Remixing the Humanities

On this episode, Geoff digs into academic social media and Twitter with Manu Chander and Gina (lastname). What purpose does Twitter serve for academics as a social outlet or a space for activism and the sharing of ideas? What are some ways that the “shorthand” of Twitter (GIFs, etc.) can help or hinder the rigor of academic conversation? How do Twitter and other forms of social media contribute to a form of communal “peer review” in a field where getting your ideas out is a key form of developing those ideas/conversations? How can that Twitter standard, the hashtag, help develop and strengthen scholarly communities in the vein of #ShakeRace and #MedievalTwitter. How do these platforms help us break down the walls between specializations and periods that often create false boundaries and limit our research and conversations? Be sure to visit our blog post at https://humanitiesremix.blogspot.com/2020/07/new-episode-twitter-and-academic.html for more information on the guests and the CFP discussed in the episode.

In this episode, Geoff talks with another group of collaborators from the Qualities of Mercy Project about how they felt about the process and the end results of the work they did with their students and The Merchant of Venice in production. What were some of the challenges of production/quality? What impact did the region/cultural milieu of the students have on the way they interpreted Shakespeare's ideas? Moreover, the guests chat about how much the project made students consider their institutional position as their performances were paired with performances from students all over the country. How did the institutions/administration respond to the project? How do you manage a variety of views and interpretations coming from the students while still needing to impose a coherent theme? What were some of the more important and significant staging choices these students made in making the text resonate with them and their communities?Joining Geoff this time are Vanessa Corredera (Andrews University), Ruben Espinosa (University of Texas El Paso), Katherine Gillen (Texas A&M - San Antonio), and Katheryn Vomero Santos (Trinity University). Listen to the new episode here! And if you missed part one, you can find it here. And you can watch the fruits of the project here!Please remember to share, rate, review, and subscribe! We can be found on Twitter and Facebook at humanitiesremix, and reach us via e-mail at humanitiesremix@gmail.com.

In our latest episode, Geoff talks with some of his co-participants in The Qualities of Mercy Project, an initiative among Shakespeare instructors who collaborated to bring The Merchant of Venice to college campuses nationwide and to discuss what "mercy" means in a regional sense. Our guests discuss the ways their students responded to the plays notions of forgiveness and mercy, ostracization, and racism/antisemitism in the wake of some of America's deadliest shootings, as well as the implications of anachronism and letting Shakespeare "off the hook." Also, what does it mean for pedagogy when we literally ask students to "embody" Shakespeare's plays and cultural discussions?Joining Geoff for this conversation are Jonathan Burton of Whittier College, Ambereen Dadabhoy of Harvey Mudd College, Brooke Carlson of Chaminade University, and Mary Janell Metzger of Western Washington UniversityWe'll be back in two weeks with another group of participants in this incredible project. In the meantime, you can watch the project here!Please remember to share, rate, review, and subscribe! We can be found on Twitter and Facebook at humanitiesremix, and reach us via e-mail at humanitiesremix@gmail.com.

This week, Remixing the Humanities sits down for a brief chat with Colleen Kennedy, the publicist for Washington D.C.'s Shakespeare Theater Company and talks about the road from academia to the "alt-ac," or, as Colleen calls it, "IRL jobs." She talks about how she tailored her job materials for a position off the tenure-track, and how she feels graduate students and humanities programs could do a better job of preparing students to work outside the academy. Additionally, she gives some advice on how graduate students can make sure that they are thinking of writing/communicating to readers of all stripes, and how cultivating a writing career outside of your dissertation or academic journals can be one of the wisest career moves you make. Also, she talks about how her new career provides something that is often lacking in academia - a work/life balance! Check out the new episode here!For more information on the Shakespeare Theater Company, head here!Colleen is happy to share her experience with the curious! You can find her on Twitter at @ReadColleenK. Please remember to share, rate, review, and subscribe! We can be found on Twitter and Facebook at humanitiesremix, and reach us via e-mail at humanitiesremix@gmail.com.

