Division of Arts and Humanities

Tell us, O muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 22:31:58 +0000

Tell us, O muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide Rachel Sauer Wed, 07/15/2026 - 16:31

Director Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey opens Friday and stars Matt Damon as the titular Odysseus. (Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures)

Rachel Sauer

With Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey opening in theaters Friday, CU �ֲ��ý classics scholar John Gibert considers why Homer’s epic is a tale that endures

The city of Troy likely existed. Scholars and historians broadly agree on this, citing its probable location as the mound of Hisarlık near modern Çanakkale in Turkey at the Aegean end of the Dardanelles, the waterway connecting Greeks and inhabitants of the Black Sea region.

Because of this desirable, strategic location, scholars and historians further agree that it’s likely wars were fought there. What’s much less likely is that a warrior king named Odysseus devised a scheme to build an enormous horse and hide Greek soldiers in it so they could sneak into Troy and win a 10-year war that began when the Trojan prince Paris kidnapped the king of Sparta’s wife, Helen.

Also unlikely: that Odysseus and his crew, on their journey home to Ithaca from Troy, were blown off course for 10 more years, encountering all manner of monsters, temptations and obstacles as punishment for eating the sun god’s cattle.

John Gibert, a CU �ֲ��ý professor of classics, notes that The Odyssey "is infinitely adaptable."

It’s a thrilling story, though, one that’s been told and retold for almost 3,000 years—since the Greek poet Homer (who may or may not have existed) crafted his enduring epic The Odyssey. Friday, Christopher Nolan’s film version of the story opens in theaters, and in explaining to New York Times reporter Melena Ryzik why he tackled such a monumental tale, Nolan commented that “it is the ur-text. It’s in everything I’ve done before.”

Millennia later, The Odyssey still fascinates, thrills and even outrages—students still are assigned to read it, and artists still plumb its 12,100 lines for insights into myth and loyalty and what it means to be human.

Perhaps that’s why we’re still reading it and, in the spirit of its origins, telling it, says John Gibert, a �ֲ��ý professor of classics and scholar of Greek poetry. It’s a story about gods and giants, but it’s also a story about a man trying to return safely to his home and (modest) kingdom.

“The Odyssey is infinitely adaptable,” Gibert says. “It gives storytellers who want to retell it so many options, and no two (retellings) are alike because creatives are always finding different things in the stories that they want to run with.”

‘Tell me about a complicated man’

In her acclaimed 2017 translation of The Odyssey, classist Emily Wilson opens with, “Tell me about a complicated man,” which Nolan has cited in interviews as an inspiration for his $250 million epic.

Wilson’s translation continues:

“Tell the old story for our modern times.

Find the beginning.”

And The Odyssey is a very old story, composed approximately 2,800 years ago and a companion to Homer’s The Iliad.

“Each one of them fills a translation 500 or 600 pages long,” Gibert explains. “So, they're really big works, but The Iliad only tells a slice of the 10th year of the Trojan War—slightly over 50 days, but really with a focus on about three or four days. It's very concentrated, and it's set in a wartime society where the values of warriors are uppermost.

“The Iliad is a kind of proto-tragedy in that it focuses on serious characters engaged in serious actions with large ramifications for the nation. But it is, at the end of the day, a fairly narrow slice of life.”

The Odyssey, on the other hand, follows Odysseus and his crew for 10 years, from a Troy in ruins to the land of the Lotus Eaters to the treacherous passage between Scylla and Charybdis and finally home to Ithaca. They encounter—and often anger—gods and monsters and a witch who turns men to swine, and in the end, only Odysseus makes it home.

Movie poster for Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (Courtesy: Universal Pictures)

From a storytelling perspective, The Odyssey is rich with action and memorable characters and can be read on one level as a rip-roaring adventure. This may stem, in part, from its origins in oral tradition, Gibert says, with storytellers performing it live and adapting it as they went.

“If you look for complete consistency in their storytelling, you will not find it because they’re composing live every time,” Gibert says. “They’ve got a vision of the overall story, but in the details it’s going to differ every single time. So, a lot of Homeric scholars are thinking, ‘A-ha, this is why there's some unevenness in The Iliad and The Odyssey.

“This is also why they have those traditional epithets like ‘swift-footed Achilles’ and ‘circumspect Penelope,’ because deploying a phrase like that buys some time for the performer to think about where he's going next.”

This is also why, in both The Iliad and The Odyssey, there’s description of common things like preparing a meal, taking a bath or performing a ritual sacrifice, Gibert says: “(Performers) had a whole stock of motifs, and they could do that stuff almost on autopilot while they're thinking about shaping the larger storytelling purpose for the occasion that they're currently telling in.”

The oral traditions from which The Odyssey grew also belie the image of a genius who sits with a quill choosing one word at a time until the perfect epic poem spans the papers in front of him—“more or less what Virgil did in Rome centuries later,” Gibert says. “Homer is just something completely different.”

A folktale hero

The Odyssey, then, shares DNA with the sort of tall tales that evolve in their telling. It also presents, in Odysseus, a man who is both hero and human, who is complex and fallible and, in some ways, relatable.

