her comments have been lightly edited for style and condensed for space.

Question: How common was temple robbery? Also, who was doing the taking and where was it happening?

Köster: In military contexts, it seems to have been fairly common. However, it was usually not labeled ‘temple robbery’ unless a Roman author wanted to emphasize a character flaw. For everyday thefts—small amounts of money or objects disappearing from sanctuaries—we know very little; our sources simply aren’t interested in that kind of activity.

These weren’t small, anonymous thieves. They were generals, governors and emperors.

Most cases took place in conquered or soon‑to‑be‑conquered territories, especially in Greece and Asia Minor. The few instances we have in Rome itself are associated with periods of civil war.

Question: Why plunder temples?

Köster: In many ancient communities, sanctuaries were essentially the equivalent of banks today. They were often the most heavily fortified places in a town, with solid walls and impressive doors. They were used to store valuables that belonged to the community, such as treasuries, and also private valuables that individuals entrusted to the gods. If you didn’t want to keep something at home, one option was to bring it to a sanctuary and ask the deity to look after it.

So, if you’re conquering territory and need money quickly, temples are a very natural place to go. Especially during long, expensive campaigns far from Rome, some temple plundering was probably inevitable. That’s simply a reality of the economics of ancient warfare.

What’s interesting is how Roman sources frame this. They ask, first of all, who is doing the plundering? If it’s a general with an impeccable reputation who claims to be acting for the good of Rome—funding further war and later returning treasures for public display—then that’s considered acceptable. Nobody criticizes those cases.

But if the person involved already has a reputation for greed or moral failings and is clearly enriching himself, then the same behavior is treated as temple robbery. This distinction allows Roman authors to frame standard warfare practices as fine while isolating blame onto particular individuals.

Question: What kinds of objects were typically taken from temples?

Köster: Generally, the more spectacular, the better. We’re talking about giant statues, large amounts of coinage and especially famous works of art. In some extreme cases, particularly greedy individuals went much further—breaking decorations off doors or removing parts of statues they couldn’t transport. But in general, Roman armies had the logistics to move large items and they took advantage of that.

Despite how frequently temple robberies occurred, ancient Romans still expressed sharp moral outrage about it—not for the plundering itself, but for particular individuals accused of committing it for the “wrong” reasons.

Question: What happened to the plunder once it was taken?

Köster: Some of it was melted down on the spot to generate revenue and pay soldiers. Other objects—especially famous artworks—were selected to be transported back to Rome for triumphs and public display. How those decisions were made and how much was lost is something we simply don’t know.

Question: Was temple plundering technically illegal under Roman law?

Köster: Often, no. Roman law was quite clear on this point: If a sanctuary was not located in Roman territory and its possessions had not been formally consecrated by the Roman people, then legally speaking, taking from it was not considered a temple robbery. A sanctuary in a territory that Rome was about to conquer didn’t necessarily count as a properly sacred space from a Roman legal perspective.

That’s one of the reasons the moral outrage in the literary sources is so interesting. There’s a real disconnect between what was legally permissible and what ancient authors chose to condemn.

Question: If plundering from temples in foreign lands was typically legal, what qualified as temple robbery in Roman eyes?

Köster: That’s the key question, and the answer is: Who did the taking? When Roman authors decide whether something counts as temple robbery, they don’t usually start by asking what was taken or where. They ask who was responsible?

If the person plundering was seen as morally upright and claimed to be acting for the benefit of Rome—funding campaigns, returning treasures for public display—then the act was framed as acceptable.

But if the person already had a questionable reputation, then the exact same behavior became reprehensible. Calling someone a temple robber is character assassination. It’s a way of saying this person is greedy, impious and unfit for power.

Question: How does that distinction help Romans think about their empire more broadly?

Köster: It’s a very clever rhetorical move. Roman imperial conquests inevitably involved violence and the destruction of sacred spaces, but Roman authors didn’t want to portray the entire system as flawed. By framing temple robbery as the failure of a few bad individuals, they could acknowledge harm without accepting collective responsibility.

Thus, it’s not a problem with Roman warfare, according to this logic. It’s a problem with isolated people who can’t behave themselves.

Question: The Roman statesman, philosopher and lawyer Cicero plays a big role in your book. Why are his speeches about temple robbery so important?

Köster: You can’t study temple robbery without Cicero’s speeches against Verres, the former governor of Sicily. Temple robbery is not part of the formal charges against Verres, which focus on corruption, but Cicero devotes enormous attention to attacks on temples because he felt they strengthened his argument.

Cicero clearly felt that these stories helped his case. The logic is: If someone is capable of violating sacred spaces so badly, then of course he’s capable of embezzlement and corruption. Verres becomes the benchmark against which all other temple robbers are measured.

Question: You state in your book that temple robbers become almost caricatures in Roman literature. What do those caricatures look like?

Köster: They’re remarkably consistent. A temple robber is never just someone who steals from temples. They are also accused of murder, torture, illegal enslavement and all kinds of brutality.

"In Rome, accusations of temple robbery were less about protecting the gods and more about defining who belonged and who didn’t."

But what’s really interesting is how often these figures fail at basic ‘Roman-ness.’ They can’t give a good speech. They don’t know how to host a dinner party properly. They dress inappropriately and don’t know how to behave in elite social settings. Despite reaching the top of society, they’re portrayed as outsiders to Roman culture.

Question: Based on available historical records, how many Romans were convicted of temple robbery? Also, what punishments did they face?

Köster: We have no robust evidence for prosecutions for temple robbery—sacrilegium in Latin—during the period I study, nor do we have definitions of the crime or discussions of penalties. In later Christian sources, where sacrilegium signifies a broad range of crimes that diminish the sacred status of someone or something (e.g., blasphemy or insulting the emperor), it is a capital offense. Here it merits the most horrific penalties that the Roman world has to offer, such as throwing people to wild animals for public entertainment. But in pre-Christian Rome, at least in the sources that survive, accusations of temple robbery are not a legal charge, but supporting evidence in other cases.

Question: What roles do the gods themselves play in these Roman narratives? Do they ever punish temple robbers?

Köster: Sometimes. There are dramatic stories of divine punishment: People struck dead, afflicted with disease—even losing their hands while trying to plunder a sanctuary. But those stories are surprisingly rare.

Most of the time, temple robbers get away with it. That raised big questions for me about ancient ideas of divine justice and the reliability of gods as protectors of their own property, which will be the focus of my next major project.

Question: If readers could take one or two ideas away from your book, what would they be?

Köster: That when we encounter moral outrage in ancient sources, we should ask what that work is doing. In Rome, accusations of temple robbery were less about protecting the gods and more about defining who belonged and who didn’t. The first question to ask isn’t ‘what happened?’ It’s ‘who is being accused?’

At its heart, this is a book about insults. And insults tell us what a culture values.

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New book from �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder scholar Isabel Köster examines temple robbery and the ancient Roman politics of moral blame.

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Top image: "The Triumph of Aemilius Paulus" by Carle Vernet, 1789

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 �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder 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 �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder 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 �鶹��Ѱ��, 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, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder 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.

�鶹��Ѱ��Boulder 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 �鶹��Ѱ��. “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, �鶹��Ѱ��Boulder 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

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