Past Forward

Cedric Tai is an undisciplinary artist born in Detroit, Michigan, residing in Los Angeles. They have an Art Education BFA from Michigan State University, and an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art. Their artwork and teachings focus on neurodivergent experience, labor, and politics. The artist also shares their perspectives through printed brochures such as 'How to Advocate for Yourself at the Doctors Office' and 'An ADHD Zine for/by Artists'. In their exhibit, @fakingprofessionalism, Tai gives experimental, provisional, and non-clinically proven answers that provide a middle ground between social media hot takes and inaccessible scientific discourse. Tai shares their personal journey through the American healthcare system, professional sphere, and art world.

Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on Health Equity is a series of interviews with activists, artists, educators, historians, and journalists about accessibility, cost, prejudice, and the human experience of healthcare in America.

Guest: Cedric Tai
Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by Past Forward in partnership with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University.

Leslie A. Schwalm is Professor Emeritus of history and gender, women's, and sexuality studies at the University of Iowa, where she taught courses on women's history, slavery, emancipation, and the Civil War. She is the author of prizewinning articles, books, and chapters on women's experiences of slavery, emancipation, and the Civil War; the struggle for civil rights in the postwar nation; and popular memory of slavery and the Civil War.

Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on Health Equity is a series of interviews with activists, artists, educators, historians, and journalists about accessibility, cost, prejudice, and the human experience of healthcare in America.

Guest: Leslie A. Schwalm
Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by Past Forward in partnership with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University.

Linda Villarosa is a journalist, an educator and a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine. She covers the intersection of health and medicine and social justice. She is a journalist in residence and professor at the Craig Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY and teaches journalism, medicine and Black Studies at the City College of New York. Her book Under the Skin was published in June 2022.

Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on Health Equity is a series of interviews with activists, artists, educators, historians, and journalists about accessibility, cost, prejudice, and the human experience of healthcare in America.

Guest: Linda Villarosa
Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by Past Forward in partnership with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University.

Nori Uyematsu was born in Cupertino, CA and grew up in Cambell, CA. His family along with over 100,000 others were forced from their home and relocated to what Nori refers to as 'concentration camps" following Executive Order 9066. Nori enlisted in the army and served in the Korean War. Nori Uyematsu was commander of the Kazuo Masuda Memorial VFW Post 3670 in Garden Grove, CA, where he served three terms.

Medium History explores memories and moments through creativity and expression, capturing the cultural ethos of that time and place through storytelling and representation. Visual material culture, such as art, and other multimodal forms can elicit responses, emotions, and opinions—human expressions, tied to temporal and cultural aesthetics. This program explores how creative mediums provide context for history beyond dates, and names, and figures.

Partnering with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University, this series will explore how comics, comic books, and graphic novels from and about the Japanese American Incarceration following Executive Order 9066, humanize the tragic experience, allowing the stories to live long past the lives of those who experienced it, and ensuring this never happens again. Supported by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library, this series is designed to be a companion to the interactive web project, Images and Imaginings of Internment: Comics and Illustrations of Camp.

Guest: Nori Uyematsu
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Janice Munemitsu is a third-generation Japanese American Sansei. A native of Orange County, California, Janice was raised on the family farm and worked there from age 5 through high school. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business and Biola University Institute for Spiritual Formation. Her family name, Munemitsu, 宗 光, means source of light in kanji. The Kindness of Color is her first book.

Medium History explores memories and moments through creativity and expression, capturing the cultural ethos of that time and place through storytelling and representation. Visual material culture, such as art, and other multimodal forms can elicit responses, emotions, and opinions—human expressions, tied to temporal and cultural aesthetics. This program explores how creative mediums provide context for history beyond dates, and names, and figures.

Partnering with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University, this series will explore how comics, comic books, and graphic novels from and about the Japanese American Incarceration following Executive Order 9066, humanize the tragic experience, allowing the stories to live long past the lives of those who experienced it, and ensuring this never happens again. Supported by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library, this series is designed to be a companion to the interactive web project, Images and Imaginings of Internment: Comics and Illustrations of Camp.

Guest: Janice Munemitsu
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Gordon H. Chang is professor of history at Stanford University and the Olive H. Palmer Professor in Humanities. In 2019, he published Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic History of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and, as co-editor, The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental (Stanford University Press). These books draw from more than seven years of work conducted by the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford which he has co-directed. His other books include Friends and Enemies: The United States, China, and the Soviet Union, 1948-1972; Morning Glory, Evening Shadow: Yamato Ichihashi and his Internment Writings, 1942-1945; and Fateful Ties: A History of America’s Preoccupation with China. He edited or co-edited Asian Americans and Politics; Chinese American Voices, with Judy Yung and Him Mark Lai; and Asian American Art: A History.

Medium History explores memories and moments through creativity and expression, capturing the cultural ethos of that time and place through storytelling and representation. Visual material culture, such as art, and other multimodal forms can elicit responses, emotions, and opinions—human expressions, tied to temporal and cultural aesthetics. This program explores how creative mediums provide context for history beyond dates, and names, and figures.

Partnering with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University, this series will explore how comics, comic books, and graphic novels from and about the Japanese American Incarceration following Executive Order 9066, humanize the tragic experience, allowing the stories to live long past the lives of those who experienced it, and ensuring this never happens again. Supported by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library, this series is designed to be a companion to the interactive web project, Images and Imaginings of Internment: Comics and Illustrations of Camp.

Guest: Gordon H. Chang
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Lupe D. Dunn is a first-time published author of The Book Poems, Short Stories, and Essays. Within twenty-six years, I taught elementary and incarcerated youths and adults. I am enjoying retirement while writing material for my second book.

The Book Poems, Short Stories, and Essays
Archway Publishing, 2023

A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen to episodes on our website, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

Past Forward is a curiosity company dedicated to educational accessibility. We work with community leaders from academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, private corporations, and public agencies to document today, with context from our past, and learn moving forward.

Matthew Arnold Stern is an award-winning writer and public speaker. He has written professionally since 1983. He published four novels, including Amiga and The Remainders, and a guide to impromptu speaking, Mastering Table Topics.

The Remainders
Black Rose Writing, 2021

A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen to episodes on our website, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

Past Forward is a curiosity company dedicated to educational accessibility. We work with community leaders from academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, private corporations, and public agencies to document today, with context from our past, and learn moving forward.

Barbara Pronin worked as an actress, a probation officer, a news editor, and a substitute teacher, which inspired her first book, a  guide to effective subbing. Her earlier mysteries, including three as Barbara Nickolae, earned kudos from best-selling writers Mary Higgins Clark and Tony Hillerman. Her latest mystery, “The Miner’s Canary,” was published last November. Her newest work, a World War II historical titled, “Winter’s End” will be released in early 2024.

The Miner's Canary
Touchpoint Press, 2022

A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen to episodes on our website, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

Past Forward is a curiosity company dedicated to educational accessibility. We work with community leaders from academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, private corporations, and public agencies to document today, with context from our past, and learn moving forward.

Farnaz Calafi loves all kinds of stories! Whether fact-based & well-researched or fictional and out-of-this-world bizarre! She previously worked for the Los Angeles Times & her opinion pieces have been published in USA Today, San Diego Union-Tribune, & The New York Times. She's the author of a non-fiction book titled, 'All Things Coffee' and an upcoming children's book titled, 'Hazel and Her Sun'.

All Things Coffee
 Farnaz Calafi, 2020

A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen to episodes on our website, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

Past Forward is a curiosity company dedicated to educational accessibility. We work with community leaders from academic institutions, nonprofit organizations, private corporations, and public agencies to document today, with context from our past, and learn moving forward.