Today is December 2, 2019 We are conducting an interview for the Arizona
State University retirees association video history project. We are
located today in the A. S. U. Community Services building. I'm fred Corey
vice provost for undergraduate education.
The technical support staff today include john McIntosh on camera, roger
carter audio David Petzel interview crew, linda Vance coy director turning
now to the interviewee, please introduce yourself stating your name and
your position at A S. U. When you retired Kristin Burr big valentine
Emeritus Professor of human communication in the huge down school of Human
communication
when I retired.
Tell us about yourself your early childhood where you were born. I was
born in michigan as you were in East Lansing and my parents were both
theater and music oriented people. So I grew up around a lot of that and a
lot of snow and where did you go to Grade school grade school was central
school in East Lansing. And then from there I went to the University of
Wisconsin and I got my MBA at the University of Wisconsin And then my
during the years that I was at the University of Wisconsin, I also went to
the University of Hawaii and took a course in hula dancing which I did not
do very well at and uh came back but I actually got my my B. A. There and
then later got an MBA at the University of Washington in Seattle and then
my PhD at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and I know part of your
career. You you worked in speech and hearing sciences, it's not, did my
first, my first go back to my all my paid jobs because that was one of the
questions. My first paid job was a swimming instructor, I was a camp
counselor, then I became a speech therapist because that was my training
as a, as an undergraduate. And I started off with speech therapy and I got
good at it, but I needed a challenge. So that's when I went for my
Master's degree and at that point I discovered oral interpretation of
literature which is much closer to communication and the world opened up
at that point. And then I went on to get a PhD in that area. What do you
mean? The world opened up suddenly, there were so many things to learn
about literature and theater and communication and audiences and how to
make a difference in the world through what communication can teach more
than just helping individuals. I was a great school speech therapist. So
teaching johnny and jane how to not lisp was
another important thing to do, but for me, I wanted something bigger.
So maybe talk a little bit about the oral interpretation of literature
because that was a big part of your life here at a S. U.
So let me start for you or it's the study of literature as an act of
speech
Yes, taking a, taking a piece of literature. Either you've written it
yourself or it's been published and you learn how to get inside the
literature and have it encompass your whole body and be able to
communicate that piece of literature to an audience. So it's a reader
writer audience and they all become one if you've done a really good job.
So if I take a phrase like
William underdone bacon
and you can see it in your head, then I've done a good job of
communicating that image.
And then you take an audience, you take an idea and maybe you put together
a whole series of pieces of literature, let's say literature about war.
And you put together a series of poems and stories and personal narratives
about war, but it's the literature which is the center of it. But the idea
is you're communicating it to an audience, so they're not so much
interested in you, but they see the words and their head, I'm I'm about to
do uh a program at, at Friendship Village
dealing with literature and I will try to embody that idea myself. People
will see, and here is I'm doing a Ron Carlson stories. Ron Carlson used to
be in the english department here and
he wrote, you wrote a number of stories. So I'm gonna be reading those
stories and I hope I can do what I teach, making literature come alive in
the audience. I want the audience to come alive. Not long look at me, but
look how good this literature is. What would you add because you're tired.
Um No, I think that your description is actually very beautiful and now do
you ever listen to audiobooks now? Often I'd love to listen to audiobooks
boy, the right reader makes a huge difference. Oh yes.
Michelle Obama reads her own book, the book that she wrote. Gosh, she
reads well I mean it's her words and she's reading it, but they're also
very some very good storytellers, good people who really know how to take
a text and and and I would like to see it in my head. I like I like that
better than better than movies and videos and pictures. I want to see the
story in my head
and I want to make it happen in your head and your head and your head.
Right
before I came here to teach, I taught at the University of Kentucky in
Lexington and I wanted to get back out west because I had come out here to
ski and seeing blue skies and mountains and ski slopes that are huge and I
wanted to get back west. So a job opened up at A S. U. And I was then
hired by um
Bill Arnold who was chair of the department and that becomes an
interesting story in that. Bill Arnold was Chair of really three areas
speech therapy, which I knew something about theater, which I knew
something about and communication and oral interview, which I knew a lot
about and he was in charge of all three of those and then they had subheds
and norm peril and Jan Elsie, you knew them, we're in charge of the, the
communication part.
