Books

What’s that knocking in the trees?

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 21:44:37 +0000

What’s that knocking in the trees? Rachel Sauer Wed, 02/04/2026 - 14:44

Kayleigh Wood

In new book, CU Boulder folklorist Jack Daly bridges the gap between academic research and Colorado legend

It was well into the evening when Jack Daly and a small group of legend trippers, organized by the Sasquatch Outpost in Bailey, Colorado, made their descent into the forests just 30 minutes outside of town. Owned and operated by Jim and Daphne Myers, the site hosts numerous Bigfoot events, from meetings to night hikes led by Bigfoot researcher Jim Myers himself.

During these hikes, which occur about once a month, Myers serves as the outpost’s liaison into what the Sasquatch Outpost’s booking website describes as “the realm of the Forest People.” Here, visitors might experience numerous encounters with Bigfoot in the form of vocalizations, footprints, knocking on trees and airborne rocks thrown in the direction of the group.

Folklorist Jack Daly, an instructor in the CU Boulder Program for Writing and Rhetoric, explores the supernatural, unexplainable and unnerving in his book Eerie Colorado: Mountain Folklore, Monsters and Tales of the Supernatural.

On that particular hike, deep in the forest, Daly and the group were startled—not by flying rocks or breaking branches, but by what he describes as “a giant silver orb just flying overhead, and we all saw it. We stopped, and it disappeared. There’s no flashing lights. It was not in, like, full orbit.”

This UFO encounter was notably different from the one he experienced in high school, when he and a friend witnessed a glowing blue orb hovering above a meadow, moving from one place to another at random intervals, for several minutes.

Daly shares this experience and more in his recently published book, Eerie Colorado: Mountain Folklore, Monsters and Tales of the Supernatural. Thursday evening, Daly will host an event at the Boulder Bookstore, where attendees will have the opportunity to learn more about Colorado’s supernatural folklore through the eyes of an expert.

Eerie Colorado

Jack Daly will speak about and sign his new book, Eerie Colorado: Mountain Folklore, Monsters and Tales of the Supernatural.

Where: Boulder Bookstore, 1107 Pearl St.

When: 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 5.

Learn more

In his book, Daly, a lecturer in the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder Program for Writing and Rhetoric, explores all things supernatural, unexplainable and unnerving in the Centennial State. Beyond simply organizing these legends in one volume, Daly grapples with the role supernatural folklore plays in the historical and contemporary culture of Colorado. Enmeshing his own personal testimony and the testimonies of the individuals he interviewed on his own with existing scholarly research, he divides his findings into two categories: the corporeal, which he describes in his book as creatures of “‘flesh-and-blood,’” and the incorporeal, referring to the entities that lack physical bodies.

Daly used ethnographic methods in his research, conducting interviews and documenting participant observation, a qualitative research method in which scholars immerse themselves in a setting and attempt to observe as many individuals as possible to draw conclusions about a specific culture. He uses the term “memorate” to classify the personal experience narratives throughout the book, including some of his own, as well as the experiences of his family members. Jim Myers of the Sasquatch Outpost shared a personal Bigfoot encounter for the book—a sighting that Myers dubbed as a Class A experience, which is an encounter at close range, where the viewer can confidently rule out all natural explanations.

Monsters, legends and the supernatural

Beyond the memorates, Daly’s fieldwork has taken him to as many of the sites featured in the book as possible for his research.

As a folklorist, Daly’s research focuses on monsters, legends and the supernatural. In 2023, he received the American Folklore Society’s Warren E. Roberts Prize in Folk Art and Material Culture for his piece “Devil in the Skies, Stars on the Barns: The Snallygaster, Hex Signs, and Barn Stars.” He earned a master’s degree in folklore and is currently pursuing a PhD in American studies at Pennsylvania State �Թ��, where he was a recipient of the 2022-23 �Թ�� Graduate Fellowship.

Daly explains that his research champions scholarship while validating personal experience, noting that “people’s experiences with the supernatural are much more common than we give them credit for.” As a folklorist and scholar of belief, he says, he takes an “ethnographic, folkloristic [and] anthropological approach,” striving to avoid approaching all things eerie and inconceivable from “a position of disbelief in regards to the supernatural,” which he refers to in Eerie Colorado as a believer-skeptic binary.

In the book’s introduction, Daly makes clear that he is unconcerned with the reality of monsters, unexplainable phenomena and supernatural beings. He approaches his research from a place of neither belief nor disbelief, but with the aim of analyzing how these stories, which trend across time and place, function on a cultural and personal level.

In his book Eerie Colorado, author Jack Daly grapples with the role supernatural folklore plays in the historical and contemporary culture of Colorado.

Daly’s UFO encounter in the hills outside Bailey, which occurred only a couple of months ago, reinforces why his research approach for Eerie Colorado is helpful. Quite often, accounts of strange phenomena come from individuals who are skeptical themselves. Daly and the group simultaneously saw a silver orb enter their field of vision before it disappeared altogether; they couldn’t explain or verify it, but they all had the same experience.

Across the folklore field, Daly says, many scholars have begun to approach the supernatural through a similar, experience-based approach championed by David Hufford, a folklorist and ethnologist whose theories Daly draws from in Eerie Colorado. When Daly approaches legends, he says he strives to address them “more literally. As they literally happened,” adding that this approach “was heavily, heavily stigmatized for, you know, over 100 years when the processes of rationalism and empiricism and enlightenment [were] the overriding paradigms in academia and within intellectual culture more broadly.”

Yet the study of folklore appears to be changing, and Daly isn’t the only scholar in the field of belief studies who is interested in how legends function in a larger cultural context. He notes a newfound “openness that scholars are engaging with, in terms of thinking: This person literally did see a UFO. This person literally did see Bigfoot. This person literally did see a ghost, which is, I think, an interesting new movement that I want to keep on pursuing.”

‘I know what I saw’

In the process of writing Eerie Colorado, Daly notes his attempts to balance academic scholarship and theory with folklore in an approachable way. Tapping into existing scholarship and attempting to draw conclusions about the role of the legend in Colorado culture, Eerie Colorado takes on a new perspective—one supported by research.

Ready for a legend trip of your own?

Jack Daly uses the term “legend trip” in his book Eerie Colorado, which he describes as a visit to a site associated with a supernatural legend, where individuals often try to interact with a legend through rituals or “tests.” For those who want to get up close and personal with some of the local legends featured in Eerie Colorado, Daly has both visited and recommends these sites:

The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. For Daly, the Stanley is a prime example of “the transformative effect that the supernatural can have in reality.” Before The Shining, he notes, the site was “in disrepair. It was falling apart. People weren’t really going to Estes Park. Stephen King goes there, he has a supernatural encounter ostensibly. It causes him to write the book… the book turns into a movie… And then that literally transforms the culture surrounding both Estes Park and the Stanley Hotel. It was repaired. It is now a destination. It’s super, super nice.”

The Vampire Grave in Lafayette, where, according to legend, a tree grew from a stake used to kill a vampire. Check out Daly’s viral TikTok at the Vampire Grave at @thefolklord

The Molly Brown House in Denver, which is rumored to be haunted by both Molly and her husband.

The Denver Botanic Gardens October Ghost Tours

Cheeseman Park in Denver, which some consider one of the most haunted sites in Denver as it was built over the Mount Prospect Cemetery, where thousands are still buried.

For those interested in legends they can explore from the comfort of their homes, Daly recommends the Digital Folklore podcast, hosted by Perry Carpenter and Mason Amadeus. Described on their website as a “fusion of audio drama and narrative documentary,” the pair dive into internet legends, monsters and conspiracy theories “through the lens of academic folklore.” Like Daly, they strive to use these legends to draw broader cultural connections, rather than simply collecting and platforming them.

After reading some of the existing books about Colorado folklore, Daly noticed a trend: “They don’t cite their sources. They are clearly unfamiliar with the broader scholarship that would give them a much deeper level [of understanding].” In Eerie Colorado, Daly describes how many previous publications on Colorado folklore will present a story and let it speak for itself, without attempting to interpret the function these stories might serve to the local people. Daly sought to remedy this gap in the literature with his book, attempting to make meaning out of popular Colorado legends by situating them within a broader cultural context and tracing their developments across time and place.

“There’s one thing you notice with legends: They migrate,” says Daly. He argues that legends, even those that appear specific to Colorado, can often be situated in “a broader legend complex [tied] into other variants that we see across not just the United States, but the entire world.”

