From The Onion to AI
What do Vassar faculty who write for public audiences, technology experts who wrestle with the growing reality of artificial intelligence, and the head writer for The Onion have in common? The thread weaving through the November 7–8 Signature Program of The Vassar Institute for the Liberal Arts was the power of narrative.
“Storytelling for Change: Shaping and Sharing Inclusive Narratives in Higher Education, Media, and the Arts” posed the question: “How do we tell impactful stories about the things that matter most, and ultimately, strengthen our relationships to each other?” It was convened by Associate Professor of Psychological Science at Vassar Dara Greenwood and Victoria Grantham, Vassar’s Vice President for Communications.
The participating Vassar faculty members were Greenwood, who writes a blog for Psychology Today and whose work has been published in numerous other periodicals; Michele Tugade ’95, Professor of Psychological Science on the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowed Chair, whose research has been published in numerous mainstream outlets; and Robert K. Brigham, Shirley Ecker Boskey Professor of History and International Relations, who has published 11 books, some for academic audiences and others for the general public. Wes Dixon, Deputy to the President and Secretary of the Board of Trustees who hosts a Vassar podcast titled Conversations @ the Salt Line moderated and also answered questions as a storyteller himself.
The speakers who addressed AI and higher ed were D. Graham Burnett, Professor of History at Princeton University and founder of the Friends of Attention, and Minerva Tantoco ’86, an early pioneer in AI, holder of four AI patents, and CEO of City Strategies Consulting.
The writer for The Onion was Mike Gillis, who was joined on a panel with Lynette Clemetson, Director of the Knight-Wallace Fellowship for Journalists at the University of Michigan, and Eric Marcus ’80, author, community activist, and founder of the podcast Making Gay History.
Preserving our Ability to Live and Learn
In his keynote speech and in response to questions from Tantoco, Burnett asserted that technological developments have fractured our attention and made a new and insidious kind of exploitation possible.
He compared this form of exploiting human consciousness in order to extract monetary value from users of AI and social media to the high-pressure techniques that pull oil and gas from the ground, calling it “human fracking.” To combat this extraction attempt, he recommended that we forge connections with each other and participate in nourishing, collaborative device-free activities, some as simple as daydreaming or taking a walk.
“If we’re going to preserve our humanity and preserve our ability to teach and learn and share stories over the next 20 years, we need to remember how diverse and constitutive of our humanity our attention actually is,” Burnett concluded. “We need to get some new forms of collective action pushing back, and it’s going to take all hands on deck.” Read student Isabel Holmes’ feature story on the keynote in the Misc.
Missed the conversation? Watch it here.
Video by Jim Sulley and Craig Bonheur
Breaking Down Walls Between Academia and the Public
During their discussion on making academic work relevant to the mainstream audiences, Tugade, Brigham, and Greenwood said that they viewed their public-facing work as an integral part of their roles as faculty members at Vassar.
Greenwood made a link to practices that she follows in the classroom—having students make meaningful connections between observations in everyday life and research findings. Brigham said one of his books about his personal history as someone who grew up in the foster care system placed a spotlight on this important national issue. And Tugade talked about applying her work on resilience to real world problems and audiences citing her work with astronauts to help them cope with loneliness and stress during trips in small spacecrafts.
Watch the complete conversation.
Video by Jim Sulley and Craig Bonheur
Illuminating Critical Stories and Perspectives
During their panel discussion on their roles in interacting with audiences, Clemetson, Gillis, and Marcus said that telling stories has always been a way humans connect with one another. “I love to tell stories—tragic or happy,” Marcus said. “They help to bring us together and find comfort in each other.” He said this belief has been confirmed by the fact that his podcast has more than 25,000 listeners and 7 million downloads from people in 200 countries.
Telling stories on a public platform can take its toll on the storytellers though, Clemetson observed. That’s why her organization provides The Knight-Wallace House, a place for journalists and others to take a break from their sometimes traumatic, always demanding work to re-charge. The program provides “two rare commodities: time and resources” giving journalists an opportunity to work on a specific and meaningful project for an academic year.