Mary Rambaran-Olm and Adam Miyashiro are no strangers to discussions of race and racism in medieval and Anglo-Saxon studies. Within the past few years, they helped found the organization Medievalists of Color, which aims to create a space for scholars who find themselves marginalized in a field with pernicious strains of white supremacy and Euro-exceptionalism. Mary recently drew even more attention to the matter by publicly resigning her position on the executive board of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists at the second meeting of the Race Before Race symposium in Washington DC. Even now, members of the society are struggling to find a way to re-name and re-brand as a means to shed recent accusations and to ideally make the society more inclusive.Mary and Adam join Remixing the Humanities to discuss recent developments in the field given the attention and fallout from Mary's speech at Race Before Race. We talk about what it means to have the scholarly and the public-facing conversations operating in tandem, and the dangers of "cloistering" academic inquiry within the confines of perceived prestige and rigor, as well as the real harm caused by ivory-tower gate-keeping. What cost to graduate students of color bear when they enter a field that wants them as students, but not necessarily as co-contributors? How do we push forward to make all fields of study more inclusive and welcoming? Does one need to operate within the per-existing system in order to affect change, or at what point does breaking with the norms become the catalyst for a real movement?Please remember to like, share, rate, and subscribe. We can be reached on Twitter and Facebook at humanitiesremix, and our e-mail is humanitiesremix@gmail.com.

Join us this week as Devori talks with Dr. Jenn Stewart, the director of composition and assistant professor of English at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Jenn tells Devori about her research with first-year composition courses and texts that focus on issues surrounding diversity. They talk about how important it is that humanities courses provide a necessary touchstone to diversity for college students, as well as what sort of data can be derived from such initiatives to help steer humanities programs into public-facing pedagogy that helps create an informed electorate and conscientious citizens, and avoid the dreaded "indoctrination" accusation.As always, be sure to like, share, rate, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. If you're interested in talking with Remixing the Humanities, you can reach out to us on Twitter at @humanitiesremix, or via e-mail at humanitiesremix@gmail.com.

On our first episode of our third season, we’re joined by Jason Farr and Travis Lau. Jason and Travis talk with us about disability/queer studies and how those areas of interest intersect with issues of embodiment. We also talk about how social media is a problematic but potentially fruitful space for public-facing engagement that moves us out of the ivory tower, and the value of collaborative work in the academy. Furthermore, we discuss how questions of disability should be influencing both our pedagogy and how we interact with one another in scholarly spaces like conferences.Find the episode here!Please check out Jason and Travis’s work:Jason Farr, Novel Bodies: Disability and Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century British Literature: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/novel-bodies/9781684481071Travis Lau, The Bone Setter from Damaged Goods Press: http://www.damagedgoodspress.com/product/2019-chaplet-series/Jason and Travis's ASECS post on accessible conferences: https://asecsgradcaucus.wordpress.com/2019/02/21/accessibility-at-asecs-and-beyond-a-guest-post-by-dr-jason-farr-and-dr-travis-chi-wing-lau/ Please be sure to like, share, review, and subscribe. If you’re interested in talking with Remixing the Humanities or contributing a short piece to our blog https://humanitiesremix.blogspot.com/ , reach out to us on Twitter @humanitiesremix or via e-mail at humanitiesremix@gmail.com.

Hello, listeners!We're back for season three of Remixing the Humanities! In this short preview episode, we tease some of our upcoming content, as well as solicit some more participants for both our "Remixing Teaching" and "Humanities from the Margins" series. If you're interested, or know someone who's really remixing humanities education in research in interesting ways, please send them our way! They can reach us on Twitter at @humanitiesremix or via email at humanitiesremix@gmail.com. Or, comment below!We'll be back with our fascinating discussion with Jason Farr and Travis Lau in early September!

This time Geoff and Michael talk to Brooke Carlson of Chaminade University in Hawaii about what it means to teach in the margins. Talking about non-traditional student populations, what does it mean to adapt a more traditional humanities model to get at what we think is important? We talk about what it means to try to foster a lifetime love of learning, how to use time and digital tools to your benefit and creating a culture where failure doesn’t mean the end of your experience, but rather a beginning. Also, how do we press the notions of “decolonizing” of syllabi and content into a framework that benefits our non-traditional or marginalized students?Please remember to like, share, rate, and subscribe – and reach out to us on social media (Twitter and Facebook) at humanitiesremix, or e-mail us at humanitiesremix@gmail.com.

Conferences can be scary for anyone. But they can be really scary for early career researchers and those who already feel marginalized in academia. Geoff talks with his colleagues Kathryn V. Santos, Nedda Mehdizadeh, and David Sterling Brown about their new initiative, SAAllies, to be launched at this year's meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America. A program designed to connect established conference attendees with those in need of allyship, information, or just someone to talk with, SAAllies is born out of a broader question about what we lose when academia isn't generous. Based in the concept of "mutual mentoring," SAAllies challenges conference attendees of all experiences and backgrounds to consider what we gain when we look out for one another, and what a friendly, engaging conference gives back to the field. If you are attending SAA and are interested in learning more about SAAllies, please visit https://spark.adobe.com/page/NasehZxuIncgr/ for further information. You can also follow #saallies on Twitter.Please remember to like, share, rate, and subscribe - and find us on social media at humanitiesremix, and humanitiesremix@gmail.com.

