The Academic Life

Exploring the book 'Is Grad School for Me?' by Dr. Yvette Martínez-Vu and Dr. Miroslava Chávez-García, offering insider knowledge for BIPOC students. Discussing personal journeys, challenges in grad school, and debunking myths about applications. Empowering historically excluded students with femtorship and sponsorships. Encouraging breaking down gatekeeping barriers and taking action in career and life.

Today’s book is: Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm (Red Hen Press, 2023), by David Mas Masumoto. In his new memoir, Mas discovers his “lost” aunt. She had been taken away in 1942 when all Japanese Americans were considered the enemy and imprisoned. Due to a disability, she became a “ward” of the state; and his family believed she had died. Then came a surprising phone call—she was alive and living a few miles from their family farm. As Mas discovers, every family has secrets, silences, and lives among their unanswered questions. As Mas learns about his aunt, he asks, How did she survive? Why was she kept hidden? The book interrogates how both shame and resilience empowered his family to forge forward in a land that did not want them. Mas shares how he is driven to explore his identity and the meaning of family—especially as farmers tied to the land. In doing so, he uncovers family secrets that bind his family to a sense of history buried in the earth they work and a sense of place that defines them. Secret Harvests is a story of a family separated by racism against Japanese Americans and the discrimination of people with developmental disabilities—reunited seventy years later, returning to their roots on a farm, and bound by family secrets.Our guest is: David Mas Masumoto is an organic farmer, author, and activist. His book Epitaph for a Peach won the Julia Child Cookbook award and was a finalist for a James Beard award. His writing has been awarded a Commonwealth Club of California silver medal and the Independent Publisher Books bronze medal. He has been honored by Rodale Institute as an "Organic Pioneer." He has served on the boards of the James Irvine Foundation, Public Policy Institute of California, Cal Humanities, and the National Council on the Arts with nomination by President Obama. He farms with his wife Marcy and two adult children, Nikiko and Koro. They reside in a hundred-year-old farmhouse surrounded by their eighty-acre organic peach, nectarine, apricot, and raisin farm outside of Fresno, California.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.Listeners may also be interested in: The Ungrateful Refugee Who Gets Believed? Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. You can support the show by downloading episodes and by telling a friend about them, because knowledge should be shared. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

Today’s book is: The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You (Catapult, 2020), by Dina Nayeri, a book which asks “what is it like to be a refugee?” There are more than 25 million refugees in the world today. At age eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother, and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned–refugee camp. Eventually she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement. She shows us that to be a refugee is to grapple with your place in society, attempting to reconcile the life you have known with a new, unfamiliar home. All this while bearing the burden of gratitude in your host nation: the expectation that you should be forever thankful for the space you have been allowed. Nayeri offers a new understanding of refugee life, confronting dangers from the metaphor of the swarm to the notion of “good” immigrants. She calls attention to the harmful way in which Western governments privilege certain dangers over others. The Ungrateful Refugee recalibrates the conversation around the refugee experience, by sharing the real stories of what it is like to be forced to flee your home, and to journey across borders in the hope of starting afresh.Our guest is: Professor Dina Nayeri, who is the author of The Ungrateful Refugee, winner of numerous prizes including the Geschwister Scholl Preis, the Kirkus Prize, and Elle Grand Prix des Lectrices. Her essay of the same name was one of The Guardian’s most widely read long reads in 2017, and is taught in schools and anthologized around the world. A 2019-2020 Fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination in Paris, and winner of the 2018 UNESCO City of Literature Paul Engle Prize, Dina has won a National Endowment for the Arts literature grant, the O. Henry Prize, and Best American Short Stories, among other honors. Her work has been published in 20+ countries and in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Granta, and other publications. She is a graduate of Princeton, Harvard, and the Iowa Writers Workshop. In autumn 2021, she was a Fellow at the American Library in Paris. She recently joined the faculty at the University of St. Andrews.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.Listeners may also be interested in:Who Gets Believed?Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. You can support the show by downloading episodes and by telling a friend about them, because knowledge should be shared. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