For example, the Phantom Jogger of Riverdale Road in Thornton, which Daly covers in Eerie Colorado, closely mimics the more commonly known story of the Vanishing Hitchhiker, which has been well documented by folklorists since the 1940s, Daly notes in his book. According to Thornton legend, a jogger was killed in a hit and run on Riverdale Road and left to haunt the site of the crash.

Daly sets the scene: “You’ll be driving along the road, and you’ll see this jogger, and sometimes they’ll ask you for a ride. They’ll get in the car, and then they’ll disappear. And so that’s a variant of the Vanishing Hitchhiker, but it’s a Colorado version because it’s athletic. It’s a jogger.”

In both cases, the disappearing hitchhikers and Thornton’s jogger often leave behind a mark of their presence. According to the local legends Daly documents in Eerie Colorado, those who are eager to drive down Riverdale Road and are brave enough to pull over may hear footsteps approaching them or fists banging against the sides of their car, or they may find handprints left on the outside of their vehicle.

Daly’s UFO sightings can also be linked back to popular legends of the past. When he was in high school, Daly and a friend “saw a giant blue orb flying over a field.” He details in Eerie Colorado that similar visual experiences are not uncommon and have been well documented across history, often known by a host of different names. “They’ve been connected with fairies,” Daly shares. “They’ve been connected with Bigfoot as well. They’re a common thing that people have described seeing.”

Throughout history and the contemporary era, countless individuals have witnessed strange phenomena in the skies that they cannot explain. Regardless of whether they interpret these sightings as flying saucers, massive fireballs or ships of fairies on the way to Magonia, Daly’s book guides readers through trends in firsthand accounts of the supernatural while tracking them across history. Popular creatures and entities that have taken on legendary status may be known by various names, but like the Vanishing Hitchhiker and the Phantom Jogger, the original legend and its local offspring often retain the same key attributes.

As for where he falls on the spectrum of belief in the supernatural, Daly says, “I do believe, honestly. And part of it has come from my own personal experience.” Recalling the silver orb in the skies near Bailey, he reflects, “I don’t know what it was, but I had that encounter. Like, I know that I know what I saw, and that’s what people say: I know what I saw. My experience was my experience, and that’s what I found in doing my fieldwork as well.”

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In new book, CU Boulder folklorist Jack Daly bridges the gap between academic research and Colorado legend.

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Top image: the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, with illustrative glow (Photo: Carol Highsmith/Wikimedia Commons)

Scholar studies humanity through skin and ink

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 17:51:52 +0000

Scholar studies humanity through skin and ink Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/29/2026 - 10:51

Chris Quirk

In his new book Indigenous Tattoo Traditions, CU Boulder alumnus and Tattoo Hunters host Lars Krutak highlights traditional techniques that sometimes date back millennia

Lars Krutak is not the kind of scholar who is content to simply write about his field. Krutak, a 1993 �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder graduate in art history and anthropology, is an internationally recognized researcher of the history and culture of tattoos and has about 40 of them himself. He even went under the knife for his research—a scarification ritual of the Kaningara people of Papua New Guinea, during which an elder made more than 400 incisions in his skin.

CU Boulder alumnus Lars Krutak (left) has studied with indigenous artists around the world, including Pius (right), one of the last Makonde tattoo masters of Mozambique. (Photo: Lars Krutak)

“That technique of incision tattooing where they cut you to create a scar and then they rub in the pigment is by far the most painful,” he says. “You're getting cut open like a piece of chicken, and then you're just bleeding all over place. It's hard.”

It’s one of the traditional techniques described in his recent book, Indigenous Tattoo Traditions: Humanity through Skin and Ink, lauded as a best science pick in the journal Nature.

The author of four books on tattooing and host of the Tattoo Hunters series on the Discovery Channel, Krutak became fascinated with the art and custom of tattoos 20 years ago. After completing his bachelor’s degree at CU Boulder, Krutuk began work on his master’s degree in anthropology and archaeology at the �Թ�� of Alaska Fairbanks. “I moved there in January of 1996,” he says. “When I got off the plane it was minus 55 degrees.”

Krutak was walking across the Fairbanks campus one day and saw a woman with three chin tattoos. “I didn't have any tattoos. I didn't know anything about tattoos. I didn't know indigenous people had tattoos,” Krutak recalls. “I could recognize that she was indigenous, and I got to know her later on, but that moment opened my eyes.”

His scholarly interest piqued, Krutak began digging through the university’s archives and extensive collection of artifacts. “I quickly realized that basically every indigenous society across the circumpolar north, from East Greenland to Siberia and seemingly everywhere in between, had a tattooing tradition at one time or another, but almost all I could find were records from 100 years ago and a few things from the 1950s.”

Krutak resolved to change that. “My main goal when I started doing this research was to preserve a history. No one in academic circles seemed interested in studying indigenous tattooing,” he says. “There were a lot of stigmas attached to tattooing at that time, and there are still some to this day. But I always felt that this was a significant part of the world's cultural heritage, and it was vanishing rapidly around the world, with no one going out there to document it.”

Permanent records

After learning about the tattooing tradition of the Yupik people of St. Lawrence Island in the northern Bering Sea, Krutak wrote to village councils and received permission to visit. What he found was that tattooing was on the wane among the Yupik, with just a small number of women who were in their 80s or 90s sustaining the custom.

In his recent book Indigenous Tattoo Traditions, author and CU Boulder alumnus Lars Krutak highlights work from indigenous artists around the world.

But he also found that the tradition went back about 2,000 years. The Yupik had, for two millennia, created anthropomorphic dolls, carved out of walrus ivory, that most likely represented ancestral personages. And the dolls had careful renditions of Yupik tattoos.

The significance of tattoos, for the Yupik people and for other cultures across the globe that Krutak has since visited—more than 40 to date—can be widely varied.

“If there is something that needs to be permanently recorded, tattoos can do that,” he says, adding that a tattoo can function as a record of hunting prowess, tally enemies killed in warfare or identify a person as a member of a particular clan or family. There are tattoos that denote a rite of passage, tattoos that invoke ancestral spirits and tattoos that relate to medicinal purposes, Krutak says.

One important meaning that bearers of tattoos have cited, across many cultures, is to identify the person in the afterlife, he says. In the case of the Yupik people of St. Lawrence Island, there are tattoos to help ancestors recognize the person so they can enter the sanctity of the afterlife. “I've been told, by many elders, that they would not be recognized as a true person from their culture without certain tattoos,” Krutak says. “This is one of the most common beliefs and purposes for tattoos across the indigenous world.”

‘Ancient marks of humanity’

What began with that serendipitous moment in Fairbanks has turned into a lifetime pursuit and a synthesis of two threads of Krutak’s interest that he cultivated at CU Boulder as an undergraduate: art history and anthropology. “I had two very formative professors,” he says. “Roland Bernier encouraged me to explore more deeply the connection between anthropology and art history, hence my double major. John Rohner was in charge of the museum studies program and introduced me to what a career in the museum field would look like.”

In some of Krutak’s travels, including his experience with the Yupik, he has encountered some of the last people in the culture who had or could share the history of tattoos in their culture, which increases his sense of urgency. “I firmly feel that indigenous tattooing deserves our attention, because it speaks volumes about what it means to be human,” says Krutak. “I think we can learn a lot about each other by studying and appreciating these ancient marks of humanity.”

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In his new book 'Indigenous Tattoo Traditions,' CU Boulder alumnus and 'Tattoo Hunter' host Lars Krutak highlights traditional techniques that sometimes date back millennia.

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Flashpoint: Taiwan

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 22:19:40 +0000

Flashpoint: Taiwan Rachel Sauer Fri, 01/09/2026 - 15:19

Bradley Worrell

In new book, CU Boulder political scientist Steve Chan highlights the dangers of a Sino-U.S. war over Taiwan and why the Chinese believe time is on their side in their goal for reunification

Just 110 miles off China’s coast lies Taiwan, an island described by some political pundits as “the most dangerous place in the world”—and the place most likely to ignite a war between China and the United States.

“Taiwan is the single greatest flashpoint for a possible conflict between the U.S. and China—and yet most Americans likely could not locate the island on a map,” muses Steve Chan, professor of distinction emeritus with the CU Boulder Department of Political Science, whose research focus is on Sino-American relations. “Nevertheless, the island’s significance is very real to both sides.”

Taiwan, which was ruled for a time by Japan as a colony, was returned to China after World War II. Following Japan’s surrender, China’s long-simmering civil war between the Nationalists and Communists broke out anew, resulting in a Communist victory in 1949 that forced the Nationalists to retreat to the island refuge, which they called the Republic of China on Taiwan.

