Welcome and stage-setting 

• Scott Black, Director, Tanner Humanities Center, University of Utah 
• Ben Winslow, Reporter, Fox 13 Utah and Salt Lake City
• Marcie Young Cancio, Department of Communication, University of Utah
• Ali Vallarta, City Cast Salt Lake 

Snowflakes, scandal, and sisterhood 

• Sara Zarr, Utah Humanities 
• Renato Olmedo-Gonzalez, Salt Lake City Arts Council 
• Emily January, Weber State University 
• Victoria Gonzalez, Reality TV Correspondent, Radio From Hell 
• Giovanna Grant, Westminster University 

Housewives U: Core Curriculum 

• Jordan Rullo, University of Utah
  “I'm Disengaging”: A Couples Therapist’s Guide to Communication on RHOSLC 
• Claire Adams and Melissa Hardy
  From Saints to Sinners: Tales of Dating and Marriage From Within the Hive 

Housewives U: Electives 

• Ali Alkhalifa, The Ohio State University
  Talking Back at The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City 
• Julia Soule and Li Murphy, Yale University
  Rented Revelations: Housewives, Crickets, and Empty Walls 
• Rachel White
  The Function of Fashion in The Real Housewives of SLC 

Housewives U: Extracurriculars 

• Crystal S. Rudds, University of Utah
  Stuck in Time? What AI Baby Parodies May Reveal about RHOSLC, and Us 
• Alex Docherty, University of Toronto
  The Cult Canonization of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City 
• Cassie Bingham, Utah Valley University
  Mormon Multiverse: How Reality TV Reveals a Spectrum of Faith Practice and Accelerates Identity Negotiation 

How we watch after school 

Elizabeth Leach, Jaq Baca, Ryan Uribé, and Tuan Pham
The Ethics of Shade: Probity, Gossip, and Connection in Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Fan Communities 

Performance by the Salt Lake Acting Company 

As Director of the Tanner Humanities Center, Scott Black is dedicated to supporting and advancing the Humanities in all its forms and varieties. As a scholar of the long history of the novel and prose fiction, he is fascinated by the many ways we tell stories about ourselves, from gossip (and rumors and nastiness) to popular entertainment, experimental literature, and high art. As a member of Team Bronwyn, he is committed to the freeing of Unis everywhere.

Ben Winslow is a report for Fox 13 Utah and Salt Lake City

Marcie Young Cancio is a Clinical Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Utah and founder of Amplify Utah, a nonprofit that creates real-world journalism opportunities for student and emerging journalists. Born and raised in Salt Lake City, she spent nearly two decades in newsrooms across the country, from Condé Nast in New York to ABC in San Francisco, earning an Emmy for television breaking news along the way. She began her teaching career at Salt Lake Community College in 2018, joined the faculty at the U three years ago, and has since been nationally recognized for her work in collaborative and community journalism through Amplify Utah. When she’s not doing journalism stuff, Marcie loves being outdoors with her pups and kid, exploring SLC’s food and drink scene, and binging trashy reality TV. She also teaches Media and Society, a course examining the impact of mass media on modern culture , which means she can watch the Real Housewives and call it work.

Ali Vallarta is the host of City Cast Salt Lake, a daily podcast and newsletter for Salt Lakers. They cover everything from political headlines to $10 lunch deals and local events. Before hopping on the mic, her career spanned from corporate responsibility to community organizing. It’s possible we crossed paths at one of the 216 bars or 511 parks she visited as new years resolutions. When not at work, you can find Ali in the mountains, under the sea, or sneaking Crown Burger into the Broadway.

Sara Zarr first encountered the Real Housewives channel-surfing hotel cable while on a book tour. The New Jersey cast was her gateway drug, but she has also dipped in and out of Beverly Hills and Potomac. When the franchise came to Salt Lake City, she immediately alerted all her non-Utah friends in her ongoing efforts to prove that Salt Lake is a real city where interesting things happen, and the cast has not let her down. When she’s not watching TV, she writes novels and works in admin at Utah Humanities.

Renato Olmedo-González is a proud queer immigrant from Guadalajara, México, whose work explores how stories of belonging, identity, and cultural expression shape public space. He came to the United States as an undocumented teen and draws on his lived experience to inform his public art and cultural programming. Renato currently serves as the Public Art Program Manager for the Salt Lake City Arts Council, shaping the urban landscape through site-specific commissions and community-based projects across the city. Outside of work, Renato enjoys collecting art, listening to music on vinyl, reading Spanish and Latin American literature, wearing a fun pair of shoes, and—like any true student of high culture—treating reality television as the rich cultural archive that it is.

