S6E6 | WOC Then, WOC Now Pt 1: Writing Books & Historical Black Women in STEM

Good luck with the start of another academic year: you are not alone. Mental health is often falsely presented as irrelevant to people of colour. Dr. Samara Linton and Dr. Rianna Walcott's brilliant The Colour of Madness explores mental health for and by people of colour across art, essays, poetry, and stories. Together with PhDiva Xine they discuss bridging the STEM/humanities divide through their collaboration and the uses of the book to communities, teaching, and health care professionals. The Colour of Madness https://linktr.ee/TheColourofMadness https://www.instagram.com/colourofmadness/?hl=en https://twitter.com/madnesscolourof?lang=en Support PhDivas on Patreon: www.patreon.com/phdivaspodcast Dr Samara Linton (she/her) is an award-winning writer, researcher, and multidisciplinary content producer. Her work includes The Colour of Madness: Mental Health and Race in Technicolour (2022) and Diane Abbott: The Authorised Biography (2020). Samara writes for various publications, including gal-dem, Huffington Post UK, The Metro, New Economics Foundation, Fawcett Society, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Her published research includes an influential report on Ebola-affected communities for the Africa All-Party Parliamentary Group (2016). She also sat on the editorial board for the British Medical Journal’s award-winning Racism in Medicine special issue (2020). Samara worked as a junior doctor in east London before joining the BBC, where she worked in production. A University of Cambridge (BA Hons.) and University College London (MBBS) graduate, she is currently completing an MA in Health Humanities at University College London. You can find out more about Samara's work at www.samaralinton.com, and she tweets at @samara_linton. Rianna Walcott (she/her) is an LAHP alumna and PhD candidate at Kings College London researching Black British identity formation in digital spaces. Rianna combines digital work, decolonial studies, arts and culture, and mental health advocacy in her work, with a deep commitment to outreach work and public engagement. She co-founded projectmyopia.com, a website that promotes inclusivity in academia and a decolonized curriculum, and is the UCL writing lab's Scholar-in-Residence for 21-22. Rianna frequently writes about race, feminism, mental health, and arts and culture for publications including The Wellcome Collection, The Metro, The Guardian, The BBC, Vice, and Dazed. Rianna is co-editor of an anthology about BAME mental health - The Colour of Madness (2022), and in the time left over, she moonlights as a professional jazz singer. Rianna will be based at The Black Communication and Technology (BCaT) Lab at the University of Maryland-College Park. Research at this new lab will focus on race and technology, as well as the development of a pipeline program to introduce undergraduates and those in the wider community to the field of Black digital studies with the aim of working toward a more equitable digital future. You can find out more about Rianna’s work at www.riannawalcott.com, and she tweets at @rianna_walcott.

Adversity and the power of friendship! In the second half of the interview, PhDiva Xine talks with historian Cassie Osei about pedagogy during the pandemic and life lessons from Sailor Moon. Do you watch anime? How does it affect how you engage in the world? For show notes see our blogpost: https://phdivaspodcast.wordpress.com/2022/07/11/s6e9-pandemic-pedagogy-sailor-moon-solidarity-w-dr-cassie-osei/ Support PhDivas on Patreon: www.patreon.com/phdivaspodcast Dr. Cassie Osei (she/hers) is a historian of Latin America and African diaspora. She earned her PhD in History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2022. She specializes in modern Brazilian history through the lens of race, class, and gender. Dr. Osei was a 2019 – 2020 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellow in São Paulo, Brazil. Beginning August 2022, she will be an Assistant Professor of History at Bucknell University. Where to find Cassie: Grad profile: history.illinois.edu/directory/profile/cosei2 Twitter: @tropigalia IG: @brasilianista Blog: tropigalia.net

