Rhodes Scholar Serene Singh Nowjan
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Alumni Magazine Spring 2019 ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: THE CONGRESSMAN SOULCYCLE CO-FOUNDER ELIZABETH CUTLER OUR VIKING-COWBOY COLORADAN — OR COLORADOAN? RHODES SCHOLAR SERENE SINGH NOWJAN. 20, 2019 The name sounds comically ominous: “Super blood wolf moon.” But the astrological spectacle — a type of total lunar eclipse that turns the moon reddish — amounted to a minor marvel. People were ready with cameras, Glenn Asakawa (Jour’86), CU’s chief photographer, among them. He took these images between 9:08 and 11:04 p.m. in Lafayette, Colo., using a tripod-mounted Lumix G9 micro four-thirds camera with Panasonic/Leica 100-400 zoom lens. You don’t have to know much about cameras or moons to be impressed by the results. 1 SPRING 2019 Coloradan ColoradanPhotos by SPRING Glenn Asakawa 2019 2 FEATURES EDITOR’S NOTE Serene Singh, CU Boulder’s first woman Rhodes Scholar, showed up ready to dance. It was late January and there’d been snow on the ground for days. She and CU photographer Glenn Asakawa went up to a Flatirons-facing building terrace. She brought some of her best bhangra dancing duds. He brought some of his best cameras. Serene, captain of the Colorado Bhangra Team, posed and danced as Glenn sought to capture a moment of pure bhangra, which in Hindi means “intoxicated by joy.” They’d been at it for more than an hour. “We were about to call it a day when she asked if I could get a photo of her jumping,” Glenn said. She leapt. He clicked. They walked away with 500 images. And that’s how we got our cover photo — the final shot of the day. Our story about COVER Serene Singh (Jour, 15 Rhodes Scholar 25 The Art of Science Serene starts on page PolSci’19), CU Boulder’s first Serene Singh (Jour, PolSci’19), CU’s first A CU engineering class reveals the beauty of 15. See outtakes from woman Rhodes Scholar, in Rhodes Scholar in 25 years, aims to be Miss moving gases and liquids. the shoot at colorado. bhangra dance attire. Photo America, too. edu/coloradan. Search by Glenn Asakawa. “Serene Singh.” 31 Living Like Julia Child ABOVE New U.S. Rep. 19 Blowing the Doors Off Visit La Pitchoune, the last original kitchen of Eric Gershon Joe Neguse (Econ, PolSci’05; CU scientist Norm Pace explores the vastness of the famed chef and cookbook author. Law’09) at a ceremonial caves and the microbial world. swearing-in event on campus in January. He represents 37 The Congressman Boulder. Photo by Glenn 23 Master of Soul Former student body president Joe Neguse Asakawa. SoulCycle co-founder Elizabeth Cutler (Econ, PolSci’05; Law’09) made a name for (DistSt’89) launched the spin sensation. himself in Colorado. Now he’s doing it in D.C. DEPARTMENTS 1 NOW 7 Campus News 13 ORIGINS Demonyms 45 CU Around 55 Class Notes Blood Wolf Moon 8 BOULDER BEAT 35 INFOGRAPHIC 47 President’s View 61 Letters 5 INQUIRY Paul Danish Our Nobel Laureates Jackson Crawford 49 Sports 65 THEN 1946 CONTACT ERIC GERSHON AT 11 LOOK Sororities 43 Alumni News [email protected] 3 SPRING 2019 Coloradan Coloradan SPRING 2019 4 INQUIRY JACKSON CRAWFORD OUR VIKING-COWBOY When I started the videos, I was just sit- Jackson Crawford, director of CU’s Nordic ting in my office, but I noticed that when Studies program, studies and translates I went back home to Wyoming and Col- Old Norse, a language spoken by medieval orado and made videos outdoors those Scandinavians. Here the native Coloradan were a lot more popular. So I decided to talks Vikings, videos and his contribution to make all of them outdoors. It’s become the Disney animated film Frozen. my brand. I’m the guy who talks about Norse mythology in the mountains with a What is the context of the literature cowboy hat on. you study? The stuff that I'm looking at is roughly How much time goes into your videos? 1,000 years old. The poems of The About six hours per video, and I try to put Poetic Edda, about the Norse gods out two videos a week. and heroes, were probably composed around the 900s and passed down oral- Have you always dressed in cowboy/ ly. Then in Iceland in the 1200s, there Western style? was a big antiquarian interest and a Yes. I grew up in Clear Creek Canyon. My lot of their oral poetry and sagas were grandfather was old-school Western, and written down. I just picked up his style. Tell me about Vikings. What do you hope your impact will During the Viking age, about AD 800 to be with the YouTube videos? 