Agora, an interdisciplinary journal grounded in the humanities, is a project of the Luther College Paideia Program. The Luther College Paideia Program encompasses many activities and resources for students, faculty members, and the broader community. It includes an annual lecture series, library acquisitions, student writing services, a faculty development program that includes sabbatical grants and summer workshops, and Agora: The Liberal Arts at Luther College. All these activities receive financial support from the Paideia Endowment, originally established through National Endowment for the Humanities grants matched by friends of Luther College. The Paideia owl logo was designed by Professor of Art John Whelan.
The primary Agora contributors are Luther College faculty; writing is also solicited from other college community members and, occasionally, from outside writers. Agora was established in 1988 by Paideia Director Wilfred F. Bunge, Professor of Religion and Classics, who edited the journal from 1988-1998. Other editors include: Mark Z. Muggli, Professor of English, 1998-2004; Peter A. Scholl, Professor of English, 2004-2014; and Martin Klammer, Professor of English, editor since 2014. Agora is distributed to on-campus faculty and administrators as well as to off-campus friends of the college. Anyone wishing to be included on the print copy list or donate to Agora should contact us at (563) 387-1153 or email agora@luther.edu.
To see the current issue and archival issues online, go to www.luther.edu/paideia/agora
2024-2025 Paideia Texts and Issues Lecture Series: Collaboration for the Common Good
Teacher-Student
Luther’s
Photo by Martin Klammer
Introduction
by MARTIN KLAMMER, Professor of English, Editor of Agora
At Luther, we’re thinking more and more about the possible uses and misuses of AI in teaching and learning. Earlier this semester Professor Andy Hageman, director of The Center for Ethics and Public Engagement (CEPE), led a discussion on AI at a meeting of the faculty. The responses varied from faculty who worry that AI will encourage plagiarism to those who already engage with AI in the classroom—allowing students, for example, to use AI generate ideas for papers (but not, one hopes, to write them!).
I’ve seen both the bad and the good of AI in my own classes.
For help with his Paideia paper, one of my students used Grammarly, “an AI technology to analyze and improve written content by suggesting grammar corrections, style enhancements, and even generating text based on context, effectively acting as a writing assistant” (Source: “AI Overview” on Google). The student’s paper alternated between his own writing and AI-generated prose using vocabulary the student could not define when I asked him. After we discussed why this was a violation of academic integrity, I allowed him to rewrite the paper, with a penalty.
On the other hand, I had some success with AI in my American literature classroom. I asked Chatbot for its interpretation of Emily Dickinson’s poem, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” and it responded: “The ‘funeral’ symbolizes a breakdown, where the speaker feels as if something in their mind is being mourned, as if they are grieving the loss of their own mental stability.” That interpretation is essentially accurate. What it lacks, however, is any mention of the actual language of the poem. So I asked students to complete Chatbot’s answer by finding textual support for its
claim, which they did. Then we talked about how they felt about my use of AI. They hardly batted an eyelash. AI had been used in their other classes, they said, and so they were comfortable with it in ours.
I recently asked Andy Hageman how he sees the potential benefit of AI in the liberal arts. He responded in an email:
In April, The CEPE invited to campus Miguel Caballero and Luis Aldana, two award-winning filmmakers behind The Ballad of Tita and the Machines, which intersects AI with migration, labor, race, and gender. We connected them with groups of students from multiple majors. In one session, the filmmakers asked a first-year international student majoring in data science for a general perspective on AI from someone who plans to be a developer. That student thought for a beat and then brought up philosopher Professor Storm Bailey’s lecture on Plato readings in Paideia 112. The student understood AI as a complex tool that humans can use in order to know and understand things that massive amounts of data can reveal when processed by computing power beyond human capacities. As a tool, this technology can enable new and different ways of knowing and knowledge sets for human beings. Inspired by Professor Bailey’s lecture, the student discussed the importance of how we classify what we can and cannot know when we engage AI.
The filmmakers later shared with me how blown away they were by an eighteen-year-old, who had traveled from Vietnam to Decorah to study data science, taking their question into the realm of philosophy and ethics in a non-technical
course. For me, that was an ultimate Paideia moment. It inspired me to experiment much more on how Paideia and the liberal arts at Luther can help produce future AI developers and decision makers who approach their work with sophisticated critical thinking and the common good in mind. It’s an exciting time to think about how we are educating the folks who’ll be developing and regulating, using and refusing, emerging AI technologies.
Andy’s response highlights one of our goals in teaching the liberal arts at Luther College: helping students make connections across disciplines in ways that will be relevant to doing good work in the world. That ability to use one’s education for the common good is demonstrated well in this issue: Jon Ailabouni composing a jazz liturgy that diversifies and energizes Lutheran workship; Orçun Selçuk collaborating with students doing research for his book, The Authoritarian Divide; Susan Schmidt recording the treatment of immigrant children in the court system; Anita Carrasco investigating the harmful effects of large-scale mining on indigenous people in northern Chile; and Carly Hayden Foster seeking to educate the public about the vote on a municipal electric utility in Decorah.
With other essays on music and the performing arts, religion, and psychology, and four chapel talks, including the Founder’s Day chapel talk by President Jenifer Ward, I hope you will enjoy reading this issue of Agora as much as Bonnie Johnson and I did putting it together.
Festival Culture and the Liberal Arts: Celebrating Humanities
by RON J. POPENHAGEN ’75
Editor’s note: Ron Popenhagen, ’75, was a theatre major with a German minor at Luther. Trained as a singer, he participated in choral ensembles and opera, and acted in theatre productions. Following graduation, he toured as a singer and actor. Ron earned his M.A. in theater arts from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and PhD in drama and theater arts from the University of California–Santa Barbara. He has coached actors and singers at UCSanta Barbara, the University of Kansas, and the University of Southern California, as well as in theater and music programs in Sydney and Paris. He is the author of Modernist Disguise: Masquerade in Modern Performance and Visual Culture (Edinburgh University Press, 2021). Ron and his partner Luda live in Sydney, Australia.
Local Context and Shared Experience
Contemporary festival culture is celebratory, unpredictable, novel, and provocative. As festivals expand in scope and variety, they intersect and overlap with other “mega events” (sports, arena concerts, circuses, and Olympic ceremonies). Partnering
with main international festivals, fringe events and alternative work round out iconic festival offerings and contribute to the effect of dizzying excess. The most distinctive and prominent festivals are the performing arts festivals showcasing dance, music, opera, and theatre. The Edinburgh Festival established itself as the world’s exemplary model of a twentieth century, city-wide cultural event. Festival culture as displayed in historic Edinburgh offers unlimited options for awe-inspiring spectatorship for three action-packed weeks. The festival experience is the opposite of the daily, repetitive schedule; festival days are unusual, inventive, exciting, and unprecedented.
Memories of festival culture experience, while I was a student at Luther College, are not easily or quickly apparent; but they are not necessarily absent. I am certain that exhilarating breakthroughs occurred and continue to occur over time. When I think back today, I remember the four years of coursework and campus activities as a segment of
time that now feels like one denselypacked semester. This unit of time, for me, is visualized as a spiraling, threedimensional collage of paper, falling leaves, fast-paced walking, typewriters, and faces hidden by parka hoods. All things were ever in motion.
The memory of this compressed past at Luther is kaleidoscopic; unearthing the seeds of festival spirit within it, however, is a challenge. The layers of accumulated people-arrivals, gatherings, dialogues, monologues, choreographies, concerts, and people-departures create a confusing sensation of a time experienced much like an isolated instant of festival culture—a concentrated, intense experience shared with others. Liberal arts study at Luther provided the backdrop and the stage on which such random moments of celebration and discovery emerged.
If one brackets these units of time, they can be regarded as playful rites of passage, according to the French anthropologist-sociologist Jean Duvignaud. He described such segments of liveness as examples of a demi-fête: a compacted festival (Duvignaud, 245).
Earlier, anthropologist Alessandro Falassi introduced such festival elastictime experiences as a Time Out of Time (Falassi 1). In a sense, Duvignaud extends Falassi’s assertion by emphasizing the performative aspects of festival and its connections with carnival, purim, or other indigenous culture rites and ceremonies, for instance.
Elements of what I interpret today as festival culture surfaced during my college residence in Decorah: singing in J. S. Bach’s St. John’s Passion in Koren Hall, acting in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Field House (now the Regents Center), directing Puccini’s Suor Angelica, or performing comedy, like the Miner’s monologue from the revue Beyond the Fringe (written for the Edinburgh Fringe in 1960).
While engaged as a student in literary studies, history, languages, the arts, and the sciences, the direct, immediate application of knowledge learned during a liberal arts education is ill-defined or unclear. Still, the mind and senses are stimulated; curiosity is encouraged. Students develop a distinguishing point of view and an individual voice. The liberal arts prepare one for further critical and creative thinking. In a recent publication, I noted that while engaged with study and arts activities at Luther, “I learned that performance is interdisciplinary study in practice” (Popenhagen, xi). Live performance is collaborative interplay; it is an exhibition of interdisciplinary knowledge which draws from studies in acoustics, architecture, communication, literature, physics, political history, socio-anthropology, and visual culture.
The festival spirit comes and goes; it is as ephemeral as live performance. Festival’s enduring impact is due to what one scholar describes as “moments of intense sociability” (Christel Deliège, 35). When experienced with others in close proximity and mutual understanding, the memory of communication is shared. One example that I recall clearly is a moment of dense silence at the conclusion of Charles Ives’ Psalm 100 performed with the Nordic Choir at Alice Tully Hall in New York City (1974). The final chord of this choral composition—with chimes and voices—
suspends and totally occupies the performance space. This shared experience of silence and spatial density represents, for me, those seconds of complicity when the festival spirit is collectively felt by participants.
There were various communal experiences at Luther. During first-year lectures in Valders Hall of Science, Sir Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation: A Personal View series, produced by David Attenborough, was screened as a text and visual experience in the “Core” program (pre-Paideia). This torrent of words and images overwhelmed and unsettled me. At the time, my reception of this “high culture” was mixed; it fascinated, but also confronted. These films introduced the tradition of European art and culture (previous generations for some of us) that felt beyond reach for one with limited means to travel. Each session of these films was a fantasia of place names, museum names, and artist names. In retrospect, this collage was received in the tempo and rhythm characterized by festival events.
With Nordic Choir over fifty years ago, in Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Romania, the visual overload returned when on-site at the frescoes of the Painted Monasteries of Bucovina, and, subsequently, on a quiet green avenue in Târgu-Jiu, where stand the sculptures Endless Column and the Table of Silence (created by Parisian-
Romanian modernist Constantin Brancuşi). These moments of density are remembered as silences replete with festival spirit. Duvignaud believes that festival spirit profoundly alters perceptions. It educates and enriches, complementing formal learning (Duvignaud 258). For me, such cultural engagements extended my liberal arts experience by encouraging openness to the unfamiliar and empathy for the “other.”
In ancient Greece, festivals assembled huge numbers of Athenian citizens in stone arenas to celebrate with dance, drama, and music. Heroic narratives and tragic tales were shown and told to move the public emotionally toward a collective, cathartic experience. An example of a dense silence is at the end of a play like Oedipus at Colonus. In this tragic Sophoclean drama Antigone supports and guides her frail, visionless father Oedipus at the conclusion of his life. For Duvignaud, this quiet moment at “the end of the play” (La fin de la pièce) epitomizes the concentrated time gap—the festival moment—which transpires after the action finishes, but before the applause commences. A representation of this Sophocles gap-intime scene was sculpted by modernist, Bauhaus-trained artist Gerhard Marcks in 1960; a bronze portrait of Oedipus and Antigone captures and suspends this humanitarian gesture. Since 1975, this end-of-the-festival moment quietly
Three festival moments: Avignon dance improvisation by Abdou N’gom, Oedipus and Antigone sculpture by Gerhard Marcks at Luther’s Center for Faith and Life, and street opera in Aix-en-Provence
stands amidst campus pedestrian traffic beside the footpath from Preus Library to the Dahl Centennial Union, in front of the Center for Faith and Life.
It is important to locate the festival in the local and the daily. Decorah’s summer Nordic “Fest” (as gruffly voiced with an explosion of the “f” consonant by my grandfather) represented festival culture in my community in the 1960s. The Fest was significant, perhaps even imperative, for some residents of Northeast Iowa, including my ancestors from Stavanger Lutheran Church in southern Winneshiek County. Was this dancing and parading a remnant of popular European performance—a Scandinavian carnivalesque?
Duvignaud would not dismiss this possibility. He recounts gaps of emotional density experienced at a sporting event at a soccer arena in Brazil, as well as collective mourning at Jean-Paul Sartre’s funeral procession in Paris. Shared experience, it seems, can even intensify with increased numbers of participants. I recall a spark of festival spirit in 1970. The Wadena Rock Fest took place on a 220-acre farm just two miles west of my own Iowa hamlet, Wadena, when upwards of 50,000 festival goers arrived in our valley to hear thirty musical acts. Originally intended to be held in Galena, Illinois, Galena in Wadena as it came to be known was a compressed lifetime in the form of a long weekend of celebration—a virtual journey across the United States while going nowhere. This Fest, a seminar in anthropology, music, and theatre, is remembered as a Dada-esque tableau vivant positioned on a hillside above the Volga River. It moved the very soul of those fallow fields.
Celebrating Humanities and the Liberal Arts
Since festivals serve no measurable (or degree-granting) function, Duvignaud’s proclamation, “Les fêtes ne servent à rien” (parties are useless) motivates us to defend them for their inspiring uselessness. Festival dreaming is almost essential once the experience becomes recognizable. Arts festivals provide opportunities to display and celebrate creativity; they are sites for
evaluation, marketplaces, courts of assessment, and forums for impassioned discourse. They evaluate the “state of the art.” Festival time is not wasted time. Festival’s working leisure—a productive dreamtime—parallels outcomes of a liberal arts education. Festival schedules (organized play) may appear laid-back, but fundamental shifts in perception are in progress. The timetable of change is eccentric; it has only a marginal association with clock time.
My dedication and promotion of humanities studies began while Assistant Professor of Theatre and Film at the University of Kansas. As a participant in Interdisciplinary Seminars sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1996-1997, in Modern Art and Literature in Paris and Modern/ Postmodern Performance Studies in Milwaukee, I was reminded of the benefits of engagement across disciplines. Seminar leaders from Princeton University and the University of Wisconsin updated my knowledge of contemporary literary and dramatic theory while challenging my assumptions regarding political and social history. While teaching at the University of Southern California and Cal State University-Northridge, I pursued further research in history and literature with seminars on World War I at the University of Cincinnati and on medieval Celtic and English literature and Nordic saga in Belfast, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the Isle of Man (NEH 2014-2015). Seminar and Institute leaders were from Harvard and UCLA, plus an array of national and international scholars. This advanced, post-doctoral work was a time of renewal and a reexamination of creative thinking; each NEH experience was a unique festival. These demi-fêtes or quasi-fêtes were productive; they stimulated publications and further ongoing research. I wrote a chapter on the Táin, an Irish epic, in The Medieval Cultures of the Irish Sea and the North Sea (Amsterdam University Press, 2019). In a studentfocused research seminar, I collaborated with seven undergraduate students to create an exhibition for the Cal State University Broome Library at Channel Islands on Masquerade as Visual Culture. While with NEH scholars on the Isle
of Man, I had the opportunity to reflect upon Viking history and previous study at Luther on British wars in Harald’s Saga while discussing arson in Iceland in Njal’s Saga. Humanities have the potential to fully engage the mind, body, and all sensations.
The humanities and the liberal arts form the background for Martin Puchner’s Culture: A New World History. Puchner’s saga—peopled with fascinating philosophers, composers, librarians, warriors, and scholars—illustrates and stirs serious thought about the storage of knowledge over millennia. His detailed narrative concerning the preservation and sharing of oral and written wisdom supplies a compelling defense of the “use of tools provided by the humanities” (Puchner 302). While the narrative travels along the Silk Road, the author attempts to define and distinguish the content of the liberal arts from the fluid definition of the humanities. Puchner’s pluridisciplinaire analysis ends with a shocking statement in the Epilogue: “… at my university 8 percent of the incoming class of 2021 declared a primary interest in the arts and humanities” (Puchner 302). Thrown back in my chair (Puchner is a professor at Harvard University), I realized that my promotion of interdisciplinary studies is detached from mainstream thought in the academy; I have been dreaming, it seems. La rêverie s’est arretée. Do others seriously perceive the humanities as passé and a liberal arts education unnecessary or outmoded?
Modern Festival Culture
The twentieth-century revival of festival events served an educational and social purpose; it was necessary and reparative. The festival spirit surfaced despite political barriers, linguistic restrictions, geographic boundaries, ethnic differences, and bothersome national identities. Its organic arrival filled a void created by the Great War; Europe was searching for a spark to rekindle a muffled, subdued festival spirit. I wrote and taught a course on festival culture for master of arts in theater students at California State University-Northridge. In this 2015 seminar, “Festival Theatre: Rites of Renewal,” participants researched the
relationships between twentieth century arts festivals and their economic, political, and social contexts. We looked seriously at festivals’ impact upon physical and psychological repair—the easing of post-war trauma.
While I lectured on iconic European international festival sites, students’ research extended beyond the European setting. However, from a historical perspective, Europe is where the modern narrative begins. We started, then, with Salzburg, Austria (1920), Avignon, France (1947), Edinburgh, Scotland (1947), and Aix-en-Provence, France (1948) as the primary cases in point. Subsequent research and presentations extended to other festival settings: Glyndebourne, UK (1934), Perth, Australia (1953), Athens, Greece (1955), Spoleto, Italy (1958), Adelaide, Australia (1960), and Spoleto in Charleston, South Carolina (1977).
Modern festivals, when advancing the Salzburg example, were cognizant departures from the nineteenth century Bayreuth Festival (Bayreuther Festspiele) of 1876. Richard Wagner created a festival for a select few who had the opportunity to appreciate his ground-breaking music in ideal circumstances. Wagner’s festival was about Richard Wagner and his music, providing a separation from urban (modernist) noise which could distract from total contemplation of his pioneering musical compositions. Silence was a vital aspect of this selected environment for serious listening. In Bayreuth, the natural setting allowed for
a perfect silence for audience members to share their mutual appreciation of most all things spiritual and Wagnerian. The member-ofthe-club status and mood has never fully disappeared over the past century and a half. Enthusiasts of Wagner’s operas, particularly The Ring Cycle (Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal), continue to assemble and assess whichever opera house in the world mounts a new production of the Ring. Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk (totalencompassing work of art) is not wholly accessible to all, however; it is brilliant in many respects, but totally crafted for some rather than for all. Wagner built a dazzling auditorium with superb acoustics for the performance of his operas. The Bayreuth Festspielhaus (1882) imposes limitations; it is the architectural opposite of the improvised, found performance spaces proposed by a medieval old town like Salzburg. Decades later, post-World War II festivals transformed aging cityscapes into youthful and vigorous playgrounds; planners in 1947 Avignon and Edinburgh understood the trauma-soothing, revivalist potential for illuminating and humanizing stone fortresses after years of violence and destruction.
