Indoor Voices: Recent Episodes
Kathleen Collins
Conversations with scholars, creators and practitioners from around the CUNYverse (City University of New York). Produced by Kathleen Collins, John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
BONUS SUMMER EPISODE! Kathleen talks with Mark McBeth, Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the CUNY Graduate Center, about his latest book Objectionable: The Quasi-objects of Queer Literacy (Peter Lang, 2026). Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com for more.
Kathleen talks with Martin Cloutier, adjunct assistant professor at the College of Staten Island (CUNY) and author of the novel Waiting for Something Else (Heliotrope Books, 2025). Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com for more.
Adam McKible, Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, talks with LaGuardia Community College Professor of English Jesse Schwartz about Jim Crow Modernism, a volume co-edited with McKible, Keith Clark and Robert Jackson. For more, visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com
C. Julian Jiménez, playwright and Chairperson of the Department of Communication, Theatre, & Media Production at Queensborough Community College, talks with writer Elaina Battista-Parsons. For more information, visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com.
Mila Burns, associate professor of Latin American and Latino studies at Lehman College and of history at the CUNY Graduate Center, talks with Richard Relkin, Assistant Vice President for Communications and Marketing at Lehman College, about her most recent book, Dictatorship Across Borders: Brazil, Chile, and the South American Cold War, published by the University of North Carolina Press. Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com for more info.
City College (CUNY) professors Jennifer T. Roberts and Nickolas Pappas discuss Roberts's book, Out of One, Many: Ancient Greek Ways of Thought and Culture. Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com for more.
Dr. Sarah Hoiland, Professor of Sociology at Hostos Community College, talks with City College political science student (Hostos student at the time of the recording) Ashley Walker about Righteous Sisterhood: Politics and Power in an All-Women's Motorcycle Club. To learn more, visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com.
Char Adams, CUNY Graduate Center alumna and author of Black-owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore, talks with journalist, author, playwright and Char's former CUNY colleague, Beth Harpaz. Visit IndoorVoicespodcast.com to find out more.
Dr. Destry Maria Sibley, a CUNY Graduate Center alumna whose dissertation is entitled, "Narrating Mother, Narrating Twenty-First Century America: On Choice, Refusal, and Relation" talks with Dr. María Julia Rossi, Professor in Modern Languages and Literatures at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the author of Narrar Las Madres. Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com to learn more.
Dr. Mark Christian (Lehman College Professor in Africana Studies & Sociology) talks about his latest book, Frederick Douglass: A life in American History (Bloomsbury 2025) with his Lehman colleague Dr. Gillian Bayne. To learn more, visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com.
Drs. Caroline Reitz and Olivia Rutigliano discuss Dr. Reitz's book Female Anger in Crime Fiction and the way anger is portrayed in popular culture, the role that anger plays, its potential and its limits. Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com for more.
Jennifer Laird, Assistant Professor in Lehman College’s Department of Sociology talks with Richard Relkin, Assistant Vice President for Communications and Marketing at Lehman, about Jennifer’s book which she co-authored with Columbia University’s Diana Hernandez. Powerless: The People’s Struggle for Energy was published in April 2025 by the Russel Sage Foundation. Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com for more info.
LaGuardia Community College instructional technology librarian Ann Matsuuchi talks with CUNY’s University Archivist and co-principal investigator of the Cultivating Archives & Institutional Memory project, Natalie Milbrodt, and the university’s Wikimedian-in-Residence Richard Knipel. Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com for more info.
John Jay College of Criminal Justice colleagues, Dr. Nathan Lents (Biology) and Dr. Olivera Jokić (English and Gender Studies), discuss Dr. Lents's new book, The Sexual Evolution: How 500 million years of sex, gender and mating shape modern relationships. Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com for more info.
In collaboration with the John Jay College Office for the Advancement of Research, Kathleen moderates a conversation about the value of the humanities with colleagues David Munns (History), Allison Pease (Provost & Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs), Belinda Rincon (Latin American and Latinx Studies and English), and Dean Ringel (History). A bonus segment includes a conversation with Dr. Charissa Che, English department faculty at John Jay. Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com for more information.
