The Academic Life

What happens when you come of age in mid-life? Why is so challenging to figure out your own past? Can you find the permission to be weird? (And can you be happy if you don’t?) Memoirist and English professor Hannah Pittard joins us to explore:

Today’s book is: We Are Too Many, a memoir about a marriage-ending affair between award-winning author Hannah Pittard’s husband and her best friend. An innovative and genre-bending look at a marriage and friendship gone wrong, Professor Pittard recalls a decade’s worth of conversations that are fast-paced, intimate, and reveal the vulnerabilities inherent in any friendship or marriage. She takes stock not only of her own past and future but also of the larger, more universal experiences they connect with—from the depths of female rage to the ways we outgrow certain people. We Are Too Many examines the unfiltered parts of the female experience, as well as the possibilities in starting life over after a catastrophe.

Our guest is: Professor Hannah Pittard, who is the author Visible Empire, Reunion, Listen to Me, The Fates Will Find Their Way, and the memoir We Are Too Many. She is a professor of English at the University of Kentucky.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a historian.

Listeners to this episode may also be interested in:

Welcome to The Academic Life! Join us here each week to learn from today’s experts inside and outside the academy, and embrace the broad definition of what it truly means to live an academic life.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

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From Dr. Painter restoring the words of Sojourner Truth’s original speech, to VP-candidate Kamala Harris enduring through repeated interruptions at her debate, to Katie Porter silently reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck at the Speaker of the House election—American women persist in speaking over their censors. While this takes courage, it is neither new or modern. American women have spoken in public spaces for hundreds of years, on myriad subjects, in venues of varying size, through a variety of methods. So why are their speeches consistently omitted from anthologies?

Today’s book is: Speaking While Female: 75 Extraordinary Speeches by American Women, by Dana Rubin. This anthology reexamines the American story as it unfolded through the centuries, revealing that in every time and place and at every critical juncture, women were speaking. Women from all backgrounds—some whose names you already know and others who will be introduced to you here—spoke in every corner of the land, and in a variety of ways. This volume offers a corrective to the story we have been told about whose ideas and which voices shaped the nation.

Today’s guest is: Dana Rubin, who is the author of Speaking While Female: 75 Extraordinary Speeches by American Women. She is the creator of the Speaking While Female Speech Bank,

and the founder of the Leadership Communications Roundtable. Learn more about Dana Rubin and the speech bank here.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who holds a PhD in American history. She has served as content director and producer of the Academic Life since she launched it in 2020. The Academic Life is proud to be an academic partner of the New Books Network.

Listeners to this episode may also be interested in:

Welcome to the Academic Life! Join us here each week to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world, and embrace the broad definition of what it truly means to live an academic life. Missed any of the 150+ Academic Life episodes? You can find them all archived here. And check back soon: we’re busy in the studio preparing new episodes for your academic journey—and beyond!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

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When we teach about how women go into politics, how are we looking for the places and ways that women get involved? Are we giving enough consideration to small towns, and to grassroots work? Heather Lende joins us to share what it was like to run for office in her Alaskan town.

This episode considers:

Today’s book is: Of Bears and Ballots: An Alaskan Adventure in Small Town Politics, by Heather Lende. Lende was one of the thousands of women inspired to take a more active role in politics during the past few years. But tiny, breathtakingly beautiful Haines—a place accessible from the nearest city, Juneau, only by boat or plane—isn’t the sleepy town that it appears to be. From a bitter debate about the expansion of the fishing boat harbor, to the matter of how to stop bears from rifling through garbage on Main Street, to the recall campaign that targeted three assembly members, Lende’s book reveals that small town politics aren’t so small. In her book, we witness up close the nitty-gritty of passing legislation, trying to uphold the lofty ideals of our republic, and just how the polarizing national politics of our era played out in one small town. Of Bears and Ballots: An Alaskan Adventure in Small-Town Politics considers what living in a community really means, and what we owe one another.

