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If these stones could talk…

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 17:01:37 +0000

If these stones could talk… Rachel Sauer Thu, 06/18/2026 - 11:01

On an Ampersand walking tour of campus during CU Boulder’s 150^th anniversary year, Professor Emeritus Paul Chinowsky weaves a tapestry of campus stories one brick at a time

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Lean in close—close enough to hear the whispers of the stones and bricks that build the University of Colorado Boulder.

Are they telling the story of the young man who rode his horse to campus, so he was frequently late and only avoided being locked out of Old Main because Joseph Sewall’s daughter had a crush on him and let him in?

Are they, too, expressing mystification about where the turtles in the pond came from? Do they have something to say about when Boulder was identified on maps as The Great American Desert?

Paul Chinowsky is a CU Boulder professor emeritus of civil, environmental and architectural engineering.

These are the stories Paul Chinowsky hears when he puts his ear to the stones. A professor emeritus of civil, environmental and architectural engineering, Chinowsky sees not just structures, but stories as he roams campus. He recently joined host Erika Randall, CU Boulder dean and vice provost of undergraduate education and professor of dance, on "The Ampersand,” a College of Arts and Sciences podcast. Randall and guests explore stories about ANDing as a “full sensory verb” that describes experience and possibility.

On a walking tour of the Quad, Chinowsky reflected on CU Boulder’s founding to understand the choices made throughout its history that brought the university community to this point of celebration, 150 years later, and planning for the next 150 years.

PAUL CHINOWSKY: It's really important when you're looking at buildings to not look at them as you are today. Think of them as they were being built. What were the creators trying to do? What was the feeling?

ERIKA RANDALL: What's the world that they're building?

CHINOWSKY: What were they trying to create? The first 50 years of this campus, we didn't know what we wanted to be. So, every building reflects, "Let's try this." In the 1860s and 1870s, we didn't know. We just knew there was gold. There was something out here. It was referred to as "The Great American Desert."

When this territory was looked at, the first Army explorers that came out here, it's on maps. This is "The Great American Desert." They came back in the early 1800s and said nobody will ever want to live there. There's nothing there.

RANDALL: Now that's what the bumper stickers say. It's like, oh, it's terrible here. Tell your friends. But when you stand in front of Old Main, and then you look across to the old library …

CHINOWSKY: Right.

RANDALL: … they're trying to decide.

CHINOWSKY: What Old Main is, at that time, you have to think about what was high society in the 1870s. It was St. Louis. St. Louis was the last civilization before you got to San Francisco.

RANDALL: So, we're serving St. Louis vibes?

CHINOWSKY: This is St. Louis. If you went to St. Louis, this would fit right in. Who would have ever built red brick here? They didn't even make these bricks here. This was all imported

RANDALL: From St. Louis?

In the 1860s and 1870s, the area that would eventually be the CU Boulder campus was referred to as "The Great American Desert." (Photo: Boulder Historical Society/Museum of Boulder)

CHINOWSKY: From the Midwest. All of this was moved. All the stone around the windows, that all comes from Indiana. Everything's imported. Now, you have to get a feel of it.

RANDALL: Yeah, let's go this way.

CHINOWSKY: Can we walk? You have to kind of … if you look back, this was wasteland.

RANDALL: And you see that in a few photographs.

CHINOWSKY: You see it in the early pictures—this land was just, it wasn't even good grazing land, because in the winter, the snow would come through and bury the cows. So, this was grazing land. And in fact, across the street, right across Broadway, was where the rancher that owned a lot of this land, that's where he kept his steers.

RANDALL: But he had to bring them in in the winter?

CHINOWSKY: He had to bring them in in the winter. So, this was all donated land. They made a big deal that it's all donated.

RANDALL: Well, that's because they didn't want it.

CHINOWSKY: They didn't want it. It's just these were the people that donated the land. This was just extra land.

RANDALL: $439.60.

CHINOWSKY: For 22 acres. Yep, that was Andrews land. That was land right where Norlin Library is now, because we're oriented this way. Here's Marinus Smith's land. That's where we're standing.

RANDALL: $509.

CHINOWSKY: $509.

RANDALL: And 80 cents.

CHINOWSKY: And 80 cents. Arnett has that triangle just on the other side of where Geography is, for $76. But he did donate 80 acres later on for a team of horses.

RANDALL: But nobody wanted this!

CHINOWSKY: Nobody wanted this. So, this was our front yard. This little area, there were no trees here. You have to imagine Hale puts in the trees afterwards, 10 years later. This was the front lawn.

An 1889 view of CU Boulder campus with Old Main in the distance. (Photo: Joseph Bevier Sturtevant/Carnegie Library for Local History)

RANDALL: Wow.

CHINOWSKY: And when we talk about the buildings, you have to feel it.

RANDALL: OK, I'm feeling it.

CHINOWSKY: You feel it? So, this is 150-year-old stone. Feel there's no rough edges.

RANDALL: No, this is hard-hewn. You can see all the chisel marks. They're not trying to keep this clean or sleek.

CHINOWSKY: No, this was rough, Colorado. This was the West. This was not clean.

RANDALL: So, this part is the West? The foundation is the West, but just beyond reach--

CHINOWSKY: This is what we thought. This is really if we could evolve--

RANDALL: Vertically up, we could be that.

CHINOWSKY: We could be that.

RANDALL: Wow! That's cool to think with that.

CHINOWSKY: And so, the mythology right from the beginning was we are going to lift what we thought, what the Europeans thought of, as new land.

RANDALL: Yes. We Europeans and our savior complexes. Oh, god!

CHINOWSKY: We are going to lift this territory into civilization. And that from the very beginning, 1870s, that was our mythology: CU was put here to lift this area up.

RANDALL: Which, when we think about it now, no wonder there isn't a ton of support always.

CHINOWSKY: There never was support for the university. It was only a year after we started that they thought we should actually have operating expenses. They gave the land but there was no money from the state to actually operate the university. Kittredge was the one in the legislature who passed the bill that we could actually have operating funds. But no funds could go to any building that wasn't a classroom building.

RANDALL: So, there was administrative and academic always together?

CHINOWSKY: Yes.

RANDALL: Huh. Was the pond here?

A view of the Museum of Natural History from 1937. (Photo: Carnegie Library for Local History)

CHINOWSKY: No. The pond didn't get here until about 1907. It was after Hale was built, and they were having flood problems, so the pond was put in as a flood control.

RANDALL: Where did they import the turtles from?

CHINOWSKY: It's a good question. I've always wondered that too. It's like, yeah, these don't belong. There's a lot of things on campus you go, huh, that doesn't belong here. So, what we're looking at is what was the empty field that people would come across to walk to Old Main. This walkway was the shortcut. This road is the original road where the horse and buggies would come in.

RANDALL: It's so wild to think of.

CHINOWSKY: Come in, drop people off there and then make the turn where Macky is to go back out. And this was the shortcut. If you were walking, you would walk straight across from the corner of Broadway and what's now University, and you come across the field to the building. And you had to get in the front door before 9 a.m.

RANDALL: Or?

CHINOWSKY: Or they closed it and locked it.

RANDALL: Our students would be in so much trouble!

CHINOWSKY: Because Joseph Sewall, who was our first president, who lived right here, he believed … he came from Illinois. He was a doctor. And punctuality was very important. So, his daughter Jane had the job. They rang the bell in the bell tower at 9 a.m., and she closed the door. No one's allowed to come into class after 9 a.m.

