Trustees Without Borders

Faculty Forum with LaDale Winling In this episode, LaDale Winling discusses his work collecting stories of systemic injustices, such as redlining, and gives a history of how redlining first occurred through the nationalization of mortgage lending. He also talks about how he views public history and how it might be important with the goal of producing better and more just communities. LaDale Winling is an associate professor of history and core member of the public history program at Virginia Tech. His research and teaching explore urban and political history in the United States, especially how space, architecture, and geography shape politics, economic life, and daily experience. His book, Building the Ivory Tower, examined the role of American universities as real estate developers in the twentieth century. Professor Winling uses spatial data tools in both his print and digital work over the web. With collaborators, in 2016 he launched Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America, on the work of the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation to map and grade the credit worthiness of neighborhoods in cities across America. In 2018, he launched Electing the House of Representatives, 1840-2016, on Congressional elections. This work has been featured in The Atlantic, the New York Times, on National Public Radio, and other media outlets.

Podcast Interview with Karen O'Brien In this episode, Dr. O'Brien speaks to the possibility of quantum social theory and what it means for avoiding the hopelessness of social change. She explores what happens when we put human capacity at the forefront for transformative possibility. She challenges us to see new paths to individual agency and true change. There is also a particular focus on climate change mitigation. Karen O'Brien is a professor of sociology and an internationally recognized expert on climate change and society, focusing on themes such as climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation including how climate change interacts with globalization processes and the implications for human security. She is interested in how transdisciplinary and integral approaches to global change research can contribute to a better understanding of how societies both create and respond to change, and particularly the role of beliefs, values, and worldview in transformations to sustainability. She has been heavily involved in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Global Change Programmes and the transition to Future Earth, a 10-year global change research initiative. She is the co-founder and partner in cCHANGE, an Oslo-based company.  cCHANGE is a beacon for individuals and organizations seeking a new perspective, inspiration, knowledge, and tools on climate change and sustainability transformations. Interviewers: Kathy Grimes, Communications Director for Virginia Tech Graduate School and Lara Nagle, Community-Based Research Manager at the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance Presented in partnership with Virginia Tech Department of Political Science, the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at VT, the Institute for Policy and Governance, the Global Change Center, the Fralin Life Sciences Institute, the Community Change Collaborative, and the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation at VT.

Faculty Forum with Andrea Baldwin In this episode, Andrea Baldwin shares a bit about how we might consider the concept of brackishness and how it might connect with Black aliveness. She talks about how this brackishness exists as an in-between space between saltwater and freshwater. She then uses this ecological concept can inform Black feminism. Dr. Andrea Baldwin is an assistant professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana studies in the Sociology Department at Virginia Tech. She completed her doctoral studies at the University of the West Indies Cave Hill campus Barbados in 2013 with a thesis entitled, Investigating Power in the Anglophone Caribbean Middle Class: Ideologies and Love as Power – Barbados as a Case Study. She is also an attorney-at-law who also holds an MSc. in International trade policy and her research interests include Black and transnational feminist epistemology, theorizing pedagogy as a form of feminist activism, care in Black communities, and Caribbean cultural studies.

Podcast Interview with Ramon Verdugo & Jessica Bauman In this episode, Ramon Verdugo and Jessica Bauman share about their work with La Frontera Project and how theatre can be a tool for building bridges. They discuss the complexities of this kind of work and how the arts can play such an important role in sharing a much more nuanced depiction of a reality than is often depicted. Ramón Verdugo is the Artistic Director of Tijuana Hace Teatro since 2007. As an artist he has collaborated in more than 30 shows, as a director, actor and producer. University professor for theatre and acting programs for opera singers. With experience in seminars and festivals such as ASSITEJ (China), Odin Theatre (Denmark), Fira Infantil I Juvenil (Spain), ITI (Armenia), among others in Mexico and United States. For over 10 years he has codirected the THT Binational School of Audiences and Festival Interprepas for youth theatre groups. Cofounder of Festival de Teatro Íntimo. Jessica Bauman is a community engaged theater maker, director and teacher. Her production of Arden/Everywhere - a reimagining of Shakespeare’s As You Like It as a refugee story - ran in Off-Broadway, with a cast of both professionals and non-professional immigrant actors from nine different countries. She has worked with immigrants and displaced people in New York City, Tijuana and Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. Jessica is a recipient of a Theater Communications Group/Mellon Foundation Travel Grant to support her collaboration with Tijuana Hace Teatro. Interviewers: Molly Todd, PhD student in the ASPECT program; Jon Catherwood-Ginn, PhD student in the PGG program

