Foreword

Welcome to Foreword Series Two

Welcome to the second series of Foreword!

We’re excited to bring you even more fascinating conversation with researchers from Brock University’s Faculty of Humanities.

This past year has definitely been an interesting one. Our world has changed a lot with the COVID pandemic—we’ve been forced to reconsider how we work, how we play, and yes, how we teach and research. And while we might think of the pandemic as a science problem, it’s a Humanities problem, too, and we’ll be hearing from our researchers how the Humanities can help us understand our present and shape our future.

You can find Foreword on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Podbean, and wherever good podcasts are found.

Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss an episode!

 

Credits

Find our footnotes, links to more information, transcripts, and past episodes on our website brocku.ca/humanities.

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @brockhumanities.

Don't miss an episode! Subscribe in your favourite podcast app. Rate and review us in Apple Podcasts to help other folks find us.

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

Our sound design and editing is by Nicole Arnt. Theme music is by Khalid Imam.

Special thanks to Brock University Marketing and Communications for website support.

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

S1E08 Unabridged: Early Modern Bookscapes

The final episode in our current series features an extended interview with Dr. Leah Knight, Associate Professor with the Department of English Language and Literature.

Dr. Knight discusses her early work exploring the connections between books and botany and how her research interests transitioned into examining women’s participation in Early Modern book culture in England through the figures of Anne Clifford (1590-1676) and Hester Pulter (1605-1678). She shares what it is like to work with rare books and manuscripts and considers our modern relationship with text in print and digital formats.

Knight’s most recent project, The Pulter Project, with Wendy Wall of Northwestern University in Illinois, United States, examines the manuscripts of poet Hester Pulter. It was selected as the year’s best project in digital scholarship by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender in 2018.

Find a full transcript at https://brocku.ca/humanities/foreword

Links

Of Books and Botany in Early Modern England: Sixteenth-Century Plants and Print Culture (Routledge, 2009) 

Reading Green in Early Modern England (Routledge, 2014)

Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation (University of Michigan Press, 2018; edited with Micheline White, and Elizabeth Sauer)

The Pulter Project: Poet in the Making ( co-directed and -edited with Wendy Wall, 2018)

Digital project gives voice to 17th century female poet (Brock News, 19 November 2018)

Leah Knight faculty profile

Department of English Language & Literature 

Credits

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @brockhumanities.

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode.

Learn more about the Faculty of Humanities, including our events, programs of study, and departments, online.

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

Sound design and editing by Serena Atallah. Theme music is by Khalid Imam.

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support.

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

S1E07 Unabridged: Indigenous Mascots

Welcome to the first of two special episodes of Foreword that we’re calling Unabridged. In these episodes we’ll be bringing you the full conversation I had with one of our researchers. 

This episode you’ll hear our full conversation with Dr. Jason Black, Fulbright researcher with the Centre for Canadian Studies, recorded in February 2020. We wanted to bring you this conversation because Jason explains important concepts that come up in many academic disciplines and popular media, such as coloniality, decolonization, and identity. He shares how he became interested in activism and the Indigenous mascot controversy, why the language and imagery we use to talk about Indigenous issues matters, and how non-Indigenous folks can engage with these issues. 

Dr. Jason Black was the 2020 Fulbright Research Chair in Transnational Studies with the Centre for Canadian Studies at Brock University. He visited from the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where he is a professor and the chairperson. He holds a PhD in Rhetorical Studies from the University of Maryland and has researched and published extensively on rhetoric and discourse around LGTBQ and Indigenous activist movements. His most recent publications include Mascot Nation: The Controversy over Native American Representations in Sports (co-authored with Andrew Billings) and Decolonizing Native American Rhetoric: Communicating Self-Determination. While at Brock, he taught CANA3V92 “Social Activism and Culture in Canada and the United States.” 

