In this special COVID-19 edition of the BG Ideas podcast, guest host Gray Strain from the Center for Women and Gender Equity interviews BGSU alum Allie Lahey. Lahey is Senior Organizing Manager for NARAL Pro-Choice California. They discuss Allie’s work organizing for reproductive freedom, building people power, and developing strategies for engaging communities in the political and legislative process.

Transcript:

Announcer:

From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society. This is BG Ideas.

Intro Music:

I'm going to show you live with a wonderful experiment.

Gray Strain:

Welcome to the BG Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for The Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. As you may have already noticed, I am your guest host today, Gray Strain, Secretary for The Center for Women in Gender Equity as well as the Office of Title IX at BGSU. Thank you to Dr. Jolie Sheffer, of the ICS, for allowing us to guest host this episode. We appreciate the opportunity for collaboration.

Gray Strain:

This special episode of the BG Ideas podcast is being recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic. That means we're not in studio, but instead are talking via Zoom and phone. Our sound quality will be different as a result, especially since we are on opposite sides of the country, but we want to continue to share with our listeners some of the amazing work being done by members of the BGSU Community. Even or perhaps especially during a crisis, we at ICS and the CWGE, think it's important to celebrate great ideas. As always, the opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of BGSU or its employees.

Gray Strain:

Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Allie Lahey, Senior Organizing Manager for NARAL Pro-Choice California and an alumna of the BGSU Human Development and Family Studies Program. In her position at NARAL, Allie spearheads the organizing program in California, supporting volunteer member led action councils, mentoring organizers and strategizing to flex the people power of NARAL for campaign victories. She has extensive experience in grassroots organizing and electoral and legislative engagement with communities, both in her work at NARAL and her previous position as the Ohio State Organizer with URGE, United for Reproductive and Gender Equity, where she primarily engaged young people through the organization's first integrated voter engagement program. Allie joins me today to discuss her work in the field of reproductive freedom and what engaging communities and the political and legislative process looks like in practice. Hi Allie, thanks so much for being here.

Allie Lahey:

Hi. Thank you so much for having me. It's a huge honor.

Gray Strain:

No, we're glad to get started and have this really important conversation with you. So first thing's first, obviously due to COVID-19 a lot has changed quite rapidly for all of us, and face to face interaction is of course, you know necessarily limited. For someone like you who spends a lot of time working on building relationships and making those really important connections. How has your work really shifted during this pandemic?

Allie Lahey:

Yeah, that's a really great question. And something I've been grappling with for the last month. COVID 19 has changed organizing and a number of ways. I think that of course it changes things logistically in terms of like how we build relationships, how we meet people. I think obviously not being able to meet in person is a huge barrier and not being able to organize in large groups, to show our power, is a huge barrier in order to make our demands, pass legislation and also it impacts turning out people to

Dr. Peg Yacobucci, professor of Geology, and Blaze Campbell, PhD student in Bowling Green's higher education and Student Affairs, discuss their work on the nearly $1 million grant funded by the National Science Foundation's Advanced program, which is committed to increasing the participation of women in STEM fields.

Transcript:

Announcer:

From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of culture and society, this is BG Ideas.

Intro Music:

I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment.

Jolie Sheffer:

Welcome back to the Big Ideas Podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University.

Jolie Sheffer:

I'm Jolie Sheffer, associate professor of English and American Culture Studies, and the Director of ICS. Today we're joined by Dr. Peg Yacobucci and Blaze Campbell. Peg is a professor of geology here at BGSU and the principal investigator and project director of a three year nearly $1 million grant funded by the National Science Foundation's Advanced program, which is committed to increasing the participation of women in STEM fields.

Jolie Sheffer:

Blaze is a PhD student in Bowling Green's higher education and Student Affairs program and the Graduate Assistant on the BG ALLIES team.

Jolie Sheffer:

The BG allies program aims to develop systemic approaches to increase gender equity for faculty and STEM disciplines. To accomplish this BGSU ALLIES is developing models and policies to train faculty allies to reduce biases that impede the career advancement of women and other minoritized faculty.

