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Detecting cognitive decline before its symptoms start

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 20:24:58 +0000

Detecting cognitive decline before its symptoms start Rachel Sauer Wed, 11/13/2024 - 13:24

Daniel Long

In his research on the brain, Daniel Gustavson looks for clues about when cognitive decline begins

According to Daniel Gustavson, assistant research professor in the Institute for Behavioral Genetics, much of the research on cognitive decline starts late.

“A lot of studies of older adults—too many, in my opinion—focus on when some cognitive decline has already happened,” he says. “It's clear that a lot of the disease, or even just normal aging, has already taken place by the time somebody comes into a clinic and says, ‘I'm worried about my brain.’”

Gustavson wants to dig deeper into the timeline and see if cognitive decline can be spotted before its telltale signs arise. A paper he coauthored and recently published in Neurobiology of Aging makes headway toward accomplishing that goal.

�� Boulder researcher Daniel Gustavson notes that a lot of cognitive decline, or even just normal aging, has already taken place by the time "somebody comes into a clinic and says, ‘I'm worried about my brain.’”

The cognitive gas tank

Gustavson’s study—which used twin research, genetic analysis and magnetic resonance imaging (MRIs), among other methodologies—examines the relationship between brain reserve in middle age and executive function later in life.

“Brain reserve,” says Gustavson, “is a bit like a gas tank. You have a certain amount of gas built up when you’re a young adult, when your brain is at its healthiest, and as you age, you start to lose some of that fuel.”

Executive function, he adds, refers to complex goal management or attentional control. “It captures higher-level cognitive processes, where you have to be controlling other sub-processes.”

An example of executive function in action is asking someone to memorize and reorder a string of letters and numbers.

“You might have people listen to a list like X, six, B, Y, seven, J, and then they’d have to remember that list in their head and repeat the numbers back in numerical order and the letters in alphabetical order,” Gustavson says. “It’s a little more complicated than just repeating what someone said.”

Using data from the Vietnam Era Twin Study of Aging (VETSA), which includes more than 1,600 subjects who have undergone various cognitive assessments at regular intervals over the past 20 years, Gustavson and his coauthors concluded that higher brain reserve at the age of 56 was associated with better executive function at the age of 68.

Looks can be revealing

Brain reserve, says Gustavson, is a proxy for brain thickness, and brain thickness is determined through MRIs.

To analyze the hundreds of MRIs of VETSA subjects, Gustavson and his coauthors used a machine-learning algorithm developed by James H. Cole, professor of neuroimage computing at the MANIFOLD Lab, which was trained in much the same way Google trains its search algorithms.

“You can train it over and over again,” Gustavson says. “The more data you have”—that is, MRIs—“and the more times you tell it, ‘You were wrong this time. You were right this time,’ the better it gets at classifying this brain as one age versus that brain as another age.”

The algorithm assesses plump, padded brains as younger and atrophied, motheaten brains as older, regardless of the chronological age of the people in whose heads those brains reside. That means, for example, that a 56-year-old can have a brain that appears 60 and a 60-year-old can have a brain that appears 56.

And this matters, Gustavson says, because how a brain looks in an MRI predicts its executive function years later.

“Controlling for their actual age, people with younger-looking brains had much shallower decline in executive function over the subsequent 12 years, and people whose brains appeared older than average had steeper drops in executive function.”

Yet the cause of this discrepancy—genetics? environment? trauma?—is something the algorithm alone can’t explain. That’s where twin research comes in.

Same genes, different story

One of the benefits of twin studies like VETSA, Gustavson says, is their ability to separate environmental influences on a person’s health—things like diet, exercise and place of residence—from genetic influences.

“Brain reserve is a bit like a gas tank. You have a certain amount of gas built up when you’re a young adult, when your brain is at its healthiest, and as you age, you start to lose some of that fuel,” says Daniel Gustavson. (Illustration: iStock)

“Those two things aren't fully separable, but basic twin studies give us some idea of how inherited different constructs are—not only cognitive abilities, like memory or speed, but also changes in those abilities. Twin studies help us quantify how much those changes are due to genetics and how much are due to environment.”

If one twin experiences cognitive decline faster than the other, in other words, researchers can confidently point to environment as the reason, since twins share the same genes.

But twin studies can go only so far, Gustavson says, as they tend to paint with a broad brush. “You often can't pinpoint specific genes or specific environments that matter, because it's all statistical.”

That’s why Gustavson and his team incorporated genetic analyses in their study. They wanted a higher-resolution snapshot of the genetic influences on cognitive decline, specifically by seeing if the APOE genotype, which is strongly associated with Alzheimer’s, predicted a drop in executive function.

What they found is that, although APOE alone did not fully explain changes in subjects’ executive function over time, those subjects’ genes taken as a whole did.

“Most of the association between people's brain health and their future cognitive decline, about two-thirds, was explained by genetics,” Gustavson says.

But that’s not to dismiss the other third as inconsequential.

“Things like healthy lifestyle, diet, smoking and alcohol use, social engagement—those things don't seem like they relate to cognitive changes, but they might impact your brain health in the first half of your life, and then your brain health in midlife will impact your cognition later,” says Gustavson.

The fourth wave

Gustavson and his fellow researchers just completed the fourth wave of data collection, when the VETSA subjects were 74 years old, and are therefore currently working to build upon their findings.

“We would like to expand our models to capture the cognitive changes even further out,” he says.

Gustavson would also like to deepen his understanding of what exactly the brain-age algorithm is detecting. “Is it capturing something new to midlife, or is it capturing something from young adulthood, the consequences of which are only becoming apparent in midlife?”

He suspects it’s the latter, but he’s not yet sure. “I really want to look at that in more detail.”

Jeremy A. Elman, Chandra A. Reynolds, Lisa T. Eyler, Christine Fennema-Notestine, Olivia K. Puckett, Matthew S. Panizzon, Nathan A. Gillespie, Michael C. Neale, Michael J. Lyons, Carol E. Franz and William S. Kremen contributed to this research.

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In his research on the brain, Daniel Gustavson looks for clues about when cognitive decline begins.

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Top illustration: iStock

Fish on film: uncovering the environmental drivers of black spot syndrome

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 17:18:32 +0000

Fish on film: uncovering the environmental drivers of black spot syndrome Rachel Sauer Tue, 11/12/2024 - 10:18

Blake Puscher

�� Boulder researchers use a unique, noninvasive method to determine the environmental factors contributing to several symptoms among tropical fish

For many researchers in biology and other natural sciences, dissecting specimens may not be desirable, though it is often necessary. This is because dissection means killing the animal a researcher is trying to study—a big issue, especially if the species is experiencing population decline.