“He is a folktale hero of the man against the sea, the man who has adventures against giants and things like that, so he's a traveling hero and this kind of hero naturally is a magnet for more stories of the same kind,” Gibert says. “You can attach any story to Odysseus, really, because it's plausible that he's the sort of guy that would happen to, and so there’s no limit. He’s a husband returning from war to his wife, and he’s also favored by a goddess who’s smoothing the path for him most of the time.”

And while The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus, is also expands the way that other characters’ stories are told, particularly women’s stories. While women only briefly appear in The Iliad and in small, circumscribed roles, Gibert says, in The Odyssey they’re more varied and complex.

“Of course, their roles are circumscribed, too (in The Odyssey), but there’s just more variety,” Gibert says. “Some of them are monsters; some of them are temptresses, goddesses or figures like the Sirens who can lure sailors to their deaths by singing a seductive song. And then some of them are family members and household members, so you’ve got your mothers, your daughters; you’ve got enslaved people”

In fact, Gibert adds, it is the plight of women and enslaved people with which some of his students have found connection and resonance. He recalls a student reading Book 22 of The Odyssey, in which Odysseus and his son, Telemachus, execute 12 enslaved women who had been assaulted or coerced by Penelope’s suitors, “and she just said, ‘You know what, this is where I quit.’ And she got up and left the classroom,” Gibert recalls.

“That was early in my teaching career and, incidentally, years before Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad (2005), which is more or less built on this scene. It was eye opening for me, and my eyes have stayed open. So, I try to work with (those emotional responses) in the classroom and tell students about how many ways we can think about this text.”

During the fourth semester of the Department of Classics’ Greek program, students read Homer in ancient Greek, developing new lenses through which they can approach both The Iliad and The Odyssey, Gibert says.

And while The Iliad is often regarded as the more profound work, The Odyssey “is going to give you just a much broader palette to paint with,” Gibert says, “with adventure, domesticity, warfare—Odysseus is the one who sealed the deal with the Trojan horse—adventures at sea, shipwrecks, giants. It’s great material for special effects if you're thinking in cinematic terms, but also just in storytelling terms it’s a story that’s still exciting to tell.”

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

With Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey opening in theaters Friday, CU �ֲ��ý classics scholar John Gibert considers why Homer’s epic is a tale that endures .

Traditional

White

Top photo: Matt Damon as Odysseus in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey (Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures)

Beyond Custer’s Last Stand: The forces that led to the Battle of the Little Bighorn

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 23:18:25 +0000

Beyond Custer’s Last Stand: The forces that led to the Battle of the Little Bighorn Rachel Sauer Tue, 07/14/2026 - 17:18

Bradley Worrell

CU �ֲ��ý historians Thomas Andrews and Noah Ramage argue that the seeds of Little Bighorn, which happened 150 years ago, were planted years before Custer’s defeat

The Battle of the Little Bighorn has long occupied a unique place in American memory. Often remembered through images of Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer making a heroic last stand against overwhelming odds, the battle has been mythologized in movies, books and popular culture for nearly 150 years.

But according to �ֲ��ý historians Thomas G. Andrews and Noah Ramage, that familiar story obscures a much larger and more complex reality.

Andrews, faculty director of the Center of the American West, says that rather than a simple clash between the U.S. Army and Native Americans, the battle (which many Indigenous people refer to as the Battle of Greasy Grass) emerged from shifting alliances with Native nations amid a backdrop of competition for territory, economic transformation and mounting pressure on Northern Plains tribes. To understand what happened at the Little Bighorn on June 25-26, 1876, Andrews argues that it is necessary to understand the forces that led up to it.

CU �ֲ��ý historians Thomas G. Andrews (left) and Noah Ramage (right) argue that the seeds of Little Bighorn were planted years before Custer’s defeat.

At the center of the conflict were several Native nations with different histories and interests, some of which allied themselves with the U.S. government while pursuing their own agendas and some of which violently resisted any efforts by the government to dispossess them of their territories. Among that latter group was a coalition led by Lakotas, joined by Northern Cheyennes and smaller numbers of Arapahos.

“Over the course of the 18th and the first part of the 19th century, the Lakotas really become a kind of great power in the Northern Plains,” Andrews explains.

Their rise was fueled largely by horses, which transformed mobility, trade, hunting and warfare. As Lakota influence expanded westward, Andrews says they moved into territories claimed by other tribes, including the Crow and Arikara. Those longstanding rivalries later helped explain why some Native groups chose to align themselves with U.S. forces, he says.

The United States and the Lakotas had already fought before Little Bighorn, Andrews notes. During Red Cloud’s War in the 1860s, the Lakotas and their allies successfully resisted U.S. efforts to establish the Bozeman Trail through their territory.

“They would actually win,” Andrews says. “They ended up winning a favorable treaty from the United States in 1868.”

That treaty guaranteed hunting rights in the Powder River Country and recognized Sioux sovereignty over vast territories. Yet even as the ink dried on the agreement, a confluence of factors was building that would ultimately lead to renewed hostilities, says Ramage, an assistant professor whose research focus is Native American and Indigenous history.

Expansion, gold and a new federal policy

By the mid-1870s, Native nations on the Plains faced enormous pressures. The completion of railroads accelerated western settlement, while Custer’s 1874 expedition into the Black Hills triggered a gold rush into lands protected by treaty, Andrews says.

“You basically had this huge influx of American squatters essentially moving illegally into territories that the government had recognized as sovereign Sioux territory,” he adds.

