��ɫ��Ƶ event, now in its 11th year, will schmooze it up on March 11

For the past decade, Hebrew classes at the ��ɫ��Ƶ have hosted a novel event described as a rite of passage: the Schmooze-a-Palooza—part concert, part community building and part celebration of Hebrew and song.

The 11^th-annual Schmooze-a-Palooza will be held at 6:30 pm Wednesday, March 12, in UMC Room 235. Anyone with an interest in Hebrew is invited.

  What: 11th-annual Schmooze-a-Palooza

  When: 6:30 p.m. March 12

  Where: UMC Room 235

  Who: Anyone with an interest in Hebrew is invited.

Led by Eyal Rivlin, a teaching professor of Hebrew language in the Program in Jewish Studies and a professional musician, students in each class prepare a well-loved song in Hebrew—memorizing it, dressing up, creating a dance and performing it in front of their peers. 

Having taught in different capacities for more than 30 years, Rivlin wanted to extend learning beyond the classroom, help the different classes connect and inspire lifelong friendships.

“When we show up in creative and expressive manners, with permission to embody our inner rockstar, a vulnerability is tapped which sets the groundwork for connecting at deeper levels,” says Rivlin. “It is clear to me that in 20 years from now, many of my students will remember singing with their friends, taking a risk and showing up together and having fun in the context of learning a language.”

Through the years, the concert has expanded and now, in addition to class performances, Jewish Studies faculty offer a song from the stage, some students volunteer to perform solos and duets of their favorite Hebrew songs and members of the local Hebrew-speaking community prepare a song as well. This year there is even talk about a flash-mob dance, Rivlin says. 

Students have said that the event is a highlight of their CU journey. Songs are a great way to expand vocabulary and memorize sentences and expressions. They also offer the community a taste of different cultural themes and musical styles.

This annual live concert is free and an opportunity to meet new friends, learn some Hebrew expressions and cheer fellow Buffs, Rivlin says.

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The all-day event will bring together local and national scholars engaged in digital public humanities projects to advocate for social change

The project on the ��ɫ��Ƶ campus is sponsoring a one-day  symposium March 14.

This all-day event brings together local and national scholars engaged in digital public humanities projects to advocate for social change and who have worked to strengthen ethical data humanities education in higher education, said Laurie Gries, associate professor of English and director of the Program for Writing and Rhetoric, who is spearheading the symposium.

  What: Working with Data for Social Change symposium

  When: March 14

  Where: In-person at CASE KOBL 140 and online;  

All faculty, staff and students who want to learn more about the data humanities are invited.

The symposium aims not only to demonstrate and underscore the value of data advocacy research for the humanities at large, but also to generate collective ideas as to how to data advocacy education can be enhanced across the disciplines in higher education, according to Gries.

She said she believes the symposium will be of interest to faculty, staff and students who want to learn more about the data humanities and, more particularly, about data advocacy as a focus of research and/or pedagogy. Those interested in attending in-person or via Zoom can 

The symposium will feature scholars and activists from around the country, including Melissa Borja, Nasreen Abd Elal and Sylvia Fernández Quintanilla, who have advocated with data for social change on projects including the ,  and , respectively. Additionally, Gries will talk about her data-driven project, the , which was recently profiled in Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine.

Gries said the symposium also will feature scholars who have worked intently to build data humanities education within and beyond the ��ɫ��Ƶ campus. For instance, in addition to featured speaker Melanie Walsh discussing the  project, David Glimp, Nathan Pieplow and other ��ɫ��Ƶ and CU Denver professors will speak about their efforts to train students how to engage data through critical, humanistic frameworks and how to use data effectively to address matters of significance to them and their communities.

Speaking of Gries’ efforts to spearhead the symposium, Glimp said, “Laurie has assembled a terrific team of collaborators to develop her vision of not only cultivating data literacy among our students but also equipping students with the tools to argue with data. By ‘arguing with data,’ I mean both being able to identify and assess all the ways data-backed arguments can mislead or go wrong, and being able to craft effective, responsible arguments with data about matters of the greatest urgency for our world.”

The Data Advocacy for All project was the recipient of a $300,000 CU Next Award in May 2022. 

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��ɫ��Ƶ Professor Jamie Nagle will discuss the quarks and gluons that formed at the Big Bang in his Distinguished Research Lecture Feb. 6

Ten trillion degrees Fahrenheit is unfathomably hot—more than 10,000 times hotter than the Sun’s core—and it’s the temperature of the universe just moments after the Big Bang. At such extreme temperatures, according to nuclear theory, ordinary matter made of protons and neutrons transforms into a plasma of fundamental particles called quarks and gluons.

