- Today is December 2nd, 2019. We are conducting an interview for the Arizona State University Retirees Association Video History Project. We are located today in the ASU 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, Dave's Scheatzle interview crew, Linda Van Scoy director. Turning now to the interviewee, please introduce herself, stating your name and your position at ASU when you retired. - Kristin [INAUDIBLE] Valentine, Emeritus Professor of Human Communication in the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, when I retired. FRED COREY: So 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. FRED COREY: And where'd you go to grade school? - Grade school a Central School in East Lansing, and then from there, I went to the University of Wisconsin and got my MA at the University of Wisconsin. And then, 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 I came back, but I actually got my BA there. And then later got an MA at the University of Washington, in Seattle, and then my PhD at the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City. FRED COREY: And I know part of your career, you worked in speech and hearing science, as it's known today. - I did. My first-- well, go back to all my paid jobs, because that was one of the questions. My first paid job was a swimming instructor, and I was a camp counselor. Then, I became a speech therapist, because that was my training 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. FRED COREY: 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 an important thing to do, but for me, I wanted something bigger. FRED COREY: So maybe talk a little bit about the oral interpretation of the literature, because that was a big part of your life here at ASU. - It is. - So let me start for you. It's the study of literature as an act of speech. - Yes. 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 reader, writer, audience, and they all become one, if you've done a really good job. So if I take a phrase like limp, 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 in their head. I'm about to do a program at Friendship Village dealing with literature, and I will try to embody that idea myself that people will see and hear. I'm doing Ron Carlson stories. Ron Carlson used to be in the English department here, and he wrote a number of stories. So I'm going to 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 all look at me, but look how good this literature is. What would you add? Because you taught. FRED COREY: Right. No, I think that your description is actually very beautiful. And now, do you ever listen to audiobooks now? - Often. I love to listen to audiobooks. - The right read or makes a huge difference. - Oh, yes. Michelle Obama reads her own books, the book that she wrote. Gosh, she reads well. It's her words, and she's reading it. But there are also some very good storytellers, good people who really know how to take a text, and I like to see it in my head. I like that better than movies and videos and pictures. I want to see the story in my head. 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 I 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 ASU, and I was then hired by 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 interp, which I knew a lot about. And he was in charge of all three of those, and then they had sub-heads, and Norm [INAUDIBLE] and Jan [INAUDIBLE] you knew them-- were in charge of 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 want to be part of that. And so they were trying to get out of being in the College of Fine Arts. There were a number of other units, and they were 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 Paige Mulhollan, who was then the provost, said, OK, 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 Sackton was the first dean, and then Nick Henry became the dean, and then Anne 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, is now in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. FRED COREY: So let's go back to that reorganization, because that reorganizing that's a big part of ASU's history. There you were, in the College of Fine Arts. Was there a lot of tension during that reorganization? Did faculty have a strong voice during the reorganization, or was it a top-down decision? - Finding a way to get justice studies and public affairs 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 gelled. 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 were interested in humanities. And that would be oral interp, which is now called performance studies. FRED COREY: And rhetoric. - And rhetoric were together, and there was an opposition with those who were social scientists. So there was a lot of tension that was going on between those two. Now, because I keep myself pretty active with the college or with the department of Hugh Downs school, there's a lot of integration now, and they don't have that anymore. It's wonderful to see. What's happening is that people in oral interp 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 thousand people seeing onstage manifestations of what the research is. I think that's an exciting thing that's happened with ASU now. - 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 my mother in some of the exercises she had the students go through. And some of her students then became politicians 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 make a difference in people's lives, to take literature out into the community, and that actually led me here. FRED COREY: To your first year at ASU, what year was that? - I came here in 1976. - 1976, the bicentennial. - Yes. - And did you teach Communication 241, 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 it, that same class. Take them from scared to death, never been in front of a group, didn't have any idea what to do, to give them a piece of literature, or something that's important for them. They talk about it, and you watch them through the semester growing. And that ability to spread the water on the little plants and watch them grow, and then to pick them up when they're