Emily January, an associate professor in the English department at Weber State University, teaches technical communication and rhetoric courses, the most popular of which has been a Taylor Swift Studies class. Her research focuses on professional identities from a feminist perspective, examining how women document their work technologically, historically, professionally, and extra-institutionally. She has conducted research in the United States, Botswana, India, South Africa, and Australia.

Victoria Gonzlalez is a Bravo TV enthusiast who has a reoccurring segment on X96’s Radio from Hell. She was invited to go on the radio morning show after writing a strongly worded email to Kerry, Bill, and Gina (the hosts of Radio from Hell) to disabuse them of their assumption that only “dumb” people watch reality TV. Every week, she goes on the radio to update Kerry, Bill and Gina about the Housewives. They say “she watches so we don’t have to.” Bill insists “something is wrong with her” and Victoria insists that they are missing out on important feminist entertainment. Victoria was born and raised in Salt Lake City, graduated from the University of Utah with a Bachelor of Arts in English, and went on to earn a law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. While she didn’t join the Church of Bravo until 2013, her education prepared her to connect deeply with Housewives fans by over-analyzing every episode and defend against those who think this entertainment is inferior. Victoria currently lives in the “Chicagoland” area, enjoys all manner of champagne, and watching movies that aren’t considered “dumb.”

Giovanna Grant is a Junior at Westminster University, majoring in Literature, Media, and Writing and minoring in French. She plans on attending law school, specializing in Entertainment Law. Giovanna is passionate about film and television and hopes to work for a major studio. When she isn’t watching RHOSLC (or many TikTok’s relating to the show), she is an avid reader, fangirl, and volunteers at the International Model United Nations Association.

Dr. Jordan Rullo, PhD, ABPP is a Board-Certified Clinical Health Psychologist, Certified Sex Therapist and Supervisor through the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists and Certified Gottman Therapist. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Clinical Psychology at the University of Utah, has a private practice in Salt Lake City, Utah (www.jordanrullo.com) and teaches online sexual health courses at sexualhealthsolutions.com. Her areas of specialty include couples and sexual health, sexual dysfunction, and sexual health related to menopause and cancer. She presents on sexual health nationally and internationally and has published over two dozen peer-reviewed articles on the topic of sexual health.

The Salty Hoes, Melissa Hardy and Claire Adams, tell the real stories of the real lives of ex-Mormon ex-wives. Brought together by jobs in academia, their bond was forged by a shared love of the RHoSLC, the horror of trying to date in Utah, and a relatable sense of salty humor. Claire was born in Belfast, in the north of Ireland, and emigrated to the United States in November 2008. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Modern Studies in the Humanities from Ulster University a master’s in Irish Studies from Queen’s University, Belfast, and a master’s in International Affairs and Global Enterprise from the University of Utah. She completed five years of PhD research in Language & Literature at Ulster University and is a PhD candidate in Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Utah. Claire is an Interim Associate Dean of Humanities & Languages who runs, reads, punches things, and teaches yoga in the evenings. Together, Melissa and Claire are entering their mid-life prime, reimagining their lives outside of Mormonism and matrimony. They are age-positive, slightly salty, RHoSLC-loving women, and are serving legions of fellow Salty Hoes through their weekly podcast of the same name. Melissa was born in Utah and grew up a Cali girl in Orange County, CA. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Zoology at Brigham Young University, a master’s degree in Biology: Ecology and Systematics at San Francisco State University, and a PhD in Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Utah. Melissa is a Biology Professor who skis, scuba dives, hikes, and is only moderately obsessed with pickleball. 

Ali Alkhalifa (he/him or they/them) is the Education Program Specialist for the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department at The Ohio State University. Prior to working with the WGSS Department, Ali had the immense privilege of being advised by Dr. Linda Mizejewski, assisting him in the development of both a Senior Thesis (“Euphoria: High Highs and Low Lows”) and an MA thesis entitled “RuPaul’s Drag Race’s Canceling Culture & the Digital Disposability of its Disrespectable, Non-Homonormative Subjects.” I am an avid RHOSLC viewer, hosting a watch party every week with my colleagues and dear friends. My passion for feminist media analysis is grounded in my genuine appreciation for art labeled “low-brow” or kitsch; belief that all representations are deserving of active, analytical engagement; and my desire to unpack how the quotidian–however fabricated–is constructed through the melodrama of reality television and its perceived “realness.”