‘What my great-grandmother saw at Little Bighorn’

For many Americans, the Battle of the Little Bighorn is remembered as “Custer’s Last Stand”—a dramatic clash of armies on a Montana hillside where Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and more than 200 soldiers of the 7th Calvary were killed on June 25, 1876.

For Rick Williams, an Oglala Lakota/Northern Cheyenne Native, historian, Indigenous rights advocate and �ֲ��ý Center of the American West former board member, the battle was never just a chapter in a history book.

It was a story passed down through his family in hushed tones, told by his great-grandmother in her native Lakota and Cheyenne and translated into English for him by his grandmother.

“I’m probably one of the few people living today who has a direct connection with someone who was there,” says Williams. “My great-grandmother was born in 1869 … and she was a little girl in the Cheyenne camp during the Battle of the Little Bighorn; she witnessed what happened.

“Growing up, my grandmother and great-grandmother would tell these stories, but they always warned me not to repeat them. They believed they could still get into trouble, possibly from the public or maybe with the government,” he adds. “Even in the 1950s and 1960s, there was still a fear surrounding (Native American) discussions of what happened at Little Bighorn, because Custer was still revered.”

Learn more

Ramage argues those developments reflected a broader shift in federal policy and attitudes toward Native nations. By this time, Ramage says the federal government was becoming increasingly willing to ignore existing agreements. In 1871, Congress stopped making treaties with Native nations, signaling that Washington increasingly viewed itself as possessing unilateral authority over Indigenous peoples and their lands.

“Instead of negotiating with Indian nations as they had in the past, a very aggressive United States starts to dictate policy to Indian nations,” Ramage says, “partially because it views them as inferior.”

He places the conflict within a broader era of American territorial expansion.

“The United States was incredibly ‘grabby’ at this moment,” he says, comparing events on the Northern Plains to a broader period of aggressive imperial expansion in which the United States seized more than half of Mexico’s territory in 1848 (through a treaty) and the annexation of Hawaii in 1898 (without a treaty).

“The U.S. wants to finally monopolize power in the Northern Plains—and to do that it had to finally overcome Lakota power,” Ramage says. He adds, “This is not a war that starts because of some sort of misunderstanding. The U.S. started this war, and it started it with the explicit aim of subjugating the Lakotas.”

Destruction of the buffalo

At the same time settlers poured westward, Andrews and Ramage say another force threatened the foundations of Plains Indian life: the destruction of the bison.

Buffalo were essential to Native economies and cultures. They provided food, clothing, shelter materials, trade goods and spiritual meaning. But industrialization suddenly transformed buffalo hides into valuable commodities, Andrews says.

In 1871, a tanning process was developed that allowed buffalo hides to be converted into belts for industrial machinery.

“It was really kind of this remarkable, literal harnessing of these massive herds of wild creatures on the Great Plains that suddenly could become industrial inputs driving American economic growth,” Andrews says.

The consequences were devastating, Andrews and Ramage agree. Commercial hunters armed with long-range rifles slaughtered buffalo in enormous numbers.

“They were really just hide hunting at that point,” Andrews explains. “Usually, they were not even taking the tongues off of the buffalo that they killed but just stripping the hides off and leaving the carcasses to rot.”

Ramage and Andrews agree that federal officials understood the significance of what was happening.

“U.S. military leaders recognized how profoundly Plains Natives depended on bison,” Andrews says. “They understood that attacking bison would serve U.S. national interests.”

Reservations and resistance

At the same time buffalo populations were collapsing, the federal government was attempting to force Native peoples onto reservations, which were intended not merely as places to live but as mechanisms of control, Andrews says.

“Their main way of trying to do this was by establishing reservations and by trying to use food, the provision of rations, to control Native peoples,” he says.

Native leaders disagreed over how best to respond. Some believed accommodation offered the best chance for survival. Others argued for continued independence.

Sioux veterans of the Battle of Little Bighorn (Photo: Library of Congress)

Initially, many Native people were willing to try reservation life, Andrews says. However, federal corruption, underfunding and bureaucratic failures made reservation existence increasingly untenable, he adds.

“Native people who tried to comply with what the United States wanted usually ended up starving,” he says.

By the summer of 1876, many Lakotas and Cheyennes had left the reservations and gathered in the Powder River Country, where treaty rights still guaranteed hunting access. What emerged was one of the largest Native encampments ever assembled on the Northern Plains, Ramage says.

The Army marches into disaster

As the U.S. Army moved to force these groups back onto reservations, Custer and the 7th Cavalry advanced toward the encampment, relying heavily on Native scouts for tracking.

While those scouts reported that it was the largest gathering of Native peoples that anyone had ever witnessed, Andrews says U.S. commanders failed to grasp the true size of the force they faced. On the fateful day of battle, Custer’s detachment of 7th Cavalry members encountered thousands of Native combatants rather than the few hundred they anticipated, he notes.

“The Americans had so badly underestimated what they were up against,” he says.

Ramage argues that this failure extended beyond Custer himself.

“Little Bighorn was arguably an intelligence failure for the United States as a whole—not just Custer,” he says. He blames federal officials for consistently underestimating Lakota power.

Grave markers at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana. (Photo: Victoria Stauffenberg/National Park Service)

“Many U.S. officials incorrectly assumed they were fighting racial inferiors,” he says. “They were consistently over-confident.”