At the world’s most powerful accelerators, scientists recreate tiny droplets of this early-universe matter by colliding heavy nuclei at near-light speeds. One of these scientists is Jamie Nagle, a ��ɫ��Ƶ professor of physics who for 20 years has studied these fleeting droplets and, along with his research group, engineered their shapes, sizes and temperatures to better understand their properties.

Nagle will discuss this work in the 125th Distinguished Research Lecture, “10 Trillion Degrees: Unlocking the Secrets of the Early Universe,” at 4 p.m. Feb. 6. in the Chancellor's Hall and Auditorium of the Center for Academic Success and Engagement (CASE).

About Jamie Nagle

Nagle has spent much of his career investigating the early universe through high-energy nuclear physics. His research has focused on understanding the quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter theorized to have existed just microseconds after the Big Bang. 

“As you go back to about six microseconds after the universe started, the temperature was around two trillion Kelvin,” Nagle explains. “It was theorized that protons and neutrons inside of nuclei would melt away, creating a bath of more fundamental particles—quarks and gluons.”

Nagle's work involves recreating droplets of this quark-gluon plasma in a laboratory by colliding large nuclei at nearly the speed of light. These collisions occur at the world’s highest-energy accelerators, including the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. 

“In the world's highest-energy accelerators, we can collide very large nuclei like gold, lead or platinum at such high velocities that we create a tiny droplet of this 2 trillion Kelvin plasma,” he says.

   What: 125th Distinguished Research Lecture, 10 Trillion Degrees: Unlocking the Secrets of the Early Universe

  Who: Professor Jamie Nagle of the Department of Physics

  When: 4-5 p.m. Feb. 6, followed by a Q&A and reception

  Where: Chancellor's Hall and Auditorium, Center for Academic Success and Engagement (CASE)

Reflecting on the award, Nagle expresses gratitude and a sense of accomplishment: “It means a lot to me. You get to a certain middle age and are more self-confident, but this recognition feels rewarding. There's a lot of effort, and much of the hard work goes unnoticed. It’s nice to feel like the fruits of that labor are appreciated.”

The Distinguished Research Lectureship also emphasizes communicating complex scientific concepts to broader audiences. For Nagle, this is a vital part of his work: “This award is very meaningful to me because I often listen to the lectures of past recipients. It's about communicating the broader context of why this scientific research is important, not just within the microcosm of nuclear physics.”

About the Distinguished Research Lectureship

The Distinguished Research Lectureship is among the highest honors given by faculty to a faculty colleague at CU Boulder. Each year, the Research and Innovation Office requests nominations from faculty for this award, and a faculty review panel recommends one or more faculty members as recipients.

The lectureship honors tenured faculty members, research professors (associate or full) or adjoint professors who have been with ��ɫ��Ƶ for at least five years and are widely recognized for a distinguished body of academic or creative achievement and prominence, as well as contributions to the educational and service missions of CU Boulder. Each recipient typically gives a lecture in the fall or spring following selection and receives a $2,000 honorarium.

Read the original article from the Department of Physics

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Participants will learn how to regulate heart rhythms to immediately address their emotional state in challenging situations.

An expert in heart-rate variability will share research and its application via the HeartMath system in a workshop at the ��ɫ��Ƶ.

Participants in the workshop, which will be at 1 p.m. Feb. 11 on , will learn how to use the heart/brain connection to regulate heart rhythms to immediately address their emotional state in challenging situations. The event is open to all, but .

The workshop will teach participants how to do so while uniting heart, mind and emotion; boosting resilience; decreasing stress; and improving mental and physical performance, notes Erin Cunningham Ritter, who will lead the workshop.

Cunningham Ritter, who is director of wellness and employee engagement for the College of Arts and Sciences, says that the workshop’s aim is to “support our communities with practical, in-the-moment tools for building coherence and capacity for resilience, stress reduction, improved self-regulation, performance and mental and physical health.”

She describes HeartMath as an evidenced-based program that teaches participants to access their hearts’ inner balance to become the best versions of themselves. These tools, which can be applied in the moment, are proven to help participants reduce stress and anxiety while improving coherence, self-security and decision making, Cunningham Ritter says.