Over time, such concerns have led scientists to develop a number of non-invasive techniques, including video transects. This is a type of video recording used in marine biology, in which divers film along a line of fixed length and depth to record images for computer-assisted analysis, obtain permanent data that can be reassessed later and survey wider areas in shorter amounts of time.

�� Boulder scientist Pieter Johnson and his research colleagues use a unique, noninvasive method to determine the environmental factors contributing to several symptoms among tropical fish.

A recently published study by Pieter Johnson, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of distinction in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and lead author Cheyenna de Wit of the University of Amsterdam, demonstrates the benefits of recording rather than dissecting specimens.

In their paper on black spot syndrome in ocean surgeonfish, the researchers use video transects to measure the severity of the disease among thousands of fish and identify the environmental factors contributing to its distribution.

What is black spot syndrome?

Black spot syndrome is a collection of several symptoms, the most prominent being the dermal lesions or spots for which the condition is named, according to Johnson. In many species, Johnson says, these lesions are black, “but in some species they’ll show up as white.” They form on the skin, scales and fins of fish.

The spots appear when the free-swimming, larval form of trematodes—commonly known as flukes, a type of parasitic flatworm—penetrate the skin of the fish and form cysts inside them. The distinctive coloration occurs when fish surround the cyst with melanin in response to the invasion, similar to the formation of pearls in oysters.

Relatively little is known about the genus of trematode that causes black spot syndrome, Scaphanocephalus. “Prior to us detecting it in 2017,” Johnson says, “it had never been reported from Caribbean fish. So, it was wholly undescribed from that area.” Much remains unknown about this trematode, including the type of snail that Scaphanocephalus infects before moving on to fish.

However, trematode infection is clearly very common in certain regions: In Johnson’s study, 70% of observed fish showed signs of infection, while a companion study of other Caribbean fish demonstrated both how high the parasite loads are in that region, and how many different fish species seem to be affected, according to Johnson.

As to the consequences of infection for fish, there is some evidence, Johnson says, that infected fish may graze less and have more trouble maintaining buoyancy. Researchers also hypothesize that they are more conspicuous to predators.

“One in particular, of course, is osprey, which are visual, fish-specialized predators that are looking for fish through the water,” Johnson says. “When these infected fish tend to flash or turn sideways, and you can see those black spots, it probably makes it a lot easier for the bird to detect them.”

If this hypothesis is true, black spot syndrome could bolster the numbers of the trematodes that cause it, as Johnson says osprey are their definitive host. That means these trematodes must enter the body of an osprey to reproduce. The transmission of the parasites is trophic, so they are passed along when infected fish are eaten.

Noninvasive methods

While black spot syndrome can have negative effects on infected fish, the most important consequences could be for reef ecosystems. According to Johnson, black spot syndrome has been increasingly prevalent in important herbivorous grazing fish in the Caribbean, such as surgeonfish and parrotfish.

Learn more

For more information on the complex lifecycles of digenetic trematodes, see this article about other research from �� involving the parasites.

“In tropical coral reef ecosystems,” Johnson explains, “surgeonfish and parrotfish, and other herbivores play a key role by grazing on algae.” Since infected fish are evidenced to graze less, and since they may be more likely to be eaten by osprey, the population of algae in the affected area can increase.

“Algae and coral are in a dynamic balance,” Johnson says, and if there is enough algal growth, “it can start to overwhelm and kill corals. So, in these areas, we try to keep those populations of surgeonfish and parrotfish as viable as possible, so that they can continue to regulate and graze down the algae.”

In fact, some studies have even said that grazing fish can help save coral reefs, with particular emphasis on parrotfish because the prior primary grazer in the Caribbean, spiny sea urchins, were killed off by disease in the 1980s. Also, trematode infection isn’t the only thing threatening surgeonfish and parrotfish populations, as they are popular catches for fisheries.

Because the fish being studied are ecologically important, it is particularly important to avoid interfering with their populations. Ordinarily, this is difficult, since dissection is the surest way to confirm a trematode infection—the parasites being clearly visible inside the fish’s bodies. In this case, though, the black spots characteristic of black spot syndrome allowed for a different approach: the video transect method.

To record as many surgeonfish as possible, and therefore provide an accurate estimate of how many fish were infected, S��BA divers filmed at 35 sites along the coast of Curaçao, an island in the southern Caribbean. They recorded two and five meters below water for either 10 minutes or until 20 adult surgeonfish had been filmed.

An ocean surgeonfish with black spot syndrome. (Photo: Cheyenna de Wit)

Environmental factors

Besides determining that 70% of surgeonfish showed visible signs of black spot syndrome, Johnson and de Witt correlated different environmental factors with the severity of the syndrome, which they based on the average number of spots per fish.

One of the most significant effects the researchers observed arose from longitude—that is, the position of fish from east to west along the leeward (downwind) shore. Both the prevalence and intensity of black spot syndrome was lower toward the east and higher toward the west.

Johnson hypothesizes that this effect is caused by urban and industrial development, as the east end of Curaçao, where a portion of the research took place, is privately owned and less developed. The researchers observed the same association between development and infection intensity in Bonaire, the neighboring island.

The first component of the effect was wave intensity, which was negatively associated with infection intensity because the larval form of trematode that infects fish can’t swim well enough to overcome opposing tides. Wave energy is usually greatest at the eastern end of Curaçao, so this will have contributed to the lower intensity of infection at the east end.

The other components were positively associated with infection intensity. Nitrogen concentration increases with sewage and domestic runoff, which can contain nutrients and other pollutants. Nutrients can increase the population of trematode hosts, and pollutants can weaken the immune systems of fish that trematodes infect.

While fishing pressure can be either positively or negatively correlated with parasite abundance, Johnson says, this depends on the species involved. In the case of Scaphanocephalus, fishing pressure could increase abundance if it removed predatory fish from the environment, resulting in an increased snail population.

