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.

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S6E2 | Springtime Rejections: PhDivas Talk About Academic Failure

In this episode, Elizabeth Duquette (Gettysburg College) and Stacey Margolis (University of Utah) discuss their experiences as co-editors of J19, the flagship journal of C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. In a recording of the live Q&A event from April 29, 2021, Crystal Donkor (SUNY New Paltz) asks the outgoing editors questions about the intellectual challenges and pragmatics of shaping research in the field of nineteenth-century American studies. For more information on the current call for new J19 editors please visit https://www.c19society.org/call-for-editors. Proposals are due by June 15, 2021. This episode was produced by Christine "Xine" Yao (University College London) and Doug Guerra (SUNY Oswego). Full transcript available here: http://bit.ly/C19PodcastS04E05.

You can contact Betsy Duquette and Stacey Margolis to learn more about co-editing J19 or submitting to the journal: eduquett@gettysburg.edu / s.margolis@utah.edu

S04E05 | Insights into Editing J19

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.

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S6E3 | Casteism ≠ Racism: Prof Shaista Patel on the Failures of 'Postcolonialism'

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. 

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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

S6E4 | PhDivas Watch Netflix's The Chair: WOC Safeguarding & Sabotage

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

S6E5 | WOC Scholars in Community: PhDiva Xine's Book Launch!

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

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

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

S6E7 | PhDivas Discuss DISAFFECTED: Solidarities Outside the Master's House

This past February, the C19 Ad Hoc Committee on Events brought together eleven scholars to discuss the contributions their first books make to our understanding of nineteenth-century history, literature, and culture. Hosted by Crystal Donker (SUNY New Paltz), this live virtual event included individual presentations and a lively Q&A, where authors shared hard-won practical advice about the publishing process. On this episode of the C19 podcast, we share the excitement and intellectual curiosity of The First Book Celebration, introducing our listening audience to a new generation of scholars. This episode was produced by Rachel Boccio (LaGuardia Community College, CUNY) and Ashley Rattner (Tusculum University). The authors appearing on this episode include Ashley Barnes, Juliana Chow, Gordon Fraser, Melissa Gniadek, Reed Gochberg, Thomas Koenigs, Hannah Murray, Julie Pfeiffer, Crystal Webster, Xine Yao, and Elissa Zellinger.  Full episode transcript is available at https://bit.ly/39L6SPq.

S05E03 | The First Book Celebration

Conferences are like icebergs: there's a lot going on below the surface. We give you insight on the secret life of academic conferences. First, Liz and Xine cover the obvious considerations about STEM and humanities conferences. But in the majority of this episode we discuss the hidden dynamics: institutional privilege, social ecosystems, and how cliques make visible professional power dynamics. In some ways, academic conferences can be like a teen movie! You enter as an overwhelmed junior person trying to break into the scene and you hope to eventually become prom queen.  Who do you eat your meals with? Can you make connections with the "cool kids," the superstars in your field? What do you do about the pressure to drink? Does social media change the game? What do you wear? What are the very real financial costs to conferences, not to mention the toll it can take on introverts, the chronically ill, or those who can't get childcare?

Senior scholars, please take conferences as an opportunity to help junior and contingent scholars! Just buying someone a coffee and chatting with them can go a long way.

S03E23 | The Secret Life of Academic Conferences

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.

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S5 Special! Liz interviews her mom

PhDivas Dr. Xine Yao and Dr. Liz Wayne get together over American Thanksgiving to talk about the challenges of working during COVID19. Supporting our own self care as we support our students, or research efforts is no trivial feat. All the best as the term and the year are winding down!

Learn about the Indigenous peoples and their treaties of the land you're on if you are in a settler colonial nation: https://native-land.ca

Support PhDivas on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/phdivaspodcast

S5E18 | The Good, the Bad, the COVID-19: Winding Down and Burning Out

Podcast about academia, culture, and social justice across the STEM/humanities divide. Dr. Liz Wayne and Dr. Christine "Xine" Yao are two women of color Ivy League PhDs navigating higher education. Biomedical engineer meets literary critic. Both fans of lipstick.