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Lyda Conley became the first Indigenous woman to argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court in her efforts to protect a sacred Native cemetery in Kansas City, Kansas. A new play by Wyandotte playwright Madeline Easley is bringing Conley's story to the stage.
In May 1782, Colonel William Crawford led over 450 volunteers across Ohio to attack British-allied Native Americans who had been raiding the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia for years. An experienced yet reluctant commander, Crawford and his men clashed with a similarly sized force of British Rangers and Wyandot, Delaware, and Shawnee Indians on the Sandusky River in early June. After three days, the Americans were routed in one of the worst defeats American arms suffered on the frontier during the American Revolution. During the retreat, Native American warriors captured dozens of men, including Colonel Crawford. Many were horrifically tortured to death in revenge for the Gnadenhutten massacre earlier that spring, when American volunteers bludgeoned nearly one hundred unarmed and unresisting Delaware Indians to death. Join us for a recorded talk with historian and author Eric Sterner as he discusses Crawford's Campaign and his new book "The Battle of Upper Sandusky, 1782" due out this spring.
Olivia honors this Wyandot lawyer, known most for her advocacy and protests to protect Indian burial lands from being desecrated and sold as real estate. -- Learn More! Lyda Conley | 10 Native Women You Should Have Learned About in History Class -- Email us! isquaredhello@gmail.com. | Follow us! Instagram https://www.instagram.com/isquaredpodcast/ | Twitter @I_squaredpod https://twitter.com/I_SquaredPod | Facebook page http://www.fb.me/ISquaredPod
Welcome to episode 19 of Ohio 88 where I, your host, Heather Wright, will discuss one of the most notorious individuals from Wyandot County, Ohio. For this episode, we will be discussing Richard Clark Jr. A man who walked into a local Sportsman Association and killed two others. For the aggravated murders of 49-year-old Roger Fredritz, and 49-year-old Cynthia Hawkinberry. He will be serving consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole with an additional consecutive three-year prison terms because a gun was used in the killings, terms that must be served before the life sentences begin.If you have any additional information or would like to share your thoughts on this case; please reach out to me at Ohio88podcast@gmail.com. Special thanks to Staci for joining me on the Wyandot County Patreon episode!www.ohio88podcast.com https://www.patreon.com/ohio88 Our music was created by Nico of We Talk of Dreams...
SNEAK PEEK!This is a sneak peek episode for our Wyandot County Patreon episode! Be sure to head over to https://www.patreon.com/ohio88 and for just $1 per month, you'll receive full bonus episodes, extra content, goodies, and more!Visit our new website: https://www.ohio88podcast.com/ Special thanks to Kelsey, for her help with this episode! Special thanks to Nico of We Talk of Dreams for the music: https://wetalkofdreams.com/
We are officially into the 2022-2023 hunting season! Last week we welcomed some small game seasons, doves, and some early waterfowl. This upcoming weekend is the opening of archery deer in the Disease surveillance areas of Hardin, Marion, and Wyandot counties. Paul was able to get out and knock down a couple doves this past week, but had little luck in the waterfowl blind. Andrew's still prepping for the upcoming season and rehabbing his knee. The show this week has 2 parts. To start we talk with Dave Kohler of the ODNR Division of Wildlife. Dave has been with the Department for many years and has a lot of knowledge. He shares with us the recap of the 2022 OHLAP program, as well as looking forward to the upcoming season. After Dave, we have the chance to talk to Jason Redd of Timber Ninja. Timber Ninja is a company that specializes in high quality mobile hunting gear, but the show is more directed at Jason's love of the outdoors, and some of the adventures he's been on. Enjoy! www.theo2podcast.com GoWild Profile Tethrd First Lite Instagram: @the.o2.podcast Twitter: @Ohiohunt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We are officially into the 2022-2023 hunting season! Last week we welcomed some small game seasons, doves, and some early waterfowl. This upcoming weekend is the opening of archery deer in the Disease surveillance areas of Hardin, Marion, and Wyandot counties. Paul was able to get out and knock down a couple doves this past week, but had little luck in the waterfowl blind. Andrew's still prepping for the upcoming season and rehabbing his knee. The show this week has 2 parts. To start we talk with Dave Kohler of the ODNR Division of Wildlife. Dave has been with the Department for many years and has a lot of knowledge. He shares with us the recap of the 2022 OHLAP program, as well as looking forward to the upcoming season. After Dave, we have the chance to talk to Jason Redd of Timber Ninja. Timber Ninja is a company that specializes in high quality mobile hunting gear, but the show is more directed at Jason's love of the outdoors, and some of the adventures he's been on. Enjoy!www.theo2podcast.comGoWild ProfileTethrdFirst LiteInstagram: @the.o2.podcastTwitter: @Ohiohunt
In today's episode I'm sharing a very special conversation with Megan McGuire aka @forest.whisperer. I remember seeing an Instagram post that she made a while back with Moon names, and this list really spoke to ancestral connection to land and place and seasonal activities especially to parts of Europe where some of her ancestors are from. This episode is in honor of what's often referred to as the Harvest Moon - or the full moon closest to the Autumnal Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. And as you'll hear, there are many other names for this seasonal moon. I got to know Megan more through this conversation and really appreciate the work that she does that is about connection, reconnection and belonging and exploring mythic time and creating Bioregional wheels of the year. Megan is a biologist and she works for the federal government and designs ecosystem restoration projects to rehabilitate the Mississippi River that her ancestors have long cherished. She lives on Dakota land in the Twin Cities, Minnesota and her ancestors were Polish and Finnish and German, Irish, French possibly English and from the Saulteaux and Wyandot tribes. She is also a mother and a permaculture gardener and works with ritual in daily life and I love how she talks in this conversation about weaving that in otherwise mundane activities in a very easeful and creative way. I love this conversation. I hope you do too! Visit Megan on Instagram @forest.whisperer and her website: www.mythictime.com. Mentions: Farmer's Almanac began publishing names for full Moons in the 1930s based on what Colonial Americans adapted from Native tribes including the Algonquin people on the Eastern Coast. These names have become widely known, but even though they now seem standardized, they are not universal. Venerable Bede was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter in the Kingdom of Northumbria who lived in the 7-8th century. He wrote On the Reckoning of Time which references calendars and lunar time.
Hear the story of the Wyandots from 2nd Chief Louisa Libby of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas.There is a sensitivity warning for this episode.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/homegrownkc/exclusive-content
Hear the story of the Wyandots from 2nd Chief Louisa Libby of the Wyandot Nation of Kansas.There is a sensitivity warning for this episode.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/homegrownkc/exclusive-content
Welcome to the 60th episode of Health Science Coach, a podcast to help students and parents learn about pathways into healthcare and sports medicine careers. Today I had the opportunity to speak with Diane Victory. She is a clinically licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, trained in various therapy modalities, including Play Therapy, DBT, TF-CBT, ACT, Theraplay, Family Therapy, EMDR. Currently serve as the Manager of Community Programs at PACES, Wyandot Behavioral Health Network. http://www.wyandotbhn.org Subscribe - Like - Comment HEALTH SCIENCE COACH - https://healthsciencecoach.com Website built and designed by- https://lanegarner.dev Supporters of Health Science Coach The Stigma.App - https://www.thestigma.app Gripping Golf Podcast - https://grippinggolfpodcast.com First Responders Golf Foundation - https://www.firstrespondergolf.org/about
Welcome to the 60th episode of Health Science Coach, a podcast to help students and parents learn about pathways into healthcare and sports medicine careers. Today I had the opportunity to speak with Diane Victory. She is a clinically licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, trained in various therapy modalities, including Play Therapy, DBT, TF-CBT, ACT, Theraplay, Family Therapy, EMDR. Currently serve as the Manager of Community Programs at PACES, Wyandot Behavioral Health Network. http://www.wyandotbhn.org Subscribe - Like - Comment HEALTH SCIENCE COACH - https://healthsciencecoach.com Website built and designed by- https://lanegarner.dev Supporters of Health Science Coach The Stigma.App - https://www.thestigma.app Gripping Golf Podcast - https://grippinggolfpodcast.com First Responders Golf Foundation - https://www.firstrespondergolf.org/about
Series 5 People of the Island, Topic 2 The Long Journey part 1The history of the Wyandot people after continued contact with settlers.There is a sensitivity warning for this epsiode.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/homegrownkc/exclusive-content
#GeekingOutSeries/Safety101/ChemicalsinFood/1This post is part of the Geeking Out series which presents data-driven information on food and farming, safety in the kitchen, practical science for cooks, cooking techniques and processes and other relevant nerdy stuff that every cook should know. For the next few weeks, we will be covering topics from the chapter, Safety 101. This is the first of four parts.While the idea of pathogens posing a danger to our health is established knowledge-- we’ve all learned about it in elementary science for one, my reference to many chemicals that are in our food system as “poison” may raise some eyebrows. I’m referring to three kinds: toxic chemicals that go on our crops such as fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides; are present in our meat and poultry like steroids and antibiotics, and are in ultra processed foods like sugar additives and preservatives. While there’s a growing body of woke citizens, health professionals, scientists, environmental groups and even government agencies like the CDC that acknowledge the toxicity in our food production system, most Americans don’t realize the gravity of the situation for a number of reasons.It’s fairly new. Widespread chemical use in agribusiness is relatively recent, gaining traction only in the mid twentieth century. The adverse effects caused by chemical fertilizers and additives in our food were not easily identified or immediately apparent, sometimes taking years to diagnose. It’s only in the last decade there’s been broad consensus that sugars, particularly high fructose corn syrup, are linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Corporate greed. The main reason for the use of chemicals in our food system is to increase efficiency and lower production costs (but not environmental and public health costs), which means bigger profits for companies. Big Business loves its bottom line and will do anything to protect it. Large amounts of money are spent trying to convince the public their products are great or that studies showing harmful effects are conflated. Sound familiar? We’ve been down this road before with the tobacco industry denying for decades that smoking cigarettes causes cancer. Human nature. Our tendency towards the path of least resistance means it’s easier not to change old habits or question previously established beliefs, despite growing available data that should convince us otherwise. Plus, it’s not easy keeping up with food trends --margarine was in, now it’s out; wine was out, now in; coffee is…what now? It doesn’t help we’re bombarded with billions of dollars in unhealthy food advertising, brainwashing us since we were children. Sorting through the muck of false or misleading information is overwhelming. To top it all, we’re not hardwired to be on red alert if we think the danger posed is far away. Unlike e coli which could make you sick right away, toxic chemicals in our food system are a slow poison and it’s easy to believe we’re okay until we’re not. Just like a lobster unaware it’s slowly boiling to death (also a good metaphor for why we’re not all panicking about global warming).Knowledge is key. Stories can put things in perspective and convince us to take action. I hope that understanding how and why America’s food system is in crisis might be the nudge we all need to make food choices that benefit the planet and ourselves, and not just Big Business.Chemical Fertilizers, Herbicides and PesticidesIt’s impossible to overemphasize the danger posed by many chemicals in our food system. They are not only toxic to us, but to other animals, the soil, the environment. Why the US is able to legally serve its populace harmful food comes down to corporate greed, how big money can influence government regulations, and insidious marketing that’s shaped culture and tastes predisposed to unhealthy food that keeps corporate coffers full. For a detailed understanding of America’s food system from production to consumption, I will defer to a few books that have strongly influenced me over the years: Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, Third Plate by Dan Barber and Micheal Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma and Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation.Monoculture America: An OverviewMost commercial farming practices monoculture, the cultivation of a single crop in an area. Think of those sweeping fields of Idaho corn or row after row of potatoes. It’s ubiquitous and you could be forgiven for thinking this is how farming always was. But that’s not right. American Indians and other farmers practiced polyculture, planting diverse crops which were mutually beneficial not only to each other, but to maintaining and building soil health. The Three Sisters of Native American agriculture is one such well-known companion planting of corn, beans and squash. Jo Robinson in her book, Eating on the Wild Side describes:‘The Wyandot people, renamed Hurons by the French were masters of this art. Each spring, the Wyandot women would walk to a cleared field and spread a mound of fish waste every three or four feet. They covered the fish with dirt and then planted a few corn seeds in the center of each mound. When the corn leaves reached hand height, they planted beans next to the corn, then sprinkled pumpkin seeds between the mounds. The corn stalks grew tall and sturdy, providing support for the limply twining beans. The beans made their contribution by drawing nitrogen dioxide out of the air and converting it to a stable form of nitrogen that could be used by all three plants, but especially by the nitrogen-hungry corn. The broad squash leaves fanned out beneath the corn and beans, preventing weeds from growing, cooling the soil, and slowing the evaporation of water.”The function of the beans to draw out nitrogen dioxide from the air and convert it into a kind of nitrogen plants can use (ammonia and nitrate) is what’s called nitrogen-fixing. Legumes, clover, lupines are some of the nitrogen-fixers commonly used to replenish the soil. Another popular companion planting example is the home gardener’s tomatoes-basil combination. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, not only do they taste good together, but the basil helps increase tomato yield and repels pests like mosquitoes, flies and aphids.In companion planting, not only is there a symbiotic relationship between plants, but the diversity provides insurance of crop survival. Blight might take down corn, but maybe the squash will survive. And when planting is diverse, it’s harder for pests to home in on their favorite food. Vast swaths of single crops are an all-you-can eat buffet waiting to happen.But in the 20th century, a confluence of events propelled America and much of the world’s agriculture into a monoculture landscape dependent on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. In 1909, A German chemist named Fritz Haber discovered a chemical way of “fixing” nitrogen, which is to produce liquid ammonia, the raw material for making nitrogen fertilizer. By 1913, the Haber-Bosch process was used to produce liquid fertilizers in greater quantities and by the time World War II was over, munitions factories which used ammonium nitrate for explosives, could find a new lease in life producing chemical fertilizers, thereby increasing supply and lowering costs to farmers.In the mid-50’s, another scientist, Norman Borlaug bred a variety of dwarf wheat that tripled yield with the use of fertilizers. The wheat variety, regimen of fertilizers and single crop cultivation (monoculture) were tested in Mexico and then later in India, which was on the brink of a famine. With the template for breeding high-yield crops dependent on fertilizers a huge success, The Green Revolution of the 60’s was born and exported to many parts of the world, including the Philippines, where “miracle” rice, another fast yielding crop, was developed. And this is how monoculture agriculture dependent on chemicals became the norm in American Agriculture.The Ravages of Monoculture AgricultureThe Green Revolution had noble intentions and was a miracle with its bountiful yields, earning Borlaug the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize. But decades later, we’ve learned what it has cost us. Forcing land to produce more than nature intended with chemical fertilizers is like me having to put in 70 hour work weeks on uppers. Eventually, both the land and I are going to self-destruct, affecting everything in our wake. Artificially propped up by speed, I may be able to function temporarily on this mad schedule. But besides the adverse effects on body and mind (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you need a refresher on Breaking Bad), I’d probably be an insufferable maniac to co-workers and family. It’s a vicious cycle. An organism builds tolerance over time, so after the initial productivity, more chemicals are required.Land stripped of nutrients and toxic with chemicals becomes sick and unable to protect itself; plants that grow in this environment are stressed and susceptible to diseases like blight. Pollinators that feed on the toxic plants become sick and die. Declining bee population is largely linked to pesticides and habitat loss and in the US, winter losses commonly reach 30-50%. And drift-prone weed-killers like dicamba kill valuable food sources for bees—weeds. Bees have been in serious decline over the last decade. Pollinators, especially honeybees, are responsible for one in every three bites of food we take, according to the USDA. You get the picture. All these fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides are killing our pollinators.But they’re also killing us. 200,000 people die every year of acute pesticide poisoning worldwide, according to a UN report released in 2017. That doesn’t include chronic illnesses and other diseases attributed to indirect exposure such as in contaminated food. And then there’s Roundup.To be continued…Interested to learn more? Read my companion posts on Cooking Subversive:I Cook to Reclaim My Health Superpowers of the Garden Get full access to Cooking Subversive at cookingsubversive.substack.com/subscribe
Episode Notes Grand Chief Ted Roll talks about the Wyandot of Anderdon's plans to create the Six points Village Project in Gibraltar and the importance of preserving Wyandot history and recognizing that they are still here. Transcript Links Wyandot of Anderdon Nation River Raisin National Battlefield Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma Wyandotte Nation of Kansas Bureau of Indian Affairs Michigan's Tribal Governments Iron Belle Trail University of Michigan Project Plans Contact What's the Deal, Grosse Ile? Web Facebook Facebook Group Instagram Patreon Tip Jar (For One-Time or Recurring Contributions) WhatsTheDealGI@gmail.com (734) 250-9554 Music: Headlund / Thanks for the Time / Courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com https://www.epidemicsound.com/track/31ek2LInQK/
From 1630-1843 the Wyandot People lit their fires along the banks of the Sandusky River. This is a humble attempt at telling the Real Story of how the Wyandot came to leave Upper Sandusky for their new home "afar in the west."
