Newsletters

To read the Center for Humanities & the Arts (CHA) November 2025 Month Newsletter, see below.

Director's Letter of the Month:

November 2025

Dear CU Boulder Community & Supporters of the CHA,

I’ve had many homes in the 5 plus decades that I’ve been on this planet. And I don’t just mean places where I happened to live—I mean I have felt a sense of belonging in various cities and states whether it was in the place where I grew up and where my parents still live (Hayward, CA) or the summers I’ve spent in Salamanca, Spain, which inexplicably in the first days I ever spent there automatically made me feel like I was home. I am not “from” Colorado – but Colorado is now home. Many of us have these stories—of leaving the place of our birth, of our upbringing, and traveling to other locales and making a home for ourselves and finding others that provide us with a sense of belonging.

You can likely see where I’m going with this.

People leave the places where they were born and raised for a variety of reasons, but it is not a crime to be a refugee, immigrant, or asylum seeker. And the lives of people living in new locales, while often figured as tragic and traumatic, need not be—or rather, that’s not the only way to understand their stories. People’s lives are multifaceted—there is pain and there is joy.

I was reminded of this when attending the public portion of a PhD dissertation “Blissful Displacement” by newly minted Dr. Toma Peiu in Critical Media Practices. Part of Dr. Peiu’s research provides an intimate glimpse into the Russian-speaking ethnic-Korean Central Asian diaspora of Brooklyn, NY—you can take a sneak peak of his film How Come We Ended Up Here? I was so moved by Dr. Peiu’s closing remarks that I asked him if I could share a portion of them in this newsletter:

“The news may say otherwise, but the world we live in is the result of the collective work of people who fix the subway, serve the food, run the shops, peel the carrots, drive the trucks and cabs, plumb the pipes, sing the hymns, trim the beards, do the make-up, clean the sewer, care for the children and elderly, bake the bread, teach the Math, deliver the mail, run your children’s gym routines, do the scientific research and make the dialectic art that recognizes the imaginaries and dilemmas of their peers. And yet the imaginaries, thoughts and dreams that animate the everyday lives of these people often remain obscure in the public sphere, including in academic research and policy priorities. We may live in the same city and ride the subway together every night, we often know less about our neighbors than about friends and family members living across the Ocean.”

Arts and humanities allow us to imagine alongside the people who prepare our food, drive busses, clean our buildings, teach our children, and care for us in hospitals and clinics—people who, in many cases, are not “from” here but who live complex and rich lives, just like us—and in some cases they are us. Dr. Peiu’s research and art practice illuminates those lives and reminds us that knowing who our neighbors are should be as easy as simply asking questions and genuinely wanting to hear the answers. 

I should also add that Dr. Peiu’s research was funded, in part, through CHA grants and fellowships eligible to graduate students working in arts and humanities. There’s a new graduate fellowship we are offering this year, the CHA Eaton Humanities Fellow, open to MA and PhD students who are interested in learning more about the work of arts and humanities to perhaps prepare for a career outside of a traditional tenure ladder academic position (Deadline, Monday, November 17). 

Dr. Peiu’s research and art is inspiring—it reminded me that the work of imagination is so vital in the times we are living in, as is finding community and creating it where you can. To that end, I hope you will consider joining the Spring 2026 book club where we’ll be reading David Owen’s Where the Water Goes: Life and Death along the Colorado River (Riverhead Books 2017) or please join us for a Difficult Dialogue Conversation with our Colorado Chautauqua partners. 

Sincerely,

Jennifer Ho

Director, Center for Humanities & the Arts

PS. I have been thinking about what real reparations looks like—for a variety of issues but especially giving land back to native nations. I have wondered under what conditions I could or would hand over my own home and land. Then I came across this story of Franciscan Sisters in Wisconsin giving back land to the Lac du Flambeau band of Lake Superior Chippewa in the name of reparations. Giving land back is possible—we just have to have the will and imagination to meet the moment. 

CHA Upcoming Opportunities

Spring 2026 Book Club The CHA will host a series of meetings (in person and on zoom) to discuss Where the Water Goes: Life and Death Along the Colorado River by David Owen. Water issues seem simple—ban golf, stop selling hay to China—but Owen’s story reveals a complex, man-made ecosystem shaped by engineering, law, and cooperation. This book explores how life thrives in the desert and what happens when the system breaks down. How to Join To join the discussion in Spring 2026, fill out this google form, which has links to interviews with Owens—first 150 people will get a free copy. People can pick up books whenever the CHA Office is open, 10:00 am–3:00 pm, Tuesday through Thursday. Please see the CHA Office calendar for any updates to office hours.