sophomores, junior, seniors, graduate students and again watch that kind of blossoming. FRED COREY: And you attracted a lot of master's degree students. - I did. Yeah. FRED COREY: 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 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 really tried. I went into the evenings, and I listened to the tapes, and the only thing I remember now is-- that means, I forget, but Heidi went on. She is fluent in it, and she did some marvelous stories and wrote her dissertation on storytelling. FRED COREY: And she was your first PhD student. - She was my first PhD student. Yeah. FRED COREY: 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 and a communication consultant. In fact, she's in Chicago right now working with a group of business people. And she'd come to ASU thinking that there was a radio, TV, and that's what she was going to be in. But at that time, there was no master's 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 she went upstairs and found out that we had a master's degree program. So she started, and she discovered oral interp for me. And then, she went on to become a communication professional, and she still does. She does very well doing that. Who else were you thinking of? FRED COREY: Oh, Cindy Mann, Cynthia Mann. - Where'd she go? FRED COREY: I don't know. When I arrived here, you had a group of about 10-- - I did. - MA students, and it was a very interesting dynamic to watch how many master's level students were committed to working with you. - Yeah. - Mostly all women. - Yeah, mostly all women, and then you made it possible. You had advised the chair to make my chair of the Masters Committee, and I loved doing that with the masters students. We have a masters program now, but it's all on video. - Online. - All online. Yeah. They're not doing it in person anymore. - Well, it's a pass-through degree program primarily. People enter the graduate program and get their master's in passing. - Yeah. These masters are not going onto PhDs, like we did. - Online. - At least, that's what Jess Alberts says. - OK. Favorite part of ASU? - Yeah. - Favorite years? - They're all good. My favorites are the students. Just I loved walking into Stauffer 318 which is there's a large room. It had a stage, and we could configure the chairs any way we wanted to, and we just made so much magic in that room. I was just there the other day with Jennifer Lindy who now teaches oral interp, and I went back into the classroom with her, and all the magic is still there. You made it happen too. I saw you perform there. FRED COREY: And Mitchell School, what was Mitchell School? - We needed a space where people could park. 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. It 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 to go around three sides. And then we had to do something about the bathroom, because it was a kindergarten room. And there were toilets for very small people, and so we had to do something about that. And then the roof leaked, and we had a light booth up in the back. Light booth, so we could light the performers, but it dripped in the rain. And so the light booth has electricity and has problems with electricity. Right? So there is a light person holding an umbrella up there and working the light switches for the show. Now, though, we have a really nice we call it the empty space. Empty space is-- FRED COREY: Peter Brook. - Peter-- FRED COREY: Brook. - Peter Brook, Peter Brook's comment, he says, I can take any empty space and make it a theater, and you can. I can make it a theater right here. And so there was an area of the cornerstone, I think it used to be a theater. FRED COREY: I think so. - A movie theater. 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 there's rain or using the toilets that are made for little kids. CREW: You talking about Center Point in downtown Tempe? FRED COREY: No. Cornerstone at the corner of university-- or no, University and Rural. - Yeah, University and Rural. Yeah, back in the corner there. CREW: There was a theater there? - Yeah. It's now an ASU building. - One of the questions that are asked here that I really wanted to talk about is that some of the special events that I did. FRED: OK. - And you were part of some of that, too, Fred. FRED: Sure. - I was a project director for a National Endowment for the Humanities grant, in which we performed contemporary Western literature in 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 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, was in a show that I directed. It was As I lay Dying by Faulkner. FRED: 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 interp was. Because the committee kept saying, well, we don't do theater. We don't do theater. He said, it's not theater. Oral interp involves an audience and gets 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 1984, it was the largest humanities grant that ASU has ever gotten. Since then, lots of other people have gotten more. FRED: But in today's dollars, that was-- was it $350? - $250. FRED: $250. - $250, yeah. You remember that, yeah? FRED: Sure, of course. Oh, it was wonderful. And it was also introducing people in the valley to literature from Western writers. - Yes. Yes. - So all the authors were southwest or west of the Rockies? - West of the Rockies. - West of the Rockies. - They were all west of the Rockies, yeah. And from that, one of them was Milagro Beanfield War by-- help me out. - I don't. - The writer, he lives in Albuquerque. Shoot, I've forgotten his name. But 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 bought that and they're bought next door and want to build a golf course or build a big apartment complex or build fancy houses, which took their 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 can do Milagro Beanfield 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 Beowulf in Danforth Chapel. You remember that. FRED: Of course. - I took Danforth Chapel, and I put banners up on the side, and turned it into a mead hall. And our daughter was a serf, who served, at the intermission, served mead, which was non-alcoholic mead. But we called it mead, and my husband Gene Valentine was the narrator, and he knows Old English. So here is a story about that. We invited Russ Nelson. 