Kelley & Emily were totally in sync in celebrating Native American Heritage month! First, Kelley tells the story of Chihenne Chiricahua Apache warrior Lozen who employed supernatural powers to detect enemies and was quite handy at horse thievery. Then, Emily tells the story of Lyda Conley and her sisters who took their efforts to protect their ancestral cemetery all the way to the Supreme Court. Start building your fort and pay attention to those arm tinglies because it's time to wine about herstory!Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/winingaboutherstory/overview)
In this episode, guest host Stevie Scheurich speaks with Dr. Angela Ahlgren, professor of theatre and film at BGSU, and Dr. Kareem Khubchandani, professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Tufts University, about how their lives as performers and professors inform each other. Angela and Kareem discuss their research as both performers and performance studies scholars exploring how political, economic, and transnational power structures shape individual and communal performances of racial, gendered, and sexual identities. Announcer: From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture & Society this is BG Ideas.Musical Intro:I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment.Stevie:Welcome back to the BiG Ideas Podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture & Society and the school of media and communication at Bowling Green State University. I am Stevie Scheurichm, A PhD student in BGSU's American Culture Studies program and a graduate assistant at the Institute for the Study of Culture & Society. Due to the ongoing pandemic we are not recording in the studio, ultimately by phone and computer. As always the opinions expressed on this podcast are those are the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of BGSU or its employees. Bowling Green State University, and its campuses are situated in the Great Black Swamp and the Lower Great Lakes region.Stevie:This land is a home land of the Wyandot, Kickapoo, Miami Potawatomi, Odawa and multiple other Indigenous tribal nations, present and past, who were forcibly removed to and from the area. We recognize these historical and contemporary ties in our efforts toward decolonizing history and we honor the indigenous individuals and communities who have been living and working on this land from time in memorial. Today we are joined by Dr. Kareem Khubchandani and Dr. Angela Ahlgren. Kareem is a Mellon Bridge Assistant Professor in theater, dance and performance studies and women's gender and sexuality studies at Tufts University. He is the author of Ishtyle, Accenting Gay Indian Nightlife, co-editor of Queer Nightlife and creator of criticalauntystudies.com. Kareem is currently working on two new book projects, Decolonize Drag and Ontologies, Queer Aesthetics and South Asian Aunties.Stevie:Kareem has just finished a digital residency at BGSU, including a critical drag workshop and a lecture entitled Divas, Drag Queens, Aunties and other academic personas. Angela is an assistant professor and graduate coordinator in the department of theater and film at Bowling Green State University. She is the author of Drumming Asian America, Taiko, Performance and Cultural Politics, which focuses on the racial, gender, and cultural politics woven into the practice and performance of taiko, Japanese ensemble drumming in the US and Canada. Her research interests include Asian American theater and performance, critical dance studies, queer and feminist theater and performance, and the politics of mourning. Thank you both so much for joining today.Angela:Thank you. Kareem:Thank you. Stevie: So we'll just start by doing some introductions. Kareem, you're a scholar of performance studies and a performer yourself. Can you give us a little background about what it is that you study, who you study, how you study and how do you see your identities as an academic and a performer sort of entwined?Kareem:So my recent book is a study of nightlife in LGBT communities, primarily gay male communities in India and in the south Asian diaspora. And it looks at how people move across national borders and are forced to move across national borders by economic projects of globalization. And it thinks about how nightlife and queer nightlife spaces offer these migrant subjects, places to practice their identities and places to feel beautiful and places to find desire and love. It's somewhat of a reenactment of my own journey moving to the US when I was 17 years old and finding these incredible spaces of dance and pleasure and play in New York city and in San Francisco. So when I moved to Chicago to start graduate school in a performance studies program, I started organizing queer Bollywood nights there. Modeled on what I'd seen in other cities.Kareem:And it was my beginning as a graduate student. It was also the first time I had lived in a big city and all of these things coming together, it just sort of all folded on each other. My research, my teaching, my study and my social life all sort of became intertwined with each other and it's hard for me to separate them. To me, I try to bring queer nightlife into the classroom. I'm currently teaching class on queer nightlife. I'm editing a book called Queer Nightlife. I wrote about this transnational Indian nightlife, and I try to practice it. And I perform in online drag shows right now in the pandemic and had performed at bars, et cetera. So for me, all of these things are laid on each other and are integrated into each other.Stevie:Thank you. And then Angie, you're also a performer, performance studies scholar. Could you give us background on your research and how your life as a researcher, performer and educator are connected?Angela:So the research that I did as a taiko player culminated in a book that you mentioned, Drumming Asian America, and this book looks at what I'm terming cultural politics as opposed to sort of international politics or partisan politics. But I'm really looking at race, gender, and sexuality, kind of both in different chapters, one or the other of those things as foregrounded, but they're really all connected across the book. I was actually a taiko player before I was a taiko scholar, but it was also actually my work in theater that put me in contact with taiko in the first place. So when I was an undergraduate student, I was a theater major and an English major in Minneapolis. And when I graduated, I was waitressing. So I started stage managing for an Asian American theater company called Theater Mu in the late 90s.Angela:And it was through my work there that A, I really got exposed to sort of Asian American history through theater. And it was also there that they had been starting a taiko group just around the time that I started stage managing. So that was really my introduction to taiko and I was really captivated by it and I really wanted to try it. And I took some classes thinking that I would have a kind of four week class and have an interesting experience and then go about my life. But I really loved it and I kept up with it. And that sort of turned into a whole... I guess I started performing with the group. It made me think about things in many different ways beyond the kinds of things that we may have learned in school. Didn't really think all that hard about race especially my own.Angela:So that really was a kind of new experience for me that I ended up exploring in much greater depth as I kind of moved into my work as a scholar. So it was really my experience as a taiko performer that when I went to graduate school as a master's student in English, led me to take some Asian American studies classes that again, accumulated and helped me think about my experiences as a taiko player in a different way. So I really knew that once I went to graduate school, I wanted to write about taiko as my dissertation project, but that I wanted to do it, not in a theater program. And I wasn't a musician. So that was never really an option, but that performance studies seemed to me to be the place where I could do that, because it thinks about performance really expansively.Angela:And because at least the things that I was exposed to there, I felt that performance studies had an affinity with critical race theory and queer theory, feminist theory and that, that would really be a field that could sort of accommodate the project that I had when I was going into graduate school. So my sort of life as a performer and my life as a scholar, especially of taiko are deeply intertwined in that sense that it's not something I ever would have written about if I never had performed it, even though I would have found it interesting, I think. In a sense, there's a way that the things that I feel most passionate about or feel that I can really get into the crevices of in a certain way are things that I have done myself and know what it feels to be in that world.Stevie:Kareem, yesterday in your talk you partially focused on academic personas and you detailed how your drag persona, LaWhore Vagistan, occasionally visits your classes. And so to both of you, since you're both performers, you're both in class, right? Could you both speak to how you use your experience as performers, your knowledge of performance and navigate the classroom, which is really right in an environment built by and for white cisgender or straight men?Kareem:Yeah. I mean, my second year of graduate school, I was really intimidated to teach the sort of core class in our performance studies department at Northwestern, because I didn't know how they would react to a small brown queer person teaching them about performance, right? I was really self-conscious about what especially straight men would think of me trying to teach them how to use their bodies and turn poetry into performance. In retrospect, I realized I needed to take control over myself and my body to enter that space and to feel like I had some command over it. Again, performance studies is a place that accommodates issues of gender, sexuality, race post-colonial histories, things like that. So it is a comfortable space, but in general, the academy doesn't.Kareem:So when I teach these kinds of core classes that expose me to students that I don't already know or don't have affinities with, I feel like I have to put on a persona, right? I have to lean into things I'm good at to feel confident in front of students and to do new things in the classroom. And one of the ways I've done that is doing drag and bringing my drag persona, LaWhore Vagistan to teach classes. And what that has done has made me realize that I was right all along that students are seeing me through my body. It matters who they see in front of them. And women of color have been telling us this for a long time. Women of color in the academy have been telling us this for a long time, that their labor is devalued because of their race and their gender and their sexuality.Kareem:When LaWhore walks into the classroom, I'm treated differently and it brings out a different reaction, but really drawing on drag's history of playfulness and camp and lack of sincerity, I get to be as boisterous as I want, right? So really leaning into drag as a tradition, I get to make fun of my students back to their faces. And we all laugh together because they're in on the joke in that moment. But again, it makes me realize that performance can really work for us in the classroom to defamiliarize the space and say, "Last week was a whole other moment when we were talking to Kareem. How do we talk about that moment as a time where we learned something very specific?" How do we re-explain it now to LaWhore who "doesn't know" what's going on here, right?Kareem:So being authentic isn't what I'm most interested in. Creating opportunities for learning and discussion and troubling what we think we already know is what I'm actually most interested in. So performance can do that. And then there are other ways that I use performance in the classroom asking folks to interpret ideas through gesture, or asking them to develop their own drag personas. So I think there are other ways that we can use performance in the classroom. But bringing my drag persona into the classroom is this way of appending what they think they know the classroom is supposed to be doing and appending who they think I am. And making them realize, and myself realize that it matters who you're learning from and asking as to interrupt our biases as well.Angela:Yeah. I think that's really awesome and I love that idea. I feel like hearing you talk a little bit about that at the talk yesterday too made me think about sort of developing personas in a way that I think that we sort of do it in a half conscious way in certain ways, but really taking that to another level and using it to be able to destabilize identity. I think that's really awesome. One of the wonderful and tricky things about teaching performance studies is that it's sort of everything and also nothing at the same time. It's so capacious and flexible, which is awesome. But it also, I think, thinking about when I first started teaching this class at BGSU, I also had a certain trepidation more because there's a sense of, "Well, what is my performance studies understanding?"Angela:Because I think that everybody could teach it in a very different way and still be right or correct and within the boundaries of what it is. Because it's also made up of so many different lineages from sociology, anthropology, theater studies, ethnography. I felt like especially the first couple of times that I taught this classes that students would continually ask, "But what is performance studies?" Or, "Is this thing we're doing performance studies or is that thing performance studies?" And I think that that is a little bit of a tricky line. But I think that ultimately my own, I think sort of as I'm continuing to teach it is to really rely on my own lineage in performance studies and theater studies to be able to bridge that sort of perceived gap, I guess.Stevie: I was listening yesterday, I was thinking about my first time as instructor of record. I was sort of like, I'm all over the place on how I present my gender and I was immediately navigating all of these assumptions that I hadn't really thought about, about sort of who the professor is and how they sort of present themselves. The first time I taught I skewed towards sort of the traditional sort of set up and it didn't work. It didn't work. This time, teaching this semester, I just worked something I thought it was neutral and I had a student be like, "You're not buying it, right? I can tell."Stevie:And I was like, "Okay, they know." They're going to know. That's the second time I showed up and I was like, "Just put it all out on the table." And the response to me being like, "Y'all know I'm a queer non-binary femme." The response was so much more positive and so much more when I was able to just kind of like... it was just so much more. You're being read. I definitely think of professing as a performer.Kareem:Well, you're making me think of my early days as a graduate student who was solo teaching classes. I went out and bought khaki pants and belts and ties just to feel professional, but also I would end up awkward sweating into them because they're just not what I used to wear. But I think that we understand the professor as this straight white man with elbow patches on his tweed blazer, but femme embodiment in the classroom is just not in our public imagination. And so just taking seriously gender, race, sexuality altogether can help us reflect on how we want to bring our bodies into classroom spaces and what that can do to distribute power. The way you were talking about a student seeing you as non-binary and what that does for them to feel like they're inside of the... that they belong, I think it matters.Stevie:We're going to take a quick break. Thank you for listening to BiG Ideas podcast.Announcer :If you are passionate about big ideas, consider sponsoring this program. To have your name or organization mentioned here, please contact us at ics@bgsu.edu.Stevie:So you both are studying at the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality performance. Performativity is a big word that gets thrown around in our field. So I was wondering if we could all take a shot at unpacking both the difference and the connection between performance and performativity, and also thinking about how performance helps us understand the ideas that are performative.Angela:Sure I can say, I can take a stab at this. I mean, I want to echo what I said to the last question is that these are both really capacious and flexible terms and that there are ongoing conversations