Marian Miner Cook
Athenaeum

Marcos Colón received his Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese Cultural Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2019. His research focuses on Brazilian literary and cultural studies, with a particular emphasis on representations of the Amazon in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Brazilian literature and film. He is currently working on a book- project based on his experiences filming the Amazon. He has produced and directed two documentary films that represent diverse perspectives on humanity’s complex relations with the natural world: Beyond Fordlândia: An Environmental Account of Henry Ford’s Adventure in the Amazon, 2018 and Zo’é, based on his experiences with the Zo’é tribe, an Amazonian indigenous community that has had little to no contact with the outside world (2018). He is particularly interested in examining a variety of perspectives on the post-rubber era in the Amazon. Colón’s scholarship uses the post-rubber era as a springboard for re-envisioning the region in a “relational” way, challenging hegemonic representations of the tropics in literature and culture. He is the editor and creator of Amazonia Latitude, a digital environmental magazine.

(NOTE: We strongly suggest that you consider viewing the movie, Beyond Fordlandia, before the Ath event. Though this is not required, it will help to generate a meaningful and productive conversation with director Marcos Colón.)

Dr. Colón's Athenaeum presentation and the screening of the movie are organized in commemoration of Earth Day. 

View Video: YouTube with Marcos Colon

Anthropologist and author David Treuer struggled with popular depictions of Native American history (including the bestselling Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee), many of which seemed to conclude that his culture was a relic of the past.  Having grown up on an Ojibwe reservation, Treuer knew that Native American history did not end with a battle in 1890. In both fiction and nonfiction, Treuer has spent his career dissecting narratives around Native American life, and reveals the unprecedented resourcefulness and reinvention it took to preserve Native languages, traditions, families.

In The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, a shortlist nominee for the 2019 National Book Award in Nonfiction, Treuer combines history, reportage, and memoir to tell the sweeping story of the tribes’ distinctive cultures from their first contact with settlers, exploring how each era spawned new modes of survival. From devastating land seizures to forced assimilation and conscription, Treuer traces how each generation developed their own form of resistance and renewal. His previous works include four novels—Prudence, The Translation of Dr. Apelles, The Hiawatha, and Little—and Rez Life, a complex and subtle examination reservation life. In his talks, Treuer presents a counter-narrative to Native American history—one that tells an essential story of resiliency, survival, and strength in the face of catastrophic odds.

Treuer’s essays and stories have appeared in Granta, Harper’s, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Esquire, Slate, and The Washington Post, among others. In addition to his works of fiction and nonfiction, he is the author of a book of criticism, Native American Fiction: A User’s Manual. Treuer is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, two Minnesota Book Awards, and fellowships from the NEH, Bush Foundation, and Guggenheim Foundation. The Translation of Dr. Apelles was named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post, Time Out, and City Pages. Treuer is a graduate of Princeton University and earned a Ph.D. in anthropology. He divides his time between his home on the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota and Los Angeles, where he teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California.

Professor Treuer will deliver the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies' 2021 Lerner Lecture on Hinge Moments in History.

Photo credit: Jean-Luc Bertini

(Text adapted from Penguin Random House Speakers' Bureau.)

View Video: YouTube with David Treuer

"Surviving the Forgotten Genocide: An Armenian Memoir" by John Minassian offers a rare and poignant testimony of a survivor of the Armenian genocide. The twentieth century was an era of genocide, which started with the Turkish destruction of more than one million Armenian men, women, and children—a modern process of erasure that began in 1895 and exploded under the cover of the First World War. John Minassian lived through this as a young man, witnessing the murder of his kin, concealing his identity as an orphan and laborer in Syria, and eventually immigrating to the United States to start his life anew. A rare testimony of a survivor of the Armenian genocide, one of just a handful of accounts in English, Minassian’s memoir is breathtaking in its vivid portraits of Armenian life and culture and poignant in its sensitive recollections of the many people who harmed and helped him. As well as a searing testimony, his memoir documents the wartime policies and behavior of Ottoman officials and their collaborators; the roles played by foreign armies and American missionaries; and the ultimate collapse of the empire. The author’s journey, and his powerful story of perseverance, despair, and survival, will resonate with readers today. 