Are you facing writing roadblocks? There are many guides on how to make your writing match academic standards, so why aren’t there any on how to make yourself actually write? How can you get to PhDone if life keeps getting in the way? Can you get there if you are a care-giver? Facing illness, or work responsibilities? Dealing with anxiety? In the midst of a personal or a global crisis? What practical advice exists to help you get to PhDone in the real world? Scholar and author Dr. Briana Barner joins us to share the practical approaches that worked for her, and that can work for you, in this episode that breaks down what it takes to tackle and finish a big writing project in real life.Our guest is: Dr. Briana Barner, who is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland. She received a doctorate in Radio-Television-Film and a doctoral portfolio in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of Texas. Briana also earned a Master’s in Women’s and Gender Studies from UT. She is an interdisciplinary critical and cultural communications scholar with research interests in Black podcasts, digital and Black feminism, digital media, Black cultural production and representation. Her work has been published in journals including Radio Journal: International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media, and Film Quarterly. She is currently working on a manuscript about the cultural production of Black podcasts.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.Listeners may also like the episodes on this playlist: Black Women, Ivory Tower Becoming the Writer You Already Are Managing Your Mental Health during the PhD process Mindfulness PhD Survival Guide Being Well in Academia Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes, because knowledge is for everyone. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

Explore the concept of habituation and how to regain sensitivity to the wonders in our lives. Learn about the power of noticing the negative and positive aspects around us and the importance of disabituation for psychological richness. Discover the transformative practice of 're-sparkling' in everyday life for a fresh perspective.

Today’s book is: Whiskey Tender: A Memoir (Harper, 2024), by Deborah Jackson Taffa, who was raised to believe that some sacrifices were necessary to achieve a better life. Her grandparents—citizens of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo tribe—were sent to Indian boarding schools run by white missionaries, while her parents were encouraged to take part in governmental job training off the reservation. Assimilation meant relocation, but as Deborah Jackson Taffa matured into adulthood, she began to question the promise handed down by her elders and by American society: that if she gave up her culture, her land, and her traditions, she would not only be accepted, but would be able to achieve the “American Dream.” Whiskey Tender traces how a mixed tribe native girl—born on the California Quechan (Yuma) reservation and raised in Navajo territory in New Mexico—comes to her own interpretation of identity, despite her parent’s desires for her to transcend the class and “Indian” status of her birth through education, and despite the Quechan tribe’s particular traditions and beliefs regarding oral and recorded histories. Her childhood memories unspool into meditations on tribal identity, the rampant criminalization of Native men, governmental assimilation policies, the Red Power movement, and the negotiation between belonging and resisting systemic oppression. Pan-Indian, as well as specific tribal histories and myths, blend with stories of a 1970s and 1980s childhood spent on and off the reservation. Deborah Jackson Taffa offers a sharp and thought-provoking historical analysis laced with humor and heart. As she reflects on her past and present—the promise of assimilation and the many betrayals her family has suffered, both personal and historical; trauma passed down through generations—she reminds us of how the cultural narratives of her ancestors have been excluded from the central mythologies and structures of the “melting pot” of America, revealing all that is sacrificed for the promise of acceptance.Our guest is: Deborah Jackson Taffa, who is a citizen of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo. She earned her MFA at the Iowa Writers Workshop, and is the Director of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, A Public Space, Salon, the Huffington Post, Prairie Schooner, The Best Travel Writing, and other outlets. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the creator of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore which stories we tell and what happens to those we don’t.Listeners may also be interested in this playlist: This discussion of the book A Calm and Normal Heart, with Chelsea T. Hicks The conversation about the book Night of the Living Rez, with Morgan Talty Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

When Zed Zha came to the United States for her education, she faced barriers to medical school admission and financial aid, and to establishing a sense of belonging. Then unexpectedly, she found the feeling of “home” in rural New Hampshire. Dr. Zha joins us to share her blog post Where is Home? and to take us through her journey to her life now as a doctor in rural America, focused on underserved patients.Our guest is: Dr. Zed Zha, who is a writer and a family doctor, a feminist and a fierce patient advocate. Her current work-in-progress is a non-fiction book project on medical misogyny. Dr. Zha is a board-certified family physician. She graduated from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, where she received the Gold Humanism Honor Society Award and the John F. Radebaugh Community Service Award. She completed her residency at the Mayo Clinic - La Crosse Family Medicine Residency, where she was the recipient of the Residency Research Award. Zed practiced full-scope primary care with obstetrics and hospital medicine in rural Washington state from 2019-2022, where she served as her organization’s COVID-19 Task Force Physician Lead. Currently, she is completing her fellowship in Underserved Dermatology.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the creator of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.Listeners may also be interested in this playlist: Far from Home: A conversation about academic relocation Gender bias in medical school and the ER Gender bias in the study of science Applying the lessons from his working class parents to his academic life, with Dr. Jorge Juan Rodríguez Community-building and How We Show Up, with Mia Birdsong Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. The Academic Life podcast is currently listened to in more than 150 countries. You can help support the show’s mission of democratizing education and sharing the hidden curriculum by downloading episodes, and by telling a friend—because knowledge is for everybody. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