HeartMath has developed highly successful programs for self-improvement in mental, emotional and physical balance, according to Cunningham-Ritter. However, HeartMath technology and materials are not intended to replace treatments for medical or psychological conditions by licensed physicians, psychologists or other health care professionals. 

The workshop is a presentation of Let’s CU Well, an expert-speaker series sponsored by Be Well, the College of Arts and Sciences’ wellness initiative, and ��ɫ��Ƶ Health and Wellness Services. For more information or to ask questions, contact Erin Cunningham Ritter.

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New CU Art Museum exhibit highlights the ways in which art meets challenging times and finds the sometimes-elusive silver lining

It began not with the more known Confederate battle flag—the infamous stars and bars—but with the lesser-known , a white linen towel waved on April 9, 1865, by Confederate troops when Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, ending the U.S. Civil War.

In 2019, textile and social practice artist Sonya Clark made the flag of truce the focal point of her work , recreating the “cloth that brokered peace and represented the promise of reconciliation.” The University of Colorado Art Museum recently acquired Clark’s 2022 print, Confederate, surrender, which reconstructs the historical artifact.

"From Me, All Things Proceed and to Me, They Must Return," by Hollis Sigler (1991) is part of the "Better Days" exhibition now open at the CU Art Museum.

It was this interpretation of a lesser-known symbol that got curators and staff at the museum thinking: “(Clark) is taking this ongoing moment in history and, in many ways, elevating it with an act of repair,” says Hope Saska, acting director, chief curator and director of academic engagement in the museum. “That started us thinking about how do artists take these times that may be challenging and then use art to respond?”

The fruit of those discussions is “Better Days,” an exhibition on view beginning today and open through Oct. 26, highlighting how artists “respond to times of uncertainty” with “work that can help make sense of the world.” In the works in the exhibit, drawn from the museum’s collection, “some [artists] imagine a better world, encouraging viewers to find silver linings, while others reveal hidden aspects of conflict, sparking conversation… Collectively, they offer ways to contend with a complex world, urging viewers to celebrate our shared humanity, witness injustice and work to repair division and inequity.”

These themes are especially timely as the U.S. presidential race speeds toward election day and as events worldwide seem to create tumult and fracture rather than hope and healing, Saska says.

“In some of these artworks (in the exhibit), artists are taking stands about racial injustice and political and social conflict, or they’re making artworks related to the AIDS crisis,” she explains. “For the museum, in the climate we have today, taking on these topics kind of feels risky sometimes. We were thinking about all of these things as we curated the exhibit, so hopefully it is thought-provoking even in its challenging aspects. Our goal is that what people really get out of it is positive and reparative. We want them to come away with hope.”

   What: "Better Days" exhibition

  When: Aug. 20-Oct. 26; reopening February 2025. Opening celebration from 4-6 p.m. Sept. 12.

  Where: CU Art Museum

More information 

Daniella Fairley, a junior who is studying art history and ethnic studies with a minor in creative technology and design, completed an eight-week Art Buffs Collective internship with the CU Art Museum during the summer. As part of the internship, Fairley helped curate and create “Better Days.”

“I felt like this exhibit shows the perseverance of the human spirit and how we cope with tragedy,” Fairley says. “In seeing a lot of these art works and learning how they were made, what they represent, their stories, I feel like it's important to show how humans struggle and how we still live through it. Art connects us more than we think, and I hope that people can feel that connection or thread when looking at this show.”

Lead museum attendant Bella Mahlerbe, a student in the bachelor’s-accelerated master’s in art history, also provided curatorial labor for the exhibit. Malherbe worked with fellow Lead museum attendant Riley Ramsay to create a visitor feedback wall where visitors can share responses to the exhibition.

Top image: "Party Picture," by Laurie Simmons (1985) is part of the "Better Days" exhibition now open at the CU Art Museum.

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CSU professor credits her autism for her ability to think in pictures and thereby notice things that most people overlook

Temple Grandin, a groundgreaking professor of animal science at Colorado State University whose work has led to the more humane treatment of livestock around the world, will speak at the ��ɫ��Ƶ Disability Symposium Oct. 8 and 14-18.

According to David Braz, a faculty affairs coordinator in the College of Arts and Sciences, the symposium aims to bring attention to people who have traditionally flown under the radar.

“When we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion in public settings, and highlight a lot of groups that have been historically excluded, a group that does not seem to get as much attention are individuals with disabilities, whether apparent or not apparent,” he says.

One disability, or different ability, that often goes unseen is autism, something with which Grandin herself is intimately familiar.