An additional, almost-forgotten nineteenth century initiative in the South of France emerged in the region now referred to as PACA (Provence-AlpesCôte d’Azur). In 1860 the Roman amphitheatre in Orange was selected as a site for festival performances. This structure built in the first century CE, during the reign of Augustus, seats 9,000 spectators. Orange, alongside Arles and Nîmes, is part of a zone in western Provence that contains significant Roman ruins. Following repairs and restoration, a Roman Festival was established at the Chorégies d’Orange, opening with a production of the opera Joseph by the French Romantic compos-
er Étienne Nicolas Méhul. The Chorégies title was adopted in the early twentieth century, borrowing from the Greek khorêgós meaning “chorus leader” in the Greek theatre. Periodic theatre productions continued for several decades with star-studded casts; Sarah Bernhardt performed in Phèdre in 1903, for example. An on-and-off festival featuring plays, symphonies, opera, and concerts continued through the 1960s. In 1971, the New Chorégies were established, featuring primarily opera, concerts, and other partially-staged operatic works. The sporadic nature of the performances separates Orange from the most iconic European festival sites detailed above. Only one opera, Puccini’s Tosca, was performed in the 2024 season, for instance. The Roman Théâtre Antique d’Orange, an amazing monument of architectural significance, is frequently featured in televised performances.
In Salzburg, credit is due to playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal and stage director Max Reinhardt who successfully stage managed the transfer of a Berlin production of Everyman (Jedermann) to a site-specific platform stage in front of the Salzburg Cathedral (August, 1920). The Salzburg Festspiele impulse, ongoing even now, was also supported by composer Richard Strauss, conductor Franz Schalk, and scenic designer Alfred Roller. This collaboration demonstrated the essential, interdisciplinary aspects of performing arts’ projects and discourse. The multilingual element of Salzburg was already apparent during this celebration of music and theatre in the casting of performances and in the community of spectators in the AustroHungarian Empire (home to twenty-six different languages and dialects). In the post-Great War years, the ringing of the bells as an iconic, acoustic sign marked the arrival of the festival spirit. A kaleidoscope of past festival images was certainly activated in summer 2020 during the mid-Covid centenary of the festival.
The festive spirit momentum is fueled by nostalgia, youthful curiosity, and the commitment of lifetime learner-spectators. Arts festival goers are new-millennium flâneurs who, like the Parisian flea market nomads of André Breton’s Nadja
Dance improvisation by Abdou N’gom, courtyard of Musée Calvet in Avignon, Off Festival, 2017
(a century ago), have faith in a surprise arrival of the “marvelous.” These roaming optimists circulate through host city streets until a chance encounter spurs delight. In Avignon and Edinburgh spectators engage in competitions to see who can witness the most performance events in one day. This choreography of entering theatres, strolling outside, chatting in cafes, climbing castle stairways, joining outdoor forum discussions, and listening to concerts under the stars occupies spectators from dawn to dusk. The festival spirit is a catalyst; it can provide the break through customary constraints and risk experiencing the “shock of the new.” Jean Duvignaud states, flamboyantly, that the festival spirit has euphoric potential; it is a phantasmagoria inciting reverie. Participants are permitted to embody their dreaming (Duvignaud, 235).
The Contemporary International Culture Festival Scene
Festival expansion in Canada, Australia, Austria, and Ireland is globally recognized; the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival (Edmonton, Alberta), Brisbane Festival (Brisbane, Queensland), and the opera-focused Bregenzer Festspiele (Bregenz, Austria) have joined the ranks of important
events. The Dublin Theatre Festival is making its mark, while classical music concerts and recitals plus opera and theatre productions continue to flourish at the Salzburger Festspiele in Austria. The Edinburgh Festival, combined with the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, constitutes the largest, performing arts/visual arts festival event in the world, stretching from Port of Leith in the north to the southern fringes of Edinburgh University and The Meadows. As a geographic opposite, the Adelaide Fringe Festival (Adelaide, South Australia) is the largest multifaceted performing arts festival in the southern hemisphere. When taking into account the single-discipline festival genre, The Bharat Rang Mahotsav Theatre Festival (New Delhi, India) is the world’s largest theatre festival. Single-discipline festivals continue to appear in abundance: festivals of comedy, film, classical music, folkloric dance and song, opera, photography, solo performance, writing and international visual arts biennales.
In France, the Festival d’Avignon and the Festival International d’Art Lyrique d’Aix-en-Provence performing arts events are a dynamic July-festival duo. These two cities in the PACA region are counterpoints in Provence; Avignon is positioned near the Rhône River and
the Pont d’Avignon while Aix’s venues occupy a zone to the east near Cézanne’s beloved Mont Sainte-Victoire. Aix and Avignon are also developing additional partnerships with neighboring Arles and its photography festival: Arles: Les Rencontres de la Photographie. As in Edinburgh, the atmosphere and attendance at these festival cities is enhanced by a local public accustomed to almost-daily exhibitions, concerts, theatre, and live performances. Furthermore, spectators have access to university communities filled with international students and scholars; discourse spills into the local cafes. A portion of the massive Aix-Marseille Université, for instance, is placed on the south side of Aix; on the other hand, amidst Avignon’s architectural wonders, stands Avignon Université. Also in Avignon, La Maison Jean Vilar is situated adjacent to the Palais des Papes outdoor venue; the Vilar Maison engages theatre specialists with lectures, exhibitions, performances, and ongoing research on Le Théâtre Populaire. As a new Avignon addition, the neighborhood is welcoming the formerly Paris-based École International du Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in the quarter’s workshop spaces. Aix-en-Provence with its fountains of excellence is asserting itself as a model festival city—where diverse performance genres are available to a diverse demographic. There are new innovative strategies for engaging young audiences, outreach to audiences unfamiliar with the European opera tradition, and inclusivity for newly-arrived migrant populations. In 2023, the International Opera Awards declared the Aix’s Festival Lyrique the Best Opera Festival of the Year, honoring the festival’s successful 75th season. Returning guest opera metteurs-en-scène like Katie Mitchell and Simon McBurney reinforce this festival’s cutting-edge reputation for stage directing and scenographic brilliance. The “second” Aix Festival—the Festival de Pâques with violinist Renaud Capuçon—is a classical and contemporary music festival with a great reputation following its first decade of performances. Aix is also home to a rich calendar of traditional Provençal music, street theatre, circus, traditional drumming, and street musicians.
Lunch and improvised discourse along one of the theatre-packed streets of Avignon
Aix-en-Provence is acknowledging its geographic placement on the continent at a time when southern Europe can no longer ignore its closeness to Africa and the Middle East. This festival is increasingly in communication and enthusiastically proposing collaboration with France’s second largest city Marseille, acknowledging Aix’s proximity to the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The Aix Festival, for instance, secures partnerships with the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (Mucem) in Marseille. The festival’s outreach activities are also supported by its co-collaborators housed in the Aix Performing Arts Hub on Avenue Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The Grand Théâtre de Province, the Conservatoire Darius Milhaud, the Ballet Preljocaj, and the Pavillon Noire, a national center for dance study. This venue forum with training centers promotes the performing arts in communities as distant as the Maghreb to the southwest of Aix-en-Provence and the far-flung neighbors in the Levant to the southeast of Aix.
As in Avignon, free public forums and lectures about contemporary, interdisciplinary performance are mingled throughout plazas and theatre venues
to stimulate discourse about artists, performance style trends, political and social issues, and proposals to make arts festivals meaningful. The Aix Academy, a research and training initiative of the Opera Festival, inspires young professional singers; this year it is expanding into adjacent disciplines of the arts and humanities to promote innovation and invigorate experimentation with opera literature, opera repertoire, and performance theory. The latest gesture of ingenuity, La Résidence pluridisciplinaire de l’Académie du Festival d’Aix (multidisciplinary residency) will contribute its first outcomes at the 2024 Festival.
Festival cities are microcosms of contemporary culture; they highlight society’s troublesome issues and address them in words, action, and visual culture statements. Festival performance exploits its opportunity to educate and to publicly question binary thinking. The festive spirit makes inroads by exhibiting alternative means of expression and being. It complicates and undermines standard, bothersome binaries like: “high” culture/ “low” culture, classical/ popular, sacred/profane, urban/rural, haves/have-nots, etc. Festival participation can disrupt learned patterns of behavior—in four distinct aspects as
noted by Falassi: reversal, intensification, trespassing, and abstinence (Falassi, 3). My paraphrasing of Falassi’s points (from his “morphology” of the festival organism) are: 1) inhabiting and embodying—for a time—what feels like one’s quotidian existence turned upside down (reversal); 2) engaging in extraordinary activities (intensification); 3) participating in happenings where ordinary behavioral limits are surpassed (trespassing); and 4) shunning established daily routine (abstinence).
Festival Culture is present in moments throughout liberal arts studies. The humanities—adept at flipping one’s head over heels—are integral to festival events. Confrontation with the traditional, the conventional, and the unorthodox remains essential to a holistic educational experience. Festival participation measures one’s learning and one’s ability to activate acquired knowledge. It is possible, therefore, to perceive a liberal arts education at Luther College as illuminated with flashes of the festival spirit. Selected memories—the amplified moments of élan and transformation—link festival spirit with the college spirit. Festival culture endures and inspires lifelong learners to initiate and participate in shared experiences. One must welcome the arrival of the out-ofthe-ordinary.
WORKS CITED
Deliège, Christel in “Avant-propos,” Mallé, Marie-Pascale (Ed.). Le Monde à l’envers (Flammarion et Mucem, 2014).
Duvignaud, Jean. Fêtes et Civilisations et La Fête Aujourd’hui (Actes Sud, 1991).
Falassi, Alessandro (Ed.). Time Out of Time: Essays on the Festival (U of New Mexico Press, 1987).
Popenhagen, Ron J. Modernist Disguise (Edinburgh UP, 2021).
Puchner, Martin. Culture: A New World History (Ithaka Press, 2023).
Street theatre in Aix-en-Provence, featuring giant puppets, music, and a carnival atmosphere, 2017
The Spirit is Moving: A Jazz Liturgy of Renewal
by JON AILABOUNI (‘10)
Editor’s Note: Jon Ailabouni gave this presentation on October 26, 2024 at Luther College’s Phi Beta Kappa Symposium on the Liberal Arts.
Good morning. My name is Jon Ailabouni. I’d like to start by sharing the identities and labels that I call home.
I am a father and a husband. I am a brother. I am the son of a Lutheran pastor and church musician. I am a musician, jazz artist, improviser, composer, and trumpeter. I am an educator. I’m a Lutheran. I’m a Midwesterner. I’m proud to be a Luther alum and to have taught at Luther College. I’m a secondgeneration Palestinian whose family are refugees from Tiberius in the Galilee. I am an American citizen, a Palestinian American, a Palestinian of the diaspora. I am white-identified. And I identify as a cisgender man and use he/him pronouns.
I am grateful for the invitation to be with you today and present on the topic of jazz in worship and to share with you a liturgy I composed called The Spirit is Moving: A Jazz Liturgy of Renewal
I started leading jazz in worship in 2010. Since that time, serving as a worship music director and liturgical arranger and composer has become an increasingly significant part of my professional, creative, and spiritual life. It’s no accident that I started leading jazz in worship the same year I graduated from Luther College. Luther is a place where through the liberal arts, the traditions of the Lutheran church, and the welcome I received, I was able to become more than just a musician, but also explore the integration of the many parts of who I am. I took coursework in sociology and social work–classes that allowed me to pursue my interest in social systems and to better understand racism, sexism, homophobia amongst other social
justice issues. I took formative classes with Tony Guzmán that were steeped in anti-racist pedagogy before that term was in vogue. Tony taught us to see that all music is equal, just as all humans are equal and deserving of dignity and respect. Be it Native American music, the music of Bach and Beethoven, Brazilian samba, frevo, and choro, jazz, or North Indian classical music: music acts as an entry point to better understand people, places, and cultures. Tony also was the first person I witnessed bring a jazz ensemble into a worship service. I’m sure Tony had no idea, but that experience was a revelation to me, and . . . here we are today!
I am hopeful that bringing jazz into worship can be invigorating, challenging, and life-giving for congregations, particularly in the ELCA. The ELCA is the whitest denomination in America. Ninety-six percent of adherents identify as white. Luther College is a college of the ELCA. The question in my mind is, what is keeping the ELCA so white in this increasingly diverse and multicultural country?
In this presentation, I will illustrate how jazz traditions can help us reimagine practices surrounding Christian community and how jazz can help create new meanings in worship. I’ve seen how jazz functions as a way to challenge deeply ingrained Eurocentric practices in worship and nurture antiracist movements in congregations.
Over the course of the twentieth century, jazz emerged and developed as a powerful expression of human dignity, sophistication, and soulfulness in the face of oppression. Jazz is an audible form of resistance. It is a rebuke to hatred. It is freedom music.
Today, we’ll look at sacred music by Black Americans often used in ELCA churches, familiar hymns from the
Jon Ailabouni
European folk and sacred traditions reimagined through the lens of Black American music traditions, and my newly composed liturgy which aims to stitch all of these elements together.
Historical Perspective on Jazz in Worship
Some of you may be asking yourselves, “What in the world does jazz have to do with faith?” Well, jazz has a long association with religious and spiritual practice. Many jazz musicians grew up immersed in the musical and homiletic traditions of the Black church. Those influences come through clearly in the secular music of such musicians as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver and so many others. There are a few notable jazz artists who made explicitly sacred works: Duke Ellington with his three sacred concerts (1965, 1968, 1973); Mary Lou Williams, the great jazz pianist and composer, who converted to Catholicism later in life and subsequently composed three jazz
PHOTO BY BLAKE NELLIS, ‘07
mass settings; and John Coltrane, whose most famous album, A Love Supreme from 1965, is a four-movement prayer to God. Coltrane referred to God as “a love supreme.” Coltrane said in an interview: “My music is a spiritual expression of what I am: my faith, my knowledge, my being. When you begin to see the possibilities of music you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hang ups . . . I want to speak to their souls.”
Okay, now because I’m a teacher and teachers know that we do the best learning when we are doing active learning, it’s time for a listening activity.
Listening Exercise 1: “Just A Closer Walk With Thee”
We’ll take a closer look now at a piece of music that comes from Black American sacred music traditions. We’ll do two versions of “Just A Closer Walk With Thee.” On a piece of paper, jot down what you notice about these two versions.
[The band plays Version 1 in traditional hymnal style. One time through, beautifully, softly, voice and piano only. This first
rendition is played using the aesthetics of European American worship traditions. The band plays Version 2 with a New Orleans traditional interpretation. Elements of jazz style include rhythm, groove, instrumentation (piano, bass, drums, trumpet, and voice), swing feel, improvisation, harmony, melodic conventions of New Orleans, call and response between trumpet and vocalist, danceable, energetic effect.]
Jon Ailabouni: Okay, that’s version 1 and version 2. Remember, one is not better than the other. All cultures, musics, and peoples are equal. But what do you notice?
Commenter #1: A lot more cheerful. More . . . edgy.
Jon Ailabouni: Okay, the second one may be more cheerful.
Commenter #2: One is calmer than the other.
Jon Ailabouni: Yes. One is calmer. Who else experienced that calm in the first more than the second one? Different. Yeah?
Commenter #3: The second version gives me a sense of lilt and joy.
Jon Ailabouni: Lilt and joy, okay.
Commenter #4: The first one’s more meditative, and the next one is toetappy.
Jon Ailabouni: Yes. Yes! Okay, I resonate with all those responses. Thank you.
Having had that shared experience, I want to tell you a little bit more about the history of “Just A Closer Walk With Thee.” The composer is unknown, but the tune is attributed to nineteenth century African-American churches in the South. It is a gospel tune. In the New Orleans music tradition, “Just A Closer Walk With Thee” is often performed as a dirge in a traditional New Orleans funeral. The tradition is a blend of European and African cultural influences. Louisiana’s colonial past gave it a tradition of marching and military style brass bands which were called on for many occasions, including playing funeral processions.
The African influences come from the legacy of Congo Square music. If you go to New Orleans, you can visit Congo Square. Congo Square was the only public space in the antebellum United States of America where African drumming and dancing were performed every Sunday until the Civil War. Everywhere else in the country, those cultural practices were prohibited, but not in New Orleans. And not in Congo Square.
Richard Brent Turner, professor of religious studies and African-American studies at the University of Iowa, writes about Congo Square: “In these public gatherings, the enslaved Africandescended community re-imagined the spiritual power of the West African festival, Kongo rituals, and Vodou through drumming, masking iconography and dance. New Orleans jazz . . . reimagines the Congo Square beat, the rhythms of African drumming, ring ceremonies, and the bamboula dances of processionpossessed music.”
Anytime we are playing New Orleansstyle jazz, we are tapping into a spiritual practice, a cultural practice, and also a survival practice exercised by enslaved African descended communities a practice that allowed these people to express their personhood amidst the most
Ailabouni’s band playing “Just a Closer Walk With Thee” at the symposium
AGORA PHOTOS BY MARTIN KLAMMER
dehumanizing circumstances. When we respectfully invite these practices into worship, they take on special significance.
In worship, we are already using all kinds of Black American music. “Just A Closer Walk With Thee” is a nineteenth-century gospel hymn. But we also sing Negro spirituals such as “Were You There,” “Guide My Feet,” “Wade in the Water,” and so many others. It’s imperative that we—especially in a predominantly white denomination—treat this music with respect. We must walk the line towards cultural appreciation and away from cultural appropriation. As we share in these cultural expressions flowing from Black communities, I’d encourage all congregations to do a few things to best walk that line.
First of all, create space to contextualize the history, culture, and people of this music. We should be contextualizing everything we do in worship. But when it comes to Black American music in white worship spaces, I believe this is crucial.