Now we were in the College of Fine Arts. So many of the communication
people said, what are we doing in fine arts because we're social
scientists and so we don't, we don't want to be part of that. And so they
were trying to get out of being in, in the College of Fine Arts, there
were a number of other units and they were um,
Justice Studies.
I'm getting to the point here, Justice Studies, Journalism, rec management
and tourism, public affairs and later social work. And they were all
unhappy where they were. And so page mo Holland, who was then the provost
said, okay, let's take all these unhappy departments and put them all into
one place and call it the college of Public programs.
So now we had to make a college out of disparate units and frank Saxton
was the first
dean and then nick Henry became the dean and then an Schneider and they
were able to make it all work.
Now they're all in different places and the Hugh downs School of human
communication, which is where you and I were, uh, is now in the college of
liberal arts and Sciences. So let's go back to that reorganization because
that's reorganizing as a big part of a issues history. Um there you were
in the College of Fine arts. What was it? Was there a lot of tension
during that reorganization? Did faculty have a strong voice during the
reorganization or was it top down decision
finding a way to get justice, studies and public affairs and and tourism
and social work and all of that. I think we just began to like each other
as people, but I'm not sure that it ever really jelled so that now when
they're in separate places, I think everybody else is happier with what
they are. But what happened when communication came out of fine arts and
into public programs, there was a lot of tension within the department
with those of us who are interested in humanities and that would be oral
interview, which is now called performance studies
and rhetoric and rhetoric were together and there was, there was an
opposition with those who were social scientists. So there's a lot of
tension that was going on between those two now because I keep myself
pretty active with the with the college or with the department of Hugh
downs school. There's a lot, a lot of integration now and they don't, they
don't have that anymore. It's wonderful to see what's happening is that
people in oral and performance studies now take research that's done by
the social scientists
and perform it. So instead of having five people read your article, they
have Maybe 100 people or with videos maybe 1000 people seeing on stage
manifestations of what the research is. I think that's an exciting thing
that's happened with ASU No.
My mother in fact was an elocution teacher and I used to lie on the floor
and peek under the door where she was teaching. And I actually got some
good ideas that I used later in my life from from my mother. And some of
the exercises she had the students go through and some of her students
then became politicians and and lawyers and she would keep track of them.
So I got some of the elocution teaching from that then to be able to use
literature
in a larger sense to to to make a difference in people's lives to to take
to take literature out into the community. And that's that that actually
led me here to your first year at A. S. U. What year was that? I came here
in 1976,
The bicentennial. Yes. And you did you teach communication to 41
introduction to oral interpretation your first year? I did. And what were
the students like?
Well I like teaching and I think it's really fun. You've taught at that
same class. Take them from scared to death. I couldn't have never been in
front of a group. Didn't have any idea what to do. Give them a piece of
literature something that's important for them. They talk about it and you
watch them through the semester growing
and that that ability to spread the water on the little plants and watch
them grow and then to pick them up when they're sophomores, juniors,
seniors graduate students. And and watch again watch that kind of
blossoming
and you attracted a lot of master's degree students.
Yeah. What were some of the highlights of the master's degree students?
One of my students is now Heidi Rose is now at Villanova and she did
storytelling with sign language, sign language storytellers. So she had to
learn sign language fluent in sign language in order to be able to do that.
People said to me, well you like to use your hands a lot, so you're going
to be good at sign language. It's very difficult to learn. I took three
semesters of it and although I took it as an audit, I took all the tests
and I got C's
and I mean I really tried and went into the evenings and I listened to the
tapes and the only thing I remember now is that means I forget.
