In this episode, Lehman College professor Victoria Sanford talks with Richard Relkin, Assistant Vice President 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. It is the story of a 19-year-old law student who was murdered in August 2005, emblematic of the thousands of women and girls who are victims of gender-based violence in Guatemala. Claudina’s story is different in that her father, Jorge Velásquez, has been committed to seeking justice for the unsolved murder and breach of justice for nearly two decades. Victoria explains the distinction between femicide and feminicide, a political term that foregrounds the dysfunctional justice system in Guatemala, specifically how the state has failed to uphold the human rights of women and girls. For listeners interested in the current political state, watch the news for the results of the presidential run-off elections in Guatemala to be held on August 20.

A public scholar, anthropologist, and internationally recognized expert on the Guatemalan genocide and feminicide in contemporary Guatemala, Victoria Sanford is a writer, human rights advocate and Lehman Professor of Excellence at Lehman College and the Graduate Center. In addition to Textures of Terror, she is the author of six other books including Buried Secrets: Truth & Human Rights in Guatemala. She served as an invited expert witness in the Spanish National Court’s genocide case against the Guatemalan generals and in an indigenous land rights case in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. A John Simon Guggenheim Fellow and Bunting Peace Fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, she has also held fellowships at the US Institute for Peace, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and Fulbright Scholar awards at the Universidad Libre and Javeriana University in Bogota, among others.

Listen to Episode 87 now!
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Julie Turley and Joan Jocson-Singh are the authors of Heavy Music Mothers: Extreme Identities, Narrative Disruptions published by Lexington Books in April. Joan and Julie are both librarians, Julie at  Kingsborough Community College and Joan, formerly at Lehman College, is now library director at the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles. They are also both musicking mothers and rock and metal music scholars. In this episode, they talk with another librarian and rock music scholar, Monica Berger, who works at New York City College of Technology. All three are supremely knowledgeable and passionate about women and rock/metal music. If this topic happens to be up your alley, be sure to stay tuned to the end for the call for collaboration.

Joan Jocson-Singh is the inaugural library director at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and moderates a Facebook group where Metal academics and librarians discuss all things metal.  Read more about her work here.

Julie Turley is Assistant Professor and Open Education Librarian at Kingsborough Community College. She is also a fiction writer with work in North American Review, Quarterly West and other journals. Her music research has included Mötley Crüe, “rock ‘n’ recovery” memoirs, and mothers who participate in rock and heavy metal music subcultures.

Monica Berger is Associate Professor and Instruction and Scholarly Communications Librarian at the Ursula C. Schwerin Library at the New York City College of Technology.

Listen to Episode 86 now!
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“We cannot simply dismiss celebrity anti-trafficking activism as a case of high-profile virtue signaling.” – From Lights, Camera, Feminism? Celebrities and Anti-trafficking Politics

In her new book, Lights, Camera, Feminism? Celebrities and Anti-trafficking Politics, Samantha Majic, Professor of Political Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, looks at those unelected, self-appointed elites, aka celebrities, who take up human trafficking as their cause. With cases studies that include Mira Sorvino, Ashley Judd, Jada Pinkett Smith, Ricky Martin, Ashton Kutcher and Julia Ormond, she asks how and to what extent do celebrities raise awareness, and what are the limits of their advocacy and activism? In essence, what good do celebrities do?

Samantha is also the co-author of Youth Who Trade Sex in the US: Intersectionality, Agency, and Vulnerability, coeditor of Negotiating Sex Work: Unintended Consequences of Policy and Activism, and author of Sex Work Politics: From Protest to Service Provision. Find out more about her research here.

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Quantitative literacy and reasoning skills are not important only to some disciplines. They’re critical to all subjects, and they play a part in all of our lives. The Academic Affairs office at John Jay College recently announced plans to re-envision quantitative reasoning and literacy (QR & QL) in the curriculum with a goal of ensuring that every student who graduates has the skills they need to thrive in the 21st century. Under the leadership of Interim Dean of Academic Programs and Professor of Political Science Andrew Sidman, faculty and administrators will collaborate to put this plan into action over the next couple of years. Listening to this episode has the potential to alter your self-perception as someone who’s “bad with numbers.” You’re probably better than you think because you’re surrounded by numbers and data every single day.