and debates about what each of them means, but I'm thinking on one level, that performance is something that happens all the time on stages, in the classroom as we were just discussing, in a wide variety of social context like sports, religion, digital space. But I think the word performativity can be a little bit more slippery. And in particular, because I think that recently it's become a pejorative term for showy, fake, theatrical. And that this in some ways runs really counter to the way that performance studies have theorized the term performative or performativity, which is often based on JL Austin. Angela:The linguist, JL Austin's idea of the performative utterance, a thing that you say that makes something happen, right? I do. When you're married means that you're placing a bet. And that a lot of scholars have taken that in different ways to mean that if something is performative it's something that actually causes something to happen or make something new happen, or urges an audience to do something. There's a lot of different ways that this kind of takes shape in scholarship. So in that sense, the term performative in the way that people in the field use it is really different from this sort of more colloquial understanding of what performative means, which often I think comes to mean theatrical or dramatic. I mean, these ended up all being such terms that people in the field have problems with.Angela:But in another sense I think the term performative it sort of means both fake and real in the sense that if we think about the way that Judith Butler talks about gender as performative, she's saying that gender is a kind of series of acts that happen and repeat so much that we take them to be natural or to have an origin and some biological fact. That in fact, gender is performative because it's actually fake, but it has real effects on the world. So there's sort of this tension, I think in thinking about that word between what is real and what is not real, and whether it's fake and showy. I'm thinking about the ways that people are using performative as performative allyship, like when you just post on Facebook a lot, but you don't actually get out there and do the work.Kareem:You hit the nail on the head. It is shocking to me to hear the word performative said so often outside the academy, but especially since last summer during Black Lives Matter protests, a lot of people were also calling out what they saw as insufficient activism as performative allyship or performative activism, where performative is assumed to be the adjective of performance. Friends of mine like to say... Actually, I think what you're trying to say is performancy, performance like. But it assumes that performance is a bad thing. And that to me is really dangerous because so much activism has actually relied on performance to have its effect in the world. When we think about the role of dress in civil rights activism, or even the hoodie in the Black Lives Matter movement and the hands up, don't shoot gesture, right?Kareem:All of these are performance practices and they're not fake, right? They have this viral effect of inviting more folks into activism, allowing them to be legible to each other. The public conversation doesn't take account how powerful performance can be, whether it's how people present themselves in the world every day. But one of the ways I think the field has shifted a little bit through the work of critical race studies scholars like, Saidiya Hartman and E. Patrick Johnson and Joshua Chambers-Letson and Jose Esteban Munoz is to say, actually performance is also something people are compelled and forced to do, especially minoritarian subjects are required to use their bodies in particular ways. Kareem:And how do we take stock of the ways that performance is actually a means of managing labor, managing life, and therefore takes serious of the way people use their bodies to survive, to find pleasure, to access wealth in ways that they're denied, right? I think it's important to take performance seriously and a deeper understanding of performativity, which I understand is, performance is ability to work in the world. Can really help us understand performance is power. Stevie:What does your research and performance work reveal about the ways in which race, nationality, class shape the way we understand and perform our gender and sexual identities?Kareem:So maybe one of the simplest ways I'll put it is in the nightclub, we think we're going there to dance and be free and feel the music. But in fact, there are very regimented rules to how we're supposed to be in the nightclub. All of those things are being controlled from the bouncer to the DJ, to lights, to what's on the walls, to the size of a space. All of these are cues that are telling us how we're supposed to be in those spaces. So we think we're going into the nightclub to feel free and feel the music and in fact, we are going in there to follow a bunch of rules. What I found is that folks who are migrants to the city whether it's from the small town in India to a bigger city or folks who are migrating from south Asia to the US, suddenly find themselves not knowing the rules when they enter the club.Kareem:The way they move, the way they dress, the way they style themselves runs up against the dominant aesthetics, right? And what I'm saying is that these aesthetics are in fact controlling devices. The donut aesthetics are what gives us capital. So if we look like what the club is supposed to be, we're great. People might talk to us. When we start thinking about what are the dominant aesthetics, we start to see how people of color, sexual minorities, gender minorities don't always fit with that dominant way of bringing your body into the world and fitting into environments. That's sort of the method that I take to my research is to ask, well, who's doing the wrong thing in the club? Because we think that just sort of stepping side to side is the natural way we dance. But in fact, people only started dancing solo in club environments in the '60s onwards with the rise of disco.Kareem:So the ways that people move in clubs together is actually quite organized. So who's going to change the layout of it. So one of the things I write about is how South Asian dancers in Chicago clubs bring their Indian dance styles like Panera or Bollywood to disrupt what is expected of the space. They don't necessarily know they're doing the wrong dance, but in doing the wrong kind of movement, they help us see what the dominant movement is. You suddenly see the contrast and you're like, "Oh, I didn't know that this is what the dominant was until I saw the contrast." And what else is possible when you have these kinds of frictions inside of the club, it's sort of thinking about dominant aesthetics as they're tied to race, gender, coloniality that rub up against minority practice of the body that people just come in wanting to practice because it's what they know.Stevie:Thank you. And for you, Angie, what have you learned from your research and performance work about how racial identity and gender norms are negotiated by the different groups of people participating in taiko drumming?Angela:I mean, one of the things I would say is that there's not a really neat way to sort of define how sort of taiko is practiced or thought about. The kind of responses that I had from people that I interviewed, especially when I was asking them specifically about how race or gender or other aspects of their identity sort of inform their practice of taiko or perhaps instigated their practice of taiko, it was really quite diverse. And part of this I think is because Asian American itself is a contested term and it's always being negotiated. But I guess the best way for me to answer this is maybe to think about a couple of specific examples. So one of the examples that I kind of point to is in Minnesota, in the group that I performed with.Angela:Because of the sort of geography and history of Asian America in Minnesota, a lot of the participants in my group were Korean adoptees. That's because there is a high number of Korean adoptees in Minnesota for reasons that to do with Lutheran churches and the sort of way that social welfare works in Minnesota as a state. But nonetheless, that's a significant population. So in my interviews with this particular couple of people talked about how Asian-American identity worked with them was often quite compelling because they were people who were mostly raised by white Midwesterners. So in some ways, taiko was a way of practicing Asian-American identity.Angela:That was I won't necessarily say new, but that was an intentional choice as a way to sort of forge community with other Asian-Americans. And I think that isn't that necessarily different from the ways that other, maybe Japanese Americans in California, for example, practice. But it has a sort of different context because of the ways that there are not sort of long established geographical enclaves of AsianAmerican communities in Minnesota the way that there are in California and New York, for example. Stevie:Another question for both of you, and we've kind of hinted at this, right? Talking about power and performance. So some people might think that drag, dancing, drumming are activities that are just recreational fun outside if they're all in politics. How does looking at performance help us identify how power that work in these almost invisible ways that we navigate our everyday life that we're not necessarily thinking about when we're in the moment, right?Angela:Yes. So I think one of the things that I would think about is this sort of ability to participate based on money and access for certain people. Another scholar of taiko, Debra Wong said to me once that, "Taiko is really an elaborate leisure activity for people who have the means to participate in it." She and I are both taiko players and very passionate about the way that it can be so powerful visually sonically in its embodied form. But I think to be able to acknowledge that starting a taiko group, for example, you need drums and those drums are quite expensive, at least $1,000 for each one.Angela:And if you are wanting to have a group, you need a lot of drums. But not only that, the sort of space that you need to be able to practice in, the space that you need to perform, or even just having the time to have a leisure activity like that, that requires a lot of practice. So thinking about the ways that leisure itself is very much tied up in class and therefore power is one of the things to think about. I think I'll pause there.Kareem:That's a perfect place to pause, because that's where I want to pick up. Fun is always measured in relation to work. I don't deserve to go out because I haven't done enough, right? And that's precisely what I'm thinking about in relation to nightlife is that I'm thinking about these global laborers who one, are only in nightlife spaces because patterns of globalization have given them mobility to enter these spaces. But again, like I was talking about before, they're not aesthetically trained to be inside of them, right? So now they're made precarious subjects. They're made to feel awkward. They're made to feel shame.Kareem:All these larger political economies that produce the very small encounter in the club where you're like, "Oh, my hair is not cut like that. I feel awkward about myself," right? Even the most minor transactions in these leisure spaces actually have to do with processes of global labor, if we look closely enough and if we think historically enough. Also, when it comes to drag. One, drag is a leisure practice for a lot of people, but for a lot of folks it's also work, right? So we go to the club to have fun, but they're actually bartenders and bouncers and bar backs and drag artists and go-go dancers working, right?Kareem:Trying to get paid in that time where we are having our leisure moment. So work is always at play in those contexts. And lastly, I think any conversation about drag in gender binaries and gender in general, has to think about the history of managing gendered bodies. That is massive economy from advertising to medicalization. When we're talking about how people dress, how people present their bodies in the world, we're actually talking about all these industries that have tried to produce gender binaries and sell the gender binary as attractive. I want to add also, so I'm working on this book called Decolonized Drag, and there are so many drag artists who are making performance about colonization.Kareem:So they're responding to political and economic violence through performance in very explicit ways. One person, Ms. Shumai in California takes Britney Spears as a womanizer, womanizer and turns it into colonizer, colonizer. I think that, again, these spaces of leisure are considered apolitical, but in fact there's so much politics being practiced in them and I think that that's important to recognize.Stevie:And in a way, I think it makes it so much more effective when you make those politics explicit and giving people an opportunity to see like, "I am participating in these power sectors in ways I didn't necessarily know." So maybe we can answer this question in a way that doesn't feel prohibitive, but enabling and encouraging. Do you have any tips for our listeners on how they can be engaged in critical audience members? And really thinking, what does it mean to be a critical viewer? Since a lot of folks might just assume that that's just looking for flaws in the performance so to speak?Kareem:I think a couple of things, one is that audience members can learn that they're also performers. So I think what I would say is, as an audience member, especially when you're entering new kinds of performance spaces, is to really watch other audience members to get a sense of what is a good respectful way to be in conversation with that art form, right? I guess alongside that research the form that you're an audience of. Get a sense of how much actors and performers get paid. Understand the economy behind it and that might get you to this place of being like, "Maybe I should mediate my criticisms." Kareem:This person wasn't working with a lot of resources. Isn't getting paid, even if they're being given a platform to do X, Y, or Z show or podcast or interview. So I think that these are some of the ways I think folks can be aware of how to be critical listeners, audience, members, witnesses, and remember that they too are in their bodies much like other performers and artists.Angela:I love those suggestions and I think that some of mine kind of overlap, but one of the things to put this from a slightly different lens, this idea of audience convention. So I teach theater history for undergraduates. One of the things I love teaching about is that the kind of conventions or rules or etiquette of being in an audience or being a spectator changed drastically based on time period, and geography and form and context. So I'd like to think about unruly, very vocal audiences of Japanese Kabuki performance versus standing in an Elizabethan theater versus maybe the kind of much more buttoned up sort of darkened theater.Angela:You have to be quiet, you have to put away your cell phones, sort of conventions of attending maybe a national theater today. So I think paying attention exactly to what are the rules and conventions of how you conduct yourself in various spaces. And I think that's its own kind of pleasure in thinking about what's expected of you and what do performers want from you. And I also wanted to echo this idea of let performances make you purious. So thinking about like, maybe find something out about the performer. What are their politics?Angela:And then thirdly, just that, I think that that moment of being a student, especially a student of theater, performance studies, cultural studies that sort of period of being like, "Oh my gosh, I can't watch everything. Everything's terrible." All I can do is see everything wrong with it. But I think just thinking about the fact that we all have really complex engagements and relationships with the world in so many things. I mean, often with our own family members, why not remember that you can have a kind of complex multilayered relationship to performance too.Stevie:Thank you so much for joining us today Kareem and Angie. Listeners can keep up with other ICS happenings by following us on Twitter and Instagram via @icsbgsu. You can listen to BiG Ideas wherever you find your favorite podcast. Please subscribe to us on your preferred platform. Our producers or Chris Cavera and Marco Mendoza. Sound editing by DeAnna MacKeigan and Marco Mendoza. Stevie Scheurich researched and wrote the interview questions.