Podcast Interview with Jiang Nengjie In this episode, Jiang Nengjie shares his perspective on filmmaking as a storytelling tool and a powerful resource to build understanding. He also digs into the experience of the children left behind in rural China and the factors driving change in this fast-changing country. He speaks eloquently about how his own emotions and need to tell the stories he sees drives him on in the search to see better. Jiang Nengjie is a Chinese filmmaker whose work includes four documentaries about the millions of children left-behind in villages by their parents seeking employment in China’s sprawling cities. When he was a child, Jiang Nengjie’s parents left him behind in their Hunan village when they went to find work in Guangdong province. Unaccustomed to the fast pace of city life, Jiang, 32, lives in his home town and splits his time between making films and taking care of three village libraries he established in the county for left-behind children. His documentaries include frank and revealing aspects of life in China. Interviewers: Yezi Yang, PhD student in Geosciences; Kim Felix, PhD student in Planning, Governance, and Globalization; Neda Moayerian: Postdoctoral research associate at Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance and Center for Economic and Community Engagement In our interview with Jiang Nengjie, since he is more comfortable speaking in Mandarin, Yezi Yang will serve as our interpreter.

Podcast Interview with Sage Crump On this episode of Trustees Without Borders, Sage discusses her work incorporating complex sciences, emergent strategy, and creative practice to imagine the world we want to live in and to build strategies and practices that will get us there. Sage Crump is an artist, culture strategist, and facilitator who supports cultural workers and arts organizations involved in social justice to build social movements. She believes in leveraging art, creative practice, and the cultural sector to transform systemic oppressions. Interviewers: C. Meranda Flachs-Surmanek, an artist, cultural organizer, and master’s degree candidate in Virginia Tech’s Urban & Regional Planning and Theatre’s: Directing & Public Dialogue programs, Gabe Velazquez, a theatre producer, performer, and Masters Candidate in Virginia Tech’s Theatre: Arts Leadership Program, and Molly Todd, a PhD student in the interdisciplinary ASPECT program, who works at the intersection of politics and culture In Partnership with The School of Performing Arts at Virginia Tech

Podcast Interview with Alia Malek, International Reporting Program On this episode of Trustees Without Borders, we consider what replaces the very idea of home when home itself becomes unattainable and its permanence illusory. Alia Malek discusses the meaning of home, as well as relevant local, national, and international policies and programs, positive and negative, that affect refugees. Alia Malek is the author of A Country Called Amreeka: US History Re-Told Through Arab American Lives (Simon & Schuster, 2009) and editor of Patriot Acts: Narratives of Post 9/11 Injustices (McSweeney's 2011). With collaborators the Magnum Foundation and Al Liquidoi, Alia edited and co-conceived EUROPA: An Illustrated Introduction to Europe for Migrants and Refugees, released in Europe in 2016. Her narrative nonfiction book, The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria, was released in 2017. Her reporting has appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, NewYorker.com, the Nation, the Christian Science Monitor, Jadaliyya, McSweeney’s, Guernica, and other publications. Interviewers: Neda Moayerian, Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Virginia Tech at the Institute for Policy and Governance, and Molly Todd, a PhD student in the interdisciplinary ASPECT program at Virginia Tech, who works at the intersection of politics and culture In Partnership with Virginia Tech's Center for Refugee, Migrant, and Displacement Studies and the Center for Rhetoric in Society at Virginia Tech.

Faculty Forum with Cruz Garcia & Nathalie Frankowski In this episode, Cruz Garcia and Nathalie Frankowski share about their search for critical forms of architectural pedagogy and how they are deeply invested in the development of new curricula and pedagogical experiments searching for diverse forms of public engagement with architecture, as well as a decolonization of the role of architecture in the construction of new worlds. Garcia and Frankowski discuss their international art and architecture workshops for diverse participants, spanning from children, to college students working across different fields and the general public. Cruz García is a Puerto Rican architect, educator, author, theorist, curator, and artist. Nathalie Frankowski is a French architect, educator, author, poet, curator, and artist. Together they are working across different platforms to ask critical questions about the role of architecture, art and pedagogy in the construction of new worlds. In 2008 they co-founded in Brussels WAI Architecture Think Tank to contribute to the collective intelligence of architecture from a panoramic and critical approach oscillating from the design of buildings and master plans with a public agenda, to the creation of publications and pedagogical projects addressing questions of historical urgency. The work of WAI Think Tank includes the shortlisted design for the National Centre for Contemporary Art (NCCA) in Moscow, the design of LI Creative Offices, and several cultural and educational buildings and spaces around the world, as well as a series of Narrative Architecture projects exploring the role of architecture in an age of planetary challenges. (Both were also serving as Assistant Professors at Virginia Tech at the time of recording.)