Find a full transcript at https://brocku.ca/humanities/foreword

Links

 Mascot Nation: The Controversy over Native American Representations in Sports (co-authored with Andrew Billings,  University of Illinois Press, 2018)

Decolonizing Native American Rhetoric: Communicating Self-Determination (co-edited with Casey Ryan Kelly, Peter Lang Publishing, 2018)

Brock welcomes Fulbright Chair in Transnational Studies (Brock News)

Superbowl reignites debate over Chiefs' name (Brock News)

Professor says SuperBowl will reignite conversation around 'controversial' Chiefs name (CBC Hamilton)

Why won't the Kansas City Chiefs change their logo and symbols (CBC Here and Now)

Centre for Canadian Studies, Brock University

 

Credits

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @brockhumanities.

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode.

Learn more about the Faculty of Humanities, including our events, programs of study, and departments, online.

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

Sound design and editing by Serena Atallah. Theme music is by Khalid Imam.

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support.

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

S1E06 Drug Photography with Dr. Linda Steer

We’re bombarded by images every day, whether we’re on Instagram or Twitter, reading a newspaper or Googling a recipe. Some images, like pictures of kittens, might make us feel happy. Other images, such as pictures of violence or drug use, might evoke feelings of disgust. But can those pictures also help us become more empathetic?  Dr. Linda Steer from the Department of Visual Art talks about her work on drug photography and how empathy can be a complicated a thing. Join us as we consider how the images we consume can make us more empathetic to others.  

Find a full transcript at https://brocku.ca/humanities/foreword

 

Links

Entangled empathy, drug use, and photographs of suffering (International Journal of Drug Policy, Vol. 65 March 2016)

New research shows empathy can shape drug policy (Brock News)

Ohio police post graphic photo of overdosed parents in SUV with 4-year-old child in backseat (Global News)

Linda Steer faculty profile

Department of Visual Arts, Brock University

 

Credits

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @brockhumanities.

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode.

Learn more about the Faculty of Humanities, including our events, programs of study, and departments, online.

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

Sound design and editing by Serena Atallah. Theme music is by Khalid Imam.

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support.

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

 

S1E05 Games with Dr. Jason Hawreliak

Like most people, you might be playing a lot of games these days: board games, video games, or games on your phone. But have you thought about how those games communicate meaning? In this episode we speak with Dr. Jason Hawreliak from Brock’s Centre for Digital Humanities, about how games communicate meaning and even propaganda.

Listen on to hear more about Animal Crossing, Call of Duty, and the field of game studies. 

Find a full transcript at https://brocku.ca/humanities/foreword

 

Links

Multimodal Semiotics and Rhetoric in Videogames (Routledge 2018)

Playing video games can ease loneliness during the coronavirus pandemic (with Aaron Langille and Charles Daviau; The Conversation)

Humanities champions honoured at spring symposium (Brock News)

Centre for Digital Humanities, Brock University

 

Credits

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter or Instagram @brockhumanities.

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode.

Learn more about the Faculty of Humanities, including our events, programs of study, and departments, online.

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

Sound design and editing by Serena Atallah. Theme music is by Khalid Imam.

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support.

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

S1E04 Nova Scotia Colonial History with Dr. Danny Samson

How can we get to know people from the past? Primary sources, like government records, letters and diaries, give historians valuable insight into human experiences of the past and making connections with modern crises.

Episode four of Foreword features a conversation with Danny Samson, an Associate Professor of History, about his work on Acadian and Nova Scotian colonial history and shares how historians use primary sources to build a more thorough understanding of past events.

Danny discusses his most recent work with his fourth year students on the Acadian expulsion from modern-day Prince Edward Island, which has been receiving international scholarly attention. He shares how his students completed their online project an interactive website Ile St-Jean: The Expulsion of 1758, which details the forcible deportation of thousands of Acadians from modern-day Prince Edward Island using primary forces, despite having their semester disrupted by the pandemic.

We also learn about Danny's ongoing project studying the diary of James Barry, a nineteenth-century miller in rural Nova Scotia. Analysis of Barry’s diary shows his connection with intellectual ideas and debates and politics in pre-Confederation Nova Scotia, as well as giving insight into the role of the miller in a small rural community.

Find a full transcript at https://brocku.ca/humanities/foreword

 

Links

Ile St-Jean: The Expulsion of 1758 (2020)

History course gains international scholarly attention for groundbreaking work (Brock News, 20 May 2020)

Daniel Samson faculty profile

@ruralcolonialns Daniel Samson on Twitter; see also #JamesBarryDiary 

Department of History

 

Credits

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @brockhumanities.

