Into the COLAverse – Episode 2: Heather Houser

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to Into the Colaverse, a podcast that takes us on the unique journeys of faculty in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Join me your host, Frederick Luis Aldama as we learn of the many ways that our faculty and their cutting edge work is transforming the world today.

[00:00:22] Frederick: I am so – this is so exciting for me. I have Heather Houser, who is an award-winning scholar, professor of English at the University of Texas with us. Um, Heather also holds affiliations with American Studies Center for Women’s in Gender Studies and the Rapaport Center for Human Rights and Justice. Heather is also co-founder of Planet Texas 2050 that we’ll hear a little bit about in our conversation.

[00:00:50] Frederick: It’s my great pleasure to talk with and learn from Heather Houser for this episode of Into the Colaverse Podcast. Welcome, Heather.

[00:00:59] Heather: Thanks so much, Frederick, for, for having me in the Colaverse. I guess I’m always in the Colaverse to some extent, but to talk in this, in this venue with you, it’s great. Great to see and hear from you.

[00:01:12] Frederick: So I wanna hear about what was kind of in the air that you were breathing as, I don’t know, a young heather at some, and that kind of led you to literature. I know you ended up at Reed College and then Stanford and um, ultimately your. Incredible research that brings together the sciences, humanities, and technology studies, affect theory, all of these incredible areas that we’re really pushing the boundaries of understanding us and us on the planet, us together.

[00:01:53] Frederick: How did this start to kind of shape? What is it a Yeah, tell us about your journey, Heather .

[00:02:00] Heather: Yeah. In, uh, we’ll keep my eye on the time so I don’t go too long on this. It’s, um, I would say I, I’ll start with literature because I feel. All those other things came much later. I had no science interest background.

[00:02:14] Heather: Um, I work in environmental humanities now, and by background I mean like as a kid I wasn’t into those things. Um, I grew up in the Poconos in Pennsylvania mostly, which for those who don’t know, it’s just a. Uh, a rural, well rural isn’t exactly right. It’s um, it’s a, um, now a major like recreation tourist site and was even when I was growing up.

[00:02:40] Heather: But it’s become more so and it’s really beautiful. It’s on the Appalachian trail. A lot of people come the like hike and swim and go on the Delaware River. But I didn’t do any of those things. So like the environmental part of my life didn’t really come from that time of my life, but it was there in the background.

[00:02:59] Heather: Um, my family. Was not, they were not big readers. So I’m the first in my family to love literature, to um, really be drawn to sort of an intellectual life. I’m the first to go to college in my family, and then all the things that come after college. Um, so I’d say in some respects that came from, uh, some that is my love of literature sort of turning to.

[00:03:30] Heather: From some turmoil. I mean, I had a bit of an unstable upbringing in a lot of ways, and I think I was drawn to reading as kind of a place to hide, , um, a place to go into, um, when things seemed uncertain around me. Um, and just a place to imagine other worlds. You know, I, I was not a writer. I didn’t like write fiction or anything as a little kid really.

[00:03:59] Heather: Just inhabiting other worlds and other stories really, I think drew me in partly because there were some uncertainties and instability in my own life. But I think there’s just like, uh, a I was a quiet kid, you know, I, I, I think there were aspects of, and just like the tangibility of reading, like holding something.

[00:04:24] Heather: I think there were just, uh, aspects. What reading feels like. Fit me right beyond some utilitarian , um, like, let me escape to this world kind of, um, perspective on it. Um, and then were there

[00:04:42] Frederick: any, Yeah, let me, let me ask you, were there, did you have any, um, I don’t know. Favorites. Favorites that you might have even returned to later on as a scholar of um

[00:04:53] Heather: Oh wow.

[00:04:54] Heather: Actually I don’t, That’s interesting cuz I, um, so well as my favorites as kind of like a preteen when I was reading longer books. Um, like I loved the A of Green Gable series. I loved. Um, so The Secret Garden by France, Francis Hobson, Burnett, and her other books, um, sort of these late Victorian, uh, narratives.

[00:05:19] Heather: I don’t work on that. I actually haven’t, I end up reading now Victorian novels as. Kind of pleasure reading because I don’t re work on them and didn’t really have them in my college education either. So I don’t return to that except that I kind of used in my scholarly work. But I, I like these big, uh, Large plotted large character novels as a source of, um, escape and kind of filling gaps and curiosity about, uh, a literary period.

