Cultural Life Series

2026: Bill Bartholomew and C. Morgan Grefe, Ph. D.

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, JWU’s Cultural Life Series hosted a conversation on who preserves history and why it matters. Drawing on Rhode Island’s past and the broader American experience, the discussion explored how culture, power and perspective shape the stories that endure.

The panel featured Bill Bartholomew, a Providence-based journalist, musician and host of Bartholomewtown, known for his conversations on politics, policy and culture, and C. Morgan Grefe, Ph. D., executive director of the Rhode Island Historical Society and historian specializing in U.S. social, cultural and public history.

Listen to the full conversation via the Bartholomewtown podcast.

2025: Loren M. Spears, Ph. D.

Lorén M. Spears, enrolled Narragansett Tribal Nation citizen, holds a master’s degree in education and an honorary doctorate from the University of Rhode Island and an honorary doctorate from Roger Williams University. She founded Nuweetooun School and the Indigenous Empowerment Center and shares her cultural knowledge with the public through museum programs. She has contributed to a variety of publications such as “Dawnland Voices, An Anthology of Indigenous Writing of New England;” “Through Our Eyes: An Indigenous View of Mashapaug Pond;” “From Slaves to Soldiers: The 1st Rhode Island Regiment in the American Revolution;” and “Repair: Sustainable Design Futures.” Spears co-edited a new edition of “A Key into the Language of America” by Roger Williams and recently co-authored “As We Have Always Done: Decolonizing the Tomaquag Museum’s Collections Management Policy” published in the “Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archive Professionals.” Under her leadership, Tomaquag Museum received the Institute of Museums and Library Services National Medal in 2016 and she has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors.

Watch Lorén speaking at this year's event in Schneider auditorium.

Dive into Indigenous history with Lorén on the This Week at JWU Podcast.

2024: Claire Wardle, Ph. D.

Claire Wardle is co-founder and co-director of the Information Futures Lab, and Professor of the Practice at the Brown School of Public Health. She is considered a leader in the field of misinformation, verification and user generated content, co-authoring the foundational report, Information Disorder: An interdisciplinary Framework for Research and Policy for the Council of Europe. In 2015, Claire co-founded the non-profit First Draft, a pioneer in innovation, research and practice in the field of misinformation. Over the past decade she has developed an organization-wide training program for the BBC on eyewitness media, verification and misinformation, led social media policy at UNHCR, been a Fellow at the Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and been the Research Director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania.

Hear Claire Wardle, Ph.D on the This Week at JWU Podcast.

2023: Chef Sean Sherman

A member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, Chef Sean Sherman was born and raised in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Cooking in kitchens across the United States and Mexico for over 30 years, Chef Sean is renowned nationally and internationally in the culinary movement of Indigenous foods. His primary focus is the revitalization and evolution of Indigenous foods systems throughout North America. His extensive studies on the foundations of Indigenous food systems have led to his deep understanding of what is needed to showcase Native American cuisine in today's world. In 2014, Chef Sean opened the business, The Sioux Chef, designed to provide catering and food education in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area. He and his business partner, Dana Thompson, also designed and opened the Tatanka Truck, which featured 100% pre-contact foods of the Dakota and Minnesota territories. In October 2017, Sean and his team presented the first decolonized dinner at the prestigious James Beard House in Manhattan. His first book, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen, received the James Beard Award for Best American Cookbook for 2018 and was chosen one of the top ten cookbooks of 2017 by the LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle and Smithsonian magazine. That same year, Chef Sean was selected as a Bush Fellow and received the 2019 Leadership Award from the James Beard Foundation. Chef Sean currently serves on the leadership committee of the James Beard Foundation Investment Fund for Black and Indigenous Americans and was recently awarded The Ashoka Fellowship. In July 2021, Chef Sean and his partner Dana opened Owamni by The Sioux Chef, Minnesota’s first full service Indigenous restaurant, featuring healthy Indigenous food and drinks. Owamni received the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in June 2022.

Chef Sean Sherman at JWU: 'The Future Is Indigenous'

2022: Paul K. Piff, Ph.D

Paul K. Piff (Ph.D., UC Berkeley) is an associate professor of psychological science at UC Irvine, where he also directs the Morality, Emotion, and Social Hierarchy Lab. Dr. Piff’s research examines the psychological impacts of inequality, the origins of human kindness, and the social effects of nature. Dr. Piff was named a rising star by the Association for Psychological Science, and his work has been featured in The New York Times, New York Magazine, and the award winning film, Capital in the 21st Century.

Privilege, Compassion, and Social Cohesion with Paul K. Piff, Ph.D.

2021: Rachel S. Herz, Ph.D

Rachel Herz, Ph.D. is a neuroscientist and leading world expert on the psychological science of smell. She has been conducting research on the sense of smell, emotion, perception, motivated behavior and cognition since 1990.  Dr. Herz is a TEDx speaker, has published over 90 original research papers, received numerous awards and grants, co-authored scholarly handbooks, and is an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University and part-time faculty in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Boston College.  She is also a professional consultant to various industries regarding scent, taste, food and flavor, and is frequently called upon as an expert witness in legal cases involving olfaction.  Dr. Herz is the author of several distinguished academic and popular science books including the leading college textbook on Sensation & Perception (multiple editions, Oxford University Press), The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell (2007; Harper Collins), which was selected as a finalist for the “2009 AAAS Prize for Excellence in Science Books,” and That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion (2012; W.W. Norton & Co), which analyzes the emotion of disgust from culture to neuroscience, and was listed as a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice. Her latest book Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food (2018; W.W. Norton & Co) was a finalist for the “2018 Readable Feast Awards” and listed among the “Best Food Books of 2018” by The Smithsonian and The New Yorker; it explores how our senses, brain and psychology govern our perception of food, and the experiences and consequences of eating.

More about Exploring the Psychological Science of Smell with Rachel Herz.

2015: Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls graduated from Barnard College and was a journalist in New York. Her memoir, The Glass Castle, has been a New York Times bestseller for more than eight years. She is also the author of the instant New York Times bestsellers The Silver Star and Half Broke Horses, which was named one of the ten best books of 2009 by the editors of The New York Times Book Review. Walls lives in rural Virginia with her husband, the writer John Taylor.

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