And I, but Heidi went on, she she is fluent in it and she did some
marvelous stories that she and wrote a diss her dissertation on
storytelling that was and she was your first PhD student. She was my first
PhD student but go back to the masters I think that was a very interesting
group of students. You had wasn't chris muldoon and chris muldoon is now
she has been for a long time a communication instructor, communication
consultant. In fact, she's in she's in Chicago right now, working with
them, a group of business people. And she was she come to ASU thinking
that there was a radio
tv and that that's what she was going to be in. But at that time there was
no master degree program and she happened to be standing next to one of
our professors who said, well we have a master's degree program, just one
floor up. So you go up, she went upstairs and found out that we had a
master's degree program. So she started and she she discovered oral
interview from me and then she went on to become a communication
professional. And she did, she still does, she does very well doing that.
Who else were you thinking of? Oh Cindy man,
Where'd she go? I don't know. There were. When I arrived here there was
you had a group of about 10 M. A. students and it was a very interesting
dynamic to watch how many masters level students we're committed to
working with you. Mostly all women. Yeah, mostly all women. And then you
made it possible. You you had advised the chair to make the chair of the,
of the master's committee and I love doing that
with the masters students. We have a master's program now, but it's all on
video
all online. Yeah, I'm not doing it in person anymore. Well it's a, it's a
pass through degree program primarily. You get people enter the graduate
program and get their master's in passing. Yeah. These masters are not
going on two phds like we did. That's what jess Albert says.
Favorite part of Vegas. You, Yeah. Favorite years.
They're all good. I my favorites are the students. I just, I loved walking
into Stauffer 3 18, which is there. There was a large room, it had a stage
and we could configure the chairs. Anyway, we wanted to and we just made
so much magic in that room. Just I was just there the other day with
jennifer lindy now teaches oral and turbo and I went back into the
classroom with her and all the magic is still there because you made it
happen too. I saw you perform there and Mitchell school, what was Mitchell
school? We needed a space where people could park. We, we used to have a
show in 318. It's on the third floor of Stauffer Hall and there's no place
where people can come from outside and park and then we had to prop the
door open at the bottom, which we weren't supposed to do and get people to
come up to the third floor.
And so we needed a space and there was a Mitchell school was being stopped
being a school and there was a kindergarten room. And so you helped make
this into a theater because you helped get the curtains go around three
sides and then we had to do something about the bathroom because it was a
kindergarten room. Mhm. And there were toilets for very small people.
And so we had we had to do something about that and then the roof leaked
and we had we had a light boots up in the back light booth so we could
light the performers but it dripped in the rain. And so we light booth has
electricity and has problems with electricity. Right so there is a white
person holding an umbrella up there and working the light switches for for
the show.
Now though we have a really nice we called empty space empty space is
peter peter peter brook peter Brookes comment he says I can take any empty
space and make it a theater and you can I can make it and make it a
theater right here And so
there there was an area of the cornerstone. You think it used to be a
theater, a movie movie theater and it was cleared out now. Dance uses it,
theater uses it and one of the rooms is the empty space and it's pretty
classic compared to what we had to work in holding an umbrella when it was
rain or using the toilets that are made for little kids. You're talking
about. Center point in downtown Tempe no cornerstone at the corner of
university, no university and rural. Yeah, university and rural. Yeah,
back in the corner there. It's not yeah, it's now an A. S. U. Building.
One of the questions that are asked here that I really want to talk about
is that some of the special events that I did and you were part of some of
that to fred I was a project director for a National Endowment for the
Humanities Grant in which we performed contemporary western literature and
nine of the libraries in Phoenix. And this was what we called trigger
scripting. Jan Elsie. And I developed a concept called trigger scripting
where we present a piece of literature
and then have a series of questions about the literature, questions that
are generated from the literature to get the audience involved in it. So
they're not just passive listeners to a performance. But the reason the
humanities, National Humanities people approved of it were that it brought
in an audience with the humanities, which is literature, definitely
literature. It so happened that one of my students when I taught at Utah
State University
in between Masters and PhD,
I was in a play or a show that I directed. It was as I lay dying by Hello
Faulkner. He went on then to work for the National Endowment for the
Humanities so that when I wrote this grant, he knew what oral and turf was
because they kept saying that the committee kept saying, well we don't do
theater, we don't do theater. He said it's not theater oral interview
involves an audience and guess people thinking and talking about ideas. So
we had this surprise person in just the right place at just the right
moment. And at the time we got this grant in In 1984, it was the largest
humanities grant that a s you've ever gotten since then. Lots of other
people got more of them, but in today's dollars, that was was it 350? Uh
202 102 150. Yeah. You remember that? Sure. Of course it was wonderful. Um
and it was all, it was also introducing people in the valley to literature
from western writers. So all the authors were southwestern west of the
rockies, west of the rockies, West of the rockies. Yeah. And from that one
of them was Milagro Beanfield War by
Mhm. Help me out.
