Episode 125: Brian Jones on the power of Black history

~ Kathleen Collins

Dr. Brian Jones has held several positions at the New York Public Library, at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Center for Educators and Schools, and now as the Senior Director of Reading and Engagement. He is an alumnus of the doctoral program in Urban Education at the Graduate Center as is his conversation partner and fellow scholar, Dr. Robert Robinson. When Robert challenges Brian to an abbreviated biography, Brian refers to himself as a reader, writer, teacher, and learner of Black history. In this episode, they discuss Brian’s latest book, Black History is for Everyone, published by Haymarket Books in 2025. Their deep and thought-provoking conversation is framed around the four themes from Brian’s book: race, nation, revolution, and education.

Dr. Robert Robinson is assistant professor in Africana Studies and Gender Studies at John Jay and doctoral faculty in Urban Studies, Africana Studies and Interactive Technology and Pedagogy at the Graduate Center. His forthcoming book, Education for the Revolution: The Legacy of the Black Panther Party’s Oakland Community School, will be published by NYU Press in January.

Some of the scholars and books mentioned:

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Episode 124: Mark McBeth on objects and queer literacy

~ Kathleen Collins

Mark McBeth, Professor of English at John Jay and the Graduate Center, has had a keen interest in objects for a long time. That interest has manifested in his creative and scholarly life and has evolved into a deep respect for finding, preserving and interpreting them. In his latest book, Objectionable: The Quasi-objects of Queer Literacy (Peter Lang, 2026), he uncovers how physical everyday items (specifically here: police cadet textbooks, young adult sex education manuals, and syndicated advice columns) have actively enforced homophobia or enabled queer survival. Objectionable follows the narrative thread in his previous book, Queer Literacies: Discourses and Discontents (Lexington Books, 2019), but it shifts the analysis from the systemic institutional sponsors of homophobic rhetoric to the tangible, everyday textual objects that have a profound impact on queer survival, identity, and resistance. In other words, a focus from the powerful agency of people to that of things.

In this episode, Prof. McBeth talks about Bruno Latour and the sociological lens of quasi-objects (things that are neither purely social constructs nor inert physical matter), the interdependence of literary sponsors, his elementary school teacher Mrs. Spencer, a certain medical dictionary (see photo below), significant figures in the world of queer archives such as Barbara Gittings, and some of his own archival quests.

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Episode 123: Martin Cloutier on humor & sex in literary fiction

~ Kathleen Collins

Martin Cloutier is an adjunct assistant professor at the College of Staten Island where he teaches writing to undergraduates. So, needless to say, we spend some unavoidable time in this episode talking about AI. But first we talk about Martin’s Lambda Literary Award-nominated novel, Waiting for Something Else, which was published by Heliotrope Books in 2025. Taking the description from one reviewer because it’s so pithy and perfect, it’s an “irreverent, unrequited sex comedy.” Martin talks about his bewilderment at the lack of funny literary novels as well as the lack of sex. So those two elements are deliberately at the forefront in this book. We had fun kvetching about the tyranny of likable characters and a general blandness and purity in contemporary fiction. Get ready for some strong opinions, or as we would describe it – hard truths. Zoomers, academics and book publishing professionals, you’ve been warned!

Thank you, once again, to the generous Emily Sohmer Tai and the CUNY Academy for the Humanities & Sciences for this collaboration.

Here are some of the books we mentioned (because they are empirically good):

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Episode 122: Adam McKible on Jim Crow modernism

~ Kathleen Collins

Adam McKible is a Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. His most recent book is Jim Crow Modernism, a volume co-edited with Keith Clark and Robert Jackson. In this volume and in his previous book, Circulating Jim Crow: The Saturday Evening Post and the War Against Black Modernity, Adam explains how and why American literary modernism and Jim Crow modernism are deeply and fundamentally intertwined. In this new collection, he and the contributors expand on the definitions. One of those contributors, LaGuardia Community College Professor of English Jesse Schwartz  – who is also a faculty committee member at the Committee on Globalization and Social Change at the CUNY Graduate Center – joins Adam in discussing the new book, the riches of periodical studies, big and little magazines, the blessing and the curse of microfilm versus  digitization, “recovery work,” and what it means for a publication to “register and re-contain.”

Professors McKible and Schwartz have been colleagues for a long time! See below for evidence. Their rapport in this conversation is another delightful testament.

Save the date for the Jim Crow Modernism symposium, Sept. 25, 2026 at the CUNY Graduate Center.