Student learning

�� Boulder students also play an important role in this research. Undergraduates in the field course Coral Reef Ecology and Conservation (EBIO 4090, taught by Johnson) spend their fall semester learning about coral reefs and the factors that threaten them before traveling to Curaçao over winter break. During a week-long S��BA expedition, students learn how to collect video transect data using the same methods Johnson and his research colleagues use and are contributing valuable data to the understanding of black spot syndrome. For the upcoming trip, students will be revisiting some of the same sites as in the study to assess how black spot severity has changed through time, particularly following recent warm water bleaching events that have killed many corals.

Since most of the factors composing the difference between the east and west ends come from human action, it is possible that the severity of black spot syndrome could be significantly reduced if the handling of runoff and/or fishing behavior were changed.

A unique methodology

One noteworthy part of the way Johnson and de Witt’s study was conducted is that, with the videos collected, the researchers had observers record the number of lesions on each fish. This is unique, as prior studies have simply noted whether lesions were present, leaving the severity of infection uncertain.

Moreover, methods like the one used in this study may help to solve the challenges that come with observing ocean life. “There's a lot of ocean out there and not a tremendous number of people to study it,” Johnson explains, “so I think approaches like this could be applied in other areas where we're detecting blackspot syndrome.” Photos are an especially useful way to study the ocean because they are easy for anyone to take thanks to digital technology, he adds. For this reason, community science platforms like iNaturalist can be used to aggregate a large amount of data.

“When people are on vacation, or they’re diving, or they’re swimming,” Johnson says, “they upload all of their observations and fish photos, and we’ve been using that to scan across large sections of the Caribbean and lots of different fish species; and now some of the undergrads in the lab are also extending that to look into parts of the Indo-Pacific and other regions of the world where Scaphanocephalus occurs.

“So, I think those kinds of approaches, video transects and these community science-uploaded images, together start to give a much bigger picture of patterns of infection over large geographic areas.”

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�� Boulder researchers use a unique, noninvasive method to determine the environmental factors contributing to several symptoms among tropical fish.

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An ocean surgeonfish with black spot syndrome. (Photo: Cheyenna de Wit)

Difficult Dialogue focuses on extremism, antisemitism

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 22:18:47 +0000

Difficult Dialogue focuses on extremism, antisemitism Rachel Sauer Mon, 11/11/2024 - 15:18

�� Boulder’s Center for Humanities & the Arts welcomes German delegation for latest in Difficult Dialogue Series

Late last month, a delegation from Germany joined scholars from the University of Colorado Boulder to discuss extremism, antisemitism and misinformation.

The discussion was organized by the �� Boulder Center for Humanties & the Arts (CHA) in collaboration with the Boulder Council for International Visitors and with support from the U.S. State Department. It was the latest of the CHA’s Difficult Dialogue Series.

The six visiting delegates, representing various regions in Germany, asked not to be photographed or quoted but engaged in a structured discussion facilitated by CHA Director Jennifer Ho. Topics spanned antisemitism, media literacy and the global effects of extremism, reflecting the delegates’ interest in the CHA’s approach to fostering meaningful discussions around divisive issues.

The Difficult Dialogue series is designed to emphasize open-mindedness, respectful listening and personal storytelling. This approach enables participants to confront challenging topics and seek mutual understanding without pressure to agree.

During last month’s discussion, participants shared their perspectives on democracy, racial inequities and the historical issues that influence the present-day political landscape, such as what is happening in Gaza. The U.S. and German participants exchanged experiences and strategies for navigating division, demonstrating the CHA’s commitment to conversations that resonate across borders.

Through the Difficult Dialogue series, the CHA aims to connect people from diverse backgrounds, emphasizing that discussing challenging topics is essential to problem-solving and cultural understanding. By hosting this German delegation, the CHA continues to affirm its dedication to promoting respectful dialogue rooted in the humanities, the center stated.

The next event in the Difficult Dialogue series is scheduled for Nov. 13 and is titled “Is that a fact?!” The session will focus on how to find facts in a world filled with misinformation. This community conversation is co-hosted with Colorado Chautauqua and open to the public and will be held at 6 p.m. at the Chautauqua Community House Rocky Mountain Climbers Club room.

For more information, visit Chautauqua’s website: www.chautauqua.com/event/difficult-dialogue-is-that-a-fact/

The University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Humanities & the Arts (CHA) is known internationally for its Difficult Dialogue series, which fosters meaningful conversations about complex issues.

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�� Boulder’s Center for Humanities & the Arts welcomes German delegation for latest in Difficult Dialogue Series.

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Loriliai Biernacki wins American Academy of Religion Book Award

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 20:46:32 +0000

Loriliai Biernacki wins American Academy of Religion Book Award Rachel Sauer Mon, 11/11/2024 - 13:46

The award jury called Biernacki’s 2023 book, The Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta's Panentheism and the New Materialism, ‘both striking and original’

Loriliai Biernacki, professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, is one of this year’s winners of the American Academy of Religion Book Award (AAR).

The group’s annual award “recognizes new scholarly publications that make significant contributions to the study of religion,” according to the award announcement. Biernacki’s book, The Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta's Panentheism and the New Materialism, published by Oxford University Press, won in the category of constructive-reflective studies, beating out five other finalists.

“Loriliai Biernacki makes a fascinating case for the contemporary relevance of Abhinavagupta’s 11th-century Indian philosophy,” the AAR jury said. “By analyzing wonder (camatkāra) as rooted in the material rather than in a cognitive faculty, The Matter of Wonder is both striking and original in its approach. The links she draws with viruses and AI in particular make this work pertinent and fresh.”

A faculty member at �� Boulder since 2000, Biernacki researches Hinduism, gender, New Materialism and the religion-science interface. She’s published dozens of book chapters and journal articles, as well as two other books: God's Body: Panentheism across the World's Religious Traditions and Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex and Speech in Tantra, the latter of which won the Kayden Award in 2008.

"As I was working on this book, reading these medieval Sanskrit authors, I found myself continually marveling at how prescient and cogent these medieval Indian thinkers were, so it felt very important to be able to connect us today to the thought of these writers so many centuries ago," Biernacki says. "Also, feel fortunate to be at the University of Colorado, which has been supportive of my work here."

Biernacki’s fellow recipients this year include Sinem Arcak Casale, Elizabeth O’Brien, Molly Farneth, Carlos Eire, Mbaye Lo and Carl W. Ernst.

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The award jury called Biernacki’s 2023 book, The Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta's Panentheism and the New Materialism, ‘both striking and original.’