Podcast Interview with Lily Yeh, Barefoot Artists Lily Yeh is an unconventional changemaker for cities guided by abundant hope. In this episode of Trustees Without Borders, Lily Yeh speaks from the heart, sharing approaches she has taken across her career to build community through art, learning, land transformation, and economic development. Lily Yeh is an artist whose work has taken her to communities throughout the world. As founder and executive director of The Village of Arts and Humanities in North Philadelphia from 1968 to 2004, she helped create a national model in creative place-making and community building through the arts. In 2002, Yeh pursued her work internationally, founding Barefoot Artists, Inc. to bring the transformative power of art to impoverished communities around the globe through participatory, multifaceted projects that foster community empowerment, improve the physical environment, promote economic development and preserve indigenous art and culture. In addition to the United States, she has carried out projects in several other countries. Interviewers: Lydia Gilmer, Master of Urban and Regional Planning Candidate at Virginia Tech, and Small Business Solutions Specialist for Pulaski County, VA, and C. Meranda Flachs-Surmanek, an artist, cultural organizer, and master’s degree candidate in Virginia Tech’s Urban & Regional Planning and Theatre’s: Directing & Public Dialogue programs In Partnership with the Virginia Tech School of Visual Arts

Podcast Interview with Brandi & Carlton Turner, Sipp Culture On this episode of Trustees Without Borders, Brandi and Carlton Turner speak about their use of the arts and agriculture to support rural community, cultural, and economic development in their hometown, Utica, MS. Carlton Turner, Lead Artist and Director of Sipp Culture, works across the country as a performing artist, arts advocate, policy shaper, lecturer, consultant and facilitator. Brandi Turner, Program and Events Manager of Sipp Culture, was born in Michigan and raised in New Orleans, LA and Oxford, Mississippi. Brandi works as co-owner and Managing Director of TWA Consulting, a firm that provides services in creative consulting for organizations looking to strengthen their work in arts and culture. The Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture) is honoring the history and building the future of Utica, MS. Their work weaves together research, development and local agricultural initiatives with contemporary media and storytelling to share the legacy and vision of Utica.  Sipp Cultures’ place-based model program promotes economic empowerment and self-sufficiency of low-and moderate-income people through education, technical assistance, training and mentoring in agribusiness. Interviewers: Neda Moayerian, Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Virginia Tech at the Institute for Policy and Governance, Sarah Lyon-Hill, Associate Director for Research Development at the Virginia Tech Office of Economic Development, and C. Meranda Flachs-Surmanek, an artist, cultural organizer, and master’s degree candidate in Virginia Tech’s Urban & Regional Planning and Theatre’s: Directing & Public Dialogue programs In Partnership With: Virginia Tech School of Performing Arts; Blacksburg Public Library; Virginia Tech’s Women and Minority Artists and Scholars Lecture Series; Center for Food Systems and Community Transformation in the Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education at Virginia Tech; The Center for Communicating Science; The Christiansburg Institute, Inc

In this bonus episode, Friends of Fulbright Argentina Student Exchange Program students share their reflections and insights after spending time at Virginia Tech. Friends of Fulbright Argentina Student Exchange Program students left to right: Facundo Arredondo, Miguel Angel Deriane, Camila Barbeito, Valentina Boretti, Mariana Giacone, Miguel Cervantes Schamun

Podcast Interview with Henrique Gomes da Silva & Andreza Jorge Henrique Gomes da Silva & Andreza Jorge explore what it means to be a resident of a favela in Brazil. They explore how their work utilizes arts and research frameworks while challenging standard understandings of who lives in these spaces and even what a favela is. They also dig into how they have been able to mobilize favela residents and build community power. Andreza Jorge is a black feminist, mother, academic, and resident of Complexo da Maré. She has worked with a variety of social projects focused on racial, gender, and sexual identity. She has published numerous articles, short stories, and poems and was named the “highlight” poet of the 2017 International Literary Festival of Paraty. She coordinates Casa das Mulheres, a space for women in Maré. Jorge uses dance, music, and composition to discuss themes pertinent to the daily life of women living in favelas.  Henrique Gomes da Silva is a black activist and resident of Complexo da Maré. He works with numerous local and international academics, artists, and activists. Silva also coordinates Maré que Queremos, a project which brings together Maré’s neighborhood associations to improve favela conditions, and Espaço Normal, a space for drug users and the homeless. Interviewers: Desiree Poets, Assistant Professor in the VT Dept. of Political Science; Courtney Surmanek, Master's student in Urban & Regional Planning & Fine Arts; Molly Todd, PhD student in the ASPECT program NOTE: Translation by Desiree Poets, PhD. 