This week, we continue our "Academia from the Margins" series with JSA Lowe. Lowe speaks with us about her experience as a disabled faculty member/scholar. We also discuss what it means to be generous with students in response to accommodation requests, and how we can learn to be better allies by "speaking a turning word." CW: suicide, mental illnessPlease look for us on Twitter and Facebook at humanitiesremix - or email at humanitiesremix@gmail.com. Visit our blog at https://humanitiesremix.blogspot.com/.

We're thrilled to be talking with the "Decolonize Your Syllabus" founder Yvette DeChavez! Yvette talks to us about her background as a Latinx student in academia, and how that impacted choices she made as an instructor when it came to de-centralizing whiteness in her curriculum. We also talk about the difference between "diversify" and "decolonize," how white faculty often pass the "empathy burden" on to their colleagues of color, and how to apply decolonization ideals not just to readings, but to assignments as well. You can find more about Yvette at her website, https://yvettedechavez.com/, as well as on her social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook.Please remember to like, share, rate, and subscribe. We're on Twitter and Facebook at humanitiesremix, and our e-mail is humanitiesremix@gmail.com.

This week, we continue our Remixing Teaching series with Ande Davis, who chats with us to shed light on the mystery that is contract grading. We talk about contract grading from the practical to the ideological, and what it can bring to the composition classroom and beyond.Please look for us at humanitiesremix on Facebook and Twitter, and we can be reached via e-mail at humanitiesremix@gmail.com. Remember to like, share, rate, and subscribe!

In our first interview looking at remixing teaching, we get down and dirty talking about Shakespeare, podcasting, and grad school cohorts with the women behind the Hurly Burly Shakespeare Show (https://hurlyburlyshakespeareshow.com/). Join us talking to Jess and Aubrey about how making Shakespeare accessible is tailor-made for podcasting, and how their show makes the Bard fun for the masses!Be sure to follow RtH on Twitter and FB at humanitiesremix. E-mail at humanitiesremix@gmail.com. Please like, share, rate, and subscribe!

Join Geoff, Michael, and Devori for a super-short, super-informal, but informational episode as we look forward to the podcast's future in 2019! We discuss some exciting upcoming series of episodes, as well as other projects we've been busy with behind the scenes. Please remember to like, share, rate, review, subscribe - and reach out to us on Twitter/FB at humanitiesremix, and email at humanitiesremix@gmail.com.Happy New Year from Remixing the Humanities!

Given the recent spate of scandals in academia, Geoff, Devori, and Michael touch on what these things mean in connection to another academic trend: generosity. What does it mean to be a generous colleague and instructor? What damage do we do to our academic ethos and our colleagues when we act in ways that are less-than-generous?

Geoff, Michael, and Devori solicited their listeners for their best bad grad school advice, and folks did not disappoint. In this episode, we discuss the dos and don'ts of graduate school - including to go or not to go?; self care; financials; publication; and everything in between.Please remember to like, share, rate, and subscribe. Find us on Twitter and Facebook at humanitiesremix, or e-mail us at humanitiesremix@gmail.com.

Geoff, Michael, and Devori chat with Dr. Sara Saylor about the crazy project that is the dissertation. What can you expect from this process in the ever-changing university? How should you get the help you need to continue and finish this important part of the process? What are some key elements that will make writing the dissertation as easy as possible?If you're interested in contacting Sara, please follow her on Facebook, or visit her website www.sarasaylor.com.As always -- like, share, rate, and subscribe! You can follow us @humanitiesremix on Twitter and on Facebook, and e-mail us at humanitiesremix@gmail.com.

Join Geoff as he talks precarity and the alt-ac path with Dr. Nora Williams (@noraj_williams). She shares her thoughts about how her PhD prepared her for a life off the TT, and how she’s able to keep up with her own research agenda. She also talks about the struggles of wanting to keep active as a scholar when there is significant bias against those who aren’t traditionally “academic.” She also uses her POV from the alt-ac to suggest some ways academia might improve for job candidates going forward.As always, like, share, rate, and subscribe. We're on Twitter, FB, and e-mail - @humanitiesremix, and humanitiesremix@gmail.com. Please reach out with comments, questions, and episode suggestions!

In this episode, Michael, Geoff and Devori discuss the reality of precarity with their own stories about academia, as well as some listener submissions. What does it mean to be precarious? How does it impact you when precarity and identity are so closely commingled? Please listen, share, rate, subscribe! We're on Twitter @humanitiesremix, and Facebook at the same. Please send e-mail inquiries to humanitiesremix@gmail.com.