This event commemorates the Annual Mgrublian Lecture on Armenian Studies and is co-sponsored by the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights, with special acknowledgement of the Minassian and Camp families for sharing their own personal history with us and our students, and now with the world. 

View Video: YouTube with Roderic Camp

Laura L. Dunn is a nationally recognized survivor turned victims’ rights attorney and social entrepreneur. In addition to being an accomplished litigator and published legal scholar, Dunn regularly advises lawmakers on state and federal policy reforms regarding campus-based gender violence. She also serves as an expert witness in high profile cases across the country. Dunn is a 2015 Echoing Green Global Fellow, the 2017 recipient of the DOJ's Special Courage Award, and a 2018 TED Fellow.

Ms. Dunn is the featured speaker for recognizing April as Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

Jeff Tsai is a former federal and state prosecutor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. A trial lawyer currently in private practice, Tsai spent a considerable part of his career in public service. He most recently served in government as a special assistant attorney general of California. He was also a principal legal advisor to former Attorney General, and now Vice President, Kamala D. Harris on policy issues related to criminal justice reform, corporate accountability enforcement, and he supervised multiple high-impact enforcement actions.

Tsai also spent many years serving in the U.S. Justice Department. He was an assistant U.S. attorney in Miami, Florida, as well as a senior counsel to the former Assistant U.S. Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Criminal Division in Washington D.C. He also served as a public corruption trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section in Washington D.C., where he prosecuted and tried former U.S. Senator John Edwards for violations of federal campaign finance laws in connection with his primary campaign for president.

Frequently called upon for legal commentary and analysis in the media, Tsai began his career as a judicial law clerk for U.S. District Judge Vanessa D. Gilmore in Houston. He received a law degree from Georgetown University. A native Texan, he earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was elected student body president.

Mr. Tsai's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the President's Leadership Fund.

From living in a tent in a Syrian refugee camp to elevating the stories within the immigration crisis, Zach Ingrasci '12 and Chris Temple '12 continue to find new ways to make films with impact. Their work thus far has been featured on HBO, Netflix, and The Atlantic, and has helped raise over $91 million dollars for poverty alleviation and refugee support efforts – changing over 275,000 lives.

Ingrasci is a director and co-founder of Optimist. Ingrasci’s journey to become a “disruptive storyteller” began while working for a small Mexican microfinance program. Ever since then he has continued to focus on the intersection of the creative arts, business, and sustainable development.

Temple is a humanitarian, filmmaker, and co-founder of Optimist. Every film and commercial he makes with Ingrasci has a purpose. Every piece of content created by Optimist is accompanied by a corresponding impact campaign that aims to create measurable and sustainable outcomes.

Since graduating from Claremont McKenna College in 2012, Ingrasci and Temple have spoken at the United Nations, TEDx Buenos Aires, and held over 4,000 they saw their short film The Undocumened Lawyer acquired by HBO and are looking forward to the release of their upcoming feature documentary, Five Years North later this year.
 

This event will include a showing of the film followed by Q & A with CMC alums, Zach Ingrasci and Chris Temple.

Todd B. Kashdan is a professor of psychology at George Mason University. He is a leading authority on well-being, curiosity, psychological flexibility, and resilience. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles and his work has been cited over 30,000 times. 

He is the author of several books including “Curious? Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life” (William Morrow), and “The Upside of Your Dark Side: Why being your whole self - not just your “good” self - drives success and fulfillment” (Penguin).

His research is featured regularly in media outlets such as The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, NPR, Fast Company, and Time Magazine. He is a keynote speaker and consultant for organizations as diverse as Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz, Prudential, General Mills, the United States Department of Defense, and World Bank Group.

He received the American Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Scientific Early Career Contributions to Psychology.