Grandin has written several books about autism and her experiences living with it, including Thinking in Pictures, The Autistic Brain and Emergence: Labeled Autistic, which Oliver Sacks said was “unprecedented because there had never before been an inside narrative of autism.”

Though Grandin, who didn’t speak until she was three and a half years old, encountered teasing and bullying growing up, she nevertheless credits her autism with giving her the ability to think in pictures and thereby notice things that most people overlook.  

“The thing about the autistic mind is it attends to details,” Grandin said during a in 2010. “The normal brain ignores the details.”  

It’s this detail-oriented way of thinking that has enabled Grandin to transform the field of animal agriculture globally. Over the course of her decades-long career, she has written more than 400 articles for scientific journals and livestock periodicals and has designed livestock facilities in the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand.

Now perhaps one of the most recognizable and beloved scientists in the world, Grandin it is important for people to realize that not everyone thinks in the same way, and that’s a good thing. “The world needs all kinds of minds!”

Grandin's presentation will be in-person and on Zoom from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Oct. 8. Registration is required.

Grandin's presentation kicks off the weeklong symposium, whose aim is “centering the experiences of persons with disabilities on campus." It will focus on a range of topics, including navigating higher education systems while diagnosed with a disability; how disability and ableism are defined; barriers for disabled veterans in academic settings; medical advocacy; and more.

The symposium has been funded for a second year with support from  the College of Arts and Sciences  and the Office of the Senior Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The symposium has been made possible through the efforts of the College of Arts and Sciences Office of Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion, University Libraries, the Be Well program, CU Disability Services, the Office of People, Engagement and Culture and students in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The symposium aims to inform students, staff and faculty but is open to the general public.

Registration is required. Links to register are included with each presentation, and each registration page includes the option to request accommodation if needed for registering.

Please note that some symposium attendees and participants may be immunocompromised. All attendees are encouraged to wear a mask while in attendance. 

Each year, ��ɫ��Ƶ strives to create an experience that is accessible and accommodates the needs of those with disabilities. If you identify as having a disability, you will have an opportunity to indicate any accommodation requirements when you register using our online registration system. Please also feel free to e-mail us at asinfo@colorado.edu to let us know how we can better enhance your experience.

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Presentation titled ‘SPEAK: Vocal Empowerment for Students and Educators’ is set for April 29

Your voice can be a path to power, a ��ɫ��Ƶ expert argues, and she will explain how in a public presentation this month.

Chelsea Hackett, a university research associate, will give a presentation titled “SPEAK: Vocal Empowerment for Students and Educators,” on Monday, April 29, at 3 p.m. .

Chelsea Hackett, a university research associate, will give a presentation titled “SPEAK: Vocal Empowerment for Students and Educators,” on Monday, April 29, at 3 p.m. .

The event is free and open to everyone, but registration is required at . The event is sponsored by Be Well, the College of Arts and Sciences' wellness initiative, and is part of its regular Let’s CU Well series of programs.

During the session, Hackett will explore “how to support your voice both within and outside of the classroom. This focuses on three aspects of voice: social/emotional, physical and civic.

“During this interactive hour, you will learn tangible skills to keep your voice healthy, and to practice getting comfortable being uncomfortable so that you can speak about issues that are important to you!”

Hackett is a 2010 ��ɫ��Ƶ theatre performance graduate and PhD graduate of New York University. She is now a research associate at ��ɫ��Ƶ’s Renée Crown Wellness Institute.

She is the co-founder and executive director of , a nonprofit that focuses on vocal empowerment for young women and girls. In addition, she is an interdisciplinary artist, researcher and creative consultant.

SPEAK, which Hackett founded with Beth Osnes, a ��ɫ��Ƶ professor of theatre, aims to “support and celebrate the voices of all young women and girls.”

The organization envisions a world in which all young women and girls are “heard, valued, and affirmed, a world that benefits from their unique contributions, one where they are safe to express themselves fully, and are free to co-author an equitable, survivable, and thrive-able future.”

   What: SPEAK: Vocal Empowerment for Students and Educators

  When: 3 p.m. Monday, April 29

  Where: , free but registration required

The nonprofit says vocal empowerment “is the ability to express yourself the way you want in any context.” The group’s approach to vocal empowerment addresses three aspects of of voice: physical, which draws from theater and voice and speech pathology; social/emotional, which uses meditations, journal activities and games to help young women and girls explore their internal voices, ideas and emotions; and civic, through which women and girls are encouraged to share their thoughts about vital issues with their communities.