RANDALL: How old was when she was ringing the bell in the bell tower?

CHINOWSKY: She was about 10, 11. And there's a story that she writes. She had a crush on one of the early students, and he was never on time because he rode in on his horse, and the stables were down near where the Union is now.

RANDALL: It's impossible to imagine.

CHINOWSKY: He would have to take his horse down to the stables and run back and come in the back door.

RANDALL: And there's no sidewalks. There’re no Lime scooters.

CHINOWSKY: There's nothing. And so, she would hold the door open for him so he could sneak in the back door because he was never on time.

RANDALL: So stinking cute.

CHINOWSKY: But here in the first floor, right over here, this was where the Sewalls' apartment was on the first floor. So, they moved in 1877, and it was a year or two later, a carriage comes in. And Jane and her sister would love to try and run out before their mom got out here. It would drive their mother just crazy as they would do it.

They would wait over here, out of that window, so they could see first. And if they saw first, their goal was to try and get out.

RANDALL: There was no Instagram or television. This is what they were doing.

CHINOWSKY: Exactly. Their goal was to try and get out there before their mom stopped her. So, one day, there's a carriage coming up with four gentlemen in a dress, top hats, everything. And they saw this, and they went, oh, this must be something important. And Jane goes running out with her sister. The carriage pulls up right here, right in front.

She comes running down the stairs, bounds up into the carriage, and jumps on the lap of the first person saying, "Hello, I'm Jane. You must be important." And her mom comes out and just stands there and is just mortified. It was President (Ulysses S.) Grant.

He came. After he got out of office, he came because his daughter-in-law lived here up in Summit County. So, he was here on his post-presidency visit. He was here with the governor coming to view the land that he had granted.

RANDALL: So, kind of the most important carriage of all time?

CHINOWSKY: And she's jumping on there, going, "Hi!"

RANDALL: Oh, my god, I love Jane.

CHINOWSKY: So those are the kind of things that are going on at the beginning. It's this mix of trying to be proper, but there's this Western casualness that's going on at the same time. And there's this push and pull of what are we going to be?

RANDALL: What are we going to be?

CHINOWSKY: What are we going to be? Nobody had written the story. It was our story to write. And there was this feeling, we've got something here.

Click play to hear the rest of the conversation!

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On an Ampersand walking tour of campus during CU Boulder’s 150th anniversary year, Professor Emeritus Paul Chinowsky weaves a tapestry of campus stories one brick at a time.

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Are Colorado moose invasive? New research says no

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 13:32:33 +0000

Are Colorado moose invasive? New research says no Rachel Sauer Thu, 06/18/2026 - 07:32

Rachel Sauer

CU Boulder archaeologist William Taylor and research colleagues find evidence that far from being non-native, moose have been in the southern Rockies for centuries, likely longer

The modern Colorado moose is often considered just that: modern—brought to the state by wildlife officials in the late 1970s, preceded by very occasional reports of moose sightings in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Since being translocated to Colorado, these charismatic megafauna have been a source of both fascination and concern. In Rocky Mountain National Park, where moose populations have thrived, ecosystems have been changing, and moose-associated impacts have sparked renewed conversations about managing an animal labeled “non-native.”

However, newly published research by an interdisciplinary team of scientists, archivists and Tribal cultural heritage leaders shows that the “non-native” label is inaccurate. They present evidence demonstrating that moose have been in Colorado for at least centuries and likely longer.

CU Boulder scholar William Taylor and his research colleagues found evidence that moose have lived in the southern Rockies for centuries.

The researchers analyzed newspaper archives, archaeological site reports, scientific journals, museum collections and photo archives to understand where and when moose were present in Colorado prior to the mid-1900s. Perhaps most importantly, notes lead author William Taylor, a University of Colorado Boulder associate professor of anthropology and CU Museum curator of archaeology, the scholars sought Indigenous histories, and in doing so found evidence of moose being well known and deeply integrated into traditional knowledge of Native people in the southern Rockies.

Crystal C’Bearing, a study co-author and Northern Arapaho Tribal Historic Preservation Officer, notes that among the Northern Arapaho, "the moose is considered a valued commodity among the Tribe.” She adds that societies within the Northern Arapaho "utilize many animals, including moose, in their clothing, society items and regalia. This tradition continues today."

The scholarly approach of joining Indigenous knowledge with historical accounts, archaeology and paleontology, "shows the power of multiple independent lines of evidence converging on the conclusion that moose were part of southern Rocky Mountain ecosystems long before modern reintroductions," says study co-author Jonathan Dombrosky of Crow Canyon Archaeological Center and the University of Alabama. "More broadly, the study demonstrates how historical sciences can help us better understand the origins of modern ecosystems and make more informed decisions about their future."

Delving into the archaeological record

The seeds for this research and the approach to it grew from Taylor’s deep dive into the CU Museum’s collections when he arrived in 2019.

“One of the things I’ve done with my time here is try to familiarize myself with and understand our own collections, which are among the more significant archaeological collections in the whole region,” Taylor says. “In the process of curating our collections, I became more and more familiar with what’s in those and the publications that are out there in the world that pertain to them.

“One of the oldest and most significant is the Jurgens collection, which is from a site in Colorado and related to a really early, deep chapter of Colorado’s pre-history, and that collection was analyzed by (one of) my predecessor(s), Dr. Joe Ben Wheat. He analyzed this collection decades ago and identified several specimens of moose in northwest Colorado dating back thousands of years, to the early Holocene.”

Arapaho objects, symbols and designs linked to moose. 1) Moose hide drum; 2-4) Track designs; 5) Ear design; 6-8) Leg and hoof designs; 9) Animal design (Moose, wolf, or elk). Images modified from Kroeber (1983). (Image courtesy Journey LeBeau)

That fact was on Taylor’s mind a few years ago when Rocky Mountain National Park officials began broadly publicizing moose management issues and the discussions that were happening about them. In many of those discussions, Taylor recalls, the messaging frequently labeled moose as “invasive,” “non-native” or “outsiders,” which doesn’t align with the archaeological record and “some of the basic facts I know from my role here working as curator,” he says.

“I also started to see some media narratives, based on secondhand accounts, suggesting that Native people in the Rockies didn’t know about moose. Things like that just started to rub me the wrong way and raised my spidey senses —I decided that there needs to be serious engagement with the archaeological record. We needed to take a closer look at these things that are trickling into the discourse—particularly characterizations of Indigenous perspectives and the historic record, because that’s going to shape what happens to moose in the future.”

Taylor contacted Tribal partners and colleagues at other universities and institutions and asked, “What’s your sense of the story of moose in the southern Rockies?” From those conversations, he proposed a rigorous analysis of the history of the moose in this area.

The work began in the archives of the CU Museum, and drew on the expertise of other museum staff. They delved into Colorado’s approximately 160 years of digitized newspapers—“an extraordinary resource,” Taylor says—mapping each documented sighting of a moose, every record of an interaction with a moose they encountered for the past 160 years. The story that emerged was a rich record showing that moose have been in this area from its earliest colonial settlement days.

Seeking Indigenous histories

The more challenging task was crawling through Colorado’s sprawling archaeological record. “Like many western states and many parts of the world, the archaeological record isn’t a neatly organized database,” Taylor explains. "It's often a chaotic compilation of dusty old books, partially published white papers, just a lot of resources kind of floating around out there, so you have to turn over a lot of rocks to find what you need.”

