Ideas Festival Emory

Without Nebraska, Bruce Springsteen might not be who he is today. The natural follow-up to Springsteen’s hugely successful album The River should have been the hit-packed Born in the U.S.A. But instead, in 1982, he came out with an album consisting of a series of dark songs he had recorded by himself, for himself. But more than forty years later, Nebraska is arguably Springsteen’s most important record—the lasting clue to understanding not just his career as an artist and the vision behind it, but also the man himself.
 
Nebraska is rough and unfinished, recorded on cassette tape with a simple four-track recorder by Springsteen, alone in his bedroom, just as the digital future was announcing itself. And yet Springsteen now considers it his best album. Nebraska expressed a turmoil that was reflective of the mood of the country, but it was also a symptom of trouble in the artist’s life, the beginnings of a mental breakdown that Springsteen would only talk about openly decades after the album’s release.

This session will be moderated by Paste Magazine's Josh Jackson and have songs from the album performed by Joe Henry.

Collin Kelley is an award-winning poet, novelist, and journalist from Atlanta, GA. His latest book is "Wonder & Wreckage: New & Selected Poems, 1993-2023" (Poetry Atlanta Press). His next project is co-editing an anthology of Stevie Nicks-inspired poetry coming from Madville Publishing in 2026.

Covington Regional Ballet will perform More to Say, a contemporary dance performance that explores the passage of time, existence, and the human experience. Written by the young performers aged 11-17, the piece delves into life's mysteries and our place in the universe, offering a fresh perspective through the lens of youth. The choreography captures the balance between the vastness of the cosmos and the personal reflections of the dancers, weaving together themes of growing up, memories, and the search for meaning. By inviting the audience to reflect with a sense of nostalgia and wonder, the performance encourages a deeper appreciation for the fleeting moments that shape our lives and a renewed curiosity about the world.

More to Say was created by Jillian Mitchell, CRB's Creative Director and Resident Choreographer. Jillian trained at Harid Conservatory and Canada's Royal Winnipeg Ballet School and performed professionally with New Jersey Ballet, Rebecca Davis Dance, Roxey Ballet, Georgia Ballet, gloATL, Proia Dance Project, and The Atlanta Opera. In addition to working with CRB, Jillian is the founder of the celebrated Atlanta-based company Kit Modus and is currently on staff at The University of Georgia Dance Department.

Virginia Willis, James Beard-award winning chef, healthy eating guru, and culinary icon shares recipes from the brand new edition of her classic cookbook, Bon Appetit, Y'all. 

The title, BE-SPOKEN, is a nod to the term ‘bespoke.’ The work uses sacred texts and music genres to address themes of Black empowerment, justice for police violence within Black and Brown communities, and hope for a more prosperous future. During the worldwide shutdown, violent atrocities committed upon the Black community were unavoidably visible. Our nation, once again, struggles to reconcile its original sin of slavery and its lasting institutionalized legacy, racism. BE-SPOKEN is a cantata that explores the themes of loss and joy, and celebrates Blackness. The work begins with a field song and moves through gospel, funk, and hip-hop. The text and music for the work was written by Emorja Roberson, Anthony T. Walker, Pamela Blair, and Chavis Gill (aka “King Chav”).

Ray  escaped the urban slums of Richmond, VA by joining the United States Army at the age of 17. As an infantryman and paratrooper, he served around the world and was awarded The Bronze Star and Combat Infantryman’s Badge, among many other decorations for his service. After 20 years, he retired and went back to school, earning his BS in Liberal Arts, MA in Public History, and EdS/EdD in Education Leadership, researching the relationship between parental behavior and African American academic success for his dissertation.  During his time as an adjunct professor at Appalachian State University, his most popular courses were “The Souls of Black Folks: An Examination of African American Social Culture” and “Storytelling: Life in the Narrative,” which explored historic and contemporary uses of storytelling and oral history in America. 

Ray’s stories have appeared in Readers Digest’s  Best Stories in America (2016) and  American Hero’s (2017) editions. He was selected as the 2017 Serenbe France Focus Storytelling Fellow (Atlanta, GA) and his stories have been featured on NPR radio shows such as The Moth Radio Hour, Snap Judgment, and Backstory as well as the Risk podcast, among many others.  As a competitive storyteller, Ray is a ten-time Moth Story Slam Champion, and winner of the 2016 National Storytelling Festival Story Slam. Sharing his stories across the US and Canada, Ray has made several appearances on Moth Mainstage, The National Storytelling Festival Exchange Place (2019) , and was part of the 2018 tour of Snap Judgment Live! 

In 2018, Ray has been named as the best known story teller in the south by Bitter Southerner magazine. Glynn Washington, host and producer of Snap Judgement, calls him “a storyteller’s storyteller.” He is distinguished for his exceptional accomplishments as a performer and spoken word performer and his training and experience as an educator and motivator.