Today’s book is: Black Women, Ivory Tower: Revealing the Lies of White Supremacy in American Education (Broadleaf Books, 2024), by Dr. Jasmine L. Harris, which is an exploration of what it means to be a Black woman in higher education. Dr. Jasmine Harris shares her own experiences attempting to be a Vassar girl and reckoning with a lack of legacy and agency, while examining the day-to-day impacts on Black women as individuals, and the longer-term consequences to their professional lives, and the generational costs to entire families. Trial and error has been required of Black students to navigate systems of discrimination and disadvantage. But this book now offers useful support, illuminating the community of Black women dealing with similar issues. The author's story is not unusual, nor are her interactions anomalies. Black Women, Ivory Tower explores why.Our guest is: Dr. Jasmine L. Harris, who is associate professor of African American Studies and coordinator of the African American Studies Program in the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas, San Antonio. A rising voice in the study of Black lives in the US, Dr. Harris's research and teaching focus on the experiences of Black people in predominantly white schools, specifically the social, physical, and economic impacts of their presence there. She has been published in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun, Women's Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.Listeners may also be interested in: Black Women, Ivory Tower discussion guide Microaggressions in the Classroom The Academic Life discussion of the book Presumed Incompetent Two Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us to learn from experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

How do the pressures of academia affect our relationships with ourselves, our work, and with substance use? Dr. Alicia Andrzejewski joins us for a candid conversation about her recent HuffPost article on her struggle to get and stay sober.Our guest is: Dr. Alicia Andrzejewski, who is an assistant professor in the department of English at William & Mary. She is a scholar of early modern literature and culture; queer, feminist, and critical race theory; and the medical humanities. Her work has appeared in Shakespeare Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, The Chronicle, Literary Hub, The Huffington Post, and other publications. Her current book project is Queer Pregnancy in Shakespeare’s Plays.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the host and producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.Listeners may be interested in this playlist: The Academic Life episode on the book Chasing Chickens: When Life After Higher Education Doesn't Go The Way You Planned The Academic Life episode on the book Managing Your Mental Health During Your PhD The Academic Life episode on Finishing Your Book When Life is a Disaster The Academic Life episode on mindfulness The Academic Life episode with Dr. Andrzejewski about ghosting people Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. You can support the podcast by downloading Academic Life episodes, and by sharing the show with a friend—because knowledge is for everybody. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

Today’s book is: Black and Queer on Campus (NYU Press, 2023) by Michael P. Jeffries, which offers an inside look at what life is like for LGBTQ college students on campuses across the United States. Dr. Jeffries shows that Black and queer college students often struggle to find safe spaces and a sense of belonging when they arrive on campus. Drawing on his interviews with students from over a dozen colleges, Dr. Jeffries provides a much-needed perspective on the specific challenges Black LGBTQ students face and the ways they overcome them. We learn through these intimate portraits that many of the most harmful stereotypes and threats to black queer safety continue to haunt this generation of students. We also learn how students build queer identities. Black and Queer on Campus sheds light on the oft-hidden lives of Black LGBTQ students, and how educational institutions can better serve them. It highlights the quiet beauty and joy of Black queer social life, and the bonds of friendship that sustain the students.Our guest is: Dr. Michael P. Jeffries, who is Dean of Academic Affairs, Class of 1949 Professor in Ethics, and Professor of American Studies at Wellesley College. He is the author of Behind the Laughs: Community and Inequality in Comedy; Paint the White House Black: Barack Obama and the Meaning of Race in America; Thug Life: Race, Gender, and the Meaning of Hip-Hop; and Black and Queer on Campus. He has published dozens of essays and works of criticism in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and The Boston Globe, and has been interviewed by The Washington Post, The New York Times, and NPR.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator and show host of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.Listeners may also be interested in: This discussion of the book Gay on God's Campus This discussion of the book Black Boy Out of Time This conversation about writing the book Brown and Gay in LA Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. The Academic Life podcast is currently listened to in more than 150 countries. You can help support the show’s mission of democratizing education and sharing the hidden curriculum by downloading episodes, and by telling a friend—because knowledge is for everybody. You’ll find all 190+ Academic Life episodes archived here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life