COVIDCalls

EP #294 - 06.22.2021 - Prisons, Labor, and the Pandemic

Today I welcome Carlee Purdum, Assistant Research Professor at the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University, to talk about COVID-19, the US prison system, and incarcerated people.

Carlee Purdum, Ph.D., is an Assistant Research Professor at the Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center at Texas A&M University. Her work focuses on the impact that hazards and disasters have on prisons and incarcerated populations. She currently leads the CONVERGE COVID19 working group studying the impact of COVID19 in prisons. Her research partners include the organizations The Texas Prison Air-Conditioning Advocates (TPAA) and the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons who she works with to study the impact that extreme temperatures and COVID19 have had on prisons and incarcerated persons in Texas.

EP #293 - 06.21.2021 - Environmental Justice & COVID Justice hosted by Felicia Henry

Today, and next week Monday, I will be your guest host! Exactly one year ago, Scott invited me to be a guest on the podcast to discuss disaster research, race, emergency management, and vulnerable communities. On that episode, I talked about the importance of redefining concepts like vulnerability and expanding how we understood the social construction of disasters. As a guest host, I’d like to continue that discussion by inviting guests to talk about structural violence, incarceration, and environmental injustice, incorporating my own background as a scholar-activist. One year after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, calls for racial and economic justice still resound across the country. It is my hope that we amplify these calls through these next few episodes.

Today I welcome Sonal Jessel. Sonal Jessel is the Director of Policy at WE ACT for Environmental Justice. She is responsible for advancing the organization’s policy agenda at the local, state, and national levels, in addition to leading New York City policy initiatives and the Northern Manhattan Climate Action (NMCA) Plan. Prior to joining WE ACT, she conducted research in energy insecurity, housing, and public health at Columbia University, and coordinated clinical trials at Weill Cornell Medicine. With roots in California and Connecticut, Sonal has an MPH in Population and Family Health with a concentration in Climate and Health from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, and a BA in Organismal Biology from Pitzer College, in California. Her interest is focused on the intersection of environmental and social justice, health, and policy.

EP #292 - 06.17.2021 - Bounding Biomedicine in the Pandemic w/Collen Derkatch

Welcome to the 292^st of the COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. My name is Scott Gabriel Knowles, I am a historian of disasters at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.  I’m coming to you live from Daejeon, SK.

Today I welcome medical Colleen Derkatch to discuss the rhetoric of biomedicine and medical expertises in the pandemic. Colleen Derkatch is Associate Professor of rhetoric in the Department of English.

Her research in rhetoric of health and medicine examines how language shapes and is shaped by various, often embodied, and sometimes conflicting forms of expertise about illness, treatment, and health. Her book, Bounding Biomedicine: Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine, external link (University of Chicago Press, 2016), examines how scientific research on alternative health practices constitutes the boundaries between what counts as safe, effective health care and what does not. Her current project is Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture.

EP #291 - 06.15.2021 - COVID Intensive Care in India

Welcome to the 291^st of the COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. My name is Scott Gabriel Knowles, I am a historian of disasters at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.  I’m coming to you live from Daejeon, SK.

My guest today is Colleen Derkatch is Associate Professor of rhetoric in the Department of English.

Her research in rhetoric of health and medicine examines how language shapes and is shaped by various, often embodied, and sometimes conflicting forms of expertise about illness, treatment, and health. Her book, Bounding Biomedicine: Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine, external link (University of Chicago Press, 2016), examines how scientific research on alternative health practices constitutes the boundaries between what counts as safe, effective health care and what does not. Her current project is Why Wellness Sells: Natural Health in a Pharmaceutical Culture.

EP #290 - 06.15.2021 - On Virality: Anti-Asian Hate in the Pandemic

Welcome to the 290^th of the COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. My name is Scott Gabriel Knowles, I am a historian of disasters at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.  I’m coming to you live from Daejeon, SK.

Travis Chi Wing Lau joined the Kenyon faculty in 2020 and is Assistant Professor of English. His research and teaching focuses on the intersections between literature and medicine and the longer histories of disability and pathology. Lau is currently working on a book manuscript entitled “Insecure Immunity: Inoculation and Anti-Vaccination, 1720-1898”, which explores the British cultural history of immunity and vaccination in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Alongside his scholarship, Lau frequently writes for venues of public scholarship like Synapsis: A Journal of Health Humanities, Public Books, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. His poetry has appeared in Barren Magazine, Wordgathering, Glass, The New Engagement and in two chapbooks.