Steve Chan, professor of distinction emeritus with the CU Boulder Department of Political Science, researches Sino-American relations and recently published the book Taiwan and the Danger of a Sino-American War.

Technically, the two sides are still at war.

Since President Richard Nixon visited Beijing in 1972, the United States had signed several communiques with China acknowledging that there is only one China—and that Taiwan is part of China. However, Washington continues to bolster Taiwan’s defense, stating that it wants to see the impasse between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait resolved peacefully.

For its part, Beijing has never renounced its goal to reunify Taiwan, by force, if necessary, claiming this goal involves its “core interest.” At the same time, continued U.S. support for Taiwan’s de facto independence fuels fears of an armed clash between it and China.

Chan explores these tensions in his book Taiwan and the Danger of a Sino-American War. Recently, Chan spoke with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine to get his thoughts on why China so badly wants to reclaim Taiwan, what’s at stake for both sides and what the future for reunification might look like. His responses have been condensed and edited for clarity.

Question: Why does China want Taiwan so badly, and why does America want Taiwan to remain independent?

Chan: I return your question with another question, which is: Why does Abraham Lincoln have such an exalted place in American history? Because he resisted the Confederacy’s secession and preserved the Union. That’s how Chinese think about Taiwan.

One of my quibbles with conventional reasoning is that people forget about their own history. They do not ask: What if the shoe is on the other foot? Therefore, the question is: How did the United States settle its own civil war? By bullets—not by ballots—in a very brutal civil war.

Taiwan is a flashpoint. The domestic political climate in neither the United States nor China is currently conducive to reasoned discourse. When it comes to national sovereignty and unity, these highly emotion-laden values do not yield to compromise.

It is abundantly clear, however, that should war break out over Taiwan’s status, it would be to the great detriment of all sides—China, Taiwan and the U.S., should it decide to intervene. It would be a disaster for the world to have the most powerful countries—the two leading countries in the world—to come to blows.

"Taiwan is important to the U.S. for strategic reasons. Washington cares about Taiwan because of its strategic position. It’s the linchpin—the pivot of the so-called ‘first island chain’ to contain China," says CU Boulder scholar Steve Chan. (Photo: Pixaby)

Question: You say in your book that U.S. backing for Taiwan is sometimes framed by policymakers as supporting democracy and human rights. You don’t agree?

Steve Chan: Not to make too fine a point, but U.S. invocations of human rights and democracy are, frankly, full of hot air, because the U.S. support for Taiwan was strongest under the Kuomintang (the Nationalists, in the 1950s and 1960s), when it was a single-party authoritarian government that ruled the island by martial law.

Taiwan is important to the U.S. for strategic reasons. Washington cares about Taiwan because of its strategic position. It’s the linchpin—the pivot of the so-called ‘first island chain’ to contain China. The first island chain seeks to box in China’s navy, preventing its access to the open Pacific.

The U.S. military is able to use Taiwan as a choke point, because Chinese ships—submarines especially—cannot transit to the open Pacific without going through some very narrow channels where the United States can monitor the Chinese ships’ movements.

If China were to conquer Taiwan, to control Taiwan, it would have broken through the first island chain, which goes from the Aleutian Islands, through Japan, Okinawa and Taiwan on to the Philippines. So, I see it more as a military contest rather than promotion of democracy and human rights. The U.S. containment policy continues today, and that’s how the Chinese see it.

Question: In your book you say that if China conquered Taiwan today it would be a Pyrrhic victory. Why is that?

Chan: In an invasion, Taiwan’s society would be shattered, and its economy would be destroyed. Also, the Chinese would lose the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese people. It would be a tough job for them to rule over a discontented, disaffected, angry populace. What do they have to gain by that?

As I say, Chinese leaders feel reasonably optimistic about the future, so why force your hand? Timing is everything. To paraphrase Otto von Bismark, Prussia’s chancellor, wise leaders try to hold on to God’s coattail to capitalize on an opportunity. The Chinese leaders have waited for over 75 years to reunify with Taiwan. They are patient, and they expect that ongoing trends would further increase their economic and military leverage over both Taiwan and the United States.

Question: You say that China is playing a ‘long game’ in Taiwan. What do you mean by that?

If war breaks out over Taiwan’s status, it would be to the great detriment of all sides—China, Taiwan and the U.S., should it decide to intervene, notes CU Boulder researcher Steve Chan.

Chan: As a country, your international standing depends on your international power, which in turn is based on your domestic economic strength. It’s your domestic economic growth and health that is the foundation for international power. Of course, domestic elite cohesion and elite-mass unity also matter for undertaking effective foreign policy.

In the U.S., we’ve been eating our seed corn—mortgaging our future and piling on debt. In effect, we are shifting the burden of paying back this debt to future generations of Americans—those who have not been born or who are not yet old enough to vote. In effect, current voters are borrowing from future generations.

For their part, the Chinese are betting on not only their own increasing strength but also the Americans’ own self-destructive behavior. Will the U.S. become disillusioned and distracted, as with its hasty withdrawal from Vietnam and Afghanistan, or become entangled in another part of the world such as Venezuela, Iran and Ukraine?

Meanwhile, Taiwan is still next door to China, and the Taiwanese realize that the Chinese will continue to be their neighbor, their largest trade partner and the destination of most of their foreign direct investment. Americans, in contrast, always have the option of “going home.” These are the thoughts on the Taiwanese people’s mind, and that’s what the Chinese are betting on.

Question: The U.S. has a policy called ‘strategic ambiguity’ as it relates to Taiwan. What is that exactly, and how does it help or hurt U.S. interests?

Chan: First of all, the United States itself does not recognize Taiwan as an independent country. Period. Unlike Ukraine, which is recognized by nearly all the countries in the world as an independent, sovereign country. The United States has agreed in several communiques with China that there’s only one China—and that Taiwan is part of China.

The United States has an interest in opposing China attacking Taiwan militarily and it is also opposed to Taiwan declaring its formal independence. So, in effect, the U.S. policy is to maintain the status quo, to sustain Taiwan’s de facto separation from China.

In his new book Taiwan and the Danger of a Sino-American War, CU Boulder scholar Steve Chan explores the tension between China's goal to reunify Taiwan—by force, if necessary—and continued U.S. support for Taiwan’s de facto independence, fueling fears of an armed clash between it and China.

The strategic ambiguity policy, in short, is something like this: We would decide later on whether or not we would fight, depending on the circumstances. In the meantime, we declare that we are opposed to China’s use of military force against Taiwan and, at the same time, any move by Taiwan to declare de jure independence. So, we’re keeping our policy ambiguous.

In that context, think of it like this: If someone threatens my daughter or my wife, people expect me to say, ‘I would definitely pummel you if you were to (attack) my daughter or wife,’ right? I would not say, ‘I may fight to you. I will keep my position ambiguous, so that I may fight you.’

People do not see that position as credible.

Recently, some former U.S. officials have promoted the idea of ‘strategic clarity’—to commit the U.S. definitely and publicly to Taiwan’s defense—a policy that is also fraught with many dangers.

Question: You say in your book that you could foresee a situation where the U.S. doesn’t fight for Taiwan if China invades. Given that the U.S. has supported Taiwan for seven decades and counting, how likely is that outcome?

Chan: The latest 2024 survey conducted by the Chicago Council of Global Affairs says that 65% of the American people are opposed to any military intervention on the part of the United States to fight for Taiwan. The majority are opposed to intervention; 35% are in support.

Now, there is usually a bump in public support for an administration's policy—whatever policy any administration adopts—at the onset of a crisis or war. It’s the so-called ‘Rally behind the flag syndrome.’

However, in six months, or in two years, when the conflict is not resolved in favor of the United States, we’ve seen that public support starts to decline precipitously. We’ve seen this with Vietnam and with Iraq and Afghanistan more recently. Some of these episodes have turned out very badly for the United States.

The tragedy of Vietnam and other conflicts stems from our exaggeration of national stake in a foreign conflict and over-estimation of our capability and stamina. We set up a test for ourselves, claiming that our intervention is a test of American will. We heighten the supposed stake we have in these places, and then when the end comes, the damage we have done to our reputation and credibility is all the more severe. We trap ourselves in our own rhetoric and self-defeating policies.

Question: If Taiwan hopes to avoid military clash with China, what might that look like? Perhaps like the former British colony of Hong Kong, which reunited with China in 1997 and which today theoretically operates under the ‘one country, two systems’ approach?

