Rosanne Cash will appear at Ideas Festival Emory in October. (Photo by Pamela Springsteen)
The Festival, which takes place on Emory’s Oxford Campus on October 18, will spotlight conversations, performances and stories on timely topics.
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Ideas Festival Emory, the flagship event of Emory University’s Center for Public Scholarship and Engagement (CPSE), returns for a second year on October 18 with a keynote conversation with Rosanne Cash.
The inaugural Ideas Festival Emory took place in September 2024. This year’s edition will share the wisdom of more than 30 scientists, scholars, musicians, filmmakers and other creative minds.
Set on the Oxford College campus, the Festival will again feature conversations, performances and stories dealing with important topics of our time.
“Ideas Festival Emory is based on a simple idea: Knowledge belongs to all of us,” says Kenneth Carter, founding director of the CPSE and the Charles Howard Candler professor of psychology at Emory University. “When people come together to talk about the challenges we all face, the closer we can get to solutions.”
Cash boasts a recording career that spans more than 45 years and includes 10 No. 1 country singles and four Grammy Awards. Three of those Grammys came in 2015, when she won for her critically acclaimed masterpiece The River & the Thread.
She’s also an accomplished writer, publishing her first book of short stories, Bodies of Water, in 1996. Her children’s book, Penelope Jane: A Fairy’s Tale, was published in 2000, and her 2010 memoir, Composed, was a New York Times best seller, which the Chicago Tribune called “one of the best accounts of an American life you’ll likely ever read.” Her essays have appeared in outlets including The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Oxford American and The Nation.
Cash, the eldest daughter of country legend Johnny Cash, will take the stage for a conversation and live taping of the Sing for Science Podcast with Dr. Robyn Fivush at 5 p.m. October 18.
With arts funding dwindling, the importance of libraries and museums is crucial. At Ideas Festival, The New Yorker’s poetry editor, Kevin Young, former director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, will be on hand to discuss the importance of these institutions as they, too, face funding cuts. He previously served as the Andrew W. Mellon director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Young will be in conversation with Atlanta author Jessica Handler.
Film gets a spotlight with a discussion with producer-director Brad Lichtenstein. Two-time Emmy nominee Lichtenstein will talk about his latest film, American Reckoning: Wilmington 1998 (with producer-director Yoruba Richen), which recounts the story of a little-known coup that took place in North Carolina. Fearing self-rule by the city’s democratically elected Black citizens, a group of self-described white supremacists used intimidation and violence to destroy Black political and economic power and overthrow Wilmington’s multiracial government.
Local concerns get the spotlight as well. Rose Scott will host a live taping of her WABE show, A Closer Look, featuring an examination of the promise and costs of the World Cup as Atlanta prepares to be a host city in 2026. The festival will also mark a homecoming for former Atlanta Journal-Constitution food and dining critic John Kessler, who is now a Chicago resident and chronicler of the Windy City’s dining scene. He also continues to contribute to national outlets such as The Washington Post and The Bitter Southerner.
“I couldn’t be happier about this year’s featured speakers,” Carter said in the press release. “They remind us that great ideas come from labs, libraries and from songs, poems, neighborhoods and lived experience. At Emory, we’re creating a space where those voices can come together where ideas aren’t just studied, they’re shared.”
Ideas Festival Emory will take place from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. October 18 on the Oxford Campus of Emory University. Registration for the Festival will open in early August. Visit the CPSE website for more information.