Kathleen discusses her novel, Study in Hysteria (Vine Leaves Press, 2024), with Dr. April Burns, Associate Professor of Psychology at Guttman Community College. This CUNY Academy Book Talk was recorded live at the CUNY Graduate Center on March 5, 2025. Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com for more information.
Author and CUNY museum studies graduate student Elaina Battista-Parsons talks with Valerie Paley, senior vice president and the Sue Ann Weinberg Director of the Patricia D. Klingenstein Library at The New York Historical. Learn more at IndoorVoicesPodcast.com.
Jean Mills, Associate Professor and chairperson in the English Dept. at John Jay College, and Ria Banerjee, Professor of English and Honors Program Coordinator at Guttman Community College and the Graduate Center, discuss Dr. Banerjee’s book Drafty Houses in Forster, Eliot, and Woolf: Spatiality and Cultural Politics and related topics. Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com for more.
Olivera Jokić (John Jay College) and Dijana Jelača (Brooklyn College) discuss Past: An Introduction to the Problem: Želimir Žilnik on Film, Communism, and Former Yugoslavia, translated from Serbo-Croatian to English by Dr. Jokic. For more information, visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com.
Borough of Manhattan Community College colleagues, Diana Rickard and Tracy Bealer, talk about the true crime genre and Dr. Rickard’s book The New True Crime: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence. Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com to learn more.
Mary Frances Phillips, author of Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins (NYU Press 2025) talks with Olivia Moy, faculty member in the English Dept. at CUNY Lehman College, about the educator, poet, activist, former political prisoner and Black Panther Party veteran. Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com for more.
Kathleen talks with John Jay College English professor Adam Berlin about his new short story collection, All Around They’re Taking Down the Lights (Livingston Press 2024). Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com for more.
Laura Katz Olson, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Lehigh University, discusses her novel, Wrinkled Rebels, with Olivia Wood, English Department Lecturer at City College. Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com for more.
Mercedes Diez, Director of Communications and College Relations at Lehman College, and Professor Ulises Gonzales of the Journalism and Media Studies Department at Lehman discuss Professor Gonzales’s new book, La Vida Papaya en Nueva York. For more, visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com.
Rebecca Bratspies and Natalie Gomez-Velez, professors at CUNY School of Law, discuss Professor Bratspies’ book, Naming Gotham: The Villains, Rogues and Heroes Behind New York's Place Names (Arcadia Publishing 2023).
Dr. Mark Christian, Professor of Africana Studies at Lehman College and author of Booker T. Washington: A Life in American History and Transatlantic Liverpool: Shades of the Black Atlantic, talks with Dr. William Seraile, professor emeritus of African American history at Lehman College.
Jeffrey Heiman and Adam Berlin, John Jay college English professors and editors of J Journal: New Writing on Justice, talk with New York City College of Technology English professor George Guida whose latest novel is The Uniform (Guernica Editions, 2024).
Bryan Warde, professor in the social work program at Lehman College and in the social welfare doctoral program at the Graduate Center, discusses his most recent book, Colorblind: Indigenous and Black Disproportionality Across Criminal Justice Systems, with Lehman College’s Assistant Vice President for Communications & Marketing at Lehman, Richard Relkin. Visit indoorvoicespocast.com for more information.
Dr. Sarah Hoiland (Hostos Community College) talks with Dr. Calvin J. Smiley (Hunter College) about dismantling the prison industrial complex and shifting away from vengeful systems of reentry. Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com for information about Drs. Smiley and Hoiland.
Rich Relkin, Assistant Vice President for Communications & Marketing at Lehman College, talks with Crissa-Jean Chappell, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English and author of the recently published YA novel, Sun Don’t Shine (Fitzroy Books, January 2024). Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com for more.
Faculty from LaGuardia Community College discuss the Second Chance Act Improving Reentry Education and Employment Outcomes grant from the US Department of Justice to fund a comprehensive prison-to-college project at Queensboro Correctional Facility. Prof. Hugo Fernandez interviews Profs. John Chaney and Joni Schwartz-Chaney. For more information on the program and guests, visit Indoorvoicespodcast.com
Ann Matsuuchi (LaGuardia Community College), Caron Knauer (LaGuardia Community College), and Sherry Antoine (AfroCROWD), discuss Knauer’s book American Slavery on Film. Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com for more.