This contextualization does a few important things. It creates a necessary entry point for learning about and humanizing the music, as opposed to commodifying it. Contextualization honors and names the traditions, cultures, struggles, and joys from which this music sprang. It challenges white supremacy culture in worship that suggests that worship traditions derived from European cultures are superior and more worthy of centering and normalizing in worship spaces. Contextualization necessitates the naming of painful history that requires recognition and continued lament and healing. You can’t talk about the Negro spirituals without talking about the history of slavery. And it creates a connection point for preaching and prayers that names explicitly the sins of racism and white supremacy and empowers us to excavate, name, and oppose these forces beyond worship.
Second, I encourage congregations to develop a financial model that will allow money to flow through the sharing of this music in worship back towards Black communities. An example I’m seeing increasingly is a practice of pay-
ing what are known as reparation royalties through donations to Black music organizations or racial justice nonprofits and community groups whenever Negro spirituals or other Black American folk music is used in worship. Reparation royalties can come in the form of a special offering or budgeted funds. For living examples of reparation royalties in action, check out The Center for Congregational Song’s Reparations Royalty Pilot Program and the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church (Decorah) Reparation Royalties Proposal.
Listening Exercise 2: “Morning Has Broken”
One way to blend jazz in worship is to take familiar worship songs from the Black American music tradition and lean into those traditions musically and culturally. Another way is to blend jazz traditions with hymns and sacred folk traditions flowing from Europe. A common practice in jazz is to take popular music, whatever is familiar to people, and reinterpret it with new rhythmic elements, harmony, and improvisation. For example, “Bunessan,” a Gaelic folk tune. I first heard it sung by Cat Stevens with the lyrics to “Morning Has Broken.” I invite you to sing this piece along with us and then again I’ll
ask: “What do you notice?” [The audience sings “Morning Has Broken.”]
Jon Ailabouni: Thank you. So what did you notice, in particular if you were familiar with that tune before. What was different, maybe, from your prior experiences?
Commenter #1: So I’m actually going to compare the first (“Just A Closer Walk With Thee”) with the second (“Morning Has Broken.”) I noticed that the trumpet had a more active role in the first piece, and in the second piece there was this harmonizing role until the solo portion. And I thought that was kind of this nice blend of the original tradition added into the African-American jazz tradition.
Jon Ailabouni: Yeah. Thank you.
Commenter #2: How do you keep yourself from thinking, “Here we’re doing night club in church?”
Jon Ailabouni: I mean, my answer is: why not? (Laughter.)
Commenter #3: To me it highlights that in this hymn that talks about creation and recreation the music is actively doing it by improvising and participating in creating actively while we’re singing.
Jon Ailabouni: Yeah. In some senses,
The band plays “Morning Has Broken” in a jazz style.
the part that challenges the European traditions that this piece comes from, the most is the improvised solo. The way I try to think about it is it’s not a chance to put myself as an individual performer on a pedestal. That’s not what it’s about. It is about me using the fullness of my imagination and abilities to pray, to meditate musically and audibly. To try to move the spirit in the space. That’s the hope.
Commenter #4: That doesn’t seem any different to me, in a good way, from an organist improvising between verses of a hymn.
Jon Ailabouni: Totally.
Commenter #4: It’s the same thing, just bringing jazz tradition into that.
Jon Ailabouni: Absolutely. And the improvisation is an important and meaningful part of many music traditions.
Commenter #5: For me, the addition of the rhythm section–the rhythms and the counter-melody and the improvisations–makes me think of ornamentation and decoration. We decorate our worship spaces in other ways with banners and such, why not also in music?
Jon Ailabouni: Yes, indeed. You can see this in so many times and places. How do the cultural artifacts, let’s say in a worship space, represent the values of a particular people or place?
Commenter #6: The premise of your approach here, which I completely appreciate, is that it takes musicians who really know what they’re doing. In the local parish, you don’t have people who have this kind of class as musicians, generally. So it’s a very special moment, where you have a group come in like yours. Or what we have at Good Shepherd, even in Decorah. It’s just a thrill. I’m just trying to raise the dilemma of, in other words, to have something done really superbly well, you really need superb musicians. Am I correct about that?
Jon Ailabouni: I mean, I pinch myself every time I get to play with musicians like this. Yes, it’s a treat. And I think the lesson there is to find whatever the gifts are in your community and to invite them in. Invite them into worship. I
have this interest in this niche, this intersection of jazz and worship, and blending those traditions. That’s what I can bring. But maybe you’ve got artists in your community. Maybe you’ve got other kinds of musicians. I’ve seen beautiful bluegrass worship services. I’ve seen all kinds of forms work well.
Commenter #7: I think it’s also an opportunity to consider the youth of your congregation, and they may be playing in a marching band, or a jazz band, or orchestra in their high school. But they’re never been asked to play for worship. And they may not be able to play like this, but it’s a start. And [having] them feeling included in a time in a church waving its hands about “Where are the young people?” Well, invite them in to play and do the best they can. And offer that gift in worship, so there’s a way to reach out to the youth. And for children as well, it may not be perfect, but it will be beautiful.
Jon Ailabouni: I have to tell you the first time I led jazz and worship I was 21 years old, and it was not good. [Laughter.] It wasn’t good. But there was enough good that I thought I am going to keep trying to do this and I was grateful to have an environment that was willing to try and you know go with it and keep trying. I don’t know if I would be in the church in the way that I am if I didn’t find the church to be a place that was welcoming of my gifts, my vision, and my leadership. So I think you’re absolutely right, youth (at various ages and stages) should be included. I will also say that I use my abilities as an educator frequently in this jazz worship setting. The group we have here today are superstar musicians who can play anything I put in front of them. Often I am working with volunteers from a congregation, maybe it’s youth, maybe it’s middle schoolers that are just learning on their instruments. In those cases, I try to pick music that they can succeed on. And maybe they don’t play every piece in the service, but they might play one or two, and it’s really great that they feel good that they can play along with great musicians like this.
Commenter #8: So I just want to point out something maybe you didn’t mention. You are not bringing in a band for
a worship service when you are going around to congregations and doing this, and you’re not just going to big city congregations. You’re going to really rural congregations and doing these services and you’re trying to pick the talent that exists within that congregation, the music talent there, and you are bringing that to the front of worship. Yes, you are the ringer. But you make this music accessible for this particular place. Every service you do is particular for that congregation.
Jon Ailabouni: That’s my wife Kate. She’s got my back! [Laughter.]
Commenter #9: I can testify to this because I’m an amateur flutist, I’m not a professional. I’m a member of the Good Shepherd band. You gave me like a 15-minute lesson on how to improvise at one time. I joined your band in improvising, and it’s such a thrill. I thought, “Okay, I’ll go this direction with him.” You try to pray with your instrument.
Jon Ailabouni: And did great, I want to say.
Commenter #10: Could you comment about the words? They didn’t come out of the cotton fields of Mississippi: “Praise to the morning, the dew, the night.” Did they?
Jon Ailabouni: Yeah, I don’t know the history of the text for that hymn. I’ll have to get back to you. But it’s not coming from the Black American experience. That’s part of my hope as well, is that I’m meeting congregations where they are at, with hymn melodies and words that are familiar to them. [“Morning Has Broken”] is a piece that would be familiar for many congregations, so that’s important to me. Accessibility. The arrangements are easy enough that we can learn them quickly. It’s important to me that it’s not the hardest music I can write so that only a specialized few can do it and on only very special occasions. No, let’s do this as often as we can.
Listening Exercise 3: “Glory to God”
We are going to continue with a few examples from my new liturgy, The Spirit is Moving: A Jazz Liturgy of Renewal. The liturgy follows the order of mass:
The congregational refrain from Ailabouni’s “Glory to God.” Used with permission.
“Kyrie,” “Gloria,” “Gospel acclamation,” “Great thanksgiving,” “Sanctus,” and “Lamb of God.” It sets these ancient liturgical texts with new melodies and harmonies flowing from the jazz tradition.
In the title–The Spirit is Moving: A Jazz Liturgy of Renewal–the key action words are “moving” and “renewal.” Through this music we will experience the movement of our emotions and bodies. Movement spurs us on towards change. Renewal is the act of liberation and reformation, which are needed in a twenty-first century Christian context. The music is designed to be easy to sing and quick to learn for a congregation. The accompaniment is written in the common practice of jazz musicians and is accessible to music leaders who don’t consider themselves jazz pros.
The “Gloria” or “Glory to God” taps into the Gospel tradition and makes space for improvisation–a form of meditation, musical prayer, and movement of the energy in worship.
Listening Exercise 4: “Gospel Acclamation”
The “Gospel Acclamation” is traditionally sung just before the reading of the gospel. It’s supposed to bring about praise and joy at the hearing of the “good news.” This piece just has one word: “Alleluia!” I tried to capture the essence of joy in that word, which literally means “God be praised.” The groove is an Afro-Cuban 12/8, which is a tradition that has its own spiritual and musical history tied to the blending of Christianity, indigenous music, religion, and slavery in Cuba.
Listening Exercise 5: “Lamb of God”
The text for the “Lamb of God” reads: “Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world. Have mercy on us. Lamb of
God, you take away the sin of the world. Have mercy on us. Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world. Grant us peace.” This text is a lament and a prayer to take away the wrongdoing that we visit upon one another, the violence in word and deed. Grant us peace. Grant us rest and resolve. My task as a composer was to capture these ideas in music.
Conclusion
I believe one of the superpowers of the arts is to move the body, the soul, and our emotional beings in ways we can’t always predict, and to tie this superpower to movements for mutual liberation. An important part of the jazz tradition is finding your individual voice as an artist. It takes a certain amount of courage and conviction to be fully yourself. For me this has meant responding to a call to ministry through music and diving deeply into this niche at the in-
tersection of jazz and worship. This is a space where I can inhabit the fullness of my abilities, not just as a jazz musician, but also as an educator, artist, composer, activist, Palestinian-American, and Lutheran. This is a space where all those unlikely identities can be at home. And this is the essence of the liberal arts, is it not? That we are more than any one label. In a world that oftentimes fragments, silos, and divides, our strength comes from knowledge of one’s own identities, labels and perspectives and working not just to embody, but also to integrate them.
To listen to recordings of the music mentioned in this article, go to https://drive.google. com/drive/folders/1VhRJiJ6RA49rNbrx7_ ZJpMblenv0AWdn.
Other recordings and more information are available here: https://www.jonailabounimusic.com/.
NOTES
Richard Brent Turner (2014). “Jazz, the Second Line, and African American Religious Internationalism in New Orleans,” Souls , 16:1-2, 69-78.
band performing his “Gospel Acclamation.” Used with permission.
Ailabouni’s
Teacher-Student Cooperation in Writing The Authoritarian Divide
by ORÇUN SELÇUK, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director Of International Studies; SALOMÉ VALDIVIESO ’24; GRACIA POWELL ’25; TALLULAH CAMPBELL ’24
Editor’s note: This Paideia Text and Issues Lecture was presented on October 8, 2024. Orçun Selçuk, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of International Studies
Iam happy to have the honor of being the first speaker of the series with my collaborators, both over Zoom and in person. The collaboration theme is really important and fits into some of the things we do at Luther, including faculty-student research collaboration. What I am going to do is to talk for ten to fifteen minutes to provide an overview of my book, The Authoritarian Divide, because I think it will be useful for you, before we talk about the collaboration, to know what the book is all about. Then the collaborators–Gracia, Tallulah, and Salomé–will talk about at what point they contributed to the book, what they learned from it, and what are some major takeaways and reflections from their perspective. Basically, I will provide a summary and outline of the book. Then Salome, who is joining us from the University of Texas-Austin, will share her reflections; then we will have Gracia, and then Tallulah. Finally, I will, based on their reflections, also offer some final comments to wrap things up before opening it up for your questions and comments from the in-person audience.
seeing a lot of polarizing leaders in different parts of the world. I am originally from Turkey, so Erdogan is one of them. Most of you in the room are from the United States, and again, we see Donald Trump. The elections are coming up, and this really important, polarizing figure, Trump, is at the center stage. But then again, there are other polarizing figures, not only in Turkey, not only in the U.S., but also Modi in India, Chavez in Venezuela, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Duterte in the Philippines, and Netanyahu in Israel. More and more are coming.
likely to be friends with one another, they’re less likely to get married to each other. Compared to the 1970s and 1980s, nowadays we are closer to people who are members of our in-party, what we call “us,” instead of the out-party, who we call “them.” So polarization has an effect on social relations from a partisan lens.
Why did I write the The Authoritarian Divide? How did this whole collaboration start? As you are following the news, I am assuming you might be
In terms of the academic contribution of the book, this is a political science book, primarily in the field of comparative politics. Comparative politics, for those of you who are less familiar with this term, studies the domestic politics of countries around the world. It basically asks questions about domestic politics, political parties, and democracy. In the existing literature, there’s a concept called affective polarization, which is a form of polarization from a more partisan lens. In the U.S., for example, you might be familiar with the idea that Democrats and Republicans are less
In the book, I rely on this literature but provide more of a leader-centric approach. Instead of the U.S. context, Democrats and Republicans, I am more interested in, for example, Trump supporters and Trump opponents, that Trump versus anti-Trump type of polarization. The other literature that the book deals with is the literature on populism. My problem with the literature is that it has this assumption that if you are a left-wing populist, you are an inclusionary populist, and if you are a right-wing populist, you are an exclusionary populist. Then, it boils down to leftwing populism is “good” populism, and right-wing populism is “bad” populism. This normative categorization is another reason why I started researching this topic. I wrote the book in the context of the global decline of democracy. All of these countries that I name here, including the U.S., Turkey, Venezuela, and India, in the last ten, fifteen, and twenty years have seen levels of democracy that are visibly lower. So, there is a global decline of democracy and there is this growing literature on opposition to populism, opposition to polarization,
and opposition to authoritarianism. In other words, I situate the book at the intersection of populism studies and polarization studies, as well as opposition studies.
In the book, I propose a new concept called affective leader polarization. This is the type of polarization that is leader-centric, and it is based on pro-leader and anti-leader identities. In the Turkish case, it’s pro-Erdogan versus anti-Erdogan. In the Venezuelan case, pro-Chavez and anti-Chavez. In the Ecuadorian case, pro-Correa and anti-Correa. In the U.S. case, it would be pro-Trump and anti-Trump. I argue that in the age of the personalization of politics, this is the type of polarization that we need to be talking about more, rather than just talking about party labels because I think there is something about these personalistic leader identities that does mobilize people in a way that traditional political parties are not able to. I have this quote from the book: “In countries where an incumbent President or Prime Minister dominates the political spectrum, I focus on how the members of the pro-leader camp express extremely positive feelings and attitudes, such as like, trust, love, admiration, and respect towards him, whereas the members of the anti-leader camp express the exact opposite, dislike, distrust, hatred, disgust, and disrespect.” When I ask them, how do you feel about Erdogan? How do you feel about Trump? One group says, “I really like or love him,” and then the others say, “I really dislike him or hate him.” These extreme feelings are the phenomena that I am interested in. Methodologically, I use some public opinion survey data. I consider a country more polarized if the survey responses cluster in the extremes. If someone has a lot of people who like them a lot and a lot of people who dislike them a lot, that’s considered polarization or polarized. These are the six ideal types of polarization that I look at in the book. This could apply to any country–the United States, Brazil, Canada, Turkey, a hypothetical country, it doesn’t matter. The first distribution is similar to a centrist distribution, close to a normal curve, that is, this person doesn’t generate any extreme emotions on either end. The
second one is a very popular president who generates very positive emotions but doesn’t generate many negative emotions. The third one is very unpopular, someone, let’s say, who would have roughly a 10-15% approval rating. The tables on the bottom are the ones that I am interested in and which I develop further in the book. The one on the lower left is called affective leader polarization symmetric equilibrium. In this case, 30% of the people say “I highly dislike him,” and 30% say “I highly like him,” and then the middle is mostly empty. You can also have polarization that favors the leader, meaning there is polarization, but there are more people who identify, as, let’s say, Erdogan supporters than detractors. The third type is when you have more anti-Erdogan than pro-Erdogan supporters. I would argue, since the election in the U.S. is right around the corner, this table in the lower right corner is what the United States looks like when it comes to Trump. There are more anti-Trump than Trump supporters, but then again, the alternative candidate, Kamala Harris, is also not very popular either. So that’s one of the reasons why we are talking about a contested election.
Populists are basically opportunistic pragmatists: they do whatever they can to stay in power and win elections instead of committing to coherent, well-established ideologies.
To reiterate, the literature that I am interested in is on populism. Populism is a very contested term. The definition I am using is by Kurt Weyland, a scholar from UT-Austin, where Salomé is located, who talks about how populists dominate their countries with their omnipresence and transformative mission instead of committing to a coherent ideology. Populists are basically opportunistic pragmatists: they do whatever they can to stay in power and win elections instead of committing to coherent, well-established ideologies. One
of the contributions of the book is that I argue against the view that left-wing populism is only inclusionary and rightwing populism is only exclusionary. I argue that they are both, so right-wing populists are inclusionary, but towards the members of their in-group. In that case, someone like Erdogan, Bolsonaro or Modi is pretty much perceived as an inclusionary figure if you are one of their in-group members, whereas, if you are in the out-group, it does not matter if the leader is right-wing or left-wing, you will feel excluded, and you will develop these negative affections.
The way I studied this was by looking at the speeches of these populist leaders in Turkey, Venezuela, and Ecuador. That is when the research part, the collaboration part, really started to emerge. In Ecuador and Venezuela these two leaders had weekly TV shows. Correa, for example, stayed in power for 10 years and there are 523 three-hour episodes available on Youtube. If you want to watch, it’s called Enlace Ciudadano. In Venezuela as well, there’s Alo Presidente, which is another TV show, and in the Turkish case I looked at something similar called the Muhtar Meetings. That was the primary data analysis of speech data. One more thing that I do in the book is attribute agency to populist leaders, and how those leaders intentionally and strategically polarize their countries. I argue that Erdogan, Chavez, and Correa decide to polarize because they think they benefit from it, but also, the anti-Erdogan, anti-Chavez, and anti-Correa camps also have some responsibility.
Thus, it’s not just about the leader, but it’s also how the opponents of the leader contribute to this polarization. In other words, we have two options.
First, the opposition could reinforce affective leader polarization if they reciprocate personal attacks similar to how populist leaders insult their opponents. If you insult back, that actually reciprocates polarization, and you continue playing that polarization game. If you dismiss the followers, saying, “if you vote for Erdogan, you’re uneducated, you are manipulated by religion, you don’t read books,” this dismissive attitude contributes to the idea that if you
are voting for a populist, you must be stupid. Also, engaging in violent protest, coups, or assassination attempts reinforces polarization in these countries.