This meant sending rafts of emails, requesting interlibrary loans of undigitized manuscripts and working professional and personal networks to better understand the archaeological record. They dug into municipal photo archives along the Front Range and museum databases for vertebrate zoology collections. From this research, they wove a rich tapestry of findings showing that “even though it’s very, very hard to get a comprehensive picture of when an animal was or wasn’t in a given place at a given time in the ancient world, when you take this multi-methodological approach and really get curious rather than starting from assumptions, you uncover a really fascinating picture,” Taylor says.

A moose affectionately dubbed "Frank the Tank" in the Colorado mountains.

One of the most exciting aspects of the research, Taylor adds, was pairing this work with Indigenous histories, including oral traditions about moose from across the region. One of Taylor’s colleagues shared a 19th-century record from the Jicarilla Apache of northern New Mexico discussing the fact that moose were present in—and had recently disappeared from—even the southernmost ranges of the southern Rocky Mountains.

Ultimately, the research coalesced into a reframing of moose in the southern Rockies, supported by evidence: Moose are not, in fact, newcomers, but longtime residents.

Supporting future management

So, what does this mean for human-wildlife co-existence and for populations and ecosystems increasingly stressed by climate change? The findings don’t mean that changes to mountain ecosystems should be ignored, Taylor and his colleagues emphasize. Instead, they argue that moose impacts should be understood through a deeper ecological and historical view, especially in national parks where many processes that once shaped large herbivore populations have been altered.

Moose calves in the Colorado mountains.

“Rocky Mountain National Park is dealing with ecological impacts from moose, but treating moose as a non-native species changes which management responses seem justified," says study co-author John Wendt of New Mexico State University, noting that large mammals and the landscapes they inhabit have never been static, and large herbivores like moose have historically been controlled by things like predators, habitat change and human hunting.

"When modern park systems operate without these regulating processes, high impacts don't necessarily mean that an animal is ecologically out of place,” Wendt adds, Instead, "they may be a sign that our management frameworks themselves should be reconsidered."

The study’s results may change how wildlife managers think about managing modern ecosystems, which have been destabilized by major changes in the last two centuries, including the removal of natural predators, the researchers note. C'Bearing says that Tribes may be willing partners in solving this issue: "Tribal people were part of the natural ecosystem in terms of hunting and wildlife management. It would be beneficial not only to the Tribes to utilize the moose again for cultural practices, but to assist in the co-management of moose in Colorado and the Southern Rockies."

Further, the multidisciplinary approach that the researchers used can be applied to other species, Taylor says. Better understanding where animals lived in the past, and for how long they lived there, can offer important clues to supporting their futures.

"The veil of time is often our biggest obstacle in understanding wildlife," said Joshua Miller, a study co-author from the University of Cincinnati. "Compared to the thousands of years that a species can live in a particular place, data from wildlife surveys might only extend a few decades into the past. We can learn a lot from those data, but some questions require more expansive time horizons. Weaving together different threads of historical evidence can fill important knowledge gaps, and help us develop strategies for managing and conserving plants and animals from around the world."

Study authors are William T. T. Taylor, John A. F. Wendt, Jonathan Dombrosky, Crystal C'Bearing, Mikayla Costales, Isaac A. Hart, Journey LeBeau, Adrian Johnson, Elena Lompe, Russell W. Graham, Chance Ward, Emily Lena Jones and Joshua H. Miller.

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CU Boulder archaeologist William Taylor and research colleagues find evidence that far from being non-native, moose have been in the southern Rockies for centuries, likely longer

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Top photo: A moose pair interacting in Sprague Lake (All photos courtesy Deena Sveinsson)

CU Boulder graduate student wins DOE award, joins NASA-DARES

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 15:53:07 +0000

CU Boulder graduate student wins DOE award, joins NASA-DARES Rachel Sauer Tue, 06/16/2026 - 09:53

Kayleigh Wood

Earth science PhD candidate Catherine Fontana will pursue cyanobacterial biofilm research at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Catherine Fontana, a geobiology PhD candidate in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Earth Science and the Interdisciplinary Quantitative Biology Program, was recently selected for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) award for her research on cyanobacterial biofilms.

The highly competitive program offers PhD candidates in various STEM fields the opportunity to advance their thesis research at one of DOE’s research facilities alongside a DOE national laboratory scientist. Additionally, awardees are eligible to receive a stipend for general living expenses and inbound and outbound transportation.

“The DOE SCGSR program allows me to study microbial processes using cutting-edge analytical techniques and world-class facilities that are a hallmark of the Department of Energy national laboratories,” Fontana says.

PhD candidate Catherine Fontana was recently selected for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Research (SCGSR) award for her research on cyanobacterial biofilms.

In the Department of Earth Science, Fontana is co-advised by stable isotope geochemist Boswell Wing and microbial physiologist Sebastian Kopf. Her research on cyanobacterial biofilms seeks to understand the connections between microbial physiology, mineral precipitation and stromatolite (a layered, rock-like formation built by microbial communities) formation using stable isotope geochemistry and experimental evolution.

From October 2026 to April 2027, Fontana’s SCGSR award will support her study at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, where she will work closely with Rhona Stuart, who leads the DOE’s MicroBiospheres Scientific Focus Area. The DOE laboratory offers Fontana the opportunity to leverage a stable isotope technique called NanoSIMS to track variation in stable isotope composition at the micron-scale level.

The project, “Tracking Carbon Flow in Cyanobacteria Biofilms and Their Mineral Byproduct,” explores “how carbon moves through cyanobacterial biofilms and the extent to which this carbon contributes to minerals they make, like carbonate, that eventually turns them into rocks, like stromatolites,” she explains, adding that her work is especially meaningful in the context of developing next-generation biotechnologies in which cyanobacteria and their biofilms may be an innovative foundation for bioeconomy products.

Charting the future of NASA astrobiology

Additionally, after a highly competitive open-call application, Fontana was selected as one of nine early-career scientists to serve on the 49-member NASA-DARES Task Force 2. Composed of members of the astrobiology community, NASA-DARES, or NASA’s Decadal Astrobiology Research and Exploration Strategy, will serve as a roadmap for the organization’s future astrobiology research, which aims to understand life’s origins, evolution and distribution across the universe.

Since January, NASA-DARES Task Force 2 has been building on the nine major focus areas—which include comparative planetology to understand habitability and astrobiology in society, among others—identified by Task Force 1 by gathering community input through virtual webinars and public discussions. Task Force 2 is currently synthesizing community perspectives into a document outlining contemporary astrobiological interests, available opportunities and the diverse scientific approaches and disciplines in motion across NASA Science.

As the executive secretary of Focus Area 8, Early Career and Workforce Development, Fontana has worked with her team to solicit and synthesize community input regarding how NASA can best support early-career astrobiologists and develop the field over the next decade.

“As an early career researcher passionate about the future of astrobiology, I am profoundly honored to be part of NASA-DARES,” says Fontana. “As the only early-career member of the ‘Early Career and Workforce Development’ focus area, I feel a strong responsibility to represent early-career voices and perspectives. This role provides me with a unique opportunity to help shape the chapter’s findings and contribute to pivotal conversations about the future of astrobiology.”

NASA-DARES is still soliciting feedback: The public comment period for NASA-DARES is open this month and close July 2. The final NASA-DARES document will be shared at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in December.

