Emory will be hosting the IDEAS festival this weekend, September 20-22, 2024 at Oxford College of Emory University. The festival will feature a wide array of events, including family-focused ones. There will be talks from some of the most impactful and interesting scientists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, and creators of our time.
The festival is hosted by Emory’s Center for Public Scholarship and Engagement, based at Emory’s Oxford College campus. This new annual event is intended to foster conversations beyond the campus and to engage the public in ideas that are central to our world today.
The keynote speaker opening the festival on Friday 20, from 7:30pm-8:00pm is renowned rapper, producer, and record executive Jermaine Dupri.
See full schedule and register for festival.
Several Emory faculty will be speaking at the event about their work or hosting panels. To ready for this engaging and thought-provoking festival, check out these books by Emory speakers.
Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan by Ruby Lal
Situated in the early decades of the magnificent Mughal Empire, this first-ever biography of Princess Gulbadan offers an enthralling portrait of a charismatic adventurer and unique pictures of the multicultural society in which she lived.
Ruby Lal is a Los Angeles Times Finalist and Emory University Professor of South Asian Studies
Race and the Obama Administration: Substance, Symbols, and Hope by Andra Gillespie
The election of Barack Obama marked a critical point in American political and social history. Did the historic election of a black president change the status of blacks in the United States? Did these changes (or lack thereof) inform blacks’ perceptions of the President? This book explores these questions by comparing Obama’s promotion of substantive and symbolic initiatives for blacks to efforts by the two previous presidential administrations.
Andra Gillespie is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University.
What you eat matters—for your health, for the environment, and for future generations. In this riveting investigative narrative, McKenna dives deep into the world of modern agriculture by way of chicken: from the farm where it’s raised directly to your dinner table.
Maryn McKenna is a journalist and author covering public health and global health, a contributing writer at Scientific American, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Human Health at Emory University.
The Plant Hunter: A Scientist’s Quest for Nature’s Next Medicines by Cassandra Quave 
A leading medical ethnobotanist tells us the story of her quest to develop new ways to fight illness and disease through the healing powers of plants in this uplifting and adventure-filled memoir.
Cassandra Quave, is an Associate Professor of Dermatology and Human Health, Herbarium Curator, and Assistant Dean of Research Cores at Emory University.
This book explores how children can grow to realize their rights and to respect the rights of others through children’s literature.
Sarah Higinbotham co-founded Common Good Atlanta, a nonprofit that bridges Georgia’s colleges and universities with Georgia’s prisons since 2008. She also teaches Shakespeare and early British literature at Emory’s Oxford College.
Book descriptions taken from publisher.