Disrupted

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is designated as a National Day of Service to encourage people to volunteer and improve their communities. But those communities' needs don’t end when the day of service ends. Here in Connecticut, people like Erik Clemons work year round to improve the communities they care about.

Erik is the CEO of New Haven-based nonprofit Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology (ConnCAT), which offers job training and youth programs. He is also the CEO of Connecticut Community Outreach Revitalization Program (ConnCORP), a for-profit subsidiary of ConnCAT dedicated to economic development in New Haven.

Recently, Erik wrote an opinion piece for CT Insider about ConnCORP's plans to redevelop part of New Haven’s Dixwell neighborhood.

In the piece, Erik grounds those plans in his commitment to community. He compares the redevelopment to making a quilt. He writes, quote “By weaving together the stories, experiences, and perspectives of those who live in Dixwell, we aim to create a space that reflects their lived experience, resilience, and unique identity — something far more meaningful than any single piece.”

GUESTS:

• Erik Clemons: CEO of New Haven-based nonprofit Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology, also known as ConnCAT. The organization offers job training and youth programs. He is also CEO of Connecticut Community Outreach Revitalization Program or ConnCORP, a for-profit subsidiary of ConnCAT dedicated to economic development in New Haven.

In this episode, Erik mentions the Harlem Renaissance. To learn more about the Harlem Renaissance you can listen to our recent episode about the movement.

You can also find our previous interview with Erik Clemons on our website.

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In recent years, politicians across the U.S. have been debating what history should be taught in the classroom. Connecticut is no exception to these debates— a 2022 press conference announcing a planned Native Studies curriculum in Connecticut's public schools turned tense when questions around the specifics of the program came up.

This hour, we’re talking to historians and educators to learn what it's like to teach and study the past in all its complexity in today's polarized political climate.

This panel was part of a live event hosted with The Connecticut Forum in November, less than two weeks after the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

GUESTS:

• Andy Horowitz: Associate Professor of History at the University of Connecticut and Connecticut State Historian. His work looks at disasters and the broader implications they have for society.

• Fiona Vernal: Director of Engaged, Public, Oral and Community Histories and Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies at the University of Connecticut.

• Chris Newell: Co-Founder and Director of Education for Akomawt Educational Initiative. He is also Founding Director of the Native American Cultural Program and Instructor-in-Residence at the University of Connecticut. He is a citizen of the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Indian Township.

To hear more about Professor Andy Horowitz's research, you can listen to our episode on disasters.

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The Disrupted team is welcoming the new year by choosing a couple of the episodes we loved from 2024. We have so many favorites that we couldn't reair all of them, but these are some of the ones that we wanted to listen back to. This week, host Khalilah-Brown Dean chose our interview with author Amy Tan.

Amy is best known for popular novels like The Joy Luck Club and its 1993 film adaptation. The book and movie explore several mother-daughter relationships — some of which were shaped by Amy’s own experiences.

Her latest book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles, hits close to home in a different way. In it, she brings the birds in her backyard to life with humor and tragedy through observations and drawings from her nature journals. But the book isn’t just a recounting of wildlife. Amy vividly imagines the birds’ inner thoughts and comes away with piercing observations about nature, humanity and the relationship between them.

This hour, Amy talks to us about that book and offers her insights on a wide range of topics including how birds have led her to reflect on mortality, her changing experience of racism and overcoming her fear of sharks.

Guest: 

• Amy Tan: bestselling author of numerous books including The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter’s Daughter. Her latest book is The Backyard Bird Chronicles. It collects entries and drawings from her nature journals.

This episode originally aired on September 27, 2024.

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The Disrupted team is welcoming the new year by choosing a couple of the episodes we loved from 2024. We have so many favorites that we couldn't reair all of them, but these are some of the ones that we wanted to listen back to. This week, producer Kevin Chang Barnum chose our interview with James Forman Jr.

The United States imprisons more people than any other country in the world.

And Black people bear the burdens of mass incarceration the most. In 2019, Connecticut was one of seven states where Black people were incarcerated at over nine times the rate of white people. That’s according to an analysis done by The Sentencing Project.

These problems aren't new, but they also aren't going away. Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Yale law professor James Forman Jr. hopes the new book he co-edited, Dismantling Mass Incarceration: A Handbook for Change, will inspire readers to work towards change. It talks about finding solutions at every level of what he calls "the criminal system," from policing to prisons to courts.