“By combining theatre with voice speech pathology, Dr. Beth Osnes and I have worked to charter a new, creative and trans-disciplinary endeavor we call Vocal Empowerment that is designed for use primarily by young women to become agents of change in their communities, their nations and the world," Hackett says. "This work supports youth in speaking about issues that are important to them, such as sexual violence prevention, climate change and racial justice.”

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Alumnus and professional photographer Chris Sessions explains how one of his first photo assignments 30 years ago in a ��ɫ��Ƶ class evolved into a cultural art exhibit

It’s fitting that in the mid-1990s one of first photo assignments at the ��ɫ��Ƶ was covering a dog and pony show.

“The assignment was my first experience being close to horses and gave me a good understanding of their sensitivity and the care needed while interacting with them,” says Sessions (BA ’97), a professional photographer and videographer based in Boulder.

And now, 30 years later, Sessions’ photography related to horses is back at ��ɫ��Ƶ. His exhibit, “,” is on display at the Center of the American West at ��ɫ��Ƶ through Oct. 17.

Chris Sessions (center) is a ��ɫ��Ƶ alumnus who has phtographed Mexican rodeo athletes for more than 10 years. (Photo: )

The show, already winning praise, is the culmination of 12 years of documentary work and features black-and-white and color photographs of charrería, the national sport of Mexico also known as Mexican rodeo, that dates back to the 16th century.

It turns out those ponies left an indelible impression on Sessions. As the years went by, he says, he’d often find himself pulling over to photograph horses on farms along Boulder’s eastern edge.

Then, one day in 2012, Sessions saw a notice for a Mexican rodeo at the Adams County Fair.

“I went and I was captivated,” he says. “Beyond the colorful culture and horsemanship, it was mostly the way the people carried themselves—conveying a deep sense of pride and elegance in their Mexican heritage and for the tradition that they’ve passed down the generations for hundreds of years.” 

A dance between horse and rider

Sessions soon met the Torres family, who have nationally ranked men’s and women’s charrería teams that regularly perform at the Colorado State Fair, the National Western Stock Show and in competitions around Colorado, the United States and Mexico. 

After sharing his work with the Torres family, they welcomed him to film and photograph the events and learn more about the sport. “This access provided ample opportunities for creativity and a deeper understanding into the cultural tradition, taking the documentary to a whole new level,” Sessions explains.

Sessions adds that his understanding of the human-horse connection comes from observing the charrería community.

“The nonverbal communication required between a well-trained horse and rider is a larger-than-life inspiration to experience and can only be described with subtlety and nuance, with words like extraordinary. It’s like a dance that brings the two beings together, moving in union, guided by an underlying magical force, and it’s this energetic intuition that I utilize while photographing the events.”

A participant in charrería, the national sport of Mexico also known as Mexican rodeo. (Photo: )

Sessions also returned to ��ɫ��Ƶ this semester to visit students studying the American West and to talk about his work and his exhibit in Tamar McKee’s class. McKee is the manager of programs and operations at the Center of the American West, which brought the exhibit to life. Sessions, who spoke alongside Carolina Herrera, the escaramuza queen (similar to a rodeo queen), says speaking to the students felt like a full-circle moment. 

“It was exciting to share the work with the students and to see their interest in learning more about the tradition.”

McKee says her students wrote initial impressions of the exhibit before Sessions’ and Herrera’s visit and then read and watched more resources to further understand not just the sport, but how it exists in Mexican-American culture given how a large swath of the western United States was carved out of Mexico.

“The end goal is to use the information Chris and Carolina shared, alongside the research and impressions of the students, to co-create an interpretive guide to the exhibit,” McKee says. “This is an example of how the Center of the American West seeks multiple perspectives and knowledge bases to provide deeper and more inclusive insight into the complexity of the region.”

Sessions says the work in the charrería exhibit is part of a larger project called , an ongoing exploration into the sport of charrería with multiple elements, including the short film “La Familia Charra,” which was included in a Denver-based film festival. The film was projected onto the History Colorado building and on a turn-of-the-century grain elevator in Denver’s River North neighborhood.

Sessions says he expects the images and footage will end up in a Charros De Colorado book project and feature film in the next two years.

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Astrophysicist who confirmed black hole at galaxy’s center to speak March 5 at ��ɫ��Ƶ

Andrea Ghez, recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize in physics, will give the 53rd George Gamow Memorial Lecture March 5 at the ��ɫ��Ƶ.