Jolie Sheffer:

Peg and Blaze, thanks for joining me today.

Peg Yacobucci:

Thank you so much.

Blaze Campbell-Jacobs:

Thank you for having us.

Jolie Sheffer:

Let's start out with just some basic explanation of the grant that you received from the National Science Foundation. What is its purpose and who is it targeted at? What existing problems is it trying to solve?

Peg Yacobucci:

So the BGSU ALLIES project is seeking to address some of the barriers that women and other minoritized faculty in STEM disciplines here at BGSU face in terms of their career advancement. Our preliminary research data collection efforts have shown that women and minority faculty are not represented in our applicant pools for faculty positions at the same rate they are earning PhDs.

Peg Yacobucci:

We also found that especially at the mid career level, associate professor level, women in minority faculty are stalling out. They're less likely to go up for full professor, they're less likely to move into leadership positions in particular. And all of these things seem to be tied to some systemic and interpersonal issues, reflecting biases that are serving as barriers to women and minority faculty here at BGSU.

Jolie Sheffer:

This initiative has a two pronged approach that is about both inclusive leadership and faculty allies. Can you talk about the goals of each aspect of the project? How do they relate to each other?

Peg Yacobucci:

So research has shown clearly that in order to really transform an institution of higher education, you need to work both bottom up and top down. So the faculty allies portion of our project is focusing on how we can work with faculty within STEM and social science departments here at BGSU to learn more about some of these barriers that women faculty face, and to learn specific strategies to address things like microaggressions and the everyday biases and barriers that faculty face within their own departments.

Peg Yacobucci:

The inclusive leadership piece is really focusing more top down, working with faculty administrators. Ch

Madi Stump, a BGSU student and winner of the ICS Student Research Award, and Chris Gajewicz, Natural Resources Coordinator for the City of Bowling Green, discuss environmental stewardship, human's relationship to nature, and restoration in local parks.

Transcript:

Intro:

From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society. This is BG Ideas.

Intro Music:

I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment.

Jolie Sheffer:

Welcome to the Big Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the school of media and communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Jolie Sheffer, associate professor of English and American culture studies and the director of ICS. Today, I'm joined by two guests, Madi Stump and Chris Gajewicz. Madi's an undergraduate environmental policy and analysis major who's currently working on a research project entitle, "Listening and Learning: Lessons from the Land." She's the first winner of the ICS Student Research Award. Chris is the natural resources coordinator for the city of Bowling Green and instructor at Bowling Green State University and a BGSU alum. Welcome, Madi and Chris.

Chris Gajewicz:

Hi.

Jolie Sheffer:

Thanks for being with me. How did each of you get interested in thinking about different ideas of environmental stewardship?

Madi Stump:

I've always cared really deeply about the environment. Growing up, I spent a lot of time in my backyard or in my front yard or my neighbor's front yard pretending to make pizzas out of dirt and grass and just really spending more time outside than I did inside. I remember being called in for dinner and being called in to do homework rather than being told to get out and enjoy being outside. That deep love and that deep connection to being outside that I experienced throughout my childhood made me really invested in protecting the environment, but when I first came to BGSU, I was actually a music performance student. So I didn't study the environment initially in college, but after my first year, decided that music was not the path for me and really rekindled that relationship with nature and that deep sense of connection and belonging that I felt in nature and have this strong desire to protect places that other people could have that similar experience of belonging and inclusion in the natural world. That's how I found environmental policy and I'm looking to continue this work in my future.

Jolie Sheffer:

What about for you, Chris.

Chris Gajewicz:

It started a long time ago when I was a little, little kid and I spent a lot of time outside, very similar to Madi. I was outside a lot and the only rule was is that when my mom rang the bell, it was time to come in and it was a big farm bell and she would ring the bell and no matter where you were, you needed to stop what you were doing. It was really hard for me because I loved going out into the woods and building forts and digging trenches and making caves and lighting things on fire and just being like a typical kid and spending my time just being out around nature. I just enjoyed it so much and I didn't even know why. It wasn't a conscious kind of a thing. It was there. We had a huge woods behind our house that was about a mile square and that was my playground as I was a kid growing up. So I was able to kind of run around out there.