Wherever they are, Black women have always theorized about race and gender, says Dr. Cassie Osei. In the first of two eps, PhDiva Xine interviews Cassie Osei, historian of Afro-Brazilian women's history, longtime PhDivas Podcast listener, and newly minted PhDiva (!). Cassie talks about archival methodologies, Black feminist theorizing beyond the US, and about the personal importance of what she playfully refers to as 'low femme theory.' For show notes see our blog post: https://phdivaspodcast.wordpress.com/2022/05/27/s6e8-afro-brazilian-womens-history-low-femme-theory-with-dr-cassie-osei/ Support PhDivas on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/phdivaspodcast Dr. Cassie Osei (she/hers) is a historian of Latin America and African diaspora. She earned her PhD in History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2022. She specializes in modern Brazilian history through the lens of race, class, and gender. Dr. Osei was a 2019 – 2020 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad fellow in São Paulo, Brazil. Beginning August 2022, she will be an Assistant Professor of History at Bucknell University. Where to find Cassie: Grad profile: https://history.illinois.edu/directory/profile/cosei2 Twitter: @tropigalia IG: @brasilianista Blog: https://tropigalia.net

Let's talk about feelings, unfeelings, boundaries, and emotional labour! How do we build solidarities beyond what Black feminist Audre Lorde calls 'the master's house'? In part 2, PhDiva Liz chats to Xine about her book Disaffected and how her own positionality as a Chinese diasporic queer person led to how she navigates a feminist approach to feeling and unfeeling that is mindful of comparative racialization. They talk about 19th-century anti-Asian and anti-Black racisms alongside their own experiences of these racisms today. How do we build solidarity? How do we avoid the exploitation of our emotional resources? What kind of work can we do if we recognize -- and are critical about -- all research is secretly 'me-search'? Support us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/phdivaspodcast DISAFFECTED won the Duke UP Scholars of Color First Book Prize. For a 30% discount use the code E21YAO on the following sites North America: www.dukeupress.edu/disaffected UK, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific: www.combinedacademic.co.uk/97814780148…isaffected/ You can read the intro for free here: www.dukeupress.edu/disaffected

So much and yet so little has changed for women of colour since the 19th century... PhDivas Liz and Xine discuss Xine's first book DISAFFECTED. Xine shares the challenges of writing a monograph (a fancy academic term for research book). Chapter 4 is kind of an homage to Liz: it discusses Black feminist approaches to STEM in the nineteenth century by analyzing a novel by a major Black woman writer alongside the writings of the first two Black American women to receive medical degrees. Liz and Xine delve into the everyday life strategies of disaffection, care, and uncaring that persist in the archive and in our everyday lives. Support us on Patreon! www.patreon.com/phdivaspodcast DISAFFECTED won the Duke UP Scholars of Color First Book Prize. For a 30% discount use the code E21YAO on the following sites North America: www.dukeupress.edu/disaffected UK, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific: https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/9781478014836/disaffected/ You can read the intro for free here: www.dukeupress.edu/disaffected