[00:05:54] Heather: I didn’t really spend much time in as a scholar. Um, But I then turned to, uh, the beats and like people like Hemingway, I actually just wrote, recently wrote an essay that maybe someday someone will publish , um, called Girliness in the Big Dick Cannon. I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that on here, but um, can you just call it girliness?

[00:06:16] Heather: Is, is kind of about being shame about my love of people like, or books like Anne of Green Gables and being told like, Well, if you’re serious, you should. Hemingway. So I did , then I started to read the Beats and Norman Mailer, you know, all these white, highly masculine, um, often misogynist, uh, writers. But I really got into it.

[00:06:42] Heather: And again, I don’t go back to that in my scholarship, but it really was the gateway for me of. Um, seeing literature as a quote unquote, serious, um, pursuit. And, you know, what I work on now is quite different from that, but I do see that was despite the source of it, which was sort of like the shaming of reading girly literature, um, it did really open up this world of like, Oh, reading is a, is a valid pursuit.

[00:07:15] Heather: It’s something that you could do beyond just leisure or pleasure.

[00:07:21] Frederick: Yeah, absolutely. Um, oh gosh. It’s so funny because I was a big sci-fi kind of nerd, um, as a teen, but my librarian also introduced me to some of those big, like George Elliot Middle Middlemarch novels and all sorts. And I, I love those novels.

[00:07:45] Frederick: It’s like I. There was something about those long, large kind of multi, or these like really thick plotted Yeah. Narratives that still to this day, even though I don’t have the time , I love, um, I love that deep, long lasting engagement with fiction. Um, so was it at Stanford then that you kind of came into.

[00:08:12] Frederick: This incredible space of, you know, affect, um, technology studies, environmental humanities. Um, yeah, tell, tell me.

[00:08:23] Heather: Yeah, it was, so I went to read college and they make you write a thesis, which I put, and that’s maybe negatively cuz I really, uh, fell into that process. Like really learned that I love to research and write long things.

[00:08:36] Heather: So, um, but I was focused then. I mean, I would say what is endured from that time in my life till now is I was focused on contemporary fiction and um, that’s also what I work on now. But back then, I wrote a thesis on Salman Rashti’s, the Satanic verses, and was interested in post-colonial theories. And, uh, I’d say I was a theory head back then.

[00:09:01] Heather: uh, just like totally fell in love with really complex, uh, theoretical concepts and readings. And then I, I spent three years not in school doing other things, but I stayed in Portland, Oregon where Reed is. And um, it was in that time, those three years that I became much more. Invested in like environmental issues from a pretty urban perspective.

[00:09:25] Heather: I mean, I love to hike in Oregon and get outside, um, which I hadn’t done in the Poconos, but I picked it up there in, in Oregon. But it was living in Portland that I started to think more about environmental issues. I mean, it’s a city known for things like it’s great transit system. It’s also known though as like a city.

[00:09:47] Heather: Uh, grew in its wealth because of logging and like clear cutting was really visible and really an issue that, um, I became interested in. So like, I think that was activated sort of in an environmental interest was activated in my years after college. And then when I started grad school, I had no sense I was going to bring that into my work.

[00:10:12] Heather: Ursula HEA was at Stanford at the time, and she’s one of the, if not founders, cuz those are words, you know, that are tricky to use. But one of like the brightest lights of like environmental criticism then and now. Um, and so I, I was in her presence and learning so much from her. I was living in California.

[00:10:35] Heather: Again, there’s a very strong environmental movement, um, and a strong like relationship to the outdoors and, and that convergence. So at some point when you have to decide what to write at a dissertation on, I didn’t know, Like I came in thinking I’d work on post-colonial theory and literature and, and then I was like, No, I’m not working on that for a lot of reasons and.

[00:11:01] Heather: Had a hard time deciding what to work on a do as a dissertation, but decided to fuse sort of this personal and political interest in the environment. Environmental issues with my academic work, which I both advise and do not advise people to do, like the way that then. You know, your work becomes so much of yourself, but it, it seemed like a good idea and I still think it was a good idea.

[00:11:27] Heather: So I, yeah, I developed a dissertation, um, working with Ursula hea and, um, that was thinking about how contemporary literature, memoirs and novels, Represent the environment in terms of sickness and how we can understand, um, like damaged bodies, damaged bodies, and also damage ecosystems through similar conceptual and narrative structures.