Chris Gajewicz:

My parents never worried about where I was, what I was doing when I was coming home. I just knew that when the bell rang, I needed to stop what I was doing and make my way back. But there was never a concern about my wellbeing or any of that when I was growing up being outside. So that sort of turned itself into going from, I guess a vocation or an advocation to a vocation and turning it into so

Jackson Bliss is an assistant professor of creative writing at BGSU. His genre-bending fiction focuses on being mixed-race in a global world. This episode features a conversation about exploring identity through writing and a reading from his forthcoming novel, The Amnesia of June Bugs.

Transcript:

Intro:

This podcast features instances of explicit language. If you are listening with children, you may want to save this conversation for later.

Intro:

From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas.

Musical Intro:

I'm going to show you this. It's a wonderful experiment.

Jolie Sheffer:

Welcome to the Big Ideas Podcast, brought to you by the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Dr. Jolie Sheffer, associate professor of English and American culture studies and the director of ICS.

Jolie Sheffer:

Today I'm joined by Dr. Jackson Kanahashi Bliss. Bliss is an assistant professor in the creative writing program here at BGSU. He's published in The New York Times, The Boston Review, Ploughshares, Tin House, and many other publications. He earned his MFA from the University of Notre Dame and his PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Southern California. Today we have the pleasure of hearing him read from his new work, Amnesia of Junebugs. Thanks for joining me today, Jackson.

Jackson  Bliss:

Happy to be here.

Jolie Sheffer:

You are both a creative writer and a literary scholar. How do you think of your creative writing as being shaped by scholarship on Asian American literature? Are there other ways in which you see your work as interdisciplinary?

Jackson  Bliss:

Yeah, it's a funny marriage, actually, and I think it's an accidental one, because, in the beginning, I wrote most experimentally, and then when I started studying Asian American studies, I realized there was a sort of strong bent towards experimentalism and activism and how it connects to ethnic nationalism, ethnic studies, academic studies, and academic centers and universities. So this was completely accidental. I didn't intentionally sort of imitate the preferred genre of activist-minded APIA literature. It just sort of happened that way. But the more I studied Asian American studies, particularly works like Immigrant Acts by Lisa ... What's her last name?

Jolie Sheffer:

Lowe.

Jackson  Bliss:

Lisa Lowe. Yeah. It sort of made me realize there's a strong sort of push against the stylistics of the empire, which tends to be connected to linear narratives and coming-of-age stories. That made me want to write that story, particularly because I found it a little bit both historically informed, but also generically arbitrary that a particular sub-genre of fiction would supposedly work so well, right, in something that we are actively trying to deconstruct.

Jackson  Bliss:

I feel like writers like Viet Thanh Nguyen are perfect examples of people who said, "No, you can have a narrative arc and do a lot of important work instead of deconstructing standardized, sort of imposed European models of narrative."

Jackson  Bliss:

So I think all of those things appealed to me a lot. So it became much more conscious the more I wrote fiction, I think. Yeah. But in the beginning, it was totally accidental and organic.

Jolie Sheffer:

Your peace Dukkha, My Love is an experimental hypertext novella, created for the web. Can you describe our audience, what that term means? What is an electronic novella, and what can people expect when encountering a text like that? What were you hoping to explore, both formally and thematically?

Jackson  Bliss:

I think part of

Dr. Melissa K. Miller, 2019 ICS Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor of Political Science at BGSU, discusses her research on women in politics. Dr. Miller shares her findings from her analysis of media coverage of the unprecedented number of women running for office during the 2018 election cycle. Dr. Miller explores how media coverage influences voter perception of mothers running for office.

Transcript:

Introduction:

From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society. This is BG Ideas.

Musical Intro:

I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment.

Jolie S.:

To the BG Ideas podcast. A collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Jolie Sheffer, an associate professor of English and American culture studies and the director of ICS. Today I'm joined by one of ICS' faculty fellows, Dr. Melissa K. Miller. She's an associate professor of political science and affiliated faculty in the department of women's gender and sexuality studies here at BGSU. Her current research is focused on women who are mothers who ran congressional campaigns in the 2018 midterm elections. This is the first extensive bi-partisan study of mother candidates and we're thrilled to be here to discuss her research. Thanks for joining me, Melissa.