Doug was elected the President of the Atlanta City Council in December 2021 and assumed office January 2022.   Doug has led an array of organizations including the Woodruff Arts Center, BrightHouse Consulting and as Founding CEO of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.Doug has served in a number of civic roles including President of the Emory Alumni Board (2014), Trustee for the Carter Center, Harvard Alumni Association Board Member and numerous other volunteer leadership roles. He has lectured at various institutions including the CDC, Duke University, Bard College and TEDx anytime online.He is an avid runner, girl dad, scuba diver, bridge player and sci-fi junkie.

At the height of the Great Depression, Los Angeles oil mogul George Allan Hancock and his crew of Smithsonian scientists came upon a gruesome scene: two bodies, mummified by the searing heat, on the shore of a remote Galápagos island. For the past four years Hancock and other American elites had traveled the South Seas to collect specimens for scientific research. On one trip to the Galápagos, Hancock was surprised to discover an equally exotic group of humans: European exiles who had fled political and economic unrest, hoping to create a utopian paradise. One was so devoted to a life of isolation that he’d had his teeth extracted and replaced with a set of steel dentures.
As Hancock and his fellow American explorers would witness, paradise had turned into chaos. The three sets of exiles—a Berlin doctor and his lover, a traumatized World War I veteran and his young family, and an Austrian baroness with two adoring paramours—were riven by conflict. Petty slights led to angry confrontations. The baroness, wielding a riding crop and pearl-handled revolver, staged physical fights between her two lovers and unabashedly seduced American tourists. The conclusion was deadly: with two exiles missing and two others dead, the survivors hurled accusations of murder.
Using never-before-published archives, Abbott Kahler weaves a chilling, stranger-than-fiction tale worthy of Agatha Christie. Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the march to World War II, with a mystery as alluring and curious as the Galápagos itself, Eden Undone explores the universal and timeless desire to seek utopia—and lays bare the human fallibility that, inevitably, renders such a quest doomed.

Carrie Buse is Head of Design for Mattel’s Future Lab, an innovation team focused on pioneering the future of play through tech-enhanced products, virtual collectibles, and mixed reality experiences. She also spearheads Mattel’s Design & Development initiative to ethically integrate AI-enabled processes into workflows and consumer-facing products.During her 20-year career at Mattel, Carrie has championed the intersection of physical and digital play through advanced concepts that put the needs of the user first. Her credits include Hello Barbie, a fashion doll powered by speech recognition and natural language processing; Hello Dreamhouse, a tech-enabled playset designed to give the child more control over bringing their stories to life; and Barbie Video Girl, a doll inspired by YouTube trends in which kids made videos with their dolls. (Keep an eye out for Video Girl’s cameo appearance at the Weird Doll’s house in The Barbie Movie.) Carrie also co-created the content and curriculum for the Barbie™ You Can Be Anything™ programming experience on Tynker, teaching over 1M kids basic coding concepts via playful Barbie themes. In addition to the Barbie brand, Carrie has supported Monster High (both OG and the reboot), Hot Wheels, Mattel Games, and Fisher Price.Prior to Mattel, Carrie freelanced as a Writer/Producer/Experience Designer crafting award-winning interactive content for Universal Pictures, Women in Film, and Philips Media Games.

Andra Gillespie is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University. She earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University. Her research focuses on the political leadership of African American politicians who attempt to transcend race and how Black voters respond to them. She is the author of The New Black Politician: Cory Booker, Newark and Post-Racial America (2012) and Race and the Obama Administration: Symbols, Substance and Hope (2019). She is also the editor of Whose Black Politics? Cases in Post-Racial Black Leadership (2010).

Chef Virginia Willis and writer Janisse Ray team up to talk not only about the nature of food and story, but about cultivating the ways we think about ourselves—how we return to authenticity, how we lighten up, how we ground, and how we tell the narratives of our lives.

Under the moniker Rose Hotel, Atlanta-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Jordan Reynolds crafts nuanced indie-rock that pulls from a palette of psychedelic shimmer and folk influence via her Southeastern roots. With a drive to pay homage to the legends of the art form, she uses the trappings of psychedelic rock not as source material, but as ornamentation, as she explores relationships, feminine rage, lust, temptation, blissful ignorance, frightening apathy, delusions, and illusions.

The importance of engaging diverse audiences is critical if today’s legacy media and modern media companies are to survive. Atlanta Journal Constitution industry experts will explore the role diversity plays in the future of media consumption and the strategies needed to effectively reach and resonate with these growing audiences, including the launch of UATL, the AJC’s new Black culture vertical.
They’ll also discuss the challenges and opportunities in ensuring that the media reflects today's multicultural society. Attendees will gain insights into how diversity drives innovation, influences consumer behavior, and shapes the media landscape for years to come.