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Earth science PhD candidate Catherine Fontana will pursue cyanobacterial biofilm research at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

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What happens after ‘Once upon a time’?

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 21:35:15 +0000

What happens after ‘Once upon a time’? Rachel Sauer Fri, 06/12/2026 - 15:35

On The Ampersand, Professor Ann Schmiesing explores the elements of a Grimm Brothers fairy tale and how these stories illuminate deeper truths about being human

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Ann Schmiesing came to fairy tales almost as a matter of academic necessity.

Growing up in Oregon, she loved stories—for their detail and as vehicles of discovery—but initially pursed them as a scholar through theater and drama. Then, in one of her first professorships, she and a colleague were tasked with analyzing the department’s curriculum for possible gaps. They discovered that the department didn’t offer a course on Germany fairy tales, so Schmiesing offered to develop one.

The brothers Grimm changed not only the course of her scholarship, but in many ways her life. In their tales, she saw not only mirrors of her personal experiences, but of human experience. Fairy tales, she discovered, could hold truths that transcend time and culture.

CU Boulder scholar Ann Schmiesing is author of The Brothers Grimm: A Biography, published in 2024 to wide acclaim and reviewed in publications from The New Yorker to The Times of London.

Now, Schmiesing is nationally and internationally recognized for her fairy tale scholarship. Her book The Brothers Grimm: A Biography, published in 2024, was recognized by The New Yorker as one of the best books of the year.

A professor of German literature in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures and the senior vice chancellor for strategic initiatives, Schmiesing recently joined host Erika Randall, CU Boulder dean and vice provost of undergraduate education and professor of dance, on "The Ampersand,” a College of Arts and Sciences podcast. Randall and guests explore stories about ANDing as a “full sensory verb” that describes experience and possibility.

ANN SCHMIESING: I started out writing about 18th-century German drama. I also did 19th-century drama and theater history. So, my background, my dissertation work, all that, it's not fairy tales and folklore.

I got into fairy tales because a colleague of mine, years ago, we were tasked by our department with looking at our curriculum and seeing what are the courses that other programs have that we don't have. And it was a, ‘Hey, we don't have a course on German fairy tales.’ And so, I was one of the ones who did some of the older stuff—18th, 19th century. I also happened to have two young daughters at the time, so I kind of volunteered to develop this course, never thinking that I would get into writing about fairy tales.

I think there was a part of me that was probably a little bit disdainful. I was excited to do the course, but what is there really to write about?

ERIKA RANDALL: So, you thought maybe it was lower art.

SCHMIESING: It wasn't the 18th-century drama, all of that. And then I started teaching the course, and I was blown away. Just blown away. I mean, first, just the enthusiasm of my students that they brought to the subject matter and everything that they brought, I think, coming from Disney and pop culture, then really delving into the tradition of German fairy tales and other fairy tale traditions.

The Brothers Grimm: A Biography by CU Boulder Professor Ann Schmiesing is the first English-language biography in more than five decades on Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, whose first names (and life stories) are less well-known than their usual moniker, the Brothers Grimm.

And then at the same time, incidentally, I was losing my hearing.

RANDALL: In the moment of working on it.

SCHMIESING: That's right. So, I was going deaf. And one day I was prepping for a class, and I was going to be teaching this tale in which there is this wicked stepmother who hears all these noises that others can't hear. And it's kind of describing her descent into madness, if you will. But for me, I was losing my hearing, and I was having all of these bouts of tinnitus, roaring noises in my ears, all of that.

And so for me, reading that passage, it really resonated. Then I started paging through, in that moment, paging through the collection, realizing there's tale after tale after tale that depicts characters with disabilities, with deformities, with disease. And there's been so little written about this. So, that really became the impetus for my book on disability in the Grimms' fairy tales.

RANDALL: I did not know that. Did it feel at all like you were being cast in the role? You were a mother. You were a woman. You were an assistant professor at the time. Were you resisting it all, too, because there's this hyper-feminization of storytelling or the bedtime tale? Did it feel lesser from a feminist perspective? Did you go in that space? And then when you started to crack it open and go, wait, this is actually the opposite, there's so much room to give trouble from a feminist lens and from a disability studies lens.

SCHMIESING: Yeah, I think there was a part of that. I mean, I was really excited to develop the course, so it wasn't something that I was thinking as, oh gosh, I have to develop this new course, or anything like that. But I think there was a part of that. And one thing that is just really important to name is so many of the canonical fairy tales that we teach, they are sexist, misogynistic, they have racist components, anti-Semitic, on and on and on. And it is really important not to sweep that under the rug, but to address that head on.

As much as fairy tales have been so normative in their own way, they've also, throughout the history of the fairy tale, they've been a space to subvert those norms. I think that's what's really powerful, too, is how you make fairy tales your own through this process of interpretation but also telling and retelling.

RANDALL: Producer Tim and I were talking before the interview today about the 150th at CU, and thinking about fairy tale and myth and how critical it is to look at our stories, and to have them be open enough that others could see themselves in them to tell their story moving forward. And I think as academics, but also as administrators who are looking at our dream for the university, the dream for academia, the dream for education, how do we put those golden keys in the hand, not knowing what doors they may open?

SCHMIESING: That's right. And I look at the 150th celebrations and, for me, I do approach this through a fairy tale folklore lens. For the Grimms, they really saw their collecting of fairy tales, of legends, of various folk texts—they saw this as a process of exhumation, of exhuming these long-buried treasures that have been forgotten and making sure that they don't die out, making sure that they're told, that they are retold. I see something similar in how we tell our story.

I mean, humans, we gravitate towards storytelling because we want to make sense of our experience. We want to make sense of this thing we call life. We want to make sense of the world around us. And often we're doing that through storytelling. What I think is important is that there's no one story.

RANDALL: There's never one story.

SCHMIESING: That's right. There's always another story. There's always another perspective. There's always another way of telling the same basic story. What I really like about the 150th celebrations is this participatory aspect, this call to tell your story. Let us know about Buffs that maybe have been forgotten. And this is everything from things we should be celebrating to things that we should have done better or could do better. I see in that, again, this same pattern that I see in fairy tales and folklore, this notion that we're never done, we're always retelling, we're always reshaping.

Click play to hear the rest of the conversation!

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On The Ampersand, Professor Ann Schmiesing explores the elements of a Grimm Brothers fairy tale and how these stories illuminate deeper truths about being human.

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CU Boulder scholar tracks Hindu nationalism’s global disguise

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 22:15:45 +0000

CU Boulder scholar tracks Hindu nationalism’s global disguise Rachel Sauer Thu, 06/11/2026 - 16:15

Cody DeBos

Ethnic studies Professor Nishant Upadhyay delves into the gap between image and reality in Hinduism

Hinduism, like most religions, has a reputation.

According to Nishant Upadhyay, a University of Colorado Boulder associate professor of ethnic studies, it is tied to a deep and ancient reverence for the natural world and offers a peaceful, colorful alternative to the spiritual traditions many Westerners grew up with.

For Upadhyay (they/them), that reputation poses a problem.

Nishant Upadhyay, a CU Boulder associate professor of ethnic studies, notes that Hinduism, like most religions, has a reputation.

“Hinduism has this reputation, especially in a place like Boulder, where it’s seen as this religion that’s environmentally friendly, animal friendly, cares about women and queer folks, cares about peace and non-violence,” they say.