Defeat at the Little Bighorn

The Battle of the Little Bighorn remains one of the most studied and debated engagements in American history. Andrews cautions that key details remain uncertain because most of Custer’s immediate command died in the fighting.

“We don’t have their perspective, and we never will,” he says.

Historians continue to debate Custer’s decisions and the roles played by subordinates Marcus Reno and Frederick Benteen, both of whom had contentious relationships with their commander.

“Reno and Benteen both despised Custer,” Andrews says.

What is clear is that the Army encountered a vastly larger and more capable force than expected. Native warriors rapidly mobilized from the enormous village and overwhelmed Custer’s detachment of about 200 soldiers. Andrews says he believes the outcome can be attributed in large part to the Cavalry commander’s ego.

“I think really it’s Custer’s arrogance,” he says.

Ramage cautions that focusing solely on tactical mistakes can distract from the larger strategy being pursued by the Army.

“From my perspective,” he says, “there is a way in which focusing on (Custer’s) strategic blunders … seriously overlooks the fact that the ‘successful’ U.S. military strategy at this moment was often defined by horrific attacks on vulnerable non-combatants.”

For Natives, victory in battle, defeat in war

News of the defeat shocked Americans, Andrews and Ramage agree.

The battle occurred during the nation's centennial year, a period Andrews describes as marked by economic depression, political corruption and uncertainty. The death of a famous cavalry officer and the destruction of his command seemed almost unimaginable, he says.

At the same time, the battle quickly became part of a national mythology. Andrews says the story of “Custer’s Last Stand” helped transform a military disaster into a narrative of heroic sacrifice.

Meanwhile, for Native peoples, their victory proved short-lived.

“The government was dead set on retribution and on securing eventual victory,” Andrews says. He notes that federal authorities intensified military operations, tightened ration policies and increasingly used hunger as a method of coercion.

“The government essentially tries to starve Native peoples into submission,” he says.

By the spring of 1877, most Native groups had surrendered or fled to Canada.

Ramage says the Army’s defeat at Little Bighorn did not change the government’s end objectives.

This is not a war that starts because of some sort of misunderstanding. The U.S. started this war, and it started it with the explicit aim of subjugating the Lakotas."

“The U.S. was deeply committed to its military goals,” he says, “and even a humiliating defeat at Little Bighorn would not and did not change its course in terms of policy.”

Lasting consequences still felt today

With the subjugation of these Northern Plains tribes, the U.S. government reduced the size of the Great Sioux Reservation, seized the Black Hills despite treaty protections and intensified its campaign to assimilate Native peoples.

Even today, the legacy remains unresolved. Andrews notes that Lakotas never accepted the seizure of the Black Hills. While federal courts later approved financial compensation, the Lakotas rejected monetary settlements. “They actually want the land,” he notes.

For Ramage, the ongoing dispute illustrates that Little Bighorn’s significance extends well beyond a single military engagement. The battle occurred during a period when the federal government increasingly abandoned treaty-making and asserted unilateral authority over Native nations—a shift with consequences that are still being debated today.

“This is a war with one very clear aggressor: the United States,” he says.

Meanwhile, the battle’s memory continues to evolve. Once commonly remembered as “Custer’s Last Stand,” Andrews and Ramage say modern historians increasingly place the conflict within the broader context of Native resistance, U.S. expansion and the struggle for Indigenous sovereignty. The historians say tribal histories, oral traditions and Native perspectives have become a more prominent part of the story, challenging earlier interpretations that focused almost exclusively on Custer and the 7th Cavalry.

For Andrews, that continuing conversation is evidence that the battle remains relevant.

“The histories and its legacies are still absolutely active in Indian country,” he says. “There are still so many unresolved issues.”

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

CU �ֲ��ý historians Thomas Andrews and Noah Ramage argue that the seeds of Little Bighorn, which happened 150 years ago, were planted years before Custer’s defeat.

Traditional

White

Top painting: "The Custer Fight" by Charles Marion Russell, 1903

How does it feel to be alive? Art has answers

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 22:29:25 +0000

How does it feel to be alive? Art has answers Rachel Sauer Mon, 06/15/2026 - 16:29

Clint Talbott

CU �ֲ��ý Professor Megan O'Grady's book fuses memoir and art criticism in ‘unusual and risky’ work that’s drawing fans and kudos

When it comes to art, your heart is as important as your brain. This is what Megan O’Grady feels.

She should know. O’Grady, assistant professor in art and art history at the �ֲ��ý, is the author of How it Feels to Be Alive: Encounters with Art and Our Selves, published this year.

A former art critic at The New York Times, O’Grady calls the book “unusual and risky,” but the gamble seems to have paid off. The New Yorker chose it as one of the best books of 2026 thus far, and it has received a starred Kirkus review. Art and literary publications, from Hyperallergic to The Yale Review, have covered it, and a wide range of readers have found her approach to art “resonant in their own lives.”

Megan O'Grady, assistant professor of art and art history at CU �ֲ��ý, is the author of How it Feels to Be Alive: Encounters with Art and Our Selves, published this year. (Photo: Thorsten Trimpop)

The book focuses on five works of art, which frame, reflect or distill chapters in her own life. She quotes the artist Barbara Kruger, who defined art as “the ability, through visual, verbal, gestural and musical means, to objectify one’s experience of the world: to show and tell, through a kind of eloquent shorthand, how it feels to be alive.”

