Tag: CUNY

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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Episode 115: Mark Christian on Frederick Douglass

~ Kathleen Collins

This is Dr. Mark Christian‘s second visit to the podcast. Last year he was here to talk about his books on Booker T. Washington and Liverpool England’s overlooked Black history. In this episode he is in conversation with his Lehman College colleague Dr. Gillian Bayne to talk about his book Frederick Douglass: A Life in American History, published by Bloomsbury in 2025. They discuss the personal reasons that got Mark interested in the subject, the sources he consulted, and what’s missing from other biographies of Douglass. They also address the hardships endured and courage displayed throughout Douglass’s life, his abolitionist activities, his belief in gender equality, his influential writings and speeches and the importance of reading to freedom. Dr. Christian closes by reading a poem he wrote about Douglass as a way to sum up his thoughts, pay respect, and to acknowledge the integration of poetry and political discourse that was not uncommon in Frederick Douglass’s day. Overall, Dr. Christian strongly and rightfully argues that Douglass should be understood as a major figure in American and British history as a whole, not only within the confines of Black history.

Dr. Mark Christian is Professor in Africana Studies & Sociology at Lehman College. He arrived at CUNY in the fall of 2011 as a full and tenured professor; having spent eleven years at Miami University of Ohio. He was the Chairperson in the Department of Africana Studies at Lehman (2011-2019).  He has been teaching in higher education for over three decades in the UK and US.  A prolific writer, he has to date published eight books and edited three special issue journals in his disciplines. He has published copious journal articles, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, and book reviews. He was educated in the UK (BA Honors & PhD) and the US (MA in Africana Studies); he was a senior Fulbright Scholar at Kent State University’s Department of Pan African Studies (1997-1998). He is currently researching for a critical biography on Martin Luther King Jr.  

Dr. Gillian Bayne is a professor of Science Education in the Department of Middle and High School Education at Lehman College and holds a dual appointment in the Urban Education Department at the CUNY Graduate Center. She brings to her work over thirty-five years of science education experience in both New York City public schools and in higher education. Her advocacy for equality and equity within communities that have been marginalized as a result of societal, educational and political injustices has been foundational to her work. Dr. Bayne is the lead educator for the Training, Education and Public Engagement in the GLOBE program, a science educator and research collaborator with Columbia University’s Center for Smart Streetscapes program, and has been a PI and CoPI on NASA and NSF science education focused grants. She is involved in science educational outreach at Genspace, a Brooklyn based community lab, and the National Society of Black Physicists x Harlem Gallery of Science Mentoring Program. Dr. Bayne works with and supports beginning, seasoned and pre-service science teachers, as well as science and urban education doctoral students and graduates. Her work has been published in highly respected scholarly venues.

Special thanks to our Lehman College Multimedia Center colleagues Brendan McGibney, Luisa Sotelo Crisantos, and Magda Soto, and Lehman’s Assistant Vice President for Communications and Marketing, Richard Relkin.

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Episode 114: Reitz and Rutigliano on female anger

~ Kathleen Collins

Dr. Caroline Reitz is an associate professor of English at John Jay and the Graduate Center and the author of Female Anger in Crime Fiction published by Cambridge University Press in the Elements in Crime Narratives series. She is in conversation in this episode with Dr. Olivia Rutigliano, a writer, film critic, and editor at Literary Hub and Crime Reads. Together they take on the female anger ecocsystem, particularly the way anger is portrayed in popular culture, the role that anger plays, and its potential and its limits. They ask where justice fits into the narratives of, for example, the streaming series Killing Eve, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Bad Sisters and in the novel My Sister, the Serial Killer. They ask what pop culture’s role is in bringing the causes and outcomes of anger to the fore and if these representations can be educational and empowering. They address trad wives, female assassins and the chicken and egg conundrum of madness and anger. They reference bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Malcolm X, Sara Paretsky, Patricia Melo, George Orwell, Victorian studies, and all the waves of feminism. They reminisce about the olden times when ultra rich megalomaniacs used to be philanthropic and at least ostensibly concerned about humanity. They weave in the importance of baby goats and recycling your tuna cans, and Caroline comes up with a crime plot on the spot. This conversation will fire you up in good ways and, well, that’s one of the questions asked here, and not rhetorically – what use is getting fired up?

Caroline Reitz is Associate Professor at John Jay and the Graduate Center and directs the Vera Fellows Program at John Jay. She is currently teaching two literature classes: Text and Context (with a focus on crime fiction and activism) and Special Topics in the 19th Century. In Spring 2026 she will teach a class at the Grad Center called “Bad Sisters.” 

