Ideas Festival Emory, the flagship event of Emory University’s Center for Public Scholarship and Engagement (CPSE), returns for a second year on Saturday, Oct. 18, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with a keynote conversation with musician and author Rosanne Cash.
Building on the success of the inaugural Ideas Festival Emory in 2024, this year’s edition at the Oxford College campus will share the wisdom of more than 30 scientists, scholars, musicians, filmmakers, and other creative minds.
“Ideas Festival Emory is based on a simple idea: knowledge belongs to all of us,” Kenneth Carter, founding director of the CPSE and the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Psychology at Emory University, said in a statement. “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 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 bestseller.
Along with her induction into The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Cash is also the recipient of The Edward MacDowell Medal, an annual honor given to one person for outstanding contribution to American culture and the arts, and was elected an Honorary American member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Cash, the eldest daughter of country legend Johnny Cash, will take the stage at Ideas Festival in conversation with Robyn Fivush, the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Psychology at Emory University, for a live taping with Sing for Science podcast host Matt Whyte at 5 p.m. Oct. 18.
With arts funding dwindling, the importance of libraries and museums is crucial. Part of the CPSE’s mission is to foster meaningful discussion of pressing issues of our world today. At Ideas Fest, 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 Coup: 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 multi-racial government.
Local concerns get the spotlight as well. Rose Scott will host a live taping of her WABE show, 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.
Music is also on the menu with poet Kim Addonizio and musician Danny Caron performing along with singer and songwriter Anya Marina.
See the full schedule at ideasfestival.emory.edu.