The writer of he lives, he lives in Albuquerque Shoot, I've forgotten his
name but we the Milagro Beanfield War had to do with issues which are
still going on right now, which is like in south phoenix, rich people come
in and buy land that
less wealthy people, particularly Hispanics lived in south phoenix in
small modest houses and rich people, so bought that and they're bought
next door and wanted to build a golf course or build a big apartment
complex or build fancy houses which took their Mhm there property tax up
so high they couldn't afford it anymore. And this is really what Tony
Hillerman was talking about happening in New Mexico. So the issue I could
do Milagro Beanfield war right now with an audience and have a connection
and that's what excites me is doing that kind of thing.
Then I loved directing Bay Wolf in Danforth Chapel. Do you remember that?
I had, I took Danforth Chapel and I put banners up on the side and turned
it into a mead hall and our daughter was a surf who served at the
intermission served mead which was nonalcoholic mead. But we called it
need and my husband jean valentine was the narrator and he knows old
english. So here's a story about that.
We invited Russ nelson who was not Russ nelson was the president at the
time and we invited him to come and as a director, I stood in the back and
he was in the the last row and jean starts off in old english the way bail
wolf was written and I heard Russ lean over and say, do you think the
whole show is gonna be in old english at that point? Then Gene turns the
page and it goes into english and everybody speaking english and I saw
Russ nelson and his wife relaxed in the back row. So that was a lot of fun
to do that and turn a space into something that you wouldn't expect to go
into
and then I did a show and uh linda vance coy. You may remember this. It
was called highly classified narrator narratives of a sus classified staff.
So highly classified me. And it makes it sound like it's secret. But what
I did, I had a class where I taught the students how to interview people
and I asked them to choose some staff member that made a big difference in
their lives
and interview them about their lives if they're willing to have you script
their life story and put it on stage.
So they each went out and almost every student has had some staff member
who's made a difference to them, sometimes an advisor, sometimes in
theater it was one of the guys who who made things happen in the theater
department behind behind the stage and his motto was your emergency is not
my job. So the students learn not to present emergencies to him. And it
was just a very um he talked about the time the Pope was here and they had
to arrange for the Pope to come and speak in the Sun Devil Stadium and
what that was like trying to get the Pope mobile into the, into the
stadium. And that was one of the stories that was told. So we did this in
the emu and invited all of the staff members whose stories were told and
then of course all their friends. So we we had everybody in the, I was I
was really proud of of what the students could do and how we wanted to
bring the staff closer to the students in a, in a personal way. And that's
another thing that oral and Turpin storytelling can do.
So when did the black interpreters theater get it started? And were you,
I'd forgotten about that. That's a good one. Yeah. I had, I had worked
with issues of black rhetoric as um PhD my PhD work. Then I went to
Kentucky
Kentucky in the early 70s,
had issues of racism which I had never had to face before.
And so I had almost no the the african american students all went to a
african american small college. There were very few of them at the
University of Kentucky at the time. And
Adolph Rupp was the athletic director and he didn't want any black players.
This was in the early 70's and I was radicalized at the time and it was
one of the reasons I, I want to live in the west, but I I wanted out of
that environment.