Chan: If they (Taiwan) negotiate with China now, maybe they can still get a reasonable deal. With the passage of time, their relative strength (compared to China) will continue to slip and they may not be able to count on continued U.S. support. Taiwan’s leverage is going to diminish over time.

But as long as Taiwan thinks that the U.S. has its back, they may still skate on very thin ice. Again, as some scholars have put it, it’s a matter of time—and China is playing the long game. The Chinese are betting that Americans will get distracted and tired, going to put out fires elsewhere, looking for other dragons to slay. The Taiwanese are also aware of this possibility.

"The United States has an interest in opposing China attacking Taiwan militarily and it is also opposed to Taiwan declaring its formal independence. So, in effect, the U.S. policy is to maintain the status quo, to sustain Taiwan’s de facto separation from China."

Question: Bottom line: Given the state of the world today, should we be more or less worried about the chance for a U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan?

Chan: So, a few quick points. No. 1: If there should be a war between the United States and China—and that’s a very big if—I believe Taiwan is the only flashpoint, the only reason for them to go to war. There are no other issues that are likely to get them into an armed conflict.

No. 2: I don’t see the Chinese initiating military actions against Taiwan today or in the near future, in the next, say, three, four, five or ten years.

No. 3: With that passage of time, China’s leverage will increase. Taiwan may very well end up succumbing to Chinese pressure—especially if the United States should prove unreliable.

No. 4: If hotheads in either Washington or Beijing come to power, then all bets are off. It very much depends on who will be the next president of the United States and the next president of China. I don’t expect war to break out today or tomorrow, but in the future, it matters who will be in charge. Also, it depends upon internal politics more than external politics, because wars can happen accidentally.

Question: If the president or a high-ranking government official asked you for a few foreign policy recommendations, what would you tell them?

Chan: Three words: Mind the gap. Watch your steps, that is. Avoid self-entrapment and self-inflicted wounds. Know when to place a big bet and when not to. I regret to say that, oftentimes, the United States has placed the wrong bet and backed the wrong horse: the Chinese Nationalists, the Saigon government, the Iraqi government and the government in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Make your domestic economy and domestic politics the priority over foreign policy. Get your house in order, economically and politically. That should be the No. 1 priority.

And understand the long-term and ongoing trends, so that you can go with the wind at your back rather than in your face. Finally, introspection and humility are important virtues in international as well as interpersonal relations.

Those are my simple pieces of advice for a prudent, wise foreign policy.

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In new book, CU Boulder political scientist Steve Chan highlights the dangers of a Sino-U.S. war over Taiwan and why the Chinese believe time is on their side in their goal for reunification.

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Top image: iStock

Classicist explores fantasy of law in an empire of violence

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 21:23:34 +0000

Classicist explores fantasy of law in an empire of violence Rachel Sauer Tue, 01/06/2026 - 14:23

Cody DeBos

In new book, CU Boulder classics Professor Zach Herz focuses on the law, the bureaucrat and the Roman Empire

When Zach Herz talks about Roman law, he says things like, “Maybe the biggest misconception is that the Roman Empire had the rule of law.”

The idea might surprise those unfamiliar with the legal timeline of the world’s most famous empire. But Herz and other legal scholars who study the period know there is truth behind this confounding theory.

Herz, an assistant professor of classics at the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder and trained attorney, explores the idea further in his newly published book, The God and the Bureaucrat: Roman Law, Imperial Sovereignty, and Other Stories. In it, he questions the long-standing assumption that Roman law was a systematic, even apolitical legal achievement.

Zach Herz, a CU Boulder assistant professor of classics, recently published The God and the Bureaucrat: Roman Law, Imperial Sovereignty, and Other Stories, in which he questions the long-standing assumption that Roman law was a systematic, even apolitical legal achievement.

Instead, beneath a layer of dry humor and self-awareness, Herz argues that the bureaucracy of Roman law functioned as a fantasy constructed to impose a sense of order on a world that was anything but ordered.

What we get wrong about Rome’s judicial system

Modern historians often describe Rome as a pristine model of legality adorned in tunics and stonework, the purest version of legal order and one that has persisted as long as its ideals.

“What I think happened is Romans lived in this world that was autocratic and violent and very scary,” Herz says. “Different people thought about this in different ways. For some, the thing they needed to do was think very hard about law.”

Viewing their ideas in an unblemished light ignores the political reality that existed throughout much of the Roman Empire. Emperors held unchecked power, assassinations were common and violence permeated daily life.

So, how did a society plagued by these problems end up producing one of the most detailed legal traditions in world history?

“The Romans were trying to imagine how a fairer state might be run. This exercise generated these massive tomes about how problems should be solved. Everyone who read them knew it wasn’t how problems were actually solved. So this thing we now see as perfect law coming from a perfect world was actually people in a very imperfect world imagining a perfect law,” Herz explains.

In other words, Roman law helped people imagine a world where the state operated predictably and justly—even if their lived experience told them otherwise.

Bureaucracy as comfort, law as theater

The illusion of a fair legal system in Rome was an important political tool. It helped stabilize Rome by giving people a language for justice and a sense they could navigate the state by rules, not whims.

In a world without modern civil institutions, that illusion was valuable. But even in today’s world, it’s still valuable, Herz argues.

“Law still does a lot of work in making our lives better by allowing us to just not think about things so much. It allows us to put certain possibilities of violence or extreme tragedy out of our minds so we can focus on the things we enjoy,” he says.

Roman law, in Herz’s view, was more about storytelling, allowing people to imagine what ethical government might look like, especially when the emperor—who held unchecked power—was corrupt, disinterested or 12 years old.

CU Boulder scholar Zach Herz argues that the bureaucracy of Roman law functioned as a fantasy constructed to impose a sense of order on a world that was anything but ordered.

“It's clear that Romans wanted to believe there were checks and balances. And in some ways, there were. There was a remedy for having a bad emperor, right? It was a knife,” Herz says.

“A lot of our legal sources come from a particularly turbulent period in Roman history, early third century. It's called the Severan period. And I don't think that's a coincidence. We see law moved to the center of Roman political culture when the emperor is an obviously ‘good’ guy. I'm not saying everyone agrees with that, I'm not saying it's true, but that's sort of how everything is represented,” he adds.

Known as the Pax Romana (Roman Peace), this second-century CE period is remembered for a stretch of “Five Good Emperors.” With a trusted leader in power, the legal system was not often on the minds of the populace.

But when a bad emperor took the throne, that narrative changed quickly.

“If everyone agrees the emperor is good, we don’t have a problem. He is going to be ethical. There are going to be checks and balances. It's when the emperor is bad, now you need rules,” Herz says.

When the emperor cites precedent

One case study in Herz’s book tracks how legal rhetoric changed under child emperors, of which Rome had several. Drawing on techniques he learned during a stint in a corporate law firm, Herz noticed something curious.

“Cites to precedent are pretty rare in imperial decision-making because you're the emperor. But they showed up a lot more when the emperor was a child,” he says.

One boy emperor from the Severan period was four times more likely to cite prior decisions than adult emperors. Herz argues this was a strategic effort by Roman officials to borrow credibility from past rulings.

“It was a way to say, ‘Even though the emperor is a kid, the system still works,’” he explains.

That system, of course, was fragile. Even so, its stories of order held power.

“If the emperor is 12, you do not want a 12-year-old boy making decisions for you. You’d rather have lawyers doing that. You’d rather have statues doing that. You’d rather have coherent prospective guidance than whims, right? So, people decided to lean into the legal system,” Herz says.

Vestiges of the past

Although the Roman Empire is long gone, its influence endures in ways that we can see traces of throughout the modern world. In fact, most of continental Europe still bases its legal codes on Roman foundations. Even Louisiana maintains vestiges of Roman law.

“It was that or witches,” Herz quips. “They built their own laws on that imagined Roman Empire because that’s just what they had to work with.”

More importantly, Herz argues that we’ve inherited the Roman idea that states ought to operate through law. From Rome, we came to believe that legitimacy comes from procedure and precedent.

“Even in places that don’t explicitly follow Roman law, those notions are still deeply, deeply classical,” he says.

"Law still does a lot of work in making our lives better by allowing us to just not think about things so much. It allows us to put certain possibilities of violence or extreme tragedy out of our minds so we can focus on the things we enjoy."

That belief can be comforting, but also misleading, Herz says. As in Rome, modern legal systems can sometimes obscure violence, exclusion or inequality under layers of ritualized language and illusory checks and balances.

Imagined order, real impact

So, what can we gain by not upholding Roman law as a perfect blueprint, but instead treating it as a cultural artifact? For Herz, the answer is a better way to understand the interplay between power and imagination in human society.

