The University of Sciences and Arts of Oklahoma (USAO) opens its academic year with the Festival of Arts and Ideas-From the Mountaintop: Why Dreams Matter on Monday, Jan. 18, through Tuesday, Jan. 19.

The Festival of Arts and Ideas is an annual event hosted by the University and this year it discusses the issue of social injustice through engaging lectures and games. Inspired by Martin Luther King the two-day festival will invoke the powerful meaning behind social justice.

The first day of the festival will open up with three lectures by USAO teachers beginning at 7:30 p.m. in the USAO Ballroom.

Tonnia Anderson, Assistant Professor of History American Studies, and Stephen Weber, Chair of the Division of Arts and Humanities and Professor of Music, will open the night with their lecture “Fording the Deep River to the Mountaintop.”  Accompanied by Weber, Anderson will discuss the vital role that music has played in the social justice scene and also the historical aspects of the Negro spiritual.

Jeanne Mather, Professor of Education, will follow Anderson and Weber with a reading of the children’s book Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation. Mather will focus on how Brown vs. the Board of Education opened the way for racial social justice and desegregation.

Monday’s night of events will end with a lecture by Camilla Smith Barnes, Associate Professor Mathematics will provide a fun and engaging quiz over famous female mathematicians. Audience members who participate in the trivia game will be able to earn prizes.

Tuesday will open up with a lecture on the advances of criminal justice on Indian reservations by Professor of American Indian Studies, Lee Hester. His lecture will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the USAO Ballroom.

Hester will be followed by Chris Garneau, Assistant Professor of Sociology, and Preston Lowe. Garneau and Lowe will examine the gender dynamics of comic books and how they damagingly reinforce gender roles.

The last lecture of the Festival is presented by Rob Vollmar who will examine the revolutionary life of Nigerian singer Fela Anikulapo Kuti. Vollmar explores the voice that Kuti provided certain minorities and social justice issues during the 1970s.