This week on the Ohio Huntsman Podcast we talk about all the things you need to be aware of before fall hunting seasons open here in Ohio. There is a whole list of changes that have taken place from last season that you need to know about in order to stay legal. So we discuss bag limit changes, season dates, certain hunting license prices going down, clarifications that have been issued on previous year changes, and new restrictions around CWD disease surveillance areas in Wyandot, Marion, and Hardin counties. Those are just the highlights and there is plenty more we cover so be sure to listen and share this one with all your hunting buddies. Ohio Huntsman is Powered by Simplecast
This week on the Ohio Huntsman Podcast we talk about all the things you need to be aware of before fall hunting seasons open here in Ohio. There is a whole list of changes that have taken place from last season that you need to know about in order to stay legal. So we discuss bag limit changes, season dates, certain hunting license prices going down, clarifications that have been issued on previous year changes, and new restrictions around CWD disease surveillance areas in Wyandot, Marion, and Hardin counties. Those are just the highlights and there is plenty more we cover so be sure to listen and share this one with all your hunting buddies. Ohio Huntsman is Powered by Simplecast
This week on the show we update the listeners on the status of the new CWD surveillance area in North Central Ohio. The disease surveillance area is made up of Wyandot county as well as portions of Hardin and Marion counties. This new area was created due to 2 wild deer that were harvested and tested positive for CWD during the 2020/2021 whitetail deer season. We also discuss the ending of the previous deer surveillance area in Holmes and Tuscarawas counties due to no additional positive tests during the 3 year surveillance period. Lastly, we discuss some of our personal thoughts on what this means for the future of hunting in Ohio if CWD begins to spread throughout the wild whitetail deer population. Photo Credit: Ohio Division of Wildlife Ohio Huntsman is Powered by Simplecast
This week on the show we update the listeners on the status of the new CWD surveillance area in North Central Ohio. The disease surveillance area is made up of Wyandot county as well as portions of Hardin and Marion counties. This new area was created due to 2 wild deer that were harvested and tested positive for CWD during the 2020/2021 whitetail deer season. We also discuss the ending of the previous deer surveillance area in Holmes and Tuscarawas counties due to no additional positive tests during the 3 year surveillance period. Lastly, we discuss some of our personal thoughts on what this means for the future of hunting in Ohio if CWD begins to spread throughout the wild whitetail deer population. Photo Credit: Ohio Division of Wildlife Ohio Huntsman is Powered by Simplecast
I'm on vacation at a cabin rental when something completely unexpected flies out of the sky.. In this week's episode, I introduce the Flying Head, an evil spirit in the Iroquois and Wyandot mythology. It's a biter, and not in a good way, but it's consistency in its actions (even when it leads to its own demise) inspired me to talk about consistency and how we can develop stronger alignment in our words, behavior, and thoughts. Enjoy the tough questions this week! Mark your calendars for Inner Monster Mondays for new episodes every week, or sign up here for email notifications! PS - I co-authored a book on building trust! You can get your copy here! ------------ Show notes: Want a topic or creature covered in the podcast along with a shout-out? Let me know: innermonsterpodcast@gmail.com Episode 18 - Kumiho and changing oneself "The Inner Monster Podcast theme v.2," "IV. Joy," and "The (Un)Caged Butterfly," by Al Gilliom. ------------------- Sponsored by: My Patrons! - First listens without ads, creepy art, and more! Join today! The Future is Trust - A practical book on how to build trust. Now on sale on Amazon! Anchor.fm - Making this podcast happen, like, via the logistics of it all. Some links might be affiliate links. Just gotta let you know :) --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/innermonsterpodcast/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/innermonsterpodcast/support
Jolie is joined by Dr. Lucy Long, director of the independent Center for Food and Culture and an instructor of American studies, ethnic studies, folklore, and nutrition at BGSU, and Jerry Reed, a recent graduate from the MA program in popular cultures studies at BGSU. They discuss their “Finding Comfort/Discomfort Through Foodways” project that examines how comfort food can be meaningful and create meaningfulness in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Announcer: From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas. Musical Intro: I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment. Jolie: Welcome back to the BiG Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Jolie Sheffer, Associate Professor of English and American Culture Studies, and the Director of ICS. Due to the ongoing pandemic, we are not recording in the studio, but remotely via phone and computer. As always, the opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of BGSU or its employees. Jolie: Bowling Green State University is located in the Great Black Swamp, long a meeting place of the Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape, Ottawa, Kickapoo, Fox, Pottawatomie, Erie, Miami, Peoria, Chippewa, and Seneca Indian tribes. We honor the rich history of this land and its indigenous inhabitants, past and present. Today we're joined by two guests, Dr. Lucy Long and Jerry Reed. Lucy directs the Independent Center for Food and Culture and teaches in American studies, ethnic studies, folklore and nutrition at BGSU. Her research focuses on food, music, and dance as mediums for meaning and community. Jolie: Lucy served as the Director of "Finding Comfort/Discomfort Through Food Ways," a project that examines how people are living and eating in these difficult pandemic times. Jerry Reed earned a BS in Education and an MA in Popular Culture Studies from BGSU. He completed an internship with the Center for Food and Culture, working to develop a curriculum that uses food to help children understand cultural conflict. Jerry worked as the Assistant Director of the Food Ways Project. Thanks both for being with me today, I'm really excited to talk about this with you. To get us started, could you tell us a little bit about the Food Ways Project and how it came about? Will you start us off, Lucy? Lucy : Okay. When the pandemic first hit, I started noticing that food media was publishing recipes for comfort food. And this is a stressful time for comfort food. So I actually edited a volume and published some articles in 2017 on comfort food, so that automatically grabbed me. And my initial response to some of these publications, particularly-there was one for the New York Times, and it was comfort foods of famous chefs. And it was all these specialty ingredients and things that, probably, the average American would not have in their pantry. And I realized, first of all, these foods are not things that I relate to, personally, as a comfort food. And they probably are not relevant to many people who are reading this. But also, the idea of having to go out and find these ingredients, some of which are very expensive, but many of which, you would have to go to different grocery stores or try to find them. Lucy : And I realized, that's going to cause a lot of discomfort. So that got me thinking a little bit more about at how, during this time, it's not a simple thing to say, "Here, eat some comfort food and calm down." And then also, comfort food itself as a very American concept. Every culture has food that is comforting, that reminds people of their childhood, and things like that. But it's uniquely American in that there is a particular sort of morality attached to food in America. That different foods are good and bad, depending on what they do to your body, physically. And we're not even talking about health, we're talking about whether or not those foods make you fat or whether they make you kind of sluggish or whatever. Lucy : So, so much of our morality around food is tied to how that food impacts your body, your body image, and whether or not you have the proper type of body. So therefore, Americans talk about good foods and bad foods in terms of, good foods are ones that are healthy for us, will keep us nice, fit and slim. Bad foods are the ones that really tastes good, lots of fat, lots of sugar, salt, but we all know that they're bad for us. That they have negative impacts on our weight, on our body shape, and on our energy levels. Lucy : So that grows out of a very distinctive, American attitude towards food. And the phrase, "comfort food," was invented in the US. Dr. Joyce Brothers used it in the 1960s as an explanation for why so many Americans were starting to be obese, said that people are turning to comfort foods. They have stress in their lives or they need comfort for some reason, so they're using that as an excuse to eat these fattening foods. And then the food industry picked up on that and said, "Oh, okay, here are some comfort food dishes," and they started using that concept to market these dishes. Saying that, "Oh, everybody needs comfort, so here, eat some macaroni and cheese." So it turned into a marketing category. Jolie: Yeah, it's so interesting because, two thoughts. One is that, the opposite of comfort food is discomfort food. The things we're supposed to like are the things we're not supposed to enjoy. That there really is this idea of, maybe that is also a very American thing, that Protestant work ethic, that we're suspicious of pleasure, in some ways. Jerry, what was your particular interest in some of these issues in this Food Ways Project? Jerry: Especially as we dug deeper into the interviews that were conducted, I think one of the most surprising and interesting aspects for me was this idea of food of discomfort. Because we focus so much on this idea of comfort food as this a very individual experience to help one self feel better. Which is incredibly relevant during the time of pandemic or even during a time of stressful elections. So when people start talking about foods of discomfort, there's two major things that I've noticed. One is there are foods of actual physical discomfort, foods that you just can't eat for dietary reasons. Whether you're lactose intolerant, PKU, et cetera, that your diet is limited. Jerry: And then there's also foods that, it's not so much that the food itself causes discomfort in some way, it's the concept of food as a whole. Some people have turned their minds now to that ... Let me redo that. A number of people have realized that, "Oh, now I happen to work at home or not work for a while. I'm living well within my needs." And they can see that, now that they've stepped a little bit outside of that daily work that they do from 8:00 to 5:00. So to be able to realize that, oh, there's got to be a number of people who are not able to live within their means. Especially during a time like this, where even as I'm struggling, I'm surviving. And so that's brought a number of weird pieces of discomfort, just conceptual discomfort, to people. And that has caused some to act, some to not act, at different levels. Jolie: I'm curious, in terms of this project, because of the pandemic you had to really work remotely. Entirely, I imagine, including with the number of international collaborators. So how did that affect the way you collaborate and conduct research? Lucy : We were able to actually extend this project much further than most oral history projects. We frequently did not even know where people were when they were responding, initially. And then it does kind of happen, I also was using social media, LinkedIn and the Center for Food and Culture has a website. And that goes out to anyone who's interested, anywhere in the world. And then I was also using Facebook. And so when I was sending out information about this, and people were responding, and then they would tell their friends about it. So I also do a lot of work internationally, especially on culinary tourism, so a lot of my international connections were seeing this, "Oh yeah, this is really interesting." And so they were sending me things. Lucy : Some of those people would just send me a little paragraph, this is what's happening here. Other times, there are people who are using this ... I developed it first as an assignment for an undergraduate class, and then realized, oh, this would actually be very useful to do on a larger scale. I should mention here, too, I did get a little bit of funding that helped to cover honoraria for the researchers. Minimal honoraria, I should say, from the Association for the Study of Food and Society. And then also humanities, the Ohio Humanities. Formally the Ohio Humanities Council, now it's just called the Ohio Humanities, and then also from the Elliot Torium Foundation, a private foundation. Lucy : So when this started, it was just like, oh, this is interesting. Let's see where we can go with it. And then, because of my international work, various colleagues in different places were picking up on it and extending it. And then the researchers themselves, one of them, who also happens to be my daughter, she teaches in Ireland at a university. So she's having some of her students do the project. And she was interviewing some of her colleagues and friends, who tended to be very international. So we're hearing from people who lived in Israel or who had parents in Israel, Norway. And then another one of the researchers is Chinese studying in the US. So he has access to a different group of people. Lucy : So, it's not a model for a social science ethnography. A lot of it was serendipity, but everything was so sudden and unexpected, we just took whatever opportunities there were. I had worked previously with Jerry and so when I started getting this idea, I approached him. I said, "I don't know if there's going to be any funding, would you like to sign on to be the assistant director of this? There's a lot of administrative stuff that I'm going to need." And he said, "Sure." I said, "Now, I don't know about funding, but ..." So I know that Jerry was committed regardless of funding. So he's been a tremendous help through this. Jolie: And Jerry, could you talk a little bit about some of the tasks that you were working on and how the pandemic may have changed the way you had previously worked on projects or worked specifically with Lucy and your relationship prior. Jerry: I guess, for my tasks, there's two halves of it. There's the largely administrative half that, it was at home or not at home. It didn't really make too much of a difference, really, just depended on which wall I was staring at. But then came the other half of it, which was doing interviews and conducting these interviews with all of these participants. Which was a very different way than I'm used to doing field work. My field work that I did for my thesis, I did at a middle school in the area. And I was there with the students for a large portion of the day, and that's what I was used to, is just being around the people. So now all of a sudden, doing these cold calls to people I don't know to say, "Hey, I want to talk about food for awhile," was a very different setting. Jerry: But because people were already isolated and wanted that contact, they were happy to talk with any stranger about anything. Just that piece of human contact was so valuable to everybody that we talked to, and it made some of the conversations we've had absolutely fantastic. And yet my work with Lucy prior, because of the nature of building curriculum, the only real thing that changed was that we couldn't really meet face to face. Which can be, I guess, somewhat solved via Zoom, WebEx, whatever your medium is. Jolie: I think it's interesting that you're talking about, in addition to comfort food, the comfort of community. And even having the occasion to talk about these things is also a real balm in these challenging times. Can you talk a little bit, each of you, about how this project created or changed your sense of community? Lucy : I think for me, I really enjoyed getting to know the different people who were working with me. They're all either master's students, PhD students, or they had recently completed masters. I was able to learn things from them, and that was really nice. I was given a whole different perspective on things from them. And then a lot of people were sending me emails with just brief snippets of their thoughts about comfort food. And some of those really challenged the assumptions that we all have. One of them that I always point out, a woman contacted me and said, "I just wanted you to let you know that my husband and I are both disabled. We've had to live off of food stamps for the last 20 years. We are eating better now than we ever have because the food stamps were expanded," and they were able to go to the farmer's market. Lucy : They were able to use them for fresh produce. And she said, "This is wonderful. I'm healthier now than I ever have been." And that was completely the opposite of what we expected. That's not to paint a rosy picture of this all either, but it automatically challenged some of my assumptions about class in America, and how class is then tied to community. Similarly, someone else, they actually came from an upper middle class background and they lived out in the suburbs. And they said that in order to go shopping, they had to drive to a supermarket. People didn't usually go out walking in their neighborhoods. They had all this money, but they didn't have that kind of casual contact that you could get in a city or in a very small town. Lucy : And they said getting food meant they either had to drive somewhere or have it delivered, and they could afford to do that, and they recognized they had a lot of privilege in being able to do that. But she said, "It's very, very lonely. We don't have the usual kinds of contacts." She didn't realize that going to the grocery store had been a way for her to connect with people. Before, it was just a chore and now suddenly, she recognized that it had been a routine that had provided connection for her. That she didn't recognize that. So two things there, having money definitely made things a lot easier for people, but it didn't automatically give them a sense of community. Lucy : And it did not give them people that they felt that they had a sense of belonging with. And then also, being partly because of the pandemic, people were starting to recognize that these activities around food that we think of as just chores, that they were actually opportunities for very meaningful connections with other people. And suddenly we were missing those. Jolie: What about you, Jerry? Any observations either through the research or your own experience, in these last seven, eight months around community that have caused you to think a little differently? Jerry: Especially in thinking about the interviews, it's surprising how much, when you would start to ask somebody what their comfort food is, how little they would talk about the food. And what the conversation would turn to is about the meals that they would share with people, or the origin of the recipe that they got the recipe for their comfort food from. And then they would bring off into a different story about that, about their grandmother, so on, so forth. And so, I think it goes to show so much of comfort food is tied up in identity and community. Who we decide our tribe is. And so it's really fascinating to hear somebody start to talk about how much they really, really have been going to carbs during this time, and then all of a sudden they're talking about how much they miss their grandchildren or friends, so it really is a lot of focus on the comfort that we get from community. Rather than the comfort that we get from food. Jolie: We're going to take a quick break. Thanks for listening to the Big Ideas podcast. Musical Interlude: Question. Answer. Discussion. Announcer: If you are passionate about Big Ideas, consider sponsoring this program. To have your name or organization mentioned here, please contact us at ics@bgsu.edu. Jolie: Hello and welcome to the Big Ideas podcast. Today I'm talking to Dr. Lucy Long and Jerry Reed, about their research on comfort food ways and how the network and practices around food provide opportunities for connection. One of the things that also strikes me in the discussion about comfort foods and how they come from traditions, from rituals, whether those are religious or cultural, familial, regional, things like that. I'm wondering, are you seeing in your