Conversations in Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration

If century-long long historical connections have been foregrounded in the first two episodes of this show, here we turn to the recent past in a conversation with Albert Laguna, Assistant Professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration and American Studies. Laguna provides a complicated narrative of Cuban American popular culture over the last few decades, a narrative that pays particular attention to humor and play as political tools. It is in the complicated everyday interactions that Laguna looks to disrupt the still too common narrative of the Cuban Americans as being disconnected from Cuba. Laguna turns us, instead to the worlds built across the diaspora through humor, technology, and media. These worlds are the focus of this discussion.

If our first episode examined some of the roots at Yale which led to the Center for the Study of Race Indigeneity and Transnational Migration, this episode turns towards the scholarly routes available for the future. Eager to hear about cutting edge work this episode features a conversation with Professor Dixa Ramirez, Assistant Professor of American Studies, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration. Ramirez's pathbreaking work in her forthcoming book provides the basis for much of this episode as we discuss the relationship between exile and migration, the oversimplification of the Dominican Republic as a locus of anti-blackness, and what it means to have an Ethnic Studies education.

In our inaugural episode we speak with Professor Matthew Frye Jacobson, the William Robertson Coe Professor of American Studies and History. Jacobson describes the recent developments in the Ethnicity Race and Migration program including the rising interest and support over the last few years. From changes in Yale's tenure system, national attention towards the criminal justice system and the staggering challenges of the contemporary refugee crisis, Jacobson provides sharp insight into the ways student activism and broader political changes have resonated within Yale.