If the master's tools can never dismantle the master's house, what can we build instead? Since emotional labour is racialized and gendered, what if minoritized people say 'no'? Listen to several brilliant WOC scholars discuss PhDiva Xine's new book DISAFFECTED: each of them was given a chapter of the book to respond to in order to give the audience a sense of the overall argument as well as a chance for each scholar to discuss their own research. 170+ people attended from around the world! 0:00 to 6:15 Xine's overview of the event and Christine Okoth's introduction 6:15 to 26:50 Xine reads a section of DISAFFECTED's argument 26:51 to 38 Chapter 1: white sentimentalism, unsympathetic Blackness, and Herman Melville's Benito Cereno Respondent: Christine A Okoth (King's College London) is working on a brilliant manuscript that will revolutionize ecocriticism: _Race and the Raw Material: Black Aesthetics as Extractive Form_ 38:10 to 53:04 Chapter 2: on Black-Indigenous counterintimacies, science, and global revolution in Martin R. Delany's work Respondent: Rianna Walcott (King's College London) who researches Black women's identity formation in digital spaces. She co-founded projectmyopia.com which promotes inclusion in academia and decolonised curriculums. She co-edited The Colour of Madness, an anthology about BAME mental health. www.riannawalcott.com and @rianna_walcott on Twitter 53:05 to 1:02:35 Chapter 3: on queer frigidity, medical science, the limits of white feminism, and the subgenre of (white) women doctor novels Respondent: Lara Choksey (UCL) who works on STS, critical race and decolonial studies with particular interest in speculative fiction. She is the author of Narrative in the Age of the Genome: Genetic Worlds (Bloomsbury 2021). https://www.bloomsbury.com/.../narrative-in-the-age-of.../ 1:03:50 to 1:13:35 Chapter 4: on Black women doctors, transformative love, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's Iola Leroy Respondent: Jade Bentil (Oxford) is a Black feminist historian whose first book REBEL CITIZEN uses oral history interviews to explore the lived experiences of Black women who migrated to Britain after WW2. Forthcoming from Allen Lane. https://www.jadebentil.com/ 1:13:31 to 1:26:25 Chp 5: Oriental inscrutability, Chinese diaspora, the first Asian North American woman writer Sui Sin Far Respondent: KerryMackereth(@CambridgeGender) works on racialization of AI, AsAm studies; co-host of @TheGoodRobot1 @KerryMackereth on Twitter 1:26:30 Coda: Toward a Disaffected Manifesto Beyond Survival. PhDiva Xine highlights respondent Lucia Lorenzi who was unable to attend. Lucia trained as a Canadianist and trauma theorist, working on how artists and writers use silence to reshape, resist, reimagine experiences of violence. Their artwork is featured on the cover of the book! @empathywarrior on Twitter and Instagram DISAFFECTED won the Duke UP Scholars of Color First Book Prize. For a 30% discount use the code E21YAO on the following sites North America: https://www.dukeupress.edu/disaffected UK, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia Pacific: https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/9781478014836/disaffected/ You can read the intro for free here: https://www.dukeupress.edu/disaffected Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/phdivaspodcast

Have you watched Netflix's The Chair? Join PhDivas Liz and Xine as they talk about all the uncomfortable resonances between their experiences as women of colour in academia and the short 'comedy' series starring Sandra Oh. (Yes, Xine even had a student describe her as 'if Sandra Oh were an academic.') They discuss antiblackness, model minority failings, sabotage, emotional labour, and sympathies with student activists and beleagured staff. Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/phdivaspodcast For another great take on The Chair, see Koritha Mitchell's CNN piece: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/26/opinions/the-chair-sandra-oh-netflix-protagonist-mitchell/index.html

Just because they are both systems of oppression does not mean that casteism ≠ racism! Postcolonialism developed as a field of study established by predominantly Indian intellectuals -- but only understanding them as non-Black people of colour erases their caste privilege. Shaista Patel, a professor in Critical Muslim studies at UC San Diego, chats with PhDiva Xine about the nuances of Islamophobia, Hindu nationalism, and casteism that are often misread or overlooked by outsiders. Image used with the permission of Snehal P Sanathanan For more on caste: Ambedkar, B.R. (1936). Annihilation of Caste. http://www.ambedkar.org/ambcd/02.Annihilation%20of%20Caste.htm(accessed June 9, 2021). Arya, Sunaina. (2020). “Dalit or Brahminical Patriarchy?: Rethinking Indian Feminism.” CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion. 1, no. 1: 217–228. Guru, G. (2002). “How egalitarian are the social sciences in India?.” Economic and Political Weekly, 5003-5009. Rawat, Ramnarayan S., and Kusuma Satyanarayana. (2016). Dalit studies. Duke University Press. Support PhDivas on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/phdivaspodcast

Mother's Day Special! Liz interviews her mom about what it's like to raise a PhDiva. Learn about Liz's childhood career aspirations and their intergenerational experience of education in Mississippi. Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/phdivaspodcast

Springtime is the season of success for a few... and rejection for the majority. PhDivas Liz and Xine revisit the perennial topic of the many, many forms of rejection in academia -- from grants, students, programmes -- as early career scholars and attentive to disparities of power. Failure isn't only personal, but can be structural especially for BIPOC academics: is the problem with your individual proposal or is it a broader institutional issue? What is at stake? 'Branding' and the academic equivalent of being influencers are necessities for junior and minoritized academics, but this doesn't necessarily translate to economic security. Liz and Xine also discuss codeswitching how they present their research to potentially hostile audiences/strangers. Support us on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/phdivaspodcast