research, new traditions being formed out of these pandemic times? Or revisions of traditions due to these particular circumstances? And if so, can you give us some of those stories? Lucy : I think new traditions are definitely being created, being rediscovered. One of the definitions of comfort food, Julie Loker was a medical sociologist who first started studying comfort food, and she published an article in 2002 and then in 2004 that established comfort food as a scholarly topic. And she identified four different needs that were being fulfilled through comfort food, that then helped people relieve their stress. And one of those was nostalgia, one of them was convenience, and we don't always think of convenience and fast food can be comfort food, because it's very convenient. Foods that offer physical comfort, the hot chocolate on a cold day, and then indulgence, which is what we usually think of. And then about 10 years later, another researcher identified belonging as a need that was being fulfilled. Lucy : So people wanted to eat the foods that other people were eating, because it gave them a sense of belonging to that community. So that gave us a baseline for studying comfort food. And part of what we started finding, the definition of comfort food is foods that help relieve stress. That's the accepted, American definition. What we started finding is that the kinds of stresses that people were dealing with during the pandemic, I think are more of an existential nature. We don't have control over our lives anymore. All of a sudden you have to recognize that nature really is more powerful than humans. So all these myths that, Americans in particular have grown up with, were suddenly being challenged. Lucy : And so, what I started noticing was that comfort food was fulfilling some of these more excess existential needs. Baking bread, I find it amazing that that so many Americans had gluten sensitivities, that bread purchasing was what was dropping. And then all of a sudden, they're all trying to make bread during the pandemic. And I felt like a lot of what that was showing was, people had a sense of control by cooking in general. And they could control the whole process and they could control the outcome. And having that sense of control is very important during the pandemic, when we can't control anything else. Lucy : It also gives people a sense of agency or efficacy. We can actually do something, it's not just control, but we can actually do something to change the outcome of things later. So we can organize our freezer so that we know that we can now make dinners for at least another 30 days. And that makes the individual feel like, oh, okay, I can do something to change the outcome of my future. And then also, one of the things that was fascinating, that the researchers who are doing most of the interviews pointed out to me, a lot of people were finding comfort by giving comfort to other people. Working with food banks, making food for their neighbors, doing things like ... something as simple as going shopping and checking with all their elderly neighbors and friends to see if anyone needed things picked up. Lucy : And that was being nice, but it also fulfilled this existential need to feel like, as an individual, we have significance in life. We can matter. And we can matter to these other people. So we started seeing these other needs, rather than belonging, I like to think about connectedness. Because part of what we were seeing with food was people were connecting, not just to a community. They were connecting to nature, to the seasons. So many people started gardening. I know for the first time I was able to do a CSA because usually I'm not in Bowling Green during the summer. Lucy : So suddenly I was, and I discovered that, oh, okay, now I'm eating zucchini and tomatoes and nothing else for the next three weeks. So now I'm eating butternut squash and potatoes and that connects me to the seasons. It connects me to nature. It connects me to these larger things that help to give a sense of continuity of life. So that kind of connectedness is on an existential level. And it's a much deeper kind of stress than simply, I had a bad day. So some of that was very exciting to me, the idea that people were finding comfort by giving comfort. I find that very optimistic and it gives me a lot of hope. Jolie: Yeah, and I think that's one of the ongoing questions, of what of these changes will stick around after there is a vaccine, after the immediate pandemic crisis has passed. Jerry, are there any other new traditions or observations that you were struck by in some of the interviews you've done that you want to share? Jerry: I guess I can categorize them in three different ways. There's the new traditions, one of the examples I can think of is somebody who has specifically taken time out of their day to have their tea time, specific time, and they specifically have their tea with condensed milk. Which is very popular in Newfoundland. Then there's also traditions that have changed. So one interview we talked about how do you have a Seder dinner online and the guides that have been sent out by the community and recipes that have been sent out. Sadly, people can only have a Seder dinner, but have a Seder dinner for a smaller group, rather than the large portions that are usually served because you have so many people. Jerry: And then there's also this, it's a slight abandonment of tradition, and one of the best examples that I have for this from an interview, would be a couple that ... Their new date night routine was to go to this very fancy Italian restaurant. Well, you can't eat in, so they would get the takeout and eat this very nice, expensive Italian food, in their car out of styrofoam boxes. So it's this, going away from being around all these people ,and it speaks the same idea of it, but it's not really the same thing anymore. And it's also an excuse to get out of the house. It has a new meaning just beyond that. And so that's three different ways that I think about it. Jolie: What possibilities do you see in bringing food into classrooms more often and more directly, whether at the K-12 level or in college. Could you talk a little bit about that? The role of education around food? Jerry: Well, I steal this concept from a botanist I met in Costa Rica. He became a botanist, and then later a tour guide, and said that he studied botany because there's plants everywhere, so you always have something to talk about. And the same is true with food as a human need, you just need food, so there's always something there to talk about. And food is so intrinsically tied into identity, and often in ways that we don't realize, which circles through back to the appropriation piece. When we talk about Southern food, for instance, and even Appalachian food, these two very different categories that both get a lot of their food histories from historically Black cooking and slave cooking. Jerry: And so when we talk about food, at any level within education, all of a sudden we're able to talk about individual identities without even having to bring up ethnicity, race, gender. One of the easiest questions to ask, to start talking about what your identity is without really even talking about identity, but talking about food, is to ask how your family prepares rice. Because most families eat rice, and if you don't eat rice, that says something when it comes to identity. And rice is this really recognizable and very versatile food. And so what you do with it says a lot. And then you can start talking about, when it comes to cultural differences, this aesthetic piece, that your enjoyment of this specific rice dish comes from your history and your family and how grandma makes it. Cultural history. Jerry: So food is this vital piece of connection. And my previous research for my thesis focused on how children use food as a means of creating connection and community amongst themselves. And they're very active in doing this, and examining food, and trading food, and trying to engage each other with food. It's a human need. And so to be able to bring this human need to the forefront of education, to use it as a background for conversations in the humanities, conversations in the sciences, is easy and beneficial because it's very easy to understand. Jolie: I'd like us to conclude by asking you each to reflect on our current moment and what you think might be the broader implications on how we regard food ways. And in particular, what lessons do you hope we learn from this moment about food and connection that we can take forward with us in the after times, whenever they do eventually arrive. Jerry, would you go first? Jerry: So much of how we decide who we are as individuals comes back to food. Not necessarily the individual dishes, but the people we eat with, the people we choose not to eat with, and how we share those meals. And what this time has done has changed that in very significant ways. But I think people are also finding ways to overcome that and rebuild their community, and rebuild the communication that they once had through food, through a variety of other means. And so I think one of these overarching pieces that you should begin to look at next is, we compare the inequalities between these two new systems, because it's easy to see one problem in just one system. But once that changes, it reveals new problems that may even say, the problem that we thought we had? It doesn't exist. That's not even the thing because it's actually this thing. So now is the time to really solidify all of these major problems that then can be focused on. Jolie: What about for you, Lucy? What would you hope we take away from this period in history in thinking differently about food and culture? Lucy : First, I should mention, that listeners can go to the website and actually see ... We have an online exhibit from text and photographs from the interviews. So people can go to www.foodandculture.org, and that website takes them to the exhibit and to the whole project. And they can read the questionnaire and actually respond. And they can also see on that website, the curriculum project, doing it. But I think the thing that I take away from this is the significance of food. That we tend to overlook the power that it has to create connections for us. And those connections both take us inwards and outwards, so that we can connect with our own histories, our own past. It can be something that's very personal, but it also connects us outwardly with larger society, with our larger culture, and internationally. So I think what the pandemic is doing is making us recognize the significance of small things, of everyday things that we normally take for granted. Jolie: Thank you both so much for joining me. I really loved this conversation. Listeners can keep up with ICS by following us on social media at @icsbgsu. You can listen to BiG Ideas wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Please subscribe and rate us on your preferred platform. Our producers are Chris Cavera and Marco Mendoza, with sound editing by Marco Mendoza. Research assistance was provided by Kari Hanlin. Musical Outro: Discussion.
Jolie is joined by Dr. Mary-Jon Ludy, chair of the department of public and allied health and an associate professor of food and nutrition at BGSU, and Dr. Jyothi Thrivikraman, an assistant professor of Global Public Health at Leiden University College in the Netherlands. They discuss their interdisciplinary, international research study of how COVID-19 has impacted the sleep and mental health of college students and offer advice on resiliency in the midst of stress. Announcer: From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture & Society, this is BG Ideas. Musical Intro: I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment. Jolie : Welcome back to the Big Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture & Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Jolie Sheffer, Associate -Professor of English and American Culture Studies and the Director of ICS. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we're not recording in the studio, but from home via phone and computer, as always, the opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of BGSU or its employees. Bowling Green State University is located in the Great Black Swamp, long a meeting place for the Wyandot, Huron, Kickapoo, Erie, Miami, and Peoria tribes. We honor the rich history of this land and its indigenous inhabitants, past and present. Jolie: Today, I'm very pleased to be joined by two guests, Dr. Mary-Jon Ludy and Jyothi Thrivikraman. Mary-Jon is department chair of public and allied health and an associate professor of food and nutrition at BGSU. Her research interests include energy balance, body composition, and innovative teaching. Jyothi is an assistant professor of global public health at Leiden University College in the Netherlands. Her research interests include food insecurity, food waste, and healthcare financing. She has worked and taught in countries around the world, including in Asia and Africa. MJ and Jyothi were part of an interdisciplinary, international research team studying how COVID-19 impacted the sleep and mental health of 2000 college students spanning seven countries and three continents. The study's findings and recommendations were first published in an August 2020 special issue of Clocks & Sleep. Thank you both for being with me today. I'm really happy to get to talk to you about your research. To start, could you explain the questions motivating this research and what you learned from your surveys? Mary-Jon: We are looking at the intersections between lifestyle, behaviors, resilience to stress and rumination in college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. So to unpackage that a bit by lifestyle behaviors, we're talking about food intake, alcohol consumption, sleep, physical activity. When we speak about resilience to stress, we're thinking about bounce back or recovery from a stressful situation. And when we think of rumination, we're considering excessive negative thoughts. So with that context, there's been a great deal of research to show that positive lifestyle behaviors, help to bolster mental health and likewise with resilience to stress, if an individual has more resilience to stress that helps to support their mental health. So more resilience, less anxiety, more resilience, more positive mood. The flip is true for rumination. If an individual has more excessive negative thinking, they're likely to have more markers of depression or more perceived stress. There have not been many studies that have looked at that intersection. Mary-Jon: So between lifestyle behaviors, resilience, and rumination, and certainly not in college students during a global pandemic. So that is the focus of our study. And it's a survey, and we have been working, as you said, in the introduction with researchers and a variety of disciplines and a variety of places across the globe. Something that you didn't mention in the introduction. We did our initial research in April and May, but we have done a follow up in October and November. And one of the exciting things I think that we added, we have a new partnership. So we have some partners who are in Ghana. So we have a fourth continent and an eighth country that we're excited to be collaborating with. And I think initially what we have found is that college students are struggling during this pandemic and it doesn't matter where those college students are. Mary-Jon: So the mental health struggles are very real. We're seeing in terms of those lifestyle behaviors that students' dietary quality has decreased, their physical activity has decreased. Their sleep quality has decreased. They're experiencing more stress, less resilience. We have seen perhaps what you would characterize as positive changes in alcohol consumption. So students are drinking less and they're actually spending more time in bed, so more sleep hours, but that hasn't led to better sleep quality. So even though you're staying in bed longer, not sleeping as well, and if we're thinking about the alcohol consumption, a lot of times alcohol consumption comes with group gatherings and folks are doing less of that right now. Jolie: Jyothi, mental health has been on the minds of lots of American parents, faculty members, staff for a long time. How does that compare to where you are at Leiden? Are these patterns similar where the pandemic is exacerbating existing problems, or is the context there a little bit different for sort of what the base point comparison was? Jyothi: So my college, Leiden University College, is part of Leiden University and we're in the international honors' college of Leiden University. And we draw our population 50% from the Netherlands, but the remaining population comes from countries around the globe. And so for many of our students in the initial lockdown, it was this uncertainty about if their country's locked down. Will they be able to get home? And so there was a fear about, will they be able to go home? And if they go home, will they be able to come back and return to study? But the situation now is slightly different. Most of the students have come back to study, and we are doing a mixture of online and face-to-face classes. And the Netherlands as a whole, for most schooling has opted for face-to-face. So primary and high school students are all face-to-face and college students, we have the option of meeting face-to-face if we want to with reduced numbers, smaller classes, ventilation, and mask wearing, which has just been legalized in the Netherlands. Jyothi: So our situation is slightly different in terms of that face-to-face interaction, which I do think has helped a lot with the students. In the initial stages, when we had that very, very strict lockdown in March, April and May, it was a challenge. We're not as an institution used to having online education. So we went from a very small, interactive dynamic program to being on Teams and Zoom, which none of us had ever done before. So there was a great deal of transition, uncertainty, uncertain Wi-Fi connection for many families, right? And many students. And I think some of those issues have resolved as time has progressed. Jyothi: That being said, the students, what they're struggling with now, I would argue is the social aspects. So they're getting the education that they need, but there's the social component of learning that is being missed out on. So we do have a residence building and we do have students living in their dorms, but surprisingly, I was really apprehensive about 400 students moving in from many different countries. I was absolutely confident that we would be ground zero for a COVID outbreak and we've had five or six cases since they've come back. And so that's been amazing, but that has meant that they've been following really strict social distancing guidelines, isolation. So they haven't had the social interaction. And I think now, as the weather gets colder and darker, you can see some of those challenges appearing. We've had beautiful unseasonably warm weather, and now it's cold and dark and it gets dark around four here. So people are fraying at the ends. Jolie: You talked about the way your teaching had to adjust in very short order to online, but I'd like you to talk a little bit about how your research and your data collection methods changed in this time period. And for this project in particular, did you have to do the project differently than you normally would have, or was this kind of similar to the kinds of research each of you had done previously? Mary-Jon: It's really interesting that you ask this. And for a number of years, I've been working with research that involves health patterns in first-year college students. And one of my collaborators, Robin Tucker, is at Michigan State University. And another collaborator, Laura Keaver, is at Institute of Technology Sligo in Ireland. Laura had obtained some grant funding that would have enabled her in April to travel to Michigan State and to BGSU, to help build on our research collaboration. Obviously that didn't happen because of COVID, but one of Robin's graduate students,Chen Du, had recently had a study approved for face-to-face data collection that looked at the intersections of lifestyle, behaviors, resilience, and rumination and college students. So we needed to regroup. Mary-Jon: And Robin and Chen worked together really quickly to reformat this investigation into an online survey. Robin reached out to Laura from Ireland and me at BGSU and said, "Would you like to collaborate on this?" So Laura and I said, "Sure." And we worked quickly to gain approval from our institutional review boards. I posted about the survey to our faculty listserv to get help in recruiting students. And when I did that, almost immediately, I had responses