Kathleen talks with Louis Bury, associate professor of English at Hostos Community College and author of The Way Things Go (punctum books, 2023). Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com for more.
Kathleen talks with Dara Byrne, Dean of Macaulay Honors College. Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com for more.
Kathleen talks with her CUNY librarian colleagues - Vikki Terrile, Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at Queens College and Stephanie Margolin, Associate Professor and librarian at Hunter College – about pop culture scholarship in the academy and in their library careers.
Returning guest host Beth Harpaz talks with Helaine Helmreich, wife of the late Professor William Helmreich (Graduate Center/City College, Sociology) about Prof. Helmreich’s recently published book, The Bronx Nobody Knows: An Urban Walking Guide. Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com for more.
Jayashree Kamblé and Tara Hickman of LaGuardia Community College discuss Jayashree’s book, Creating Identity: The Popular Romance Heroine’s Journey to Selfhood and Self-Presentation] (Indiana University Press, 2023).
Lehman College professor Victoria Sanford talks with Richard Relkin, Assistant Director for Communications & Marketing at Lehman, about her recently published book Textures of Terror: The Murder of Claudina Isabel Velasquez & Her Father’s Quest for Justice.
Julie Turley (Kingsborough Community College) and Joan Jocson-Singh (Lucas Museum of Narrative Art) discuss their book, Heavy Music Mothers: Extreme Identities, Narrative Disruptions, with Monica Berger (NYC College of Technology).
Kathleen talks with Samantha Majic, Professor of Political Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, about her new book, Lights, Camera, Feminism: Celebrities and Anti-trafficking Politics. Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com for more.
Kathleen talks with John Jay's Interim Dean of Academic Programs and Professor of Political Science Andrew Sidman about the college's strategic plan initiative focusing on quantitative literacy and reasoning. Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com for more.
Angie Beeman (Baruch College) talks with Soribel Genao (Queens College) about Angie’s book, Liberal White Supremacy: How Progressives Silence Racial and Class Oppression, Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com for more.
Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is a writer, civil rights attorney, playwright, and Professor of Constitutional Law at John Jay College. Her most recent book, She Took Justice: The Black Woman, Law, and Power – 1619 to 1969, showcases the courage of a range of black women in the face of racial prejudice and gender oppression. Gloria talks with John Jay College Media Relations Director, Rich Relkin about the book and about her other creative works, including the play Shot: Caught a Soul and Dreams of Emmett Till. Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com for more.
John Jay College Associate Professor of History Edward Paulino discusses his book Refranes de mi Abuelita: Sayings of my Grandmother and “Eddie’s Perejil,” his one-man performance about Dominican identity and the 1937 Haitian Massacre.
Rose Kim, faculty in Social Sciences, Human Services and Criminal Justice at BMCC, Wanett Clyde, library faculty at New York City Tech, and Cynthia Tobar, library faculty at Bronx Community College discuss Children of the People: Writings by and about CUNY students on race and social justice (DIO Press, 2022). For more information visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com.
John Jay College’s Richard Relkin, director of Media Relations, and Evan Mandery, professor in criminal justice, discuss Evan’s new book, Poison Ivy: How Elite Colleges Divide Us. Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com for more.
David J. Puglia talks with Mira Johnson about his edited collection, North American Monsters: A Contemporary Legend Casebook (University Press of Colorado, 2022). For more info, visit indoorvoicespodcast.com
In September 2022, Chancellor Matos Rodriguez announced the recipients of the newly established Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Initiative (or BRESI) awards. 126 projects across CUNY will be funded from a $10 million gift from the Mellon Foundation with the goal of reimagining and expanding the study of race and ethnicity. In this episode, you'll hear a number of awardees describing their projects, providing a cross section of the innovative and vital work being carried about by our colleagues around the university. Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com for more information.
Kathleen talks with Kate Brandt, Professional Development Coordinator in CUNY’s Adult Literacy/ HSE/ESL Programs. Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com to learn more.
A visit to the Safe Haven Farm Sanctuary and conversations with its co-founder, Bill Crain (CCNY Psychology), and animal advocate Daisy Dominguez (CCNY Library).
A conversation with the producer and director and two playwrights of John Jay College's 2022 production of Seeing Rape.