O’Grady concurs, saying: “I have often been bludgeoned by art’s beauty, energized or pulverized by its emotional content, vacuum-sealed within its force-field. I’ve looked at it and thought, This is exactly what it feels like to remember someone I lost, or, This is what love is, a tenderness toward existence.”

Additionally, she contends, art “provokes unanswerable questions about how to live in a fragmenting society. It enacts transfers of energy, joy and defiance. It suggests new forms of connection and belonging.”

O’Grady is a critic and essayist and has also written for The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review and Vogue.

Recently, she answered questions from Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine. Her responses follows:

Question: How can a regular person have greater appreciation for art? Are there steps one could take?

O’Grady: In my view, your appreciation of art is no more or less refined as mine or anyone else’s. My book directly challenges the idea that one must be an expert to enjoy art, and I’m skeptical of approaches to art that feel precious or exclusionary. Part of being human is to look for meaning in life—and art is one mode of seeking.

How It Feels to Be Alive models a mode of looking at art as an intimate encounter, one that deploys—in my experience, anyway—not instantaneously, but over time, in different seasons of life: as teenager trying to figure out who I was, or in moments of loss—after the end of a long relationship, or after losing my home and everything I owned in a freak accident.

Art helped me think through becoming a parent, and the awareness that I had deeply implicated myself in our broken world. It changed the way I think about the natural world and the invisible histories written into the landscape. It made me look very clearly at people with very different experiences of American life than my own, and it challenged me to deal with some of my own unresolved feelings about all sorts of things: creating a home, the unconscious shame I had about my body, about materialism and guilt.

I’ve always been interested in art’s capacity to make us feel things, to challenge the way we see ourselves understand the world around us. This, to me, is why we need art—in any form, be it visual art, music, literature—and why we come to it seeking answers or solace or self-recognition or things we can't put into words.

Nan Goldin, Picnic on the Esplanade, Boston, 1973, cibachrome print. (Courtesy of Nan Goldin and Gagosian)

We live in an era that both fears and devalues art, that often treats it as a commodity, an artifact to categorize by medium and period, or to instrumentalize in displays of political dominance. I’m especially concerned by characterizations of art as elitist, decorative or superfluous, and we can already see the result of our educational systems’ deprioritizing of the arts and humanities in declining creative and critical-thinking skills.

We look at art with the same eyes we do everything else. What are you attracted to and why? Is there more to be learned from other works by a particular artist, or about the artists and the times they were responding to? Art is entirely subjective: It hits us all differently depending on where we’re at in life, our experiences and interests.

I encourage readers to seek out the art in their midst—this is what I try to do, anyway. Build it into your life; get on mailing lists. For those interested in visual art who live in the �ֲ��ý area, the MFA show at CU Art Museum is a great place to see emerging artists addressing the issues of our time. There are exceptional art institutions as well as alternative art spaces across the country.

Question: Your book has elements of a memoir and elements of art criticism. In taking this approach, you share portions of your life that range from joy and pain and points in between. Can you talk about how such open introspection might help the reader understand art better—or feel it more fully?

O’Grady: Art is private in origin and public in expression—this is essential to its power. As an art critic for The New York Times, I found myself listening to artists’ stories, many of them intensely personal, and reflecting on everything that had led up to the creation of these charged objects we see in museums and galleries. The artists had risked a lot to make the work they did, and their trust in me was humbling. I began to think of the other side of the equation—what impact art had had in my own life, and what I was risking in my work as a critic.

Things were heating up in the world—a global pandemic, a turn toward fascist politics, race and gender-based violence—and I began thinking more about why we should care about things like art in times that often feel chaotic and cruel. Because I did care, even though so many things about our culture leads us to cultivate cynicism and self-interest. Being honest about these things is a risk; truth-telling is a risk. Because art both exposes and asserts cultural values, it can really upset people.

Agnes Martin, Friendship, 1963, gold leaf and gesso on canvas, 6 ft. 3 in. × 6 ft. 3 in. (190.5 × 190.5 cm). Gift of Celeste and Armand P. Bartos. (© Agnes Martin Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY)

These are the tensions that inspired me to write the book and that guided its structure. Honestly, we should all be taking risks right now.

Question: If a student asked you to list five works of art that conveyed how it feels to be alive, how would you answer?

O’Grady: We all have to find the answer to this for themselves. How It Feels to Be Alive tackles recurring themes in my life and in the lives of some of the artists I’ve known.

In the chapter on Agnes Martin, I’m thinking about connection and isolation, and the impact our friends have on us. A chapter that begins with Carrie Mae Weems’ “Kitchen Table Series” leads me consider the complexity of seeing oneself clearly when we’re so busy being seen. Kruger’s “Untitled (Your Body),” which kicks off chapter 3, was one of the first works of art that led me to understand what it meant to have a critical perspective on the world, and later, as a parent to a daughter, to confront my own internalized misogyny.

The great performance artist Pope.L, with whom I traveled to Flint, Michigan, to do a project involving the tainted water—we bottled and sold it as a Pope.L-branded art object to raise money for the people of Flint—challenged my uneasy feelings about home as troubling national or personal identity, the subject of chapter 4. The last chapter is about environmental artists and how they reframe our position on Earth, anchored by the largely overlooked land artist and monumental sculptor Beverly Pepper.