from some colleagues who were interested in getting involved. So Wan Shen is a Chinese faculty member, she is in nutrition. She said, "Could I help you to recruit a Chinese sample of students?" And I said, "Oh, that would be fabulous." Mary-Jon: And HeeSoon Lee, who is a South Korean faculty member in social work, said, "I would love to help you recruit a South Korean population." So both of them jumped on board and then another colleague. His name is Brent Archer, he's a South African colleague, he's in communication sciences and disorders. And he said, "Oh, maybe I can help you recruit a South African population." Well, that didn't work out. However, Brent connected us with Jyothi and her team in the Netherlands, and this just kept growing and growing. And we formed this international team of health focused investigators, but health in a broad sense, multidisciplinary health. And it's been just super exciting to work with and learn from this whole team. Jolie: And Jyothi, what about for you? Was this process in doing sort of everything online and surveys and the sort of international approach, was that in line with previous research you had done, or was this a sort of new mode of work for you as well? Jyothi: It's a very new mode of data collection for me and tend to be very much more of a participatory action research type of researcher. So I've done a photo voice project where participants in the Hague had to take photos of their food waste. So I do believe in local engagement, right? So this was very new for me in survey data. My strong suit is not quantitative data, so this was a leap for me as well too. But you know, what was nice was to join a project with researchers from different countries and to learn from each other, to understand people's different viewpoints on these topics, to even get feedback on the paper. So we've had one paper submitted and accepted. And so it was nice just to see how other people thought about the different issues and the suggestions they gave. So I think it's an opportunity to learn and MJ, Robin and myself, we've applied for another grant. We weren't successful, but this possibility has opened up other possibilities, which has been lovely. So I welcome future collaborations with this team. Jolie: I'm curious, another question I have is sort of how do you when you're working internationally across multiple disciplines, right? So a general common language of health, but thinking about those questions with different methodologies, different theoretical orientations, all of that, how did you create a common research language for talking across those disciplinary, theoretical, geographical and cultural differences? Jyothi: Sure. I can actually give an example. We had multiple email exchanges about this. So in the first round of a survey. We didn't collect any race and ethnicity data. And we were talking about that, during the second round, there is race and ethnic data collected, but solely in the U.S. and we were trying to think about how would we collect that here in the Netherlands? And we don't collect data like that. And so we emailed back and forth with Laura at Sligo. And she said that they just dropped that question. The same with the Malaysian partners and Taiwan and we don't categorize individuals according to Black, white, Hispanic, African-American, those categories don't exist. It's whether you're Dutch or not. And whether you come from a migrant background or not. And so the categories that are used in the U.S. even though they make sense to me, because I'm American, they're not practical here. Jyothi: And for our students, if they had to fill that out, they would know what to make sense of that. We do have students that are Black, but they're African black. We have Zimbabweans; we have Ethiopians; we have a different category. So their experience about being Black is very different. And so I think we spent a few emails, so we actually don't have those questions. So it was also looking at the survey to contextualize it for the various regions, what made sense. And that was fascinating for us to think about as a team. How do we think about this, and what are the assumptions that we're making when we include these questions? Jolie: So, MJ, you were the founding director of the Health, Wellness, & You academic learning community at BGSU where first-year students guided by upperclassmen, grad students and faculty mentors became researchers about their own health patterns. Can you talk a little bit about why you think it's important for first-year students in particular, just to really think reflectively about their patterns and to find opportunities for improving their own self-care practices? Mary-Jon: Jyothi and I actually talked about this yesterday. And one of the concepts that she talked to me about was critical junctures in life. And Jyothi was talking about that in the context of the COVID pandemic being one of these time points, where it can cause you to take either path A or path B, and it's a life course shift. And I think that parallels the work that we do with first-year college students. So it's one of these critical junctures in life where students are adopting patterns that may follow them throughout life. So it's a time where if you're able to establish healthy lifestyle behaviors. So if you're able to learn techniques that will help you to improve your resilience or be more physically active, or eat a high-quality diet or sleep better, that those are patterns that you can use to support you throughout life. Jolie: Given your experience at both the U.S. systems, and now in the Netherlands, I wonder what changes you'd like to see implemented. And you can answer this at whatever scale you want, whether it's sort of on the small scale, like a college campus, right? Are there recommendations you think that could improve health care access and the issues of resilience and things like that for students, or they're kind of bigger scale changes? Clearly, you're mentioning sort of the different kind of economic and social support models that's a much larger scale, but what are some of the smaller scale changes that you think could help improve student outcomes in times of real challenge? Jyothi: So, one of the things that my institution did, because we were shifting online, we decided that the student's well being was central to that. And we weren't going to operate as a business as usual standard. So our Dean actually said, "it's okay if you want to cut back on content a little bit to ensure that whatever you teach you meet the learning outcomes, but you kind of focus on a few things and ensure that they learn those well." So that relieves a little pressure from us, but it also helps the students that they're not just moving from one task to another, to another, one topic to another. So I think it's recognizing at the moment what you need and for the students, it wasn't drilling content and more content into them. And so I think it was even in the initial stages of the pandemic we had from the institution and understanding that 80% is good enough. That we need to transition ourselves. Many of us have families, kids that were home, and it wasn't this expectation of you must work a hundred percent. Jyothi: You need to be on calls. 80% is okay. 70% is okay. And part of that is, it's a different sort of job guarantee. In the U.S. you have tenure in institutions, but many of us here have permanent contracts. So after two years, you're generally up for a permanent contract, which means that it's really hard to fire you. But most people work really hard, so there's a level of trust. So with my husband's company, for example, he was locked down and worked from home, but it was also, they told him universally for the first two weeks, just make that transition to being at home, ensure that your kids are okay. And I think it's not just us as a university or college, it has to be multiple pieces of the puzzle to recognize that we're all in this together and working together. And it made a huge difference that my husband could take two weeks and we could kind of focus on the kids and we didn't have to worry about this and that, that we could kind of transition as a family into this new reality. Jolie: You've both studied, taught and worked at universities and cities around the world. I'm curious as to some observations you might make about similarities or differences with how different regions or nations provide mental health resources and support to students in particular. Mary-Jon: Something that we have both talked about is the stigma that is associated with mental health care and concerns. At BGSU, right before the pandemic, we participated in something that was called, The Healthy Minds survey to look at mental health factors on our campus. And some really interesting findings came out of that. So most of our students were experiencing mental health challenges. So about 60% of them were experiencing mental health challenges, but only about half over the time course of a year actually got treatment for their mental health challenges. So that's half of students going untreated, and the students by and large are reporting that those mental health challenges affect their academic performance. So about four and five of them are saying "these mental health challenges have affected my academics." Mary-Jon: And I think maybe the most interesting thing that came out of that survey for me was that almost no students said that they would judge another person for receiving mental health services. It was very small. It was about 4% of them, but 47% of people thought that other students, other people in their lives, would judge them for receiving mental health services. And when I'm thinking about that, that is the single biggest challenge is to mitigate that stigma so that we're getting students and we're getting members of the population at large connected with the services that they need. Jolie: How does that compare to your experiences, Jyothi? Jyothi: So while we do have good overall medical care, I think mental health is one area that we don't do so well here. So there are waiting times, and it is a challenge to go and seek mental health care. And at my college, we do have student life counselors, but there's a limited number of sessions that you can have and schedule with the student life counselor. So once those are done, you do need to seek care outside of the college and getting and accessing that care, while it might be free, is a challenge. And even that, there are limits to how much the insurance will cover. Jyothi: So in the Netherlands, they ask you to define whether you have a low problem, a medium problem, or a high problem. And then they decide how many sessions they think that you might need. So someone who has a low mental health issue, they might decide to give you 10 sessions, and then it just scales up from there. So while we do have a system that there are not barriers financially, there are other barriers. And so it has been a challenge this semester for some students accessing those services and part because in the country where we struggle with that in general. Jolie: We're going to take a quick break. Thanks for listening to the Big Ideas podcast. Announcer: If you are passionate about Big Ideas, consider sponsoring this program. To have your name or organization mentioned here, please contact us at ics@bgsu.edu. Jolie: Welcome back to the Big Ideas podcast. Today, I'm talking to Dr. Mary-Jon Ludy and Dr.Jyothi Thrivikraman about sleep, mental health, and resilience in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nancy Krieger, a professor of social epidemiology at Harvard's Chan School of Public Health said that COVID is pulling a thread that is showing the very different conditions in which we live because of social structures that are inequitable both within the United States and between countries. By pulling the thread, it's revealing patterns that have long been known in public health. I think this really speaks to what we've been talking about. As we've seen, the pandemic has exposed and deepened racial, socioeconomic, and health inequalities. In the U.S. this is definitely true in the case of Black Indigenous, Latinx, and other communities of color, having higher rates of infection, serious illness and death. And we're certainly seeing that here with the disparate economic impacts of the virus. Do you also see differences in access to and the efficacy of self-care, sleep and resilience among members of at-risk groups? Mary-Jon: I would see some specific challenges to these BIPOC communities and challenges that I have experienced when working with my students are that oftentimes these communities are essential workers. So they haven't been given the same breaks or the same flexibility that lots of us have had for working from home and social distancing. So these communities are put at greater risk. And some of the students that I've worked with, they have had to continue working at their jobs because they are the only family member who's currently working right now. So even though they're trying to navigate the higher education system, they're also responsible for supporting their families. And I think that there's a good body of research to say that the BIPOC communities are also living with higher levels of day-to-day stress. And those experiences with chronic stress can have an effect both on mental health and on physical health. So it's a more vulnerable population. Jolie: Anything you want to add to that, Jyothi? Jyothi: Yes. So we don't have the same categories. So for us, it's migrant, non migrant. And within the migrant category, we do distinguish between Western and non-Western migrants. So for non-Western migrants, so in the Netherlands, that would be Moroccans, Turkish. We do have a large Indonesia Surinamese population from the former Dutch colonies in Indonesia and Suriname. And in the first wave, they were not disproportionately impacted, but in the second wave they have been disproportionately impacted. In terms of whether they're essential workers or not, we don't necessarily have that. So it is much more of a mix between Dutch and non-Dutch doing some of those grocery store clerks, the other essential roles. Jyothi: So it is a different mix here, but I would argue, yes, these communities have been impacted in other ways. So whether it's primarily suffering illness and death from that, but they might have impacts around food. They might be under employed, so the other secondary impacts. A lot of them may not speak Dutch. So accessing medical care, the shift to online education, if your kids go to a local school, everything was in Dutch. And so some of the parents have challenges understanding what is going on if you don't speak Dutch. And then there aren't very many support mechanisms to help non-Western migrants who don't speak Dutch right now. Jolie: We are recording this conversation in December 2020. So we're now a year out from the first confirmed cases of COVID-19. I want to ask a last question. What do you think are the most important lessons that you hope we are learning? What do you see as the best-case scenario for how this current crisis might transform our conversations around mental health and wellbeing? Mary-Jon, you want to go first? Mary-Jon: Sure. For me in the pandemic, I have seen the value of educational institutions. Bowling Green State University, often calls itself a public university for the public good. And I believe that the pandemic has made that mission even more clear. So I'm reflective. And I think about the pandemic as an opportunity to be part of the solution. Something that I think about with higher education is that it has a reputation for being a bit of a dinosaur. So we don't adapt very rapidly to change. And the pandemic was something that forced us to rapidly adapt to change. So we were able to transform our courses quickly online. We have been able to learn that we can work in hybrid course environments in hybrid work environments. And if we have students or we have faculty, or have staff who are experiencing challenges, that it gives us an opportunity to work with them in a flexible sense. Jolie: And for you, Jyothi, what do you hope we take away from this time? Jyothi: I think to follow up on what MJ just said; I do think that it has opened up new possibilities from an educational standpoint, new ways of collaborating across institutions, amongst faculty. We've had guest speakers from around the world that we didn't even think were possible. And so, for exposure to students, that's been brilliant. We've also gotten much more creative about trying to design assignments, where students go outside of the building. So we don't just give them essays anymore. We say go safely or in groups of two with masks and go take photos and develop an essay. So we've started to think creatively about how education works and what's the best way for students to interact with the material. But because I like larger pictures, I do wonder because there is this talk about getting back to normal and some of the conversations we've had about structural inequalities, both in the U.S. and here in the Netherlands. Jyothi: I do hope that we don't go back. I hope that one of the lessons that we learn is how to creatively engage with solutions and problems. To realize what we've been talking about, which is that we're people and that we need each other much more than we've realized. I think both the U.S. and the Netherlands tend to be very individualistic on some level. And one of the lessons that I hope and that public health is formed from is how important we are and how connected we are. And we sometimes forget that. And I hope the pandemic has made us realize our connections. Jolie: Yeah, I think that's so true. I think this time, and the challenge is so many of us have with social distancing, that feeling of isolation really does reveal that when we talk about public health, we're not just talking about viruses or bacterial infections or things like that. We're also talking about collective mental health, and the social fabric of communities and the need to really prioritize that. If we can get a man to the moon, if we can do this moonshot warp speed for a vaccine, why can't we have those same kinds of ambitions and success at really rethinking the social fabric of our communities to be more equitable? So thank you both so much. You wanted to add something? Mary-Jon: So can I add something? And I don't know where to throw this in later, I think many of the pieces of education and pieces of programming already exist, it's just getting people connected with those and something that's been really neat on our campus is we've had these dining robots. So these little robots that you can order and they deliver your meals to you. So that's something that happened on our campus right before the pandemic began and something I serve on this mental health awareness and education committee, and something that we were able to do was to get messages to students about support services, like the counseling center to be included in the dining robot. So when you get your meal, you also get a message reminding you of support services. Mary-Jon: I don't know that will work and actually help to connect people to the services. But I think we need to look at those unique communication methods. And another thing that campus is doing is Designing Your Life. So that's a book that came out of Stanford, but it's an approach. And it's been mostly used with mid-career professionals who might be unhappy in their lives. So to think about how to design more successful and more meaningful lives, but it's an approach that's really being considered for college students to think about designing their lives in a manner that will promote better balance and better self-care. Mary-Jon: So I'm thinking about some of these things that we discussed, and I'm thinking that if we have this designing your life approach, that part of that is thinking about how to bolster your resilience and thinking about how to set up healthy lifestyle behaviors. So I think about these pieces just being infused in all of the courses, and as faculty members, we're always putting together a syllabus design for course. So what can you put in there that can help to connect students with services and let them know that it's actually okay to access the services? Jolie: Listeners can keep up with ICS by following us on social media, whether that's Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook @icsbgsu. You could also listen to Big Ideas wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Please subscribe and rate us on your preferred platform. Our producers are Chris Cavera and Marco Mendoza with sound editing by Marco Mendoza. Research assistance was provided by ICS intern, Morgan Taylor, with editing by Kari Hanlin. Musical Outro: Discussion.