Our guest is: Heather Lende , who has contributed essays and commentary to NPR, the New York Times, and National Geographic Traveler, among other newspapers and magazines, and is a former contributing editor at Woman’s Day. A columnist for the Alaska Dispatch News, she is the obituary writer for the Chilkat Valley News in Haines and the recipient of the Suzan Nightingale McKay Best Columnist Award from the Alaska Press Club. Her previous bestselling books include Find the Good; Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs; and If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name. Her website is heatherlende.com.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who holds a PhD in American history. She has served as content director and producer of the Academic Life since she launched it in 2020. The Academic Life is proud to be an academic partner of the New Books Network.

Listeners to this episode may also be interested in:

Welcome to the Academic Life! Join us here each week to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world, and embrace the broad definition of what it truly means to live an academic life. Missed any of the 150+ Academic Life episodes? You can find them all archived here. And check back soon: we’re busy in the studio preparing new episodes for your academic journey—and beyond!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Like wolves, orcas have been loved and loathed throughout history. What created this complicated relationship between humans and whales? And have we changed our attitudes toward them and their habitat needs in time to save them? Science writer and biologist Hanne Strager joins us to share:

Today’s book is: The Killer Whale Journals: Our Love and Fear of Orcas, by Hanne Strager, which opens as intrepid biology student Hanne Strager volunteers to be the cook on a small research vessel in Norway's Lofoten Islands. This trip would inspire a decades-long journey to learn about the lives of killer whales—and an exploration of people's complex relationships with the biggest predators on earth. In The Killer Whale Journals, Strager brings us along with her as she battles the stormy Arctic seas of northern Norway with fellow biologists intent on decoding whale-song and dialects, interviews First Nations conservationists in Vancouver, observes Inuit hunters in Greenland, and witnesses the dismantling of black market "whale jails" in the Russian wilderness of Kamchatka. Featuring photographs from Paul Nicklen, The Killer Whale Journals reveals rare and intimate moments of connection with these fierce, brilliant predators.

Our guest is: Hanne Strager, who is a biologist, whale researcher, and the future Director of Exhibitions and Visitor Experience at The Whale, a museum in Norway set to open in 2025. She cofounded a whale center in Norway and has served as the Director of Exhibitions at the Natural History Museum of Denmark. She is the author of A Modest Genius: The Story of Darwin’s Life and How His Ideas Changed Everything, and The Killer Whale Journals: Our Love and Fear of Orcas.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who holds a PhD in American history. She has served as creator and producer of the Academic Life since she launched it in 2020. The Academic Life is proud to be an academic partner of New Books Network.

Listeners to this episode may also be interested in:

Welcome to the Academic Life! Join us here each week to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world, and embrace the broad definition of what it truly means to live an academic life. Missed any of the 150+ Academic Life episodes? You can find them all archived here. And check back soon: we’re busy in the studio preparing new episodes for your academic journey—and beyond!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When we are tethered to our responsibilities, it can feel like we need someone to give us permission to go have fun. Maybe some of us have begun to forget what “fun” is? And what it feels like to have it? Have we talked ourselves into the idea that fun is just for kids…and that truly responsible people don’t have time for it? Dr. Mike Rucker joins us to explain the value of fun for our personal and our professional life. It turns out, it’s even good for our health.

Today’s book is: The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life, by Dr. Mike Rucker. Fun is an action you can take here and now, practically anywhere, anytime. Through research and science, we know fun is enormously beneficial to our physical and psychological well-being, yet fun’s absence from our modern lives is striking. Grounded in current research, accessible science, and practical recommendations, The Fun Habit explains how you can build having fun into an actionable and effortless habit and why doing so will help you become a healthier, more joyful, more productive person.

Our guest is: Dr. Mike Rucker is an organizational psychologist and charter member of the International Positive Psychology Association whose work has been published in the International Journal of Workplace Health Management and Nutrition Research. His ideas about fun and health have been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Vox, Thrive Global, mindbodygreen, and more. Named one of ten digital changemakers by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, he currently serves as a senior leader at Active Wellness. Learn more at MichaelRucker.com. He is the author of The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women and gender.