Julia Soule is an Arkansan sequestered in the Northeast, where she is pursuing a Masters of Environmental Management at Yale School of the Environment and a Masters of Arts in Religion at Yale Divinity School. She is especially interested in how implicit beliefs about the environment affect power allocation in the United States, with an eye towards agrarian countercultures and the South. Her research is centered in her home state of Arkansas, where ecotourism, megacorporations, counterculture movements, and state religious power converge with material consequences for the people and places she knows best. Julia has a background in organic farming, teaching elementary school, grocery cooperative organizing, pressure canning, Taco Bell rewards program manipulation, and oversharing on the Internet.

Li Murphy is an Idaho-raised entomologist, NSF Graduate Fellow at the Yale School of the Environment, and the kind of person who mounted a tiny video camera on a Mormon cricket and would do it again. She studies the socioecology of the Great Basin, following insect migrations across Nevada, Idaho, and Utah using drones, folklore, and methods that are harder to explain at parties than you’d think. Her Salt Lake Tribune op-ed on renaming the “Mormon cricket” sparked polite confusion and several long email threads, which she considers a career highlight. Off the field and outside the lab, she works as a creative director of her wife’s jazz career, acts (badly) in low-budget music videos, and handles animals on set for documentary and film productions (just hissing cockroaches, honeybees, docile horses, and house cats so far). She conducts annual Western roadside attraction pilgrimages and loves practical but unfashionable footwear and 90’s-era trucks. Catch Li on Substack Getting Crickets for field notes, thoughts on same-sex child rearing, and pictures of her posing scenically with her grasshopper puke-stained butterfly net.

Rachel White graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in Economics and Creative Writing from the University of Utah, then studied poetry for two years in the MFA program.  Her poetry chapbook, The Velvet Earth After Rain (Moon in the Rye Press, 2024) was selected as a “Notable Read”by Utah Humanities Book Awards that recognize work of outstanding literary merit and lasting importance by Utah authors. She is a co-founder and editor of a literary magazine, The Nomad at the-nomad.org. Rachel chronicles streetstyle and fashion @slc_on_the_street, named for the great Bill Cunningham’s long-running NYT feature.

Crystal S. Rudds is an assistant professor of English at the University of Utah. Currently at work on a book about representations of public housing across literature and media, her teaching and research interests include twentieth century American literature, Black Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies, and housing geographies.

Alex Docherty is a 2026 graduate from the University of Toronto’s Cinema Studies Institute and John H. Daniels’ Faculty of Architecture. Her academic and editorial work can be found in Camera Stylo, The Varsity, and The Canadian Journal of Media Studies. She enjoys examining audiovisual media through a feminist and post-internet lens.

Cassie Bingham is a systems and design educator and impact strategist who holds degrees in Sociocultural Anthropology with an International Development emphasis, and Sociology. Her experience includes roles in nonprofit development for immigrant and refugee communities, leadership of disaster relief operations at Moria Refugee Camp in Greece, and social entrepreneurship with East African artisans and small business owners. As Director of the UVU Center for Social Impact, she has developed integrated strategies grounded in systems thinking and social change design. She mentors the Center’s annual cohort of student Impact Fellows and UVU’s Oxford Map the System research teams. She created the UVU Design for Impact pitch competition and regularly serves as an Alumni-in-Residence for Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design Teaching and Learning Studio. Cassie also serves as adjunct faculty, designing and teaching courses on Social Impact Strategy, Systems and Design Thinking for Macro Social Work, and Philosophies of Justice. Beyond academia, she is a relational strategy systems and impact consultant.

Elizabeth Leach · Tagline: “Some keep receipts, I keep encyclopedias—and in Utah, that’s practically scripture.” · A Utah-native, I am a creative human who works in tech as a product manager for music software. I am a writer, musician, and real housewives fan, and oracle. I have been watching since the first franchise, in Orange County, popped up on screens in 2008. As a student of psychology, I enjoy watching the social dynamics, conflict and resolution, as well as remembering the details to make sure I am up to speed with who is right, and who is good.

Meet Jaq Baca: Product Manager and Scrum Master by day, professional chaos-translator by trade. She keeps teams shipping, stakeholders aligned, and somehow makes Jira feel like a personality trait. Off the clock, she’s a women’s hockey regular, pottery enthusiast, and climbing optimist who believes most problems can be solved with better grip, better glaze, or better snacks. And yes, she absolutely watches Real Housewives like it’s required research.

Tuan Pham · Tagline: “I smell like hospital.” · Bio: I have studied and worked in healthcare for nearly half of my life, but the human stories I am so privileged to hear are always limited and clinical in nature despite having significant consequences on people’s lives. RHOSLC stories are the complete opposite of that and probably one of the many reasons I’m so drawn to this world.  I may be the reality television show novice of this panel, but I think I can go the distance with anyone when it comes to RHOSLC.