1100, Scandinavians were making a kill- There’s a lot of information about Norse ing off of raiding and pillaging the richer mythology and Norse language on the lands south of them. It’s a hyper martial web, but most of it is terrible. There are society with a family-based morality, so people with three or four times more fol- you can rob and kill people you’re not lowers than me who are basically making related to. As far as physical image goes, stuff up. What I’m trying to do is say ‘This Vikings didn’t really wear horned hel- is what we actually see in ink and calf- mets. But they did fight with axes. Also, skin.’ The community around my videos they were actually quite clean. In the has been overwhelmingly positive and Scandinavian days of the week, Saturday appreciative of the fact that I tell them is called bath day. A bath a week doesn't what we know and I don’t start making sound fantastic to us, but by medieval up things to fill in the holes. standards they were very clean. Do you see parallels in American Why did you translate The Poetic Western and medieval Scandinavian Edda and The Saga of the Volsungs? cultures? The other translations were so hard Old Norse sagas always have a frontier to read. Previous translators were too edge to them. They’re so much like fixed on the word order in Old Norse, Westerns. People were living far apart, which makes really awkward sentences relying on themselves and their small in English. They also wanted it to sound family. It’s the same attitude, like ‘Back old — it’s like “thou art.” Very Shake- when men were men and the wilder- spearean. In my translations, I’m willing ness was still untamed.’ If someone to mix around the word order and put it challenges your honor, you fight them in normal English. Apparently it struck a with an axe in the sagas, with a gun in chord. For two years in a row, my trans- the Westerns. lation of The Poetic Edda is pretty often the number-one best seller in European I heard you were a consultant for literature on Amazon. It sold 10,000 the Disney movie Frozen. copies in 2017. The creative team wanted to give Frozen that old Scandinavian feel. I wrote the What led you to launch your You- runes [ancient alphabet letters] in a Tube channel? book you see at the beginning. There’s In 2016, I was an adjunct professor in also a scene with spoken Old Norse — California making $1,600 a month while that voice is the actor imitating me. paying $1,200 a month in rent. I had to do something else to make ends meet. Condensed and edited by Ula Chrobak. 5 SPRING 2019 Coloradan Photo by Glenn Asakawa Coloradan SPRING 2019 6 BOULDER BEAT By Paul Danish WHERE’S THOMAS RIHA? died of cyanide poisoning, one within HE DISAPPEARED 50 YEARS ago this spring. days of a suspicious update to his will. Where to begin — maybe with the When the cops arrested her for Colorado Daily staff’s song about him forgery and fraud, they found a pound of (to the tune of “Where Have All the cyanide in her basement. Flowers Gone”): Meanwhile, Riha sightings were reported in Montreal, Prague, Moscow Where has Thomas Riha gone, long and Shangri-La. SPRING 2019 time passing? News ... and what of Mrs. Tannenbaum? Is he dead or is he fine… When will we ever learn... Is his body down a mine? Two Letters, Big Difference Thomas Riha was a Czech-born U.S. Enquiring minds wanted to know. citizen who taught Russian history at Including CU President Joe Smiley. So CU DUO DEVISES GENDER-NEUTRAL APPROACH TO HEBREW CU in the 1960s. he asked the CIA. One day he didn’t show up for class “Don’t know,” said the CIA guy, in so and vanished into thin air. many words. “I’ll ask an FBI guy I know.” When the cops went to his house, “No foul play here,” said the FBI guy. they found the table set for breakfast “Riha dropped off the face of the earth but nothing touched. for personal reasons.” The plot quickly thickened. The CIA guy told this to Smiley, who The week before Riha vanished, declared Riha was okay. his wife, Hana, opened a window When the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover and screamed that Riha and another heard this, he called up the CIA and woman were trying to drug her with said, in effect, “Who the bleep told ether, according to a 2011 account by you that?” Boulder attorney Gerald Caplan, who “We’ll never tell,” said the CIA. was Hana's lawyer. Galya pleaded not guilty by reason of CU poli sci prof Richard Wilson lived insanity to the fraud and forgery charges In Hebrew, it’s harder than you’d think to write “student” in a gender-neutral way.