Second, the anti-leader oppositions can also mitigate polarization if they reflect on their past mistakes, avoid personal confrontations with the populist in power, and then engage in a pro-democracy discourse and coordination. When I look at these three cases, Turkey, Venezuela, and Ecuador, what I find is that the opposition generally fell into this trap. In the initial years, they affectively reinforced their polarization, and then later they did some learning, and they tried to mitigate polarization.
The theoretical framework of the book–the outcome that I’m interested in or the dependent variable–is affective leader polarization: basically, the situation where the country is divided between pro-leader and anti-leader camps, one camp versus the other camp. What explains that, in my view, is populism as a political strategy. Populism explains affective leader polarization because populist leaders are inclusionary to their followers–symbolically, politically, and materially–and exclusionary to their opponents. This is regardless of where they’re located in Europe, the U.S., India, Israel, or Turkey. The location simply doesn’t matter. Further, it doesn’t matter if they’re right-wing or left-wing. Finally, opposition actors, people who are anti-Erdogan, antiCorrea, anti-Chavez, anti-Trump, can also reinforce and mitigate polarization with their discourse and with their actions. Opposition has a secondary responsibility for polarization, because the opponents of populist leaders are so tempted to respond to polarization with polarization. Now, I will pass it to Salomé. Thank you.
Salomé Valdivieso ’24 (International Studies, Anthropology, and Political Science)
Thank you, Orçun. Hi everyone! I am Salomé. It’s so good to see everyone. For those of you who I don’t know in the audience, I graduated two years ago, and it’s so nice to be back at Luther, at least virtually. Thank you so much for this opportunity, and for allowing me to
share my experience doing an academic collaboration with Professor Orçun Selçuk while I was at Luther.
I want to start by acknowledging that this was a very transformative experience for me–not just for the research that I do, but also in my own academic journey and as a person as well. I began this partnership with Orçun during my first year at Luther when I became interested in studying politics. Orçun and I came to Luther the same year, and then I learned about his research project in Ecuador. I am Ecuadorian, so it was perfect. We have spent hours, as Orçun said, analyzing former President Rafael Correa’s rhetoric. Later, we dissected an analysis of this rhetoric, and we made it so it would frame the concepts that Orçun developed in his book that is, the symbolic, political, and material levels of polarization. I want to highlight that, for me, this was the first in-depth exposure I had to academic praxis in political science. Even to this day, I am able to use these skills, not only in my classes at UT but also in my research. What I think made these collaborations so unique and rewarding was the freedom that I had in the collaboration. I think it’s important to be mindful of potential power dynamics within collaborations. However, I had a lot of freedom, and I think these power relationships were mitigated by the freedom I had to pursue my own research interests.
Collaboration can foster a kind of dialogue and sharp thinking that exposes us to other ways of thinking outside of Luther College, and this was certainly the case for me.
While working on the weekly TV shows and analyzing the rhetoric, I was encouraged by Orçun to explore my own perspectives, so I focused on the diaspora and the relationship the Ecuadorian diaspora has with populism. Continuing to this day, that’s the research I do here with UT’s team. That
intellectual freedom to explore guided this mentorship, which was, for me at least, a key component to developing my own critical voice in academia. Through the process of collaborating, we also developed a strong academic community which has been very enriching and deeply supportive of academic collaborations like this one. Collaboration didn’t only build bridges but also helped us reach out to academics across different fields, at different conferences, and in different institutions. I think that collaboration can foster a kind of dialogue and sharp thinking that exposes us to other ways of thinking outside of Luther College, and this was certainly the case for me.
Once we started this research collaboration for his book, we continued our research on diaspora and populism, and we published an article together, which we were able to present at three major conferences: the Latin American Studies Association in 2023, the North Central Council of Latin Americanists in 2023, and multiple times at the Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago. Each of these conferences offered a unique platform for me to put my foot in this academic world for the first time and also to reach out to people in different disciplines. We received invaluable feedback in different fields. We were also honored with the best collaborative research award at the North Central Council of Latin Americanists in 2023. This recognition underscores for me how important it is to have these collaborative projects in an undergraduate setting. Collaboration is not just about producing this article, it’s also about building a community and building skills. I think that finding a place to belong in academia as an undergraduate student, as an Ecuadorian, and as someone who doesn’t speak English as a first language can be very challenging. I think that through collaboration we can empower those voices, and we can empower each other in that process.
This freedom of voice and intellectual inquiry led to a research publication. I am continuing this work right now here at UT Austin as I pursue my master’s in Latin American studies. I happen to be working with Professor Kurt
Weyland, whom Orçun mentions in his publication. There is just a lot of enrichment in that process through getting to know the scholars that I have gotten to work with here in my next academic step. Currently, we are working on our next publication about runoff reversals in Ecuador. This is looking into how the opposition has created some sort of cooperation to work against the populist candidate. Ecuador has elections next year, so hopefully, our research will be very on point and will be able to start a conversation in Ecuador. As we continue our collaboration and this mentorship, despite me not being at Luther, I think that I have become a more well-rounded researcher. Developing these skills made me a more competitive candidate for a master’s program here at UT-Austin.
I will end my speech by saying that collaborating with Professor Selçuk has given me the courage to pursue my academic passions, despite the challenges that academia has presented. Being an academic is not always easy, but I hypothesize that this kind of collaboration gives me the tools to keep going. It gives you energy, and when you are able to share your ideas with someone else, it makes you feel that you are not crazy for studying the things that you want to study. When you have that retrospective feedback, that is constant, and I think that was the beauty of it.
I am tremendously grateful that Orçun and I happened to be in the same place at the same time at Luther College and that from day one he opened his door to me. To be able to start with the speeches, but then, later, to share my interest in diasporas and have him say, “Okay, let’s do it,” and then to research diasporas and populism. My last thought is that I would argue that some undergraduate institutions like Luther College, at times, don’t see the highlights of collaboration. I’m very glad that we are doing this Paideia Text & Issues series to highlight how important
they are because they truly are lifechanging, and they can truly set you up for success later in life if you want to be an academic and pursue a master’s or a PhD. So, for the faculty in the audience, seek those collaborations, and for students too, don’t feel afraid to knock on doors and to talk to your professors about your research interests. It was a bit intimidating at first to be presenting at these big conferences with people who are in their PhD programs, or in their master’s programs, but I think that truly Luther College is a place that can give you those skills. These kinds of collaborations are a sign of it. Well, that was very brief, but thank you. Good to see everyone.
Gracia Powell ’25 (International Studies and Political Science)
Good evening. Thank you all for joining us here tonight. Just to repeat, my name is Gracia Powell, and I am a senior here at Luther this year. I would like to start by echoing what Salome said, and just take a chance to tell you all that this has
been one of the most academically enriching experiences for me over my time at Luther. I think it is most logical for me to start by explaining how I came to work in this role as a research assistant. I had Professor Selçuk as a professor my first year at Luther in the fall semester, and then again for my J-term class. It was at that point that he approached me and asked me if I would be interested in doing this research assistant position for him. I was thrilled at the opportunity, because at the time I was working in the catering department, and nothing against Luther catering at all, but I felt I would get better experience from this research assistantship, and I can confidently say that I made the right choice. I have really enjoyed the consistency of this project over the years. Having started this work my first year, continuing on this book project through its publication this last year, and then moving forward still working as a research assistant has been very rewarding. Having this big final goal in mind was really helpful in pushing me forward, and seeing the different steps in the publication process along the way was really interesting. Learning about how complex it truly is to research, write, and publish a book was fascinating. Going through that process and getting through to the other end with a published book, even though it’s not mine, has been really exciting for me to witness.
Throughout the writing process I did several different tasks in my role as a research assistant. I started by reading and summarizing different articles and books that were relevant to the research that Professor Selçuk was doing so that he could write about that literature in the book. I did proofreading for grammatical clarity and readability in the book. Being a native English speaker was a strength here and allowed me to bring a different perspective. Later on, I did citation review to make sure that citations were done consistently and looked professional. By the time the
Orçun Selçuk’s 2024 book, published by the University of Notre Dame Press
book reached the publication process, I did publication-specific reviews since the University of Notre Dame has their own list of requirements they look for when they publish a manuscript. Then, more recently, I have done some translations of citations into Spanish, as it will be published in Spanish next.
I have had a lot of big takeaways from this project over the years. I have learned a lot about the research process, and this is particularly helpful to me now, as I am a senior, and am working on writing some long research papers for my political science and international studies seminars. Having this background, knowing how research is done and knowing how to look for scholarly sources, has helped me be prepared for that process. I also learned a lot about the publication process, which, as I said, I found to be really fascinating. As someone who does not have a clear career path in mind moving forward, that was interesting for me to learn about as it is something I might be interested in pursuing after my time here at Luther. I gained a better understanding of academic writing, especially how to write citations properly. Again, this is helpful for me as I am doing my own research now, knowing how to present academic writing in a clear and professional manner. I got a lot of practice reading academic papers and being able to synthesize information. I cannot think of a college-level class where that is not an important and useful skill. Finally, I was able to learn a lot about a very relevant topic: populism. It is a concept that comes up more and more in our world, and, for me, having that base knowledge on this topic has been really impactful. I found that I had a lot of interest in it, and when I studied abroad in Nottingham, England last year I was able to take a course specifically on populism where I was able to bring my past knowledge and build upon it by engaging with more of the literature that’s been written on the topic. I also learned a lot about the countries that are represented as case studies in the book: Turkey, Ecuador, and Venezuela. I think that is a great thing, especially as we try to promote students at Luther being global citizens. Having that deeper understanding of other countries, other
cultures, and how politics work in those places is really important. Wrapping up, this has been a wonderful experience for me. I will certainly miss doing this work when I leave Luther, but I am grateful for the connections that I’ve made, and that I will get to carry forward. Professor Selçuk has opened up a lot of opportunities to me over my time at Luther, and I think having that connection to a faculty member or a professor, at a small college especially, can be so valuable as you develop as a student and a professional. I would encourage any students who are here today to seek out those relationships with your professors because they can open up so many doors to you. Thank you.
Tallulah Campbell ’24 (Political Science, Nordic Studies, and International Studies)
I am Tallulah Campbell, and I graduated from Luther this past May with a triple major in international studies, Nordic studies, and political science. Like Gracia and Salomé, I have had the privilege both of working with Professor Selçuk on this book, and also being his student in several courses over my years at Luther. I can say most definitely that my experiences in class and working on this project with him were some of the main things that kept me at Luther College. They were pretty impactful academically, and also in terms of creating relationships with people in this community.
To be valued as an intellectual person, as someone with something to say about a topic was really special.
I started my time at Luther in the fall of 2020, which was a unique time to start a college education for a lot of reasons. I had moved almost 2,000 miles away from home to go to a very small school in a part of the country I had never lived in before. One of my very first classes was Global Populism. In this very room I sat over there, six feet
away from everyone else in the class. We were staggered in the third and fifth rows or something, and I was opened up to this whole world of academic discussion in something that I was really interested in but had not yet been able to foster. Having a professor who just had a huge impact on my experience of what it meant to be a student is already impactful, and then to be approached after that class by him and to be invited to work on this project meant a lot to my 18-year-old self, and it still means a lot to my 21-year-old self. It wasn’t that long ago, but to be valued as an intellectual person, as someone with something to say about a topic was really special. It’s also incredibly cool to have worked alongside other students in this process. Gracia and Salomé are both lovely individuals that I have been friends with during my time at Luther, and to also know them as the intelligent contributors that they are has been very special. During my experience working on this project, I looked into the symbolism that populist leaders use to communicate their particular ideologies to their fan bases. I looked into the way that those symbols can be traced and repeated in different international scenarios. For example, we see the red MAGA hat, and it’s eerily similar to the Narendra Modi masks and things like this. Learning about these things taught me a lot about all the different ways that you could look at any given subject. I did not know much about political science as a field, other than that I was interested in it. To look at one aspect of political science, and to know it is something that you can focus on for several months, and only look at that one particular thing and it can be the most rewarding research experience that you will have was a very special and impactful journey. It was really a very cool gift to work on this project. It was my first of two research assistant roles at Luther College, both of which have really created an image for my future in the world and in academia that I did not have before I worked on those projects. They also had an impact on me as a person in the political world. Working on this project during the 2020 election and now reflecting on it during the 2024 election has really shaped and
helped me interpret the way that people and politics interact with each other. Overall, this was an incredibly valuable and cool experience for someone who is a nerd about topics like this. I am very appreciative of the time I spent on the project and of Professor Selçuk’s impact on Luther and my Luther experience.
Orçun Selçuk
Before passing it to the audience for questions and comments about our experience, the book, and the collaboration, I would like to say thank you to Tallulah, Gracia, and Salomé for accepting my invitation to be here tonight. It was a really important and enriching experience for me as well to work with these students over the years. This is my sixth year at Luther, and in my first year at Luther, as Salomé said, we started at the same time. I was just out of graduate school, and I said, “Okay, I’m going to turn my dissertation into a book,” but I didn’t know how. It’s a really long process to write a book. This project came out of my dissertation, which I started researching and writing around ten years ago. So in that sense, if there is one lesson for anyone in the room, especially people who are planning to write a book, it is to be patient and take small steps. So instead of saying, “Okay, I’m just going to write this book in one semester or one year,” take small steps. It’s probably not realistic to write a book like that, especially if you are teaching six or seven courses a year.
One of the things I have really appreciated at Luther is to work with these really wonderful, high achieving students, because, as they said, I actually reached out to them. Tallulah was in my Populism class, and she was a very impressive student, so I said, “Okay, would you want to work with me?” It was the same thing with Gracia in Global Politics and Global Politics and Movies. Then Salomé is from Ecuador. Just being from Ecuador doesn’t mean she would be the best fit, right? She was also interested in the material, so we had good chemistry. We are still working on these areas of research, and I really appreciate that Luther has this program. I worked with Tallulah, Salomé, and Gracia primarily in the fall and the spring semesters. It
used to be called the Academic Administrative Assistant program. Now it has changed names, but the idea is pretty much the same.
What really helped me was knowing that I would have students coming to the Koren building on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It kept me on top of things because I knew I needed to give them tasks, and for me to give them tasks, I needed to be working on things as well. So, in that sense, Gracia, for example, this semester is still working for me, and she comes on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I have to think about what things I can assign to her, which then forces me to research and engage in scholarly activities. I think that’s really important, because if you come out of graduate school, you have your advisor and your dissertation committee, but then, once you become an assistant professor, you’re on your own. There is no one who is supervising your research, and you have to determine what to research.
It’s not just me teaching the students. . . I could also learn things from them.
You can choose to turn your dissertation into a book, or you can say “I’m not going to turn this into a book, instead I’m going to start to try to publish some articles.” Also, you could say, “I don’t like my dissertation topic, I got the PhD and now I am just going to do other research.” I chose to turn my dissertation into a book, but as Gracia said, I didn’t know all the processes involved, such as the book proposal and then the whole peer review process. Gracia was especially involved in those processes. We worked together, and then also for the TV shows that I analyzed. If I didn’t have Salomé, as I mentioned in the book acknowledgements, it would have been very hard to really analyze those. First of all, she is a native speaker of Spanish, but also, she is from that culture. As you now know, populism is all about those cultural appeals, so you can speak Spanish, you can understand
Spanish, but you might miss a lot of cultural appeals if you are not familiar with let’s say coastal or Ecuadorian Spanish. I really appreciate working with these students.
Salomé graduated two years ago and I was really happy that she stayed as a CGL [Center for Global Learning] fellow last year, so we could actually work on our co-authored article on populism and diaspora. As she said, my research is not directly on diaspora. The book talks a little bit about Ecuadorians living abroad but, in that way, Salomé pulled me into that topic. I think that’s part of the collaboration aspect, that it’s not just me teaching the students, it’s not just a one-way relationship, I could also learn things from them. Tallulah did research on the symbolic appeals of populists, and she did a pretty comprehensive list that is all incorporated into the book. In that way, I learned from every student.
Sabbatical and Citizenship: Thoughts on Children and Courts, Voting and Elections
by SUSAN SCHMIDT, Associate Professor of Social Work
What does it mean to be a citizen—in the general sense as a citizen of any community, and the specific sense as a US citizen in this era? What are the meaning and responsibilities of citizenship, who can pursue its protections, and what does it mean to work with young people who may be exercising new rights of citizenship for the first time? These thoughts about citizenship provided a common theme that connected my sabbatical activities regarding children and courts, voting and elections, during the 20232024 academic year.
Citizenship: Children & Immigration Court
The early seeds of my sabbatical research were planted during two Paideia 450 courses on “Migration and Border Issues” in 2019 and 2021, when our classes spent a week in Minneapolis, including a day spent observing immigration court hearings and using a court monitoring template of The Advocates for Human Rights (The Advocates) to record elements of due process for respondents in removal proceedings (The Advocates, n.d.). For my sabbatical research, I built on The Advocates’ court monitoring work by observing the treatment of children and youth in two different legal contexts over a six-month period.
The first court observation setting occurred in the Fort Snelling immigration court, located as part of a federal campus with a complex history existing near: a state park at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers and part of the Dakota homeland; a historic fort in the westward expansion of the US, used as a concentration camp for the Dakota people following the US-Dakota War of 1862 (MN Historical Society [MNHS], n.d.); and as the home of the enslaved pesons Dred and
Harriet Scott, plaintiffs for the infamous US Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision which denied US citizenship and constitutional protections for all African Americans (MNHS Historic Fort Snelling, n.d.). This setting of beauty, pain, and historic complexity forms an inconspicuous yet relevant context when entering the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building, housing numerous federal agencies, including the court of the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). The Fort Snelling immigration court holds “removal” (i.e. deportation) and other hearings for immigrants living in Minnesota and North and South Dakota (EOIR, 2024). I attended the “juvenile docket” in person every other Monday for six months to observe removal cases where the primary respondents were under age 18 at the initiation of the case and still under age 21.
The second observation context involved child protection court proceedings (“child in need of protection or services,” or CHIPS) in five Minnesota counties: Ramsey, Hennepin, Dakota, Anoka, and Nobles. Most of these court observations were live online, with some in-person observations in Ramsey and Hennepin county courts. Hearings addressed charges of child abuse and neglect; the removal, placement, and permanency of children; termination of parental rights; and custody, adoption, and truancy.
I kept thinking about what he’d said, “I don’t have a place to live.”