Podcast Interview with Dr. Monica White, University of Wisconsin In this episode, Dr. White speaks to the history of Black agriculture in the United States and how the lessons of the past are relevant as we look to solve current problems. She touches on how we might be able to replace a broken food system with a healthier, community-growing model. Additionally, she also digs into how we should deepen our understanding of community agency and resilience. Dr. Monica White is an associate professor of Environmental Justice with a joint appointment in the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the first Black woman to earn tenure in both the College of Agricultural Life Sciences (1989) and the Nelson Institute (1970) at UW-Madison. Her research investigates Black, Latinx, and Indigenous grassroots organizations that are engaged in the development of sustainable, community-based food systems as a strategy to respond to issues of hunger and food inaccessibility. As the founding director of the Office of Environmental Justice and Engagement (OEJE) at UW-Madison, she works to bridge the gap between the community and the university and its resources by connecting community-based organizations that are working on areas of environmental/food/land justice to faculty and students. Her first book, Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement, received the 2019 Eduardo Bonilla Silva Outstanding Book Award from the Division of Race and Ethnic Minorities Section of the Society for the Study of Social Problems.  Interviewers: Nicole Nunoo, Ph.D. student in Agricultural Leadership and Community Education; Lara Nagle, Community-Based Learning Project Manager at the Institute of Policy & Governance

Podcast Interview with Todd London In this podcast episode, Todd London reflects on conflict and communion in society and the values of art as a core element for building strong communities. He reflects on his work in theatre and how he has seen the arts interact with communities. Todd London has worked in the American theatre for more than thirty years, supporting the flourishing of individual artists, advocating for best practices, creating connections between independent artists and producing theatres, and documenting the evolving field. His service has taken many shapes: artistic director, educator, arts journalist and essayist, public speaker, and theater historian. He is also a novelist, and his second novel, If You See Him, Let Me Know, was published in February 2020 (Austin Macauley). Todd is currently Director of Theatre Relations for the Dramatists Guild, Head of MFA Playwriting at the New School, and Founding Director of The Third Bohemia, an interdisciplinary retreat for artists. He received an honorary doctorate from DePaul University’s schools of Theatre and Music in 2016. Interviewers: Yvonne Chang, Master's student in Virginia Tech's MFA in Theatre program, Sarah Lyon-Hill, Associate Director for Research Development at the Virginia Tech Office of Economic Development, and C. Meranda Flachs-Surmanek, an artist, cultural organizer, and Master's student in Virginia Tech’s Urban & Regional Planning and Theatre: Directing & Public Dialogue programs Presented In Partnership With Virginia Tech School of Performing Arts, Blacksburg Public Library, Virginia Tech’s Women and Minority Artists and Scholars Lecture Series, the Center for Food Systems and Community Transformation in the Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education at Virginia Tech, the Center for Communicating Science, and and Christiansburg Institute, Inc

Podcast Interview with Julia Dinsmore By sharing her first-hand account of dealing with poverty, Julia Dinsmore teaches her audience about socio-economic inequality while empowering people to be part of the solution. She invites listeners to think critically about the actual and imagined divides that alienate people experiencing poverty in society; in particular, she speaks about the weaponization of the sacred knowledge shared through "oral culture,” which she contrasts with "print culture,” and the dehumanization that can result from hoarding too much wealth. Julia Dinsmore is an author, poet, singer-songwriter, and poverty abolitionist who is best known for her poem, “My Name is Not Those People.” Julia uses creative voice and storytelling to talk about the one thing we too often ignore – class and poverty in America. From church basements to the halls of congress, Julia has presented in her edu-performance style, calling those who listen to join the work of creating a just world for those experiencing poverty and marginalization. She is a teacher for students in high schools and ivy leagues. She has taught students at Stanford University, Brown, Duke Divinity, Swarthmore, and Amherst College, among others. She is most well known for her classes in neighborhood “porch sitting” which she calls an alternative to service-learning. Interviewers: Lara Nagle, Community-Based Learning Projects Manager, Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance, and Steven T. Licardi, LMSW, a spoken word poet, mental health advocate, and therapist with New River Valley Community Services Presented in partnership with Virginia Tech University Libraries, Center for Humanities at Virginia Tech, and the Office for Inclusion and Diversity Advancing the Human Condition Symposium at Virginia Tech.