All Things Grinnell

Artist Jean-Ulrick Désert joins us for a conversation about the power and responsibility of art. How do we confront hatred in the world? Creativity is not the easiest response, but it might be necessary. Searching for justice where there is none can be a daunting endeavor, but what can artists do during these challenging times? Désert uses common and recognizable objects from everyday life but presents them with a poetic twist meant to interrupt expectations — and to create space for dialogue in the place of discomfort. Is he changing the world with his art? He wouldn’t go that far, but he might be planting much-needed seeds of change around the world.

Dartanyan Brown has been on a quest “to find sounds and vibrations that are healing to people or motivating to people.” In liberal arts fashion, that quest has meandered with Dartanyan through careers in journalism, music, technology, and education. Listen to this conversation with the Iowa Rock ’n Roll, Blues, and Jazz Hall of Famer to get some musical healing and inspiration. A storyteller from a young age, Dartanyan dreamed of becoming Clark Kent and reporting for the newspaper. He got his shot with the Des Moines Register and soon found himself reporting on Martin Luther King’s assassination. But he was drawn back to the music of his childhood and left his studies at Drake University to pursue a music career. He has since woven his passion for music with his fascination for electronics and his drive for empowerment through education, bringing his music to schools as a teaching artist. In April 2019, he graced Grinnellians with his first performance in Iowa in 40 years. 

There has never been a fair, just, or healthy food system in the United States of America. So how do we get there?

LaDonna Redmond starts off the third season of the podcast with a long-overdue episode on the connection between food and racial justice. From the beginning, the United States of America has relied on exploitative labor practices (and the consequent creation of a racial caste system) to produce food and other agricultural products.

A national leader in food activism, Redmond understands this history intimately and has worked to reverse these persistent historical trends, which now take the form of public health threats like gang violence, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Her journey into food activism started in Chicago with a quest to find healthy food for her son, which led her to planting urban gardens and radically altering the food landscape of her community. Redmond transcends traditional understandings of “food deserts” to address the root causes of injustice and build resilient communities through food.

In this episode, the season finale, we say goodbye to Mike Latham, outgoing vice president of academic affairs and dean of the College, and talk about his time here in Grinnell and the importance of global education, before he becomes the president of Punahou High School in Hawai’i. Then we get global ourselves and talk to the language assistants from this past year, Mélanie Izrael, Maria Kustova, and Carla Wagner from Argentina, Russia, and Germany. We’ll also hear from Ania Chamberlin ’19, who put on quite the art exhibit in Smith Gallery before graduating this spring. To round out the show we recap this year’s Summerfest event at the College.

Amy Tan, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club and many other novels, aspiring nature journalist, and musical dominatrix for the literary band The Rock Bottom Remainders, gave the 2019 Commencement address. She sat down to talk about the values she shares with Grinnell and how she found her own path to a meaningful career after a traumatic childhood. She discusses how writing has influenced her life and helped her to understand who she is and connect with her family, as well as millions of readers around the world.

What happens after death? In this episode, we wrestle with that age-old question alongside Shakespeare and our very own John Garrison, associate professor of English. His recently published book, Shakespeare and the Afterlife, reckons with how the Bard grappled with some of the biggest questions of life and death during his time. Then, we turn to a seemingly more uplifting topic, reconciliation, with Jan Frans Van Dijkhuizen, associate professor of English literature at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Dijkhuizen paints a bleak picture of the literary history of reconciliation, but his conclusions bear strongly on our present moment, especially the polarized political landscape that surrounds us. Dijkhuizen and Garrison worked together as research fellows at the Folger Shakespeare Library in D.C. in 2016 and became friends and collaborators. We also hear from our music correspondent, Gabriel Shubert ’20, who spoke with the drummer from Camp Cope, an Australian independent alternative punk band that performed in Grinnell on April 19.

We talk with scholars of Native studies about important issues facing Indigenous people throughout the United States, from the effect of oil booms on people and land to misrepresentation in literature. Sebastian Braun, director of the American Indian studies program at Iowa State University, discusses the Bakken oil boom and the impact it’s had on Native and non-Native people and the environment based on his time at the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Gina Caison, assistant professor of English at Georgia State University, talks with Ben about the often overlooked role of indigenous people in the South and how focusing on that history impacts contemporary Native peoples. There’s also a short story on Noura Mint Seymali, the Mauritanian musical emissary who performed in Herrick Chapel on April 3.

Ella Williams ’18 graduated from Grinnell in December with a degree in gender, women’s and sexuality studies, and big plans for her music career. Since graduating, she went on tour in Europe with Adrianne Lenker, playing to sold-out crowds all over the place as her musical persona, Squirrel Flower. She’s returned stateside and is working on finishing up a new record before she starts touring again this summer, all over the country. Ella was born into a musical family, and the apple didn’t fall far from the tree. By the time she got to Grinnell, she had already released her first album, but she chose not to study music academically at Grinnell. Williams continued to play music, though, and her songs show the influence of her time in Grinnell. She released another EP under her alias, Squirrel Flower, and one of her songs, “Conditions,” gained recognition on NPR’s All Songs Considered. On the show, Williams reflects on her music and time in Grinnell, which was coming to an end when we talked back in the fall. We also get a preview of Will Bennett’s ’13 new album, “All Your Favorite Songs,” from his band, Will Bennett and the Tells. Bennett grew up in Grinnell and his music is heavily influenced by his hometown.