Nicole Treska (CCNY alum and adjunct professor) talks with Michelle Valladares (CCNY MFA Creative Writing director) about her forthcoming memoir, Wonderland (Simon & Schuster, Fall 2023).
John Jay College Associate Professor of History David Munns talks about his co-authored book, Far Beyond the Moon ; A History of Life Support Systems in the Space Age, with Richard Relkin, John Jay’s Director of Media Relations. Visit us at IndoorVoicesPodcast.com
Dr. Rebecca Shapiro is an Associate Professor of English and Linguistics in the English Department at New York City College of Technology and the author of Fixing Babel: An Historical Anthology of Applied English Lexicography. She talks with former student Estephanie Montero about language learning. Visit us at indoorvoicespodcast.com.
Cynthia Tobar, faculty librarian and head of archives at Bronx Community College, talks with Gregory Sholette and Chloë Bass about Social Practice CUNY (SPCUNY), a unique pedagogical initiative that supports the integration of art with interdisciplinary research, community collaboration, environmental justice and urban studies.
Kathleen talks with Molly Rosner, Director of Education Programs at the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives at LaGuardia Community College, about her book, Playing with History: American Identities and Children’s Consumer Culture.
Claire Stewart, Associate Professor in the Hospitality Management Program at CUNY's New York City College of Technology, talks with former student and CUNY BA program alumnus, Daniel Vater, about his multi-faceted culinary career.
Hannah Kavanagh, a Hunter@Macaulay senior, talks with Kathleen about producing and hosting the first student-run podcast at CUNY, CUNY Uncut. Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com for more.
Khánh Lê (Queens College and the Graduate Center) talks with adjunct professor Julian Costa (NYC College of Technology) and Gabriel Da Silva (Pace University) about the book they’ve recently completed, What They Know: Reflections of Vietnam, a project originally started by Dr. Rebecca Dean in the 1980s. To learn more, visit Indoorvoicespodcast.com.
Michelle Valladares, Director of the MFA in Creative Program and Lecturer in English at City College, talks with Kathleen about the program, its providential Harlem location, and why it's seeing an unprecedented number of enrollments.
Erin Thompson, Associate Professor of Fraud, Forensics, Art Law & Crime in the Department of Art and Music at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Todd Fine, CUNY Graduate Center PhD candidate and president of the Washington Street Advocacy Group, talk about Erin's forthcoming book, Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments.
Yarimar Bonilla, Professor in the Department of Africana & Puerto Rican/Latino Studies at Hunter College and in the PhD Program in Anthropology at the Graduate Center, assumes the role of Acting Director of El Centro, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, on July 1. In this episode, she talks with Vanessa Valdés, Director of the Black Studies Program and Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at City College. Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com
Jeremy Caplan, director of teaching and learning at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, talks with Michael Rain, alumnus and founder of research and media company Enodi, about the J school’s new online intensive Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators program.
John Jay College librarian and professor Jeffrey Kroessler and architect Laura Heim discuss their book, Sunnyside Gardens: Planning and Preservation in a Historic Garden Suburb, with Owen Gutfreund, Associate Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College. Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com for more information.
Alisse Waterston (John Jay) and Charlotte Corden talk with Kathleen about their graphic novel, Light in Dark Times: The Human Search for Meaning published by the University of Toronto Press.
Cynthia Tobar, Head of Archives at Bronx Community College, talks with Molly Rosner, Assistant Director of Education Programs at the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives at LaGuardia Community College and Summer Walker, a student in la Guardia’s Commercial Photography program, about their project Portraits of an Epicenter: NYC in Lockdown.
New York City College of Technology librarians Junior Tidal and Nora Almeida discuss their podcast, City Tech Stories, and Junior’s new book, Podcasting: A Practical Guide for Librarians.
CUNY Grad Center and Manifold fellow alum Jojo Karlin describes her doodle-based note taking process. She talks about how and why she came to draw her dissertation on Virginia Woolf, about the experience of taking visual notes both in person and via Zoom, about digital humanities, open access, the Manifold digital platform, and the call to be curious at heart of the Graduate Center.