EP #41 - 05.11.2020 - The History of Pandemic Recovery w/York County History Center and the York County Economic Alliance

EP #289 - 06.14.2021 - Prisons and the Pandemic w/ Guest Host Felicia Henry

Hello everyone! Welcome to the 289^th episode of the COVIDCalls, a daily discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic with a diverse collection of disaster experts. My name is Felicia Henry, I am a PhD Student in the Department of Sociology and Criminal justice at the University of Delaware.  I’m coming to you live from Wilmington, Delaware.

For the next three Mondays of June, I will be your guest host! Exactly one year ago, Scott invited me to be a guest on the podcast to discuss disaster research, race, emergency management, and vulnerable communities. On that episode, I talked about the importance of redefining concepts like vulnerability and expanding how we understood the social construction of disasters. As a guest host, I’d like to continue that discussion by inviting guests to talk about structural violence, incarceration , and environmental injustice, incorporating my own background as a scholar-activist. One year after the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, calls for racial and economic justice still resound across the country. It is my hope that we amplify these calls through these next few episodes.

Today I welcome Dr. Dan Berger, Associate Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at University of Washington Bothell. He is the author or editor of several books, including Captive Nation: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era, which won the 2015 James Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians, and Rethinking the American Prison Movement, coauthored with Toussaint Losier. His most recent book is Remaking Radicalism: A Grassroots Documentary Reader of the United States, 1973-2001, coedited with Emily Hobson. Berger curates the Washington Prison History Project, an online archive of prison policy and organizing in Washington state, and has contributed articles to The Appeal, Black Perspectives, Boston Review, and Truthout, among elsewhere.

EP #288 - 06.07.2021 - The Politics of Compassion: COVID-19 in China w/Bin Xu

Today I welcome Professor Bin (HSU) Xu to discuss COVID-19 and the legacy of the Sichuan Earthquake in China, alongside cultures of mourning around the world today.

Bin Xu is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Emory University. His research interests lie at the intersection of politics and culture, including collective memory, civil society, cultural sociology, and social theory. He is the author of The Politics of Compassion: The Sichuan Earthquake and Civic Engagement in China (Stanford, 2017), which won the 2018 Best Book Prize for Culture and Honorable Mention for Asia from the American Sociological Association, and Chairman Mao's Children: Generation and the Politics of Memory in China (Cambridge, forthcoming in 2021). His articles have appeared in leading sociological and China studies journals. He is working on his third book The Culture of Democracy: A Sociological Approach to Civil Society (under contract with Polity Press, UK) and two ongoing projects pertaining to mourning, commemorations, and symbolic politics of the COVID-19 crisis.

EP #287 - 06.03.2021 - Mother & Daughter Reflect on a Pandemic Year

Today I welcome Sara McBride and Bernadette McBride back to COVIDCalls for a follow up on their lives and work in the 14 months since we first talked.

Bernadette McBride has a Masters in Nursing from Gonzaga University and a Masters in Health Education from Whitworth University. She is a registered Nurse Practitioner in Washington State, specializing in geriatric family practice. Bernadette formerly the owner of adult family homes, Legacy Management and Tranquility Life Care in the Tri-Cities for 25 years. For her first Master’s degree, she focused on death and bereavement of parents who lost children to SIDS.

Dr. Sara K. McBride has a Ph.D. in Media Studies from Massey University.  Sara has a master’s degree in Public Administration from University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, with a concentration in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance. She is currently a Mendenhall Fellow at the U.S. Geological Survey, studying the communication of aftershock forecasts and earthquake early warning. Sara also has served 16 years as a practitioner in emergency management. She was part of the New Zealand’s H1N1 response in 2009.

EP #285 - 06.02.2021 - Theatre and Performance in a Pandemic

Today I welcome Jenny McConnell Frederick, Artistic Director of the Rorschach Theatre to talk about theatre and performance in pandemic times.

Jenny McConnell Frederick is a Washington, DC-based Director, Producer and strong believer in impossible theatre.  She's the co-Artistic Director of Rorschach Theatre which she founded in the summer of 1999 with Randy Baker. 

She has directed, produced and created theatre experiences for Theater J, University of Maryland, Catholic University and Word Dance Theatre.  Currently she is part of an 8-member team building Rorschach's ground-breaking Distance Frequencies, a project for which she created the concept.  The immersive experience sends participants to seven locations around Washington, DC to explore chapters in an unfolding story about DC history--real and imagined. The project culminates in a live show in July 2021.