Best Vanessa Walker Podcasts (2024)

1
Life Lessons: Kindergarten Wisdom for All Ages 28:30

4d ago28:30

28:30

Angela and Vanessa discuss the ideas from "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" written by Robert Fulghum. How much of what we teach our 5- and 6-year-old children can guide us through challenging times today and why can't we just get back to basics! Now relax, sit crisscross applesauce and enjoy this fun but thought-provoking episo…

1
Firuzeh Shokooh Valle, "In Defense of Solidarity and Pleasure: Feminist Technopolitics from the Global South" (Stanford UP, 2023) 1:03:14

8d ago1:03:14

1:03:14

Including women in the global South as users, producers, consumers, designers, and developers of technology has become a mantra against inequality, prompting movements to train individuals in information and communication technologies and foster the participation and retention of women in science and technology fields. In In Defense of Solidarity a…

1
Oneka LaBennett, "Global Guyana: Shaping Race, Gender, and Environment in the Caribbean and Beyond" (NYU Press, 2024) 53:52

10d ago53:52

53:52

Previously ranked among the hemisphere’s poorest countries, Guyana is becoming a global leader in per capita oil production, a shift which promises to profoundly transform the nation. This sea change presents a unique opportunity to dissect both the environmental impacts of modern-world resource extraction and the obscured yet damaging ways in whic…

1
Faith Smith, "Strolling in the Ruins: The Caribbean's Non-Sovereign Modern in the Early Twentieth Century" (Duke UP, 2023) 1:04:31

11d ago1:04:31

1:04:31

In Strolling in the Ruins: The Caribbean's Non-Sovereign Modern in the Early Twentieth Century (Duke UP, 2023), Faith Smith engages with a period in the history of the Anglophone Caribbean often overlooked as nondescript, quiet, and embarrassingly pro-imperial within the larger narrative of Jamaican and Trinidadian nationalism. Between the 1865 Mor…

1
Balancing Acts: The Perils of Over-Encouragement in Parenting 30:21

19d ago30:21

30:21

Vanessa and Angela discuss the daily struggles of encouraging your child to pursue their interests, versus pushing them to their limits and possibly even over. How do we know when to stop and put guardrails in place to protect our kids from the potentially harmful effects of over-encouragement?By Vanessa Walker and Angela Trapp

1
Keja L. Valens, "Culinary Colonialism, Caribbean Cookbooks, and Recipes for National Independence" (Rutgers UP, 2024) 1:04:40

21d ago1:04:40

1:04:40

Women across the Caribbean have been writing, reading, and exchanging cookbooks since at least the turn of the nineteenth century. These cookbooks are about much more than cooking. Through cookbooks, Caribbean women, and a few men, have shaped, embedded, and contested colonial and domestic orders, delineated the contours of independent national cul…

1
John Soluri, "Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States" (U Texas Press, 2021) 1:14:22

27d ago1:14:22

1:14:22

Bananas, the most frequently consumed fresh fruit in the United States, have been linked to Miss Chiquita and Carmen Miranda, "banana republics," and Banana Republic clothing stores—everything from exotic kitsch, to Third World dictatorships, to middle-class fashion. But how did the rise in banana consumption in the United States affect the banana-…

1
Chloe Wigston Smith, "Novels, Needleworks, and Empire: Material Entanglements in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World" (Yale UP, 2024) 51:22

1M ago51:22

51:22

In the eighteenth century, women’s contributions to empire took fewer official forms than those collected in state archives. Their traces were recorded in material ways, through the ink they applied to paper or the artefacts they created with muslin, silk threads, feathers, and shells. Handiwork, such as sewing, knitting, embroidery, and other craf…

1
Laura Gómez, "Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism" (The New Press, 2020) 1:03:24

1M ago1:03:24

1:03:24

Latinos have long influenced everything from electoral politics to popular culture, yet many people instinctively regard them as recent immigrants rather than a longstanding racial group. In Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism (The New Press, 2020), Laura Gómez, a leading expert on race, law, and society, illuminates the fascinating r…