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 last row. And Gene starts off in Old English, the way Beowulf was written. And I heard Russ lean over and say, do you think the whole show is going to be in Old English? At that point, then Gene turns the page, and it goes into English and everybody's speaking English. And I saw Russ Nelson and his wife relax 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 Linda Vansco-- you may remember this. It was called Highly Classified, narratives of a ASU classified staff. So "highly classified" 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 made things happen in the theater department behind the stage. And his motto was, "Your emergency is not my job." So the students learned not present to emergencies to him. And 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 Popemobile into the stadium. And that was one of the stories that was told. So we did this in the MU, and invited all of the staff members whose stories were told, and then, of course, all their friends. So we had everybody in the-- I was real proud of what that students could do, and how we wanted to bring the staff closer to the students in a personal way. And that's another thing that oral interp and storytelling can do. --into those. FRED: So when did the Black Interpreters Theater get its start? And were you-- - Oh. I'd forgotten about that. That's a good one. Yeah. I had worked with issues of black rhetoric as 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 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 '70s. And I was radicalized at the time. And it was one of the reasons I wanted to live in the West. But 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 want to tell them what to do. So I started getting some African-American students in my classes, and I had some talented ones. And I would 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 did a show called From Rhapsodes to Rap. The rhapsodes were, as you know, rhapsodes were the storytellers for The Iliad and The Odyssey. The Greek story tellers were called rhapsodes. So take the first part of rhapsodes, and it moves to rap, and they were doing rap at the time. And then we toured with that around to the communities, and other people got to see what they were doing. And then, because two or three the advisors found out about it, they had a lot more African-American students take classes in oral interp. Because once you start a little movement like that, then it starts to go. Yeah, that was good. FRED: It was a thriving troupe for a long time. - It was. It was. FRED: Yeah. - Yeah. Yeah. That's good. FRED: And when you arrived, there were gender issues in the department, right? - Yes. I think I was one of two people in the department, women, and I immediately looked around to see where other women were. I'm a feminist, and I work in issues of women. So I found the very beginning of women's studies with Thelma Shinn, who was the first. She was hired half-time for women's studies and half-time in English. And it was exciting because we then became adjunct women's 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 ASU, by going out and seeing the kinds of interest and the kinds of research that women were doing. And then came along Mary Rothchild. I think she's also been interviewed here. And she was chair when she was 30, and she was chair when she was 40. She was chair again when she was 50, 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 have its own unit. But at first, we were it. 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. FRED: And it was a time that called for great strength in the home front, too, right? In the Department of Communication. - It did that, and then we began to hire more women in the department. 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. I like that part. FRED: Right. Did you notice changes of that sort happening throughout ASU? The cultural changes in terms of women's rights? - I saw a compartmentalizing when we first got here. And then, with the women's studies and the faculty women's association-- I was president of the faculty women's association 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. Something I thought about when these questions came up was that I got my bachelor's degree when I was in my 20s, my master's in my 30s, my PhD in my 40s. So I think a lot of people think, well can you get a PhD later in life? And I did that. Then I got to be a full professor at 50. I was proud of that. And then at 60, I got a Teaching Award from ASU. And then at 70, I got a National Teaching Award that Wallace Bacon-- And it was even more meaningful because Wallace Bacon really started oral interpretation at Northwestern. So his name just goes down through all the people who've ever taught oral interp or performance studies. I got that. And then when I stopped teaching at a ASU, I started teaching at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. I taught in a women's studies program. So I was home again in women's studies. But I was teaching ethnography. I was teaching women's storytelling to students in and 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 college program at the Federal Prison Camp up in North Phoenix. And so I taught communication and creative writing. I actually taught oral interp to them, and I was trying to get them to get some communication skills by using their own poetry and their own writing. A lot of them are really good writers. It was fun teaching them. Now I don't drive the 100-mile round trip anymore, but I do help Peg Bortner near downtown by whatever paperwork it needs to be done to keep that program going. And I'm hoping that somebody-- because 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 ASU that I saw over the years. FRED: Yeah, all right. So-- - You do that? FRED: Sure. So when you arrived what was ASU West like? - There wasn't one. FRED: Poly. - Yeah. Dell Felder helped start ASU 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 Polytechnic, no East. Downtown was almost nothing. So the way I'd characterize it, it was it was pretty predictable. There were silos, and that's the word that was being used. 