Melissa M.:

Thanks for having me.

Jolie S.:

The 2018 midterm elections really put the spotlight on women running for political office. Can you talk to us about what initially drew you to focus on candidates who were also mothers?

Melissa M.:

I really have always been interested in the intersection of women, media, voters, campaigning. Gender and politics is a study of my research and I'm an expert on American politics. What happened? I go all the way back to 2008. A friend and colleague of mine, Dr. Jeff Peak, he's a presidency scholar. I'm a gender scholar within the political science department and we decided to do a collaborative project where we content coded press coverage of the presidential candidates back in 2008 and we thought what a great slew of candidates to look at. I of course was most interested in looking at how Hillary Clinton was covered by the press in her 2008 attempt to get the democratic nomination.

Melissa M.:

He was interested in all the candidates as a presidency scholar and so we did a press coverage study of Hillary Clinton and it was amazing to do. We published our results in the journal called Politics and Gender and there were some real gendered aspects of her coverage that really jumped out. In the midst of that campaign, from my perspective as a gender scholar, I was so pleased to be able to study Hillary Clinton's press coverage. We content coded 6,000 news articles about the democratic race specifically to look at her coverage and then come around August, John McCain, the Republican nominee named Sarah Palin, the Alaska governor as his running mate. And so suddenly our study is underway and it was like we'd won the lottery.

Melissa M.:

At least it felt that way for me. Holy cow, now I can study a Republican woman also competing not for president but as a vice presidential running mate. So we also, Jeff Peak and I, did a study of how Sarah Palin was covered and in both Clinton's coverage and Palin's coverage back in 2008 there were real gendered coverage markers. Their gender was mentioned at a disproportionate rate. Their marital status was mentioned at a disproportionate rate. In Hillary Clinton's case, her press coverage was much more negative than her male rivals and the content of that negative coverage was highly personal. Really personal descriptives that were very negative about her.

Melissa M.:

For Sarah Palin, her coverage was very distinguished by t

Dr Mona-Hanna Attisha , the pediatrician whose press conference and testimony before Congress alerted the public about the Flint, Michigan water crisis and the author of BGSU's 2019-2020 Common Read, What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance and Hope in an American City and Dr. Karen Johnson-Webb, associate professor of geography at BGSU, whose research includes racial disparities in health, discuss environmental racism and the Flint water crisis.  

Transcript:

Introduction:

From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas.

Musical Intro:

I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment.

Dr Jolie Sheffer:

Welcome to the Big Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Dr Jolie Sheffer, associate professor of English and American culture studies and the director of ICS. Today we're joined by Dr Mona-Hanna Attisha and Dr. Karen Johnson-Webb. Dr Hanna-Attisha is a pediatrician who's press conference and testimony before Congress alerted the public about the Flint, Michigan water crisis. She's the author of BGSU's 2019-2020 Common Read, What the Eyes Don't See A Story of Crisis, Resistance and Hope in an American City.

Dr Jolie Sheffer:

Dr. Johnson-Webb is an associate professor of geography at BGSU. Her research includes racial disparities in health.

Dr Jolie Sheffer:

Thanks for joining me today.

Mona Hanna-Attisha:

It's great to be with you.

Karen Johnson-Webb:

Thanks for having me.

Dr Jolie Sheffer:

Mona you played an important role in alerting the public about the Flint water crisis and advocating for the city's residents. Can you begin to just tell our audience how you began practicing medicine in Flint and how that led into your involvement in the water crisis?

Mona Hanna-Attisha:

Yeah, so I first got a flavor of medicine in Flint as a medical student. So I went to Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine and it's actually the first community based medical school. So the medical school is founded to really kind of serve the rest of the state, and Flint was one of its original campuses. So as a medical student over 20 plus years ago I was in Flint for my clinical training and that's where I really fell in love with the city and I fell in love with the discipline of pediatrics. I then went to Detroit for about 10 plus years to do my residency at the Children's Hospital in Michigan. And then in 2011 I had this amazing opportunity to come back to Flint to give back to the city that really gave me so much and to serve as their pediatric residency director, which means I got to oversee the training of future pediatricians.

