From The Onion to AI

A Signature Program of The Vassar Institute for the Liberal Arts Tackles the Art of Impactful Storytelling

What do Vassar faculty who write for public audiences, technology experts who wrestle with the growing reality of artificial intelligence, and the head writer for The Onion have in common? The thread weaving through the November 7–8 Signature Program of The Vassar Institute for the Liberal Arts was the power of narrative.

The first Signature Program of the 2025-26 academic year, “Storytelling for Change: Shaping and Sharing Inclusive Narratives in Higher Education, Media, and the Arts” posed the question: “How do we tell impactful stories about the things that matter most, and ultimately, strengthen our relationships to each other?” It was convened by Associate Professor of Psychological Science at Vassar Dara Greenwood and Victoria Grantham, Vassar’s Vice President for Communications.

In his keynote speech, D. Graham Burnett, Professor of History at Princeton University and founder of the Friends of Attention, asserted that technological developments have fractured our attention and made a new and insidious kind of exploitation possible. He compared this form of exploiting human consciousness to extract monetary value from users of AI and social media to the high-pressure techniques that pull oil and gas from the ground, calling it “human fracking.” To combat this extraction attempt, he recommended we forge connections with each other and participate in nourishing, collaborative device-free activities, some as simple as daydreaming or taking a walk. 

“If we’re going to preserve our humanity and preserve our ability to teach and learn and share stories over the next 20 years, we need to remember how diverse and constitutive of our humanity our attention actually is,” Burnett concluded. “We need to get some new forms of collective action pushing back, and it’s going to take all hands on deck.”

After his speech, he sat down for a conversation with Minerva Tantoco ’86, an early pioneer in AI, holder of four AI patents, and CEO of City Strategies Consulting.

During their discussion on making academic work relevant to mainstream audiences, faculty members discussed their public-facing work, integral parts of their roles at Vassar. 

Panelists included Greenwood, who writes a blog for Psychology Today and whose work has been published in numerous other periodicals; Michele Tugade ’95, Professor of Psychological Science on the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowed Chair, whose research has been published in numerous mainstream outlets; and Robert K. Brigham, Shirley Ecker Boskey Professor of History and International Relations, who has published 11 books.Wes Dixon, Deputy to the President and Secretary of the Board of Trustees, who hosts a Vassar podcast Conversations @ the Salt Line, moderated.

Greenwood made a link to practices that she follows in the classroom—having students make meaningful connections between observations in everyday life and research findings. Brigham said one of his books about his personal history as someone who grew up in the foster care system placed a spotlight on this important national issue. And Tugade talked about applying her work on resilience to real-world problems and audiences, citing her work with astronauts to help them cope with loneliness and stress during trips in small spacecrafts.

Mike Gillis, a writer for The Onion, joined Lynette Clemetson, Director of the Knight-Wallace Fellowships for Journalists at the University of Michigan, and Eric Marcus ’80, author, community activist, and founder of the podcast Making Gay History, for a panel about their roles in interacting with audiences, moderated by Greenwood.

Telling stories has always been a way humans connect with one another, panelists said. Marcus, whose podcast has more than 25,000 listeners and 7 million downloads from people in 200 countries, said, “I love to tell stories—tragic or happy. They help to bring us together and find comfort in each other.”

Telling stories on a public platform can take its toll on the storytellers though, said Clemetson, whose organization provides The Knight-Wallace House—a place for journalists and others to take a break from their demanding and sometimes traumatic work to recharge and focus on meaningful projects.

Gillis said he believed that injecting humor into storytelling can make both  mundane and disturbing topics more palatable and relatable.

Carina Cole, a media studies major and Editor-in-Chief of The Miscellany News, said the panel was encouraging. “I think there is a lot of fear surrounding going into this profession right now, understandably, but having examples of people who have succeeded in making careers out of storytelling is invaluable. Just being able to see there are still options for people interested in this career path is important.”

The two-day program also included “The Story of Life After College: Starting Up the Career Ladder,” featuring Carlo Salerno, an education economist with Burning Glass Institute, and Gene Carlton Waddy, a Vassar junior. Salerno shared research-backed insights into what current employers value, noting that students may have more marketable skills than they realize—skills that relate to their academic majors of interest. As the conversation came to a close, Waddy, who had voiced his and his peers’ anxieties, expressed a sense of relief at hearing the information Salerno had shared. 

In an interactive session titled “Whose Story Is It?” Stacy Bingham, Vassar’s Associate Dean of the College for Career Education, Vassar and Jannette Swanson, Director of External Engagement for Vassar’s Center for Career Education, led attendees in an iterative exercise about the liberal arts and careers.

The program concluded with three performances and a storytelling workshop. Doreen Oliver performed a piece from her award-winning one-woman show, Everything Is Fine Until It’s Not, about her experience of parenting a child with autism, and later read a piece about their interaction with police. Jeremy Davidson, co-founder, along with his wife, actor Mary Stuart Masterson, of Storyhorse Documentary Theater, directed a seven-person cast (including one Vassar student, Dora Graham ’26, and an alum, Emily Donahoe ’97) in a dramatized nonfiction reading based on the experiences of a police officer and others in their Hudson Valley community. To cap off the program, Christina Thyssen, a lecturer in English at the University of Albany and a story coach and producer of On The Fly Story Slam, led participants through an interactive session on shaping and sharing their own personal stories.

Aniyah Bailey ’28 said the event clarified her thoughts about life after Vassar. “As an economics major pursuing law school, the ability to explain complex ideas clearly, anticipate what an audience does or doesn’t know, and communicate with precision and intention will be central to my success, so ‘Storytelling for Change’ was very helpful,” she noted.

Greenwood and Grantham were pleased that the varied backgrounds and perspectives of the speakers and attendees had sparked such lively discussions.

“Whether it was from a Poughkeepsie organizer saying that the keynote speaker spoke to her soul, or people tearing up at the theater performances and laughing at Onion headlines, it seemed participants were truly present and engaged,” Grantham said. “I think it’s really important to underscore that stories have the power to move us—in addition to helping us think about things in a different way.”

Greenwood said the ideas sparked at the event would continue to be discussed in other forums. “We saw broad swaths of people connecting with each other and sharing experiences and insights,” she said. “They wanted to keep the conversations going! We plan to follow up with all involved to see where their insights about storytelling and community will take them. Ultimately, the event seemed to tell its own story about how hungry we all are for authentic engagement with each other and with the world around us.”

—Larry Hertz