A discussion featuring Harsha Walia, alongside community organizers and migrant workers representing Migrant Workers Alliance for Change (MWAC), took place at the American Anthropological Association's 2023 Annual Meeting in Toronto. This episode is the first part of a two-part mini-series highlighting the impact and contributions of Harsha Walia’s scholarsh ... Show More
Jun 24
79. Pushing Buttons: Gender and Sexual Diversity & Dissidence in Academia
In this episode, we dive into gender and sexual diversity, sexual dissidence, and their intersections with anthropology and education. Through a conversation with Dr. Joshua Liashenko, Director of LGBTQ+ Studies at Chapman University, we explore how queer anthropologists are enga ... Show More
43m 25s
Jan 2025
Andrew Smith, "Class and the Uses of Poetry: Symbolic Enclosures" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
Sociologists have had surprisingly little to say about poetry as a topic while sometimes also making grandiose claims that sociology is/should be like poetry. These are the prompts which begin Andrew Smith’s Class and the Uses of Poetry: Symbolic Enclosures (2024, Palgrave Macmil ... Show More
1h 12m
Feb 2023
Curtis Runstedler, "Alchemy and Exemplary Poetry in Middle English Literature" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
Curtis Runstedler's book Alchemy and Exemplary Poetry in Middle English Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) explores the different functions and metaphorical concepts of alchemy in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Middle English poetry and bridges them together with the exempl ... Show More
59m 21s
Nov 2024
1231: Gala Noise by Diane Mehta
Today’s poem is Gala Noise by Diane Mehta. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Today’s poem invites us to contemplate how language is not just what is heard, but what is conveyed beneath the surface. Underneath, it sees that we are interconne ... Show More
5m 49s
Apr 2025
Re-release: How to enrich your everyday life with poetry (w/ Sarah Kay)
Roses are red, violets are blue, has poetry ever been intimidating for you? For many people, this art form can feel unapproachable, but poet and educator Sarah Kay, suggests that people who don’t like poetry just maybe haven’t found a poem that really speaks to them. Sarah propos ... Show More
31m 28s
Jul 2023
Stephen Davies, "Adornment: What Self-Decoration Tells Us About Who We Are" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
Elaborating the history, variety, pervasiveness, and function of the adornments and ornaments with which we beautify ourselves, Stephen Davies's Adornment: What Self-Decoration Tells Us About Who We Are (Bloomsbury, 2020) takes in human prehistory, ancient civilizations, hunter-f ... Show More
31m 19s
Jan 2025
Don McKay — Neanderthal Dig
Don McKay’s poem “Neanderthal Dig” begins with the discovery of an ancient, child-sized skeleton placed on the wing of a swan and then takes flight, showing us how love and death are riddled with paradoxes — mixing the earthbound and the sacred, the personal and the universal, th ... Show More
14m 52s
Aug 2024
1180: The Gardener 85 by Rabindranath Tagore
Today’s poem is The Gardener 85 by Rabindranath Tagore.
The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Major writes… “Poetry has a way of collapsing time, and by working the senses, having us experience an era. In the blues rhythms of Langston Hughes’ poetry, I hear e ... Show More
6m 17s
Jun 1
Basma Al Dajani, "The Arab Andalusian Love Poetry: A Study of the Interaction Between Place and Man Through Time" (AU Cairo Press, 1994)
In this episode of Unlocking Academia, host Raja Aderdor speaks with Dr. Basma A. S. Dajani, Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, in a sweeping conversation on Arab-Andalusian love poetry and the cultural, linguistic, and emotional legacies it continues to inspire. Rooted ... Show More
34m 12s