Dr Jolie Sheffer:

Okay. How did you first learn about the possibility of elevated lead levels in Flint's water supply?

Mona Hanna-Attisha:

So I learned about the issue of lead kind of late in the story. So in April of 2014 Flint changed their water source from the great lakes, which we had been getting for over half a century to the Flint River. And this was done while we were under kind of state appointed emergency management and it was all about saving money. So that happened in April of 2014 and there was kind of concerns from the very beginning about things like color and odor and taste and bacteria. And throughout this time all the people in power said everything was okay. So I was telling my patients for about a year and a half when they came in with concerns about the water, that everything was okay because all these really important scientists were saying everything was okay. But that all changed when I heard about the possibility of lead in the water. And that happened in

Keynote speakers for the 2019 Women of Color Leadership Summit Dr. Sekile Nzinga-Johnson (Director of the Women's Center at Northwestern University) and KaeLyn Rich  (queer feminist, a direct-action organizer, a nonprofit leader, and a sexuality educator in upstate New York) discuss women of color in places of leadership, as well as collaboration across universities between women of color.  

Transcript:

Introduction:

From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas.

Intro Song Lyrics:

I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment.

Jolie Sheffer:

Welcome back to the BG Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I am Jolie Sheffer, Associate Professor of English and American Culture Studies and the Director of ICS.

Jolie Sheffer:

Today we are joined by two very special guests, Dr. Sekile Nzinga-Johnson and KaeLyn Rich. Dr. Sekile Nzinga-Johnson currently serves as Director of the Women's Center at Northwestern University. KaeLyn Rich is a queer feminist, a direct action organizer, a nonprofit leader, and a sexuality educator in upstate New York. On behalf of ICS and the Center for Women and Gender Equity, I'd like to welcome you both to BGSU. I'm thrilled to have you here as keynote speakers for the 2019 Women of Color Leadership Summit.

Jolie Sheffer:

The summit is designed to increase the number of women of color in places of leadership to encourage collaboration across the university as well as share the lessons and knowledge on leadership practice developed and modeled by women of color. Thanks again for joining me. I'd like each of you to give a little background on your current work, then how you came to the role you now occupy. What has been your own path to becoming a leader? Sekile?

Dr. Sekile Nzinga-Johsnon:

That's a great question. I appreciate you asking. I often interpreted my career, up until a few years ago, I interpreted my career as being disjointed. Every time I took a pivot in my career I felt like I was adding all of these kind of disjointed parts of myself. I started as a clinician, and then I'm a researcher, and now I'm really focused on training social workers as a professor. And I couldn't quite see what the narrative was or what the arc was in my career. And then I came to Chicago and continued my work as a professor and scholar and researcher and began also doing policy work. And again, I felt like these were all very disjointed. I couldn't see that where the thread was.

Dr. Sekile Nzinga-Johsnon:

And then I was interviewing for my position at Northwestern and it was within that interview that it all began to gel for me. And I realized that each and every one of these pieces, being a clinician, being an activist, working in policy, working in research, being an educator, that each one of these pieces prepared me to now step into my role as the Director of the Women's Center. And that was my narrative and it wasn't disjointed, but actually that they were building me in all these different skillsets that I would need to move into this leadership role. Because I actually like doing all of those things. I like doing research, and I like policy, and I like being able to be empathic towards people, which is a use of my clinical skills.

Dr. Sekile Nzinga-Johsnon:

And I also like to educate folks and I love to be in community and in collaboration and coalition with folks. And so, all of those things are pieces oof my leadership style, and they're things that I think we actually need if we're going to be change agents, a catalyst for change within institutional settings.

Jolie Sheffer:

And so what is your vision now for the Women's Center an

Dr Starr E. Keyes, Associate Professor within the school of counseling and special education at BGSU, discusses her research undergone in the Fall of 2019 as an ICS Faculty Fellow. Her project, entitled “Disability, Race, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” builds on her background studying the education system regarding learning abilities and special education, as well as research related to urban school systems and behavioral interventions. 