These are the major themes, but within each chapter, they become more complex, involving other artists and works. And they are certainly not the only themes in life—the book doesn’t try to be comprehensive. That would be impossible. Rather, it seeks to model a way of looking at art, encouraging others to seek out their own works of art in any form that are meaningful to them.

Question: You mentioned that you love your students, who are “less interested in making a mark than in leaving no trace,” a great line. Your writing (and good writing generally) is also a form of art. Do your students appreciate that, particularly in the TikTok era? Do you have a sense of this?

O’Grady: They all see reading and writing as essential to their creative process. My graduate students, MFA candidates in arts practices who are learning where they fit into larger conversations about representation and politics, use writing to refine the conceptual elements of their visual practice—that is, to better grasp and articulate a strong point of view, which involves a great deal of reflection and critique. We’re all asking ourselves what’s important in this moment in time in which our attention is fragmented and monetized and so much of what used to connect us feels broken.

Most of the artists I teach and write about in the book—Glenn Ligon, Barbara Kruger, Arthur Jafa, Trevor Paglen, Robert Adams, Imani Jaqueline Brown and Carrie Mae Weems, just to name a few—use text or narrative extensively in their art and/or have a writing practice complementary to their visual work.

Question: Beverly Pepper’s art, which forms the basis of a chapter in your book, was criticized with sexist tropes, but it reflects (or punctuates) the monumental scale of the landscape and the cosmos. Perhaps this question is outside the realm of how it feels to be alive, but your recounting of this episode spurs a question about how it feels to be a female artist in a male-dominated world. Or, more generally, how it feels to create art that is the “deeply rooted understory.”

O’Grady: Part of what thrills me about being a critic is looking at a single work of art over time and thinking about how it can reveal tremendous cultural shifts, and personal ones.

Art is private in origin and public in expression—this is essential to its power.

Pepper’s story, for me, is very much about how it felt to be alive as a discredited or overlooked artist—one who was making work that was by any measure groundbreaking and radical. It is dehumanizing not to be recognized for one’s work because of the body one is born into.

In the last chapter, I play with the idea of the anomaly—in art history, but also in the cosmos. Humans always center themselves, but what if, as Pepper and other artists have done, we centered the land instead, reframing our perspective? What if we are the anomalies? This is what art and art criticism does best: reframe and challenge our assumptions.

Pepper’s anomalousness is but one example of the many people left out of art’s dominant narratives. Art history is a set of stories that are continually being rewritten, in part because so many people were left out of previous drafts, or because considerations of their work were so essentializing. In the book, I argue that it is impossible to make art or behold it separately from the conditions of its making and beholding.

Question: In the chapter “Forces of Nature,” you ruminate on the landscape of Colorado, suggesting that remarking on its humbling effect is “cliché.” Can an observation or feeling that might be called a cliché be expressed in a way that is not cliché?

O’Grady: I certainly hope so! Art/literature/music show us this time and again—that the things others have experienced before us have the capacity to compel us anew via the human imagination. Life, at the end of the day, is a cliché. Behind human is a cliché. It has all been felt before—this is part of what makes art capable of transcending time and place—and yet there will always be more to think, to see, to say.

Question: You offer an extended meditation on Agnes Martin’s Friendship, particularly by the suggestion to approach her work “as you would cross an empty beach to look at an ocean.” That seems to suggest that we should have an emotional and intellectual receptivity?

O’Grady: Those are Martin’s words, not mine. She articulated this as an ideal—an ambition for her work. She was reaching the peak of her powers just as conceptual art, with its theories and manifestos, was beginning to dominate the conversation. Martin, who found solace in Christian and Buddhist thinkers, wanted something less intellectual from her work: to induce a particular feeling of infinitude, humility, wonderment and vastness in spectators.

In my book, I return a few times to Martin’s image of crossing the beach to look over the ocean. In her life, Martin had the experience more than once of coming metaphorically to the edge of the shore, or precipice, in her life—as, perhaps, we all have, in our own ways, when we’re at loose ends. It is both exhilarating and terrifying to look into the great beyond, and she confronted this to a degree that perhaps no artist has before or since.

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

CU �ֲ��ý Professor Megan O'Grady's book fuses memoir and art criticism in ‘unusual and risky’ work that’s drawing fans and kudos.

Traditional

Claes Oldenburg, American, born in Sweden (1929–2022); Coosje van Bruggen, American, born in the Netherlands (1942–2009). Shuttlecocks, 1994, aluminum, fiberglass-reinforced plastic, paint, 230 9/16 × 191 7/8 in. (585.6 × 487.4 cm). The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. (© Estate of Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Image courtesy of Nelson-Atkins Digital Production & Preservation)

White

Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Shuttlecocks, 1994, aluminum, fiberglass-reinforced plastic, paint. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.

What happens after ‘Once upon a time’?

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 21:35:15 +0000

What happens after ‘Once upon a time’? Rachel Sauer Fri, 06/12/2026 - 15:35

On The Ampersand, Professor Ann Schmiesing explores the elements of a Grimm Brothers fairy tale and how these stories illuminate deeper truths about being human

Listen to The Ampersand

Ann Schmiesing came to fairy tales almost as a matter of academic necessity.