“But it has always been deeply caste-ist and patriarchal,” Upadhyay adds.

That gap between image and reality is at the heart of Upadhyay’s new paper, published in the Amerasia Journal, which traces a pattern of right-wing Hindu diaspora organizations forging “solidarities” with Indigenous peoples across the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

They argue these gestures are not acts of genuine allyship, but more calculated moves in service of Hindu nationalism, a political ideology with a far different agenda than the one being advertised.

“We have to be very careful when Hindu nationalists use this framework of indigeneity because this is deeply fraught and violent. We can’t come here and say Hindus are in solidarity when Hindus are actually oppressing indigenous, caste-oppressed and Muslim communities in India,” Upadhyay says.

Indians on Indian lands

Upadhyay, associate chair of Graduate Studies in CU Boulder’s Department of Ethnic Studies, is also the author of Indians on Indian Lands: Intersections of Race, Caste, and Indigeneity. The book was recently awarded “Outstanding Contribution in Social Sciences” by the Association of Asian American Studies. Their recent work is a continuation of the book that closely examines the proliferation of the Hindu nationalist movement in the diaspora.

To understand Upadhyay’s argument, it helps to understand the landscape in which their work is taking place.

“I’m looking at more recent formations of the diaspora in the last 100 years to North America, which is a very different form of migration than indentured labor migrations of South Asians to the different colonies under the British empire,” Upadhyay says.

“My focus is more on folks who are willingly moving with caste, class and religious privileges, capital and mobility. A lot more ‘skilled’ workers have moved more willingly in the past several decades, mostly to North America, Western Europe and Australia,” they add.

Upadhyay argues that dominant-caste Hindu immigrants in the U.S. and elsewhere aren't simply racialized minorities navigating racism in white settler states. Rather, in the way these communities relate to the lands they now inhabit, Upadhyay likens them to settlers rather than allies of indigenous peoples.

“Because India was able to become independent in 1947, when we move here, we are racialized, but we don’t really understand the realities of violence that indigenous communities continue to face,” they say.

Hindu nationalism further complicates the picture.

“The Hindu nationalist ideology is about a century old. The project claims that India should only belong to Hindus, specifically dominant caste Hindus, and anyone who’s not a Hindu should not be part of it,” Upadhyay explains. “So the violence is targeted primarily at Muslim and Christian communities in India.”

“Saffronwashing is a way to talk about how Hindu nationalists normalize and make invisible the violences perpetuated against caste-oppressed, indigenous and religious-minority communities in India. They portray Hinduism as environmentally friendly, peace-loving, non-violent, yoga-loving, colorful festivals and spicy food,” explains CU Boulder scholar Nishant Upadhyay.

Under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, now in his third term, that ideology has become deeply entrenched in Indian political and social life. Upadhyay says it has also traveled with the diaspora.

A familiar playbook

The attempts at allying with indigenous communities Upadhyay examines follow a similar script.

In 2016, during the Standing Rock protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline, Hindu American organizations issued statements claiming kinship with the Standing Rock Sioux.

“Hindu nationalist groups started coming out with these statements saying, ‘We are indigenous to India, and we were colonized by the British. You are indigenous, and you’ve been colonized by the Europeans and the American state. So, we understand your struggles, and we want to be in alliance with you,’” Upadhyay recounts.

The pattern repeated when unmarked graves of Indigenous children were discovered at former residential school sites in Canada, and again when Native Hawaiian protectors rallied against the construction of a massive telescope on the sacred summit of Mauna Kea. In Australia, Hindu organizations point to DNA studies suggesting genetic links between Indian and Aborigine populations as evidence of ancient kinship.

Each gesture, Upadhyay argues, is a form of what they and other scholars call “saffronwashing”—a term borrowed from the similar logics of greenwashing and pinkwashing.

“Caste is very important to think about and name. … This is a longer genealogy of violence that dominant caste Indians have imported with themselves when they’ve come here. So, it’s a conversation we need to be having much more proactively and keep fighting against,” says Nishant Upadhyay. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

“They project these cultural things about Hinduism but erase the violences that hide beneath those cultural practices.”

For Western audiences unfamiliar with caste, the danger in these solidarity gestures may be hard to see. That disguise is the problem.

Caste is among the oldest systems of structural oppression in human history. It predates European colonialism by thousands of years and extends well beyond the borders of India and Hinduism.

For Hindu nationalists in the diaspora, the goal, Upadhyay says, is to normalize and mainstream themselves. Within progressive spaces, interfaith coalitions and anti-racist organizing, Hindu nationalist messaging can be normalized, and any criticism of India’s treatment of its own minorities can be suppressed. In the last decade, there have been cases of diasporic Hindu nationalist groups going after scholars, writers and activists critical of the Hindu nationalist regime in India, caste violence, Islamophobia and the occupation of Kashmir.

Already, Upadhyay points out, Hindu nationalist influence has shaped K-12 textbook battles, hiring cultures in Silicon Valley and the political landscape at the highest levels of American government across both parties.

“This impacts all of us,” they say.

What real solidarity looks like

Upadhyay is careful to distinguish the solidarities they critique from others that they see as genuine and decolonial. Kashmiri, Tamil, Punjabi, Dalit and Tibetan diaspora communities, they argue, have modeled a fundamentally different approach rooted in an honest acknowledgment of their own position, histories and complicities.

“We left our homelands because our people are oppressed and now we are refugees or immigrants here, but we have also become settlers,” they say, describing the framework these communities embrace. “That’s a very different articulation and practice of solidarity.”

At its core, the question is whether a community treats its own suffering as unique and self-contained or accepts its connection to a broader web of struggle and liberation.

For Upadhyay, only one of those orientations can sustain real solidarity.

“We can learn from these decolonial frameworks where interlinking of oppression and liberation is at the forefront,” they say.

That work, Upadhyay says, begins at home. The task they set for themselves, and for others in dominant-caste diaspora communities, is to look inward first.

“We have to examine how caste, race and indigeneity have shaped our own privilege before presuming to stand beside those whose lands and lives remain on the line,” Upadhyay says. “We have to fight together because our liberation is interconnected.”

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Ethnic studies Professor Nishant Upadhyay delves into the gap between image and reality in Hinduism.

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Top photo: Flags of the Party flags of India's conservative Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena. (Photo: Al Jazeera English/Wikimedia Commons)

Can evolutionary rescue help even long-lived species from going extinct?

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 17:44:14 +0000

Can evolutionary rescue help even long-lived species from going extinct? Rachel Sauer Tue, 06/09/2026 - 11:44

Tiffany Plate

Two CU Boulder researchers are helping clarify how species’ populations with longer lives can still adapt to a changing climate

Our warming climate is leaving many plant and animal species with a choice: either adapt, find a new home or risk extinction. Fortunately, throughout the history of life on Earth, a concept called evolutionary rescue has stepped in to help species adapt to new environments and climates.

Evolutionary rescue is a biological process where natural selection favors the individuals of a species that carry genetics best suited to the new climate. These individuals are more likely to survive and reproduce and are therefore able to better propagate future generations to ensure survival of the species.

Scott Nordstrom (left) earned his PhD from CU Boulder in 2023 under the advisorship of Brett Melbourne. (right), professor of ecology and evolutionary biology (Left photo from Scott Nordstrom; right photo from Brett Melbourne)

For example, a smaller bat may be better able to weather a hot summer with multiple heat waves. Or a monkeyflower that's better able to retain water in its leaves may have a better chance of surviving a megadrought. These genetic anomalies help move the population toward survival, instead of extinction.