Observing these two court contexts in parallel allowed me to consider how a court process for non-citizen children
compares to a court process designed for a largely domestic citizen population. Most noticeable was the attention or disregard for the “best interests of the child,” a pivotal touchstone in child welfare proceedings which was a noticeably absent consideration in immigration court (Nagda & Woltjen, 2015).
One case that still stands out to me from immigration court was an unrepresented youth who called into his court hearing remotely while seated in the back of a parked car. He said at one point, “I don’t have a place to live….” He hadn’t been able to call an attorney to help him with his immigration case because he only recently had enough money to pay his phone bill. The judge peppered him with questions about his immigration case, exhorting him to find an attorney to help him. Long after that hearing ended, I kept thinking about what he’d said, “I don’t have a place to live.” Yet, this wasn’t a matter with which the immigration court was equipped to help. In another case, an unrepresented teenager told the judge that she had been the victim of abuse, yet again this warranted no apparent response or follow up from the court.
Susan Schmidt
In my analysis, immigration proceedings prioritized federal government interests over children’s best interests. This was most evident in the federal government’s interests routinely represented by government trial attorneys. Children, by contrast, had to recruit their own legal help and were represented only 37% of the time, represented themselves before the judge 31% of the time, and did not appear in court (perhaps because they lacked representation) 36% of the time. In addition, children seeking protection from deportation, including those who lacked any legal help, faced complex multi-agency legal procedures. Furthermore, court personnel demonstrated unresponsiveness to child welfare and well-being issues when they arose in court. This analysis and related policy recommendations are detailed in my forthcoming article, “In Whose Best Interests? Comparing Children’s Treatment in Immigration Court and in Child Protection Hearings in Minnesota: Similar Issues without the Relevant Tools or Best Interests Standard,” to be published in the Journal on Migration and Human Security
In juvenile court child protection proceedings, I was surprised at how rarely young people attended their own court hearings (25% of the time). It was often
their absence, rather than their presence, that made an impression on me. Even when young people attended their juvenile court child protection hearings, they were seen but hardly heard. Though MN CHIPS proceedings provided more regular legal representation and/or guardians ad litem to assess children’s best interests (91% of the time), there was very little engagement of children and youth during these proceedings concerning their views. Another article will explore principles of youth engagement in juvenile court and child welfare proceedings and will present findings from my research.
In both court settings, I concluded that we—as adults, as professionals, as citizens and US citizens—can and should do better in our legal proceedings that purport to protect children and youth, yet our immigration proceedings expect too much of young people during complex legal proceedings occurring in another language and culture, while our child welfare proceedings expect too little by overlooking youths’ abilities to meaningfully contribute to decisionmaking about their own lives.
We can and should do better in our legal proceedings that purport to protect children and youth.
Citizenship: Voting & Elections
In addition to my formal court observation research, I became more involved in voter service, elections, and advocacy, through volunteering with the League of Women Voters-St. Paul, serving as a Minnesota election judge, and participating in Minnesota’s social work lobby
day in St. Paul. As a social work professor at Luther College, I teach courses addressing “macro social work” with communities, organizations, society, and systems. In SW 401 “Practice III: Community and Organizational Change,” taught in the fall, students organize themselves as a class to undertake nonpartisan voter engagement activities on Luther’s campus, educating their peers and encouraging them to vote. During SW 304 “Social Welfare Policy & Issues” in the spring, students participate in a statewide social workers’ lobby day in Des Moines, along with other social work students and professionals from around the state. Participating myself more directly in voting, election and advocacy activities provided a direct practice perspective on these activities, similar to what I expect students to engage in as part of class.
With other League of Women Voters (LWV) volunteers, I visited several Minnesota high schools to help 16- and 17-year-olds to “pre-register” to vote. Minnesota implemented the “Democracy to the People Act” in May 2023, tying automatic voter registration to certain state government interactions, joining over 20 other states that allow pre-registration by eligible high school students, and by creating a permanent absentee ballot list for voters who want to only vote remotely (Cummings, 2023). In talking with high school students about how voting works, and in helping them to register (if 18 or older), or pre-register (if age 16 or 17), I was reminded of things I enjoy about teaching social work courses that address voting, elections, and public policy. As students learn and take action, they gain confidence in their own views and voices, they identify a role for themselves in our civic systems, and they begin to develop a habit of public and electoral participation.
More directly related to US citizenship, I attended a naturalization ceremony held at the Minnesota State Fair, and volunteered with the LWV to help these new US citizens from twenty different countries register to vote for the first time (Ansari, 2023). The presiding federal judge for the ceremony, the Honorable Kate Menendez, quoted
Registering students to vote at Harding High School, with Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon
former presidents Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy, and encouraged these new US citizens to “add your voice to the national chorus of the US,” noting that “our government is only a government of the people if people vote.”
Lastly, on Election Day in November 2023, and the February and August 2024 primaries, I served as a Ramsey County Election Judge. In each of these elections, I was encouraged by the spirit of civic cooperation at the local level, without regard to each other’s political views.
Together these activities reinforced my commitment to incorporating nonpartisan voter and civic engagement education and projects into my social work courses, including during my fall 2024 SW 401 course on “Community and Organizational Change” as students are currently working together as a class to plan and carry out non-partisan voter engagement activities on campus.
Conclusion
Taken together, my court observations and voter engagement activities made me wonder what our actions as US citizens convey to those who are not yet citizens, whether through immigration court proceedings, through the naturalization process, or through civic activities like voting. Do we hinder or help those seeking protection; disparage or encourage those who might have a path to US citizenship; exclude or welcome young people new to the voting process? How do our own experiences and our thinking about civic engagement impact our responses to these questions?
Our nation’s implementation of both immigration and voting policies has been complex, flawed, inequitable, and still contested today. Perhaps not surprisingly, the intersection of these policy arenas has emerged as its own area of contestation. Yet both immigration and voting are fundamental in our historical journey to becoming the nation we are today—a democracy of many different voices.
When I ponder the lessons of the last year, I think of both concrete and conceptual citizenship, of my responsibilities to the present and the future, of our
New US Citizens taking the naturalization oath of allegiance before Judge Menendez at the Minnesota State Fair
important roles as educators with learners from near and far, and our legacy of mentoring, encouraging, welcoming, and preparing the next generation…of students, of voters, of present and future Americans.
REFERENCES
Ansari, H. (2023, August 28). Citizenry on a stick: Minnesota State Fair holds first naturalization ceremony since 1996 for new Americans. https://sahanjournal.com/ changing-minnesota/minnesota-state-fairus-naturalization-ceremony-citizenship-oath Cummings, C. (2023 May 5). “Walz signs ‘Democracy for the People Act’ allowing automatic voter registration, pre-registration for teens.” WCCO News. https://www.cbsnews. com/minnesota/news/walz-signs-democracyfor-the-people-act-allowing-automatic-voterregistration-preregistration-for-teens Executive Office for Immigration Review, US Department of Justice. (2024). Immigration Court List - Administrative Control. https:// www.justice.gov/eoir/immigration-courtadministrative-control-list
MN Historical Society. (n.d.). The US-Dakota War of 1862. https://www.mnhs.org/fortsnelling/learn/us-dakota-war
MN Historical Society, Historic Fort Snelling. (n.d.). Enslaved African Americans and the Fight for Freedom.https://www.mnhs.org/ fortsnelling/learn/african-americans
Nagda, J. & Woltjen, M. (2015). Best Interests of the Child Standard: Bringing Common Sense to Immigration Decisions. First Focus: Big Ideas. https://firstfocus.org/wp-content/ uploads/2015/04/Best-Interests-of-theChild-Standard.pdf
Schmidt, Susan (2024). “In Whose Best Interests? Comparing Children’s Treatment in Immigration Court and in Child Protection Hearings in Minnesota: Similar Issues Without the Relevant Tools or Best Interests Standard.” https://journals.sagepub.com/ doi/10.1177/23315024241286870
The Advocates for Human Rights. (n.d.). Immigration Court Observation Project. https:// www.theadvocatesforhumanrights.org/Immigration_Court.
Intelligent Design—It’s Not Just for Conservatives
by ROBERT SHEDINGER, Professor of Religion
The seeds of my fall 2023 sabbatical go back a decade, to the fall semester 2013 when I taught for the first time a course on the science/ religion relationship. This had been a long-standing course at Luther taught by Loyal Rue who had just retired. As someone with an undergraduate engineering degree and a Ph.D. in religious studies, I had a natural interest in the science/religion relationship. But I knew I needed to get up to speed on the issues animating contemporary debates, especially the acrimonious debate around evolution and intelligent design. At the time, I knew little about intelligent design and perhaps even less about evolutionary theory, the latter which I simply accepted as true without question. For this reason, I dedicated a fall 2014 sabbatical to an in-depth reading of many of the seminal texts in the history of evolutionary theory, starting, of course, with Darwin’s Origin of Species, but also working through texts by figures like Sewell Wright, J. B. S. Haldane, Theodosius Dobzhansky, George Gaylord Simpson, Ernst Mayr, and Francis Crick, as well as more contemporary writers like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett. I also began reading texts by noted intelligent design advocates like Michael Behe and Stephen Meyer to see what all the fuss was about.
What I discovered shocked me. First, while I expected intelligent design books to be filled with biblical quotations and tendentious religious arguments, I found them instead to be scientifically substantive. They seemed to be raising significant questions about the sufficiency of the modern Darwininspired evolutionary theory, questions without easy answers. Second, as I read the literature of evolutionary theory from the perspective of a humanities scholar, I began to tease out a grand
narrative of Darwinian triumph that consistently overrides any attempt to engage with the very real challenges to modern evolutionary theory discussed in the intelligent design literature. I eventually formulated this insight into a 2019 book, The Mystery of Evolutionary Mechanisms: Darwinian Biology’s Grand Narrative of Triumph and the Subversion of Religion
The research for this book introduced me to the correspondence of Charles Darwin, the official publication of which the Luther library had begun collecting in the 1980s. Just for fun I began reading this correspondence, not knowing if it would lead to anything. But I was quickly hooked and ended up reading the first eleven volumes (the collection is now over 30 volumes!), over four thousand pages worth of letters written both by and to Darwin by family members and scientific associates. Volume 11 took me up to the year 1863, four years past the publication of the Origin of Species. To my surprise, these letters revealed a Darwin very different from the Darwin that emerges from most biographies and textbook summaries. These latter serve the aforementioned grand narrative of Darwinian triumph, but the Darwin who narrates his own life through his letters turns out to be a far more ambiguous figure.
Darwin viewed Origin of Species as a mere abstract of his theory, lacking much of the evidence and authorities on which his ideas are based.
For example, we learn from the correspondence that Darwin viewed the Origin of Species as a mere abstract of his theory, lacking much of the evidence
and authorities on which his ideas are based. And in fact, the Origin was a mere abstract. Prior to 1859, Darwin had been working on what he called his Big Book on species that he planned to publish as three separate volumes. But when he was about three-quarters finished, circumstances forced him to lay the Big Book aside and abstract it in the form of the Origin instead. He promised his readers that he would follow up the Origin in about two to three years with his longer work, a work that would contain the evidence and authorities he had left out of the Origin since it was only an abstract. People waited and waited for the appearance of the Big Book so they could better evaluate the arguments made in the Origin. But they would wait in vain. Darwin never completed nor published the promised Big Book, but instead followed up the Origin with a monograph on orchids. Why Darwin let his readers down has never been adequately answered. Most of Darwin’s unfinished Big Book manuscript survived among his papers and was published by Cambridge University Press in 1976, making it
Robert Shedinger
readily available to scholars. But it has been widely ignored. Why? Highlighting it, I believe, would undermine the carefully guarded myth that the Origin of Species was Darwin’s magnum opus, when in fact its own author viewed it as an imperfect abstract of a much larger work that he promised but never delivered. Having myself read the criticisms leveled at the Origin by Darwin’s scientific correspondents, and having compared the Origin with the Big Book manuscript, I have concluded that Darwin knew the Big Book would not adequately answer these criticisms and he therefore abandoned its publication. I made this argument in Darwin’s Bluff: The Mystery of the Book Darwin Never Finished, published in February 2024.
I find myself unexpectedly supportive of the intelligent design position.
This brings me to my fall 2023 sabbatical. Part of this time involved making publisher-suggested revisions to Darwin’s Bluff. But I also began working on a new project. After a decade of immersing myself in Darwin studies, evolutionary theory, and intelligent design, I find myself unexpectedly supportive of the intelligent design position. I say unexpectedly, because the prevailing stereotype holds that intelligent design is merely religiously-motivated pseudoscience pushed by conservative Christians. The institutional home of the modern intelligent design movement, The Discovery Institute in Seattle, Washington, is itself a politically and socially conservative think tank. I consider myself very liberal politically, socially, and religiously, so I have found myself in the awkward position of supporting an idea—intelligent design—almost universally understood as explicitly connected to religious, political, and social positions diametrically opposed to my own. But upon further investigation, this awkwardness has dissipated as I have come to realize that the stereotype about intelligent design is just that, a stereotype; it does not accord with reality.
While some high-profile supporters of intelligent design are evangelical protestants (Stephen Meyer) or conservative Catholics (Michael Behe), the religious profile of the ID movement is far more diverse than usually presented. It would also include figures like David Berlinski (secular Jew), Leif Jensen (secular Dane with an interest in Hinduism), Michael Denton (agnostic), and a host of others who fail to fit the stereotype. I now realize that I can engage with intelligent design on its scientific merits without giving up my liberal commitments in other areas of life. It turns out that intelligent design is not just for conservatives. Thus, my sabbatical also involved beginning to write a short book tentatively titled Why Liberals Should Ditch Darwin and Consider Intelligent Design. In the balance of this report, I will give a brief outline of this work in progress. Why should liberals consider ditching Darwin?
lash over him could have worked harder at clearness than I have.”1 If slaves under the lash had only had Darwin’s problems!
First of all, Darwin himself was a deeply conservative figure. His theory of natural selection and the struggle for existence over finite resources was deeply tied to the competitive capitalism of the British Empire from which Darwin benefitted greatly as a member of the wealthy class who never held a paying job. Moreover, his formative opportunity to sail around the world on the H. M. S. Beagle was only possible due to his father’s wealth and the exploitative colonialism of the British Empire. In addition, though a supporter of abolitionist causes, Darwin was still deeply racist. In his letters, he (and his wife, Emma) threw around the N-word quite casually as an endearing way to refer to each other as the other’s slave. And when Darwin’s botanist friend Joseph Dalton Hooker made comments about Darwin’s obscure writing style, Darwin responded, “Thank you for telling me about obscurity of style in the Origin. But on my life no n----- with a
Darwin was also no fan of multi-culturalism. He was horrified by the sight of the indigenous peoples he met on the Beagle voyage. Yet he wrote to Charles Kingsley on February 6, 1862, “In 500 years how the Anglo-Saxon race will have spread & exterminated whole nations; & in consequence how much the Human race, viewed as a unit, will have risen in rank.”2 Darwin’s thinking on human evolution had a deep impact on the development of the eugenics movement founded by his cousin, Francis Galton, from which German Nazis borrowed much of their racist ideology. Finally, Darwin was no feminist, believing strongly in the principle of male superiority. He asserted that because men had to struggle with each other for mating opportunities, they naturally grew stronger, faster, and smarter than women. He wrote in the Descent of Man, “The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by
Shedinger’s 2024 book, published by The Discovery Institute
man’s attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can woman—whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands.”3 Whether the issue is economics, race, or gender, Darwin was no friend of ideals important to liberals. And liberal scholars are beginning to notice.
Take Joan Roughgarden for example, a professor emerita of evolutionary ecology at Stanford University. In 2004, she published Evolution’s Rainbow to highlight the way Darwin’s theory of sexual selection is based on heteronormative assumptions not characteristic of what we actually find in nature. That males are the sexually aggressive ones and females are coy and choosy (Darwin’s view) is exploded by the great diversity of gender expression and sexual orientation found throughout nature. As a transgender woman herself, Roughgarden’s approach is a queering of Darwin’s sexual selection theory. And she is not alone. A paper appearing in 2024 in the journal Human Genetics and Genomics Advances titled “Queering Genomics: How Cisnormativity Undermines Genomic Science” argues that cisnormative assumptions underlying genomics research is having a deleterious effect on transgender and intersex people when it comes to medical research. There is increasing recognition that Darwin’s scientific work was deeply influenced by the conservative social mores of Victorian England in a way that challenges its scientific credibility.4
In terms of gender relations, Holly Dunsworth, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Rhode Island, takes a feminist approach to Darwin’s sexual selection theory, arguing that size differences between males and females are not due to males needing to struggle with each other for mating opportunities, but has more to do with hormone levels. She concludes, “an updated answer to why there are sex differences in the human skeleton is less likely to be interpreted to justify cultural conceptions of masculinity, femininity, and rigid binaries of sex and gender with ‘human nature.’”5 Liberal criticisms of Darwin coming from queer and feminist scholars are now becoming mainstream.
Of course, criticizing Darwin is not the same as making a positive case for intelligent design as an alternative. And there is certainly not the space in this brief sabbatical report to make such a case.6 But a few comments are in order.
Some people will be familiar with the 2005 Kitzmiller decision where a federal judge in Pennsylvania decided that intelligent design is not science. This seemed to put the nail in the coffin of the intelligent design movement. But while the case itself was rightly decided (the Dover Area School District did have explicitly religious motivations for its actions), the judge’s decision to go beyond the case at hand and opine about the larger question of what constitutes science was very problematic. Whether intelligent design is or is not science is not a legal question, and even the atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel has been harshly critical of the judge’s reasons to deny intelligent design the status of science.7
Another question that arises is whether intelligent design is a science stopper. Does proposing the involvement of an intelligent agent in the origin and evolution of life end the scientific search for a naturalistic explanation? In reality, modern intelligent design theory would not be possible without the great advancements made in science over the last century. When Darwin looked at a cell through a microscope, all he could see was a lump of jelly-like protoplasm.
It did not look very complex. But modern technology has allowed us to resolve the cell down to its dizzying complexity of molecular parts and interaction networks, raising the question of what kind of gradual, undirected process could possibly create such an exquisite entity. The origin of life from non-life truly remains one of the most perplexing questions in all of science. Proposing the activity of an intelligent agent in the origin and evolution of life only makes sense in light of scientific advancements—it is not a rejection of them.
Another issue that should concern liberals is academic freedom. Liberals rail when conservatives try to ban books like Nikole-Hannah Jones’s 1619 Project. And well they should. But liberals grow silent when anyone showing even an interest in intelligent design gets drummed out of academia or even the editorship of a peer-reviewed journal that had the temerity to publish a paper favorable to intelligent design. Many careers have been derailed by a liberal cancel-culture when it comes to intelligent design. Academic freedom cannot be invoked only to support ideas one agrees with. Either it pertains to everyone or to no one.