Jeanne Theoharis (Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College) and Yoruba Richen (Directory of the Documentary Program at Newmark Graduate School of Journalism) discuss Yoruba's recent film, How it Feels to Be Free, a documentary about six iconic African American women entertainers who champion civil rights and challenge racists stereotypes. Jeanne is the author of the award-winning The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. The two are collaborating on an upcoming project about Rosa Parks. Visit IndoorVoicesPodcast.com for more.
Amy Adamczyk, Professor of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, talks with Indoor Voices about her latest book. She is co-author, along with University of Notre Dame Sociology Professor Christian Smith, of Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion on to the Next Generation (Oxford University Press, 2021)
Beth Harpaz, editor of CUNY SUM, talks with Kathleen Collins, librarian and professor at John Jay College's Lloyd Sealy Library, about Kathleen's book, From Rabbit Ears to the Rabbit Hole: A Life with Television published by the University Press of Mississippi.
Edward Snadr and Shonna Trinch, John Jay College faculty and authors of What the Signs Say: Language, Gentrification, and Place-Making in Brooklyn, talk with Mary Gatta and Molly Vollman Makris, faculty members at Guttman Community College, about their book, Gentrification Down the Shore, published by Rutgers University Press.
In this episode, two punk scholars - Raymond Patton and David Pearson - discuss how punk operates and frames itself in different contexts and time periods, including issues of diversity and multiculturalism and the experiences and participation of immigrants, women, people of color, and the continuum or rejection of politics and commercialism. The occasion is the recent publication of David's book, Rebel Music in the Triumphant Empire: Punk Rock in the 1990s United States (Oxford University Press). Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com for more info.
Cathy Davidson, Dree-el Simmons and Tatiana Ades share their experiences in creating We Eat: A Student-Centered Cookbook as part of the “Introduction to Engaged Teaching and Transformative Learning in the Humanities and Social Sciences” class in Spring 2020 offered by The Futures Initiative at the CUNY Graduate Center.
The editors of J Journal: New Writing on Justice talk with contributor Estha Weiner about her poetry. The biannual literary journal, edited by English department faculty Jeffrey Heiman and Adam Berlin, is produced at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Visit indoorvoicespocast.com.
John Jay College English dept. colleagues Allison Pease and Victoria Bond discuss Bond's finale to the award-winning trilogy, Zora and Me: The Summoner, a fictional series based on the life and work of anthropologist and writer Zora Neale Hurston.
Frederick Wasser, Professor in the Department of Television, Radio and Emerging Media at Brooklyn college, chronicles the sweeping account of the Twentieth Century Fox film studio. His book serves as a survey of American film history and “at times it becomes a history of the century itself.”
Char Adams is a race and identity journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, Teen Vogue, People Magazine, and more. She is also the digital editor of CUNY SUM, the website for research, books, and creative works generated at CUNY. Char is also the co-creator of a new podcast, COVID University New York. Visit our blog at indoorvoicespodcast.com for more info about Char, her work, and the podcast.
Shonna Trinch is a sociolinguist and faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at John Jay College, and Edward Snajdr is a cultural anthropologist and faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at John Jay College. Their book, What the Signs Say: Language, Gentrification, and Place-Making in Brooklyn (Vanderbilt University Press), is the result of a decade of ethnographic research that deconstructs the public language of storefronts and the wide-ranging but often nuanced effects of these signs on a community’s inhabitants as well as on visitors, developers, and potential residents. While signage may seem like mere words, Trinch and Snajdr show how significantly interconnected signs are with so many urban issues - real estate, gentrification, race, and class.
Margot Mifflin, Professor of English at Lehman College and the Newmark Journalism School is the author of Looking for Miss America: A Pageant’s 100-Year Quest to Define Womanhoodwhich will be released by Counterpoint Press on August 4. In this episode, she talks with Beth Harpaz, editor of CUNY SUM.
Jean Halley is Professor of Sociology at the College of Staten Island (CUNY). She discusses her memoir-in-progress that includes themes of the Western U.S., race, violence, and memory itself.
Kathleen and Steve catch up on stationery, online learning, and don't even get too into why video conferencing is a pain.
In her newest book, Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets (Oxford University Press, 2019), Elissa Bemporad explores two extreme manifestations of tsarist antisemitism in the Soviet Union from 1917 to the early 1960s. Elissa is assistant professor of history at Queens College and the Graduate Center, where she specializes in Russian and Eastern European Jewish history, gender, and genocide studies. She is interviewed by Beth Harpaz.
