Scholarly Grounds

Maria-Aparecida Lopes is Professor of History and Chicano Latin American Studies at Fresno State.  We speak about her new book, Foodways in the Twentieth-Century City (Cambridge Elements Series Cambridge University Press, 2025), which she wrote with María Cecilia Zuleta from El Colegio de Mexico.

Jennifer Randles, Professor of Sociology and Associate Dean in the College of Social Sciences here at Fresno State has joined us to discuss her research, which concerns social and economic inequities that affect American family life.  We discuss her first two book projects -- Proposing Prosperity? Marriage Education Policy and Inequality in America (Columbia, 2017) and Essential Dads: The Inequities and Politics of Fathering (UC Press, 2020), which served as building blocks for her most recent work -- Living Diaper to Diaper: The Hidden Crisis of Poverty and Motherhood (UC Press, 2026).

"An urgent spotlight on a dire injustice." ― Publisher's Weekly

Hanayo Oya, Assistant Professor in Media, Communications, and Journalism in the College of Arts and Humanities at Fresno State joins host Lori Clune to discuss her work as a documentary filmmaker, specifically as producer/director of the critically-acclaimed Boy Soldiers: The Secret War in Okinawa (2018) and co-producer on Netflix's Emmy-nominated documentary series, Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War (2024).

David E. Low, Professor, Department of Teacher Preparation, Kremen School of Education, Fresno State, joins host Lori Clune to discuss his book, Transgressive Humor in Classrooms:  Punching Up, Punching Down, and Critical Literacy Practices (Routledge, 2024).