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World War II vet, �� prof joins event marking end of that war

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 15:17:11 +0000

World War II vet, �� prof joins event marking end of that war Rachel Sauer Fri, 11/08/2024 - 08:17

Clint Talbott

Richard Jessor, �� Boulder professor emeritus, to join Miami’s New World Symphony this weekend to be interviewed by historian James Holland

Next spring marks the 80^th anniversary of the end of World War II and the Holocaust, and Miami Beach’s New World Symphony is performing two concerts this weekend that will feature pre-concert interviews with Richard Jessor, a University of Colorado Boulder professor emeritus of behavioral science who fought with the U.S. Marines on the island of Iwo Jima.

Conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya and best-selling historian James Holland will team up for a commemorative concert honoring veterans and the “global sounds of resilience.”

The symphony characterized the event this way: “From the beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima to the skies of the Tuskegee Airmen, explore the global fight for democracy through music that commemorates and reflects. Soprano Emily Magee makes her NWS debut in the pensive and poignant Four Last Songs.”

In pre-concert appearances on Saturday, Nov. 9, and Sunday, Nov. 10, Holland will interview Jessor about his experiences in the war.

Jessor, who will turn 100 this month, said the attempt to use music to illuminate “such deeply disturbing human experiences as war and the Holocaust is, to my mind, an admirable enterprise deserving support.”

Additionally, he said, the event should underscore the need for societies to do everything possible to avoid such calamities in the future. “And finally, perhaps, as one of the diminishing cohort of WWII combat veterans still alive, I feel a continuing responsibility to be a voice against the madness of wars.”

Jessor noted that the senior vice president for artistic planning and programs of the New World Symphony is Martin Sher, son of Boyce Sher and Daniel Sher, dean emeritus of �� Boulder’s College of Music.

Jessor met Martin Sher in July when he was visiting his parents in Boulder. At that meeting, Sher discussed his plan to devote the 2024-25 programs to commemorating the end of World War II and the Holocaust, and he wanted to present music that would provide an interesting and inspirational commentary.

Examples include Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony, written when the city was under siege, and the music for the film Saving Private Ryan, written by John Williams. Sher also wanted to learn more about Jessor’s combat experience as a Marine in the battle for Iwo Jima.

At the time, Sher was consulting with Holland, and Holland interviewed Jessor via Zoom on his blog. Later, Sher conceived the idea of the pre-concert interviews and asked Jessor to have those conversations with Holland in person. “Of course, I agreed,” Jessor said.

This weekend’s Veterans Day concerts are free to veterans. Saturday’s concert is available to stream live and will be available online after the performance. The streaming option is free to anyone with an email address who registers at this link. The full concert program is at this link.

Jessor’s pre-concert interview will not be streamed, however.

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Richard Jessor, �� Boulder professor emeritus, to join Miami’s New World Symphony this weekend to be interviewed by historian James Holland.

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Above: Richard Jessor at his home in Boulder. �� Boulder photo by Glenn Asakawa.

Veteran sees Vietnam the country beyond the war

Anonymous — Fri, 25 Oct 2024 17:30:37 +0000

Veteran sees Vietnam the country beyond the war Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 10/25/2024 - 11:30

Rachel Sauer

�� Boulder alum and regent emeritus Peter Steinhauer shares Vietnam experiences with students, to be featured in the in-progress documentary Welcome Home Daddy

Peter Steinhauer joined the U.S. Navy because that’s what young men of his generation did.

“I was brought up to finish high school, go to college, join a fraternity, get married, spend two years in the military, then work the rest of my life,” he explains. “Of everybody I went to high school with in Golden, most of the boys went in (the military).”

So, after graduating the University of Colorado Boulder in 1958—where he met his wife, Juli, a voice major—he attended dental school in Missouri, then completed a face and jaw surgical residency, finishing in 1965. And then he joined the Navy.

Peter Steinhauer (left) and Steven Dike (right) after Steinhauer's presentation during the Oct. 18 class of The Vietnam Wars, which Dike teaches.

He had two young daughters and a son on the way, and he learned two weeks after being stationed at Camp Pendleton that he’d be shipping to Vietnam, where he served from 1966-67.

“How many of your grandparents served in Vietnam?” Steinhauer asks the students seated in desks rimming the perimeter of the classroom, and several raise their hands. Steinhauer has given this presentation to this class, The Vietnam Wars, for enough years that it’s now the grandchildren of his fellow veterans with whom he shares his experiences of war.

Even though Steinhauer had given the presentation before, the Oct. 18 session of The Vietnam Wars, for students in the Honors Residential Academic Program (HRAP), was different: It was filmed as part of the in-progress documentary Welcome Home Daddy, which chronicles Steinhauer’s experiences during and after the war and his deep love for the country and people of Vietnam.

“Pete told me once that he dreams about Vietnam all the time, but they’re not nightmares,” says Steven Dike, associate director of the HRAP and assistant teaching professor of history, who teaches The Vietnam Wars. “He’s spent his life as a healer and an educator, and I think one of the values (for students) is hearing how his experiences in the war informed his life after it.”

‘An old guy there’

Steinhauer, a retired oral surgeon and �� regent emeritus, served a yearlong tour with the 3rd Marine Division, 3rd Medical Battalion in Da Nang, Vietnam. Lt. Cmdr. Steinhauer was a buzz-cut 30-year-old—“an old guy there,” he tells the students—with a Kodak Instamatic camera.

He provided dental care and oral surgery to U.S. servicemen and servicewomen as well as Vietnamese people, and he took pictures—of the rice paddies and jungles, of the people he met, of the nameless details of daily life that were like nothing he’d experienced before.

“This was the crapper,” Steinhauer tells the students, explaining a photo showing a square, metal-sided building with a flat, angled roof. “There were four seats in there and no dividers, so you were just sitting with the guy next to you.”

When the electricity went out, he and his colleagues worked outside. When helicopters came in with the wounded, it was all hands on deck.

Left image: Pvt. Raymond Escalera holds the since-deactivated grenade that Peter Steinhauer (to Escalera's left) removed live from his neck, in a photo that made the front page of The Seattle Times; right image: Peter and Juli Steinhauer (on right) visit Raymond Escalera (white shirt) and his wife in California.

“They’d be brought off the helicopter and taken to the triage area,” Steinhauer says, the photo at the front of the classroom showing the organized chaos of it. “A lot of life-and-death decisions were made there, catheters and IVs were started there. The triage area is a wonderful part of military medicine.”