In the face of anthropogenic climate change, however, conservationists are worried that species with the longest life spans—like giant pandas, elephants, or sequoia trees, for which new generations take years to decades—will be too slow to adapt and avoid extinction.

A mathematical model developed by Scott Nordstrom (PhDEBio’23) proved that that’s not always the case, however. As part of his doctoral dissertation, Nordstrom, in partnership with Brett Melbourne, a University of Colorado Boulder professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, set out to determine just how true it was that long-lived species were resigned to their fate. Their findings were published in The American Naturalist in May 2026.

Their model contributes to conversations about conservation, especially when it comes to extinction concerns. “A lot of the more endangered species or the populations that are at higher risk of extinction tend to be longer lived,” says Nordstrom. “So, it's especially relevant for thinking about conservation.”

Shifting focus: From flour beetles to tortoises

Before taking on this project, Nordstrom and Melbourne had been working with colleagues at Colorado State University to understand the evolutionary rescue patterns of flour beetles, which live for about a month before a new generation is birthed.

“We found that genetic diversity of the population is really critical for allowing rapid adaptation to occur,” says Melbourne. “And that got us thinking about how things could be really different for longer-lived species.”

Large tree species, like the Giant Sequoia, can live for thousands of years, but are now more endangered than ever due to increased wildfire activity in the American West. (Photo: Pexels)

The researchers set out t try to understand how relevant their findings were to species with longer lives.

Experimental work tracking the genetic variations in generations of long-lived species was not possible, however, so the pair created the next best thing: A flexible mathematical model and computer simulations that would allow them to map out potential evolutionary patterns of these species.

For each simulation, they input a sample population into the model, using “good” environmental factors (i.e., the climate that they were already adapted to). Then they switched those factors to “bad” (i.e., a climate with warmer temperatures or less water).

“Each individual’s survival depended on how well it was adapted to its environment, so when the environment shifted from good to bad, survival was low and the populations started shrinking,” says Nordstrom.

“But because there was genetic variation within the populations, some individuals were slightly better adapted to the bad environment, and those individuals were more likely to survive and pass on their genes, allowing the population to adapt,” he adds.

When nurture beats nature

Through their simulations, Nordstrom and Melbourne were also surprised to find that long-lived species can experience a complicated evolutionary dynamic in which a population’s traits seem to decouple from their genetics. In these cases, some random environmental event has affected an organism's trait in a way that turns out to be an advantage in the changed environment.

For example, an American alligator might be genetically predisposed to weigh 600 pounds but actually weighs 400 pounds because environmental factors impeded its growth in early development. Perhaps the alligator was born in a drought year, when typical prey like fish and turtles were scarce.

Ultimately, that smaller alligator may be able to survive heat extremes better in a hotter climate, thus slowing the rate of population decline. And because they are long-lived (up to 50 years), there is a good chance that there will be multiple small alligators in a population at once, thus changing the composition of that population in a way that slows the rate of population decline, allowing adaptation time to catch up and prevent extinction, the researchers speculate.

Researchers have long thought that species like the American alligator, which can live up to 50 years, are less likely to benefit from evolutionary rescue to help them adapt to changes in the climate of their habitats. (Photo: Unsplash)

Interestingly, those chances are much less likely to occur to short-lived species like flour beetles. Nordstrom says that’s because their short life spans don’t allow for their non-genetic phenotypic variation (like that seen in the undersized alligators) to remain in the population as time progresses; instead, only their genes are passed on to their offspring, and their offspring will thus not inherit their size advantage.

“The flour beetles just mate once and pass their genes forward,” says Nordstrom. “Next generation, repeat.”

That means that natural selection occurring within a generation can be important for evolutionary rescue in long-lived species. Previously, it was speculated that only evolution between generations determined whether populations could adapt to new conditions in time.

“This process of rescue is one part evolution and one part demography,” says Nordstrom. “In the race of evolution versus demography, this definitely helps the demography because it slows down population decline.”

He adds that this will be surprising to researchers who have up to this point only considered the evolutionary component here. “But we showed that the demography is actually super important, too.”

While Nordstrom and Melbourne can’t say that all long-lived species will benefit from their demography, Nordstrom says it’s important for future researchers and conservation managers to know that evolutionary rescue is not out of the question for endangered species like pandas and bison.

“Maybe it's a little bit more complicated than we thought,” says Nordstrom. “But this is the first major study finding that it’s not necessarily true that slower generational turnover guarantees that adaptation and evolution will be slower.”

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Two CU Boulder researchers are helping clarify how species’ populations with longer lives can still adapt to a changing climate.

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CU Boulder co-sponsors Holocaust studies workshop in Berlin

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 01:46:05 +0000

CU Boulder co-sponsors Holocaust studies workshop in Berlin Rachel Sauer Mon, 06/08/2026 - 19:46

The two-day workshop will bring together scholars and students from around the world to assess the state of Holocaust studies in the mid-2020s

The University of Colorado Boulder is co-sponsoring an international conference assessing the state of Holocaust studies in the mid-2020s, discussing achievements, shortcomings and prospects.

Along with Technische Universitat Berlin (Technical University of Berlin) and the Barenboim–Said Akademie in Berlin, CU Boulder will help welcome students and scholars of the Holocaust from around the world to a two-day workshop Tuesday and Wednesday at the Barenboim–Said Akademie.

What: Assessing the State of Holocaust Studies in the Mid-2020s: Achievements, Shortcomings, Prospects

When: June 9-10

Where: Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin, Germany

Learn more

Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, professor and Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History in the CU Boulder Department of History, will give the workshop opening lecture, focusing on practicing Holocaust studies in times of uncertainty.

A central focus of the conference is an awareness that while Holocaust studies, over the past 50 years, had developed from a marginal field into a vibrant international discipline, the last Holocaust eyewitnesses will be passing in coming years. With this passing, conference organizers note, contemporary history is becoming history, while at the same time the field faces new challenges: from politicized debates and attacks on scholarship to the reverberations of wars and conflict, which are prompting scholars worldwide to partially reassess the Holocaust in both its historical and contemporary dimensions.

The workshop aims to bring together leading international researchers at various career stages to assess the current state of Holocaust studies critically, asking: What has been achieved? What remains unresolved? What new directions are emerging?

CU Boulder’s involvement in the workshop continues to build on international collaborations that saw, in Fall 2025, the creation of a tri-university graduate course on modern German-Jewish ego-documents, or autobiographical writings, team-taught by faculty across CU Boulder, the Open University of Israel (OUI) and the Center for Research on Antisemitism (ZfA) at the Technical University Berlin (TU Berlin).

The course brings together students and professors from the United States, Israel and Germany to partner on collaborative research, including an intensive, eight-day in-person seminar in Berlin.

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The two-day workshop will bring together scholars and students from around the world to assess the state of Holocaust studies in the mid-2020s.

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Rethinking marriage—and divorce—in Muslim Indonesia

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 19:25:26 +0000

Rethinking marriage—and divorce—in Muslim Indonesia Rachel Sauer Mon, 06/08/2026 - 13:25

Bradley Worrell

CU Boulder sociologist Rachel Rinaldo’s research uncovers how Indonesian women are re-shaping marriage and its end within Islamic law, with implications far beyond Southeast Asia

When Rachel Rinaldo, a University of Colorado Boulder sociology associate professor and the faculty director of the Center for Asian Studies, first began studying gender and social change in Indonesia nearly 25 years ago, she entered a field already shaped by deep-seated assumptions.