Transcript:

Introduction:

From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the study of culture and society. This is BG ideas.

Musical Intro Lyrics:

I'm going to show you them with a wonderful experiment.

Jolie Sheffer:

Welcome to the big ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the study of culture and society and the school of media and communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Jolie Schaeffer, associate professor of English and American culture studies and the director of ICS. Today I'm joined by Dr Starrr E. Keyes an associate professor at Bowling Green in the school of counseling and special education this semester. She's an ICS faculty fellow. Dr Keyes has done research on a wide variety of subjects relating to the education system, related to learning abilities and special education as well as research related to urban school systems and behavioral interventions. Dr Keyes received her BA and PhD from the Ohio state University and her master's in education from the University of Toledo. Today we're discussing her new research project entitled Disability, Race, and the School to Prison Pipeline. Thanks for coming to join me today, Starr.

Starr Keyes:

Thanks for having me.

Jolie Sheffer:

Tell me how you came to study this topic. What was your path from your previous research into this particular project?

Starr Keyes:

Yeah, I think it's a combination of a lot of experience personally and professionally. That got me to this point right now. But before this I was actually looking at the effects of computer assisted reading instruction on students' fluency, their reading fluency. And that's really important, right? Because we know students from urban areas tend to come to school behind in skills. And so I really want it to help them with their reading skills. But I started thinking about the bigger issues at play.

Starr Keyes:

And what else is going on in the educational system and how we can better serve students. And what's going on in the media also plays a role. But it's also something that I've just been interested in for a while. And so really just looking at, what contributes to this phenomenon, this school to prison pipeline and what can we do about it? W what does the research look like? What does research say about it? And so that's really kind of what got me started on it, just finishing up the computer system, reading instruction, and then after tenure being able to go into something a little bit more, deep if you will.

Jolie Sheffer:

We've been hearing a lot about the role of racism and the treatment of students leading to disproportionate numbers of minority and poor students being pushed into the criminal justice system. What role does disability play in the school-to-prison pipeline?

Starr Keyes:

Right, so students who have disabilities are often disproportionately represented, right? So what we know is that race and disability are some of the biggest factors that make students end up in this system, the school-to-prison pipeline. And some of those students who have disabilities may or may not, or who had been categorized as having disabilities may or may not actually have them. So there's a larger issue of disproportionality of these students in special education in the first place saying they have a disability.

Jolie Sheffer:

So can yo

Dr. Nicole M. Jackson, Associate Professor of History at BGSU, discusses her research undergone in the Fall of 2019 as an ICS Faculty Fellow. Her project, titled “Women Writing Black to the British Empire,” considers black British women's contemporary popular literature as a site for working out ideas about race, sex, gender, love, and national belongings. 

Transcript:

Introduction:

From Bowling Green State University and the Institute For the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas.

Intro Song Lyrics:

I'm going to show you this. What a wonderful experiment.

Jolie Sheffer:

Welcome to the Big Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute For the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Dr. Jolie Sheffer, Associate Professor of English and American Culture Studies and the Director of ICS. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Nicole M. Jackson, who is an Associate Professor of History. She researches the contemporary African diaspora with a focus on post World War II black social movements, migrations, race, and imperialism in Britain and the United States. She joins me today to talk about research undergone in fall, 2019, as an ICS faculty fellow. This project considers black British women's contemporary popular literature as a site for working out ideas about race, sex, gender, love, and national belongings. I'm very pleased to sit down with you today and learn more about your work and an alternative canon of black British women's literature. Thanks for being here, Nicole.

Nicole Jackson:

Thanks for having me.

Jolie Sheffer:

Why don't we begin by having you give a little background on your research and how you came to be interested in this particular project.