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode.

Learn more about the Faculty of Humanities, including our events, programs of study, and departments, online.

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

Sound design and editing by Serena Atallah. Theme music is by Khalid Imam.

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support.

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

 

Quotable: Data Privacy and Surveillance Capitalism

As we live more of our lives online, data privacy issues become more important. Who is collecting our data and what are they doing with it? Aaron Mauro, Assistant Professor with the Centre for Digital Humanities, spoke about identity and surveillance captalism with social media intern Hayley Wilhelm for this bonus mini episode.

Links

Working from home during the pandemic creates new cybersecurity threats (The Conversation, 9 April 2020)

 

Coronavirus contact tracing poses serious threats to our privacy (The Conversation, 10 May 2020)

 

Canadians need to consider implications of COVID-19 surveillance, says Brock prof (Brock News, 21 April 2020)

 

@onthename Aaron Mauro on Twitter

 

Dr. Aaron Mauro website

 

Centre for Digital Humanities

Credits

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @brockhumanities.

 

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode.

 

Learn more about the Faculty of Humanities, including our events, programs of study, and departments, online.

 

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

 

Sound design and editing by Serena Atallah. Theme music is by Khalid Imam.

 

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support.

 

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

 

 

S1E03 Early Modern Bookscapes with Dr. Leah Knight

You’ve heard of landscapes and seascapes, but have you ever head of bookscapes? Today’s researcher investigates the history of reading and attempts to unravel the complex relationship between women and written text in Early Modern Britain. Dr. Leah Knight from the Department of English Language and Literature spoke with us about textual culture and her digital project featuring the unpublished manuscript of 17th century poet Hester Pulter.

Dr. Knight studies early modern English poetry, prose, and the culture they emerge from. She’s authored two books, Of Books and Botany in Early Modern England and Reading Green in Early Modern England, which were both awarded the annual book prize of the British Society for Literature and Science. 

More recently, Dr. Knight has been investigating the history of reading, examining the evidence of reading materials, habits, and experiences associated with Anne Clifford (1590-1676). 

She has also turned to the long-neglected manuscripts of the poet Hester Pulter (1605-1678) and has launched a digital project with Dr. Wendy Wall of Northwestern University that was selected as the year’s best project in digital scholarship by the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender in 2018.  

Find a full transcript at https://brocku.ca/humanities/foreword

Links

Of Books and Botany in Early Modern England: Sixteenth-Century Plants and Print Culture (Routledge, 2009) 

Reading Green in Early Modern England (Routledge, 2014)

Women’s Bookscapes in Early Modern Britain: Reading, Ownership, Circulation (University of Michigan Press, 2018; edited with Micheline White, and Elizabeth Sauer)

The Pulter Project: Poet in the Making ( co-directed and -edited with Wendy Wall, 2018)

Digital project gives voice to 17th century female poet (Brock News, 19 November 2018)

Leah Knight faculty profile

Department of English Language & Literature 

 

Credits

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @brockhumanities.

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode.

Learn more about the Faculty of Humanities, including our events, programs of study, and departments, online.

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

Sound design and editing by Serena Atallah. Theme music is by Khalid Imam.

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support.

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

S1E02 Indigenous Mascots with Dr. Jason Black

Before COVID-19 took over our news headlines, Canadians were worried about other issues. There were bushfires in Australia, impeachment in the United States, and royals leaving the United Kingdom. Here in Canada, one of the growing issues making headlines was the spreading demonstrations in support of the Wet’suwet’en protest against Coastal Gaslink Pipeline in BC.   

At the time, Brock’s Centre for Canadian Studies was hosting a researcher in Indigenous activism as part of the international Fulbright program. Dr. Jason Black from the University of North Carolina was at Brock to work on research for his new book project.   

Today’s episode features a conversation with Jason we recorded in February, when the Kansas City Chiefs had just won the Super Bowl and the COVID-19 pandemic crisis had not yet disrupted the school year. At the end of our conversation, we have an update from Jason on how the pandemic situation is impacting Indigenous activism.  

