SORAPOD

SORAPOD

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SORAPOD episodes

  • Again, My Memory's Terrible w/ Gregory Halbe

    The Society of Reluctant Anthropologists talks to Gregory Halbe about collective decision making, navigating group dynamics, and the wild side of academic conferences!

    Gregory Halbe’s academic career has been largely shaped by fortuitous accidents and moments of sudden inspiration. Only lately, in what David Brooks calls the Second Mountain phase of his life, has Gregory found and started to seize a guiding sense of purpose. It started with a family move the summer before his junior year in high school. All classes in his first choice of foreign language, German, were filled. He ended up studying Russian instead. His teacher was married to the local orchestra director, so Gregory’s first experiences with Russian and orchestra were inextricably linked. Four years later, up against a deadline to choose a major going into his junior year, Gregory peered into the orchestra pit of a production of Man of La Mancha, turned to his dad, and said “that’s where I want to be". Two years later, frustrated by his inability to master the lip trill on his instrument, the horn, Gregory sought the synergy of his two loves, music and Russian, in a Russian culture masters program. A few failures and happy accidents later, Gregory found himself working on a dissertation on Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera, Snowmaiden. Along the way, he and his advisor, Prof. Margarita Mazo, founded Rusalka, a choir in the Russian folk tradition, which is where he and Maureen met. After all that, Gregory has found his priorities for a happy and fulfilling retirement in family, church, and community.

    For a transcript and credits for the episode, check out sorapod.com

    1 hr 30 min
  • Surely That's Too Much Whisky w/ Aimee Joyce

    The SORAsians have a fun and deeply insightful conversation with Aimee Joyce, Senior Lecturer at the University of St. Andrews.

    We talk curses, ethics, traces, the academy (duh), and so much more.


    For a transcript of the episode, check out sorapod.com


    Links:

    Tracts Network: ⁠https://tractsnetwork.online/⁠

    Aimee’s Website: https://aimee-joyce.com/

    Terminology:

    Praxis: Praxis is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied, realized, applied, or put into practice

    ARC: ARC literally stands for Advance Reader Copy. It is a means of reviewing a person or a department.

    Book List:

    Aimee Joyce, “Spectral Borders: History, neighbourliness and discord on the Polish-Belarussian Frontier” Forthcoming

    Gina Athena Ulysse “Because When God Is Too Busy” https://books.google.com/books/about/Because_When_God_Is_Too_Busy.html?id=l9YGEAAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description

    Deborah Levy “The Cost of Living” https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Cost_of_Living.html?id=JLlHDwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description 

    Tressie McMillan Cottom “Lower Ed” https://books.google.com/books/about/Lower_Ed.html?id=m3QADAAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description 

    Jacques Rancière “Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics” https://books.google.com/books/about/Dissensus.html?id=mXPSsMk-71cC&source=kp_book_description 



    1 hr 25 min
  • I Don't Know What Happened, But Something Happened w/ Daniel Sokol

    We're joined by Daniel Sokol, a former university lecturer, medical ethicist, magician, and lead advisor for Alpha Academic Appeals. We discuss the issues students face, the creation of Alpha Academic Appeals, the lengthy and frustrating appeals process, and the improvements needed in university appeals processes.

    For a transcript, please visit www.sorapod.com


    Find Daniel on Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/DanielSokol9


    Alpha Academic Appeals: https://www.academicappeals.co.uk/


    Daniels writings in The Times Higher Education: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/author/daniel-sokol


    1 hr 7 min
  • A Pink Liberal Agenda

    Barbie, Boat Brawls, and The Color of Resilience! The tripod is back to talk about the aesthetics of resistance. You can also follow Sahil's B-plot blanket gymnastics at our website

    This is an expansion of a conversation that was originally had for the American Anthropological Association, the abstract for which is below:

    For many marginalized and minority students, the Ph.D. can be a site of violence, mirroring and leveraging homophobia, racism, and misogyny under the cover of academic rigor. This situation is at times so bleak that students give up - some on the Ph.D., some on caring for their mental and physical health, and some have taken their own life. While this is widespread across the Ph.D. experience, anthropology, with its history as a tool of colonization, should be the site of reflection and transformation. So it is with great urgency that we ask: How can resistance and endurance be created through joy and aesthetics? This paper examines the case of a cohort who banded together in the face of academic and state violence. Rather than falling into a culture of toxic critique or allowing themselves to be divided by competition, they decided to cooperate. They baked and cooked to show care for each other. They came to seminars color-coordinated as a joyful show of solidarity with each other. In creating a herd aesthetic that confused those in positions of power who perpetrated violence, they protected each other. They created a fictive person who, with an email address and social media, accompanied each of them throughout their respective fieldwork. To the outside, it looked silly and nonsensical. But these acts of resilience grounded participants to their work and the self, despite the violence enacted on them (and which still has long-reaching implications to this day).

    Check out the original 40-minute convo, a transcript, and everything else you want to know about the Society of Reluctant Anthropologists check out our website sorapod.com

    1 hr 26 min
  • A Grand Theory of Everything w/ Leyla Jagiella

    Maureen and Sahil talk to Leyla Jagiella about, well, a grand theory of everything (which they totally figured out)!

    Leyla Jagiella is a cultural anthropologist and scholar of religion who has worked on orthodoxy and heterodoxy in Islam and gender and sexuality in Muslim societies. As a Muslim trans woman, she has been a community activist for more than two decades and has held workshops on trans Muslim intersectionality and empowerment in Germany, the UK, Pakistan, Malaysia and South Africa, she has worked with LGBTQI refugees in Germany and is currently project coordinator of the Jewish-Muslim Cultural Festival (Jüdisch-Muslimische Kulturtage) at the Muslimische Akademie Heidelberg, Germany. Her book Among the Eunuchs: A Muslim Transgender Journey was published in 2021 by Hurst. 


    https://www.sorapod.com/

    https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/among-the-eunuchs/


    1 hr 11 min
  • Start Wearing Purple

    The first ever episode of the Society of Reluctant Anthropologists (SORA) Podcast - introducing who we are, why we’re on the mic, and a bit of our origin story.

    For a transcript of the podcast, check out sorapod.com/podcast/episode001


    And visit our website at sorapod.com

    1 hr 42 min

About SORAPOD

From the publisher's feed

With growing criticism of the academy from within and outside, we dig into what the future of the institution looks like, and what knowledge production is in today's context. SORA asks academics and…