PhDivas

Join us in laughing at the absurdity of a so-called postracial world! We sip some tea with Danielle Morgan and chat about race and humor, #BlackGirlMagic, and navigating graduate school as a women of color with a family. Danielle just earned her PhD in English with a project about comedy and satire in African American culture and literature (congrats!). We talk about race, intent, and audience in Hamilton the musical and the work of Dave Chappelle and Aziz Ansari. There's also the #BlackGirlMagic of women like Ava DuVernay, Michelle Obama, Beyonce, and so many others. What considerations go into finding a supportive partner and having children when you're a woman in academia? (Subsidized child care at conferences!)

Danielle is one of the co-hosts of the Black Girl Magic podcast which highlights amazing black women. Check them out! https://soundcloud.com/blackgirlmagicpod

So you're used to being "the smart one." How does our pursuit of success have its pitfalls? In a guest lecture for a Cornell course on "A Life Worth Living," we talk about how we define success and how that drive feeds into problematic ideas about meritocracy and respectability. Competition can become an all-consuming mentality: it's not just about our worth as individuals but our relationship to communities and our burdens of representation. Liz addresses the pressures surrounding her identity as a proud Black woman from Mississippi with a passion for physics, while Xine reflects on her love of literature and its connections to the perception of Asians as the "model minority." Beyond chasing professional accolades, how can we give ourselves the time and space to be happy?

Spring is a time of renewal -- and also rejection according to the academic calendar. So. Much. Rejection: grad schools, fellowships, postdocs, jobs, publications -- all come rolling in, sometimes with a little bit of success thrown in. Track records of academic success obscure every level of academia is filled with what feels like different forms of failure. It's damn hard not to internalize. Liz and Xine try to balance celebrating individual successes for ourselves and others, allowing space for pity parties, and building community solidarity. How do we accept ourselves in the face of rejection? We help pick each other up, dust off, and try again. (And we're not fans of catchphrases like "grit" and "resilience.")

It happens here: we start our second season by helping the whisper network speak up about sexual harassment and assault in academia. The Hunting Ground documentary has brought attention to sexual assault on US campuses and there are now high profile cases about sexual harassment experienced by grads in astronomy and philosophy. We interview Anna Waymack, grad student and advocate, about issues with the current system of academia writ large. Please support institutional and cultural change! We are using the nightingale as our image for this episode in reference to the horrific ancient myth about Philomela who was silenced by her rapist -- support survivors and speak out!

For more information, to give anonymous testimony, and to help create change, please check out Sexual Assault Network for Grads: www.ixgrads.org/

"But my best friend is ____!" What if this common phrase was treated as more than an excuse for bigotry, but as an ethical imperative for allyship and activism? Liz and Xine were invited to give their first keynote, "Friendship as Activism," for the Agency and Solidarity Conference at Cornell. We talk respectability politics; our studies, ourselves; diversity, activism, and service in the academy; and self-care and survival.

Oh, and the keynote was covered by The Cornell Daily Sun and we were called "race, gender, and sexuality activists." Ha! We wouldn't really describe ourselves that way. Your thoughts?

"Graduate Students Urge Activism, Public Service on Campus": http://cornellsun.com/2016/03/15/graduate-students-urge-activism-public-service-on-campus/?platform=hootsuite

Are graduate students workers? Liz and Xine explore this debate by interviewing Jackqueline Frost from Cornell Graduate Students United. We discuss issues of graduate student labor at Cornell and higher education in general -- power dynamics, fear, funding, and differences between humanities and STEM in approaches to work and work dynamics. Should graduate students of the world unite? Do we have nothing to lose but our chains?

"BANG" -- Xine fired her confetti gun and then sauntered off-stage to applause of a thousand people. The Vagina Monologues are a perennial cultural touchstone on many college campuses for women's advocacy. Xine and Liz talk about the power and problems of the play. How can we affirm bodies and womanhood without excluding issues of race or trans women from the conversation? What kind of responses do we get from cis men and how can we encourage them to be supportive allies?

Xine is proud to be a part of Cornell's student-run cast. All proceeds went to the Advocacy Center of Tompkins County to help with their work against sexual violence.

Meredith Talusan's essay "Performing in The Vagina Monologues as a Transgender Woman." http://www.buzzfeed.com/1demerith/performing-in-the-vagina-monologues-as-a-transgender-woman

What happens when we experience loss in grad school? How do we find ways to heal and to remember when our time is so structured by quantifiable successes and milestones? The leave of absence disrupts this timeline and people will judge you for taking it and others will condemn you for not doing it. Liz and Xine take this episode to discuss mental health and to mourn their loved ones through both intangible memories and tangible mementos. From jade necklaces to laundry to an extra winter coat, what do we keep or let go when we lose someone?

What if? With every BA/PhD/postdoc/job application we open so many possibilities for our academic journeys and lives in different places and even fields of interest. Xine and Liz speculate about some of these alternate realities, from family histories to career paths. How do we imagine our pasts and futures in this uncertain world? Who are these other Lizes and Xines?

Let's build the academia and the world we want to live in! January is National Mentoring Month (US) so Xine and Liz talk about how much success in academia is owed to mentors and the importance of paying it forward by mentoring. We discuss this emotional and gendered labor and, of course, the disproportionate (but important) burden placed on marginalized peoples in the academy. What should you know about being a mentor and about being a mentee? Thank you to all our wonderful mentors and support to all our mentees!