Undisciplined

In this podcast episode, we speak with medical doctor, public health expert, editor of The American Journal of Public Health since 2015, former editor of "Epidemiology in History" at the American Journal of Epidemiology, and author of The Public Health Approach: Population Thinking from the Black Death to COVID-19. He breaks down how issues from immigration to racism can create challenges in the public health system. He highlights why certain countries in Africa have been considered tropical hotspots. He insists that meaningful change in public health must be driven from a population perspective.

In this episode, we speak with distinguished professor, Elliott West, a Pulitzer Prize nominee, and winner of the Bancroft Prize for his book Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion. We talk about the changing relationship between the United States government and American Indians influence Euro-American lives. We look at the ways westward expansion affected native cultures and freedom as well as their portrayal in American popular culture. We challenge some of the popular mythologies around Native Americans, especially common in Westerns and other popular culture surrounding cowboys. Confronting these issues unveils some of the dehumanizing ideologies, stereotypes, and atrocities experienced by Native Americans. The views expressed are meant to illuminate and unravel these issues.

In this podcast episode, we discuss what is Black Horror and why it is important. The episode explores the intersection of Black bodies and the horror film genre, blaxploitation, and Black experience as horror using American films dating from 1915-2023. We also examine how Black narratives present reflections of power and identity through film relative to the time and space that created them.

This episode explores the how one can think outside of the box of how museum exhibitions can be facilitated by utilizing digital humanities. Stevens talks about ways of reconceptualizing the display of African artifacts that are in institutions in the United States. Stevens bring virtual and augmented reality to the exhibition of African artifacts using a process of “affective curation,” which situate objects in their proper social, cultural and emotional contexts.

This episode explores the activism of Black Teachers in the 1950s. When a number of teachers lost their jobs during the desegregation period, they sprang into action triggering the actions of the NAACP. As public education became a highly contested terrain, teachers moved to the forefront in this oft-forgotten chapter of the Civil Rights Movement.

We talk with Arkansas International Writer-at-Risk, Uchenna Awoke about his debut novel, "The Liquid Eye of a Moon." Described as a modern day, A Nigerian Catcher in the Rye, Uchenna Awoke’s masterful debut breaks the silence about a hidden and dangerous contemporary caste system. The Liquid Eye of a Moon" is by turns hilarious and poignant, capturing all the messiness of adolescence, and the difficulty of making your own way in a world that seeks to oppress you.

In this podcast episode, we speak to Michad Holliday a PhD student in education about his upcoming documentary that covers the massive educator exodus that is presently plaguing our public school system. He investigates the cause through a social justice lens, by connecting the initial southern exodus following the Sweat vs Painter and McLaurin versus Oklahoma State Regents higher learning cases, which set the precedent for the landmark, Brown V. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. He also explores how the 14th Amendment set off another public-school exodus and eventually what happened in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957, "The Little Rock Nine" and cover Charter Schools and the privatization of public education, which has recently been exacerbated by the new Arkansas LEARNS Act.

In this podcast episode, we tell you who we are as host and cohost, what Undisciplined is all about and in providing a brief breakdown of the upcoming season we highlight why you the listeners should tune in to us.

In this episode, we shift the narrative of summer school from punishment to enrichment. Dr. Lakia Scott, Assistant Provost for Faculty Development & Diversity at Yale University, shares her experience as the Founding Executive Director of the Baylor Freedom Schools Program. This episode explores the program's enrichment impact on students, strategies for fostering successful collaborations with local school districts and other sponsors, and the logistical and cultural considerations in building the program and curricula. The program's unique focus on texts that explore citizenship, government, History, and culture as a pathway to expand African American students' access to educational enrichment, equity, and opportunity is particularly relevant in an education policy era that may be widening the opportunity gap.

Historian, Angela Sutton, speaks to us about her groundbreaking new book, PIRATES OF THE SLAVE TRADE: THE BATTLE OF CAPE LOPEZ AND THE BIRTH OF AN AMERICAN INSTITUTION, in which she explores how a pivotal battle between the British navy and a notorious pirate crew, led by “Black Bart” Roberts, cleared the way for an explosion of the slave trade, the establishment of chattel slavery in the Americas, and the deadly racism that still permeates U.S. society. She also speaks to us about her current work at Fort Negley and what it means to do the work of breaking the barriers created by slavery, racism, and other inequities.