So when I came here and there were african american students and I like
literature that comes from african american voices, but I'm a white person
and I don't, I don't want to tell them what to do. So I started um getting
some african american students in my classes And I had some talented ones
and I would kind of pick two or three of them as directors and so I would
supervise but sort of hands off and let them do it. So they they did a
show called from wraps Odes to wrap the raps. Odes were as as you know the
episodes were the Storytellers
for the Iliad and the odyssey. The greek storytellers were called wraps
Odes. So you take the first part of wraps odes and it moves to wrap and
they were doing rap at the time and then we toured with that around the
communities and other people got to see what they were doing. And then
because two or 3 of the advisors found out about it, they made a lot had a
lot more african american students take classes in an oral in terms
because once you start a little movement like that then then it starts to
go, yeah that was good. It was a thriving troop for what it was.
Yeah. Yeah, that's good.
And when when you arrived there were gender issues in the department.
Right? Yes. I think I was one of 2 people in the department women and we I
immediately looked around to see where other women were. I'm a feminist
and I work and issues of women. So I found the very beginning of women's
studies with Phil motion. It was the first she was hired halftime for
women's studies and halftime in english and it was exciting because we we
then became adjunct
women studies people from all these different departments. And suddenly
there was a whole community of people and at that point I began to feel at
home at A S. U. By going out and seeing the kinds of interests in the
kinds of research that women were doing. And then and then came along mary
rothschild who's I think she's also been interviewed here And she she was
chair when she was 30 And she was chair when she was 40, she was chair
again when she was 15. And she said, I'll be damned if I'll do it when I'm
60. So it moved on to other people to become a much more integrated and
and have its own unit. But at first we were that we were at one person as
chair and then all of us who were adjunct in the other departments and
that was exciting. It was an exciting time to be here. And it was time
that called for great strength in the home front too. Right. And in the
Department of Communication it did that. And then we began to hire more
women in the department and and now there's lots of women. It's not an
issue anymore. It's just good to see that something that you've worked on
becomes a non issue. It isn't something you have to worry about now, mm
hmm. I like that part.
Did you notice changes of that sort happening throughout a issue with
their cultural changes in terms of women's rights.
I saw I saw a compartmentalizing
when we from when we first got here and then with the faculty are the
Women's Studies and the Faculty Women's Association. I was president of
the Faculty Women's Association for For a year two years. And those kinds
of pushes along with society's pushes meant that there were a lot more
women in all kinds of areas. That was a good thing to have happened. Yeah.
Um
something something I thought about when these questions came up was that
I I got my bachelor's degree when I was 20, my 20s, My master's in my 30s
, My PhD in my 40s. So I think a lot of people I think well can you get a
PhD later in life And and I did that and I got to be a full professor at
50 that was I was proud of that. and then at 60 I got a teaching award
from A. S. U. And then at 70 I got a national teaching awards,
Wallace Bacon. And it was even more meaningful because Wallace Bacon
really started oral interpretation at Northwestern. So he his name just
goes down through all the people who have ever taught oral inter poor
performance studies. I got that.
And then when I stopped teaching at A. S. U. I started teaching at
victoria University and Wellington New Zealand I taught in a women's
studies programs. I was back home again in Women's Studies but I was
teaching ethnography is teaching women's storytelling to students in in
Wellington.
And so I did that for 10 years and then for five years after that I have
worked with Peg Bortner. Some of you may know her Peg Bortner started the
the college program at the federal prison camp up in north phoenix. And so
I taught, I taught communication and creative writing. I actually taught
oral and terp to them and I was trying to get them to get some
communication skills by using their own poetry and their own writing and
they there are a lot of them are really good writers was fun teaching,
teaching them Now I don't drive 100 mile round trip anymore. But I do help
peg Bortner downtown by whatever paperwork it needs to be done to keep
that program going. And I'm hoping that somebody this peg is now retired.
I'm hoping that somebody will be interested in taking over the prison
program because one of my passions is education for incarcerated people
and incarcerated women in particular. Yeah. one of the questions was about
the change
in a issue that I saw
you do that. Sure. So when you arrived, what was a issue west like there
wasn't one had Del Felder helped start a S. U. West and she said it was
like trying to build an airplane while you're flying it. So they had a few
classes I taught over there for extra money and there was no no
polytechnic, no East. No downtown was almost nothing. So the way I
characterize it it was it was pretty predictable. There are silos and
that's the word that has been used as this is my area and this is what I
do. And there's not much that's going on around working with other groups.