Gillis said he believed that injecting humor into storytelling can make both mundane and disturbing topics more palatable and relatable. He cited one headline that The Onion runs every time there is a mass shooting in the United States: “No Way to Prevent This Says the Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.” He said families whose children were killed in a mass shooting at Sandy Hook [CT] Elementary School have reached out to The Onion’s editors to thank them for keeping the dialogue relevant and alive.
Carina Cole, a media studies major and Editor-in-Chief of The Miscellany News, noted that the panel was encouraging. “I think there is a lot of fear surrounding going into this profession right now, understandably, but having examples of people who have succeeded in making careers out of storytelling is invaluable. Just being able to see there are still options for people interested in this career path is important.” Read Cole’s Misc story on the panel.
Understanding the Current Story of Life After College
The two-day program also included “The Story of Life After College: Starting Up the Career Ladder,” featuring Carlo Salerno, an education economist with Burning Glass Institute, and Gene Carlton Waddy, a Vassar junior. Salerno shared research-backed insights into what current employers value and how recent graduates are faring in a tumultuous job market. He said students may have more marketable skills than they realize that are components of their academic majors of interest. As the conversation came to a close, Waddy, who had voiced his and his peers’ anxieties, expressed a sense of relief at hearing the information Salerno had shared.
In an interactive session titled “Whose Story Is It?” Stacy Bingham, Associate Dean of the College for Career Education, Vassar and Jannette Swanson, Director of External Engagement for Vassar’s Center for Career Education, led attendees in an iterative exercise about the liberal arts and careers.
Engaging Audiences’ Hearts and Minds Via Live Performances
The program concluded with three performances and a storytelling workshop. Doreen Oliver performed a piece from her award-winning one-woman show, Everything Is Fine Until It’s Not, about her experience of parenting a child with autism. Later in the program, she read an op-ed she published in The New York Times about how police intervened when her then-13-year-old Black son with autism hugged a Target employee and was deemed a threat. Jeremy Davidson, co-founder, along with his wife, actor Mary Stuart Masterson, of Storyhorse Documentary Theater, directed a seven-person cast (including one Vassar student, Dora Graham ’26, and an alum, Emily Donahoe ’97) in a dramatized nonfiction reading based on the experiences of a police officer and others in their Hudson Valley community. To cap off the program, Christina Thyssen, a lecturer in English at the University of Albany and a story coach and producer of On the Fly Story Slam, led participants through an interactive session on shaping and sharing their own personal stories.
Building Connection and Community Through Shared Experiences
Aniyah Bailey ’28 said the event clarified her thoughts about life after Vassar. “As an economics major pursuing law school, the ability to explain complex ideas clearly, anticipate what an audience does or doesn’t know, and communicate with precision and intention will be central to my success, so Storytelling for Change was very helpful,” she noted.
Brandon Ogesi ’29, a student from Nairobi, Kenya, said, “The Signature Program encouraged me to actively utilize my liberal arts education as a foundation for resonating with societal problems that bring narratives aimed at solutions.”
Want a synopsis? Watch a three-minute video of the two-day convening.
Video by Jim Sulley and Craig Bonheur
Greenwood and Grantham were pleased that the varied backgrounds and perspectives of the speakers and attendees had sparked such lively discussions.
“Whether it was from a Poughkeepsie organizer saying that the keynote speaker spoke to her soul, or people tearing up at the theater performances and laughing at Onion headlines, it seemed participants were truly present and engaged,” Grantham said. “I think it’s really important to underscore that stories have the power to move us—in addition to, and connected to, helping us think about things in a different way.”
Greenwood said she thought the ideas sparked at the event would continue to be discussed in other forums. “We saw broad swaths of people connecting with each other and sharing experiences and insights,” she said. “They wanted to keep the conversations going! We plan to follow up with all involved to see where their insights about storytelling and community will take them. Ultimately, the event seemed to tell its own story about how hungry we all are for authentic engagement with each other and with the world around us.”