In a career spanning more than 25 years, Joe Henry has left an indelible and unique imprint on American popular music. As a songwriter and artist, Henry is celebrated for his exploration of the human experience. A hyper-literate storyteller, by turns dark, devastating, and hopeful, he draws an author’s eye for the overlooked detail across a broad swath of American musical styles — rock, jazz and blues — rendering genre modifiers useless.
Henry has collaborated with many notable American artists on his own body of work, from T Bone Burnett, Daniel Lanois, and Van Dyke Parks on one side of the spectrum, to Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Brad Mehldau, and Bill Frisell on the other. A three-time-Grammy-winning producer, Henry has made records for Bonnie Raitt, Hugh Laurie, Lisa Hannigan, Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens and Solomon Burke among many others.
Additionally, Henry has taken his musical talents to film and television. He has scored music for the films Jesus’ Son, Knocked Up, and Motherhood, as well as produced tracks for the film I’m Not There. His song “Stars” was featured in the closing credits in the fourth season of HBO’s Six Feet Under.
In 2013, Algonquin Press published, “Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World that Made Him,” a book co-written by Joe and his brother Dave Henry.
In 2016, Henry teamed up with Billy Bragg on the collaborative album Shine A Light: Field Recordings From The Great American Railroad. The pair were subsequently nominated as “Duo/Group of the Year” by the Americana Music Association.
American Songwriter called his 2017 release Thrum “Audacious and auspicious…akin to Van Morrison at his most impressionistic.”
Henry released his 15th solo album The Gospel According To Water on November 15th 2019 :
“These are simple, wise and sonically gorgeous songs.”—Rosanne Cash“
Here is the voice of a friend and brother who had been away too long. There is enough anger, enough misery in the world. Too many tears, fires and trampled flowers, so make room in your life for some beauty like this.”—Elvis Costello“.
In every track, there is gentleness and strength. His music is poetry.”-Gloria Steinem
Included in Barack Obama’s Favorite Music of 2019+ New York Times Best Songs of 2019
Henry’s 16th solo album “All The Eye Can See” will be released January 27th 2023. Henry is joined by more than 20 musicians, among them his trusted long-time musical companions and friends – his son Levon Henry on saxophone & clarinet, David Piltch on bass, Patrick Warren on piano & keys and John Smith on acoustic guitar.
It is an intimate album, highly emotional, amazingly quiet and beautiful, and relaxed, with simple yet skillful tunes, touching lyrics featuring 12 new and unforgettable songs, framed by an instrumental prelude and prologue.

Common Good Atlanta (CGA) began in 2008, with one Ph.D. student, Sarah Higinbotham, who felt called to volunteer to teach at a prison as a response to her uncle's incarceration. After writing fourteen Georgia prisons, Phillips State Prison finally accepted her offer to teach a course. That semester, Sarah provided all the books for the course on world literature. The class filled in twenty minutes, with ninety incarcerated men on the waiting list.
 
In 2010, after two years of teaching by herself, her graduate school friend Bill Taft joined the work. Together, they co-direct Common Good Atlanta, which has grown to more than sixty faculty members teaching over thirty-five courses across four prisons.

Situated in the early decades of the magnificent Mughal Empire, this first ever biography of Princess Gulbadan offers an enthralling portrait of a charismatic adventurer and unique pictures of the multicultural society in which she lived. Following a migratory childhood that spanned Kabul and north India, Gulbadan spent her middle years in a walled harem established by her nephew Akbar to showcase his authority as the Great Emperor. Gulbadan longed for the exuberant itinerant lifestyle she’d known. With Akbar’s blessing, she led an unprecedented sailing and overland voyage and guided harem women on an extended pilgrimage in Arabia. Amid increasing political tensions, the women’s “un-Islamic” behavior forced their return, lengthened by a dramatic shipwreck in the Red Sea.
 
Gulbadan wrote a book upon her return, the only extant work of prose by a woman of the age. A portion of it is missing, either lost to history or redacted by officials who did not want the princess to have her say.
 
Vagabond Princess contemplates the story of the missing pages and breathes new life into a daring historical figure. It offers a portal to a richly complex world, rife with movement and migration, where women’s conviviality, adventure, and autonomies shine through.

Global dance music stars SOFI TUKKER celebrate the release of their new album “Bread” in a chat about the beloved food staple and the chemistry that makes it so delicious with food scientist, Dr. Maria Ortiz. Dr Ortiz runs the popular Instagram page "All You Knead Is Bread” where she illustrates the fascinating science behind bread chemistry and her delectable sourdough recipes. This conversation will be recorded for the Sing For Science podcast and moderated by its host, Matt Whyte. Sing For Science is a Top 10 Music Interview Podcast on Apple’s charts - past guests include David Byrne, SIA, Korn and dozens more.