And then when Croak came it was like chaos because he took all the cards
and threw him up in the air and everything was different. So for a little
while there was chaotic. And now I think it's exciting
the kind of
interdisciplinary work that's being done right now where units are brought
together kind of like our College of public programs bringing together six
units that didn't never worked together before. And somehow they figured
out a way to do that. I I like that kind of creativity. So you were
involved in faculty governance. You were president of the faculty senate.
I was I was the first actual president before that they were called chair
of the faculty Senate. And then I actually I actually have a I should have
brought it. I have gavel gavel that I said first president of the A. S. U.
Faculty now I think it's a different name. What is it now? No it's
president of the but it's not faculty Academic Senate. Academic Senate.
Yeah. Yeah same thing. All right so what were some of the issues that were
came up while you were president
one of the issues was the cross on top of danforth chapel
and some issues about whether the chapel should be for all kinds of people.
All religions or only christians.
And the cross had originally when danford, as I understand danford chapel
did not originally have a cross on top and one of the earlier presidents
of A. S. U. Put the cross up. And then we had a debate about it
and what during the debate there was a huge storm And I walked to campus
one day and the cross was gone.
I think God took the cross down. He says what happened here? It was
apparently a big wind that came up but then Russ nelson put it back up and
braced it up there so it wouldn't fall down again. So now we were back
arguing about it because I thought I had already been taken care of by the
forces of nature. But but we did have to argue about it. And one of the
counter arguments was that the entrance to the library is a shinto shrine
design and so should that be taken out to. So they argued about that and
then they argued about the fact that it's called a chapel and the word
chapel is associated with christians and it's still there. The cross is
gone. We did the faculty senate did decide that the at the cross should
come down so that it can be used as a meditation center for everybody and
not just for um christians,
but the word chapel is still there and I don't know if other religions use
it or not. But that was a an emotional moment.
The faculty senate,
it lead, it lead to lots of other things. It was for the first time. The
faculty representative could sit with the dean's, could sit with the vice
presidents and one of the other issues at the time that I was president
was the building of or the making the making the university club, making
it a club. And it wasn't before that. So during the time that I was
president, there was some argument about about that and I'd heard that the
story about how come we even had one in the first place was that they were
interviewing somebody for academic for athletic director and the athletic
director said, well why don't we talk about this issue of whatever it was
over at your university club.
Silence around the table. We don't have a university club at which point
Russ, nelson and Brent Brown who was important, He was a professor in the
school of public affairs, but he was also something with the president in
the president's office. The president's office, they said, well we've got
this building over here, we could, we could take this building and make
the university club out of it. And it was a pretty rundown art studio. Is
that what it was? I didn't know that. So they decided to put all that
together. And then there was a talk about whether there should be a bar or
not. So I remember sitting there with all the vice presidents and the and
the deans and they were all arguing about whether or not they should have
a bar and some of the people were saying oh we don't want professors
staggering across the campus after drinking it at the university club. And
the two people who held out for having it were Russ nelson who was a
teetotaler and Brent Bond Brent Brown who was a yes. So the two people who
never ever drank liquor at all said we should have a university club and
we sort of guarantee that we're not going to have professors stumbling
over to the their lectures and it worked out just fine now it's running
well that was a good story.
The year that I was president
of the faculty,
Tony Hillerman was getting an honorary degree, so I got to meet him which
is a treat. And at at one of the pre sessions before he came on stage or
came to speak the anthropology department, presented him with the masters
thesis. Now to back up for those of you who read Tony Hillerman's stories
about Navajo life and living in the in New Mexico right on the border with
Arizona. His main character was called joe lee porn. And in the books
Jolie porn, had a master's degree in anthropology from A S. U. And he
would carry this through all the novels that always mentioned A S. You
mentioned anthropology and and and of course Jolie porn was a major
character. So what the anthropology department was did was to come up with
a master's degree
cases with Jolie porn and the title of his master's thesis in anthropology
and present this to tuna hillerman, which is very he loved it. He just I
thought that was great.