“A huge amount of what law does is create this mirage of order. And it's backed up by force in unpredictable and confusing ways, if you really want to get into it,” he says.

Despite that ambiguity, Herz doesn’t see law as sinister. Nor does he see Rome’s imagined structures for a utopian world as malevolent. He believes it is human.

Our instinct for structure and fairness drive us to create something bigger than ourselves to believe in.

“You don’t have to think something totally real to think it’s incredibly useful. For most of us, the lives we want to make for ourselves don't require us to get into deep thinking about violence or crime and law prevents us from having to get into it. That's a very important gift that law gives to us,” he says.

For Herz, what makes Roman law worth studying is not that it worked inherently, but that it worked because people wanted it to.

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In new book, CU Boulder classics Professor Zach Herz focuses on the law, the bureaucrat and the Roman Empire.

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Charting the rise and fall of great sea powers

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 17:29:31 +0000

Charting the rise and fall of great sea powers Rachel Sauer Thu, 09/18/2025 - 11:29

Bradley Worrell

CU alum’s book examines how the fate of the Netherlands, Great Britain and the United States as economic and political powers has been deeply intertwined with their ability to project power via the seas

Colin Flint, a �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder PhD geography graduate and professor of political geography at Utah State �Թ��, researches the rise and fall of great world powers.

It’s a topic beyond simple academic interest to Flint, who was born in 1965 and raised in England during a period of seismic change in the country.

“At the time, Britain was still struggling to figure out that it wasn’t the world’s greatest power anymore, so my socialization and political coming of age was in a declined power,” he says. Additionally, Flint says being raised in the busy ferry port of Dover made a powerful impression on him by highlighting the country’s long history as a maritime nation.

Colin Flint, a CU Boulder PhD geography graduate, researches the rise and fall of great world powers.

“Dover definitely has influenced me, being so close to the water,” he says. “My high school was on a hill overlooking the harbor, which at the time was the busiest ferry port in the world, with ships going back and forth to France and Belgium. So, the notion was very much rooted in me that Britain drew its power, historically, from the sea.”

At one point, Flint entertained the idea of joining the Royal Navy before setting his career sights on academia. He obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Britain, then pursued his PhD in geography at the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder thanks to fortuitous connections between his undergrad mentor and CU Boulder Department of Geography Professor John O’Loughlin.

“I moved to United States of America in 1990 to attend university, and the literature at the time and discussions were all very declinist. It was very much, ‘America has gone down the tubes,’” he says. “Broadly speaking, I moved from a declined power into a declining power, or so I thought at the time.”

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Flint says the idea of America as a declining power was largely replaced with a triumphalist narrative that saw the U.S. as the world’s only remaining superpower.

Ideas about what makes a country an economic and political superpower—and how a country can lose its status as a hegemonic power—had been percolating in Flint’s brain for years when he recently published his book Near and Far Waters: The Geopolitics of Seapower. The book specifically looks at the Netherlands, Great Britain and the United States for context on how the countries used sea power to project their economic and political influence across the globe.

Flint spoke with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine about his book, while also offering insights on how current events are shaping the outlook for the United States and the world. His answers have been edited for clarity and condensed.

Question: What is the context for your book’s title: Near and Far Waters?

Flint: There are legal terms about coasts and the exclusive economic zone around the country’s coastlines, but I’m not using it in that way. I’m thinking about an area of ocean in which a country has interest and influence over and off its coastline.

"Near and Far Waters" by CU Boulder alumnus Colin Flint focuses on the Netherlands, Great Britain and the United States for context on how the countries used sea power to project their economic and political influence across the globe.

That is an important piece of ocean for a country because there’s resource exploitation, but it’s also a matter of security. If a country wants to protect itself from potential invasion, it needs to control those waters off its coastline—it’s near waters.

Some countries, once they’ve established control of their near waters, have the ability and desire to project beyond that, across the oceans into what would then become its far waters. If you think about Great Britain in the context of the British Empire, once it fought off European threats to its coastline—its near waters—it was then able to develop the sea power to establish its empire. It was in African far waters, it was in Indian far waters, in Middle East far waters and so on.

Another good example of this would be how the United States of America, over the course of history, pushed other countries out of its near waters. The Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico are good examples, where Spanish and British influence were ended over the 1800s and 1900s. And then by establishing control through annexation of Hawaii and the purchase of Alaska, America developed its Pacific near waters, too, which it expanded upon through the course of World War II, pushing the Japanese back and establishing bases in Okinawa, Japan; the Philippines; and Guam, etc.

Question: One of your chapters is titled ‘No Island is an Island.’ What do you mean by that?

Flint: I was talking about how the projection of sea power requires the control of islands. Often, the geopolitical goal and benefit of controlling an island is not the island itself—it’s how it enables projection of power further, or how it hinders other countries’ projection of power by being near sea lines of communication that you can have a base to try and disrupt. For example, when Hawaii became part of the United States, it allowed the U.S. to project power across the Pacific. Again, it’s not the island itself—it’s the projection of power across an ocean.

Projecting sea power is about more than just having a strong navy.

Question: If one country’s far waters extend into the near waters of another country, that would seem to be a recipe for conflict, would it not?

Flint: That is the kicker, of course, that a sea power’s far waters are another country’s near waters. And it has historically led to conflicts and even wars. It’s always involved violence—and not just between great powers and lesser powers, but also violence against the people living on islands or in coastal lands where sea powers are looking to establish dominance and exploit resources.

Question: China has been rapidly expanding its navy in recent years. Is it simply beefing up its sea forces to protect its near waters, or is it looking to supplant the U.S. as the dominant sea power? Or are there other motives at play?

Flint: You often see in newspaper articles written in the United States and maybe other Western countries that China has the biggest navy in the world. This always makes me laugh because, yes, it’s got hundreds and hundreds of tiny little coastal defense vessels, but even now that it has two aircraft carriers, it does not have the ability to project power like the United States of America, which has 11 carrier groups. So, I think that should always be recognized.

The other sort of trope that’s often wielded out there, which I think we need to question, is: The West is worried about China developing a navy, because it will allow China to disrupt trade networks. Well, wait a minute. China is very dependent on imports, especially of fuel or energy. Additionally, it is the world’s largest trading economy, and it’s worried about the robustness of its domestic economy. They cannot maintain their economic growth based purely on their domestic market, so they need to have a global economic presence for markets and for securing inputs into their economy.

Putting those two things together, it makes no sense why China would want to disrupt global trade. In fact, the country’s reaction to President Trump’s sanctions tells us that the last thing China wants is global trade disrupted. They’re very worried about the fragility of their own economy and whether that leads to social unrest, etc. The flip side of that is how the West could really hurt China by blocking those trade routes to prevent energy imports into China and exports.

China is definitely trying to grow its navy. I think what makes it so interesting is its simultaneous attempt to have a navy that can defend its near waters while perhaps preventing the operation of the United States in its far waters. To what extent China is attempting to establish a presence in its far waters is less clear.

"A sea power’s far waters are another country’s near waters. And it has historically led to conflicts and even wars," notes scholar Colin Flint. ("Naval Battle of 1812," Painting, Oil on Canvas; By Rodolfo Claudus; 1962/U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command)

Question: From your book, it seems like you have some serious concerns about the potential for a serious conflict arising from disputes over near and far waters?

Flint: In fact, I’ve never been so concerned or worried in my career, to be honest with you. When I started teaching my class on political geography many moons ago, let’s say in the mid-1990s, I used to start off with some structural model of global political change, which essentially says, we have cycles of war and peace, for the want of a better term.

And I asked my students to try and get them engaged: ‘Picture yourself in 2025. What are you going to be doing?’ It was staggering to me how many of them believed that they would be millionaires and already retired (laughs).

The point of that was that the model I was using predicted another period of global war, starting in 2025. I don’t do that exercise anymore, because it isn’t funny; it’s really quite serious. So yes, the risk of war is high, and I think it could emerge in a number of different places. One focus is on the South China Sea, the near waters of China, as that is clearly a potential flashpoint. Taiwan is the obvious focal point of what that conflict would look like.

I also wonder about potential flashpoints of conflict in Chinese far waters—and that could include the Arctic and the Northern Atlantic, because another factor that has to be considered is global climate change and the increasing possibility of a trade route through the North Pole, which would cut trade times from China into European markets considerably. Those waters represent U.S. near waters, so …

Question: Do you envision any sort of viable alternatives to a conflict between world powers over near and far waters, especially in today’s environment?