1
Soulful Steps: Navigating the National Museum of African American History and Culture 29:30

1M ago29:30

29:30

Vanessa shares her experience visiting Washington DC and walking through the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Angela weighs in with her own experience and discussions ensue regarding the importance of remembering our history lest we repeat it.By Vanessa Walker and Angela Trapp

1
Timothy P. Storhoff, "Harmony and Normalization: US-Cuban Musical Diplomacy" (UP of Mississippi, 2020) 59:13

1M ago59:13

59:13

Harmony and Normalization: US-Cuban Musical Diplomacy (University Press of Mississippi, 2020) explores the channels of musical exchange between Cuba and the United States during the eight-year presidency of Barack Obama, who eased the musical embargo of the island and restored relations with Cuba. Musical exchanges during this period act as a lens …

1
Vince Brown, Caribbean Vectors (EF, JP) 45:51

1M ago45:51

45:51

The largest slave uprising in the 18th century British Caribbean was also a node of the global conflict called the Seven Year’s War, though it isn’t usually thought of that way. In the first few days of the quarantine and our current geopolitical and epidemiological shitshow, John and Elizabeth spoke with Vincent Brown, who recently published Tacky…

1
Vanessa Walker, "Principles in Power: Latin America and the Politics of U.S. Human Rights Diplomacy" (Cornell UP, 2020) 1:04:37

2M ago1:04:37

1:04:37

Vanessa Walker's Principles in Power: Latin America and the Politics of U. S. Human Rights Diplomacy (Cornell University Press, 2020) explores the relationship between policy makers and nongovernment advocates in Latin America and the United States government in order to explain the rise of anti-interventionist human rights policies uniquely critic…

1
Man vs Bear: Why the Controversy? 32:59

2M ago32:59

32:59

Women were asked if they would rather be alone in the forest with a bear or a man. Surprisingly (to many but not all) some women said bear. Angela and Vanessa discuss the Man vs Bear question and provide their take on why this is even a controversy.By Vanessa Walker and Angela Trapp

1
Benjamin Bryce and David M. K. Sheinin, "Race and Transnationalism in the Americas" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2021) 39:15

2M ago39:15

39:15

Edited by Benjamin Bryce and David Sheinin, Race and Transnationalism in the Americas (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021), highlights the importance of transnational forces in shaping the concept of race and understanding of national belonging across the Americas, from the late nineteenth century to the present times. The book also examines how …

1
Adriana Chira, "Patchwork Freedoms: Law, Slavery, and Race beyond Cuba's Plantations" (Cambridge UP, 2022) 40:15

2M ago40:15

40:15

In nineteenth-century Santiago de Cuba, the island of Cuba's radical cradle, Afro-descendant peasants forged freedom and devised their own formative path to emancipation. Drawing on understudied archives, this pathbreaking work, Patchwork Freedoms: Law, Slavery, and Race beyond Cuba's Plantations (Cambridge UP, 2022) unearths a new history of Black…

1
Maria Cristina Garcia, "State of Disaster: The Failure of U. S. Migration Policy in an Age of Climate Change" (UNC Press, 2022) 50:15

2M ago50:15

50:15

Natural disasters and the dire effects of climate change cause massive population displacements and lead to some of the most intractable political and humanitarian challenges seen today. Yet, as Maria Cristina Garcia observes in State of Disaster: The Failure of U. S. Migration Policy in an Age of Climate Change (UNC Press, 2022), there is actually…

1
Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha, "Vodou en Vogue: Fashioning Black Divinities in Haiti and the United States" (UNC Press, 2023) 1:27:01

2M ago1:27:01

1:27:01

In Haitian Vodou, spirits impact Black practitioners' everyday lives, tightly connecting the sacred and the secular. As Eziaku Atuama Nwokocha reveals in Vodou En Vogue: Fashioning Black Divinities in Haiti and the United States (UNC Press, 2023), that connection is manifest in the dynamic relationship between public religious ceremonies, material …

1
Mateo Jarquín, "The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History" (UNC Press, 2024) 33:59

2M ago33:59

33:59

The Sandinista Revolution and its victory against the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua gripped the United States and the world in the 1980s. But as soon as the Sandinistas were voted out of power in 1990 and the Iran Contra affair ceased to make headlines, it became, in Washington at least, a thing of the past. In The Sandinista Revolution: A Globa…