Well you were also hired at the time when the issue was decided to become
a major research institution. Right? So that was a transition for the
institution. Um So there's lots of emphasis on on research. I did my
research in Spain and in Galicia it's a portion of Spain that's in
Northwest Galicia. And you mentioned chris muldoon, she just got back from
walking part of the camino and she just as last month was in santiago de
compostela, which is the town that we lived in. And I interviewed women's
storytellers in Northwest Spain. I've always been interested in
storytelling and particularly interested in women's take on it
And the women, I I thought I was going to hear stories of ST James which
is he's the patron saint of Spain. And the women all said if you want to
hear about ST James, you talked to my, I preached my brother my father or
my uncle or my brother, I said what do you want to talk about? We don't
want to talk about ST James, this is my short version of it. They want to
talk about going to row Maria, which is of celebration of whatever event
happened in a particular place. So for example, there's a town called
Machida where there are stones that are in the shape of a boat, an
overturned boat. So there's the hull of the boat looks like with stone and
there's something that looks like a mast and something that looks like a
sail. And so the story that's told about that are the stories that the
women told me. The Virgin mary came two Kallithea when ST James was there
and he was getting all discouraged because he wasn't getting any converts.
He would take the scallop shell, that's a symbol of ST James and he would
use it to baptize, but he only made five converts and he'd been there for
years and years. So the virgin mary appears to him on a pillar and says
not to worry, this is valentine's version, not the way it was told to me
go home to Palestine and Israel and I'm sorry, but you're going to have
your head cut off, but you'll be martyred and there will be christians. So
not to worry, says the Virgin mary. Well all the stories that were told to
me about this place, I was able to put the stories into their words and
not just my words. So, if you want to read about it, I have an article I'd
be happy to share.
Well, let's talk about students. So the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, what
changes did you see in the student population over those years? Were they
rebels in the 70s at all? Or were they, were they involved in? It would
have been post peace movement? Yeah. I got into using literature as a a
force for talking during the Vietnam war. And independently Jan Elsie here
at A S. U. And I and I at the University of Kentucky were we didn't know
each other, but we both said here we are doing literature like Shelley's
Skylark or or pizzas when I have fears that I may cease to be lovely poems.
But what difference is that going to make in the world? And she and I
sort of independently said, we need to we need to use our skill to help
students speak what they want to speak. And we began to bring more
personal narrative in and that I think took over a lot of what was going
on with.
Right, well, you created a course called Performance for social Change.
I did. And that that that john l c actually started that I picked up on it
from her. So, as soon as I got here, I had a a kindred spirit in wanting
to use literature out in in the community. So you would have the classroom
, but didn't the students actually go out into the community and perform
in social contexts? Yes. Yes. Yes. So we worked with the blind, we worked
with the population of blind people and uh the attitude, she went out to
the attitudes and we went to the attitudes frequently. I at the time there
was a women's prison at the corner of 32nd Street and Van Buren, it was an
old motel and had been turned into a minimum minimum medium security
prison. And I was able to get students in there and had them teach
the same thing that I've been teaching, which is communication and
creative writing to let them see what creative thinking can be even if
they're incarcerated. And in fact one of the people that I did that with
is Cheryl, now, Jackie and Cheryl and her husband helped fund the
christian Berwick valentine
undergraduate scholarship in in communication
and she she was an excellent teacher to incarcerated people. She now runs
a business that a third of the of the profits goes into um causes like a.