With a focus on happiness from the psychological perspective, Professor Kashdan’s Athenaeum talk is part of a 3-part series on Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Happiness co-sponsored by the Berger Institute at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with Todd Kashdan

Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of "The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart," "Apocalyptic Swing" (a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize), and "Rocket Fantastic," winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. Calvocoressi is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship from Stanford University; a Rona Jaffe Woman Writer's Award; a Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, TX; the Bernard F. Conners Prize from The Paris Review; and a residency from the Civitella di Ranieri Foundation, among others.

Calvocoressi's poems have been published or are forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals including The Baffler, The New York Times, POETRY, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Tin House, and The New Yorker. Calvocoressi is an editor at large at Los Angeles Review of Books, and poetry editor at Southern Cultures.

Works in progress include a non-fiction book entitled, "The Year I Didn't Kill Myself" and a novel, "The Alderman of the Graveyard."

Calvocoressi teaches at UNC Chapel Hill.

Professor Calvocoressi's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Center for Writing and Public Discourse at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Oren Cass is the executive director of American Compass, whose mission is to restore an economic orthodoxy that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity. From 2015 to 2019, Cass was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where his work on strengthening the labor market addressed issues ranging from the social safety net and environmental regulation to trade and immigration to education and organized labor. Prior to his time at the Manhattan Institute, Cass held roles as the domestic policy director for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in 2012, as an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and as a management consultant in Bain & Company’s Boston and New Delhi offices.

Mona Charen is a columnist, journalist, political commentator, and writer. She often writes about foreign policy, terrorism, politics, poverty, family structure, public morality, and culture. Charen wrote for National Review magazine, where she was an editorial assistant starting in 1979. Later she joined the staff of First Lady Nancy Reagan as a speechwriter. She subsequently worked on President Ronald Reagan's staff, in the White House Office of Public Liaison and in the Office of Communications. She currently is the policy editor of The Bulwark, a nationally syndicated columnist, and host of The Bulwark’s Beg to Differ podcast. 

John Wood Jr. is a national ambassador for Braver Angels, whose mission it is reduce American political polarization and to promote productive conversation across ideological lines. A former vice-chairman of the Republican Party of Los Angeles County, Wood is a musical artist and a respected writer and speaker on subjects including racial and political reconciliation. In 2014, Wood ran against Maxine Waters for her seat in California's 43rd Congressional District.

Jon Shields, associate professor of government at CMC, will moderate the conversation.

This panel discussion is sponsored by the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with John Wood, Jr., Oren Cass, Mona Charen, Jon Shields

Amanda Eurich is a professor of history at Western Washington University and author of "The Economics of Power: The House of Foix-Navarre-Albret during the Wars of Religion" and numerous essays on the politics and culture of religious violence in early modern France. She is a recipient of grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France, and most recently, the Meeter Center of Calvin University. Her current research explores the radicalization of religious identity through the writings and correspondence of the sixteenth-century jurist, Jean de Coras, known to Anglophone audiences as the judge who presided over the trial of Martin Guerre.

View Video: YouTube with Amanda Eurich

Candace Valenzuela ’06 has devoted her life to fighting for opportunities for others, especially for access to education. She first ran for her local school board to improve Texas schools, becoming the first Latina and first African-American woman to serve on the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school board. In 2020, running on a platform to stand up for all Texas children and their families, Valenzuela was the Democratic nominee for Congress in Texas’s 24th District. She is an advocate for greater fiscal transparency and expansion of STEM education, vocational training, and coding academies in district schools.

The daughter of U.S. Army veterans, Valenzuela was born in El Paso, Texas, into a family with generations of military service. Her great-grandfather came to the United States from Mexico, eventually fighting in World War I. Subsequently, her grandfather fought in World War II. She often says that her father once jumped out of airplanes for a living, while her mother fixed them.

Her lived experiences motivate her views and political passions. The first in her family to graduate from college, Valenzuela attended Claremont McKenna College on a full scholarship. Appreciative of such an opportunity, she is determined to fight for access to education for all.

Ms. Valenzuela’s Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Women and Leadership Alliance, the Berger Institute for Individual and Social Development, the Kravis Leadership Institute, and the Mgrublian Center for Human Rights, all at Claremont McKenna College.

