Unpack This!

Where academic misfits unload their baggage.

Unpack This!

academia

Unpacking”It’s Coming from Inside the House”: on being outsiders within the academy

Jo and Constance discuss Constance’s recent article published in Women in Higher Education, which reflects on familial tensions experienced by academics who come from a working class background. Among other things, they also chat about the illegibility of academic work, the work and community that sustain them, and they chat it up about what they’d be doing if they weren’t academics (say what?!). You can find them on Twitter at @VoxJoHsu and @creneebailey. Email them at theunpackthispodcast@gmail.com.

Moten and Harney’s The Undercommons: https://www.akpress.org/the-undercommons.html

Unpacking African American Literacies with Dr. E

Constance and Jo chat with the AMAZING Dr. Elaine Richardson (https://twitter.com/DoctaE1) about everything from hip hop literacies to reclaiming our time. Among other things, Docta E,discusses her current and future research projects, and what she does in her “down” time– in this case, attending a Sy Smith concert in Atlanta. 

References from the conversation:

Dr. E’s TEDxOSU talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FB5-_W-EroQ

Unpacking Lateral Moves & Constance’s New Gig

In this episode, Jo and Constance unpack the academic lateral move, and Constance discusses her new appointment. She has accepted a tenure track position at Georgia State University in Atlanta where she’ll be teaching folklore and contemporary African American literature. Constance and Jo also chat it up about the various academic positions they have held and the difficulty they had making those transitions. Jo has finally made it to Twitter so you can follow them on Twitter @voxjohsu and you can follow Constance @creneebailey or ConstanceTheeAkademic on Twitter and IG because that’s how she’s affectionately referring to herself these days! Follow the podcast on Twitter @The_UnpackThispodcast. As always, email us with questions, comments, episode or guests suggestions, and more at theunpackthispodcast@gmail.com!

Unpacking Amazon Prime’s Master

Spoiler Alert: We spoil all of Amazon Prime’s Master, starring Regina Hall, not to be confused with Regina King, which Constance does the entire episode. In addition to spoilers, Jo Hsu (https://www.vjohsu.com) and Constance Bailey (linktr.ee/constancerbailey) chat with special guests Niketa Reed, Executive Director of Arkansas Soul (argotsoul.com) and Professor JL Adolph of Georgia State University’s Perimeter College and host of YouTube’s Dad Cypher (social media links at the end of the show notes). Constance and JL are friends from their grad school days at Mizzou so about half the show is them going back and forth like Skip and Shannon (sports show reference). In addition, each scholar gives their big takeaways. JL references Amiri Baraka’s “The Changing Same,” sleepwalking, and transformation-among other things. Niketa talks mammy symbolism and the restriction on knowledge through an uncomfortable library scene, which Constance then connects to historic barriers to literacy for Black Americans. Jo explores the intersection between their research on coalition building and Niketa’s question about Asian American characters being white-aligned. Jo argues that this proximity to whiteness has strategically been created through anti-Black rhetoric. Constance goes on about fifteen tangents, but she ultimately believes the film asks Black women scholars, what are the choices that they can live with. Other topics touched on in the episode were the tenure process, AP publishing standards, Rachel Dolezal and performing racial identity, microaggressions, the obligatory Black people head nod, in group behavior,  Dr. Roxanne Gay and Nikole-Hannah Jones’ comments at Virginia Tech’s Faculty Women of Color in the Academy conference (FWCA)-which is for faculty, students, and administrators and it’s amazing so Constance says everyone needs to go, and MUCH MUCH more. You can follow the podcast on social media at https://twitter.com/The_UnpackThis or email us at theunpackthispodcast@gmail.com  Follow JL Adolph on any of his social media:

Professor Adolph’s social media links: 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJkzs7oxbzbr3_w3aHiR1Vg

https://www.facebook.com/groups/332921840929745

https://www.instagram.com/dad_cypher/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jladolph1906/

https://www.tiktok.com/@dadcypher

Unpacking Inside Higher Ed’s “Hard Academic ‘Truths'”

In their usual well-modulated voices,  Jo and Constance unpack Jennifer Snodgrass’s Inside Higher Ed article, “Seven Hard Truths and a Few Lies.” They ruminate on imposter syndrome,  time-consuming administrative tasks, and rigid power structures. As usual, they conclude that context and mitigating circumstances affect the applicability of Snodgrass’s insights–so, are the “truths” really true? It’s… complicated. Overall, they appreciate that Snodgrass highlights oft-untold elements of academic life. 

You can find Snodgrass’s article here: https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2021/11/18/truths-about-academic-career-people-often-dont-share-opinion

Teaching for a World That’s Livable: Queering Pedagogy in the Time of COVID, with GPat Patterson

Constance and Jo speak with Dr. GPat Patterson, Associate Professor of English at Kent State Tuscarawas about their recent article, “Loving Students in the Time of COVID: a Dispatch from LGBT Studies.” We explore teaching as the cultivation of immersive learning experiences, why the imperative to market our disciplines as job-market training is a trap, and how to build more supportive environments for liberatory teaching and learning.

Items mentioned in this episode:

Contagion, Contamination, and Containment

Our fearless hosts discuss Constance’s “Rethinking Literature” course about infectious disease, medical ethics, and pandemics. She also loves a good meme, so those come up too. They also unpack one of Constance’s favorite quotes from Jo’s article, “Containment and Interdependence: Epidemic Logics in Asian American Racialization.” 

Jo writes, “I argue that any pursuit of justice for Asian Americans must respond to and take responsibility for the imbrications of our stories with anti-Blackness, colonization, and heteronormativity—that this difficult work of relating is necessary for breaking cycles of containment and devastation,” and in typical Constance fashion, she asks them to expand on an already expansive quote. 

Because Constance can never remember the name of anything, the texts she references in the episode are Hydra by Matt Wesolowski, The Kiss of Death: Contagion, Contamination, and Folklore by Andrea Kitta, and An Epidemic of Rumors: How Stories Shape Our Perception of Disease by Jon D. Lee. 

For questions, comments, or suggestions, email us at theunpackthispodcast@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter. theUNPACKTHISpodcast @The_UnpackThis.

Peer Reviewed Hip Hop Album-Say What??? Interview with A.D. Carson

In the Season Two preview, Jo and Constance talk with scholar A.D. Carson (aydeethegreat.com) about the peer review process for his dissertation, which took the form of a hip hop album. They also talk about A.D.’s next project, ghosts, ancestor veneration, and Black History Month, among other things. For questions, comments, or suggestions of topics and guests, email theunpackthispodcast@gmail.com. You can also follow theUNPACKTHISpodcast on Twitter @The_UnpackThis.

S1E8: “Made-up Genres”

In this episode, Jo and Constance explore academia’s “made-up genres,” from undergraduate assignments to dissertations to documents for the job market. They discuss the functions of these documents, how they’ve adapted and responded to these at-times unsettling discursive situations, and they offer their thoughts on what might change for us to have more humane conversations with one another.

S1E7: Self and Community Care

In this episode Jo and Constance explore the concept of self-care by asking what it means and who is responsible for it-the individual or institutions that hold power. They also tackle the question of how can self care be achieved with PM Kester, host of the How to Take a Break podcast (https://open.spotify.com/show/6ex93HTzfOxLXEN8QFe5r3)

This episode was mixed and mastered by Amanda Willis and Will Shute