Nicole Jackson:

So my PhD research, what this shoots off from is I look at black British and African American postwar social movements about migrant populations. So in the US, I'm looking at people who are migrating at the end of the second World War to primarily the West. I'm looking at California. And then in the UK, I'm looking at Caribbean people who are migrating to primarily London. And all of my work is about community activism, so I want to understand how these migrants become socially active around things that are affecting their community. And in particular, for the dissertation I was looking at three frames, so education, reproductive justice, and policing. And then that blew out a little bit more to looking at belonging and citizenship. Although that was embedded at the time, not that I realized that it was important.

Nicole Jackson:

And so in the UK, part of what I saw was that so much of their community activism was institution building. And probably the most significant institution were black bookshops. They were spaces of congregation, they were spaces of education, so there were a lot of like extracurricular educational things happening, like Saturday schools and afterschool programs. And they were also printing houses, so they were printing a wide range of work. So some academic texts, some informational pamphlets, and a lot of poetry from community members, and then as well novels. So that's the connection between community activism and social movements and black literature.

Jolie Sheffer:

I'm curious as to, you're a historian, but this project has you looking at literature. So how do you approach the study of this literature from your perspective as a historian?

Nicole Jackson:

Carefully. I think I'm aided in the fact that Caribbean people have a really long history of artistic production. So there is a really large body of work, especially for instance Carol Boyce Davies, who was looking at migrant Caribbean population. She does the US and the UK. So there are people who are looking at Cari

Linda Butler (a photographer who's been documenting the effects of climate change for a number of years, most recently focusing on the Great Lakes), and Lynn Whitney (associate professor of photography at BGSU, whose celebrated work consists of black and white photographs of Lake Erie) discuss merging the worlds of fine art and environmental activism. 

Transcript:

Introduction:

From Bowling Green State University, and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas.

Intro Song Lyrics:

I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment.

Jolie Sheffer:

Welcome to the Big Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Jolie Scheffer, associate professor of English and American cultural studies, and the director of ICS. Today, I have the honor of being joined by two women photographers who bring together the worlds of fine art and environmental activism. We have with us Linda Butler, and Lynn Whitney. Linda is a photographer who's been documenting the effects of climate change for a number of years, most recently focusing on the Great Lakes. Lynn Whitney is an associate professor of photography here at BGSU, whose work is in the permanent collections of the Toledo Museum of Art and Yale University. Much of Lynn's work consists of black and white photographs of Lake Erie.

Jolie Sheffer:

Welcome, and thanks for talking with me today. To begin with, I'd like each of you to talk about how you came to your current landscape work about the Great Lakes, and what motivates you to do this particular work at this time. Linda, you start us off?

Linda Butler:

Well, I'm going to be a little nervous too, so we'll work through it, but, I guess, my main concern as a human being right now is what's happening to our planet. And, global warming is causing things like unusual storms, and I think this part of the country, for instance, the Maumee River with all its flooding, and the problems flooding causes to the lake itself, because fertilizer is being washed off the fields and going into the lake, I mean, it was an ideal setting to take photographs in. And, it's been a very rich experience for me to work at this end of the state, although, I worked actually around all of Lake Erie. And, I'm tracking both things like renewable energy projects, and which governments are doing more in that area, as well as really heavy industry that uses a lot of energy to make steel or concrete, and finding out where the carbon dioxide is coming from, and, it's heavy industry, and it's also from coal running power plants; coal.

Linda Butler:

And, if you go around the lake, there a lot of ways that coal is being delivered to barges and so on. And so, it's really evident all around the lake, but less so in Canada, because, the coast of Canada has much less industry, and also the Government of Canada has put a lot of money into renewable energy.

Jolie Sheffer:

So, in your work, you really show how the Great Lakes are the best and the worst of the current state of climate change and industrial effects on the landscape in some.

Linda Butler:

Well, I can't comment on the other lakes, because I really know Lake Erie, but there's a lot to learn from Lake Erie and how we're using this water.

Jolie Sheffer:

What about you, Lynn, how did you come to ... This is a long term project, so what is your story been and getting interested in the lake?

Lynn Whitney:

My story is interesting, because my story begins with the Maumee River and the bridge construction that happened over the Maumee River. I was commissioned to photograph the bridge that was constructed there, the Veterans Memorial Skyway, from the Toledo Museum of Art, and the river, obviou