1
Andil Gosine, "Nature's Wild: Love, Sex, and Law in the Caribbean" (Duke UP, 2021) 1:04:22

2M ago1:04:22

1:04:22

In Nature's Wild: Love, Sex, and Law in the Caribbean (Duke UP, 2021), Andil Gosine engages with questions of humanism, queer theory, and animality to examine and revise understandings of queer desire in the Caribbean. Surveying colonial law, visual art practices, and contemporary activism, Gosine shows how the very concept of homosexuality in the …

1
Safe Spaces: The Power of Psychological Safety Everywhere 30:28

2M ago30:28

30:28

Vanessa and Angela review the definition of psychological safety and discuss the benefits of incorporating this concept into all aspects of our society including the workplace, parenting, friendships and even romantic relationships. It's not about raising "snowflakes"; it's about raising kind humans who create a space for others to make mistakes, s…

1
Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, "Puerto Rico: A National History" (Princeton UP, 2024) 44:44

3M ago44:44

44:44

Puerto Rico is a Spanish-speaking territory of the United States with a history shaped by conquest and resistance. For centuries, Puerto Ricans have crafted and negotiated complex ideas about nationhood. Jorell Meléndez-Badillo provides a new history of Puerto Rico that gives voice to the archipelago's people while offering a lens through which to …

1
Degrees of Debt: Is College Worth the Price Tag? 28:45

3M ago28:45

28:45

Angela and Vanessa discuss college degrees and debate the value of higher education in a country the puts young people into debt, sometimes upwards of half a million dollars, with no promise of a good income or even a job. What are the alternatives and are we ever going to consider changing the status quo?…

1
Jeremy Black, "The Atlantic Slave Trade in World History" (Routledge, 2015) 41:54

3M ago41:54

41:54

In The Atlantic Slave Trade in World History (Routledge, 2015), Jeremy Black presents a compact yet comprehensive survey of slavery and its impact on the world, primarily centered on the Atlantic trade. Opening with a clear discussion of the problems of defining slavery, the book goes on to investigate the Atlantic slave trade from its origins to a…

1
Christopher Michael Blakley, "Empire of Brutality: Enslaved People and Animals in the British Atlantic World" (Louisiana State UP, 2023) 58:46

3M ago58:46

58:46

Historians of early America, slavery, early African American history, the history of science, and environmental history have interrogated the complex ways in which enslaved people were thought about and treated as human but also dehumanized to be understood as private property or chattel. The comparison of enslaved people to animals, particularly d…

1
Adele Oliver, "Deeping It: Colonialism, Culture & Criminalisation of UK Drill" (404 Ink, 2023) 48:10

3M ago48:10

48:10

Deeping It: Colonialism, Culture & Criminalisation of UK Drill (404 Ink, 2023) by Adèle Oliver shines a critical light on UK drill and its fraught relationship with the British legal system. Intervening on current discourse steeped in anti-Blackness and moral panic, this Inkling ‘deeps’ how the criminalisation of UK drill cannot be disentangled fro…

1
Mauricio Fernando Castro, "Only a Few Blocks to Cuba: Cold War Refugee Policy, the Cuban Diaspora, and the Transformations of Miami" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) 1:11:19

3M ago1:11:19

1:11:19

In Only a Few Blocks to Cuba: Cold War Refugee Policy, the Cuban Diaspora, and the Transformations of Miami (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024), Mauricio Castro shows how the U.S. government came to view Cuban migration to Miami as a strategic asset during the Cold War, in the process investing heavily in the city's development and shaping its future as a…

1
126 E. G. Condé / Steve Gonzalez on Hurricanes, Fiction, and Speculative Ethnography (EF) 37:34

3M ago37:34

37:34

In this episode, Elizabeth talks with Steven Gonzalez, anthropologist and author of speculative fiction under the pen name E.G. Condé. They discuss the entanglement of politics, Taíno animism, and weather events in the form of a hurricane named Teddy. Steve describes the suffusion of sound he has experienced in Puerto Rico and the soundlessness at …

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Vanessa Walker Podcasts

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