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 [INAUDIBLE] 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 ever work together before, and somehow they figured out a way to do that. I like that kind of creativity. FRED: 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 have a-- I should have brought it-- I have a-- - Gavel. - A gavel that said, "first president of the ASU faculty." Now I think it's a different name. What is it now? - No, it's president. - But it's not faculty senate. - Oh, academic senate. - Academic senate. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Same thing. All right. So what were some of the issues that 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. Originally, as I understand, Danforth chapel did not originally have a cross on top, and one of the earlier presidents of ASU put the cross up. And then we had a debate about it, and 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? I says, what happened here? It was apparently a big win 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 it'd already been taken care of by the forces of nature, 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 too? 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. The faculty senate did decide that the cross should come down so that it can be used at a meditation center for everybody and not just for Christians. But the word chapel still there, and I don't know if other religions use it or not, but that was an emotional moment for the faculty senate. It led to lots of other things. It was for the first time the faculty representative could sit with the deans, could sit with the vice president, and one of the other issues at the time that I was president was the building of-- or the making of The University Club. FRED COREY: Oh. - Making it a club, and it wasn't before that. So during the time that I was president, there were some argument about that. And I'd heard that this story about how come we even had one in the first place was that they were interviewing somebody for athletic director. And the athletic director said, well, why don't we talk about this issue, whatever it was, over 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. FRED COREY: He was a professor in the School of Public Affairs. - But he was also something with the president. FRED COREY: Oh, yeah. He was in the president's office. - In the president's office. They said, we've got this building over here. We could take this building and make the University Club out of it. FRED COREY: And it was a pretty rundown art studio space. - Is that what it was? FRED COREY: Yeah. - 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 deans, and they were all arguing about whether or not they should have a bar. And some of the people were saying, well, we don't want professors staggering across the campus after drinking at the University Club. And the two people who held out for having it were Russ Nelson who was a teetotaller, and Brent Brown who was a Mormon. FRED COREY: Member of the LDS, yeah. [INTERPOSING VOICES] - So the two people who never, ever drank liquor at all said, we should have a University Club. And we guarantee that we're not going to have professors stumbling over to their lectures, and it worked out just fine. - Yep. - 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 was a treat. And at one of the pre-sessions, before he came on stage or came to speak, the Anthropology Department presented him with a master's thesis. Now, to back up, for those of you who read Tony Hillerman's stories about Navajo life and living in New Mexico, right on the border with Arizona, his main character was called Joe Leaphorn. And in the books, Joe Leaphorn had a master's degree in anthropology from ASU, and he would carry this through all the novels. They'd always mention ASU, mention anthropology, and of course, Joe Leaphorn was a major character. So what the anthropology department did was to come up with a master's degree thesis with Joe Leaphorn, and the title of his master's thesis in anthropology and present this to Tony Hillerman. He loved it. He just thought that was great. FRED COREY: Well, you were also hired at the time when ASU decided to become a major research institution. Right? - Yes. - So that was a transition. - Yes. - For the institution. - Yes. So there was lots of emphasis on research. I did my research in Spain, in Galicia. It's a portion of Spain. It's in Northwest Galicia. And you mentioned Chris [? Muldoon. ?] She just got back from walking part of the Camino, and she, just this last month, was in Santiago de Compostela which is the town that we lived in. And I interviewed women storytellers in Northwest Spain. They've always been interested in storytelling and particularly interested in women's take on it. And the women-- I thought I was going to hear stories of St. James, which he's the patron saint of Spain. And the women all said, if you want to hear about St. James, you talked to my priest, 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 my short version of it. They wanted to talk about going to a Romería which is a celebration of whatever event happened in a particular place. So for example, there is a town called [? Machia, ?] 