Ideas Festival Emory to celebrate resilience with leading musicians, artists and scholars

Oct. 9, 2025

Media Contact

Kyndra Farley

Media Relations Specialist

The 2025 Ideas Festival Emory is right around the corner. On Saturday, Oct. 18, discussions and performances featuring world-renowned artists, musicians and scholars will take place across the Oxford College campus as participants engage with the most important issues of our time and consider this year’s theme: resilience.

The festival, now in its second year, is the flagship event of Emory’s Center for Public Scholarship and Engagement.

Grammy Award-winning musician and writer Rosanne Cash will join the Sing for Science podcast, hosted by Matt Whyte, for the keynote conversation — an on-stage recording before an audience in the Oxford Student Center at 5 p.m. The discussion is sold out, but check the event listing for an additional ticket release as the date approaches.

“Ideas Festival Emory is based on a simple idea: knowledge belongs to all of us,” says Kenneth Carter, founding director of the center and Charles Howard Candler Professor of Psychology. “When people come together to talk about the challenges we all face, the closer we can get to solutions.”

The festival begins at 10 a.m. and continues throughout the day, concluding with Cash’s keynote. The full schedule and a list of participants is now available online. The festival is free and open to the public. Visit the festival’s website for more information.

“I’m so excited about this year’s lineup for Ideas Festival Emory,” Carter says. “I can’t wait for the community to come together to feed their curiosity and have some fun.”

Below are a few of the many anticipated highlights at the 2025 Ideas Festival Emory.

Live art on the Quad with Docta

Time to be announced, Oxford Quad

See the creative process in action when Senegalese graffiti artist Docta makes art on the Oxford Quad during the festival. Docta is one of the precursors of this urban art in West Africa. His colorful work combines wild style, bubble, 3D and African masks, fusing artistic technique with strong messages that speak to all generations. His body of work stretches back into the 1990s and continues today, offering a means of expression that speaks to the oppressed and the voiceless.

“Who Did That? Public Art and the Walls of the City”

11 a.m., Williams Auditorium

For street art that’s closer to home, don’t miss a discussion titled “Who Did That? Public Art and the Walls of the City.” Randy Gue, assistant director of collection development at Emory’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, will converse with local graffiti artists about the blurred lines between art and vandalism, protest and expression, permanence and ephemerality. Artists, curators and community voices will dive into the questions behind Atlanta’s walls: Who gets to create? Who decides what stays? And how does street art reflect the spirit — and the struggles — of a city in motion?

“American Coup: Wilmington 1898”

12 p.m., Williams Auditorium

Carol Anderson, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of African American Studies at Emory, will join filmmaker Brad Lichtenstein to discuss his 2024 documentary “American Coup: Wilmington 1898.” Anderson is the author of “Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African-American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955,” which was published by Cambridge University Press and awarded both the Gustavus Myers and Myrna Bernath Book Awards. Anderson’s third book, “White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide,” won the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and is also a New York Times Bestseller, a New York Times Editor’s Pick, and listed on the Zora List of 100 Best Books by Black Woman Authors since 1850.

“Twelve Super Bowls in One Summer: The Impact of World Cup in Atlanta”

3 p.m., Oxford Student Center, Greer Forum

One of the festival’s most anticipated panels, “Twelve Super Bowls in One Summer: The Impact of World Cup in Atlanta” will include Atlanta City Council President Doug Shipman, an Emory College alumnus. The panel will be hosted by Rose Scott during a live taping of her WABE show, “Closer Look,” and focuses on the promise and costs of the World Cup as Atlanta prepares to be a host city in 2026.

“The Battle for the Black Mind”

2 p.m., Williams Auditorium

NAACP Image Award-winning author Karida L. Brown’s recently published book “The Battle for the Black Mind” is an explosive historical account of the struggle for educational justice in America. Brown, professor of sociology at Emory, will be joined by Charly Palmer, an award-winning fine artist and illustrator and Brown’s husband, to discuss the stories of pioneering Black leaders and the institutions they built to educate future generations. Drawing on over a decade of archival research, personal reflection and keen sociological insight, “The Battle for the Black Mind” traces a century of segregated schooling, examining how early efforts to control Black minds through education systems laid the foundation for the systemic inequities we still live with today.

“The Pool Is Closed”

3 p.m., Phi Gamma Hall

Atlanta artist and author Hannah Palmer will discuss her latest book, “The Pool Is Closed,” which began as a journal of social encounters with water. In 2018, while teaching her kids to swim and working on urban river restoration projects, Palmer found herself dangling her feet in a seemingly all-white swimming pool. She started to worry about how her young sons would learn to swim. Would they grow up accustomed to the stubbornly segregated pools of Atlanta? “The Pool Is Closed” is a book about water: where it flows and where it floods, who owns it, and what it costs. It’s also a story about embracing parenthood in a time of environmental catastrophe and political anxiety, of dwindling public space and natural resources. It chronicles a year-long quest to find a place to swim and finding, instead, what makes shared water so threatening and wild.

“Local Journalism: Needed Now More Than Ever”

1 p.m., Phi Gamma Hall

In an era of shrinking newsrooms and information overload, local journalism remains essential for building informed communities and holding institutions accountable. This conversation brings together UGA journalism professor Monimala Basu; Keith Pepper, publisher of Rough Draft Atlanta; Patrick Graham, publisher of The Covington News and The Walton Tribune; and Janel Davis of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to explore the challenges and opportunities facing local news today. From sustaining independent outlets to covering stories that national media overlook, these journalists will share why local reporting matters more than ever — and how it shapes the future of our cities and neighborhoods.

Outdoor performances

All day, Oxford Quad

The festival’s outdoor stage is sponsored by Georgia Public Broadcasting and will feature live music from Kim Ware and Anya Marina, poetry from Megan Sexton and Kim Addonizio, dance from the Covington Ballet and more. “We’re thrilled to partner with GPB in bringing the vibrant sights and sounds of artists at work to the Oxford College Quad,” Carter says. “Public radio is a critical voice for news and community engagement in a time when support for the arts matters more than ever.”

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