Flint: My motivation with the book was with an eye to waving some sort of flag about how to think about peace rather than war. Most of our lenses are national lenses. If we keep on this pattern of a national lens, then I see a strong likelihood to repeat these cycles of near and far water sea powers, which have always involved a period of global war.

We need to change that lens. We need to have a global view as to why countries are always seeking far waters, entering other people’s near waters and why that can lead to conflict.

Today, we’re facing a humanity-scale problem, which is global climate change. Is that the thing that will tell us we need to work together, rather than compete? I’m not saying it is; I’m saying, if I see a glimmer of optimism to your question, that’s it.

Question: Based upon your research, if a country loses its status as a hegemonic power, can it later recover that status? And, in the context of today’s world, what might things look like if the U.S. lost its hegemonic status?

Flint: The short answer is no, based upon past history, a country that loses its hegemonic status has not been able to reclaim it once it’s gone.

But to your second question, it goes back to the question about what China’s intentions are. In American popular culture, where every sports team has to be No. 1, even if they are eighth in some Mickey Mouse conference, there is this obsession that there has to be a singular winner or champion.

What I’m saying is that we shouldn’t just assume that if the United States declines there will be another emergent dominant power in the world. It’s quite possible that if the United States declines, what might emerge would be a multipolar world, although I don’t know what that might look like.

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Top image: A squadron of the Royal Navy running down the Channel and An East Indiaman preparing to sail, by artist Samuel Atkins (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

When the microbiome is a family matter

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 16:00:54 +0000

When the microbiome is a family matter Rachel Sauer Mon, 09/15/2025 - 10:00

Cody DeBos

CU Boulder researcher Jessica Finlay wrote and recently published a book with her father about how microbes unlock whole-body health

When Jessica Finlay moved from Canada to Minneapolis for graduate school, she didn’t expect microbes to be part of her academic journey. Now an assistant professor of geography at the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder with a focus on health, neighborhoods and aging, she’s still an unlikely candidate to write a book about the body’s microbiome.

Yet, alongside her father, Brett Finlay, a professor of biochemistry and microbiology at The �Թ�� of British Columbia, that’s exactly what she has become.

Together, the pair wrote The Microbiome Master Key: Harness Your Microbes to Unlock Whole-Body Health and Lifelong Vitality. Their new book blends cutting-edge science with practical advice for healthier everyday living.

Jessica Finlay (left), a CU Boulder assistant professor of geography, and her father, Brett Finlay (right), a professor of biochemistry and microbiology at The �Թ�� of British Columbia, together wrote the recently published The Microbiome Master Key: Harness Your Microbes to Unlock Whole-Body Health and Lifelong Vitality. (Photo: Jessica Finlay)

But hiding below the science is a family story that bridges disciplines and perspectives to give readers a better understanding of the hidden ecosystem within everyone.

From aging in place to microbial studies

Jessica’s primary research focuses on how environments affect health, aging and quality of mid- to later-life. She regularly delves into what it means to grow old in different neighborhoods and seeks to understand what people need to stay safe, active and connected.

“I’m a health geographer and environmental gerontologist,” she explains. “I’d never considered microbes as part of my research, but in conversations with my dad, I realized that they are everywhere and underpin many of the processes I study.”

Her interest in aging began during grad school, when she volunteered at community programs for older adults in north Minneapolis. That experience—and the changing urban landscape she witnessed—helped her to develop a dissertation focused on the lived experience of aging in place.

One recurring fear she identified while interviewing 125 older adults was the threat of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Hearing their concerns eventually propelled Jessica to study how neighborhood environments affect dementia risk.

But it wasn’t until she started talking more about her work with her father, a long-time microbial science researcher, that she considered an even smaller-scale environmental factor.

“Microbes are our invisible neighbors and lifelong partners that fundamentally shape our health and well-being,” Jessica says. “When participants in my study are able to exercise, get outside, and socialize, they are swapping microbes and picking up new ones.”

Eat dirt

In 2016, Brett published Let Them Eat Dirt: How Microbes Can Make Your Child Healthier, a popular science book focused on how early microbial exposure supports childhood development.

The public response was positive, but readers kept circling back to one question: “What about the rest of us?”

Preparing for a follow-up, Brett knew his daughter would be the perfect collaborator. Together, they set out to explain gut health in accessible language and explore how microbial ecosystems influence nearly every part of the human body.

The Microbiome Master Key: Harness Your Microbes to Unlock Whole-Body Health and Lifelong Vitality blends cutting-edge science with practical advice for healthier everyday living.

“This book talks about microbiomes all over the body, not just the gut. It also looks at most of the body’s organs and the effect of microbiomes on them. It also provides a list of prescriptive things you can do based on science to improve your health,” Brett says.

That holistic approach was important to both him and Jessica. While Brett reviewed thousands of publications across microbiology and immunology, Jessica took the lead in translating technical insights into clear, practical prose. She also infused the book with narrative storytelling, expert interviews and examples from everyday life.

“We wanted to distill an overwhelming breadth of information into key evidence and studies so that readers have the facts to make health decisions based on what’s right for them,” Jessica explains.

Their core message? Taking care of your microbial health isn’t inherently complicated, but it often requires us to rethink how we move through the world.

As Brett puts it, “Look after your microbes and they will look after you. Eat healthy, exercise, stress less, sleep well, and have a good community of family and friends. All these factors really impact the microbiome.”

Collaborating for a cause

Collaborating on a book is never easy. Doing so across disciplines poses its own challenges, and during the years-long process, Jessica and Brett had to overcome many of them. But they both found the experience deeply rewarding.

Jessica says, “We wanted to continue the conversation from my dad’s first book. I was initially apprehensive to write together, since my depth of knowledge is health geography and environmental gerontology, not microbiology. But it was a true pleasure to collaborate and each [of us brought] distinct skills and knowledge to the book.”

Now, the Finlays hope their book will help people make informed choices about their health, whether it’s deciding if a probiotic is worth the hype or learning how to create healthier environments at home.

“Thankfully it’s relatively simple and hopefully affordable to support your microbes. Eat an array of plant-based foods. Get outside, move your body, and connect with people to swap both conversation and microbes,” Jessica says.

For her, science is about bridging the gap between research and real life—and it’s reflected in her work.

“Life throws us many unexpected situations,” she says, “and knowing the current state of science and what sources to trust can help us make the best decisions for us and those we care about.”

Brett agrees, summing up their shared hope for the book’s impact, saying, “I hope it makes readers aware of the microbiome and how it can affect our well-being.”

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CU Boulder researcher Jessica Finlay wrote and recently published a book with her father about how microbes unlock whole-body health.

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Secrets, spies and a stirred Vesper

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 19:53:24 +0000

Secrets, spies and a stirred Vesper Rachel Sauer Tue, 09/02/2025 - 13:53

Cody DeBos

CU alum mixes CIA career into newly published cocktail memoir

When Robert Dannenberg (IntlAf’78) began photographing cocktails against the backdrop of mountain views from his home in Nederland, Colorado, during the COVID-19 lockdown, it started as a casual hobby. He’d send the photos to a group of retired CIA colleagues, all of them still close after decades of fieldwork and covert operations.

“One of them suggested putting them together in a book,” Dannenberg recalls. “That was the wife of my co-author, Joseph Mullin.”

What started as a way to pass the time soon stirred up something more refined.

CU Boulder alumnus Rob Dannenberg (left) at The Fountain Inn in Washington, D.C., enjoying an Old Fashioned (the cocktail mentioned on p. 52 of A Spy Walked Into A Bar). (Photo: Rob Dannenberg)

“We were reminiscing about various points in our careers where cocktails were important in helping us get the mission accomplished,” he says.

Soon after, A Spy Walked Into A Bar: A Practitioner’s Guide to Cocktail Tradecraft was born. The book blends real-life CIA stories from Dannenberg and Mullin’s careers with the drinks that helped mark the end of a successful operation or the forging of a crucial relationship.

“Cocktails and espionage are linked in real life as well as in fiction like the Ian Fleming novels,” Dannenberg says.

But his book isn’t a James Bond thriller. It’s a memoir in disguise, served shaken, not stirred.

A Cold War toast

For much of his life, Dannenberg worked in the shadows. Before eventually becoming the CIA’s former chief of operations for the Counterterrorism Center, chief of the Central Eurasia Division and head of the Information Operations (Cyber) Center, he was a field agent with boots on the ground.

“I was mostly a Russia guy and did two tours of duty in Moscow,” he says. “I was responsible for the agency’s global collection operations in Russia. Truly important and fascinating work if you consider what is going on in the world today.”