Sharon Zukin, Professor Emerita of Sociology at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, discusses her book, The Innovation Complex: Cities, Tech, and the New Economy, with Richard Ocejo, Associate Professor of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the CUNY Graduate Center.
Bret Maney, assistant professor in the English department at CUNY’s Lehman College and Cristina Perez Jimenez, assistant professor in English at Manhattan College, talk about the English translation of Guillermo Cotto-Thorner’s 1951 novel, Manhattan Tropics (Trópico en Manhattan), published by Arte Público Press.
Christen Madrazo and Alan Winson, both faculty members in the English department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Nora Almeida, a library faculty member at New York City College of Technology, talk about how they use podcasting in their work with students at CUNY.
Adam Berlin and Jeffrey Heiman are faculty members in the English department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and are the editors of J Journal: New Writing on Justice. The biannual literary journal, which features fiction, poetry, and personal narrative about contemporary justice issues, has been published biannually since 2008. The 24th issue will be available later this month. Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com for more information on our guests.
Julia Miele Rodas is Professor in the English Department at Bronx Community College and the author of Autistic Disturbances: Theorizing Autism Poetics from the DSM to Robinson Crusoe. In this episode, she has a conversation with fellow disability studies scholar, Olivia Moy, Assistant Professor of English at Lehman College.
Mark Carpentieri teaches public speaking at Queensborough Community College and is the owner of M.C. Records, a blues/roots music label based on the South Shore of Long Island. Mark is also a graduate of Queens College. In this interview, Mark shows the connection between public speaking and running a label, talks about the need for online teaching and learning, and explains what makes a good blues drummer. Suffice it to say, this interview covers a lot of ground.
As someone who loves music, talking to Mark about his life in the music industry was a real treat. As was his optimism about the music industry and about higher education.
In this episode, you’ll hear David Pearson, adjunct faculty in the music and general studies departments at CUNY Lehman College, in conversation with Ray Patton, Associate Professor of History and Faculty Director of the Honors Program and Macaulay Honors College at CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice. They discuss Ray’s book, Punk Crisis: The Global Punk Rock Revolution (Oxford U. Press 2018). Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com for more information.
Beth Harpaz, editor of CUNY SUM, talks with Matthew K. Gold, associate professor of English and director of the M.A. program in digital humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center and co-editor of Debates in the Digital Humanities 2019.
Heidi Diehl, an adjunct lecturer and assistant director of the freshman composition program at Brooklyn College, discusses her new novel, Lifelines.
Dr. Jill Grose-Fifer is an associate professor in the psychology department at John Jay College. She thinks deeply about her teaching and works hard to keep it interesting, effective and relevant. She is thus far the only two time winner of John Jay's Distinguished Teaching Prize. Earlier this year, she co-authored a book with Patricia J. Brooks and Maureen O'Connor called Teaching Psychology: An Evidence-Based Approach. It’s a practical and scholarly guide for teachers whether they're new to the job or looking to shake things up.
David Puglia explains the story and implications of "hon" in his book Tradition, Urban Identity, and the Baltimore Hon: The Folk in the City (Lexington Books 2018). David is a folklorist, an assistant professor in the English Dept of Bronx Community College and a native Bawlmorean.
Jean Halley is a professor of Sociology at the College of Staten Island and she teaches in the Women’s and Gender Studies Masters Degree Program. She studies and writes about gender, sexuality, race and cultural normativity and many subsets therein. Her most recent book, and the one we really focus on in this episode, is Horse Crazy: Girls and the Lives of Horses, will be out in July and is published by the University of Georgia Press. To learn more about Jean’s work, visit indoorvoicespodcast.com.
Nicole Bode teaches at the Craig Newmark School of Journalism and is the head of Newsroom Sustainability for Civil. Civil is a fascinating project designed to help journalism, which, you may have heard, is going through a bit of a rough patch.
Civil does interesting things, like using the blockchain to archive content. What that means for librarians is that content won't disappear. News content can disappear for a variety of reasons, both accidental and deliberate. Civil is working to make sure the historical record remains intact.