Listeners to this episode may be interested in:

Welcome to The Academic Life! Join us here each week, to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and embrace the broad definition of what it means to lead an academic life.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today’s book is: The Lost Journals of Sacajewea (Milkweed Editions, 2023), by Debra Magpie Earling, which is a devastatingly beautiful novel that challenges prevailing historical narratives of Sacajewea. Among the most memorialized women in American history, Sacajewea served as interpreter and guide for Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery. 

In this visionary novel, acclaimed Indigenous author Debra Magpie Earling brings this mythologized figure vividly to life, casting unsparing light on the men who brutalized her and recentering Sacajewea as the arbiter of her own history. Raised among the Lemhi Shoshone, in this telling the young Sacajewea is bright and bold, growing strong from the hard work of “learning all ways to survive”: gathering berries, water, roots, and wood; butchering buffalo, antelope, and deer; catching salmon and snaring rabbits; weaving baskets and listening to the stories of her elders. When her village is raided and her beloved Appe and Bia are killed, Sacajewea is kidnapped and then gambled away to Charbonneau, a French Canadian trapper. Heavy with grief, Sacajewea learns how to survive at the edge of a strange new world teeming with fur trappers and traders. When Lewis and Clark’s expedition party arrives, Sacajewea knows she must cross a vast and brutal terrain with her newborn son, the white man who owns her, and a company of men who wish to conquer and commodify the world she loves. Written in lyrical, dreamlike prose, The Lost Journals of Sacajewea is an astonishing work of art and a powerful tale of perseverance—the Indigenous woman’s story that hasn’t been told.

Keywords from today’s episode include: Sacajewea, Agai River, Appe, Bia, Charbonneau, Lewis and Clark, The Journals of Lewis and Clark, Otter Woman, Pop Pank, MMIW, Lemhi Shoshone, Shoshone, Mandan, Hidasta.

Today’s guest is: Debra Magpie Earling, who is the author of The Lost Journals of Sacajewea. An earlier version of The Lost Journals of Sacajewea was written in verse and produced as an artist book during the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition. She has received both a National Endowment for the Arts grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She retired from the University of Montana where she was named professor emeritus in 2021. She is Bitterroot Salish.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a freelance book editor. She has served as content director and producer of the Academic Life podcast since she launched it in 2020. The Academic Life is proud to be an academic partner of the New Books Network.

Listeners to this episode may be interested in:

Listeners may also be interested in:

Welcome to the Academic Life! Join us here each week to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world, and embrace the broad definition of what it truly means to live an academic life. Missed any of the 150+ Academic Life episodes? You can find them all archived here. And check back soon: we’re in the studio preparing more episodes for your academic journey—and beyond!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Have you ever been ghosted in academia? The mentor who no longer replies when you reach out, the collaborators who mysteriously stopped collaborating with you, the search committee that said you were a top candidate and then stopped communicating with you—these are academic ghosts. They are people who are important to your career and suddenly stop responding to you without warning or explanation. What makes academic ghosting different than romantic ghosting? And why does it seem to hurt so much more? Dr. Andrea Andrzejewski joins us to explain:

Our guest is: Dr. Alicia Andrzejewski, an assistant professor of English at the College of William & Mary. She is a scholar of early modern literature and culture; queer, feminist, and critical race theory; and the medical humanities. Her work has appeared in Shakespeare Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, The Chronicle, Literary Hub, American Theater, The Boston Globe, Catapult, and others. Her current book project is Rude-Growing Briars: Queer Pregnancy in Shakespeare’s Plays, which argues for the transgressive force of pregnancy in his oeuvre and expansive ways in which modern people thought about the pregnant body.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a historian.

Listeners to this episode may also be interested in:

Welcome to The Academic Life! Join us here each week to learn from today’s experts inside and outside the academy, and embrace the broad definition of what it truly means to live an academic life.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Did we miss a fork in the road somewhere? What if our lives are going just fine, but we still want to hunt for the pieces of ourselves we’ve dropped along the way? Is it too late to claim more for ourselves?