GUEST:

• James Forman Jr.: J. Skelly Wright Professor of Law at Yale University. His book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018. He recently co-edited Dismantling Mass Incarceration: A Handbook for Change.

You can learn more about the prison system in the U.S. by listening to Disrupted's interview with Reginald Dwayne Betts.

Special thanks to intern Frankie Devevo.

This episode originally aired on October 25, 2024. 

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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 exploring the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance in honor of its 100th anniversary. 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 earlier this year.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. She joins us today to talk 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.

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Poet Reginald Dwayne Betts was part of a carjacking in a Virginia mall parking lot when he was 16 years old. He was charged as an adult and sentenced to 9 years in prison.

Dwayne was released in 2005. Today, he’s a lawyer and award-winning poet. He’s also the founder and CEO of a nonprofit organization called Freedom Reads. It provides handcrafted bookcases full of brand new books to prisons.

For Dwayne, and other incarcerated people, those books can be a lifeline— a connection to the rest of the world.

This hour, we have a candid conversation with Dwayne as he reflects on his poetry, the power of books, and life after prison.

We also take a visit to the Freedom Reads workshop and hear from some of the formerly incarcerated people who build the bookcases and bring them to prisons. You can see photos of the Freedom Reads workshop on our website.

GUEST:

• Reginald Dwayne Betts: Award-winning poet, whose books include Felon and the upcoming Doggerel. He's also a lawyer and the Founder and CEO of Freedom Reads

• Michael Byrd: Library Production Assistant at Freedom Reads

• Steven Parkhurst: Communications Manager at Freedom Reads

• James Flynn: Library Production Assistant at Freedom Reads

Special thanks to Kevin Baker and Ivan Dominguez at Freedom Reads.

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Poet Crystal Wilkinson says people are always surprised to hear that there are Black people in Appalachia. That’s despite the fact that two million Black people live in the region. The Black presence in Appalachia goes all the way back to the time of enslavement. And Crystal’s own family is a part of that history— her relatives Aggy and Tarlton Wilkinson were an interracial couple there in the early 1800s.

She talks about all of that in her book Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks. It’s a culinary memoir about how she connects with her Appalachian ancestors through cooking.

This hour, hear our extended interview with Crystal. She joins us to talk about food, family and her relationship to the past. She discusses her appreciation for traditions like Thanksgiving cooking, while learning through her children how those traditions evolve.

GUEST:

• Crystal Wilkinson: Writer and former Poet Laureate of Kentucky. She teaches creative writing at the University of Kentucky and is author of Perfect Black. Her latest book is Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks.

This is an extended version of the interview that originally aired on October 18, 2024

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Actress Anna Deavere Smith is known for her roles on TV series like The West Wing, Nurse Jackie and Black-ish. She’s also the playwright and performer behind more than fifteen one-woman shows including the Tony-nominated Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 and the new This Ghost of Slavery: A Play of Past and Present. She writes scripts based on her interviews with real people in a style she pioneered called “verbatim theatre.”

Host Khalilah Brown-Dean spoke with Anna about the politics of art at a live event in New Haven in late-October. The event was part of the Artistic Congress, organized by Long Wharf Theatre and Yale Schwarzman Center. We discussed doubt, courage and her hope that her art inspires people to take action.

GUEST: 

• Anna Deavere Smith: Actress and playwright. On TV she is known for roles on The West Wing, Nurse Jackie and Black-ish. One stage, she has written and performed in more than fifteen one-woman shows, including the Tony-nominated Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992 and the new This Ghost of Slavery: A Play of Past and Present. She is also a professor at NYU and founded the Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This year, Michael Morand, director of community engagement for Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, was appointed New Haven's official city historian. We return to our conversation with him about bringing New Haven’s history to life and the exhibit he collaborated on at the New Haven Museum. The exhibit includes years of Michael's research as part of The Yale and Slavery Research Project documenting Yale’s historical ties to slavery. The exhibit, which is on view until March, 2025, is called Shining Light on Truth: New Haven, Yale, and Slavery.

Guest: 

• Michael Morand: Director of community engagement for Yale's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and New Haven's official city historian.

You can read about Michael Morand's role as New Haven's official city historian on CT Public's website.

Special thanks to our intern Frankie Devevo.

This episode originally aired on September 11, 2024. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.