C. L. U. Buildings for for people who are homeless or lb
G. D. two people. So I think I think I was able to help nurture some of
that. You got to care about your environment, you have to care about other
people and that it was it was easy to do with the population of students
that we had with an interest in performing and literature, but not theater
because the the students in theater or sometimes just want to become
actors. That's why they're there. The students in performance and oral and
wanted wanted to make a difference in the world. And it was those students
that we just you do did too. We both just grabbed onto those so much of
your work. Did bring a s you into the community through the National
Endowment for the Humanities Grant, your coursework in Social change and
working in the prisons and working in the prison. What do you see was how
would you describe the relationship between a S. U. And its communities
during your time here? I I thought that we professors were not at the time
rewarded for what we did in the community and that is always what I
thought I should do. And I I resented that there was so much emphasis on
my research when the I like doing research, I enjoy doing it, I did a lot
of it, but I thought the emphasis should be on all three. I mean, there
were three legs of the stool that nick Henry had and it was it was service
teaching and research. So it was a voice that all three were important and
you need all three for a stool. But one of the legs of the stool was not
particularly strong. But I think now there's a lot more with the new
president now or not. So new with crow a lot more emphasis on getting the
community. I like to see that happen now. Maybe I'm wrong. But it seems no
, I think you're right. It seems more good. My university, my first
university was University of Wisconsin and they said the universe, the
borders of the university are the borders of the state. Sorry, I grew up
with that idea that a university should encompass the whole state. And I
think the issue is trying to do that now and I I'm proud that I was here
for such a long time. 27, years. A long time. The last question that was
asked, I wanted to change. Go ahead. The last question was how do I occupy
my time? Mm which sounds like not me. So I changed it to how do I
contribute to my communities since I retired from A S. U. Because I
believe that's that's what I've chosen for. Make meaning out of my life.
So what do I do? Uh I taught ethnography at victoria University and I'm
going back again next year to visit my students and the teachers that I
worked with at and new Zealand.
One of my favorite places in all this world is New Zealand. So I did that.
Then I'm helping with the Rios Lotto program with with Peg Bortner and
the the federal prison camp for women in north north phoenix. And then I'm
living at friendship village
where one of the nice people that are helping make this happened lives.
And I chair the hiking committee and the pet committee. We have 100 dogs,
25 cats, four birds and four tortoises. They have to be looked after and
whatever issues they are comes to the pet committee and then the hiking
committee, we we hiked twice a month all around phoenix Area, within 60
miles of Phoenix area from october to March. And then the emeritus college
, which I think is a wonderful who? Who started that Jacob? Jacob, Dick
Dick Jacobs started. And then who was the provost that really pushed it?
I've forgotten his name. Yeah. Yeah. Milk. Milk click. Yes. And I that is
a for those who watch this or might be emeritus faculty because many of us
are still writing, we still had an article we hadn't published yet or
we're still doing something that's interesting. And there's an Emeritus
College voices journal, which I've published in. And we we have short
talks, which I think is a very clever idea. Two professors each get a half
hour and they will talk about whatever they're interested in whatever
research they're doing. And it keeps us all engaged in each other's work.
And so I think many universities across the country now have an emeritus
college and I'm a proponent of that. Nice. And were you part of the
emeritus college when it went downtown with the exhibits in university
center. Yes. Well, because my husband is an artist. So his work was down
there is still up there on the wall. He's a jean valentine, he's a printer
paper maker. And his work is on the wall of 4 11 on the 5th floor. Yeah.
And he taught in the english department
and your daughter went to Asia, daughter went to A S. U. Got a degree in
tourism and is now the marketing director for the School of Earth and
Space Exploration at A. S. U. And she's married to Tony Roberto who is a
professor in my department Communication. And how did they meet? I
introduced them. Mhm. I was hiking with a group from communication and I
started a hiking group of the faculty and grad students and I thought they
ought to grad students, especially those who are not from Arizona I need
to see things need to get out there. So they I started the hiking group
with them and they kept doing and I would hike with them. So I was hiking
with this nice young man and he looked so young that I thought he was a
grad student. So my usual question is, well now who is your graduate
director? And he said actually I'm a professor. Oh
and the we kept talking and nice guy and yes they've been married five
years now
it's sort of off the topic. Okay that's a wrap. Well Kristin, thank you so
very much for sharing your memories of a issue. You're very much a part of
this institution. And it was wonderful to hear your stories and being able
to work with you fred Corey, that's an outstanding part of my work was
having you in an office next door.