People are beginning to recognize that intelligent design researchers are actually the ones doing better science.
An increasing number of people are beginning to recognize that intelligent design researchers are actually the ones doing better science by delving into the weaknesses of modern evolutionary theory that the biological establishment continues to ignore. In the June 18, 2024 issue of Compact, we find an article by David Moulton titled “Two Cheers for ‘Intelligent Design.’” Moulton identifies as a secular, gay, agnostic; not the kind of person you would expect to harbor a positive attitude toward intelligent design. Nevertheless, he writes, “The first person to get me to take Intelligent Design seriously was a secular scientist;
Charles Darwin
PUBLIC DOMAIN VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
even though my acquaintance rejected Intelligent Design as a positive inference, he still valued it as a critique of the dominant evolutionary paradigm.”
Moulton interviewed intelligent design advocate Stephen Meyer and came away with a real appreciation of Meyer’s scientific acumen and his humility in the face of hard questions.
In closing, we should remember that liberals turning to intelligent design is not a new phenomenon. Darwin’s contemporary who independently developed the idea of natural selection, Alfred Russel Wallace, became an early supporter of intelligent design and held very liberal views on many subjects. He was a socialist economically, a supporter of environmental causes, someone with great appreciation for the knowledge of the indigenous peoples he lived among, and a man of no particular religious sympathies. Yet while he agreed with Darwin on the power of natural selection to do some things, he believed the development of mind and consciousness in living organisms spoke to the existence of a creative intelligence.
Intelligent design may not in the end prove to be correct, but it does deserve a fair hearing.
I conclude with wise words from Wallace:
My first point is, that the organizing mind which actually carries out the development of the life-world need not be infinite in any of its attributes—need not be what is usually meant by the terms God or Deity. The main cause of the antagonism between religion and science seems to me to be the assumption by both that there are no existences capable of taking part in the work of creation other than blind forces on the one hand, and the infinite, eternal, omnipotent God on the other.8
Modern intelligent design theory does not require positing the identity of any particular creative intelligence. It merely
posits that certain aspects of biological organisms are best explained as the result of intelligent activity, not a blind, undirected process. Intelligent design may not in the end prove to be correct, but it does deserve a fair hearing. And one need not be a Bible-thumping, antiscience, religious zealot to see where the evidence is going. There are very good reasons today for liberals to consider ditching Darwin to take a serious look at intelligent design.
NOTES
1. May 11, 1859 letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker., See Frederick Burkhardt et al., eds. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Vol. 7 (Cambridge University Press), 296.
2. February 6, 1862 letter to Charles Kingsley. See Burkhardt, Correspondence, Vol. 10, 71.
3. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (Modern Library Edition, 1950), 873.
4. For more on this, see Evelleen Richards, Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection (University of Chicago Press, 2017).
5. Holly M. Dunsworth, “Expanding the Evolutionary Explanations for Sex Differences in the Human Skeleton,” Evolutionary Anthropology 29 (2020): 14.
6. A good place to start would be Stephen C. Meyer’s Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design (HarperOne, 2013).
7. Thomas Nagel, “Education and Intelligent Design,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 36 (2008): 187-205.
8. Alfred Russel Wallace, The World of Life; a Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose (Chapman and Hall, 1911), 392.
“Your Book is Like a Sword”
by ANITA CARRASCO, Professor of Anthropology
Your book is like a sword that I use to defend myself when I sit across the table from the mining companies and negotiate.
These were the words utilized by an indigenous woman to describe what my book Embracing the Anaconda meant to her. As a leader of a peoples whose water resources have been extracted for over a century by mining companies in northern Chile, she said the book “was proof that this history happened to us, we didn’t make it up.” As an anthropologist, I always hoped that my research could serve a purpose not just for my career, but especially for the indigenous communities that continue to fight for their rights and recognition ever since I began working with them more than twenty years ago.
During my 2023-24 sabbatical leave, I had plenty of time to relax and do the important work of presenting the research results I had been accumulating over two decades. For this, I had the privilege to travel to Chile and
participate in a book tour of the Spanish edition of my work entitled, El Abrazo de la Anaconda. The publisher Pehuén was pleasantly surprised that an anthropology book had sold out so quickly (in three months to be exact). The unexpected commercial success of the book in Chile prompted Pehuén to publish a second edition and offered me the opportunity to include an addendum with nineteen additional photographs for the text. The images were shot by William Rudolph, an intriguing American engineer from the Anaconda mining company for whom I included a stand-alone chapter in my book. In what follows, I will tell you about this engineer, about his photographic legacy, and what his images can teach us about the historical relationship between an American mining corporation and the Atacameño-Lickanantay indigenous peoples of northern Chile.
W.E. Rudolph’s Photographic Collection of the Atacama Desert (1920s-1950s)
William E. Rudolph (1889-1975) was a civil engineer trained at New York University (NYU), who participated in the mining industry of northern Chile in the 1920s and again from 1948 until the end of the 1970s as chief engineer of the Chile Exploration Company (Anaconda). Rudolph facilitated the exploitation of Chuquicamata, the largest copper deposit in the world, exploring and bringing water to this mine located in one of the
driest deserts on the planet. One of his no-less-important achievements was his extraordinary documentation of unusual photographs portraying indigenous people as he passed through the Atacama Desert. In 2021, Katherine Rudolph donated 2,500 photographs to the library of the geographical society to which her grandfather was a member during his lifetime. I was contacted by librarian Susan Peschel, who asked me to identify the contents and places displayed in the images, in order to create an official online collection with free access for communities, researchers, the curious, and the general public eager to access the testimonial and aesthetic value of these visual documents. Lila Colamar Terán and Ricardo Tapia (indigenous people knowledgeable of the Atacameño-Lickanantay territory) worked with me over the course of three months. Together we classified a total of 1,627 images that are now available in the long-awaited collection titled “William E. Rudolph Collection” in the library of the American Geographical
Anita Carrasco
Carrasco (second from left) at a book presentation in Chile
Society at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.
There are no formal records of people in these remote villages in the 1920s, 1940s, and 1950s, reflecting the level of intimacy of the scenes that Rudolph’s photos managed to reveal. In the collection of 1,627 images, we find shepherdesses smiling at the camera, children playing, families sharing, women weaving on a loom; and everyone poses calmly, without fear, in front of this gringo engineer’s camera. The mutual trust that his images reveal is not easy to achieve, not even in the present when people are already accustomed to the foreign presence.1
These photographs have formidable value as testimonial documents for the contemporary indigenous cause–especially for young Atacameños raised in the city, who struggle to reconnect with their roots and indigenous identity. Atacameño youth will benefit greatly from being able to get a closer look at these images of their grandparents, their hometowns, their landscapes alas obtaining a window into their past: “Just as photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help them take possession of a space in which they feel insecure” (Sontag, 1977, p. 9).
In the addendum of the second edition of my book, nineteen unpublished photographs from the Rudolph col-
lection are reproduced. The selection was made thinking about supporting with images the stories that were told to me in my interviews during ethnographic fieldwork in the Atacama Desert. These nineteen photos portray a historical dimension of how the water theft occurred, framed in a process of slow violence2 where indigenous actors of this desert were invited to participate, by working in the construction and maintenance of pipelines, in their own annihilation as a society. These images confirm the sanity of their memories: “Photographs provide evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we are shown a photograph of it” (Sontag, 1977, p. 5).
this pipe to obtain drinking water. This image reminds me of narratives the shepherdesses of Turi told me about their long walks with buckets on their shoulders to collect water from this pipe. Clean, arsenic-free water is needed for drinking, cooking, and bathing.
This curation includes photographs of residents of the Loa River basin moving pipelines in carts pulled by mules at the beginning of the twentieth century and of the pipelines of the Chuquicamata mine like sharp blades cutting across the desert landscape.
The last image in the selection portrays a shepherdess resting, sitting on the pipe that to this day crosses the meadow of Turi. Taking a closer look, we can notice that there is a small faucet installed in
On my trip to northern Chile for the presentations of the first edition of this book (2023), an Atacameño friend gave me another image. I was able to contrast Rudolph’s seated shepherdess in the 1950s with a photograph taken in 2010 that captures the scene of another shepherdess, kneeling and washing clothes by hand at the foot of the same pipeline. Both contrasting images reflect the past in the present. Here I include Rudolph’s 1950 shepherdess and the one shot in 2010. The juxtaposition of the old photograph along with the new forces us to think about how the shepherdesses became beggars for water–the same water that once flowed freely through the desert, feeding the meadows that they had to travel every day in search of pasture for their animals.
In closing, the words of an Atacameño colleague who read El Abrazo de la Anaconda serve as an invitation to reflect on a history of dispossession that has resurfaced with the voices of those who shared their stories for my book: Sensack (Greetings), El abrazo de la Anaconda has made visible a reality that for years was hidden in the Andean landscape. For years there has been an attempt to hide the genocide that mining activity
Shepherdess at Meadow of Turi Pipeline in the 1950s
Shepherdess doing laundry at Meadow of Turi Pipeline, 2010
has caused among indigenous peoples. Today in these 7 chapters, in these 243 pages, we can discover the violence exerted against women, children, and grandparents, the Atacameño-Lickanantay and Quechua who live in the territory. Through these pages we realize the misery of human beings, of wanting to end the life of indigenous nations.
100 years have not been enough to plunder our territory; today Anaconda’s Embrace extends towards the Salar de Atacama, and it will be said that the landscape in a couple of years will be unrecognizable.
For the Atacameño-Lickanantay People, of which we are part, this text is the beginning of a fight to conserve our territory. Here is the experience, or rather the bad experience, of how Codelco mining company continues with the depredation without any questioning in indigenous territories. We are part of the territory, and this book will allow us to mobilize, to denounce, and stop the abuses towards our Patahoiri, Pachamama, mother earth.
So be it…
—Tajniri Lickana Lickanantay (Servant of Lickanantay Territory)3
REFERENCES
Carrasco, Anita. 2024. El abrazo de la Anaconda. Crónica de la vida Atacameña, Minería y Agua en los Andes. Pehuén Editores, Chile. Second edition.
Carrasco, Anita. 2023. El abrazo de la Anaconda. Crónica de la vida Atacameña, Minería y Agua en los Andes. Pehuén Editores, Chile. Carrasco, Anita 2020. Embracing the Anaconda. Chronicle of Atacameño Life and Mining in the Andes. Lexington, Roman & Littlefield.
Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press.
Sontag, Susan. 1977. On Photography. New York: Picador Press.
NOTES
1. The images can be accessed at the web address https://collections.lib.uwm.edu/digital/ collection/ags_south/search/searchterm/Donated%20by%20Katherine%20Rudolph?CIS OBOX1+Donated+by+Katherine+Rudolph/
2. Slow violence is a concept coined by socioenvironmental historian Rob Nixon (2011) that describes processes in which environmental impacts span a series of time scales of historical depth, and which, due to their slowness, go unnoticed as environmental violence until they occur and it’s too late. A clear example of violence in contemporary slow-motion disasters is climate change caused by the intensive use of non-renewable energy such as oil.
3. Email correspondence, November 15, 2023.
Carrasco at a book presentation at Museo del Desierto Calama-Chile
Decorah Considers Establishing a Municipal Electric Utility
by CARLY HAYDEN FOSTER, Professor of Political Science
Sabbaticals provide the luxury of time to catch up, finish longrunning projects, reflect on past work, and plan for new projects. My sabbatical involved all of those things, in the context of Decorah’s ongoing community efforts to establish a municipal electric utility.
As a participant/observer in Decorah’s efforts to establish a Municipal Electric Utility (MEU), I have been immersed in local politics, community education efforts, state regulatory agencies, and electric utility policy. I have been grateful for the opportunities to build valuable relationships with other people who are also interested in volunteering their time and skills to try to improve our community. My involvement with efforts to establish a MEU in Decorah began in 2016, when I volunteered to serve as a board member of a community organization (Decorah Power) advocating for electrical municipalization. Those efforts led to a May 2018 MEU referendum which, after a recount, failed by three votes.
Despite this narrow loss, the idea that Decorah residents could participate in democratic local control of this essential utility service took hold in the minds of many community members. In December 2020 I was appointed by the mayor of Decorah, Lorraine Borowski, to serve as chair of the Decorah Municipal Electric Utility Task Force, established by the Decorah City Council to investigate the potential advantages and disadvantages of establishing a MEU. The Decorah MEU Taskforce completed its work in December 2022, culminating in a 34-page report [see Notes] and unanimous recommendation that the City of Decorah hold another referendum on electrical municipalization. The City Council thanked us for our work and decided not to take action on our recommendation “at that time.”
When I applied for my sabbatical in the fall of 2023, the Decorah City Council had still taken no action on the MEU taskforce’s recommendation and my intentions were to write a “post-mortem” on Decorah’s MEU efforts. Instead, electricity costs have increased far faster than Alliant Energy said they would, MiEnergy (the rural electric cooperative that provides energy to the area surrounding Decorah) offered to partner with a Decorah MEU (if there were to be one), and the Decorah City Council developed a renewed interest in the idea of electrical municipalization. In April 2024, the Decorah City Council voted to hold a second MEU referendum on March 4, 2025. Because Decorah voters will have another chance to weigh in on the topic, a post-mortem sabbatical report on municipalization efforts no longer made sense.
As this essay goes to press in November 2024, I am working in conjunction with the City of Decorah to develop factbased, voter education information explaining exactly what Decorah residents will be voting on when they cast ballots in the MEU referendum. This voter education information (see pages 32-33) is intended to be shared with Decorah residents by direct mail, and via the City of Decorah’s website, in early 2025.
What I learned while working on this project
Monopolies operate fundamentally differently than other businesses
Investor-owned utilities (IOUs), like Alliant Energy, are regulated monopolies. Because it would be extraordinarily expensive, and potentially dangerous, to have more than one company building electrical infrastructure and competing to provide electricity to homes, the state grants monopoly rights to provide electricity in defined service territories. In
exchange for the guaranteed customer base for this essential service, entities agreeing to provide the service must agree to conditions imposed by the state regulatory agency (in Iowa, this is the Iowa Utilities Commission). Investorowned utilities are legally allowed to provide a return on investment to their stockholders of approximately 10%. While other types of businesses must be responsive to customer interests in order to generate revenue, profit for investor owned utilities is guaranteed as a part of their monopoly agreement with the state. Investor-owned utilities, like Alliant, increase their revenue by earning a commission-approved return on equity for their capital expenditures, and then requesting that the state approve rate increases in order to cover those increased expenditures. One of the reasons that many people in Decorah are interested in exploring the possibility of establishing a MEU is because of Alliant’s very high rates. Municipal electric utilities, like rural electric cooperatives, are often able to provide excellent quality electricity service at a lower cost than
Carly Hayden Foster
Uncertainty is unavoidable
Like national politics, local political realities are always in flux. This means that working with local government requires flexibility, and an ability to be comfortable with uncertainty. I did not expect the 2018 MEU vote to be so excruciatingly close. I did not expect that the MEU taskforce I chaired would ultimately end with a unanimous recommendation that the city proceed with next steps towards pursuing a MEU – unanimity is exceedingly rare in any local political efforts. I also did not expect that upon hearing our unanimous recommendation, the Decorah City Council (in January of 2023) would decide “not to take action at that time.” I was less surprised in April of 2024, when the Decorah City Council decided to bring this issue back to Decorah voters on March 4, 2025, because Alliant ratepayers had been notified just a few months earlier that the company had filed an application with the Iowa Utilities Commission to increase electric rates once again.
investor-owned utilities because they are not obligated to make a profit for their investors. For more information, see the Decorah MEU Taskforce Report [see Notes].
State regulatory agencies like the Iowa Utilities Commission are more important than most people think
I know, that is a boring, political science professor thing to say, but it is true. The governor of the state of Iowa is responsible for appointing the three people who serve staggered six-year terms on the commission. Those commissioners are then responsible for pursuing the IUC’s mission, which is: “to ensure that reasonably priced, reliable, environmentally responsible, and safe utility services are available to Iowans.” This involves approving, or not, electricity rates and rate increases, establishing standards and monitoring the quality of utility services, and responding to customer
complaints. This is far more work than three individual people can manage, so the IUC has a staff of state employees responsible for helping to complete these tasks. Alliant is well-resourced; they have financial interests to protect and employees whose job it is to protect those interests. Volunteer-based efforts to pursue electric municipalization (as Iowa residents are legally entitled to do under state law) would never have a chance at success without regulatory agencies like the Iowa Utilities Commission and the Iowa Office of Consumer Advocate. And electricity rates would go through the roof if the IUC rubber-stamped the enormous rate increases that Alliant regularly requests. Functioning government regulatory agencies are things that people tend to take for granted, but I have learned to be grateful for people working in these regulatory agencies who take their responsibilities to Iowans seriously.
Support on Decorah’s City Council for investigating the potential opportunities presented by electrical municipalization has ebbed and flowed over the years that I have been involved. Some city council members seem to have changed their mind over time, and membership on city councils frequently changes. For example, one of our long-time city council members, Ross Hadley (Luther class of 1995), recently moved from Decorah and resigned his seat, necessitating a special election to fill that seat on December 10, 2024. There are no guarantees that support on the city council for this issue will persist going forward.
Even if voters do vote in favor of the MEU on March 4, a positive referendum outcome is still only one more step in the process. The city would need to establish a MEU Board, that board would need to agree that it is a good idea to petition the IUC to take over Alliant’s Decorah service territory, the IUC would need to agree that establishing a MEU is in the best interest of Decorah residents, and then Decorah voters would need to approve a bond issue to cover the costs. In the long run, a MEU could generate revenue for the
Table shows Interstate Power and Light Co. (Alliant Energy) costs relative to other utilities in Iowa. Source: 2023 Annual Electric Power Industry Report by the US Energy Information Administration.
city, but purchasing the infrastructure would require significant up-front costs. There is no way at the outset of this endeavor to predict the outcome of all of those steps, but for me, continuing with this work in the face of all this uncertainty is an expression of optimism in our community and hope for a better future.
“Local control” is more than just a catch phrase
By definition, municipal electric utilities are operated in the interest of their customers. This means that when people served by MEUs have problems or concerns about their electric service or electric rates, they can take those concerns directly to the people in their community responsible for managing the MEU. On March 4, Decorah voters will have an opportunity to make a choice about the provider of their electricity, and to embrace local control of this essential service. I sincerely hope that Decorah voters will take the time to learn about the issue.