Steinhauer also documented the casualties, whose starkness the intervening years have done nothing to dim. One of his responsibilities was performing dental identification of bodies, “one of the hardest things I did,” he says.

Then there was Dec. 21, 1966: “A guy came in—it was pouring rain, and we had mass casualties—and he came in with trouble breathing,” Steinhauer recalls. “We discovered he had an unexploded M79 rifle grenade in his neck. We got it out, but a corpsman said, ‘Doc, you better be careful with that, it can go boom.’”

Not only did Marine Pvt. Raymond Escalera survive a live grenade in his neck, but about 12 years ago Steinhauer tracked him down and visited him at his home in Pico Rivera, California. “We call four or five times a year now,” Steinhauer says.

Building relationships

Steinhauer and his colleagues also treated Vietnamese civilians. “One of the most fun parts of my year there was being able to perform 60 or 70 cleft lip surgeries,” Steinhauer tells the students, showing before and after photos.

Peter Steinhauer (left) and medical colleagues in Vietnam, with whom he worked during many of his 26 visits to Vietnam since the end of the war.

He then shows them a photo of the so-called “McNamara Line” between North and South Vietnam—a defoliated slash of brown and gray that looks like a wound that will never heal.

Healing, however, has happened, and continues to. “I was blessed by the ability to go back to a place where so many horrible things happened during the war and make something beautiful of it,” Steinhauer says.

In the years since he returned from war—and met his almost-one-year-old son for the first time—Steinhauer has gone back to Vietnam more than two dozen times. Acknowledging that his experience is not all veterans’ experience, he says he has been blessed to learn about Vietnam as a country and not just a war.

“How veterans dealt with the war, how they’re still coming to terms with it as we’re getting further away from it, are really important issues,” says Mark Gould, director and a producer of Welcome Home Daddy. “It’s not just a war that we quote-unquote lost, but it was the most confusing war the United States has ever fought. We never had closure, but that didn’t stop Dr. Steinhauer from reaching out. Our tagline is ‘Governments wage war, people make peace,’ and that’s what he stands for.”

The idea for the documentary originated with Steinhauer’s daughter, Terrianne, who grew up not only hearing his stories but visiting the country with him and her mom. She and Gould served in the CalArts alumni association together, and several years ago she pitched him the idea for Welcome Home Daddy, which they are making in partnership with producer Rick Hocutt.

Peter Steinhauer with his children upon his return home after serving in the Vietnam War; the "Welcome home daddy" message inspired the title of the documentary currently being made about Steinhauer's experiences during and after the war.

The documentary will weave Steinhauer’s stories with those of other veterans and highlight the relationships that Steinhauer has built over decades—through partnering with medical professionals in Vietnam and volunteering his services there, through supporting Vietnamese students who study in the United States, through facilitating education and in-person visits between U.S. and Vietnamese doctors and nurses. At the same time, Juli Steinhauer has grown relationships with musicians and other artists in Vietnam. Both parents passed a love for Vietnam to their children.

An ugly war, a beautiful country

The stories of Vietnam could fill volumes. In fact, Steinhauer attended a 10-week course called Tell Your Story: A Writing Workshop for Those Who Have Served in the Military in 2008—offered through the Program for Writing and Rhetoric and the Division of Continuing Education—and wrote Remembering Vietnam 1966-67, a collection of his memories and photographs of the war that he published privately and gives to family, friends and colleagues.

�� 10 years ago, Steinhauer asked to audit The Vietnam Wars—“wars” is plural because “we can’t understand the American war without understanding the French war,” Dike explains—in what was only the second time Dike had taught it.

“So, I was a little nervous,” Dike remembers with a laugh, “but he comes in and is just the nicest guy in the world. I asked if he’d be interested in sharing his experiences, and he’s given his presentation during the semester every class since.”

In the Oct. 18 class, Steinhauer shares stories of bamboo vipers in the dental clinic, of perforating vs. penetrating wounds, of meeting baseball legends Brooks Robinson and Stan Musial when they visited the troops, of a since-faded Vietnamese tradition of women dyeing their teeth black as a symbol of beauty.

“It was an ugly war, but it’s a beautiful country,” Steinhauer says. “Just a beautiful country.”

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�� Boulder alum and regent emeritus Peter Steinhauer shares Vietnam experiences with students, to be featured in the in-progress documentary Welcome Home Daddy.

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Swastika Counter Project launches

Anonymous — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 21:19:27 +0000

Swastika Counter Project launches Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/24/2024 - 15:19

Bradley Worrell

Public advocacy website envisioned by �� Boulder associate professor Laurie Gries tracks swastikas across the U.S. and offers resources to counter those hate-filled incidents

In the months leading up to Donald Trump’s election in 2016, Laurie Gries, director of the University of Colorado Boulder Program for Writing and Rhetoric and associate professor of English, became increasingly concerned about almost-daily news reports of swastikas—sometimes accompanied by hate-filled messages—showing up in public spaces across the country.

“This was the same time when various sources were reporting rising incidents of hate and bias in the United States, when Donald Trump and his racist and divisive rhetoric was just coming into political power, and when white nationalist organizations seemed to be coming out of the woodwork,” she says.

Laurie Gries, director of the University of Colorado Boulder Program for Writing and Rhetoric and associate professor of English, became increasingly concerned about almost-daily news reports of swastikas—sometimes accompanied by hate-filled messages—showing up in public spaces across the country.

Determined to address the issue of the swastikas head on, Gries began working on a project with a team of interdisciplinary scholars with expertise in visual communication, critical geography and social justice education. Their aim was to identify how and where swastikas were placed, who they targeted, what messages they conveyed and how communities responded. The coordinated results of that five-year effort—which document 1,340 swastika incidents in total—recently went live on The Swastika Counter Project website.

Recently, Gries spoke with Colorado College of Arts and Sciences Magazine about the Swastika Counter Project. Her answers were lightly edited for style and condensed for space limitations.

Question: How did the swastika project come together and why did you decide you needed to address this issue?

Gries: When Trump first came onto the political scene, I started hearing about increased incidents of hate and violence, and as a visual rhetoric scholar, I began noticing more and more reports of swastikas showing up on the streets of the United States.

On the day that Trump was elected, I woke up deeply concerned and asked, ‘What if I tracked these swastikas? What if I took the digital research method called iconographic tracking that I worked for 10 years to develop and applied it to this particular case? What might we discover?’