Dannenberg’s career was punctuated by moments where toasting a drink meant more than relaxation. Lifting a glass meant trust, camaraderie or closure. The stories in his book don’t spill classified secrets, but they do offer a glimpse into the rarely discussed human rituals of intelligence work.

The Vesper and the Manhattan

While his book includes everything from the Vesper Martini to bourbon sippers among a carefully curated selection of 58 cocktails, two stand out for Dannenberg.

“My favorite from the book is the Vesper Martini—probably the cocktail most truly associated with Fleming’s James Bond,” he says. “If you watch the movie Casino Royale with Daniel Craig, you will know what I mean.”

But when Dannenberg settles in for a drink of his own, he switches spirits. “If I’m in the mood for a whiskey cocktail, I’m a Manhattan guy,” he adds. “There are several variations of the Manhattan presented in the book.”

These two drinks have special connotations for Dannenberg, who associates each with specific operations he took part in during his career. Readers can find those stories within the pages, he promises.

Rob Dannenberg began photographing cocktails against the backdrop of mountain views from his home in Nederland, Colorado, during the COVID-19 lockdown, sending the photos to a group of retired CIA colleagues. (Photo: Rob Dannenberg)

Better than briefs

After decades of writing intelligence briefings, reports and operational memos, Dannenberg says that A Spy Walked Into A Bar offered a new kind of writing freedom.

Mostly.

“Writing the book was a lot more fun than writing intelligence reports!” he says with a grin. “But one of the agreements you make with the agency when you have a top-secret security clearance is that you have to submit to them for approval anything you write.”

Dannenberg sent in a draft of the manuscript, and, in true CIA fashion, it was returned with numerous redactions.

“I thought the redactions might look amusing to the reader, so we went ahead and left the blacked-out text in the book,” he adds.

Making a difference

Dannenberg’s path to the CIA began at the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder, where he studied international affairs.

“I grew up wanting to work overseas,” he says. “While at CU, I narrowed it down to three options: State Department, U.S. military or CIA.”

The CIA called first, and he answered. Dannenberg served through tense political shifts, cyber conflicts and counterterrorism operations during his career. Along the way, he learned the personal cost of the work.

“Being an operations officer (or case officer) in the CIA isn’t easy,” he says. “There is a lot of pressure, a lot of time away from home and family, plenty of risk and times that require patience and persistence.”

Still, Dannenberg believes it was worth it.

“I was privileged to experience things in my career, both good and bad, that I would not have experienced in any other profession. My time at CU set the stage for a career that was more than I could have ever imagined,” he says.

Now retired, Dannenberg remains in touch with many of the colleagues who shaped his career and the book. He also hopes that today’s CU students will consider international affairs and public service.

“We live in dangerous times, and you can make a difference,” he says.

If A Spy Walked Into A Bar proves anything, it’s that even in the secretive world of espionage, stories still find a way to be told— even if the best parts are blacked out.

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CU alum mixes CIA career into newly published cocktail memoir.

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Prof focuses on the brothers behind the fairy tales

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 21:37:22 +0000

Prof focuses on the brothers behind the fairy tales Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/25/2025 - 15:37

Clint Talbott

CU Boulder’s Ann Schmiesing, professor of German and Scandinavian Studies, publishes first English-language biography in more than five decades on Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Once upon a time, a professor volunteered to develop a college course on German fairy tales. She did as she promised, but that was not the end.

“Once I prepared the course and began teaching it, I was just smitten,” says Ann Schmiesing, professor of German and Scandinavian studies at the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder, now a world-renowned scholar of the Brothers Grimm.

CU Boulder scholar Ann Schmiesing is author of The Brothers Grimm: A Biography, published last year to wide acclaim and reviewed in publications from The New Yorker to The Times of London.

Schmiesing has written two books on the Brothers Grimm. The most recent, The Brothers Grimm: A Biography, was published last year to wide acclaim and reviewed in publications from The New Yorker to The Times of London. It is the first English-language biography in more than five decades on Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, whose first names (and life stories) are less well-known than their usual moniker, the Brothers Grimm.

Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859) are widely known as collectors of fairy tales, but they were also mythographers, linguists, librarians, civil servants and philologists who, among other things, strove to preserve key elements of German culture.

They produced a vast body of work on mythology and medieval literature, launched on a monumental German dictionary (which they had completed through the letter F by the time they both died), and made groundbreaking linguistic discoveries.

“By and large, people don’t know a whole lot about the Brothers Grimm, and that was one of the reasons why I wanted to write the book,” says Schmiesing, who is also the senior vice chancellor for strategic initiatives at CU Boulder.

While teaching the course on the Grimm fairy tales, she noted that students were often familiar with some version of the tales, principally through Disney versions or other contemporary retellings of stories like Snow White.

Teaching moral lessons

The Grimms released seven complete and 10 abridged versions of the tales, and the brothers revised the tales over time. Starting with the second edition, for instance, doves peck out the evil stepsisters’ eyes in Cinderella as a punishment for their wickedness. Violence in the tales is rarely gratuitous, Schmiesing says, but in Cinderella and other tales, the Grimms sometimes added violence to teach a moral lesson.

As they edited and revised the tales, she adds, they mediated among different versions and revised them to reflect 19th-century bourgeois norms. For instance, female characters in some tales contribute less dialogue in later editions, Schmiesing says: “Their thoughts are simply paraphrased.”

Similarly, the Grimms adjusted “Hansel and Gretel” to reflect then-contemporary notions of women. In an earlier version, the culprit was their biological mother but in a later version of this tale, a stepmother abandons the children.

“They change that because they feel like they can’t possibly suggest that a biological mother would abandon her children,” Schmiesing says, adding, “Again, that's playing into their 19th-century ideas of women and motherhood.”

The Brothers Grimm: A Biography by CU Boulder Professor Ann Schmiesing is the first English-language biography in more than five decades on Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, whose first names (and life stories) are less well-known than their usual moniker, the Brothers Grimm.

Additionally, some female characters are initially more independent than they appear in later editions, “so the Grimms kind of lessened their independence and increased their dependence on male characters,” Schmiesing says.

Over time, the Grimms also made the tales folksier, adding rhymes and idioms. And the Grimms did not think the tales were just kid stuff. They saw the tales as being interesting to all ages and relevant to German culture, Schmiesing says.

Germany in the Grimms’ lifetime was not politically united, and it was wracked by the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Their own part of Germany was occupied by the French for a time, and “so they see collecting and publishing fairy tales and other texts . . . as a way forward for Germany,” Schmiesing says.

In the Grimms’ view, if Germans could appreciate their cultural heritage, perhaps they’d be able to assert themselves as a politically united entity: “So it might seem to be naive, but they really thought that their scholarly works, their collections, would also be a path out of the wars,” Schmiesing says.

Asking deep questions

Their scholarship was even broader, however. The brothers were interested in deep questions, such as how languages developed over time, how customs developed over time, how literary texts developed over time, “and that to them is all interwoven.”

Jacob Grimm, in particular, devoted much of his scholarly life not only to literature, but also to legal customs, linguistic study and his German Grammar, which includes his discovery of what is now called Grimm’s Law.

“It’s been said that Grimm’s Law was as important to the humanities as Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is to the sciences,” Schmiesing says.

They did all of this on top of full careers as librarians, university professors, and, in Jacob’s case, a civil servant.

“It’s just extraordinary, the volume of scholarship that they produced,” Schmiesing says, noting their “sheer accomplishments” of “incredible breadth.”

Of the tales themselves, Schmiesing says Rumpelstiltskin is among her favorites. “It is one of the most enigmatic tales in the Grimms’ collection.” The tale can be viewed as being about the forced labor of female characters, disease and disability, or the meaning of spinning straw into gold.

In addition to these and other possible meanings, the tale changes significantly between versions, she notes. In an early version, the woman despairs not because she can’t spin straw into gold, but because she wants to spin yarn but can spin only gold.

“Also, who is Rumpelstiltskin, and what does he represent?”

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CU Boulder’s Ann Schmiesing, professor of German and Scandinavian Studies, publishes first English-language biography in more than five decades on Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

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Top illustration: by Walter Crane from "Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm" (1886).

‘There’s no standard way to be Indian or Indigenous’

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 18:57:35 +0000

‘There’s no standard way to be Indian or Indigenous’ Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/13/2025 - 12:57

Chris Quirk

In new memoir, CU Boulder alumnus Tony Tekaroniake Evans eschews narrow notions of identity, especially Indigenous identity

Of all his childhood memories, one in particular sticks in the mind of Tony Tekaroniake Evans (DistSt'86, focusing on cultural anthropology, biology and geography): In his third-grade class in Georgia, while making decorations for Thanksgiving, his classmates began asking about American Indians.