Civil is also using cryptocurrency as a tool to help news organizations get paid. If you're like me, you know nothing about what cryptocurrency really is, but it makes you vaguely nervous. The knock on Civil is that it's complicated. Nicole addresses that concern, pointing out that ATMs once seemed hopelessly complex to people. And now, much less so. Unless you're using one in front of me. Then, they become impossibly complicated.
Nicole also gets into the similarities between the struggles of journalism and the struggles of public higher education.
It's an accessible, informative interview.
I promise.
Quadira Coles, Vanessa Gutiérrez, Wilmarie Feliz and Akanksha Anand are graduate students at John Jay College and are recipients of the Tow Policy Advocacy Fellowship and the Pinkerton Community Graduate Fellowship, student development initiatives coordinated by the Prisoner Reentry Institute (PRI).
Michael Rain is a 2017 alumnus of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. He's the co-founder of ZNews Africa and founder of the Enodi project, a digital gallery that highlights the stories of first-generation black immigrants of African, Caribbean and Latin descent. This episode was recorded at the Made In NY Media Center, a collaborative workspace in Brooklyn where Michael recently completed a podcast certificate program produced through a partnership between the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment and the Made in NY Media Center. Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com where you can learn more about Michael's work.
Andrea Balis, a faculty member in history at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Elizabeth Levy, a children’s book author, have marshaled their experience working in theater, politics, writing and historical research to produce a book for middle-grade students about the Watergate scandal. Their book is Bringing Down a President: The Watergate Scandal and will be published by Macmillan’s Roaring Brook Press in August of 2019.
Nancy K. Miller is a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center. She talks about her latest book, My Brilliant Friends: Our Lives in Feminism (Columbia University Press), with Jason Tougaw, professor of English at Queens College.
Ria Banerjee (Guttman Community College), Megan Behrent (NYC College of Tech), Allison Better (Kingsborough Community College), Sarah Hoiland (Hostos Community College), and Maria Julia Rossi (John Jay College of Criminal Justice) discuss their participation with the CUNY Faculty Fellowship Publication Program and the continuation of their active writing group that came about as a result.
Elizabeth Alsop is an assistant professor and academic director of Communication & Media and Liberal Studies at CUNY's School of Professional Studies and the author of the forthcoming book, Making Conversation in Modernist Fiction (Ohio State U. Press, 2019). Read more about Elizabeth’s work at indoorvoicespodcast.com.
Sarah Hoiland is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Hostos Community College in the Behavioral & Social Sciences Department. As a feminist ethnographer, she is researching the historical and contemporary representations of women within the male dominated world of motorcycle club subculture. Visit indoorvoicespodcast.com for a link to her recent article “Impromptu Fiesta” or ‘Havoc in Hollister’: A Seventy-Year Retrospective” in the International Journal of Motorcycle Studies.
Edgardo Sanabria-Valentín, Ph.D. is the Associate Program Director for PRISM (Program for Research Initiatives in Science and Math) and also the Pre-Health Careers Advisor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He is the recipient of the ESCMID Young Scientist Award (2007), a Leadership Alliance-Schering Plough Graduate Fellowship (2006), and the NBHS-Frank G. Brooks Award for Excellence in Student Research (2001). He is also a founding member of the NYC-Minority Graduate Student Network and The Leadership Alliance Alumni Association.
Debra Caplan is an Assistant Professor of Theater in the Dept. of Fine and Performing Arts at Baruch College and the author of Yiddish Empire: The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and the Art of Itinerancy (U Michigan Press, 2018). She is interviewed by Beth Harpaz, editor of CUNY SUM.
Jason Tougaw is an associate professor in the English department at Queens College and the author of two recent books: The Elusive Brain: Literary Experiments in the Age of Neuroscience (Yale UP 2018) and The One You Get: Portrait of a Family Organism (Dzanc 2017). This episode title comes from a 2015 journal article he published in Modern Fiction Studies.
Beth Harpaz is the content editor for SUM, a new website showcasing CUNY research. She’s also the author of three books and a #recoveringjournalist after 35 years in newsrooms. Her work as travel editor for The Associated Press earned her the 2018 bronze award for travel journalist of the year from the Society of American Travel Writers and another SATW award for a podcast about visiting all 50 states. Follow her on Twitter @literarydj
Bridgett Davis is a journalist, essayist, novelist, memoirist, filmmaker, teacher and director of the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Program at Baruch College. Her newest book, The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother's Life in the Detroit Numbers (Little, Brown in January 2019) is a compelling and touching tribute to her mother and to the business that supported her family for decades.