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 woman told me. The Virgin Mary came to Galicia 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 murdered, 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. - Yeah. That's what I like to talk about. - 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 involved in-- it would have been post-peace movement. - Yeah. I got into using literature as a force for talking during the Vietnam War. And independently, Jan [? Elsie ?] here at ASU and I at the University of Kentucky, we didn't know each other, but we both said, here we are doing literature, like Shelley's "Skylark" or Keats's 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 independently said, 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 oral interp. FRED COREY: Right. Well, you created a course called Performance for Social Change. - I did. I did. Jan [? Elsie ?] actually started that, and I picked up on it from her. So as soon as I got here, I had a kindred spirit in wanting to use literature out in the community. FRED COREY: So you would have the classroom, but didn't the students actually go out into the community and perform in social context? - Yes. FRED COREY: That's what it was called. - Yes. So we worked with the blind. We worked with a population of blind people. FRED COREY: The Beatitudes, you went out to Beatitudes. - And we went to the Beatitudes. Frequently, 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, medium security prison. And I was able to get students in there and had them teach the same thing that I had been teaching which was 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 Najafi, and Cheryl and her husband helped fund the [? Kristin ?] Burge Valentine Undergraduate Scholarship in Communication. And she was an excellent teacher to incarcerated people. She now runs a business that a third of the profits goes into causes like ACLU buildings for people who are homeless or LBGTQ people. So 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 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 students in theater are sometimes just want to become actors. That's why they're there. The students in performance and oral interp wanted to make a difference in the world, and it was those students that we just-- you did too. We both just grabbed onto those. FRED COREY: So much of your work did bring ASU into the community through the National Endowment for the Humanities grant. - Yeah. - Your coursework in social change. - Yep, and working in the prisons. - Working in the prisons. - Yeah. Yeah. - How would you describe the relationship between ASU and its communities during your time here? - I thought that we professors were not at the time rewarded for what we did in the community, and that was always what I thought I should do. And I resented that there was so much emphasis on my research, when I liked doing research, I enjoy doing, and I did a lot of it, but I thought the emphasis should be on all three. There were three legs of the stool that Nick Henry had, and it was service, teaching, and research. So it was voiced 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 really, 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-- FRED COREY: No. I think you're right. - It seems more-- my university, my first university, was the University of Wisconsin, and they said the borders of the university or the borders of the state. So I grew up with that idea, that a university should encompass the whole state, and I think ASU's trying to do that now. And I'm proud that I was here for such a long time, 27, 28 years, a long time. The last question that was asked, I wanted to change. FRED COREY: Go ahead. - The last question was how do I occupy my time? Which sounds like not me, so I changed it to how do I contribute to my communities, since I retired from ASU? Because I believe that's what I've chosen for making meaning out of my life. So what do I do? 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 in New Zealand. One of my favorite places in all this world is New Zealand. So I did that. Then, I'm helping with the Rio Salado program with Peg Bortner and the federal prison camp for women in north Phoenix. And then, I'm living at Friendship Village, where one of the nice people that are helping make this happen lives. And I chair the Hiking Committee and the Pet Committee. We have 100 dogs, 25 cats, 4 birds, and 4 tortoises that have to be looked after, and whatever issues there are comes to the Pet Committee. And then the Hiking Committee, we hike 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 started that? CREW 1: Dick Jacob. - Dick Jacob? CREW 1: Dick Jacob. - Dick Jacob started it, and then who is the provost that really pushed it? I've forgotten his name. CREW 1: Milton? CREW 2: Milton Glick. - Yeah, Milton. Yeah. Milton, Milt Glick. Yes, and that is for those who watch this or might be Emeritus faculty. Because many of us are still writing, or we still had an article we hadn't published yet, or we're still doing something that's interesting. And there is an Emeritus College voices journal, which I've published in. And 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 that many universities across the country now have an Emeritus College, and I'm a proponent of that. FRED COREY: Nice, and were you part of the Emeritus College when it went downtown with the exhibits in the University Center? - Yes. Well, because my husband is an artist, so his work was down there. it is still up there on the wall. Gene Valentine is a printer, paper-maker, and his work is on the wall for 11-- on the fifth floor. Yeah. - Yeah, and he taught in the English Department for a long time. - He taught in the English Department. Right. - And your daughter went to ASU? - Daughter went to ASU, got a degree in tourism and is now the marketing director for the School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU. And she's married to Tony Roberto who is a professor in my department, communication. - And how did they meet? - I introduced them. I was hiking with a group from communication, and I started a hiking group of the faculty and grad students. I thought they ought to-- grad students, particularly those who are not from Arizona, need to see things, need to get out there. So I started a hiking group with them, and they kept doing it, 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. We kept talking and nice guy, and yes, and they've been married five years now. It's sort of off the topic. OK. That's a wrap. - Well, Kristin, thank you so very much for sharing your memories of ASU. 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 the outstanding part of my work was having you in an office next door.