“There is a common idea in academic literature and media discussions that changes in the developing world are mainly due to ideas imported from the U.S. or Western Europe,” she explains. “That narrative underplays the more internal dynamics of social change.”

Rinaldo’s recently published research paper, “I Have a Right to a Better Imam,” challenges that Western-influence narrative as it relates to Indonesia, instead revealing a much more nuanced and local story.

Rachel Rinaldo, a CU Boulder associate professor of sociology and faculty director of the Center for Asian Studies, first began studying gender and social change in Indonesia nearly 25 years ago.

Indonesia—the world’s largest Muslim-majority country—offers an especially rich case for understanding changing family dynamics, Rinaldo says. With a population that is roughly 90% Muslim and shaped by a mix of longstanding local traditions, economic transformation and evolving religious interpretations, she says it presents a unique environment in which the meaning of marriage—and the decision by women to end it—is being renegotiated.

“One of the things I argue in the article is that religions are always shaped by the societies where they are adopted. Christianity, for example, looks different in Brazil compared to Italy. The same is true for Islam—it looks different in Indonesia versus, say, Egypt,” she says. “In Southeast Asia, there has long been a social structure that gives somewhat more power and agency to women, particularly in marriage. Women have historically had more say, and it’s also been more common for women to work outside of the home.”

This longstanding pattern has influenced how Islamic norms are interpreted in Indonesia, producing a version of Islamic family law that—while not fully egalitarian—is more progressive compared to other Muslim-majority countries, Rinaldo says.

Today, Indonesia’s legal system includes Islamic family laws that apply to its Muslim citizens. These laws establish clear frameworks for marriage and divorce, while also reflecting tensions between traditional gender roles and growing expectations of partnership and mutual responsibility.

Rethinking the origins of change

Through her interviews with several Indonesian women, as well as observations in Islamic courts, Rinaldo says she has found little evidence that Western cultural models were the primary drivers of change. Instead, she says the women she interviewed described a gradual shift in expectations rooted in their own understanding of marriage, religion and personal autonomy.

Crucially, these changing expectations are tied to how women interpret Islamic law—not as a rigid system that confines them, but as a set of principles that can justify their desire for a more equitable partnership, Rinaldo says.

Perhaps the most surprising finding of Rinaldo’s research is the role Islamic courts play in Indonesia, many of which are overseen by female judges. Contrary to common assumptions that such institutions are uniformly conservative or patriarchal, Rinaldo says the courts today tend to be pragmatic.

“What struck me was that judges in Islamic courts were fairly sympathetic to women’s concerns. They emphasized that marriage should be a partnership, and that lack of support—financial or emotional—from husbands was a valid issue,” Rinaldo says. “The idea of a more companionate marriage was embedded in legal thinking … and how legal and religious frameworks were being interpreted locally.”

Economic change has played a critical role in enabling this cultural shift in Indonesia, says CU Boulder researcher Rachel Rinaldo. As Indonesia’s economy has grown, more women have gained access to education and paid employment. (Photo: Lek Nikto/Unsplash)

Rather than attempting to keep marriages intact at all costs, Rinaldo says many judges see their responsibility as arbitrators of outstanding issues resulting from the dissolution of the marriage.

“Judges told me that by the time cases reach them, marriages are often already over, so their role is to facilitate resolution rather than reconciliation.”

Gender differences in divorce law

Despite certain progressive aspects of Indonesian family law, Rinaldo says the country’s legal framework still treats men and women differently when it comes to divorce.

Men can initiate divorce relatively easily, often without needing to provide a specific reason. Women, by contrast, must file a formal case and cite one of several legally recognized grounds for divorce. Rinaldo says these grounds include violence, abuse, financial neglect and even “disharmony”—a broadly defined category that essentially allows women to argue that the relationship is not working.

While this requirement might seem restrictive, Rinaldo says women have become increasingly adept at navigating the system. Many women understand the legal criteria and present their cases in ways that align with judicial expectations, she explains.

Some women even draw on religious arguments, pointing to their spouse’s bad behavior—such as drinking, gambling or neglecting prayer—as evidence that their husband is not living up to his obligations, Rinaldo says.

“Women sometimes use that strategically, knowing judges would respond negatively to behaviors such as drinking or gambling,” she says. “At the same time, religion is an important source of meaning for many women, so these issues were also genuine sources of conflict.”

Evolving expectations for marriage

Underlying these various legal strategies is how women have come to think about marriage itself, Rinaldo says. A recurring theme in Rinaldo’s interviews was dissatisfaction—not with marriage as an institution—but with how it was being lived in their own lives.

“Many women felt their husbands weren’t contributing enough,” she explains. She says the lack of support extended beyond finances, which were historically the husband’s responsibility. In one example, a woman described reaching her breaking point when her husband refused to help care for their children. “She was like, ‘These are our kids; we’re supposed to be doing this together,’” Rinaldo recounts.

Rinaldo notes the women she spoke with were not demanding perfectly equal relationships, but she says they did expect that the marriage involve shared responsibility. When that expectation was not met, she says, it often became a turning point for the relationship.

Economic change has played a critical role in enabling this cultural shift in Indonesia, Rinaldo says. As Indonesia’s economy has grown, more women have gained access to education and paid employment. She says this has expanded their options while also reducing the monetary risks associated with divorce.

In Indonesia, the term "imam" typically refers to a Muslim religious leader. However, in marriage, some Muslim women use it to describe their husbands. (Photo: women at mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia. Mohammed Alim/Pexels)

In some cases, women are the primary earners in their families, which can fundamentally reshape the power dynamics in a relationship. Meanwhile, the experience of divorce tends to differ depending upon Indonesian women’s socioeconomic status. Among lower-income women, divorce is often handled pragmatically, while for middle-class women the process is often more complicated because it often involves shared property and assets, Rinaldo says.

“They really need the assistance from the court to help unwind that kind of situation,” she explains.

From shame to relief and finding family support

Despite various challenges, Indonesian women who divorced their husbands told Rinaldo they ultimately do not regret their decision. While a few expressed feelings of shame—particularly in relation to family expectations—the most common feeling was one of solace.

“I would say the predominant feeling was one of relief,” Rinaldo says.

Regarding their specific motivations for seeking a divorce, Rinaldo says a number of the women told her they did so because they were concerned about exposing their children to unhealthy marital conflict or dysfunction. “They didn’t want that to be the model of marriage that their children were growing up with.”

One issue that many divorced women faced was difficulty obtaining child support that they were owed from their husbands. These payments are often not well-enforced by the Islamic courts. Nevertheless, even when they are entitled to financial support from their ex-husbands, Rinaldo says many women choose not to pursue it because they prefer to have nothing to do with their ex-spouses.

“I think this all reflects broader changes in society, where women today are more financially independent. They have strong support systems today, and they also face less social stigma around divorce than in the past,” she adds.

Faith, authority and the meaning of ‘imam’

One particularly revealing aspect of Rinaldo’s research involves the concept of the “imam.” In Indonesia, the term typically refers to a Muslim religious leader. However, in marriage, some Muslim women use it to describe their husbands.

“The idea is that the husband is . . . their own personal Islamic leader,” Rinaldo explains. This reflects a traditional expectation that wives should obey their husbands. Yet even women who embrace this idea are willing to leave marriages when their expectations are not met, she adds.