A few related QL/QR resources of interest:

• Numlock News, Substack of Walter Hickey, a data journalist who is obsessed with culture, society and fascinating numbers buried in the news
• Michigan State U’s QL guide
• QL & the Humanities (from the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture)

Listen to Episode 84 now!
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Angie Beeman‘s book, Liberal White Supremacy: How Progressives Silence Racial and Class Oppression, examines the divides among progressives and the role of liberal ideology in preventing significant social change. In it, she analyzes racism-evasiveness as the outcome of color-blind ideology and promotes practical applications of what she refers to as action-oriented or “racism-centered intersectionality.” In this episode, Angie is in conversation with Soribel Genao, Professor in the department of Educational & Community Programs at Queens College. They discuss how beliefs and strategies that might seem on the surface to be enlightened, are not only limiting but can perpetuate racism and white supremacy.

Dr. Angie Beeman is an Associate Professor at Baruch College. Her research examines changing expressions of racism, the challenges of allyship, and building more equitable workplace environments. Dr. Beeman’s research has appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Counterpunch, Gender, Work, and Organization, and Ethnic and Racial Studies. In addition to these publications, she has been quoted in Nature, Forbes Magazine, The Wire, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, Galveston Daily News, and WalletHub. Dr. Beeman has shared her work with multiple audiences and is frequently invited by organizations to speak on the issues of racism, social justice, and cultivating inclusiveness in the workplace. She has appeared on CSPAN’s Washington Journal and Connecticut Public Television and has given talks for Historic Mitchelville Freedom Park, the Association of Junior Leagues International, Network of Executive Women, and NASA.

Dr. Soribel Genao serves as member with Educational Leadership at CUNY, Queens college and is a bilingual researcher with community and place-based research and evaluation experience using both qualitative and qualitative methods. Throughout her career, she has consulted on initiatives focused on diversity and inclusion with an equity lens within private, higher education, and non-profit sectors globally.  She holds a doctorate in Public Administration from Rutgers University.  Over the course of her academic career, lived experience and quest for access and belonging serving as a muse, Dr. Genao constantly informs research and scholarship within the discipline of educational leadership. During her doctoral work and throughout early years in academia, she characterized herself as a scholar focused on issues of diversity and collaboration in urban school leadership. And, while she is still examining these issues, her focus has evolved and is now grounded in social justice as an umbrella for promoting solidarity and equitable practices in schools, communities, and society. This evolution to a social justice framework seemed like a natural transition for her, yet it reignited her research passion and scholarly endeavors. In her co-edited book entitled (Re)Building bi/multilingual leaders for socially just communities (2020), the authors highlight the benefits of preparing future school leaders to understand and recognize language and multicultural diversity issues. They also address the impact of multiculturalism and globalization on educators, children, families, schools, and communities. In the article, “All we need in one mic: A call for anti-racist solidarity to deconstruct anti-Black racism in educational leadership” (2021), her co-author and her contend that principal preparation programs have not but must explicitly prioritize anti-racist school leadership to promote anti-racist dispositions in schools, leaders, teachers, and students. She contributed to Episode 77 with her colleagues where they described their BRESI project, “Advancing Antiracism, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Social Justice, and Belonging (A/DEISJ+B).”

Listen to Episode 83 now!
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Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is a writer, civil rights attorney, playwright, poet, 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, including 17^th century African warrior Queen Nzingha, Oney Judge, a slave owned by George Washington, Sojourner Truth, Shirley Chisholm, and a host of others that you’ve likely heard of and, significantly, some that you never learned about in school. Gloria talks with John Jay College Media Relations Director, Rich Relkin, about how these women used the legal system in their fight for freedom. They talk about Gloria’s other creative works, too, including two plays: Shot: Caught a Soul  and Dreams of Emmett Till. She also hosts an animated series on the U.S. Constitution, Your Government, and a legal issues podcast, Law of the Land.

Gloria has had and continues to have a distinguished career that includes litigating cases for organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She is also the executive director of the nonprofit legal think tank, The Law & Policy Group. She is a 2023 winner of a Faculty Research and Scholarship Award at John Jay, given to faculty who have demonstrated consistently exceptional scholarship over the past three years. If you’re familiar with Gloria and her work, it won’t be surprising to learn that there is much more in the pipeline. Follow her on Twitter to keep up.