[00:11:56] Heather: And also at my time at Stanford, um, CNY was working, was uh, on the faculty when I started though. She, she moved, um, in my time there. So, And she was one of, you know, these, uh, and remains one of these brilliant scholars of affect theory and you know, just being around her ugly feelings, her book Ugly Feelings came out my first year at Stanford.

[00:12:19] Heather: So it was just a lot of energy around affect theory. Um, so I mean, that did not come from my own life, although I joke that I’m very bad at expressing and. Like having emotions . So like my work was, uh, maybe a compensation, thinking about emotion and feeling and not being able to ex express it as well as I wanted to at times.

[00:12:44] Heather: Um, but yeah, it, so I was very much influenced by the scholars at Stanford and also especially with the environmental humanities, like by my own investments beyond the academy at the. .

[00:13:00] Frederick: Yeah. It’s so important for, um, your work here is so important to put a focus or shift direction to the ways our, our bodies, um, and the environment are so interrelated.

[00:13:15] Frederick: I know, I, you know, for, for me personally, on a, on a personal level, it has. You know, growing up with the, in California, where in rural California where they sprayed pesticides, not only kind of in our backyards, but. Across, uh, the fence from our playgrounds. Yeah. You know, I still, I suffer like my, I’m so messed up in terms of immunocompromised

[00:13:43] Frederick: I carry that eco sickness, uh, with me. Is there, is there a, in your work here, I know you, you look at David Foster Wallace and Leslie Marmon Silco, um, What I know you and I are and others are acutely aware of body and environment, but um, within that space, Are there things that we can do collectively to kind of open spaces for eco wellness?

[00:14:12] Frederick: And maybe this is where your info, uh, well comes in. Um, I know you talk about all sorts of things, including oil spills and data collection and the arts, but is, is there, is there a space that you see clearing in and through the literature and the arts that can. Show us a possible future that isn’t sick.

[00:14:40] Heather: Mm. Well, that isn’t sick at all. I don’t, I don’t know. Um, but the, I mean, I think a lot of the,

[00:14:51] Heather: Well, trying to think of the, the books in Eco Sickness, but, um, just speaking more broadly, um, You know, alongside the, the, there are often aren’t redemptive, purely healing narratives in the things I work at on, you know, for example, EK at the Dead, um, by Leslie Maron, Soko, um, you know, Ceremony has her prior novel, much earlier novel has.

[00:15:18] Heather: Much more of a healing narrative than Almanac of the Dead has. And I do think a lot of contemporary writers in America and in other, um, national contexts. They’re not sure that there’s really going to be healing in some comprehensive purifying sense, and I think they don’t, most of them don’t want that kind of optimism that seems beyond, um, possibility, but carving out, um, within, you know, trying to.

[00:15:52] Heather: Ameliorate and um, and things like, you know, pesticide pollution, things like extraction, that leads to a lot of health and other consequences. You know, the certainly invested in thinking of those political and public health actions, but also just where’s the beauty and like, you know, not wanting to sacrifice, um, some of the more maybe healing or joy producing.

[00:16:22] Heather: Aspects of our surroundings while at the same time recognizing that they are contaminated or compromised and might not be, um, you know, completely brought back to whatever ideal someone might have. Um, so I think, you know, there’s a lot of amazing, um, environmental nonfiction that thinks about this as well or represents like, These combinations of here is a, you know, an a damaged ecosystem that has also damaged bodies.

[00:16:57] Heather: But, but where is the beauty in that? Or where’s the curiosity in, in those spaces? Um, where have people made their livings and lives in these places regardless? Um, yeah, so basically like contamination doesn’t. , Um, or, or damage or whatever words might be relevant. Doesn’t mean it’s sort of. A wasted land.

[00:17:23] Heather: Mm-hmm. , there’s a scholar and a saying as it’s, um, among others, talks about like blasted landscapes that, you know, sort of finding a way to live in these blasted landscapes, How people have for like generations. Um, As, and not just thinking of them as sort of gone and, mm-hmm. totally. In terms of loss, um, with info.

[00:17:46] Heather: Well, that was something my, my second book, something I was really interested in is like, how are both authors and visual artists, um, thinking about loss and, and actually thinking about loss in terms of like data and scientific concepts as well. Um, So I think that idea of loss is really, obviously it’s very important to environmental thought, but people I think are trying to find what’s, what remains within the lost as well.