In part two of our exciting season finale, we continue our conversation with Stephanie and Jennifer, but allow the interview to degenerate into guilty TV pleasures and the addicting nature of social media.
In our exciting, surprise two-part season finale, we interview Professors Stephanie Margolin (Hunter) and Jennifer Poggiali (Lehman) about their workaround academic libraries and bathrooms. While the topic lends itself to fairly easy jokes, it’s fascinating and important, speaking to everything from student success to the human experience.
Anna Gotlib is a faculty in the Brooklyn College philosophy department and editor of The Moral Psychology of Sadness (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). The volume celebrates the rich opportunities for intellectual exploration within this complex and overlooked emotion. In this episode, Gotlib shares her reasons for choosing the topic and makes a strong case for allowing space – philosophical as well as social – for sadness, especially in American culture where frank discussions of sadness are generally frowned upon. Sadness can foster self-learning, give one’s life fuller meaning and quiet what Buddhists call the chattering monkey mind.
Barbara Gray is writing a biography of 19th century grifter-turned-philanthropist, Sophie Lyons. She talks about the genesis of the project, her research process and gives us a sneak peak of Sophie's fascinating life. She also gives us a glimpse into her work with students in her role as the director of the Research Center at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.
I first met Dana Weinberg when I was a graduate student in the Queens College Applied Social Research program. She was, as you’ll soon hear for yourself, an incredible teacher. Her work at the time was around the sociology of nursing and we read Code Green: Money-Driven Hospitals and the Dismantling of Nursing, an amazing book which I often give to nursing students. It’s beautiful, both in terms of its prose and its ideas.
I was very interested to learn Dana is now working on the sociology of digital publishing. Her article, “Comparing gender discrimination and inequality in indie and traditional publishing” (with her collaborator, Adam Kapelner), examines the impact of gendered names on publishing, finding that books written by male-sounding names sell for higher prices than female – across independent and traditional publishing (sorry Kathleen!).
Dana also studies digital publishing from the inside as novelistDB Shuster. Her latest book, To Catch a Traitor is a is a Cold War spy novel. I was moved by Dana’s thoughts on DB Shuster helping her to finder herself.
Also, in the spirit of correcting/clarifying, Dana correctly remembered that Art Worlds is by Howard Becker.
Linda Villarosa is a journalist and director of the journalism program at City College of New York.
Richard Lieberman is the head of the La Guardia and Wagner Archives, which just happens to be housed at LaGuardia Community College, my home campus. In this interview, we touch on a lot of great topics, ranging from the importance of faculty-led projects, to Wikipedia, to Ed Koch’s mayorship. If these seem like disparate strands, then you’ve never met Richard, who masterfully ties together the strands of history.
Micki Kaufman, a doctoral student in history at the CUNY Graduate Center, talks about her dissertation, “Everything on Paper Will Be Used Against Me:’ Quantifying Kissinger.” She uses computational text analysis and visualization techniques to work with material from the Digital National Security Archive’s Kissinger collections.
Robin Davis, librarian and assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, talks about her computational linguistics project, “Nondescript: A Web Tool to Aid Subversion of Authorship Attribution.” http://indoorvoicespodcast.com/2018/02/02/NYCDHW
Boone Gorges is the lead developer for the CUNY Academic Commonsand a one-time CUNY grad student, making him uniquely qualified to navigate between the technical world and the academic one. As someone who truly believes free and open source software is the pillar of an informed society, I loved speaking with Boone, who can articulately argue that a broad technical understanding of our various systems--from operating systems to algorithms--is an important new literacy. He even makes a compelling case that understanding these systems, and understanding how best to focus our attention, is a form of information literacy, something that speaks to me as a librarian.
Interview with author Claire Stewart; http://indoorvoicespodcast.com/2017/11/22/episode-6-fruitcakes-folkways-and-photo-ops
Interview with Barry Spunt, Associate Professor of Sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.