Vox Humanities

Matthew Salesses is the author of the bestsellers The Hundred-Year Flood, an Adoptive Families Best Book of 2015 and a Best Book of the season at Buzzfeed, Refinery29, and Gawker, among others, and Craft in the Real World, an Esquire Best Book of the 2021, which explores alternative models of craft and the writing workshop, especially for marginalized writers. His latest novel is the PEN/Faulkner Finalist Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear, a Thrillist.com Best Book of 2020.

Silas Cassinelli is an assistant professor in the Department of English. He teaches classes in Asian American studies, Ethnic American literatures, and gender and women’s studies. His research focuses on the Korean diaspora, transnational adoption studies, and queer kinship.

Both joined host Sylvester Johnson in a small panel discussion about their race, culture, literature and their shared experience as trans-national Korean-American adoptees.

Novelist, poet, and memoirist Lucinda Roy’s latest book is the speculative novel THE FREEDOM RACE (Tor/Macmillan), Volume I of THE DREAMBIRD CHRONICLES trilogy. Among her previous books are the memoir NO RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT: What We’ve Learned from the Tragedy at Virginia Tech, the novel LADY MOSES (a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection) and the poetry collection THE HUMMING BIRDS, winner of the Eighth Mountain Poetry Prize. A Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, she gives keynotes and presentations around the country on creative writing, race and racism, diversity, and campus safety. Her commentaries and poetry have been published in numerous newspapers and journals, including USA Today, the Guardian, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the New York Times. Her passions include writing, teaching, oil painting, and (when all else fails) laughing till it hurts. Lucinda Roy joined Sylvester Johnson in October of 2021 to discuss her writing, her art, the power of stories, and the way in which imagination can be an antidote to despair. 

In this episode, Sylvester Johnson speaks with Aaron F. Brantly, an assistant professor of political science at Virginia Tech about his leadership of the Tech4Humanity Lab at Virginia Tech.  A centerpiece of the Tech4 Humanity initiative, the lab is a trans-disciplinary space for focusing on the impact of technology on the human condition. Dr. Brantly has worked on issues related to cybersecurity from multiple angles, including human rights and development, intelligence and national security, and military cybersecurity. His interests span the political science and computer science divide. The interview was recorded in November of 2020.

Sylvester Johnson hosts a small round table discussion on race in the European Middle Ages with Geraldine Heng and Matthew Gabriele.

Geraldine Heng is Professor of English and Comparative Literature, with a joint appointment in Middle Eastern studies and Women’s studies.  She holds the Perceval Professorship, created by anonymous donors to support her career.  She is also Founder and Director of the Global Middle Ages Projects (G-MAP): www.globalmiddleages.org

Her first book, Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (Columbia University Press, 2003, 2004, 2012; 533 pp.) traces the development of a medieval  literary genre—European romance, and, in particular, the King Arthur legend—in response to the traumas of the crusades and crusading history, and Europe’s myriad encounters with the East.

Heng’s second book, The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (Cambridge University press, 2018; 504 pp. in a larger, 10 x 7 format) argues that the medieval period was not a pre-political, pre-racial era, and that religion then (and now)—as much as science, in the high-modern era of “scientific racism”—was selectively deployed to identify differences among humans that were essentialized as absolute and fundamental, so as to distribute positions and powers differentially to human groups, in practices that we would today call acts of race.  Invention of Race won the 2019 PROSE prize in Global History, and was listed among History Today's best books of 2018.

Matthew Gabriele is a professor of medieval studies and the chair of the Department of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech. He has published numerous academic articles and several books, including An Empire of Memory: The Legend of Charlemagne, the Franks, and Jerusalem before the First Crusade, which received the Southeastern Medieval Association’s Best First Book in 2013.

Dr. Gabriele is a regular contributor to Forbes.com; his public writing has appeared in such places as The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Slate, and The Roanoke Times; and interviews with him have aired locally, nationally, and internationally.

In the summer of 2020, Sylvester Johnson spoke with E. Patrick Johnson about his award-winning film Making Sweet Tea.

E. Patrick Johnson is the Dean of the School of Communication at Northwestern University, where he holds the Carlos Montezuma chair as Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies.

He is a scholar and an artist who performs nationally and internationally and has published widely in the areas of race, gender, sexuality and performance. Johnson is a prolific performer and scholar, and an inspiring teacher, whose research and artistry has greatly impacted African American studies, Performance studies, and Gender and Sexuality studies. He has written two award-winning books, Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (Duke UP, 2003), which won the Lilla A. Heston Award, the Errol Hill Book Award, and was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History (University of North Carolina UP, 2008), which was recognized as a Stonewall Book Award Honor Book by the LGBT Round Table of the American Library Association.

He co-edited (with Mae G. Henderson) Black Queer Studies—A Critical Anthology (Duke UP, 2005). He is also the editor of Cultural Struggles: Performance, Ethnography, Praxis by Dwight Conquergood (Michigan UP, 2013) and co-editor (with Ramón Rivera-Servera) of solo/black/woman: scripts, interviews, and essays (Northwestern UP, 2013). Johnson edited No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies (Duke UP, 2016) and he also co-edited Blacktino Queer Performance (with Ramón Rivera-Servera (Duke UP, 2016). He recently published the creative nonfiction text titled Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women. He is also writing a companion volume (?) Black. Queer. Southern. Women. — An Oral History.

In late 2020, Sylvester Johnson sat down with Alex Munro, Claudia Hasenfang, and Cole Powell, three members of the award winning design team of Virginia Tech students and recent alumni.  The team is responsible for the creation of the T.E.A.R. Mask, a prototype pocket-sized anti-tear gas respirator that protects the eyes, nose, and mouth from the harmful effects of tear gas. Its design is compact enough fit in a pocket or purse, and incorporates a simple operation of use that can be deployed quickly and safely.  As the designers highlight, the T.E.A.R. Mask exemplifies the human centered technological design practices that animate the university's Tech for Humanity initiative.