Festival of Ideas

2026 Festival of Ideas

Cover of Dacher Keltner's book AWE: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. It has the Northern lights behind silhouetted trees. For 2026, the Festival theme is AWE, inspired by the work of Dr. Dacher Keltner and his book AWE: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. In his research, Keltner defines awe as the feeling we experience when we encounter something vast that transcends our current understanding and invites us to rethink our place in the world. Rather than prescribing a single definition, the 2026 Festival of Ideas invites participants to explore the many sources of awe identified in Keltner’s work; including moral beauty, nature, collective experience, art, ideas, and human connection.

Details

Date: Thursday, April 2
Location: UTA Planetarium and SEIR 298
Cost: Free

Schedule

Time	Event	Location
12:45 PM	Author Q&A	UTA Planetarium
7:00 PM	Keynote Speaker Event	Science and Engineering Innovation and Research Building (SEIR), room 298 (655 W. Mitchell St., Arlington, TX 76010)

*Keynote Speaker Event is open to the public. Parking is provided in Lot F9 and Lot 49. There will be a book signing following the event.

About the Festival of Ideas

What began in 2005 with a generous donation by UT Arlington alumnus Mustaque Ahmed (’81) has grown into an endowment funding dynamic programing that showcases unique aspects of the arts, humanities and social sciences. By appealing to a multi-disciplinary audience, Festival of Ideas brings together the twelve departments and four centers that make up the College of Liberal Arts at UTA.

Festival of Ideas culminates with a keynote speaker who demonstrates the transformative power of creative expression. Selected for their inspiring messaging, commitment to diversity of perspective, and broad appeal, past keynote speakers have been authors, playwrights, artists, and activists.

At its very core, the entire Season of Festival of Ideas unites the University and draws in the larger community around issues that touch every member of society. Festival of Ideas harnesses the power of the arts, humanities and social sciences to explore big ideas and to seek common ground across the human experience.

Experiencing Awe: Wonder, Creativity, and the Liberal Arts.

COLA Undergraduate Student Contest: Call for Creative Submissions

We invite you to find awe, explore awe, and tell your story. What makes you pause and wonder? When, where, and how do you experience awe? Why is that so? Turn your ideas, experiences, or questions into a product that can be shared with others. Learn more about Dr. Keltner's take on AWE by reading his interview and/or watching his YouTube video. [Deadline: March 23, 2026]

Contest Guidelines Submission Form

Past Speakers & Themes

David Treuer

New York Times Bestselling author and Guggenheim Fellow David Treuer is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. Treuer is the author of seven books and the winner of two Minnesota Book Awards, the California Book Award for Nonfiction, and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Carnegie Medal. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, LA Times, and The Washington Post, among others. He divides his time between Leech Lake Reservation and Los Angeles, where he is a Professor of English at The University of Southern California.

Jarrett Krosoczka

Jarrett J. Krosoczka is the New York Times bestselling author/illustrator behind more than forty books for young readers, including his wildly popular Lunch Lady graphic novels, select volumes of the Star Wars^TM: Jedi Academy series, and Hey, Kiddo, which was a National Book Award Finalist. Krosoczka creates books with humor, heart, and deep respect for his young readers— qualities that have made his titles perennial favorites on the bookshelves of homes, libraries, and bookstores over the past twenty years.

Octavio Solis

Author of over 20 plays, Octavio Solis is considered by many to be one of the most prominent Latino playwrights in America. With works that both draw on and transcend the Mexican-American experience, he is a writer and director whose style defies formula, examining the darkness, magic and humor of humanity with brutal honesty and characteristic intensity. Lydia is a riveting play about the Flores family in 1970’s El Paso, Texas. Lydia, an undocumented maid, comes to the Flores family to assist them with their disabled daughter. What follows is a personal look into a shared family trauma, with the themes of understanding/misunderstanding, love, sexuality, identity and the importance of voice, especially for those who cannot speak.