View Video: YouTube with Candace Valenzuela '06

Yusef Komunyakaa was born in Bogalusa, Louisiana. The son of a carpenter, Komunyakaa has said that he was first alerted to the power of language through his grandparents, who were church people: “the sound of the Old Testament informed the cadences of their speech,” Komunyakaa has stated. “It was my first introduction to poetry.” Komunyakaa went on to serve in the Vietnam War as a correspondent; he was managing editor of the Southern Cross during the war, for which he received a Bronze Star. He earned a BA from the University of Colorado Springs on the GI Bill, an MA from Colorado State University, and an MFA from the University of California-Irvine.

In his poetry, Komunyakaa weaves together personal narrative, jazz rhythms, and vernacular language to create complex images of life in peace and in war. Komunyakaa’s early work includes the poetry collections "Dedications & Other Darkhorses" (1977) and "Lost in the Bonewheel Factory" (1979). Widespread recognition came with the publication of "Copacetic" (1984), which showcased what would become his distinctive style: vernacular speech layered with syncopated rhythms from jazz traditions. His next book "I Apologize for the Eyes in My Head" (1986) won the San Francisco Poetry Center Award; "Dien Cai Dau" (1988), a book that treated his experience in the Vietnam War in stark and personal terms, won the Dark Room Poetry Prize. It is regularly described as one of the best books of war poetry from the Vietnam War. The collection explores the experience of African American soldiers in the war as well as captures the embattled Southeast Asian landscape. Komunyakaa’s "Neon Vernacular: New and Selected Poems"(1994) won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

In 2011 Komunyakaa was awarded the Wallace Stevens Award. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the William Faulkner Prize from the Université de Rennes, the Thomas Forcade Award, the Hanes Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Louisiana Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1999-2005. He has taught at numerous institutions including University of New Orleans, Indiana University, and Princeton University. Currently he serves as Distinguished Senior Poet in New York University’s graduate creative writing program.

Photo credit: Arthur Elgort

View Video: YouTube with Yusef Komunyakaa

Vinay Prasad, M.D. and M.P.H., is a practicing hematologist-oncologist and associate professor in the department of epidemiology and bio-statistics at the University of California San Francisco. He studies cancer drugs, health policy, clinical trials, and better decision making. He is author of over 250 academic articles, and the books Ending Medical Reversal (2015), and Malignant (2020). He hosts the oncology podcast Plenary Session.

Dr. Prasad's Athenaeum presentation is co-sponsored by the Rose Institute of State and Local Government at CMC.

View Video: YouTube with Vinay Prasad

Brian Stafford is CEO of Diligent Corporation, a pioneer of modern governance technology. He is responsible for all day-to-day operations, with a focus on accelerating global growth and incorporating scale into the business in order to seamlessly manage the growth. Previously, Stafford served as a partner at McKinsey & Company, where he founded their Growth Stage Tech Practice, and was also the founder of CarOrder. He holds a Master’s in Computer Science from the University of Chicago and a B.S. in economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

View Video: YouTube with Brian Stafford

Kelly Neff, Ph.D., is a social psychologist, author, professor, futurist, and talk-radio personality who brings to the transformational media world her unique focus on the intersection of psychology, consciousness, and human sexuality. 

An academically trained research psychologist, she received her B.A. (2004) in Psychology magna sum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Georgetown University and her M.A. (2006) and Ph.D. (2010) in Social Psychology from Claremont Graduate University.
Committed to exploring the leading edge of psychology and technology, she wrote her first book, “Teaching Psychology Online in 2013,” and followed it up with articles on sex, consciousness, psychology, and futurism that have been read and shared tens of millions of times. Her hit show Lucid Planet Radio has attracted expert guests across the sciences, popular culture, and esoteric traditions and has been streamed to hundreds of thousands of listeners since it premiered in 2015. 

Neff’s newest effort, “Sex Positive” (2020), seeks to empower sexual freedom, inspire healing, and improve people’s relationships by fusing cutting-edge scientific findings with Eastern philosophies and her own insights. 

View Video: YouTube with Kelly Neff