I didn’t really start tracking swastikas on that day; I just made the commitment because I had long wanted to use my scholarship for public humanities research. I guess, then, one might say that Trump was the motivator, but really it was fear. At the time, a lot of people—the FBI, the Southern Poverty Law Center, journalists and scholars—were attributing a rise in antisemitism and violence to his rhetoric. It was my fear that if that’s the case, those incidents were surely only going to be amplified as he rose to power.

I don’t have any comparative data (i.e., data on swastika incidents) prior to Trump’s arrival on the political scene to confirm whether that’s true or not, so I’m very careful to say that the data we collected can’t really be used as evidence for that claim, but in our data, we certainly can see that there are a lot of associations that people are making between swastikas and Donald Trump and white nationalism.

Question: Was no one else tracking and compiling these incidents in which swastikas were being placed at houses of worship, schools and other sites?

Gries: Actually, there are quite a few projects that have tracked antisemitism, and even swastikas, but they have been constrained in various ways. Some sites only track antisemitism that happen on college campuses. Some track antisemitic events that happened all over the world. Then there are sites like ProPublica, whose tracking projects were limited to a particular year. So, I wanted to create a project that would transcend some those constraints.

Question: What are some of the top findings of your research as it relates to swastika placement, any language accompanying the swastikas, maybe any surprises your research uncovered?

Data analysis by The Swastika Counter Project found at least 1,300 documented incidents of swastikas in the United States between Jan. 1, 2016, and Jan. 20, 2021.

Gries: I think it’s important to note that the swastika incidents we discovered occurred in all 48 contiguous states and in the District of Columbia, so this is a national problem. Of course, they were showing up more in cities with large populations, which is to be expected. But we were surprised that according to our data, swastika incidents most often surfaced in schools, and almost equally in K-12 and higher education settings. We thought swastikas might mostly show up on the exterior of religious institutions, and particularly Jewish religious institutions, but that wasn’t the case.

We also were surprised to discover so many swastikas surfacing in private spaces. Of course, a lot of swastikas were spray painted on the exterior of buildings in urban spaces. But our data discloses how swastikas were often drawn on people’s cars, on their homes, on the dorm doors of students, and in some cases, on the interior walls of people’s homes that had been broken into and, in one case, lit on fire.

I think the other most surprising finding was just the horrific language that was showing up alongside swastikas—from racist and homophobic appeals to white nationalism to implicit threats of surveillance and violence to direct threats of genocide. And also that such threats were directed at not only Jewish community members; a lot of Black American, Latinx, LGBTQ-plus community members and immigrants were also commonly targeted. It was just overwhelming—the multi-directional hate and very graphic violence.

Question: How did Colorado compare to other parts of the country when it came to swastika incidents?

Gries: For Colorado, there were 30 reported incidents in our data set. So, I would say it’s not uncommon in Colorado for these swastikas incidents to occur, and I’ve had a lot of people tell me about swastikas they witnessed that aren’t even in our data set.

We know, for instance, that Colorado State University in Fort Collins has had so many swastika incidents that they recently created an antisemitism task force. One of our (Swastika Counter Project) advisory board members is actually heading up that task force because antisemitism on that campus has become such a serious problem.

In contrast to the incidents of public swastikas that The Swastika Counter Project tracks, some cities worldwide have also seen anti-swastika graffiti. (Photo: Cogiati/Wikimedia Commons)

Question: Beyond tracking incidents of swastika placement around the country, what other kinds of information can be found on the Swastika Counter Project website?

Gries: Part of our challenge was figuring out how to present the data in ways that would be useful for a variety of community stakeholders—people who are dealing with swastika incidents in their communities, such as school administrators, teachers and parents, the local police force, and local and national politicians. We wanted to create a swastika tracking project that has a strong civic component to it, which I think makes this project a bit unique. So, we created an interactive map that can be filtered in different ways; data visualizations that can be easily downloaded; and educational resources and lesson plans for teachers at various levels. We also generated two different reports, one of which describes and analyzes how different communities have responded to swastika incidents, so that stakeholders can read those accounts and learn from them. That’s especially important, because in our research we found that the various stakeholders often worked in isolation in responding to swastika incidents.

Question: The Swastika ‘Counter’ Project—is it fair to say the name is a play on words?

Gries: Yes—it’s a double entendre. The goal is to both count and counter the contemporary proliferation of swastika incidents in the United States. And in that sense, the Swastika Counter Project is very much a scholarly activist project.

When we first began tracking swastika incidents, we planned to simply report our data and let the evidence speak for itself. And to a great extent, the data still does do that. Our findings report, for instance, is largely descriptive. But the longer we worked on the project and discovered the gross horror of violence that was ensuing, the more we felt compelled to also take more concerted action by building out the educational component of the website. So today, I don’t pretend that the data advocacy website isn’t motivated by my own desire to try to address some very real, pressing problems and to use my scholarship to try to create a more just world. This is very much a project where I’m wearing my activism on my sleeve.

Question: What kind of assistance did you have when it came to tracking and compiling data, creating visual representations, developing a website, etc.?

Gries: The central work of tracking, coding, and analyzing was done by myself and Kelly Wheeler (assistant professor at Curry College), but we soon realized we needed more help. I reached out to Morteza Karimzadeh in the geography department here at �� Boulder, and he and his former student, Jason Miller, ended up doing all the amazing work with the mapping part of the project.

Residents of Eugene, Oregon, responded against swastikas found in a city neighborhood in 2017. (Photo: SBG Photo)

I am also really proud that we received a lot of help from various students at and beyond ��. For instance, an undergraduate computer science major at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, worked on the data visualizations with us, while graduate students from that same institution helped to create some of the lesson plans. Here at �� Boulder, a team of undergraduate students enrolled in a technical communication and design class in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric did a user-centered study for us to help develop a website that would be easy to navigate and comprehend for a public audience. And then another group of tech comm students helped us figure out how to invite community participation through features under the Contribute tab of the website. In this sense, the Swastika Counter Project is really exemplary of the immense value that data humanities and public humanities education can have for both undergraduate and graduate students. I am really excited about that.

Question: People who commit several years of their life to a project will often call it a labor of love. Is that how you would describe this project?