[00:18:19] Frederick: Um mm-hmm. Yeah, you, um, actually the title of one of your say, public, more public facing scholarly pieces is climate writing Stuck. Yeah. , um, kind of str struck, you know, um, jumped out at me. But also your eyes wide open, critical optimism, um, in, you know, in the planet Texas 2050 work. Um, seems appropriate as well.

[00:18:47] Frederick: Maybe you can talk a little bit. You know, both.

[00:18:51] Heather: Yeah. Um, well, I, I’d say, um, really around the time of working on Info l which came out in 2020, I became more invested in, um, writing for a variety of audiences. And part of that was I had in 2017, along with, uh, colleagues from across ut like, um, Um, the natural sciences, engineering geosciences, um, others in cola architecture, a whole very, um, multidisciplinary team.

[00:19:22] Heather: We created this, uh, where we were selected to create this, um, Grand Challenge initiative to really think about what is happening. In Texas around climate change. Um, thinking about infrastructure, ecosystems, you know, public health as much, as much as we could encompass and what are some of the strategies that, you know, people, communities can, can implement to address that.

[00:19:50] Heather: Um, and that was a, it is because it’s ongoing. I’m no longer on the, um, directing team, but really is trying to bring like our scholar. Questions and methods in, in, um, dialogue with communities that are facing these, these climate impacts. So that inherently has this like, public dimension even as much as it’s very rooted in, um, you know, in scholarly worlds as well with scholarly outcomes.

[00:20:20] Heather: So, um, yeah, I think the no, it, it is just become. Working on environmental issues, I think, but it’s not the only, uh, area of work, but it’s one of those where you’re sort of often drawn to think about how your ideas are communicated into the public, how they might matter or maybe how they don’t, and like how to reframe them.

[00:20:46] Heather: So they, they do. And um, that’s an ongoing project for me. But it was certainly. Catalyzed or reinforced working in on planet Texas 2050. Um, and then some of the writing I’ve been doing in the past four, four or so years. Mm-hmm. and some of that, like, publicness can also mean like just your, your colleagues, right?

[00:21:11] Heather: You know, people who aren’t versed in the same things you’re versed in. It’s still an academic community, but like realizing the way you talk about, say, concept like resilience and all the critiques you know about that are not there maybe in, in another discourse in another community. And it might be quite different, you know, in like a frontline community that has real problems with the idea of resilience.

[00:21:36] Heather: So it’s like, you know, that that publicness kind of opened up, um, Both within my u ut Austin, uh, sphere, but then also, you know, working in Austin, the city and Texas more broadly.

[00:21:52] Frederick: So should one have kids despite climate change? ? Oh

[00:21:58] Heather: yeah. Well, I, um, I don’t give answers to that question, . I’m more think about how people are thinking about that question.

[00:22:08] Heather: Um, I do think, I mean, I. I am interested. That is one of the book projects I’m working on is sort of like what happens to questions about reproduction and the face of climate crisis, but also in the face of the long history of like eugenics and population control. In the name of the environment. Um, and so, I mean, I personally do not have children, but it was not initially an environmental decision.

[00:22:35] Heather: It had a million other sources that remained strong. And then also the environmental came in, like in my late twenties. It was not an impetus. I’ve never wanted kids, I would say since I was not a kid. Um, But now you know, there’s this very vocal community that’s like child Free for climate and some people are like, That’s what I am, period.

[00:22:59] Heather: And this is why I think about it. And other people are ha do have a more like advocacy bent and that’s just not mine. I think it’s worth, you know, thinking about why people are facing that question and the histories that question’s embedded. And then how like artists, uh, and writers, you know, of all stripes, like are also thinking about that question of family and reproduction and kinship in like speculative forms, you know, and, and maybe more realist forms.

[00:23:34] Heather: Um, so yeah, I, I won’t answer that question , um, as like, uh, a dictate for someone else. But, um, I will probe the question cuz I think especially young people, I mean, you know, we work with people in ages 18 and up of course, but like a real concentrated population of late teens and twentie. People who are definitely thinking about this a lot.

[00:24:01] Heather: And climate’s not the only question on their minds, of course it’s economy and, and racism and just a whole lot of things where they’re like, What is this world? Right? Um, so yeah, it’s something I actually encounter in more casual ways, um, working in with that population as well as like thinking about it in.

[00:24:26] Heather: In these more, um, you know, scholarly, artistic and historical ways.