“People marrying at later ages and wanting a more meaningful marital relationship, more people remaining single or in non-marital partnerships and people having fewer children are changes happening around the globe.”

In one case, Rinaldo says a woman she interviewed sought guidance from religious authorities about whether to stay in her unhappy marriage or seek a divorce. As a result of the answers she received to her queries, the woman decided the answer was not to endure the marriage but to find “a better imam,” she says.

Rinaldo says that phrase captures the tension at the heart of these transformations: Women are not rejecting their religion but instead are reinterpreting it.

A broader global story about marriage and divorce

Although Rinaldo’s research focuses on Indonesia, she says she believes her work reflects broader global trends. Rising education levels, economic development and evolving gender roles are reshaping marriage and families in many societies, even as religious tradition continues to play a powerful role, she says.

“I think what happens in Indonesia can illuminate the kinds of things that we’re seeing across many countries in the global south, other developing countries and, even more broadly, some similar dynamics in the United States,” she says. “People marrying at later ages and wanting a more meaningful marital relationship, more people remaining single or in non-marital partnerships and people having fewer children are changes happening around the globe.”

In Indonesia, Rinaldo says, those changes are unfolding through the interplay of local culture, legal institutions and individual agency. She says the result is neither a rejection of tradition nor a simple embrace of modernity, but more so a negotiation—a process though which women are redefining marriage from within. And in doing so, Rinaldo says, they are quietly reshaping one of society’s most fundamental institutions.

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CU Boulder sociologist Rachel Rinaldo’s research uncovers how Indonesian women are re-shaping marriage and its end within Islamic law, with implications far beyond Southeast Asia.

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Top photo: Josh Estey/Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

Undergraduate Isabella Perrin named 2026 Cech Fellow

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 23:12:39 +0000

Undergraduate Isabella Perrin named 2026 Cech Fellow Rachel Sauer Wed, 06/03/2026 - 17:12

The newly established fellowship, named in honor of CU Boulder Professor Thomas Cech, gives students opportunities for research, professional mentorship and career exploration

Isabella Perrin, a University of Colorado Boulder undergraduate student studying molecular, cellular and developmental biology and public health, has been selected as one of 176 inaugural Cech Fellows by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

The fellowship, awarded to an inaugural cohort of undergraduates from 109 institutions in 36 states and territories, is named in honor of Nobel laureate Thomas Cech, a CU Boulder distinguished professor of biochemistry, former HHMI president and current HHMI investigator.

The Cech Fellows will spend nine weeks this summer conducting hands-on research with HHMI scientists at universities and research institutions across the country, as well as at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus in Virginia. They will contribute to research while receiving professional mentorship and exploring potential careers in biological and biomedical research.

"I’ve always believed that getting students into real research environments early is one of the most powerful things we can do for them and for science,” said Cech. “I’m deeply honored that this program carries my name, and I look forward to seeing what this first cohort of Fellows will go on to achieve.”

Leslie Vosshall, HHMI vice president and chief scientific officer, noted that a single summer in the right lab can kickstart a scientific career: “By asking real questions alongside scientists at the top of their fields, this year’s Cech Fellows will have the opportunity to see what a life in science actually looks like.”

Perrin, who is working with researchers at the University of California Berkeley this summer on immunology research about the pathways and mechanisms that relate to autoimmune and inflammatory disorders, has previously conducted RNA research with Robin Dowell, a professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, and Mary Ann Allen, a research associate professor with the BioFrontiers Institute.

“As a Cech Fellow, I’m honored and excited to join a diverse community with engaging and curiosity-filled science research,” Perrin said. “I value this opportunity not only to learn from mentors and peers about how to conduct meaningful research but also to engage in research that, at its core, is based in bettering individuals’ quality of life.

“I hope to learn and use new skills to contribute to the field in a rigorous manner, and to use a creative mindset to approach challenging questions. I love learning about the capabilities and quirks of the immune system and am thrilled to be a part of a lab that focuses on applying this work to human health conditions.”

Summer research experiences are “often where undergraduates discover their passion for scientific inquiry,” said Joshua Hall, HHMI lead senior director and scientific program officer at HHMI. “The Cech Fellows Program gives talented students direct access to some of the most exciting science happening anywhere in the country, and we’re thrilled to welcome this inaugural cohort.”

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The newly established fellowship, named in honor of CU Boulder Professor Thomas Cech, gives students opportunities for research, professional mentorship and career exploration.

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CU Boulder debuts $33.5 million renovation to general chemistry labs

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 14:45:03 +0000

CU Boulder debuts $33.5 million renovation to general chemistry labs Rachel Sauer Tue, 06/02/2026 - 08:45

Bradley Worrell

The recently completed project increases the number of labs from 12 to 14 and includes a multitude of modernization and safety improvements

The University of Colorado Boulder Department of Chemistry recently debuted a new suite of general chemistry teaching labs in the Ekeley Sciences Building, part of a $33.5 million renovation project.

While Ekeley has had some updates over the years, the building was originally constructed in 1898, and the general chemistry spaces needed many improvements related to modernization, eco-conscious updates and safety optimization, said Chris Marelli, director of the general chemistry teaching labs. Funding for the project came from a mix of sources including the President’s Initiative, campus cash reserves and bond debt.

�鶹��Ժ participate in a chemistry class in one of the newly renovated lab spaces.

Designed with both functionality and flexibility in mind, these updated lab spaces blend advanced technology with intentional design, Marelli said. Technological upgrades include a video calling system that allows graduate teaching assistants a direct line to lab staff during emergencies, updated engineering controls for improved safety, new HVAC systems for increased air flow and new touch-control fume hoods for improved safety. Additionally, new lighting and new A/V systems with projectors and screens or widescreen TVs replaced chalkboards. These new A/V technologies bring more state-of-the-art teaching into the labs, Marelli said.

The addition of wheelchair-accessible workstations in seven labs creates spaces that are both adaptable and inclusive, while collaborative workstations further support active learning, Marelli said. Three adjacent help rooms were also added, which can be configured as separate spaces or combined into a larger instructional area to accommodate varying instructional needs.

“All of the remodeling was completed with the goal of creating a better learning experience for students,” Marelli said. “These updated facilities will benefit not just our chemistry majors but all arts and sciences students who enroll in an undergraduate chemistry lab.”

To support the goal of making hands-on general chemistry learning accessible to such a wide student population, the number of general chemistry labs was increased from 12 to 14 during the renovation, thanks to creative spatial redesigns, Marelli said. The renovation prioritized efficient usage of the existing building footprint while widening hallways for safer pedestrian traffic patterns during class changeover periods, relocating the three help rooms and integrating better storage solutions into the lab spaces.

“We were at maximum capacity in our labs before; we can now accommodate an additional 400 students, allowing room for us to continue to grow our program moving forward,” Marelli said. The renovated labs will be able to accommodate an additional 1,000 students each year, he added.

Construction on the renovated lab spaces began in December 2025 and was spearheaded by Adolfson & Peterson Construction (A&P). Marelli and two of the general chemistry lab coordinators, Avery Hatch and Estrella Lastre, participated in meetings with A&P to provide insight into how students would use the lab spaces and helped guide project decisions for the renovation.

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The recently completed project increases the number of labs from 12 to 14 and includes a multitude of modernization and safety improvements.

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