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Adam McKible
NEH City of Print Seminar, 2015
Jesse Schwartz

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Episode 121: C. Julian Jiménez on manifesting queer joy

~ Kathleen Collins

C. Julian Jiménez is an award-winning queer, Puerto Rican, and Dominican playwright and Chairperson of the Department of Communication, Theatre, and Media Production at Queensborough Community College. In this episode, he’s in conversation with a friend and former castmate from their Rider University days. Elaina Battista-Parsons is an editor, writer, and reader for Vine Leaves Press and micro fiction instructor for Yellow Arrow Publishing. She interviewed the New York Historical’s Valerie Paley last year. They reminisce a bit about their performing past, then launch into Julian’s creative work and his CUNY life – the two of which are inextricably intertwined.

Purchase Julian’s plays at Theatrical Rights Worldwide and The Outrage.

Julian & Elaina in costume for a production of Lend Me a Tenor

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Episode 120: Mila Burns on the South American Cold War

~ Kathleen Collins

Mila Burns is associate professor of Latin American and Latino studies at Lehman College and of history at the CUNY Graduate Center, where she is also the associate director at the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies. Dr. Burns’s most recent book is Dictatorship Across Borders: Brazil, Chile, and the South American Cold War published by the University of North Carolina Press. The book reshapes conventional understandings of the South American Cold War by emphasizing Brazil’s proactive role in the Chilean coup. Drawing on testimonies of Brazilian political exiles and newly declassified sources, Dr. Burns demonstrates that the conflict was not solely U.S.-driven, but involved regional actors, and that both repression and resistance operated across national boundaries. She talks about the book in a lively conversation with Richard Relkin, good friend of the podcast and Assistant Vice President for Communications and Marketing at Lehman College.

For more about Próspera, the Honduran city referenced in the episode, see this New York Times article.

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Episode 119: Jennifer T. Roberts on the infinite variety of the ancient Greeks

~ Kathleen Collins
Book cover of 'Out of One, Many: Ancient Greek Ways of Thought and Culture' by Jennifer T. Roberts, featuring various ancient Greek motifs and illustrations.

Jennifer T. Roberts, Professor of Classics and History, and Nickolas Pappas, Professor of Philosophy and Classics, have been City College colleagues for more than thirty years. Here they discuss Jen’s latest book, Out of One, Many: Ancient Greek Ways of Thought and Culture. The word “many” in the book’s title describes the variation within and among the ancient Greeks, and the word “one” is a nod to the steadfast ego and drive of the individual, within which, too, there is vast diversity. They address opposing world views by various thinkers on the existence, the definition or surprising backstory and impact of concepts such as motion, courage, competitiveness, ostracism, and antagonism and Nick asks Jen what she thinks people imagine when they think of antiquity, and what students find most incomprehensible when it comes to learning about Ancient Greece.

In the event you might think this episode is not for the likes of you, I assure you that the conversation is lively, accessible and includes references to Seinfeld, the Muppets and Percy Jackson. Above all, their friendship and scholarly amity shines through, making this a conversation that will likely have you smiling as you listen.

Scroll down this page for a bit more about Jen who earned the Distinguished Professor title in 2025.

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Episode 118: Sarah Hoiland on women bikers

~ Kathleen Collins

In this episode, we have the good fortune of welcoming back returning guest and host, Dr. Sarah Hoiland, Professor of Sociology at Hostos Community College. When she was here in 2018, she talked about an article she had written about the 1947 Gypsy tour motorcycle rally in Hollister, California. That was foundational research she was conducting on motorcycle culture and women’s empowerment which, seven years later, became the book Righteous Sisterhood: Politics and Power in an All-Women’s Motorcycle Club published by Temple University Press. She is in conversation here with Ashley Walker, a City College political science student (Note: when this was recorded in December, she was just about to graduate from Hostos!). The two met through the HOPE program (Holistic Oasis for Parents’ Education) at Hostos which is directed by Sarah. Ashley talks with Sarah about her years-long experience with an all-women’s motorcycle club from her embedded status to her eventual exile or “civic death.” In so doing, they address issues of gender, power, and the meaning of rituals and lineage and they end on the positive note of the joy of community building.

Sarah L. Hoiland, Professor of Sociology at Hostos Community College, the Research and Budget Director at the CUNY Academy, and Principal Investigator of two current National Science Foundation funded research projects. Righteous Sisterhood: Politics and Power in an All-Women’s Motorcycle Club (Temple University Press, 2025) offers readers a lens through which to see how righteous sisters forge a political community within and through RSMC and invites readers to explore how these women negotiate identity, politics, and the pursuit of excellence in an environment that resists change. It is a story of empowerment, defiance, and the transformative power of community amid a fractured society—while also revealing themes of disempowerment, conformity, and the exclusionary force of political communities. Her research spans a variety of contexts and topics, but it is centered around questions of identity, transformation, and belonging. In addition to the episode mentioned above, her other previous visits to Indoor Voices can be found here and here.