[00:24:32] Frederick: Heather, it’s really interesting that, um, I mean, we open the pa, we don’t even have to open a newspaper or turn on the news. We walk outside our doors in, in places like Austin, but you know, everywhere in the world today, um, everywhere and summers.

[00:24:51] Frederick: Aren’t summers anymore. Uh, winters, uh, don’t feel like winters anymore. It, it literally is impossible to deny climate change. And I don’t necessarily wanna to kind of go down the rabbit hole of the, the debates here, but, um, gosh, you know, Um, we have this, we have Monkeypox now kind of on the, you know, right on the coattail of Covid 19, you know, where, what can your research kind of open us to see?

[00:25:35] Frederick: Um, And even beyond the research, you know, what might we be thinking we need to be doing? I mean, you mentioned, um, supporting and getting involved. Um, so there’s that of course. Um, but yeah, what, how, where are we with all of this ,

[00:25:57] Heather: You know, for as much as I work on this stuff some days, and this might be one of them, I, you know, I definitely struggle with those questions too.

[00:26:05] Heather: Like nothing. I was recently, well, one of the things I’ve noted this summer, and I actually just wrote an outfit about it, as like, you’ll hear a theme, right? Like of, and I’m sure you are like this too, right? Like, we write through a lot of our thoughts, um, even if it doesn’t land somewhere, right? It’s like a way of grappling with these things.

[00:26:25] Heather: But one of the things I’ve noticed this summer, um, Is people are talking climate crisis and changes. They’re noticing to me in a way they never have. I mean like I’m in a community of people who talk about these things all the time for different reasons. But like my brother and his like 70 year old business partner and like my friend who owns a lot of real estate in Austin, like people who are not climate deniers, although my brother’s business probably partner apparently was.

[00:26:55] Heather: But like, um, Really, uh, who have not denied that climate change is happening, but are like you’re saying, like really feeling it this year. And, um, and so I’m, I’m. Also thinking about that moment, this moment that we’re in, of like how not to slip into despair or like that there can only be one action and it’s the right one.

[00:27:26] Heather: And if it doesn’t happen, then everyone gives up. Like if one bill doesn’t pass, like we have to throw everything away away. But like, you know, continuing these conversations and thinking about the actions that would matter to each individual. So, Where my brother is in, uh, Norfolk, Virginia, is very different maybe than where I am in Austin, Texas and who I am as a, as a professor versus he works in construction and, and, and that kind of works.

[00:27:57] Heather: So like to me it’s about continuing, if there is, as it seems to me, um, what Lauren Berlin calls an intimate public forming. Is like curious and really, like you said, you don’t even have to open the newspaper necessarily to really feel and know things are happening, but they’re not necessarily part of like a political movement or even want to be, and it’s so.

[00:28:26] Heather: Like to me, uh, I mean I have like a wishlist, a dream list of like things that might happen. Um, like things like stopping fossil fuel subsidies, right? Like that would be a really great big thing. It’s not in the, um, budget Reconciliation Act, which actually, you know, as compromised, continues to support oil and gas leases.

[00:28:48] Heather: There are a lot of things that are touching people who haven’t been on the front lines and in those first impacted communities who are like finding what matters to them and finding. How that can be galvanized, right? That sort of intimate public, um, and turned into whatever fits more locally for them. I don’t know, like, um, you know, revolution is an option, but I don’t see it on the horizon at the moment.

[00:29:18] Heather: so these, um, these more local, um, yeah. Responses and how people can manifest that, um, in ways that matter to them is something. You know, thinking about now more than ever, in addition to the a, these big, like what’s, what’s in front of Congress? Who’s on the ballot bog, Right. You know, like, what do I do day to day?

[00:29:41] Heather: Those are, are always still relevant, but um, yeah, seeing this public and seeing what happens with it is, is where I’m at at

[00:29:50] Frederick: the moment. You mentioned, um, in our conversation earlier, you’re working on something that’s a little more personal, a book. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:30:00] Heather: Yeah, I can try. I was trying this morning and kind of ran up against Walls, , but um, um, I’m thinking of it as a book of personal essays.

[00:30:10] Heather: It might have a solid narrative arc or a coherent narrative arc, but it might be more a set of essays, which is what it is now that, um, I might call striving, um, which is really thinking about some of the things we started thinking about, which is how did I get where I am? And that is a way of thinking about class and how I find class markers as they are traditionally used, don’t really fit me or so many fit me.