Growing up in Oregon, she loved stories—for their detail and as vehicles of discovery—but initially pursed them as a scholar through theater and drama. Then, in one of her first professorships, she and a colleague were tasked with analyzing the department’s curriculum for possible gaps. They discovered that the department didn’t offer a course on Germany fairy tales, so Schmiesing offered to develop one.

The brothers Grimm changed not only the course of her scholarship, but in many ways her life. In their tales, she saw not only mirrors of her personal experiences, but of human experience. Fairy tales, she discovered, could hold truths that transcend time and culture.

CU �ֲ��ý scholar Ann Schmiesing is author of The Brothers Grimm: A Biography, published in 2024 to wide acclaim and reviewed in publications from The New Yorker to The Times of London.

Now, Schmiesing is nationally and internationally recognized for her fairy tale scholarship. Her book The Brothers Grimm: A Biography, published in 2024, was recognized by The New Yorker as one of the best books of the year.

A professor of German literature in the �ֲ��ý Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures and the senior vice chancellor for strategic initiatives, Schmiesing recently joined host Erika Randall, CU �ֲ��ý dean and vice provost of undergraduate education and professor of dance, on "The Ampersand,” a College of Arts and Sciences podcast. Randall and guests explore stories about ANDing as a “full sensory verb” that describes experience and possibility.

ANN SCHMIESING: I started out writing about 18th-century German drama. I also did 19th-century drama and theater history. So, my background, my dissertation work, all that, it's not fairy tales and folklore.

I got into fairy tales because a colleague of mine, years ago, we were tasked by our department with looking at our curriculum and seeing what are the courses that other programs have that we don't have. And it was a, ‘Hey, we don't have a course on German fairy tales.’ And so, I was one of the ones who did some of the older stuff—18th, 19th century. I also happened to have two young daughters at the time, so I kind of volunteered to develop this course, never thinking that I would get into writing about fairy tales.

I think there was a part of me that was probably a little bit disdainful. I was excited to do the course, but what is there really to write about?

ERIKA RANDALL: So, you thought maybe it was lower art.

SCHMIESING: It wasn't the 18th-century drama, all of that. And then I started teaching the course, and I was blown away. Just blown away. I mean, first, just the enthusiasm of my students that they brought to the subject matter and everything that they brought, I think, coming from Disney and pop culture, then really delving into the tradition of German fairy tales and other fairy tale traditions.

The Brothers Grimm: A Biography by CU �ֲ��ý Professor Ann Schmiesing is the first English-language biography in more than five decades on Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, whose first names (and life stories) are less well-known than their usual moniker, the Brothers Grimm.

And then at the same time, incidentally, I was losing my hearing.

RANDALL: In the moment of working on it.

SCHMIESING: That's right. So, I was going deaf. And one day I was prepping for a class, and I was going to be teaching this tale in which there is this wicked stepmother who hears all these noises that others can't hear. And it's kind of describing her descent into madness, if you will. But for me, I was losing my hearing, and I was having all of these bouts of tinnitus, roaring noises in my ears, all of that.

And so for me, reading that passage, it really resonated. Then I started paging through, in that moment, paging through the collection, realizing there's tale after tale after tale that depicts characters with disabilities, with deformities, with disease. And there's been so little written about this. So, that really became the impetus for my book on disability in the Grimms' fairy tales.

RANDALL: I did not know that. Did it feel at all like you were being cast in the role? You were a mother. You were a woman. You were an assistant professor at the time. Were you resisting it all, too, because there's this hyper-feminization of storytelling or the bedtime tale? Did it feel lesser from a feminist perspective? Did you go in that space? And then when you started to crack it open and go, wait, this is actually the opposite, there's so much room to give trouble from a feminist lens and from a disability studies lens.

SCHMIESING: Yeah, I think there was a part of that. I mean, I was really excited to develop the course, so it wasn't something that I was thinking as, oh gosh, I have to develop this new course, or anything like that. But I think there was a part of that. And one thing that is just really important to name is so many of the canonical fairy tales that we teach, they are sexist, misogynistic, they have racist components, anti-Semitic, on and on and on. And it is really important not to sweep that under the rug, but to address that head on.

As much as fairy tales have been so normative in their own way, they've also, throughout the history of the fairy tale, they've been a space to subvert those norms. I think that's what's really powerful, too, is how you make fairy tales your own through this process of interpretation but also telling and retelling.

RANDALL: Producer Tim and I were talking before the interview today about the 150th at CU, and thinking about fairy tale and myth and how critical it is to look at our stories, and to have them be open enough that others could see themselves in them to tell their story moving forward. And I think as academics, but also as administrators who are looking at our dream for the university, the dream for academia, the dream for education, how do we put those golden keys in the hand, not knowing what doors they may open?

SCHMIESING: That's right. And I look at the 150th celebrations and, for me, I do approach this through a fairy tale folklore lens. For the Grimms, they really saw their collecting of fairy tales, of legends, of various folk texts—they saw this as a process of exhumation, of exhuming these long-buried treasures that have been forgotten and making sure that they don't die out, making sure that they're told, that they are retold. I see something similar in how we tell our story.

I mean, humans, we gravitate towards storytelling because we want to make sense of our experience. We want to make sense of this thing we call life. We want to make sense of the world around us. And often we're doing that through storytelling. What I think is important is that there's no one story.

RANDALL: There's never one story.

