We hear a lot of of debate around sex and sexuality from our political leaders these days. Proposed legislation in areas like reproductive rights and education are constantly in the news. And while that debate may seem intense today, it isn’t new. Americans have long argued over which kinds of sex are, and aren’t “acceptable.”

You need to understand the past to understand the present, as the saying goes. And according to historian Rebecca L. Davis, there are a lot of misconceptions about the past. This hour, we return to our conversation about her new book Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America. She’ll explain the surprising ways Americans have understood intimate relations and even share a touching story that took place right here in Connecticut.

GUEST:

• Rebecca L. Davis: Miller Family Endowed Early Career Professor of History at the University of Delaware and Professor of Women and Gender Studies. Her latest book is Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America.

You can listen to the interview with Jason Stanley that Professor Davis mentioned in this episode on our website.

This episode originally aired on December 13, 2024.

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Oral history preserves the past by recording people’s real voices. It’s not just about recording the stories people tell. It’s also about the way they tell them. Oral history is about memory and humanity. It’s a form of history that anyone can be a part of.

This hour, we’re talking to two Connecticut residents about the stories they have preserved through oral history.

Author and educator Mary Romney-Schaab talks about her father's experience as a Black person imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. And Amanda Rivera, a PhD candidate in American Studies at Yale University, discusses the history of Connecticut's Puerto Rican communities.

GUESTS:

• Mary Romney-Schaab: retired teacher and author of An Afro-Caribbean in the Nazi Era: From Papiamentu to German. The book details her father’s experience in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II

• Amanda Rivera: PhD candidate in the Department of American Studies at Yale University. Her work explores activism and education reform in Puerto Rican communities in southern Connecticut.

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This hour, we are returning to conversations about the stories we see represented on the small screen. Elizabeth Ito is the creator of City of Ghosts and also worked on Adventure Time. She'll discuss using people's real voices in her work and covering topics like gentrification on a series that children watch. Bethonie Butler, author of Black TV: Five Decades of Groundbreaking Television from Soul Train to Black-ish and Beyond, talks to us about shows centering Black characters from 1968's Julia up to the present day.

GUESTS:

• Elizabeth Ito: writer, director and storyboard artist in the animation industry. She is the creator of the series City of Ghosts, which is currently on Netflix. She also worked on Adventure Time.

• Bethonie Butler: author of Black TV: Five Decades of Groundbreaking Television from Soul Train to Black-ish and Beyond. Bethonie is a former reporter for The Washington Post where she covered television and pop culture.

This episode originally aired on February 21, 2024.

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Legendary trumpeter Terence Blanchard is the first Black composer to have had an opera performed at the Metropolitan Opera. But, as he says, he isn't the first Black composer qualified to do so. This hour, we talk to musicians who are changing the face of opera by bringing new stories to the fore.

GUESTS:

• Terence Blanchard: Executive Artistic Director at SF Jazz and Multiple Grammy Award-winning trumpeter and composer. He has performed as part of Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers and composed the scores for dozens of films, including Spike Lee films like BlacKkKlansman and Malcolm X. In 2021 he became the first Black composer to have had their opera performed at the Metropolitan Opera with Fire Shut Up in My Bones. He will be performing selections from Fire Shut Up in My Bones in Hartford on April 24th.

• Julia Bullock: Grammy Award-winning classical singer. She has curated a program that she performs called “History’s Persistent Voice.” It’s a multimedia project that includes poetry, visual art and music inspired by the songs of enslaved people.

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In March of 1924, more than 100 Black and white attendees were at a dinner party in downtown Manhattan. The party was organized by prominent thinkers Charles S. Johnson and Alain Locke and included people like W.E.B. DuBois. Their goal was to bring together Harlem’s young Black writers with white publishers to help the writers’ work find a national audience. The party was a success. So much so that it’s often considered the start of the period known as the Harlem Renaissance.

The Harlem Renaissance saw a boom in the popularity of Black writers, just as the party’s organizers hoped. Writers like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston might get the most attention, but the period was not just about writing— music and visual arts also flourished.

This hour, we’re listening back to our episode exploring the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance. UConn professor Erika Williams joins us to explain what the Harlem Renaissance was and to help us understand how people thought about queerness during the Harlem Renaissance.

We’ll also hear from Denise Murrell who curated a recent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art called "The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism." She says exhibits like this one can help expand the museum-going public.