LEARN MORE:
City of Decorah MEU resources include the Decorah MEU Task Force Report and videos from MEU Task Force Information Sessions: https:// www.decorahia.org/commission-andboards/decorah-municipal-electricutility-task-force Iowa Utilities Commission: https://iuc. iowa.gov/
A municipal electric utility (MEU) is an electricity service provider owned and operated by a local government. Much like the city owns and operates the water and sewer system in Decorah, many cities also own and operate other utilities, including electricity or communications. There are 136 municipal electric utilities currently operating in Iowa. Nationwide, 14.2% of customers are served by consumer owned electric utilities, including municipal electric utilities (MEUs) and rural electric cooperatives (RECs).
What is the difference between a municipal electric utility (MEU) and an investor-owned utility (IOU)?
A municipal electric utility is owned by the municipal government of the area that it serves. Investor-owned utilities are owned by private investors. Electric service in Decorah is currently provided by an investor-owned utility (IOU), Interstate Power and Light, also known as Alliant Energy. All electric service providers in Iowa are regulated by the Iowa Utilities Commission (IUC). The IUC determines which entity (MEU, REC, or IOU) is granted monopoly rights to provide electricity within a defined service territory. Electric service providers (MEUs, RECs, and IOUs) may choose to generate electricity, but primarily they provide electricity purchased on the wholesale electricity market.
Why is Decorah holding a MEU referendum?
The State of Iowa requires a positive referendum outcome, demonstrating community support for a municipal electric utility (MEU), before a city can take any steps towards pursuing electrical municipalization, including communication with the Iowa Utilities Commission regarding the costs of purchasing infrastructure. Decorah needs information on infrastructure, costs, and revenue to make an informed decision on whether or not to apply for municipalization, and that information cannot be gained without a positive MEU referendum result. In 2021 the
Decorah City Council established an independent Decorah MEU taskforce and asked it to investigate the potential advantages and disadvantages of pursuing a MEU in Decorah. That task force determined that the potential advantages of municipalization in Decorah outweighed the potential disadvantages, and in 2023 the MEU taskforce unanimously recommended that the City of Decorah take the next step towards electrical municipalization, a MEU referendum. The Decorah MEU Taskforce Report, including a summary of the potential advantages and disadvantages of electrical municipalization, is available at the City of Decorah’s website.
When is the referendum?
Tuesday March 4, 2025. Polls will be open from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm. Early/ absentee voting will begin February 12, 20 days before the election, in accordance with Iowa state law.
What will be on the March 4th referendum ballot?
“Shall the City of Decorah, in the County of Winneshiek, State of Iowa, be authorized to establish a municipally-owned electric utility?”
Important note: establishing the municipally owned electric utility means establishing the legal entity that is the “utility.” This is only the first step in the municipalization process described below. Establishing a municipally owned electric utility does NOT mean that the city begins operating a municipal electric utility.
What happens if the referendum passes?
If Decorah residents vote in favor of pursuing the municipalization process, then the City of Decorah is authorized to establish a Decorah Municipal Electric Utility Board. Members of the MEU Board would be appointed, much like the City Council appoints members to other Boards. At this point, the Board has many options, but most likely, they will petition the Iowa Utility Commission to compel Alliant to share inventory, expense, and revenue data with Decorah. The Decorah MEU Board would then work closely with the Iowa Utilities Commission to determine what
infrastructure would need to be purchased, the costs of that purchase, and the expected revenue. The subsequent steps below are potential outcomes that can only happen after a positive MEU referendum outcome.
At that point, if the numbers look good and if the Decorah MEU Board is still interested in pursuing municipalization, it may decide to conduct another feasibility study and develop a business plan. The Decorah MEU Board would then be able to petition the IUC to acquire Alliant’s service territory in the Decorah Area.
The IUC will evaluate Decorah’s plan and may allow the city to proceed with the process of pursuing municipalization only if the IUC determines that the city’s plan is viable and that a Decorah MEU could operate with the same or better reliability at the same or better rates, and that electrical municipalization is in the best interests of Decorah and in the “public interest.”
If the IUC approves the City of Decorah’s application for electrical municipalization, then the IUC establishes the price that the city would be required to pay Alliant to acquire its infrastructure in the Decorah service territory.
If the city agrees to the purchase price, the city would then be responsible for financing that purchase.
If bonds are needed to finance the costs associated with establishing a MEU, another vote would need to occur authorizing the expenditure.
If Alliant appeals the IUC decision, the Iowa court system is responsible for adjudicating legal appeals.
If all of these steps in the electrical municipalization process are concluded favorably for a Decorah MEU, then ultimately Decorah’s MEU Board would own and operate a Decorah MEU. The Decorah MEU Board could then 1) manage and operate the MEU entirely in house (for example hiring MEU staff, establishing rates, addressing customer complaints, maintaining electrical infrastructure), 2) contract with an experienced entity such as Mi-Energy (the REC currently providing electricity in the service territory that surrounds
Decorah) for all or part of the MEU management, or 3) engage in a combination of those options over time.
At any time in this entire process, even after a yes vote, the Decorah City Council retains the authority to change its mind and withdraw from the municipalization process.
Would a “Yes” result on this referendum mean that the City of Decorah would be responsible for generating electricity?
No. A Decorah MEU would purchase electricity from the wholesale electricity market. The City could opt to supplement that electricity supply with locally generated electricity, if it decided to do so.
Will electricity rates be higher or lower under a MEU?
The Decorah MEU Board will ultimately be responsible for making decisions about electricity rates. The Iowa Utilities Commission will not approve an application to establish a MEU unless it agrees that it is likely that a Decorah MEU could operate with the same or better reliability as the investorowned utility at the same or better rates for customers. For a closer look at how Alliant’s rates compare to Iowa MEU rates, see the Decorah MEU Taskforce Report at https://www.decorahia.org/ commission-and-boards/decorah-municipal-electric-utility-task-force.
With a Municipal Electric Utility, who would be responsible for restoring service in the event of a natural disaster?
MEUs participate in Mutual Aid Agreements with other electric service providers to maintain and restore services in the event of natural disasters. Additionally, MiEnergy has agreed to enter into a maintenance-and-operation agreement with a Decorah MEU, if Decorah were to be interested in such an agreement. On average, Iowa MEUs have better reliability than IOUs over time (see the Decorah MEU Task Force Report for details).
What happens if the referendum does not pass?
Alliant Energy (Interstate Power and Light) remains the electric service
provider for the Decorah area service territory.
What has changed since 2018?
A MEU referendum was held in Decorah in May 2018, and that referendum failed to pass by three votes. Since that time a number of things have changed, and the Decorah City Council has decided to bring this issue to the voters in March 2025. Some of the things that have changed since 2018 include:
The Iowa Utilities Commission (then the Iowa Utilities Board) determined that Alliant misled the Decocrah community in 2018 when it claimed that rates would likely rise by less than 1% per year for the next decade, and “failed to meet the standards of a regulated utility” with regard to being transparent with customers. Alliant requested double digit base rate increases in 2019, and again in 2023. The Iowa Utilities Commission ultimately approved rate increases far exceeding the 1% annual increase that Alliant told Decorah residents to expect.
MiEnergy, the current electricity provider for the geographic area immediately surrounding Decorah, has offered to partner with Decorah, as needed, to ensure a seamless transition of electric service providers. MiEnergy currently partners with 11 communities in the region, including Spring Grove, Caledonia, and Lawler. MiEnergy’s rates are significantly lower than the rates that Decorah residents are currently paying to Alliant.
The electrical grid is increasingly being stressed by weather extremes and changing asset and demand patterns, and many MEUs (and rural electric cooperatives) are seriously considering or pursuing the owning of electricity generation assets on their distribution grid for greater resiliency and reliability over time. There is currently a window of strong federal financial incentives for MEUs to invest in grid and generation assets through 2032, which Decorah could potentially take advantage of.
Operatic Stage Direction 101
by BETH RAY WESTLUND, Professor of Music
At some point during the spring 2024 sabbatical, my wise friend Jessica Paul, professor emerita of music, labeled the sabbatical project “experiential.” That was helpful to me, as I occasionally grappled to explain the project to people. “No, I don’t plan to write a book. No, I’m not teaching at another institution. No, I am not conducting quantifiable research….” I proposed using the semester to visit opera rehearsals in order to develop a deeper understanding of stage directing in the opera rehearsal process. In addition to independent study and conversation with stage directors, the primary method to bolster my training and experience was observing several rehearsals at multiple professional companies, universities, and colleges.
Although I have co-taught the Music 362 (Opera Workshop: Scenes) course five times, I never received formal training in stage direction. I notice (and admire) that many of my younger colleagues left graduate school with more specific directing knowledge and practice than I did. Most of my teaching methods for Opera Scenes come from my own experience interpreting music and text as a performer. That experience is valid and valuable, but there are additional variables in staged opera. And there is other required knowledge, technique, and procedure that I have not been exposed to related to planning, preparing, fostering, and running effective rehearsals. I hoped that increasing my contact with various directors and their approaches to bringing opera to life would help improve my own stage direction skills.
I contacted four regional professional opera companies explaining my sabbatical project and requesting to observe part of the staging rehearsal process. I got responses from three of the four companies, and I worked with various
staff members at each of those three companies to arrange visits during a staging rehearsal period. American opera companies are categorized by the size of their annual budget. Based on the Opera America Annual Field Report, 2023, Budget 1 companies (also known as “A-house”) have budgets of over $15 million. Budget 2 companies (“B house”) have $3-15 million budgets. Budget 3 companies have $1-3 million, and Budget 4 companies operate with $250,000-1 million. I was able to observe La bohème rehearsals at Minnesota Opera (a Budget 2 company), Candide rehearsals at Madison Opera (a Budget 3 company), and Tosca rehearsals at Cedar Rapids Opera (a Budget 4 company). It was interesting to see the difference in rehearsal space, support staff, physical resources, and rehearsal protocol at these three companies. Each of these companies, however, hired artists with significant credentials. Many had sung their current role with another professional company, and many had future engagements with major domestic and international opera companies.
I also reached out to opera and theatre faculty members at seven regional colleges and universities. Colleagues at six institutions invited me to visit; one did not respond.
Of the six who offered to let me observe part of the staging rehearsal period, I was able to schedule visits at four schools: Viterbo University (preparing Later the Same Evening by John Musto), Iowa State University (The Miller’s Daughter by Jodi Goble plus selected arias and duets from opera and musical theatre), University of WisconsinWhitewater (Gallantry by Douglas Moore), and University of WisconsinStevens Point (Acis and Galatea by G.F. Handel).
As I consider how to summarize this
sabbatical, I realize that what I learned at each place was largely dependent on the opera, the director’s personality and approach, the singers’ experience and expertise, the point at which I observed the rehearsal process, and even whether a rehearsal pianist attended. I can’t identify or summarize one particular method or technique that stood out as most beneficial or effective. As with most creative endeavors and with teaching/learning in general, the approach, strategies, and activities must account for diverse variables and diverse participants.
During my first observation at a professional company, the director was very high energy and participatory. His background was acting—not opera— and this informed his approach. He frequently stood or walked next to the singer, asking questions, commenting on the dramatic situation, or speaking a character’s potential subtext aloud. As a singer moved downstage delivering their lines, the director sometimes walked backward away from the performer say-
Beth Ray Westlund
ing, “Say it to me. Look me in the eye. Tell me!” I learned a lot from his questioning process too. Even with performers who’d sung their roles before, he filled in very interesting background information about the political situation within the opera and during the time it was written. This is standard information to know in preparing to direct (or act), but he was masterful in relating it to the characters and their choices. He also discussed the characters’ professions and how common notions at the time regarding those professions would influence the interactions among characters. He didn’t always follow the written stage directions in the score (e.g. “irritated, he closes the window” or “looking over the fan”), often looking for possibilities of a deeper or alternate meaning.
Incidentally, neither the director nor the actors used a score during the rehearsal, even though I saw rehearsals very early on in the staging process. This stood out to me, and I knew that our students would be surprised about that! This director also said he assumes that three hours of rehearsal time is required for every nine minutes of music. For student productions, we would prefer to allow even more time, ideally!
thought like an actor, so I would say, “Oh, well, you know, the Countess might be feeling any one of these things. She might actually take this action. She could . . . I would be thinking about all the options, for every character, which I still do in preparing something, getting to know it.
So I needed to separate that. I didn’t want to be a director who told singers, “Do this, feel this, this is what it is.” I wanted to be able to have a more collaborative relationship because I thought that seemed like what great directors were able to do . . . it was really about telling a story on actors, the way a choreographer sets a ballet on dancers.”
Other directors I observed used quite different methods. One simply gave the students a road map without much dramatic impetus: “move here at this point,” “pick up the newspaper at this line,” etc. I didn’t know whether the students would find this approach tedious, but they wrote diligently in their scores and stayed engaged. Presumably more detailed characterization was added after the basic blocking work was completed. Another director emphasized the primacy of the music: “How does this music translate into something physical for your character? Match the quality of your movement to the music.” Another pointed out intentionality of the overall energy arc in a scene. The action before a death scene (La bohème), for example, must contain a certain level of energy or else there is no way for energy to decrease as Mimi’s death nears. This director frequently suggested and
demonstrated very specific gestures and reactions and ways of moving based on relationship and subtext. In the Candide scenes with principals and a large chorus, the director was intentional about keeping the action clear while building a deliberate “picture”—designing an arrangement of characters on different levels and in foreground/background.
In opera coursework, we encounter students who ask for nearly full agency in their creative choices. Simultaneously, we work with many students who are comfortable only with detailed, specific options or outright directions. This is challenging when a small scene contains students of both types. In either case, I aspire to encourage and facilitate a student’s exploration, choices, commitment, and confidence versus imposing a list of prescribed ideas or actions. Hearing director Stephen Wadsworth interviewed in Opera America’s “The Oral History Project” confirmed the importance of this goal. He said,
Before I could direct a show, I needed to learn how to get an actor’s performance out of the actor instead of, as it were, playing the role myself—because I’ve always
Attempting this actor-based story telling is something I am trying to keep in my awareness during the current semester of Music 362 (opera scenes), especially because I have approached directing in the past from the perspective Wadsworth described initially. In Speed Dating Tonight, the opera for our class by Michael Ching, it is helpful that the short vignettes will allow time for student exploration and experimentation. And since the opera is a new work for me and my two coinstructors, conceptual collaboration between students and faculty is even more inherently part of the process than most of the scenes I’ve directed in the past. I am excited to work with the students under this set of conditions!
I was able to see the final product—a performance—for two of the organizations I observed. If I could change anything about my semester away, I wish there had somehow been more time and money to return to each of the seven venues for a performance. That may have made the rehearsal observations coalesce in an even deeper way. Nevertheless, I am grateful to the college for the sabbatical opportunity and to the provost’s office and the Rodamaker family for the Tomson Family Faculty Fellowship that supported travel for this sabbatical project.
Viva l’opera!
Poster for Candide, from the Madison Opera IMAGE
OF THE MADISON OPERA
Tessituras
by JOSEPH L. BREITENSTEIN, Professor of Psychology
Part of my sabbatical work was to explore the initial success of the counseling minor, which first appeared in the 2022-23 Catalog after being proposed by Britt Rhodes, Andy Eastwood, and myself representing the social work and psychology departments. Our goal was to develop a minor that would complement both majors, while also appealing to a variety of other students where it might be possible to combine their passions and majors into a meaningful career as a helping professional. Lauren Siems ’24 (personal communication, March 26, 2024) describes such an educational journey:
I never knew what I wanted to do for a career. My mother is a nurse, and so that is what I decided to major in college as an incoming freshman. I am not interested or skilled in science but being a caregiver and nurturing people sounded right.
When classes started, however, the nursing major quickly became a bust due to the science component. I dropped the human anatomy course and registered for the general psychology course, and it was so interesting. I decided to be a psychology major.
I enrolled in the developmental psychology course the following semester. I had taken a child development class that I loved during my senior year of high school, so I decided that I wanted to be a child psychologist. The content of the developmental psychology course was interesting in theory, but there was such an emphasis on scientific thinking and methods that I felt ostracized. I soon realized just how unappealing the psychology major was with its multiple math and science requirements. Disappointed in myself, I abandoned the psychology major.
I have been involved in theatre since I was in elementary school, and it became a prominent extracurricular activity ever since I stepped foot on campus. I felt at home with the people in the theatre department, so at the end of my freshman year I declared a theatre major. I did not know what I would use it for after graduation, but I was trying my best to focus on being the happiest I can be at the moment.
At the end of my sophomore year, the college announced the new counseling minor. I was shocked in the best way. This new minor was everything I wanted from the psychology major. The psychology classes I had already taken counted towards it, and the rest of the classes had a prerequisite of a junior standing. It all felt written in the stars!
Lauren does not appear to be alone among Luther students interested in the new counseling minor, an offering that appears to be unique among our competitors. The most recent data, presented below, finds 31 students from a variety of majors declaring a counseling minor in just the two short academic years
Joseph L. Breitenstein
of its existence. The preponderance of psychology and social work majors minoring in counseling suggests a desired complementarity for such students.
Lauren is also not alone in sensing differences and sometimes even conflict between scientists and practitioners. Martin Seligman is perhaps the most prominent living psychologist. His
research discoveries of learned helplessness, learned optimism, and positive psychology are used widely by counselors in more applied settings. Such applications were a primary goal of Seligman, who often spent his sabbaticals working with prominent clinicians to best integrate his research findings into their practices. Seligman noted a great deal of unfortunate and unhelpful tension between scientists and practitioners within psychology and used the metaphor of tessitura, or the range in which one’s voice or instrument produces music best and without undue strain, to conceptualize one’s place along a continuum anchored by science and practice at opposite ends, without prioritizing one over another (Seligman, 2018).
the left (scientist) side of the scale. I am interested in face-to-face interaction, not analytical research.
In my experience, saying you are a theatre major comes with a lot of judgment, but saying you are a theatre major and a counseling minor seems to cause more disruption. “What do you do with that? What do those things have to do with each other?” Theatre and counseling have everything to do with each other. It is said in the world of counseling that connection heals, and art is connection. Theatre is a powerful tool for communication between actors on stage and an audience. This is why psychodrama and drama therapy are effective tools that are often utilized in counseling. Not to mention that in both theatre and counseling, empathy is the most important skill in your toolbox.
