Announcing ‘Rhyme & Reason’ the Podcast

ARHU launches a new podcast that features faculty voices exploring timely topics related to race, equity and justice.

By ARHU Staff 

The College of Arts and Humanities has launched its very own podcast, “Rhyme & Reason,” featuring ARHU Dean Stephanie Shonekan in conversation with scholars and teachers from across the college.

In its five-episode inaugural season, the podcast will focus on pressing issues related to race, equity and justice. Voices include faculty studying indigenous feminist philosophy; race and immigration; Asian American, Latinx and Afro-diasporic cultures; anti-semitism; and more.

The first three episodes are now available! Episode 1 features Shonekan in conversation with Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner, an Indigenous feminist philosopher and assistant professor in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Their discussion centers on indigenous identity and language, as well as Meissner’s vision for the Indigenous Futures Lab, which she established at UMD to serve as a hub of indigenous feminist research and evaluation.

Episode 2 features Madeline Hsu, professor of history and director of the Center for Global Migration Studies, UMD’s interdisciplinary home for the study of migration and immigration around the world both today and in the past. In their conversation, she and Shonekan discuss the historical and contemporary causes of migration, challenges facing immigrants to the U.S. today, and a new project focused on the rich culinary histories of the ethnic and immigrant communities in the D.C. metro region.

Episode 3 features Nancy Mirabal, associate professor of American studies, who directs the Latino/a Studies program. In their conversation, she and Shonekan discuss the Chicano and Latinx communities in the United States and Mirabal’s role as the director of the Community Fellows Program for the Urban Equity Collaborative, a project funded by the UMD Grand Challenges initiative that engages community organizers as partners to respond to and develop solutions to urban displacement and dispossession.

Stay tuned for future episodes and follow the podcast. 

Illustration by Mary Kacsur. The podcast is produced by Nat Kuhn and Brian Crawford.