The history of racial violence in this country is long and ugly, and the trauma is ever-present for many people. But can art help us reckon with that history? In this episode, we talk to the people behind the current exhibitions on display at the College’s Faulconer Gallery. First, we discuss Reckoning with the Incident: John Wilson’s Studies for a Lynching Mural, which brings together the preparatory studies and sketches of John Wilson’s 1952 mural, The Incident, which depicts the scene of a racial terror lynching at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan while a young African-American family looks on. The exhibition challenges viewers to think about the legacy of racism in this country. Then we take a look at Dread and Delight: Fairy Tales in an Anxious World, curated by Emily Stamey ’01, who worked in the Faulconer Gallery as a student when it first started. Stamey brought together the work of 19 artists whose work grapples with and reinvigorates early-modern European fairy tales. If you think you know fairy tales, think again. Finally, we end with a story about the alumni care packages sent to students before spring break.

We rupture the infamous “fourth wall” of theatre, going behind the scenes with Rob Neill ’91, founding member of the New York Neo-Futurists, to discuss their unique brand of performance, which lies somewhere between improv, sketch comedy, and avant-garde theatre. The Neo-Futurists were on campus this semester to perform their show, “The Infinite Wrench,” which features a race against the clock of 30 plays in 60 minutes. We also talk with Ellen Mease about the more traditional theatrical world of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which Mease directed this semester. She shares her memories about what Grinnell’s theatre has meant to her, 40 years after she first directed her first production of the show.

In this episode, we talk with Ralph Savarese, professor of English, about his new book, See It Feelingly: Classic Novels, Autistic Readers, and the Schooling of a No-Good English Professor. For years, researchers have claimed that autistic people struggle to understand literature. Savarese’s experience reading books with his own adopted son, DJ, made him question the prevailing assumptions about autism. Over the course of many years, Savarese read novels with autistic readers from across the spectrum, immersing himself in their intellectual and sensory worlds as they immersed themselves in literature. Savarese, an English professor with a neuroscience background himself, turned these experiences into his book, which is part scientific research, part ethnography, and presents a compelling case for rethinking how we conceive of autism. Before relegating autistic children to segregated learning spaces, Savarese believes we should seek to include them whenever possible. These readers engaged deeply with the novels, revealing profound insights which emerged from the way their different bodies and brains reacted to the stories, but also from their experiences of stigma and exclusion.

In this episode of All Things Grinnell, we talk with Jordan Scheibel ’10, whose transformative experience with local agriculture as a student at Grinnell encouraged him to plant his roots here after graduation. He now runs Middle Way Farm, an organic farm on the outskirts of Grinnell. We also talk with Jack Mutti, emeritus professor of economics, about the impact of trade disputes and tariffs on Iowa’s agricultural sector. 

In this episode of All Things Grinnell, we dig into the Grinnell College Garden, talking with some of the workers and volunteers who’ve contributed to the garden’s improved production the past two years. Then we talk with Heather Swan, beekeeper, poet, and lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, about her book, Where Honeybees Thrive, which creatively explores efforts to ensure a sustainable future for honeybees – and ourselves.

In this episode, we talk with two of the speakers from this fall’s Scholars’ Convocation Series. First, we talk with Kathryn Lofton, professor of religious studies at Yale University, about pop culture and what religious studies can tell us about the music, TV, and products we consume. Then we talk with Kathy Cramer, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, about the politics of resentment among rural voters in Wisconsin.

In this episode, we talk with more speakers from this year’s Rosenfield Symposium, which explored the inextricable relationship of sports and politics, economics and society. First, we talk with Sarah Fields, professor of communication at the University of Colorado in Denver, about the intersection of law, gender, and sports. Then we talk with Nola Agha, associate professor of sport management at the University of San Francisco, about the impact of public stadium subsidies.

In this episode, we talk with speakers from this year’s Rosenfield Symposium, which explored the inextricable relationship of sports and politics, economics, and society. First, we talk with Juliet Macur, the Sports of the Times columnist for the New York Times, about her experience covering stories that transcend the field of sports, such as workplace harassment, sex abuse, brain trauma, doping, and international corruption. Then, we talk with Louis Moore, associate professor of history at Grand Valley State University, about athlete activism – past, present, and future. 

It’s a Saints Rest special! We talk with Noga Ashkenazi ’09, who directed the movie Saints Rest, filmed and set in the iconic Grinnell coffee house, about how she fell in love with Grinnell and the challenges and joys of making the movie. Then, we talk with Saints Rests’ former owner Jeff Phelps ’71, and the current owner, Sam Cox, about the origins of Saints and how the coffee shop has become a home for so many in the Grinnell community.

On this inaugural episode of All Things Grinnell, we talk with Will Freeman, Grinnell track and field coach and physical education professor, about his summer road trip across all 48 contiguous states at the helm of a Morgan Three-Wheeler. We also talk with Mithila Iyer ’19, the recipient of the Fischlowitz Travel Fellowship, who explored minority theatre productions across the country over the past year.