Above, I have added two more dimensions that have been helpful to students in finding their professional tessituras: whether they operate from more of an analytical or experiential perspective and where their interests lie on the biopsychosocial continuum. The tessitura that appears to fit most counseling minors intending to be counselors is in bold type although there is some tessitura fluidity for any individual, just like there is a suitable range in music for any given performer. While Luther students are found across all three tessituras, it appears more often the case that they are summer camp counselors and not summer camp researchers.
Along these lines, Lauren Siems writes: I learned about the tessitura model and felt validated. I thought there was something wrong with me for the psychology major to not work out, but the tessitura showed me that my interests and goals lie within the right (practitioner) side of the scale and not
Regardless of their position on the tessitura scales, all counseling minors appear to benefit from the required course Counseling 301: Evidence-Based Practice, whether they are “research reluctants” like Lauren or more traditionally minded researchers from the left side of the spectrums. The course includes research methods and statistics directly applicable to practice to demonstrate effectiveness, especially in fast-paced environments like schools, including some strategies not typically found in traditional statistics courses more
scientifically minded students take, like qualitative methodologies. Students tend to find research less intimidating and more useful when it can inform one’s particular passions in helping people (Todd and Epstein, 2012).
Each summer, the college offers what is referred to as the Research Scholars Program. During the summer of 2023, I was one of four students accepted to pursue a research project of my choosing. As a theatre major, I had recently gravitated heavily towards playwriting. To complement my counseling minor, I decided on a project I called “Intergenerational Trauma on Stage.” I spent my days researching case studies and other published works about intergenerational trauma to educate myself on the phenomenon and begin to integrate my findings into a play script. By the end of the summer, I had drafted a full-length stage production highlighting a family’s experience with intergenerational trauma that I continued to develop as a part of my senior project.
I eventually realized that I want to be a school counselor, specifically for elementary school students, who are often affected by trauma. As part of the counseling minor, I had to complete a social work practicum, and I had the opportunity to observe a special education social worker within the school district I grew up in. Even though I wanted to be a school counselor and not a school social worker, I still learned so much about what practices research supports and what it means to serve students and their families.
But will there be counseling jobs for Lauren and students with similar aspirations? The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (2024) predicts notable growth in related fields for counselors with master’s or bachelor’s degrees for the foreseeable future as displayed in Table 2.
The reality is there is so much mental anguish in the world that we need every professional voice working harmoniously, regardless of where they are on the three scales. As liberal arts faculty, we use the wide ranges of our tessituras to help students find theirs, regardless of any differences or similarities between theirs and ours. Luther’s counseling minor appears to offer a practical and passionate option to help students discover their voices.
Now, at the end of my undergraduate journey, I have been accepted into an accredited master’s program in school counseling. I never would have found my calling were it not for the counseling minor.
REFERENCES
Seligman, M.E.P. (2018). The hope circuit: a psychologist’s journey from helplessness to optimism. PublicAffairs.
Todd, S. J. & Epstein, I. (2012). Practicebased research in social work: a guide for reluctant researchers. Routledge. https//:doi/ org/10.4324/9780203155639
United States. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Strong growth projected in mental healthrelated employment.” Retrieved September 9, 2024, from https://www.bls.gov/opub/ ted/2024/strong-growth-projected-in-mental-health-related-employment.htm.
The Sound of Silence
by NICHOLAS SHANEYFELT, Associate Professor of Music
My favorite time to be in the Noble Recital Hall is 10:00 pm.
Actually, my favorite time is the moment 9:59 turns over to 10:00: the exact moment the HVAC system’s fans turn off. You don’t necessarily notice the noise of moving air if you walk into the NRH amid daily activity, or with music coming from the stage. But if you’re sitting in silence at 9:59, a faint white noise goes away at 10:00, and you realize just how much more silent this room has the capability of becoming.
I can remember the first time I was fascinated by this magnitude of silence as an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame. It also happened to be in a performance venue: the newly constructed Leighton Concert Hall, a state-of-the-art venue designed to maintain silence even if a football game in an 80,000 seat stadium (and the noise of cheering fans, marching bands, Goodyear blimps, etc.) is going on next door. Seizing a rare opportunity to practice in this place, I also took the time to appreciate being wrapped in silence by this 1200 seat acoustical feat. It was the first time I encountered silence of that magnitude, and perhaps the first time I was compelled to take my hands off the piano, take a seat in the audience, and bask in the wonder and awe of that nothingness.
Fast forward twenty years later, to the summer of 2022 in Sacile, Italy, when I took a group of students from the International Music Festival of the Adriatic for a tour of the Fazioli piano factory. Each step of the tour shed light on the assembly of a concert grand piano. A new piano meets the culmination of its assembly in the playing-in room, where virgin strings and hammers and keys are robotically, perpetually pounded by a pneumatic device that churns out
an apocalyptic concerto eerily reminiscent of the famous opening bars of Tchaikovsky’s 1st, until the hammers have achieved the divuts necessary for optimal sound.
The next stop on the tour is a study in contrast: the dead room, so called because it is lined with foam and so perfectly silent that you shouldn’t stay in there for more than a few minutes for fear of becoming disoriented. After a few seconds in the dead room, used for acoustical research, you can clearly hear your own heart beat, and you realize how essential ambient sound is to our existence, and that silence is a relative term.
Though I hope your encounters with silence invite awe and contemplation, it is possible that in a distraction-filled world they sometimes invite anxiety, too. Perhaps you haven’t had the chance to experience or enjoy silence in exactly the same ways or magnitudes, but I invite you to think about the moments of silence—profound or not—in your own lives, and if and how you’ve taken the time to appreciate them, whether it’s a walk in the cathedral-like canopy of maples and oaks at Malanaphy Springs; meditating in Qualley Chapel; or reading in your favorite study corner. As musicians, we spend our lives perfecting the act of producing sound with skill and precision, but we need reminding that music is more expressive and evocative because of silence. I claim no talents in the visual arts, but I appreciate silence’s counterpart in this field: the concept of white space or negative space. Whether it’s on a canvas, a poster, or a photograph, absence guides the eye to what is important, accentuating the subject.
SEPTEMBER
11, 2024
Out of darkness, light.
In these first, fresh days of a new semester, as you manage the uncertainties of a new beginning, meet new people, and build a routine, my wish for you is this: In each of the things you create this year, whether it is sound from silence, art from a blank canvas, choreography from a bare studio floor, or pottery from unformed clay, take comfort in the abundant blessing that allows you to create something from nothing; hold fast to the privilege of being able to share it with others, and cherish the fleeting time you have here to hone it and create it with your unique voice. And if you ever happen to be in the NRH at 9:59 pm, take a seat and listen!
Nicholas Shaneyfelt
IMAGE BY CHIP PETERSON
Created to be Disruptive
by SOPHIE YAKES,’25
Good morning! My name is Sophie Yakes. I am a senior Identity Studies major and Sociology minor and because of my area of study, and due to other things I will discuss shortly, I am created to be disruptive. Just ask my parents! Happy family weekend!
Today I want to talk about being disruptive and how disruptiveness can be a wonderful and constructive thing, not an unfortunate or annoying breach of social norms. Because where would we be without disruptive conversations?
I study exactly this. Identity Studies is a branch off of sociology; it is like the study of society and people, but on a more embodied and personal level. I study how to have constructive disruptive conversations, versus destructive disruptive conversations. I get to learn about social structures and use intersections of dominant ideologies to understand how said structure impacts an individual and their behavior. If that sentence made no sense to you, sign up for an IDS class! I promise, you wont regret it and I’ve taken seven classes with Char Kunkel.
But for the time being, what I mean is simply that I get to study how to approach problem solving in various ways, one of those being challenging and questioning normalness and coming up with unique yet conventional ways to analyze and solve a problem using theoretical language and historical facts backed by research. Nothing is inherent, but I have always had a knack for this kind of thing.
When I was in elementary school I had a problem: I wanted a pet of my own. I had always felt drawn to animals and I wanted a pet to care for. To my wonderful parents, this was quite disruptive to their already disrupted lives of having a very opinionated oldest child (me) and
two energetic sons. Their hands were full with human puppies, so to speak.
My parents were not pet people. They didn’t dislike animals, but not having pets makes life a little simpler. Their normal was very different from what I wanted it to be. My dad had a turtle he fished out of Wisconsin’s Lake Winnebago, which he kept in a tank for a winter and then put it back in the spring. That’s it!
My mom, on the other hand, grew up with all kinds of animals.But in rural Missouri, pets mostly stayed outside. So when I asked for a dog, my mom said, “Ew, Sophie, no. Dogs eat cow poop, they’re gross.” Okay, I never mentioned adopting a cow but if that’s what it takes to get a dog I’m all in. My parents just weren’t really brought up in ways that showed them the impact that the strength of an animal bond can have on a person. I disrupted ALL that, real quick.
I never mentioned adopting a cow but if that’s what it takes to get a dog I’m all in.
Long story short, we never got a cow, but, over the next ten plus years, my non-pet-people-parents were very strategically convinced—using theoretical language backed by research—to open their hearts (and house) to many pets, all that helped shape me into who I am. Over the course of ten years (and not all at the same time), I had the privilege of having a whole list of pets, who all had/have DIY enclosures and the best diets my elementary and middle school budget could buy, and who taught me companionship too profound to learn from a human.
SEPTEMBER 20, 2024
Sophie Yakes (and Ollie)
So here’s the rundown.
From first to twelfth grade I had six guinea pigs who taught me that love doesn’t occupy the space it’s in, and that the smallest creatures can have the biggest impact.
In middle and high school I had four gerbils, all of whom lived over double their life expectancy, which was how I convinced my parents to let me adopt them in the first place.
In middle school I snuck the next door neighbor’s cat in and out of the basement for six months before my dad found out, and when he did and the neighbor announced he was moving, my dad was the one to walk next door and ask if we could keep the cat. We still have that cat, his name is Jim, he is fourteen years old and my dad’s favorite son.
Then, a year into my time here at Luther, my little brother found a cat on a cold night, with scabs and scars on her face, and he coaxed her to our house. My parents by this point had a soft spot for animals that I had worn into them,
so they took pity on her but swore they would surrender her to the shelter as a stray. Her name is Cleo, she rules my parents’ house, and she is probably my dad’s favorite daughter.
I always seemed to have something in a little tank, betta fish, snails, etc. (aka the least of my parents’ problems when it came to my obsession), so when a tank the size of a couch with a bearded dragon found its way to me via a craigslist ad, they weren’t all that surprised, I’m sure. Eleven, or El, the bearded dragon, is about six now and the two of us have convinced my reptile UNenthusiast mom that scaly four-legged love is misunderstood and is powerful, too. When I’m at school, they watch TV together and send me pictures.
My first year at Luther I took in a kitten who is the sun that I orbit. Ever seen a girl walking her cat on a leash around Luther? It’s probably me! Olive (Ollie) reminds me to slow down, to embrace goofiness and have a good laugh—or sometimes cry to get enough sleep, and that sometimes all you need is to frolic through Anderson Prairie. He’s a
great little hunter but has always somehow understood that El is off-limits, and even lets her cold-blooded body cuddle up to him to share some warmth. As if I’m not surrounded enough by animals, I also work at the Humane Society here in Decorah. Shameless plug: if you have family coming to visit this weekend, we have lots of kittens and a whole bunch of well-behaved dogs in case you’re looking.
Anyway, my point is that my heart for four-legged creatures was and still very much is SO disruptive. And if this disruptive love for animals hadn’t impacted me, I feel like we’d probably still have a family full of animals, because love, and God, occupy all shapes and sizes of creatures and bring human members of a family so much closer. In the spirit of family weekend, I want to say thank you to my parents for allowing my deep love and curiosity for animals to continuously disrupt their lives, because I carry them all with me everyday and know this disruptive and unconditional love is exactly what God created it to be.
El, the bearded dragon, soaking up the sun this August
The Ship of Luther
by JENIFER WARD, President of Luther College
I. It seems fitting that we should be outside today, with the leaves turning and falling, and the temperatures along with them. It is indeed the changing of the seasons at Luther College, as summer turns to fall and this community looks forward to welcoming a new president. It is fitting that we should be gathered on Bentdahl Commons, described on our website with these words:
“At the heart of it all sits Bentdahl Commons, a campus green that acts as a gathering space for the Luther community. Connected by curving sidewalks, Luther’s central campus has the distinction of reflecting historic landscape design, mapped in the early 1900s by renowned architect Jens Jensen.”
At the heart of it all, then, is a paradox: the work of a landscape architect is both of nature and of human design, and as a college founded by Lutherans, we are no strangers to paradox. Martin Luther, in Freiheit eines Christenmenschen (Freedom of a Christian) stated in 1520: “A
Christian is a free lord of everything and subject to no one. A Christian is a willing servant of everything and subject to everyone.” We are grounded in this place and on this land, grounded in paradox–both in terms of our founding beliefs and in the literal design of the heart of our campus.
II.
I’ve been thinking about another paradox, as well. “Theseus’ Paradox” was discussed by the Greek historian and philosopher Plutarch, who lived between CE 46 and around 119. He asks this question: if a ship has been restored over time, board by board, is it still the same ship when not a single board is original to the ship?
Think about it: not one piece of the original ship remains. Is it still the same ship? Where does the identity of that ship come from? Is it the shape? The material? The idea of the ship? Does the builder’s design still live on, if every inch of the ship has been replaced? Philosophers have mused on this puzzle for
OCTOBER 16, 2024
centuries, and pose all kinds of answers, depending on how one thinks about what constitutes identity.
III.
If “Luther College” replaces the “ship of Theseus” as we think about Founder’s Day today, what was the original college? Our ship was Norwegian. It was Lutheran. It was founded in a different place and relocated to Decorah. It admitted only men–white men, and then women, and then people of color. Some of the courses taught in the early days are no longer taught. Some of the courses taught today are in areas that would have been incomprehensible to President Laur Laursen. Not one faculty member remains. Not one president is original. Not one building is original. The mission has been revised over time. The church that was Luther’s home has been revised over time. If none of these is original, how can we be sure that Luther College is Luther College? What makes a college?
Against the backdrop of these questions, I am always amused when I hear people say “that’s the way we’ve always done
Jenifer Ward
President Jenifer Ward (foreground) giving Founder’s Day chapel talk on Bentdahl Commons
LUTHER COLLEGE PHOTO BY ALEXANDER BODNAR
it at Luther,” and yet that belief speaks to a further paradox: the individuals who make up this college, whether they joined in 1861, 1936, 1977, 2000, or 2024, and regardless of their backgrounds and identities, all have some sense of what Luther College was and is. Personal identity and community identity somehow find their way to each other, and even as completely as the ship of Luther has changed, it is still recognizable as Luther.
What has allowed us to endure is that throughout our history, a critical mass of students, alumni, faculty, and staff and others has embraced the responsibility to “mind the ship”—sometimes through support and sometimes through critique, but always through the lens of wanting Luther College to be seaworthy, and always aware that this ship takes students on a lifetime of journeys that transform them and the world around them.
A new president will follow me. For this person, I will be proud to turn over the captain’s wheel, knowing that they will not mind the ship alone as Luther sails into its next era. You, and our alumni, Regents, and local community, need to be rowing along, pointing out dangers, shouting to your shipmates to notice the eagles overhead and the beauty of this
river valley, and bringing your unique talents and perspectives to the ship of Luther College.
As we gather today to celebrate the legacy of our founders and think about the journey ahead, here is my challenge to you: pick up your oar. Remember that you, individually and together, are the ones who mind the ship of Luther.
Soli Deo Gloria.
President Ward encourages her listeners to “mind the ship” of Luther College
LUTHER
COLLEGE
PHOTO BY ALEXANDER BODNAR
Created to be People of Gratitude
by SOUK SENGSAISOUK, ‘23
My name is Souk Sengsaisouk, and today I feel honored to speak about the theme “Created to Be.” This idea of being “created to be” invites us all—students, staff, faculty, and community members alike—to reflect on our purpose and the ways we can bring light into each other’s lives.
Life on this campus can feel fast-paced, with people often rushing from one responsibility to the next. Yet each of us is here by God’s grace, with a unique purpose. We were created not just to complete tasks or fulfill roles, but to live with intention, to bring kindness and joy to those around us, and to strengthen the bonds that hold our community together.
In my own journey—from Lao PDR to Thailand, to the Netherlands, and now here—I’ve learned that no matter where we are, gratitude is a universal language. A simple “thank you,” a genuine smile, or a kind gesture can transcend differences and create a sense of belonging. This campus, this community, has shown me that warmth and connection don’t just happen; they are built by people who choose to be present for each other.
This message is for each of us, because we all play a part. To the students, who bring energy, ideas, and curiosity to every corner of this campus: you are created to be learners and explorers, people who push boundaries and seek understanding. To the staff members who work tirelessly behind the scenes to create a welcoming environment: you are created to be the heart of this place, the ones who nurture and support. To the faculty, who share their wisdom and guide us all: you are created to be mentors and lights, shepherding us in both knowledge and character. And to the broader community, whose presence reminds us that we are part of something
greater: you are created to be supporters and friends, grounding us in a shared purpose and history.
There’s a beautiful verse in Proverbs that says, “A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit” (Proverbs 15:13). This verse reminds us of the power we have to lift each other up. Our smiles, our words of thanks—these small gestures create joy and connection. They are ways we can reflect God’s love to one another, affirming that each of us is valued, seen, and cherished.
So, today, let’s take a moment to remember that we are all created to be people of gratitude. Let us recognize the value of each person in this room and beyond. Let’s take the time to thank the people around us—the students, the staff, the faculty, and the community members—who all contribute to making this place feel like home. Let’s share a smile, extend a hand, and build the kind of community that reflects the love and grace God has given us.
May we walk through today and every day with grateful hearts, fulfilling the purpose we were created for by lifting each other up, sharing joy, and shining light into the lives of others.
Thank you, and may God bless each of you as you live out the unique purpose you were created for. Amen.
Souk Sengsaisouk
Find the current issue and back issues of Agora online
You can read the current issue of Agora online, and you can also find and search all back issues by going to our webpage: www. luther.edu/paideia/agora.
Changing your address? Want to stop receiving Agora? If you do, please email or write us. Contact Agora at agora@luther.edu or write Agora, Main 215, Luther College, 700 College Dr., Decorah, IA 52101.
The image at left illustrated early issues of Agora. The journal was established by the Paideia Program, and paideia translates as education. The image shows a teacher with his tablet on his lap and stylus in his hand.
THE LIBERAL ARTS AT LUTHER COLLEGE
Luther College, 700 College Drive, Decorah, Iowa 52101-1045