GUESTS:

• Erika Williams: Associate Professor of English and Africana Studies at the University of Connecticut.

• Denise Murrell: Merryl H. & James S. Tisch Curator at Large at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She recently curated an exhibit called "The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism," which was on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2024.

• Brandon Hutchinson: Associate Professor of English, Affiliate Faculty of Women and Gender Studies and Co-Coordinator of the Africana Studies Program at Southern Connecticut State University.

• Jonah Craggett: one of Brandon Hutchinson's former students

• John Guillemette: one of Brandon Hutchinson's former students

• Frankie Devevo: one of Erika Williams' former students and former CT Public intern

To learn more about Zora Neale Hurston, you can listen to our interview with Tracy Heather Strain.

This episode originally aired on December 20, 2024.

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Historian Martha S. Jones was looking through a book one day when she found a section mentioning her grandfather. It referred to her grandfather as white. But in reality, her grandfather’s father was a free man of color, and his mother was born enslaved. This wasn’t the first time her family’s racial identity was questioned, so she started writing down her version of her family’s history. It's that history, and her family's relationship to racial identity, that she explores in her new book The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir.

GUEST:

• Martha S. Jones: The Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, Professor of History and Professor at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Her latest book is The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir.

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Five years ago, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Since that time, the world has changed dramatically, from the way we think about public health to the way we socialize to the way we watch movies. But those changes haven't had the same impact on everyone.

This hour, we’re talking about COVID-19’s impact on existing inequities. We talk about the diverse experiences of disabled people over the last five years, and take a broader look at the history of health and race.

GUESTS:

• Mara Mills: Associate Professor and Ph.D. Director in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. She is Co-Founder and Director of the NYU Center for Disability Studies. She co-edited the recent book How to be Disabled in a Pandemic.

• Edna Bonhomme: Historian of science. Her new book is A History of the World in Six Plagues: How Contagion, Class and Captivity Shaped Us, from Cholera to COVID-19.

To learn more about public health and COVID-19, you can listen to our episode reflecting on four years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

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This hour on Disrupted, we're challenging long-held assumptions about parents and caregivers. First, Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, explains how care workers are undervalued. She touches on the way the early days of the pandemic spotlighted issues in caregiving and why the legacy of American colonialism in the Philippines influenced both her family history and the disproportionate number of Filipinx nurses who died from COVID. Then, UConn professor Kari Adamsons talks about her research on fathers and the problem with the way many people think about "traditional families."

GUESTS:

• Angela Garbes: author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change

• Kari Adamsons: Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Connecticut

This episode originally aired on February 15, 2023.

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Bernadette Atuahene initially moved to Detroit, Michigan to study squatters rights. But she discovered a more urgent issue once there— that many Black residents were losing their homes.

The reason was property tax foreclosure, and it came as a result of property taxes that were illegally inflated. It’s one of several racist housing policies that shapes who does or doesn’t have generational wealth in the U.S.

This hour, we’re talking about government policies that impact the homes and neighborhoods people live in.

GUEST:

• Bernadette Atuahene: Professor of Law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. Her new book is Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America.

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Every February, the United States celebrates Black History Month. But this year, the celebration might feel a bit different.

On January 31st, the Department of Defense announced it would no longer use official resources to celebrate cultural awareness months, including Black History Month, which began the following day. That announcement came after the Trump administration's rollback of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives within the federal government.

This hour, we’re joined by a panel of experts to talk about Black History Month and what it means today.

GUESTS:

• Kevin Gaines: Julian Bond Professor of Civil Rights and Social Justice and Interim Director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia.

• Christina Greer: Associate Professor of Political Science at Fordham University

• Michael Harriot: founder of ContrabandCamp and bestselling author of Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America

In this episode, the guests mention several Black Americans who have made an impact on U.S. history. Here are some of the names if you want to learn more:

Ella Baker, Mary McLeod Bethune, George Washington Carver, James Chaney, Septima Clark, John Henrik Clarke, David Dennis Sr, Fannie Lou Hamer, Steven Henson, bell hooks, Barbara Jordan, Garrett Morgan, Constance Baker Motley, Gloria Naylor, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Gloria Richardson, Amelia Boynton Robinson, Jo Ann Robinson, Cleveland Sellers, Robert Smalls, The students in the court case Edwards v. South Carolina, Ida B. Wells-Barnett

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