Gries: For me, I don’t think it was about love so much as it was about committing to do social justice work and really trying to walk the walk. I mean, as you might imagine, it was not fun to track so many incidents of hate and violence around the country. …

It’s also just been a beast in terms of labor. I tell people that this project was probably more intense work than my first 350-page monograph because I had to teach myself so many new skills, not only in terms of research, but also guiding and managing team projects, doing data advocacy, and developing web content skills. I am so glad I did this project, but for the last eight years, it’s just been very intense.

Question: If former President Trump is elected to a second term in November, do you think you would take up this project again?

Gries: I’m really, really torn. Part of me wants to try to secure some national funding and put together a larger team. If I did, I would also want to research (swastika incidents during) the Biden administration, and then start tracking in the present time, too, because I think that longitudinal study would help us address certain questions that we weren’t able to address in this project.

On the other hand, I started this project in early 2017, and it became a large part of my life. My husband would tell me that on days I was doing the researching and the coding that I was affectively different. I was angry. I was upset. I was impatient.

I honestly don’t know if I want to put myself through that again on a personal level. I truly believe that more arts and humanities faculty need to be doing this kind of work, as I think we can bring an important perspective to data-driven research that addresses pressing socio-cultural problems. And maybe if I had the funding and could put together a large enough team where I didn’t have to bear so much of the burden I would consider it, but right now I just don’t know.

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Public advocacy website envisioned by �� Boulder associate professor Laurie Gries tracks swastikas across the U.S. and offers resources to counter those hate-filled incidents.

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William Wei is again named Colorado’s state historian

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 14:43:11 +0000

William Wei is again named Colorado’s state historian Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 10/23/2024 - 08:43

Adamari Ruelas

�� Boulder historian serving second term in position, focusing on an accurate and comprehensive portrayal of Colorado’s history

William Wei, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of history and faculty affliate in the Center for Asian Studies, has been named state historian by History Colorado, his second time receiving the honor.

William Wei, �� Boulder professor of history and Colorado state historian, is the author of Asians in Colorado: A History of Persecution and Perseverance in the Centennial State.

Wei was one of the five founders of History Colorado’s State Historian’s Council, which “reaches across the state to aid in the interpretation of the history of Colorado and the West, providing opportunities to expand the understanding of the historical perspectives, cultures and places of Colorado.”

The State Historian’s Council was founded in 2018 and comprises five interdisciplinary scholars who provide complementary perspectives and rotate the state historian position every year on Aug.1, Colorado Day. Wei’s first term as state historian was from 2019-2020.

"It is a great honor to be appointed the Colorado state historian again,” Wei says. “I remain committed to ensuring that Coloradans receive an accurate and comprehensive portrayal of the Centennial State's history. This commitment naturally extends to Colorado's marginalized communities, whose stories have often been neglected, overlooked and forgotten.”

Wei was named the 2022 Asian American Hero of Colorado and is the author of Asians in Colorado: A History of Persecution and Perseverance in the Centennial State. He also was a founding editor-in-chief of History Colorado’s Colorado Encyclopedia and a lead advisor for the organization’s Zoom In: The Centennial State in 100 Objects.

“William brings a broad global perspective alongside an encyclopedic interest in Colorado to the role of State Historian,” notes Jason Hanson, chief creative officer and director of interpretation and research at History Colorado, in announcing Wei’s second term. “He is passionate about how historical perspective can help us see the present more clearly and in ways that can truly improve people’s lives. I am excited for him to share his knowledge and passion with the people of Colorado as the state historian once again.”

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�� Boulder historian serving second term in position, focusing on an accurate and comprehensive portrayal of Colorado’s history.

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Andrés Montoya-Castillo earns 2024 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 13:43:24 +0000

Andrés Montoya-Castillo earns 2024 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/22/2024 - 07:43

�� Boulder chemist will use the five-year support to study tailoring cycles affecting energy flow in solar energy conversion

Andrés Montoya-Castillo, an assistant professor in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Chemistry, has been awarded a 2024 Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering.

The fellowships, given by the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, are awarded to innovative early-career scientists and engineers, who receive $875,000 over five years to pursue their research.

“These scientists and engineers are the architects of tomorrow, leading innovation with bold ideas and unyielding determination,” said Nancy Lindborg, president and chief executive officer of the Packard Foundation, in announcing the 2024 awards. “Their work today will be the foundation for the breakthroughs of the future, inspiring the next wave of discovery and invention.”

Montoya-Castillo is a theoretical chemist who leads a lab that encompasses multidisciplinary skills spanning physical chemistry, condensed matter physics and quantum information science.

Explaining his research that the fellowship will support, Montoya-Castillo notes, “The world’s growing population faces looming food shortages and the pressing need for cheap and sustainable energy sources. Reliable conversion of sunlight–our most abundant energy source–into fuel can address these threats. However, reliable energy conversion requires knowing how to tailor, at an atomic level, photoprotection cycles limiting food production and energy flow in solar cells that convert sunlight into fuel.”

He adds that he “will harness the power of generalized master equations to develop efficient, atomically resolved theories and analysis tools that cut the cost of experiments needed to reveal how to employ chemical modifications to manipulate photoprotection cycles in plants and the photocatalytic activity of metal oxides. Our developments will offer transformative insights into fundamental excitation dynamics in complex materials, enabling the boosting of photosynthetic crop production and optimization of environmentally friendly semiconductors that split water into clean fuels.”

Last year, Montoya-Castillo was named a U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Research Program scientist and earlier this year received the �� Boulder Marinus Smith Award, which recognizes faculty and staff members who have had a particularly positive impact on students. He received his BA in chemistry and literature from Macaulay Honors College, ��NY, and his PhD in chemical physics from Columbia University.

“I’m honored and thrilled to be part of the Packard Fellows class of 2024!” Montoya-Castillo says. “With the help of the Packard Foundation's funding, I look forward to finding new ways to measure and control nonequilibrium energy flow for human use.”

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3RtY7QKzxU&t=6s]

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�� Boulder chemist will use the five-year support to study tailoring cycles affecting energy flow in solar energy conversion.

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Loving the art but not the artist

Anonymous — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 19:45:24 +0000

Loving the art but not the artist Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/21/2024 - 13:45

Adamari Ruelas

�� Boulder philosopher Iskra Fileva explores the complexities in separating the magic of a story from the controversies of its teller

The transition from summer to fall—trading warm days for cool evenings—means that things are getting … spookier. Witchier, maybe. For fans of the series, the approach of Halloween means it’s time to rewatch the Harry Potter movies.