[00:30:40] Heather: Um, it’s hard to know, like it’s not an identity in, in that. I am this kind of sense, but it’s much more shimmering, uh, a term I used in another essay I wrote. Um, so it’s a way of thinking about class, thinking about education and gender and the importance of books and also dance, which didn’t talk about that.

[00:31:03] Heather: But dance has always been an important part of my life and kind of like envisioning other futures for myself, um, but also being very. Aware of where I come from. And for me that’s thinking about the Poconos, it’s thinking about some of the, uh, financial and other instability of growing up and really thinking about my dad as another striver , um, to use that term, but someone who like went about it in very different ways.

[00:31:34] Heather: So as you can tell, I haven’t quite found the way to encapsulate this, but it’s certainly. About, Yeah. Class and gender and books and dance is like my quick way of, of characterizing it. ,

[00:31:49] Frederick: I can’t wait. I can’t wait. Um, yeah, no, it sounds, um, Like, it’s going to be absolutely remarkable, stunning. Like all of your work, all that you do.

[00:32:03] Frederick: Oh, well, um, I’m not

[00:32:04] Heather: so confident in this, but I am loving doing it, so I’m just running with that. Right. It doesn’t matter where it goes maybe, but, um, just really it’s feeling, you know, like a, a good thing for me to do when we’ll see what happens with it

[00:32:20] Frederick: in the. You mentioned at the very beginning, um, you know, some of these, these large plotted novels, um, you mentioned Anna Green Gables and, and others.

[00:32:33] Frederick: What are you, you know, this is the crazy question, right? We always we’re, we teach in literature departments and yet, like, I’m not sure the last time I actually read something, Where I didn’t have my pencil out, you know, taking notes. Um, what are you, , Are you able to, And if so, what, what, what was something that was kind of exciting for you?

[00:33:00] Frederick: Or maybe it’s narrative in other forms, like, I don’t know, TV or platform streaming or whatever, But yeah, what’s on the proverbial bedside table?

[00:33:11] Heather: Oh, well, I’m, I’m actually not at my bedside, but I just grabbed a book. I’ve been reading from it, um, to move to another room in the house. So one of the ways I get away with or get away from the pencil is, um, Reading.

[00:33:27] Heather: Yeah. Big old novels. I’m not likely to work on or teach. Um, so my most recent one was Bronte’s Ette, which is a very weird novel, but actually thinking about like class and, and things like depression and affect. It’s kind of fascinating, but I, I read it without a pencil. , . Um, and then, uh, that was the last big, I think, Oh no, I read, um, a Sentimental Education by Flo Bear this summer.

[00:33:54] Heather: Um, and I read it in English. But one of the things that gets me into a different mode of reading is I, I can read Spanish and French well, and I don’t really work on them. Um, but so it’s, it’s like a different kind of attentive reading because I’m not, especially in Spanish, it’s, I’m not fluent. Um, I would not say I’m fluent at all, but like I, so it’s a different form of attention.

[00:34:23] Heather: French I can read much more quickly. Um, but again, it’s like just paying attention to. Like, what is this word and how is this sentence put together? And like, wait, you can do that grammatically. I didn’t know that . Um, but anyway, so I’m reading this novel that a mutual friend of ours actually recommended to me by Christina Reve Garza.

[00:34:44] Heather: Um, actually he borrowed it or loaned it to me. So it’s um, in English it would be no one will see me cry. From 1999, it’s, um, set in Mexico City at the turn of the 20th century. Anyway, it’s like, I’m not gonna do anything with this except like enjoy it and work my Spanish, learn something new about Mexico City at the turn of the century and, um, among other things.

[00:35:11] Heather: So, um, yeah, that’s one of the ways I. Kind of read for pleasure or without a pencil in hand, like go old or go into a different language. Um, or I don’t know, sometimes I can just do it, you know, just turn a switch in my brain and be like, I might forget this tomorrow, , I’m just gonna read it. Um, to be in it.

[00:35:39] Frederick: I love that. So, gosh, from you’ve taken us on this remarkable journey. Um, from, you know, Poconos and of Green Gables, um, read college, um, art and data sets, transdisciplinary environmental studies, shimmering identities. My goodness. Thank you, Heather, so much for taking the time to share your journey.

[00:36:09] Heather: Well, thank you for inviting me. This was a pleasure.

[00:36:11] Outro: Into The Colaverse is produced by the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Liberal Arts Sound Engineering by the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services. You can find into the Colaverse Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. Thanks for listening and see you next time.