SCHMIESING: That's right. There's always another story. There's always another perspective. There's always another way of telling the same basic story. What I really like about the 150th celebrations is this participatory aspect, this call to tell your story. Let us know about Buffs that maybe have been forgotten. And this is everything from things we should be celebrating to things that we should have done better or could do better. I see in that, again, this same pattern that I see in fairy tales and folklore, this notion that we're never done, we're always retelling, we're always reshaping.

Click play to hear the rest of the conversation!

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about Germanic and Slavic languages and literature? Show your support.

On The Ampersand, Professor Ann Schmiesing explores the elements of a Grimm Brothers fairy tale and how these stories illuminate deeper truths about being human.

Traditional

White

CU �ֲ��ý co-sponsors Holocaust studies workshop in Berlin

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 01:46:05 +0000

CU �ֲ��ý co-sponsors Holocaust studies workshop in Berlin Rachel Sauer Mon, 06/08/2026 - 19:46

The two-day workshop will bring together scholars and students from around the world to assess the state of Holocaust studies in the mid-2020s

The �ֲ��ý is co-sponsoring an international conference assessing the state of Holocaust studies in the mid-2020s, discussing achievements, shortcomings and prospects.

Along with Technische Universitat Berlin (Technical University of Berlin) and the Barenboim–Said Akademie in Berlin, CU �ֲ��ý will help welcome students and scholars of the Holocaust from around the world to a two-day workshop Tuesday and Wednesday at the Barenboim–Said Akademie.

What: Assessing the State of Holocaust Studies in the Mid-2020s: Achievements, Shortcomings, Prospects

When: June 9-10

Where: Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin, Germany

Learn more

Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, professor and Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History in the CU �ֲ��ý Department of History, will give the workshop opening lecture, focusing on practicing Holocaust studies in times of uncertainty.

A central focus of the conference is an awareness that while Holocaust studies, over the past 50 years, had developed from a marginal field into a vibrant international discipline, the last Holocaust eyewitnesses will be passing in coming years. With this passing, conference organizers note, contemporary history is becoming history, while at the same time the field faces new challenges: from politicized debates and attacks on scholarship to the reverberations of wars and conflict, which are prompting scholars worldwide to partially reassess the Holocaust in both its historical and contemporary dimensions.

The workshop aims to bring together leading international researchers at various career stages to assess the current state of Holocaust studies critically, asking: What has been achieved? What remains unresolved? What new directions are emerging?

CU �ֲ��ý’s involvement in the workshop continues to build on international collaborations that saw, in Fall 2025, the creation of a tri-university graduate course on modern German-Jewish ego-documents, or autobiographical writings, team-taught by faculty across CU �ֲ��ý, the Open University of Israel (OUI) and the Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) at the Technical University Berlin (TU Berlin).

The course brings together students and professors from the United States, Israel and Germany to partner on collaborative research, including an intensive, eight-day in-person seminar in Berlin.

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

The two-day workshop will bring together scholars and students from around the world to assess the state of Holocaust studies in the mid-2020s.

Traditional

White

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 CU �ֲ��ý 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 CU �ֲ��ý 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 �ֲ��ý, 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 CU �ֲ��ý 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.”

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

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

Traditional

White

‘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

CU �ֲ��ý 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 �ֲ��ý.

“Every experience is novel, and every novel is an experience,” says CU �ֲ��ý 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.”

Did you enjoy this article? Subscribe to our newsletter. Passionate about Germanic and Slavic languages and literatures? Show your support.

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

Traditional

White

Top photo: Bhautik Patel/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 CU �ֲ��ý 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 �ֲ��ý 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 CU �ֲ��ý 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.

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

New book from CU �ֲ��ý scholar Isabel Köster examines temple robbery and the ancient Roman politics of moral blame.

Traditional

White

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 CU �ֲ��ý 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 CU �ֲ��ý 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 �ֲ��ý, 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.

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

Traditional

White

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, CU �ֲ��ý 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.

CU �ֲ��ý 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 �ֲ��ý. “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.

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

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

Traditional

White

Top image: "Lobofour" by Tony Robbin, 1982

Division of Arts and Humanities

Tell us, O muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide

Related Articles

Beyond Custer’s Last Stand: The forces that led to the Battle of the Little Bighorn

Related Articles

How does it feel to be alive? Art has answers

Related Articles

What happens after ‘Once upon a time’?

Related Articles

CU �ֲ��ý co-sponsors Holocaust studies workshop in Berlin

Related Articles

Some still like it hot

Related Articles

‘Every novel is an experience’

Related Articles

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

Related Articles

Happiness in literature isn’t entirely a matter of chance

Related Articles

Telling stories of The Garden

Related Articles

Division of Arts and Humanities

Tell us, O muse, of that ingenious hero who traveled far and wide

Related Articles

Beyond Custer’s Last Stand: The forces that led to the Battle of the Little Bighorn

Related Articles

How does it feel to be alive? Art has answers

Related Articles

What happens after ‘Once upon a time’?

Related Articles

CU �ֲ���ý co-sponsors Holocaust studies workshop in Berlin

Related Articles

Some still like it hot

Related Articles

‘Every novel is an experience’

Related Articles

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

Related Articles

Happiness in literature isn’t entirely a matter of chance

Related Articles

Telling stories of The Garden

Related Articles

CU �ֲ��ý co-sponsors Holocaust studies workshop in Berlin