PhDivas

Geosciences are the least diverse of all STEM fields. But is it enough to track statistics about gender and race given the discipline's colonial, masculinist history? Quantitative scientists experiment with qualitative methods in order to examine experiences at a Canadian geoscience conference. PhDiva Xine interviews marine biologist Sara Cannon and fluvial geomorphologist Leonora King (UBC Geography) about their paper that tracked posters vs. panels, behaviour at talks and on panels, and the division of labour. What are the limits on such a study? How can this translate into institutional change?

Since recording this episode, the CGU executive has created a committee to determine the current state of diversity within the CGU membership and to establish a plan going forward to promote diversity within the CGU and Canadian geosciences.

"Diversity in geoscience: Participation, behaviour, and the division of scientific labour at a Canadian geoscience conference" in the journal Facets by Leonora King, Lucy MacKenzie, Marc Tadaki, Sara Cannon, Kiely McFarlane, David Reid, Michele Koppes

http://www.facetsjournal.com/doi/10.1139/facets-2017-0111

Leonora King (@Leonora_King) www.leonoraking.com

Sara Cannon (@secanno) www.saraecannon.com

The 1970 student massacre at Kent State is iconic in the United States and beyond. Days before the 2018 anniversary, at least 65 students at Aligarh Muslim University in India were brutalized by the police for peacefully protesting the police dismissal -- without charges -- of the armed Hindu nationalists who had threatened their campus. PhDiva Xine talks with Wajiha Mehdi (PhD student in Social Justice at UBC) to raise Western awareness of the protests in India by students, farmers, and many other parts of Indian society against state neoliberalism, Hindu nationalism, the abuse of the lower castes. Why has this barely been covered in Western media? What kinds of narratives make international headlines from a country like India or about Muslims?

Photo (right) by Wajahat Jilani

More information here: http://thecompanion.in/amu-chalo-to-save-academia-from-hindutva-terror/

PhDiva Xine is moving to London, England as a #NewProf! Liz and Xine catch up after an exhausting spring to talk about Xine's new position as Lecturer at University College London, differences between STEM and humanities public outreach, illusions of meritocracy -- and complicated feelings to kind cliches. "I always knew you would make it." "Are you excited?"

Creating or conjuring? Junior scholars Emmanuelle Andrews and Katrina Sellinger were inspired by a public dialogue on the work of words between poet Dionne Brand and critic Christina Sharpe moderated by writer David Chariandy. Emmanuelle and Katrina co-edited a special issue of The Capilano Review extending that conversation on Blackness through their curation of essays, interviews, poetry, sculpture, and tattoo art. PhDiva Xine talks to these up-and-coming scholars at UBC about Black love, mentorship, Canadian and English moral exceptionalisms about race, and how people create but do not think of themselves as creators.

The Capilano Review 3.34 (physical or digital copies available): https://thecapilanoreview.com/featured/

Emmanuelle Andrews (@Elle_Drews) co-directed the short film Coming to Love. Her MA thesis in Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice (UBC) is entitled "Reading the Threat, Imagining Otherwise: Notting Hill Carnival, the London Riots and a Global Issue of Blackness."

Katrina Sellinger (@space_femme) is working on diasporic Black queerness through studies of Janelle Monae and the film Moonlight. She is completing her MA in English (UBC) and will be starting her PhD at McMaster University.

"Dead, drunk, or dancing": Kavelina SnowGiggles Torres​ (Yup’ik/Iñupiaq/Athabascan) seeks to challenge the usual media representations of Indigenous peoples. PhDiva Xine Yao​ interviews Kavelina about her work as a writer and filmmaker selected for the Sundance NativeLab Fellowship. What can narrative do that documentaries can't? Yugumalleq/Shades of Life (2014) is currently on exhibit at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her play "Something in the Living Room" will be performed spring 2018 at Green College, UBC on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Musqueam people. This episode contains references to Star Trek, Firefly, The Fifth Element, and much more scifi geekery.

Duncan McCue is attributed to the quote “drumming, dancing, drunk or dead”. He heard it from an elder. His rule is called the WD4 rule. A Indigenous/Aboriginal will make it in media if they are a “Warrior, drumming, dancing, drunk or dead”. He is an Anishinaubae, from Ontario, a member of the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation.