This episode is the final chapter of a mini-series focusing on the NEH-funded project "Toward a Pedagogy from Crisis.” Stevie Scheurich guest hosts and shares the personal stories of precarity and uncertainty for non-tenure track and contingent faculty members in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. These participants discuss how the pandemic brought to light pre-existing crises and economic insecurity within academia and share how they are navigating these challenges as instructors. Announcer: From Bowling Green State University, and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas. Musical Intro: I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment. Stevie: Hello, and welcome back to the Big Ideas Podcast, brought to you by the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. Stevie: I'm Stevie Scheurich, a PhD student in BGSU's American Culture Studies program, and a graduate teaching associate in BGSU's Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies program. I'll be guest hosting this episode, which is part of a mini-series focusing on the National Endowment for the Humanities' sponsored project, "Toward a Pedagogy from Crisis: Adaptive Teaching and Learning at Bowling Green State University during COVID-19." Stevie: Due to the ongoing pandemic, we are not recording in the studio, but from home via phone and computer. As always, the opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the individuals involved, and do not necessarily represent those of BGSU or its employees. Stevie: Bowling Green State University is located in the Great Black Swamp, long a meeting place of the Wyandot, Shawnee, Lenape, Ottawa, Kickapoo, Fox, Pottawatomie, Erie, Miami, Peoria, Chippewa, and Seneca Indian tribes. We honor the rich history of this land and its indigenous inhabitants, past and present. Stevie: For today's episode, we will be doing things a little bit differently. Building on our previous episode, featuring members of the grant team working on Toward a Pedagogy from Crisis, today, I will be talking to the non-tenure track faculty members who participated in the summer camp devoted to reflexive teaching and learning. Campers were comprised of graduate teaching associates and contingent faculty who experienced differing levels of precarity due to their positioning within academia. Stevie: Since we here at Big Ideas are big believers in the transformative power of storytelling, this episode will feature members of the Summer Institute sharing their personal experiences of precarity and uncertainty caused by COVID-19 pandemic. Stevie: I began by asking everyone about how the pandemic has brought to light preexisting crises and precarity within academia. These crises are disproportionately experienced by people who are Black, Indigenous, people of color, disabled, queer, and working class folks at all levels of academia. Stevie: I asked everyone how they saw these inequalities affecting their students and themselves as non-tenure track faculty. Everyone immediately began by reflecting on how their students were being affected. Megan Rancier, an Associate Teaching Professor of Ethnomusicology was concerned by major gaps in access to internet and technology. Megan: I think I've definitely noticed those inequalities kind of more outside the university than within it. But I think you're absolutely right that once we kind of all went into crisis mode, all of these obstacles, all of these inequalities, suddenly became much more obvious to people who previously probably were oblivious to them, like me. Megan: For example, I'll talk about one thing with faculty and one thing with students, and I'll start with the students because obviously when we shifted everything online, there was this massive assumption that the internet would just solve everything. It won't be any problem. Students are using internet all the time. They're good at it. They know how to use all of these different things. And of course they'll have access, because why wouldn't they? Megan: Then, come to find out, everybody was using the university wireless. Well, not everybody, but a lot of people were using university devices, people living in urban spaces, rural spaces, it didn't matter where they were, if they were not on campus, there was no guarantee that they were going to have access to a device or access to a reliable internet, and, in some cases, internet at all. Megan: In retrospect, it seems completely bizarre that we would have just made that assumption that everybody would be fine. Within a few days. It became obvious that everything was not fine and students started to fall through the cracks. So that was a huge challenge for everybody. And then you start looking around and realizing how many other challenges students are dealing with. Of you're in an apartment with eight other family members and they're all sharing the same device, or maybe you live in a situation that is not healthy or safe, you have that added challenge. Megan: All of a sudden the focus totally shifts from, "we need to make sure the students are doing what they're supposed to be doing, completing their assignments, doing what we ask them to do in our course syllabus, et cetera, et cetera," and all of a sudden we, faculty, are more placed in a situation where we're like, "Hey, are you okay? What do you need? Talk to me. Are you there? I'm worried about you." Megan: Suddenly it became a lot more human than I think a lot of faculty are used to being with their students. And that is very challenging, I think, for a lot of faculty, because I think sometimes we go into this sort of default mode of almost a little bit of a oppositional relationship with students, as if they're always trying to outsmart us and we're always trying to anticipate what they're going to try to do to get out of what we're assigning them, blah, blah, blah. And so there's this kind of Tom and Jerry dynamic a little bit. Megan: But when we get into that mindset, we forget about each other's mutual humanity, and I think that the COVID crisis and shifting everything to online and realizing the real problems that our students were dealing with outside of coursework, was a real wake-up call for faculty, that I think we needed. Stevie: Christopher Witulski is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the College of Musical Arts who teaches ethnomusicology and world music. He's noticed that both the pandemic and the summer's protest for racial justice have prompted a broader discussion about how curriculum design can be used to either promote or push back against colonial and white supremacist structures. Christopher : Maybe that's telling that it's not very often that I sit back and think, what would the dream structure be for a system that is more equitable for everybody involved. The fact that that's not a conversation that we have is telling in its own right, and perhaps that's part of the conversation itself. Christopher : But no, in my department, we're actually trying to make some changes. I think there are a lot of things that we've noticed related to the COVID crisis in the spring, the shifty online learning too, and then also the issues, the obvious foregrounding of racial disparities and inequities that happened over the summer, obviously that extended far past that, but that became really clear and really focused in the national consciousness over the summer. Christopher : That's turned into, I don't know about other fields, but across music studies that's been something that every part of musical studies has been grappling with, this history of white supremacy, why we value what we value, what we teach, why we teach what we teach, how we do it. Because at the end of the day, it's all choices that we're making. We're valuing certain ideas and valuing certain content. Christopher : I personally don't care if you know Mozart's birthday, but this is a conversation I've been having with my students for a different class, how can you take these ideas about history and thread them into something that's relevant and compelling and helps us to understand the experiences that we are having here and now? How do we understand? When I teach world music, how do we look to other people around the world and see how they're interacting with music and each other, and use that to understand ourselves? Christopher : Maybe that's a little selfish, but how can we look at something that feels different, because that's what a lot of teaching is, you're introducing new ideas, and then using that to better reimagine ourselves? Stevie: Some of the people I talked to focused on how the pandemic's highlighting of existing inequalities has given us an unprecedented opportunity for improvement. Tiffany Scarola, an Assistant Teaching Professor in the English Department sees the pandemic and the major shifts in educational approaches that it requires as an opportunity for expanding and accelerating the work that has already been done to build just and equitable classrooms. Tiffany: I feel like for both me and my students it's been equally set, but I mean, there's always going to be issues in any form of education, whether it be higher education or K-12 learning, because people are becoming more comfortable with embracing their identities, which they should. We have accessibility now as opposed to it being disability previously, and we have the LGBTQI community. Especially BG, it being a safe zone, safe campus, things like that. Tiffany: It's just the fact that people are becoming more comfortable, but it's still this slow moving arch, because we just don't know what people are going to become comfortable with once they kind of define their identity. But before I definitely feel like a lot of those particular issues that students struggled with, especially with regards to identity, not just so much as in gender or binary identity, but in terms of having disability requirements and stuff like that, students with dyslexia, or I have a student who requires to be able to actually see my mouth physically to be able to listen to lecture, because I forget what it is that causes that, but that kind of need is something that I never would have thought of, especially now with having to wear my face partially covered when I do a physical lecture. Tiffany: But I definitely think some good has actually come out of the pandemic because now we're kind of, and I don't want to use the word forced, but it seems like the only term I can kind of use. We have to confront it and we have to realize it in a real way and in an immediate way. And some of the stuff that we've had to do to accommodate just kind of the general student population has very much had a positive effect. Stevie: While everyone was mostly focused on how the crisis was affecting their students, with a little encouragement I was able to get them to share how the crisis was affecting them as non-tenure track faculty members. Megan: Of course faculty were going through their own challenges. So shifting from the students to the faculty themselves, I think most of us are in the privileged position of not having to worry about equipment and reliable internet as much, although that is still a challenge for a number of faculty, especially part-time faculty who don't enjoy a full-time salary, let's face it. And they also have job precarity, as you mentioned, to worry about. Megan: I saw numerous examples of people trying to teach from home, but they had their kids there. Their kids were home from school and they're trying to juggle 50 different things. I mean, I realized how incredibly lucky I am to have what I have, just a quiet space. I don't have children so I didn't have to worry about that. And I completely sympathize with people who do because that just seems like such an impossible task. But yeah, a lot of pressure placed on faculty to suddenly come up with this completely new way of teaching that a lot of faculty just really were not prepared for. Megan: It makes sense. I mean, so many things you take for granted, just sitting in a room and talking to another person, you don't realize how easy it is until you're trying to replicate that experience through a screen with buttons and apps, and all of a sudden you realize, oh my gosh, I took this simple thing so much for granted, where I could say something and look at the other person to see if they understand, and now I can't even do that. That's such a simple thing, such a human thing, that technology really cannot fully replicate. Megan: The pedagogical experience, like pedagogy itself, is so dependent on that basic human interaction that I think a lot of us are still kind of struggling to figure out how to replicate that. Stevie: All of the campers I spoke with noted that the COVID crisis and the summer camp have encouraged them to bring a vulnerability and approachability that has helped them build stronger community in both their virtual and face-to-face classes. Here's Elena Aponte, Adjunct Instructor of Women's Studies and Academic Writing. Elena:: I think struggling with community was kind of an issue beforehand. It still is now, but I think post pandemic, we're a little more in this together. And I think difficult in terms of personal issues, my teaching persona and being a teacher has incredibly changed since the pandemic. And that's one of the things that the summer camp really helped with too, is just allowing us to be more vulnerable and allowing us to really engage more as a community with students, whether that's making sure to let them know that this is a safe classroom or just simply reaching them on a more personal level with the different things you can do as a teacher. Stevie: And here's Chris Witulski. Christopher : I think I have, but I'm not sure if it's a change from the student side or if it's a change that results out of my own thinking as I shifted during the camp. There were a couple of elements of the camp that I really appreciated, especially starting... The idea of creating a space for learning is not a super novel idea for online teaching. But for instance, I remember there was a moment in the camp where some of the assigned listening was about vulnerability and humanization and sort of humanizing yourself and trying to allow the students to be human as well. And that goes beyond the basic, here are a handful of strategies for icebreakers and building communities. It gets beyond that in a way. Christopher : For many students, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it doesn't matter. But I feel like I hope it does. Sort of being more human, being a real person, being vulnerable, being comfortable with that, sort of sitting within that and existing there. So yeah, in that sense, I do feel like there has been a change. I hope it's something that's reflected in the way the students are perceiving things. Stevie: Some campers have also noted that as much as technology can be a barrier, it can also help build a relaxed and supportive learning environment. Here's Elena Aponte again. Elena:: I think allowing them talking via chat is often really fun too. Because if you spend a lot of time online or interacting with each other like that, it is really fun. So it's been fun to teach that way too. And they are kind of way more supportive. I know in my office we have the motion sensor lights and sometimes if I'm lecturing my lights will just turn off. So they're used to me waving my hands at some point during the lecture to turn the lights back on, and they're really supportive about that. Stevie: Speaking of technology making and breaking barriers, Tiffany Scarola shared with me how she used Snapchat to help reach students who only have access to classes through their phones. Tiffany: In the spring, when we were first to go all remote, I had one of those students who was using his phone a lot for schoolwork, and I decided to use Snapchat as a mode of communication with my students. And I kind of sent it as a joke, "You guys can hit me up on Snapchat." And a bunch of them were like, "No, I really need it, because I have terrible internet, or I have unreliable internet, but my phone data works so much better." Tiffany: At the end of the semester, several of them remarked to me, "If you hadn't used Snapchat to send out messages about class, I never would have known when some stuff was due or I never would have known class announcements or never would have known these updates." Stevie: I concluded all of my interviews by asking the campers to share with me their wildest dreams about how this crisis could serve to restructure academia into a more just and equitable environment for both instructors and students. Answers ranged from changes in individual teaching practices to broad changes at every level of education in the United States. Tiffany Scarola emphasized the radical importance of bringing transparency to academia. Tiffany: This is something that I truly do value, pandemic or no, but definitely the pandemic I think would provide us the opportunity to embrace this, is transparency for real and not the manifestation, the falsity of it. I mean, because transparency is a real thing and people say the word, but they don't live the word sometimes with certain things. And I just feel like, if not now, when are you going to do it? Tiffany: Because that's how we break the barriers and realize that all of those members of those underrepresented groups can participate. If we are truly embracing transparency, then those groups will feel included. Of course, people identifying by their proper pronoun, all those things are so acceptable and great and I love that and let's keep doing that, but that's not all we need to do to create a completely equitable society, either in academia or outside of academia. Tiffany: I just hear the word transparency used in meetings and it's just like, but you guys don't fully embrace it, and that's part of why there's still a disconnect and why your students aren't getting the material, is because you aren't fully being transparent. Tiffany: I, for as long as I've been teaching, I think I've been teaching now at this level since, I want to say, like 2013 was my first year teaching academically at college level, and I have always tried to embrace the idea of transparency before it was a thing. Letting my students know about the things that I struggled with in school and the things that I struggle with as an instructor, letting them know, "Guys, I really messed up this one lecture thing from the other day, so forgive me. Let me backtrack on this," and stuff like that. Tiffany: Just being actually open with them, even down to how I design my Canvas shelves. When I do it, I put everything out there for them all at once, and I tell them, yeah, it's going to be scary and intimidating, but at least you know everything that you're getting into. And I try to make it so everything is just in the modules and they can just go on down the line and there's no, here's