“Where are they? Can we meet them?” they asked.

“I’m an Indian!” said the young Evans, who had recently begun to learn more about his Mohawk heritage. His teacher replied that, no, the Indians were gone. “The teacher said Indians were extinct,” Evans recalls. “That was a little traumatic, and I realized I was going to have to take what I was learning in school with a grain of salt. After all, my grandmother spoke Mohawk in our house.”

In his new memoir, CU Boulder alumnus Tony Tekaroniake Evans explores history, identity and society through a personal lens, encouraging readers to eschew received and narrow notions of identity, especially Indigenous identity.

Evans recounts the episode in his new memoir, Believing in Indians: a Mixed-Blood Odyssey, published by Basalt Books. In the book, Evans explores history, identity and society through a personal lens. Along the way, he encourages readers to eschew received and narrow notions of identity, especially Indigenous identity.

The author of three books, Evans is also a journalist, historian, columnist and public speaker. He began his career writing for the Santa Fe New Mexican and the Taos News newspapers and since then has written for A&E Networks, History.com, High Country News and Smithsonian’s American Indian magazine. In addition, he has thousands of reporting bylines over the past three decades for the Idaho Mountain Express, his hometown newspaper in Ketchum, Idaho.

“People are so much more interesting than we can realize by glancing at their appearance, or making stereotypical assumptions about someone’s background, knowledge and interests,” he says. “It’s important to hear the details, because details bring us together as human beings, and that’s what I hope I’m doing with my book.”

Telling family stories

The jarring incident in the classroom spurred Evans to ask more questions about his family and background.

“My mother started telling me stories, and that my name, Tekaroniake, meant ‘two skies’ in Mohawk,” he says. “My Aunt Nadine had a medicine pouch made for me, and my mentor, who was also my mother’s childhood friend, Ed Two-Axe Earley, sent me some books from the reservation. That’s where my life journey began—but it didn’t end there.”

One of the questions about identity that Evans weaves through the book is who decides, and on what grounds? “If you tell people you’re Indian, they’re often going to have all these boxes to check—language, fluency, culture. Are you from the reservation? Do you know your history? It just goes on and on,” he says.

“When do you stop being Indian in somebody else’s eyes? When you get a vacuum cleaner? When you do yoga? There’s no standard way to be Indian or Indigenous. My Jewish grandfather was taken in by the Mohawks. He married my grandmother and worked with them building the Manhattan skyline. Did he stop being Jewish?”

In his book, Evans tells ironically of receiving his official registration “as an Indian and a member of the Mohawks of Kanawà:ke Band” from the registrar of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development of Canada. “Becoming Indian is no simple process,” he writes. “Today, as a newly minted official Indian, I could go down to a nearby reservation and legally take peyote, stay up all night and visit with ancestors in the spirit world. Or I could just stay home and watch PBS Masterpiece programming and have a glass of wine.”

Time spent at CU was rewarding

His interest and investigation of his own identity led Evans to study cultural anthropology at the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder.

“I learned a lot of wonderful things at CU and absolutely loved my time there,” he says. “I found that I could learn from many cultures, not just my own. And I learned to interpret Iroquois traditions in my own way. Our Great Law of Peace, perhaps a thousand years old, stems from an experience of compassion and understanding for the pain of others, and how to heal from violence and move on from retribution to a better way of life.”

Evans’ book ranges across cultural topics and religious traditions, and provides numerous history lessons along the way, but stays firmly in the personal throughout. “I realized that the book needed to be about my story and emerging sense of Native values, and all of its quirks and weirdness, and heartache and humor,” he explains.

“Memoir is a really important art form. It is personal and subjective, and also specific. It gets deeper than the ethnographic generalities that people recount in much of the scholarly writing on native history and culture.” Evans also makes a case for what Indigenous people and traditions have to offer the world in a turbulent and uncertain moment: “Indigenous cultures can provide spiritual renewal and a sustainable path forward for humanity.”

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In new memoir, CU Boulder alumnus Tony Tekaroniake Evans eschews narrow notions of identity, especially Indigenous identity.

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The ‘happy haunting’ found in letting words lead

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 13:30:00 +0000

The ‘happy haunting’ found in letting words lead Rachel Sauer Thu, 07/24/2025 - 07:30

Cody DeBos

For poet Stephanie Couey, the inspiration for her new chapbook began with a walk

Some poems begin with grand ideas. Others start with a walk.

For Stephanie Couey, an assistant teaching professor in the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder’s Program for Writing and Rhetoric, inspiration often strikes when her feet are moving. The rhythm comes first, and meaning follows.

For Stephanie Couey, an assistant teaching professor in the CU Boulder Program for Writing and Rhetoric, writing inspiration often strikes when her feet are moving.

“Some cluster of words that feels good or rhythmic or perhaps gross in a good way comes to mind,” she says. “I’ll record it in my phone, and everything else usually unfolds outward from there.”

That’s how many of the poems in her latest chapbook, “Quiet Pulse,” began. Fragments of sound or texture unearthed through movement and slowly shaped into verse according to their natural rhythms.

Feeling the language

Rather than starting with a theme in mind, Couey trusts her internal response to language—how syllables feel in the mouth and rhythms pulse on the page—to guide the outcome. Couey’s is a deeply embodied approach to writing that treats poetry not just as a literary act, but also as a physical one.

“I approach the writing process as rooted in the body, which it is,” she says. “I write focused mainly on sound, but I’ll almost inevitably see narrative threads emerge in the process.”

This sensory foundation creates space for emotion, memory and meaning to filter in organically.

“I never set out to write a poem about, for instance, gendered violence, late-stage capitalism or the endangerment and loss of arctic wildlife. But if it’s whirring around in my mind, it will likely come through.”

As Couey penned the poems that would eventually become “Quiet Pulse,” she started to notice they shared textures, recurring images and a certain emotional tenor.

“I don’t know that there’s an originating story or idea in particular,” she says. “But as the writing of these poems happened, I started to see something that a grouping of them was doing that felt related.”

“The title is intended to reflect some of those threads,” Couey notes, “a state of being near death, of being underwater, and/or having the body be silenced—all of which are states the speaker of the poems inhabits throughout the project.”

No shortcuts

Despite their spontaneous beginnings, Couey’s poems are far from effortless.

“They all took a long time to shape, but some came out in draft-form much faster than others,” she admits. “I think it’s like running or any kind of exercise. Some days you are just faster or more efficient, even if you prepared in all the same ways. I wish I knew what made the difference!”

Her willingness to move at the poem’s pace, rather than forcing her own deadline or structure upon it, mirrors her approach to teaching.

“Hopefully these poems create an experience of both beauty and abjection that lingers. A kind of happy haunting,” says Stephanie Couey.

In the classroom, Couey encourages students to pay attention to what their writing is already doing rather than make it conform to a formula.

“When student writers put any amount of effort into their work, they are almost always doing something worthwhile, and I want them to see that and focus on that, then figure out how to move outward from there,” she says.

The same ethos guides her as a poet.

“I try to treat my own poems in the same way, asking: What is the work on the page already trying to do, and how do I make it do that thing more effectively?”

Couey and her students also share a practice that’s become one of her favorite parts of the writing process: embodied journaling. The exercise encourages students to write freely and regularly, without self-editing or judgment, while tuning in to their bodies and surroundings.

“They often speak to the value of writing unself-consciously and engaging with their bodies, their breath and their surroundings,” Couey says, “and of slowing down and truly processing their thoughts and emotions.”

This sentiment, which frequently appears in students’ end-of-semester reflections, reminds Couey to keep her own notebook handy to scribble a thought at the bus stop or capture a mid-walk rhythm before it slips away.

Happy haunting

When “Quiet Pulse” found a home with Dancing Girl Press, Couey was thrilled. Now that her chapbook has been published, she hopes readers walk away from it with a lasting impression, if not a fully definable one.

“Hopefully these poems create an experience of both beauty and abjection that lingers. A kind of happy haunting,” she says.

While poetry remains a core part of her creative practice, Couey is also working on a long-gestating essay project about grief, suicide and the ways stories take shape around loss. She isn’t in a rush to finish. Like her poetry, the project will take the time it needs.

For now, whether she’s drafting verse or guiding students through journaling, Couey will continue to let the writing lead.

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For poet Stephanie Couey, the inspiration for her new chapbook began with a walk.

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