Creative Intelligence

Presented in collaboration with the Bingham Center for Teaching Excellence and the Hazelrigg Lecture Series for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Laurie Santos is the Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology at Yale University and host of “The Happiness Lab” podcast. An expert on the science of happiness, her Yale course — Psychology and the Good Life — teaches students how the science of psychology can provide important hints on how to make wiser choices and live a life that’s happier and more fulfilling. Her course has been featured in multiple news outlets including the New York Times, “NBC Nightly News,” “The Today Show,” GQ magazine, Slate and O, The Oprah Magazine. A winner of numerous awards both for her science and teaching, Santos was recently voted as one of Popular Science Magazine’s “Brilliant 10” young minds and was named in Time magazine as a “Leading Campus Celebrity.” Her podcast has over 100 million downloads.

• Convocation talk — Thursday, Sept. 19, 4 p.m., Haggin Auditorium
  “The science of happiness: Evidence-based tips to feel better”

Presented in collaboration with the Delcamp Visiting Writer Series

Fady Joudah is the winner of the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize and has published six collections of poems, including “The Earth in the Attic,” “Alight,” “Footnotes in the Order of Disappearance,” “Tethered to Stars” and “Textu,” a book-long sequence of short poems whose meter is based on cell phone character count. He has translated several collections of poetry from Arabic and is the co-editor and co-founder of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. He was a winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2007 and has received a PEN award, a Banipal/Times Literary Supplement prize from the UK, the Griffin Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Arab American Book Award. Along with writing poetry, Joudah volunteers for Doctors Without Borders and serves as an emergency room physician. He lives in Houston.

• Public talk and book signing – Tuesday, Oct. 29, 6 p.m., Carrick Theater
  “Aesthetics of Return”

Tim Kirkman is a co-founder of T42 Entertainment, a production company that seeks to amplify LGBTQ voices. In 2016, the company produced “Lazy Eye,” which was written and directed by Kirkman. It was released in theaters and then streamed on Netflix after screening in festivals around the world.

His first feature, a personal documentary “Dear Jesse,” received numerous honors, including Emmy, Gotham, GLAAD and Independent Spirit Award nominations. Distributed theatrically by Cowboy Pictures, “Dear Jesse” was named Best Documentary of the Year by the Boston Society of Film Critics, won the Audience Award at Frameline and screened in film festivals all over the world. After its HBO/Cinemax Reel Life series debut, Kirkman was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary Writing.

He also wrote and directed “Loggerheads,” which premiered in the Dramatic Competition at the Sundance Film Festival. Starring Tess Harper, Chris Sarandon, Michael Kelly, Bonnie Hunt, Robin Weigert, Michael Learned and Kip Pardue, the movie won the Grand Jury Prize at Outfest, Audience Awards at the Florida and Nashville film festivals and the top screenwriting prize at the Madrid International LGBT Film Festival. It was released theatrically by Strand Releasing.

A North Carolina native, Kirkman received his bachelor’s degree from North Carolina State University’s College of Design, where he majored in graphic design with a minor in journalism. After graduation, he moved to New York City and worked for more than 10 years as an art director for Miramax Films, designing posters and advertising campaigns for award-winning films. While at Miramax, he completed an M.A. in media studies at The New School.

In addition to his film work, Kirkman teaches directing at the University of Southern California’s School for Cinematic Arts and screenwriting at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television.

• Screening of “Lazy Eye,” written and directed by Tim Kirkman, followed by Q&A with Tim Kirkman — Thursday, Jan. 23, 7 p.m., Carrick Theater

As a reporter who was the first Latina in many newsrooms, Maria Hinojosa dreamt of a space where she could create independent, multimedia journalism that explores and gives a critical voice to the diverse American experience. She made that dream a reality in 2010 when she created Futuro Media, an independent, nonprofit newsroom based in Harlem with the mission to create multimedia content from a perspective of people of color. Futuro does this in the service of empowering people to navigate the complexities of an increasingly diverse and connected world. 

As the anchor and executive producer of the Peabody Award-winning show “Latino USA”, distributed by NPR, as well as co-host of “In The Thick,” the Futuro Media’s new political podcast, Hinojosa has informed millions about the changing cultural and political landscape in America and abroad. Hinojosa is also anchor and executive producer of the PBS show “America By The Numbers,” the first national television series to examine our country’s dramatic demographic shifts, and “Humanizing America,” a digital video series that deconstructs stereotypes about the American electorate. She is also a new contributor to the long-running, award-winning news program “CBS Sunday Morning” and a frequent guest on MSNBC.

Hinojosa has won dozens of awards, including four Emmys, the John Chancellor Award, Studs Terkel Community Media Award, two Robert F. Kennedy Awards, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club and the Ruben Salazar Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAHJ. In 2019, she was named the inaugural Distinguished Journalist in Residence at her alma mater, Barnard College.

• Public talk and book signing — Tuesday, Feb. 25, 7 p.m.

Ever since their debut feature “45365” won a Grand Jury Prize at South by Southwest in 2009, Bill and Turner Ross have been at the vanguard of documentary filmmaking, continually pushing the boundaries of creative nonfiction storytelling. The Ross brothers’ six feature-length films have all been award-winning hits at the world’s biggest film festivals, including Sundance, Tribeca, the Venice Biennale Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, American Film Institute Fest and many others.

The Ross brothers have pushed their playful innovation even further with their latest film, “Gasoline Rainbow” — a semi-fictional account of five Generation Z teenagers on a road trip from a small town in Oregon to the coast, where they seek a legendary “Party At the End of the World.” Newly graduated from high school, the friends are outsiders seeking sparks of hope in the malaise of a divided and downcast post-COVID America. “Gasoline Rainbow,” recently named one of the 25 best films of the year by Hyperallergic, is perhaps the first American film told from the perspective of people roughly the same age as college students — an improvisational self-portrait of the new generation. Watch the official trailer for ‘Gasoline Rainbow.’

• Screening of ‘Gasoline Rainbow,’ followed by a Q&A with the directors, the Ross brothers — Thursday, March 20, 7 p.m., at the Kentucky Theatre

Presented in collaboration with the Bingham Center for Teaching Excellence

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry including “Against Which,” “Bringing the Shovel Down,” “Be Holding,” which won the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award,  and “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. 

In addition to his poetry, Ross has released three collections of essays: “The Book of Delights, which was published in 2019 and a New York Times bestseller, “Inciting Joy” (2022) and “The Book of (More) Delights” (2023).

• Reading and book signing – Tuesday, March 25, 6 p.m., Carrick Theater