The Feminist Present

Anthony Christian Ocampo is a scholar and writer who focuses on race, immigration, and LGBTQ issues. He is a sociology professor at Cal Poly Pomona and a Ford Foundation Fellow. His groundbreaking book, The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino-Americans Break the Rules of Race, was called “essential reading not only for the Filipino diaspora but for anyone who cares about the mysteries of racial identity” by José Antonio Vargas. Laura and Adrian talk to Anthony about Filipinx identities, about racialization, about queerness in the academy, and about how one studies the ways in which race and gender are perceived and experienced.

Sarah Marshall is a writer currently at work on a book about the satanic panic of the 1980s. Michael Hobbes is a journalist at the Huffington Post. Since 2018, Sarah and Michael have been hosting "You're Wrong About," a podcast about true crime, moral panics, and the untruths or half-truths around crime, fame, and power that have dominated American culture and national politics over the past half century. Laura and Adrian speak with Sarah and Michael about their podcast, about taxonomies of wrongness, and about the myths by which the true crime genre has governed the way gender is experienced and politicized in the United States.

Moira Donegan is an opinion columnist for Guardian US whose work has also appeared in the New Yorker, n+1, the New Republic, and in the viral The Cut essay, “I Started The Media Men List," in which she describes her creation of (and the fallout from) the "Shitty Media Men" list that outed sexual harassers in media and journalism. Laura and Adrian talk to Moira about Jane Fonda's classic workout tapes, exercising at home, about what our new domesticity does to the male gaze, the institution of the gym and why one should mourn it, and whether there is a way to disentangle self-improvement from capitalism. [Trigger warning: some discussion of disordered eating.]

In addition to his advice-giving role as Slate’s Dear Prudence, Danny M. Lavery is a co-founder of the Toast and the author of Texts From Jane Eyre, The Merry Spinster, and Something That May Shock and Discredit You. Danny talks to Laura and Adrian about giving advice, about respect and respectability, and above all about biological and chosen families. [NOTE: This episode contains material that may be disturbing to some listeners.]

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at the New Yorker whose recent work includes an exploration of youth vaping and essays on the ongoing cultural reckoning about sexual assault. Previously, she was the deputy editor at Jezebel and a contributing editor at the Hairpin. Her criticism has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Grantland, the Awl, Pitchfork, The Fader, Time, and Slate. Her first book, the essay collection Trick Mirror, was published in 2019. Laura and Adrian talk to Jia about eating and cooking during a pandemic, about food as a means to create and project self-image, and about what it means to be "lucky" in the age of COVID.

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an academic and writer whose work has been recognized nationally and internationally for the urgency and depth of her incisive critical analysis of technology, higher education, class, race and gender. McMillan Cottom’s columns have appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Dissent Magazine. She is also the author or co-editor of four books. Her most recent book, THICK: and Other Essays, is a critically acclaimed best-seller that situates Black women’s intellectual tradition at its center. Laura and Adrian speak to Tressie about the protests that engulfed the United States following the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, about writing and thinking on the fly in unsettled times, and about why it all feels different this time.

In our inaugural episode, we are proud to welcome Evette Dionne to discuss her new book about Black women's fight for equality and suffrage, Lifting as We Climb: Black Women's Battle for the Ballot Box. Known across the internet as “free Black girl,” Dionne is a Black feminist culture writer, editor, and scholar: she’s the editor-in-chief of B*tch Media and the author of another 2020 book, Fat Girls Deserve Fairytales Too: Living Hopefully On the Other Side of Skinny. Laura and Adrian speak to Evette about black women and the battle for the ballot box, about writing and teaching erased chapters of history, and what equitable coalition building could look like now.

Listen for a first look of what is to come this season on The Feminist Present. First full episode will be released on June 10th.