Many many thanks to Rich Relkin for his unparalleled guest hosting for this episode and for those with John Jay colleagues David Munns, Evan Mandery and Edward Paulino. We wish him the best of luck in his new communications role at Lehman College and look forward to our continued collaboration.

Listen to Episode 82 now!
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Edward Paulino has been a faculty member in the Department of History at John Jay College for more than 20 years. His most recent book, Refranes de mi Abuelita: Sayings of my Grandmother, is “a bi-lingual kaleidoscope of changing colors … that encapsulates archives of knowledge and discernment from the campos of the Dominican Republic to the barrios of New York City.”

In this episode, Edward talks with Richard Relkin, John Jay College’s Director of Media Relations about the book as well as Edward’s one-man performance “Eddie’s Perejil” which wrestles with Dominican identity and the 1937 Haitian Massacre, often referred to as the Parsley Massacre. Their conversation, addresses some heavy topics, and Edward’s work and creativity shows how light can come from dark places.

• To preview and purchase the book: https://www.dominicanwriters.com/product-page/refranes-de-mi-abuelita
• Edward’s web page: https://www.drpaulino.com/
• Border of Lights: https://borderoflights.org/

Listen to Episode 81 now!
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Children of the People: Writings by and about CUNY students on race and social justice is a collection of essays, play excerpts and poems from students and faculty – in many cases students who became faculty – recounting their journeys, including their glories and defeats and the plaudits and critiques of the university system that has played a central role in their lives. Edited by Rose Kim, Grace Cho and Robin McGinty, the book grew from a project at the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center. This episode is a conversation with Rose Kim, Faculty in Social Sciences, Human Services and Criminal Justice at BMCC, along with two contributors to the volume, Wanett Clyde, library faculty at New York City Tech and Cynthia Tobar, library faculty at Bronx Community College. The book chapters are revelatory, candid, and moving, and Children of the People has the potential to change the attitudes and behaviors of readers. We all agree it should be required reading for anyone, in any role, in higher education.

Please follow us on Twitter at indoorvoicespod, and we all thank you in advance for sharing this episode with everyone you know!

P.S. Cynthia Tobar interviewed participants in LaGuardia Community College’s COVID documenting project in May 2021 and the co-directors of Social Practice CUNY in February 2022. She was also one of the BRESI award grantees who shared their projects in October 2022. Cynthia’s project is “Black Lives Matter in Higher Education: Empowering Student-Scholar Voices.”

Listen to Episode 80 now!
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John Jay College of Criminal Justice colleagues, Richard Relkin, Director of Media Relations, and Evan Mandery, professor in the department of criminal justice, discuss Evan’s new book, Poison Ivy: How Elite Colleges Divide Us (New Press, October 2022). In the book, Evan investigates the many factors that lead to an extremely narrow path to admission to these colleges, one that is de facto available only to the wealthy. In this interview, as in the book, Evan champions public universities such as the one where he has been teaching for more than two decades. “CUNY is a magic place,” says Evan.

Rich Relkin interviewed John Jay’s David Munns in April 2022.

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David Puglia, Associate Professor in the Department of English Language & Literature at Bronx Community College, is the editor of North American Monsters: A Contemporary Legend Casebook, published by the University Press of Colorado in Spring of 2022. In this seasonally-themed episode, he talks with Mira Johnson, adjunct professor in the BCC English Dept. and the New York Folklore & Education Network Coordinator at Local Learning. They discuss topics such as the complex and nuanced meanings of terms like legendary, monster, and cryptid, as well as regionality, plausibility, media iterations, and David’s long-lasting relationship to Goatman. Speaking of Maryland fixtures, David was our guest on Indoor Voices in 2019 when he talked with me about his book Tradition, Urban Identity, and the Baltimore Hon: The Folk in the City (Lexington Books 2018). Listening to this episode, you’re guaranteed to learn something about monsters (and the people who follow and study them) and maybe get some ideas for your Halloween costume.

North American Monsters received the 2022 Brian McConnell Book Award which recognizes excellence in contemporary legend research.

Listen to Episode 78 now!
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