your to-do list for the week, here's this separate window where you can get all these readings from. It's like, here's all the readings and they're listed in the schedule in this order, so literally all you have to do is go down the line. Here's the assignment for this week and just go on down the line. As opposed to making them dig for the content. Tiffany: There's a time and a place where they should be doing that for source acquisition and stuff like that, but a truly transparent classroom means that we recognize all of those things and we allow our students to see that we are not infallible, because that's a big part of the problem with not just the underrepresented groups, but with the groups that are widely represented. They still feel that there's this really big distinction between the fact that we're in front of the room and they're on that side of the room. Tiffany: At one point, we were all on that side of the room and we need to recognize the real struggles of what happens on that side of the room, regardless of race, gender identity, any of those things. And it starts with us acknowledging the things that we have struggled with ourselves. Tiffany: Right now, people are more willing than ever to talk about things that they're struggling with, but we still could do more. In an ideal utopian society, yeah, it would be to not just say that I believe in transparency and to say that I create a safe space, to actually live up to saying the words. Because there's a big difference between saying that you embrace it and actually demonstrating it to your students. That's how you get through to them, and that's how you overcome crisis, whether it be in your education or in the real world. It's all the same. Stevie: Chris Witulski focused on the need for universities to build flexibility into their structures to encourage experimentation and to make systemic change easier. Christopher : This is something that I wish we were better at, but there are a lot of structural, really firm, multi-level structural boundaries to being able to make the kinds of changes that I think would be really helpful, whether it's in the area, in the department, in the field of study, in the classroom, at the university. Christopher : I think the hardest part... See, I don't even have an answer to what I would imagine a dream situation to be, because I'm having a hard time imagining beyond the boundaries that exist, you know? But I feel like oftentimes there are solutions that seem really clear and really straightforward, but then there are boundaries to implementing those that are frustrating and I think the sheer degree of frustration that exists keeps those boundaries in place. Those things prevent people from being able to carry out the kinds of changes that would make a difference. Christopher : In terms of a structure, I would love to see a more flexible university. I would love to see a more flexible system. We're trying to do that a little bit in our area. I would love to see stronger online systems. I would love it whenever I take an online class, I learned a lot because there were good things that I wanted to use instead of, I took this online class and I learned a lot because being a student in it was really awful for some reason. The camp was actually was an excellent example of something that gave a lot of models of how you can do this better. But a lot of times when I've taken online classes, they've been really painful. Christopher : I would love to see more flexibility for instructors, for the university, for structures, for students, more options, more ways to engage things, more ways to understand the ideas that we're trying to get across, more opportunity for choosing your own adventure, but not in a way that just sort of fits you within a different administrative structure instead, which is what it often turns into. You know what I mean? So a way to do that in a real powerful way at the core of imagining what the school is. Christopher : What that looks like, I don't know. I'd have to sit down for a little while and jot some notes down. Stevie: Elena Aponte emphasized how hiring more Black, Indigenous, and POC instructors will positively impact Black, Indigenous, and POC students. Elena:: I think the sense of humanity is really important, and if I was going to look to the future, I would definitely hope that that sense of humanity is put to the forefront too. And again, going back to my personal things in terms of justice and equity, making sure not to teach students a history of anything that's whitewashed. Elena:: Because in the Pathways Program, I do have quite a bit of students who are students of color, are first-time, first-generation students, and they may not be expecting their professors to even acknowledge that or understand that, and so I want to be able that I can. Elena:: It does frustrate me that I am, even though I'm half Puerto Rican, I'm still white, I'm also half white, so it's frustrating that I do have to teach students of color their history in some way. That is frustrating. So my hope for the future would be that there's more opportunities for professors of color to teach everything they want to teach, but also to teach students a history from their own perspective too. Elena:: I know we're seeing stuff with like the University of Chicago is offering, it's been a while since I've read the article, but they're offering this program specifically for Black scholars and they're getting a lot of pushback for it because they're saying, well, you're shutting out a huge demographic of students, et cetera, et cetera. But if we're looking at the world around us, it makes sense for them to want more Black scholarship, especially if we need to understand these issues for those of us who can't, or didn't before. So that's also something I'd like to see moving forward in terms of justice and equity, recognizing the Black, Indigenous, people of color, and that community and making more opportunities for them without making them feel guilty either. Stevie: Elena also pointed out the importance of equitable pay for non-tenure track faculty. Elena:: From a completely personal standpoint, more opportunities for adjunct professors as well. Better pay. Access to healthcare. I think adjunct professors do a lot of the majority of teaching core classes for universities. Same thing with graduate students. Graduate students teach a lot of core classes as well. They just need to be more publicly recognized for the work that they do. Elena:: We're well-educated individuals. A lot of us have masters degrees as well. And we're doing this because we love to teach, or we love the discipline that we've learned in, so it's only fair that we should get a little more recognition over what we do at the university, which I think will happen in time, for sure. Stevie: Finally, Megan Rancier pointed out the importance of equitably funding education at all levels. Megan: Now, if we're talking about my wildest dream, I would want to make university education free. I would want it to be accessible to everybody. And that would also require all the K-12 schools to be adequately resourced and equitably resourced, so that students come in with the same levels of preparation. Which, if you teach in any university, you realize that they are not. So that would be my wildest dream. Equal resource allocation to all K-12 schools, free college for everybody, adequate funding. Megan: My God, if you look at the decline in the state share of instruction to public universities, the institutions that the state is supposed to be supporting so that it has an educated workforce that can then go into good jobs so that they can then pay their taxes and fund everything that we need in the state, it's shocking how that funding has declined over the past few decades. Megan: I would love for this crisis to be a wake up call to state legislators, and even federal legislators, to reinvest in public education, because we need it. And we've seen how the pandemic has highlighted all of these inequities. Megan: But what my fear is, is that it might do completely the opposite, because we've had this economic downturn as a result of the pandemic and the knee jerk reaction seems to be, well, we've got to cut this, we've got to cut that. All of a sudden we're in austerity mode, when that is very short-term thinking. If we're thinking in the long-term, we need to be investing in education even more. Megan: Not to get on a soapbox or anything, but because of what I saw with inequal access to technology and resources during the shift in spring 2020, I would just like for that not to be an issue, those just simple barriers to an education. And again, it's true at the K-12 level as well. Megan: Every child, every student should have equal access and equal opportunity to the tools and resources that they need in order to have a shot at being successful. Because otherwise the inequalities will simply compound on each other and the gaps will become wider. We need to change the direction of the funding situation in education. So I don't know if that was a dream or a dystopia that I just painted for you. Stevie: With that, I'll leave you all to mull over your own dreams and ideas about what can be done to build a more just and equitable academia and educational environment for all. Stevie: I want to thank everyone who spoke with me for this episode. Listeners can keep up with the Tour to Pedagogy from Crisis Project and other ICS happenings by following us on Twitter and Instagram @icsbgsu and on our Facebook page. Stevie: You can listen to Big Ideas wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Please subscribe and rate us on your preferred platform. Stevie: Our producers are Chris Cavera and Marco Mendoza, with sound editing by Marco Mendoza. Support for this episode was provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which funded the grant project, Toward a Pedagogy from Crisis: Adaptive Teaching and Learning at Bowling Green State University during COVID-19.
Martin erzählt von dem kanadischen Weihnachtslied "T'was in the moon of wintertime" (Huron Carol), das ursprünglich von einem Missionar für die Wyandot geschrieben wurde. Der Liedtext zeigt, wie sich die Weihnachtsgeschichte in andere Kulturräume hineinfindet.
Ah, Thanksgiving. Turkey, green bean casserole, and...genocide. In this episode, we focus on Native Americans and the effects of the colonization of North America by European settlers throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. In particular, we discuss the life and legacy of St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American to be canonized, and Leatherlips of the Wyandot, a Native American leader executed for witchcraft by his own people. Enjoying the podcast? Please take a second to rate/review/subscribe! Here's how to get in touch with us: Email: saintsandwitchespodcast@gmail.com Instagram: @saintsandwitchespodcast Twitter: @saintsnwitches
In honor of Native American Heritage Month, we are mashing up two of our favorite indigenous subjects: Lyda Conley & Susan La Flesche Picotte. Conley was a formidable fighter for justice & the preservation of Wyandot cemetery. Susan was a the first Native American woman to receive a medical degree. Please consider donating this month to an indigenous charity, especially one that works towards helping women & LGBTQ+ folks. Stay safe, stay healthy.
This Deal Analysis highlights The VareCo’s ability to execute a unique value-add opportunity in an A+ location in Denver, CO. This deal consists of a 23 unit property, a duplex, and a vacant lot. Throughout the entirety of the project, The VareCo saw the project through to completion, despite unexpected bumps along the way.
In this episode, Joanie Spencer, Director of Content and Partner at Avant Food Media, visits with Rob Sarlls, who has spent his career at Wyandot cultivating a cohesive company culture, inspiring change, and harnessing business as a force for good. Sarlls discusses focusing on better-for-you snacks, applying to become a Certified B Corporation, providing COVID-19 relief for employees, and benefitting from SNAC International membership.
To keep the production line running, baking and snack companies are finding new ways to support and incentivize their workers throughout the pandemic. Baking & Snack spoke with Rob Sarlls, president and chief executive officer, Wyandot Snacks, about why the company decided to give its employees snacks, extra pay and quarantine aid during the crisis and how it has impacted morale.
On this episode of the #FromTheShadowsPodcast , the crew is excited to bring to you an interview that we had with Ashlie Payton. Ashlie Payton is a graduate of Bowling Green State University College of Arts and Sciences, in History. She lives in Upper Sandusky. She has been a professional Harpist from 2002 till the present. Ashlie has held managing positions and researcher with both Wyandot county and Wood county historical societies where she specializes in folklore and explaining the real facts that contribute to the folklore. #ashliepayton #uppersandusky #wyandotcounty #woodcounty #folklore #history #bowlinggreenstateuniversity #researcher The From The Shadows Podcast is a program where we seriously discuss the supernatural, the paranormal, cryptozoology as well as ufology. Anything that cannot be rationally explained has a platform for discussion here on the From The Shadows Podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe!
Anishnaabe have signed many treaties with various governments. South of Lake Superior in the early 1800's was a tumultuous time. What do these treaties entail?Have the Treaties been honoured?Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/user?u=19470381)
Three sisters barricaded themselves in a Wyandot cemetery in downtown Kansas City, Kansas, in the early 1900s, in order to save it from destruction. Hear how the Wyandot came to settle in Kansas, and how one of those sisters, Lyda Conley, took the battle over the cemetery all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Rita & Amanda encounter a creepy man at a bar, not a first for either of them. Then Amanda tells the story of Lyda Conley, the first Native American woman to argue before the Supreme Court, while Rita regales us with the tale of Lucy Hobbs Taylor. Lucy was the first woman to graduate from dentistry school! Don't forget to follow us on social media! FB: facebook.com/idkherpodcast Twitter: @IDKHerPodcast Insta: @idkher_podcast
Alzheimer's Association, Northwest Ohio Chapter serve 24 counties in Northwest Ohio including Allen, Ashland, Auglaize, Crawford, Defiance, Erie, Fulton, Hancock, Hardin, Henry, Huron, Knox, Lucas, Mercer, Ottawa, Paulding, Putnam, Richland, Sandusky, Seneca, Van Wert, Williams, Wood, and Wyandot. The Alzheimer's Association is the leading voluntary health organization in Alzheimer's care, support and research. Our mission is to eliminate Alzheimer's disease through the advancement of research; to provide and enhance care and support for all affected; and to reduce the risk of dementia through the promotion of brain health.24hr Help Line 1-800-272-3900You can find more info at alz.org/nwohio
We have a lot to be thankful for this year--the biggest thing being, perhaps, the fact that we don't have to worry about Big Head. This week, Megan tells us the story of Big Head, also known as Flying Head. This featured creature from Wyandot and Iroquois mythology is a cannibalistic monster afraid of acorns. If you like our podcast, don't forget to rate and subscribe and let all your spooky friends know! If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or shoutouts for your guinea pig, feel free to reach out by emailing us at fairytalltalespod@gmail.com! You can also get social with us: Instagram: @fairytalltales Twitter: @fairytalltales Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FairyTallTales --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/fairy-tall-tales/support
Some of the trickiest navigation for a singer can be pronunciation. You can feel like you are thrown about like a canoe in a storm, especially if you are working in another language. To avoid drowning, you need skill - and to be in control. As a bilingual choir, we regularly sing songs in both French and English - as well as in many other languages. To ensure we have the correct pronunciation, we always try to get help from experts -- people who study or first language is the one we are working in. Many years ago, we learned that there are two ways to pronounce Latin - one for speaking and one for singing! We have been so fortunate to have choir members from many cultures, who speak German, Finnish, Spanish, French - and even proper English! We also reached out to experts to sing the Huron Carol properly in the original Wyandot language. Here is a little sample of Pierre working on pronunciation of a small part of the popular French Christmas Carol, Tous Le Ciel Reluit (All the Heavens Glow). _ *PleaseDONATE to support our 40th year events ! *_ All Donations receive a charitable receipt. About The Stairwell Carollers: * * Pierre Massie started our a cappella choir in 1977 while a music student at Ottawa University. The Stairwell Carollers are ranked with the best of Ontario choirs, winning both the 2010 and 2013 Ontario Music Festival Association competitions. A registered Canadian charity, we also help local charities with our concert,CD and cookbook sales. * *
Daniel sat down with Richard Zane Smith, Catherine Tammaro, Steven Dorland, and Lindi Masur at the Gardiner museum to talk about traditional Wyandot pottery, cultural revitalization, resistance, and the importance of tradition. Music: Joakim Karud - Waves (Vlog No Copyright Music) Music provided by Vlog No Copyright Music. Video Link: https://youtu.be/VMghJ_civuM
For episode 7 of The Outstanding Ohioians show, I had the privilege of interviewing Gene Logsdon, the well-known "Contrary Farmer". Gene has authored 30 books, written for many farming journals, and his popular blog "The Contrary Farmer". During the interview that will stir your soul, Mr. Logsdon will reminisce about growing up and returning to Upper Sandusky, being raised in a charming rural lifestyle, giving the Seminary a try, becoming a writer, raising a family, and recently fighting a battle with cancer that made him look at life through a different lens. Mr. Logsdon is best recognized through his writing as an advocate for garden and small-scale farming, along with sharing pieces of farming history. His writing is often the result from his own small farming operations or talking to others. I really enjoyed my conversation prior to the interview, and I trust you will enjoy listening to the podcast. Here is how you can learn more about Mr. Logsdon: Gene's blog Books written by Gene Logsdon Thank you for listening. Please rate the show on Itunes or Sticher.
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