Olivia Rutigliano is a film critic, editor at Literary Hub and Crime Reads and an instructor at John Jay College, currently teaching a course on justice and literature in the Interdisciplinary Studies Department.

Mentioned in this episode:

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Episode 102: A novel about 1960s’ City College activists

~ Kathleen Collins

Laura Katz Olson is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Lehigh University. She is also an alumna of City College and was a student during the iconic 1960s’ period of the civil rights and antiwar movements. Her novel, Wrinkled Rebels (Vine Leaves Press, 2024) is a vivid representation of the lives of six City College student activists during that time and reunites with them decades later. Olivia Wood, Lecturer in the English Department at City College, talks with Professor Olson about the novel, and together they place the characters and events of the story into the present-day resurgence of campus protests and the current election season. They talk about activism past and present, the meaning and evolution of campus spaces, the “ivory tower” and the purpose of academic writing.

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Episode 100: How did this %@#! bridge get its name?

~ Kathleen Collins

Rebecca Bratspies and Natalie Gomez-Velez have been colleagues for twenty years, both professors of law at CUNY School of Law. In this episode they talk about Professor Bratspies’ book, Naming Gotham: The Villains, Rogues and Heroes Behind New York’s Place Names (Arcadia Publishing 2023).

Professor Bratspies was motivated to embark on this project while stuck in a traffic jam in the Bronx. Her frustration at the famously busy Major Deegan Expressway led to the question, “Who were these people and why do they name things after them?” For many years her work has been in the area of environmental justice and human rights. While Naming Gotham may look at first glance like a departure, it’s not. It, too, addresses issues of power and social inequality and incorporates legal history such as the origins of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Listeners will get a preview of some of the so-called villains – Richard Riker, Peter Stuyvesant – and heroes – Jackie Robinson, Billie Jean King, Herbert Lehman* – whose sometimes surprising stories are told in Naming Gotham. Profs. Bratspies and Gomez-Velez also talk about connections between teaching and some of the named parties as well as the uses of history and the way it repeats itself. And as they agree, there is always something more to learn about New York City.

Rebecca Bratspies and Natalie Gomez-Velez

You can learn more about Rebecca Bratspies at https://www.rebeccabratspies.com/ and follow her on Twitter, Bluesky, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

You can learn more about Natalie Gomez-Velez at https://www.nataliegomezvelez.com/ and follow her on LinkedIn.

This episode continues a collaboration with CUNY Academy. Rebecca Bratspies is a past participant in their book talk series.

*An article about naming CUNY places appeared in the PSC CUNY Clarion.

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Episode 92: Louis Bury on the way things go

~ Kathleen Collins

Louis Bury is an associate professor in the English department at Hostos Community College. He’s also an art critic, writer and poet. His first creative nonfiction book, Exercises in Criticism, was an experiment in applied poetics where he used what are known as constraint-based methods in order to write about constraint-based literature. In this episode we talk about his most recent book, The Way Things Go, (punctum books, 2023). It’s another work of creative nonfiction, also using constraint writing, and is comprised of multiple forms such as numbered lines of prose, poetry, data, dialogue, news headlines, and a couple of specific CUNY documents that will be familiar to many listeners. The book’s title, and to a large degree its subject matter, is inspired by the 1987 Fischli and Weiss film “The Way Things Go.” It is mostly quite personal, and includes intimate philosophical reflections, letters to and from Lou’s sister, Emily, and even an MRI report. At the root of all of it is a meditation on human vulnerability, of the physical, emotional and existential variety, and an overriding theme of climate change. That precarity is reflected in a grappling with daily human existence as well as the larger forces that threaten the survival of the planet. Despite the previous couple of sentences, this conversation is upbeat, and I hope you’ll find it just as inspiring as I did.

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Episode 76: Kate Brandt on adult literacy

~ Kathleen Collins

Kate Brandt is Professional Development Coordinator in CUNY’s Adult Literacy/ HSE/ESL Programs. You may have a vague sense that CUNY offers such initiatives, so here’s your chance to learn along with me about their robust nature and fundamental value. I talk with Kate about her path to and long tenure at CUNY and how the field of adult literacy has and hasn’t changed in recent decades.

At literacy.cuny.edu, don’t miss “Students Speak, My Pandemic Year” and “Feature the Teacher.” Kate also gives a shout out to CollectedNY.org, a free resource for adult education teachers.

We also talk about Kate’s forthcoming novel, Hope for the Worst, to be published by Vine Leaves Press in the Spring of 2023. Learn more about Kate and her writing at katebrandt.net.

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