Ghez, Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA, shared half of the prize with Reinhard Genzel of the University of California, Berkeley.

Andrea Ghez, 2020 Nobel Prize winner in physics, will give the 53rd George Gamow Memorial Lecture March 5 at the ��ɫ��Ƶ. (Photo: The Nobel Foundation)

The pair were recognized by the Nobel committee for their discovery of a “supermassive” black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Ghez, head of UCLA’s Galactic Center Group, solved the question, what exactly is “Sagittarius A*,” which was first detected as a mysterious radio signal in 1933. 

“I see being a scientist as really fundamentally being a puzzle-solver,” Ghez in 2021. “Putting together the pieces, trying to find the evidence, trying to see the bigger picture.”

   What: 53rd George Gamow Memorial Lecture

  Who: Andrea Ghez, recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics

  When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 5

  Where: Macky Auditorium, ��ɫ��Ƶ campus

  Tickets: Free and open to the public

Learn more 

She helped develop a new technology to correct the distorting effects of Earth’s atmosphere. Gathering data from the world’s largest telescope system, the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, she and her team continue to plumb the depths of the galactic center 26,000 light years distant.

While Albert Einstein’s epochal work on relativity remains the best description of how gravity works, Ghez says it can’t account for gravity inside a black hole. Through what she calls “extreme astrophysics,” she seeks to go where the pioneering astrophysicist could not.

“Einstein’s right for now,” she said. “However, his theory is showing vulnerability. … At some point we will need to move … to a more comprehensive theory of gravity.”

A member of the National Academy of Sciences and author of a 2006 children’s book, “You Can Be a Woman Astronomer,” Ghez is widely recognized as a role model for young women.

“Seeing people who look like you, or are different from you, succeeding shows you that there’s an opportunity,” she said.

Top image: An artist's concept illustrating a supermassive black hole with millions to billions times the mass of the Sun. ()

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Eminent German historian Paul Nolte will discuss whether the golden age of democracy is over or whether it can escape collapse and recover

One of Germany’s leading contemporary historians will present a research colloquium addressing the stage of crisis that liberal democracy has entered in the early 21st century—asking whether the golden age of democracy over and is on course for eventual collapse, or whether it can recover.

Historian will present the colloquium, titled “Crisis or Transformation? From Good-old Democracy to Rough Democracy, ca. 1970-2020,” which is jointly organized by the ��ɫ��Ƶ Program in Jewish Studies, the Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History and the Pacific Office of the German Historical Institute Washington in cooperation with the .

Historian Paul Nolte will discuss the crisis in liberal democracy at a research colloquium Tuesday.

It will be from 2-3:30 p.m. Tuesday in Center for Academic Success and Engagement (CASE) E422. To receive the pre-circulated text on which the discussions will be based, please RSVP by email to cujewishstudies@colorado.edu.

At ��ɫ��Ƶ, the visit is co-sponsored by the Center for Humanities and the Arts; the International Affairs Program; and the Departments of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, History and Sociology.

As one of Germany’s leading contemporary historians, Nolte holds a chair in modern history with a special emphasis on contemporary history and international relations at the . His research areas include social, intellectual and political history of the 18th to 20th centuries, especially post-1945 Germany and the United States; transatlantic history of democracy; public intellectuals and social, economic and political concepts and mentalities; urban history and metropolitan cultures; religion and civil society in Western societies; and public history and cultures of memory. 

   What: Crisis or Transformation? From Good-old Democracy to Rough Democracy, ca. 1970-2020

  When: 2-3:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 13

  Where: CASE E422

Nolte has written more than a dozen books and has served as a fellow or guest professor at Oxford University, Harvard University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Among his many transatlantic undertakings is chairing the academic advisory committee of the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, which brings American PhD candidates to Germany.

His colloquium will focus on the current state of crisis in which liberal democracy exists, when they are under attack from neo-authoritarian ideas, movements and regimes, externally as well as from within. He will address what a potential recovery could look like, asking, “What if we were not witnesses to a crisis of democracy, but rather to its transformation, with the current predicaments being the new normal?”

Nolte will discuss how, from a historical point of view, “pre-crisis” democracy corresponded to social structures, cultural milieus and technological environments that will never return. Further, this longing often projects a relatively short period in the trajectory of democracy, participation and liberal society as an ideal state, while it was in itself full of shortcomings, rigid structures and privileges for the few.

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