This autumn also marks the 25^th anniversary of the U.S. release of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, book three in author J.K. Rowling’s seven-book series about a boy wizard defeating the forces of evil with help from his friends. Many U.S. readers of a certain age cite Azkaban as the point at which they discovered the magic of Harry Potter.

However, in the years since the series ended, Rowling has gained notoriety for stating strongly anti-trans views. Harry Potter fans have expressed disappointment and feelings of betrayal, and asked the question that has shadowed the arts for centuries, if not millennia: Is it possible to love the art but dislike the artist? Can the two be separated?

�� Boulder philosopher Iskra Fileva notes that, "Even if you are an aestheticist, you probably cannot separate the art from the artist if the background information is affecting the proper interpretation of the story.”

“In principle, you can try to focus on the purely aesthetic properties of an artwork. This is the aestheticist attitude,” says Iskra Fileva, a University of Colorado Boulder assistant professor of philosophy who has published on topics of virtue and morality. “But even if you are an aestheticist, you probably cannot separate the art from the artist if the background information is affecting the proper interpretation of the story.”

The Impact of Knowing

Fileva offered as an example the work of Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro. In a short story called “Wild Swans,” Munro depicts a young girl on a train who is sexually assaulted by an older man sitting beside her, but who pretends to be asleep and does nothing because she is curious about what would happen next.

Munro’s daughter came forward several months after Munro’s death in May to say she’d been abused by her stepfather and that her mother, after initially separating from her stepfather, went back to live with him, saying that she loved him too much.

Fileva points out that in light of these revelations, it is reasonable for readers of “Wild Swans” to reinterpret the story. Whereas initially they may have seen it as a psychologically nuanced portrayal of the train scene, they may, after learning of the daughter’s reports, come to read the story as an attempt at victim-blaming disguised as literature.

Fileva contrasts Munro’s case with cases in which an author may have said or done reprehensible things, but not anything that bears on how their work should be interpreted—as when Italian painter Caravaggio killed a man in a brawl, but the homicide is considered irrelevant to interpreting his paintings.

Fileva points out also that the question of whether the art can be separated from the artist may seem particularly pressing today, because modern audiences know so much more about artists than art consumers in the past may have. If no one knows facts about the author’s life, art consumers would be unable to draw parallels between an artwork and biographical information about the author.

“These are things that, historically, few would have known about—the origin of a novel or any other kind of artwork. Art might have looked a little bit more magical, and there may have been more mystery surrounding the author and in the act of creation,” says Fileva, explaining how the personal lives of artists have begun to seep into the minds of their consumers, something that has recently become common.

"The Crowning of Thorns" by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (ca. 1602-1607). Philosopher Iskra Fileva notes that even though Caravaggio killed a man in a brawl, the homicide is considered irrelevant to interpreting his paintings.

In 1919, poet T.S. Eliot wrote, “I have assumed as axiomatic that a creation, a work of art, is autonomous.” And in his essay “The Death of the Author,” literary theorist Roland Barthes criticized and sought to counter “the explanation of the work is always sought in the man who has produced it, as if, through the more or less transparent allegory of fiction, it was always finally the voice of one and the same person.”

However, early 20th-century movements such as New Criticism, which considered works of art as autonomous, have given way to more nuanced considerations of art in relation to its artist.

“I do think that if you want to understand what work literature does in the world, starting with its historical moment is an important step,” Amy Hungerford, a Yale University professor of English, told author Constance Grady in a 2019 story for Vox. “But I also am fully committed to the idea that every generation of readers remakes artworks’ significance for themselves. When you try to separate works of art from history, whether that’s the moment of creation or the moment of reception, you’re impoverishing the artwork itself to say that they don’t have a relation.”

Too many tweets

The growth of social media has added a new layer to the issues of art and the artists who create it. According to Fileva, social media have made it more difficult to separate the two because of how much more the consumer is able to know, or think they know, about the artist: “Artists are often now expected to have a public persona, to be there, to talk to their fans, to have these parasocial relationships, and that might make it difficult to separate the art from the artist,” she says.

In Fileva’s view, all this creates a second way in which facts about the author seem to bear on the public’s perception of an artwork. While learning about the revelations made by Munro’s daughter may lead some readers to reinterpret “Wild Swans,” other readers and viewers may feel disappointed and “let down” by the author even without reinterpreting the artwork or changing their judgment about the work’s qualities.

This fall marks the 25th anniversary of the U.S. release of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which many U.S. readers of a certain age cite as their entry point into the series.

This is another way in which it may become difficult to separate the art from the artist: The work becomes “tainted” for some audience members because of what they have learned about its creator.

It may have always been the case, Fileva suggests, that people who really loved a work of art, even when they knew nothing about its creator, imagined that they were connected to the artist, but this is truer today than ever. Fans are able to follow their favorite artists on social media and feel that they know the artist as a person, which creates expectations and the possibility for disappointment.

Perhaps inevitably, greater knowledge of the artist as a person affects how consumers interact with his or her art—whether it’s Ye (formerly Kanye) West’s music, Johnny Depp’s films or Alice Munro’s short stories.

So, where does that leave Harry Potter fans who have been disappointed by Rowling’s public statements?

Different books by Rowling illustrate the two different ways in which biographical information about the author may affect readers’ interpretation of the work, Fileva says. Rowling’s book (written under the pen name Robert Galbraith) The Ink Black Heart, featuring a character accused of transphobia, is an example of the first way: Facts about the author’s life may bear directly on the interpretation of the work.

When, by contrast, a transgender person who loved Harry Potter in her youth and loved Rowling feels saddened by statements Rowling made about gender, the reader may experience the book differently without reinterpreting it, Fileva says. Such a reader may think that the book is just as good as it was when she fell in love with it; it’s just that she can no longer enjoy it in the same way.

Some art consumers are more inclined to be what Fileva calls “aestheticists”—Barthes’ account of the death of the author resonates with them. Aestheticists may find it easier to separate the art from the artist in cases in which biographical information about the author is irrelevant to understanding and interpreting the work.

Whether any reader, whatever their sympathies, can separate facts about Munro’s life from the story “White Swans” or Rowling’s public pronouncements on gender from the interpretation of her book The Ink Black Heart, Fileva says, is a different question.

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�� Boulder philosopher Iskra Fileva explores the complexities in separating the magic of a story from the controversies of its teller.

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