Dr. Jason Black was the 2020 Fulbright Research Chair in Transnational Studies with the Centre for Canadian Studies at Brock University. He visited from the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where he is a professor and the chairperson. He holds a PhD in Rhetorical Studies from the University of Maryland and has researched and published extensively on rhetoric and discourse around LGTBQ and Indigenous activist movements. His most recent publications include Mascot Nation: The Controversy over Native American Representations in Sports (co-authored with Andrew Billings) and Decolonizing Native American Rhetoric: Communicating Self-Determination. While at Brock, he taught CANA3V92 “Social Activism and Culture in Canada and the United States.” 

 Find a full transcript at https://brocku.ca/humanities/foreword

 

Links

 Mascot Nation: The Controversy over Native American Representations in Sports (co-authored with Andrew Billings,  University of Illinois Press, 2018)

Decolonizing Native American Rhetoric: Communicating Self-Determination (co-edited with Casey Ryan Kelly, Peter Lang Publishing, 2018)

Brock welcomes Fulbright Chair in Transnational Studies (Brock News)

Superbowl reignites debate over Chiefs' name (Brock News)

Professor says SuperBowl will reignite conversation around 'controversial' Chiefs name (CBC Hamilton)

Why won't the Kansas City Chiefs change their logo and symbols (CBC Here and Now)

Centre for Canadian Studies, Brock University

 

Credits

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @brockhumanities.

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode.

Learn more about the Faculty of Humanities, including our events, programs of study, and departments, online.

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

Sound design and editing by Serena Atallah. Theme music is by Khalid Imam.

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support.

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

S1E01 Viking Culture with Dr. Andrew McDonald and Dr. Angus Somerville

What image comes to mind when you hear the word Vikings? A violent warrior society, raiding and pillaging? A seafaring people trading and migrating across vast distances of the North Atlantic? 

Vikings have a hold on the popular imagination, but new directions in Norse studies might just challenge our preconceptions of who and what the Vikings were. We spoke with professors Andrew McDonald and Angus Somerville from Brock University's Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies about their research into gender roles in Viking society. 

Dr. Andrew McDonald is a professor with the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Department of History. In July 2019, Professor McDonald launched his book The Sea Kings: The Late Norse Kingdoms of Man and the Isles c. 1066-1275, which went on to be shortlisted for Scotland’s prestigious Saltire Society Literary Awards. 

Dr. Angus Somerville is a retired professor of English. He taught Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and Middle English language and literature while at Brock and won two awards for his teaching. Professor Somerville has published on authors Evelyn Waugh, Robert Graves, Martin Seymour-Smith, and Michael Polanyi. He has worked for almost forty years on The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (published by Oxford University Press).

Professors McDonald and Somerville co-authored the book The Vikings and Their Age and have recently released an updated edition of their textbook, A Viking Age Reader, with University of Toronto Press.

 

Links

The Sea Kings: The Late Norse Kingdoms of Man and the Isles c. 1066-1275 (Andrew McDonald, John Donald/Birlinn, 2019)

A Viking Age Reader, Third Edition (Angus Sommerville and Andrew McDonald, University of Toronto Press, 2020)

The Vikings and Their Age (Angus Sommerville and Andrew McDonald, University of Toronto Press, 2013)

The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford University Press)

Andrew McDonald faculty profile

Brock prof returns to land of Vikings for book launch (Brock News, 24 July 2019)

Viking book shortlisted for prestigious prize (Brock News, 11 Nov. 2019)

Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Brock University

Faculty of Humanities, Brock University

 

Credits

We love to hear from our listeners! Join us on Twitter and Instagram @brockhumanities.

Please subscribe and rate us on your favourite podcasting app so you don’t miss an episode.

Learn more about the Faculty of Humanities, including our events, programs of study, and departments, online.

Foreword is hosted and produced by Alison Innes for the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.

Sound design and editing by Serena Atallah. Theme music is by Khalid Imam.

Special thanks to Brock University’s MakerSpace and Brock University Marketing and Communications for studio and web support.

This podcast is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities at Brock University.