Kavelina's Twitter: @SnowGigglesAK

Vision Maker Media: https://www.visionmakermedia.org/bios/kavelina-torres

"Yugumalleq" is part of "The Abundant North: Alaska Native Films of Influence" at the Institute of American Indian Arts: https://iaia.edu/event/abundant-north-alaska-native-films-influence/

Who gets cited in your discipline? What if exploring that question led to death threats? "Why these professors are warning against promoting the work of straight, white men" is the Washington Post's take on Drs. Carrie Mott(Rutgers) and Daniel Cockayne (UWaterloo)'s peer-reviewed article on the politics of citation. The alt-right was not happy. PhDiva Xine talks to these feminist geographers about the dangers of public scholarship, academic vs. mainstream media timelines of production and attention, and their allyship as white scholars trying to center conversations led by women of color. What happens to academic freedom for junior scholars, especially those underrepresented, in an increasing precarious profession?

On Twitter check out @citeblackwomen #citeblackwomen

Tressie Cottom McMillan's essay "Everything But the Burden: Publics, Public Scholarship, and Institutions": https://tressiemc.wordpress.com/2015/05/12/everything-but-the-burden-publics-public-scholarship-and-institutions/

Mott and Cockayne's article "Citation matters: mobilizing the politics of citation toward a practice of ‘conscientious engagement’": http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966369X.2017.1339022?journalCode=cgpc20

Washington Post's representation of their work: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2017/07/16/feminist-scientists-say-citing-research-by-straight-white-men-promotes-a-system-of-oppression/?utm_term=.166bfc119367

Dr. Carrie Mott: https://geography.rutgers.edu/people/faculty-core/472-mott-carrie

Dr. Daniel Cockayne: https://uwaterloo.ca/geography-environmental-management/people-profiles/daniel-cockayne

Race is messy, literally and figuratively, as Professor Brigitte Fielder (Wisconsin-Madison) argues in her project on the non-linear transferability of race in nineteenth-century America. Shakespeare's Othello in America became a minstrel play warning against the dangers of miscegenation -- what does it mean with Othello's blackface makeup begrimes Desdemona? At the 2017 conference of the American Studies Association, PhDiva Xine chats with Brigitte about anti-racist mentoring, pedagogy, and colleagueship in higher ed and their discipline as a dynamic entity. How can we change a field of study and whose shoulders do we stand upon? (Shoutout to work in early Black studies, like the the Just Teach One-Early African American Print Project: http://jtoaa.common-place.org/ and the Colored Conventions project: coloredconventions.org/)

More on Brigitte Fielder's work: http://www.brigfield.org/

How do children of immigrants survive in the wake of diaspora? Punjabi is Canada's 5th most spoken language. As a PhD student in Asian Studies at UBC, Kiran Sunar reads, translates, and speaks multiple languages as a part of reclaiming Punjabi literary forms from Orientalism. Kiran and PhDiva Xine discuss Rupi Kaur and the power of Instagram poetry, disgraceful Canadian histories, and the importance of ice cream to BIPOC friendship. "How do we keep our wounded?" asks Kiran in this conversation about generosity, kindness, and creation in activism and literature.

Keep an eye out for Kiran's novel currently titled "Nerve"! If you're looking for some good reading, peruse the writers mentioned here: Audre Lorde, Hiromi Goto, Dionne Brand, Larissa Lai, Cherrie Moraga, Nalo Hopkinson.

More on Kiran Sunar: http://asia.ubc.ca/kiran-sunar/

How can we empower teen girls of color? PhDivas Liz and Xine talk to Eden and Ellisa Oyewo about how their C.O.R.E. work supports girls in those formative years before university. These sisters from Indiana collaborate from different cities and careers (engineering vs. fashion) to create and run C.O.R.E. (Creating Opportunity to Reach Empowerment), an online magazine and on-site programming at schools to bring career resources, financial planning, fashion tips, and relationship advice catered to girls of color 12-18. We talk about the struggles of girlhood and it turns out even the PhDivas have things to learn from C.O.R.E.!

C.O.R.E. Magazine: http://thecorereader.com/

You can also find them on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest!

800,000 undocumented young people in the US will be endangered if the DACA(Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program ends. PhDivas Liz and Xine interview DREAMer Dory Castillo, an amazing undergrad furthering children's science education who hopes to become a physicist herself. But because of her undocumented status, she has to live with the threat of deportation to a country she's never even visited. From Dory's dreams about studying fluid mechanics and her love of teaching, we turn to discussing issues of respectability, immigration, and the many, many misconceptions about undocumented immigrants, particularly the DREAMers. We support the DREAMers because they are #HeretoStay.

Help to defend DACA: https://unitedwedream.org/