CEO and author Alisha Fernandez Miranda joins us to talk about what she gained by loosening her grip on deliverables, deadlines, and external affirmations of success. In this episode we explore the value of internships, mishaps, and what it means to trust in your dreams and in yourself.

Today’s book is: My What If Year (Zibby Books, 2023) a memoir by Alisha Fernandez Miranda, about pausing her career to take four internships in three different countries, and finally explore the “What If” of her once-discarded—but still very real—dreams. With the tentative blessing of her husband, her parents, and her kids, she spent one year asking “What if?” and getting far more answers to that question than she ever expected. In My What If Year, she begins to question if exhaustion is a reasonable price to pay for anything, why she was so afraid of failure, and what success could look like on her own terms. For anyone who’s ever felt stuck, My What If Year proposes that it’s not too late to look for roads untraveled.

Today’s guest is: Alisha Fernandez Miranda, who is a graduate of Harvard, and the London School of Economics. She is the author of My What If Year, and the co-author of 50 Years: Kinloch Lodge. She is the ex-CEO and current Chair at I.G. Advisors, and is the host of Quit Your Day Job, a podcast that takes you behind the scenes of your dream jobs. Alisha is a Cuban-American, born and raised in Miami, and has spent her adult life in New York and London; she is currently based in Scotland. She speaks and writes regularly on women’s empowerment, social impact and sustainability. Her writing has been published in Vogue, Romper, The Good Trade, Insider and more.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a freelance book editor. She has served as content director and producer of the Academic Life podcast since she launched it in 2020. The Academic Life is proud to be an academic partner of the New Books Network.

Listeners to this episode may be interested in:

Welcome to the Academic Life! Join us here each week to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world, and embrace the broad definition of what it truly means to live an academic life. Missed any of the 150+ Academic Life episodes? You can find them all archived here. And check back soon: we’re in the studio preparing more episodes for your academic journey—and beyond!

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What makes a community college job interview different than one at a four-year college or a university? Do you need a PhD to get hired? What are they looking for? Professor Rob Jenkins joins us to explain the hidden curriculum of navigating the community college job market, including:

Our guest is: Professor Rob Jenkins, an associate professor of English at Georgia State University Perimeter College. He has spent more than 35 years in higher education, mostly at the two-year college level, where he has served as a faculty member, a department chair, an academic dean, and a program director. He writes the “Two-Year Track” columns in The Chronicle of Higher Education, and is the author of six books, including Welcome to My Classroom, and Think Better Write Better. For the past 15 years, he has led workshops on preparing for two-year college careers at research universities across the country. For more information, visit www.robjenkins.com.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a historian.

Listeners to this episode may also be interested in:

Welcome to The Academic Life! Join us here each week to learn from today’s experts inside and outside the academy, and embrace the broad definition of what it truly means to live an academic life.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How can the things you normally leave off of a CV help you navigate the job market? What if you made a list of all of the highs and the lows of your academic journey? Kate Stuart explains the benefits of doing this, including:

Our guest is: Kate Stuart, who is the Associate Director for the Office of Career Development ASPIRE Program within the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. She coaches biomedical science PhD graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, coordinates the Beyond the Lab podcast and video series, and teaches seminars specifically on Cover Letters and Professionalism. Kate is a Gallup certified Strengths Coach and enjoys incorporating StrengthsFinder into career and professional development. Kate is also the Director of Strategic Affairs and Events for the BRET Office. Kate has been with the BRET Office of Career Development since 2012 and at Vanderbilt since 2007. Prior to her time with BRET, Kate coordinated undergraduate student-alumni career engagement with the Vanderbilt University Alumni Association. Besides spending time with her husband and children, gardening, and coaching elementary school basketball, Kate loves to carefully craft clever out-of-office messages to make emailers laugh when they miss her.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a historian.

Listeners to this episode may also be interested in:

Welcome to The Academic Life! Join us here each week to learn from today’s experts inside and outside the academy, and embrace the broad definition of what it truly means to live an academic life.

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.