Ashley Walker is a recent graduate of Hostos Community College with an Associates Degree in Business Management and is currently a Political Science major at City College. She is an avid learner, loves potting/planting, books, music, and all things Tim Burton! In her career, she hopes to make lasting change in the intersections of communities she inhabits by way of advocation and policy change. Ashley is a mom, a student, a proud member of Hostos Community College HOPE program, Student Government, Student Leadership Academy, Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society, as well as the Malave Leadership Academy and is looking forward to putting her hands in as many “pots” as she can. 

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Episode 117: Char Adams on Black-owned bookstores

~ Kathleen Collins

This episode reunites two friends and former CUNY colleagues, Char Adams and Beth Harpaz. The occasion is the publication of Char’s new book, Black-owned: The Revolutionary Life of the Black Bookstore, published by the Penguin imprint, Tiny Reparations Books. They discuss the history and continued relevance of the Black-owned bookstore which serves as a center of political resistance and a community and cultural pillar. The first Black-owned bookstore was opened by an abolitionist in 1834 and since then, the institution has seen booms and resurgences. They have also been targets of surveillance and violence and withstood the dominance of corporate chains and online megastores. They thrive today, continuing their tradition of activism and community building. Char’s book is a rigorously reported history that showcases the Black bookstore as a revolutionary institution built on community, resistance, and joy.

Char Adams is a 2020 alumna of the Women’s and Gender Studies Masters program at the CUNY Grad Center. Learn more about her work here. Beth Harpaz is a journalist, author, playwright and Char’s former colleague. They met at CUNY when they both produced the website SUM which was a spiritual sister of this podcast. Both Char and Beth have been on the podcast before and this conversation is as enlightening as it is a heartwarming reunion.

No small thing: Beth visited the newly reopened Studio Museum in Harlem recently and was overjoyed to see Char’s book prominently displayed in the front window.

Buy Black-Owned from a local Black-owned bookstore!

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Episode 116: Rossi and Sibley on narrating motherhood

~ Kathleen Collins

This episode exemplifies the ideals of Indoor Voices. It is a conversation between two people whose work overlaps and interfaces, both working away at CUNY for years without knowing of the other until very recently, and now that they have met, they have already collaborated and have so much to talk about that it justifies a podcast of its own. You’ll also witness them truly thinking and listening – in real time. It is the exact opposite of a scripted conversation. Dr. Destry Maria Sibley is a recent CUNY graduate center alumna whose dissertation is entitled, “Narrating Mother, Narrating Twenty-First Century America: On Choice, Refusal, and Relation.” Dr. María Julia Rossi is professor in the Modern Languages and Literatures dept at John Jay and the author of, among other books, Narrar Las Madres or Narrating Mothers. To put it too simply, the nexus of their scholarly Venn diagram is narratives about motherhood. They talk about the proliferation of motherhood literature in the last decade and a half; the presence in more recent memoirs of maternal ambivalence; the freedom of fictional characters to express less nuanced feelings and behaviors;  the role of a political angle on motherhood narratives, asking whether the political and the personal are on a continuum or exist as a dichotomy; the differences between motherhood literature in Spanish and English; and how texts on motherhood both reflect cultural evolution and affect it.

Recommended reading:

  • Eva Baltasar, Boulder
  • Rachel Cusk, A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother
  • Laura Freixas, A mí no me iba a pasar: Una autobiografía con perspectiva de género
  • Ariana Harwicz, Matate, amor (translated as Die, My Love)
  • Nuria Labari, La mejor madre del mundo (translated as World’s Best Mother)
  • Jane Lazarre, The Mother Knot (translated as El nudo materno)
  • Yiyun Li, Things in Nature Merely Grow
  • Valeria Luiselli, Lost Children Archive
  • Valeria Luiselli, Los ingrávidos (translated as Faces in the Crowd)
  • Lorena Salazar Masso, Esta herida llena de peces (translated as This Wound Full of Fish)
  • Brenda Navarro, Casas vacías (translated as Empty Houses)
  • Helen Phillips,The Need
  • Anne Boyd Rious, Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters
  • Samanta Schweblin, Fever Dream

Bonus listening:

This episode was recorded at John Jay College’s brand new Digital Creation Lab. Thank you, Program Manager Girard Tecson for making the studio space available to us.

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