Jesmyn Ward has been hailed as the standout writer of her generation, proving her “fearless and toughly lyrical” voice in novels, memoir, and nonfiction. She's been called “the new Toni Morrison.” Ward is a MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipient and in 2017, she became the first woman and the first person of color to win two National Book Awards for Fiction—joining the ranks of William Faulkner, Saul Bellow, John Cheever, Philip Roth, and John Updike. Her books include "Let Us Descend," "Sing, Unburied, Sing," "Salvage the Bones," and "Navigate Your Stars." The professor of creative writing at Tulane University joins host Dean Nelson for this evocative conversation as part of the 30th anniversary of the Writer's Symposium by the Sea at Point Loma Nazarene University. Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Humanities] [Show ID: 40217]

In this program, Lerone Martin, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University, discusses his recent book, The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover, which reveals how Hoover and his FBI teamed up with leading white evangelicals and Catholics to bring about a white Christian America by any means necessary. His research draws on thousands of newly declassified FBI documents, including a civil lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for FBI files on Billy Graham. Martin takes readers from the pulpits and pews of small-town America to the Oval Office, and from the grassroots to denominational boardrooms. In this talk, Martin transforms how we understand the FBI, white evangelicalism, and our nation’s entangled history of religion and politics. Series: "Ethics, Religion and Public Life: Walter H. Capps Center Series" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 39809]

Poet, novelist and Native American scholar N. Scott Momaday has spent decades bringing his culture and the landscape alive through his writing. He received a Pulitzer Prize for his first novel, "House Made of Dawn." His books include "The Way to Rainy Mountain," "In the Bear's House," "In the Presence of the Sun: Stories and Poems, 1961-1991," and "The Gourd Dancer." He is also the editor of various anthologies and collections centered on his Kiowa heritage. As part of the Writer's Symposium By the Sea, host Dean Nelson sat down with Momaday at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to talk about his life in literature. Series: "Writer's Symposium By The Sea" [Humanities] [Show ID: 38122]

On March 4th, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address. He considered it his “greatest speech” and his “best effort." Join Academy Award-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss and best-selling Lincoln biographer Dr. Ronald C. White for a fascinating look at the Second Inaugural Address. Through a powerful, fascinating voyage of discovery, one comes away with a better understanding of where the country was in 1865 and Lincoln’s feeling towards the Civil War, the defeated Confederacy and, perhaps most importantly, American slavery. A century and a half later, as the U.S. faces a similar struggle over who we are as a people and a nation, Lincoln's speech still resonates. [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 38385]

In this program, Emily Lin, with the UC Merced Library, explains the process of digging into archives, including a look at how archives are created, where to look and what to expect to find, and strategies and possibilities for research. Series: "Critically Human" [Humanities] [Show ID: 38279]

The Kumeyaay are native inhabitants of San Diego and Imperial counties and Baja California, Mexico. For thousands of years, the Kumeyaay people farmed the land and ocean, managed forest fires, manufactured pottery and basketry and engaged in commerce and trade. Stan Rodriguez, Ed.D., executive director of the Kumeyaay Community College, talks about the deep physical and spiritual connection the Kumeyaay people have to the Earth. Despite brutal religious, economic, political and social hardships under European rule, Kumeyaay culture and traditions continue in the region to this day. Series: "Triton Talks" [Humanities] [Show ID: 38071]

Beginning in the 1950s, the United States embarked on an elaborate program to study how LSD might be used to alter the behavior of an enemy. This collaboration between academia and government conducted astonishing studies with little regard for the ethics of experimentation. Joel E. Dimsdale, MD, describes how this research program evolved and shares stark examples of its impact on science and society. Series: "Osher UC San Diego Distinguished Lecture Series" [Health and Medicine] [Humanities] [Show ID: 37465]

This lecture takes on the question of why we have only two political parties in the United States and how the two party system shapes our politics. Most significantly, this lecture looks at the ways in which the politics of race - Black civil rights in particular - during the Civil War, Reconstruction, the modern Civil Rights Movement and the election of Barack Obama served to shift the two political parties into new realignments. This lecture traces the transformation of the two parties over 150 years, marking the shift of the Democrats from the party of the Confederacy to the party of the New Deal and Civil Rights, and the transformation of the Republicans from the party of Lincoln and Radical Reconstruction to the White Mans Party of Trump. Series: "Public Policy and Society" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 36281]

“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.” As look at the history of American democracy, we begin with the nation’s founding contradiction: the dispossession of Natives, the enslavement of Africans and the exclusion of women in a new nation dedicated to the radical concept of universal human equality. Through a reading of the founding documents of the United States, ranging from the Declaration of Independence to the speeches of Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Barack Obama, we consider how race, colonialism and slavery shaped the nation's founding, and how this legacy, this “original sin” of the American founding, continues to shape and distort our democracy. Series: "Public Policy and Society" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 36276]

Twentieth-Century African American Freedom Struggles transformed both US and World History. These seminal liberation struggles include the important yet relatively unknown series of early twentieth-century southern African American streetcar boycotts as well as the iconic Civil Rights-Black Power Insurgency (1935-75). First, Waldo Martin examines why and how these foundational freedom struggles proved essential to the making of the modern African American Freedom Movement. Second, he examines the centrality of the modern African American Freedom Movement to both the creation of the modern United States and the development of the modern world. Waldo Martin is the Alexander F. & May T. Morrison Professor of American History & Citizenship at the University of California, Berkeley. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Public Affairs] [Humanities] [Show ID: 35148]