In episode five of Faculty Spotlight, Lauren and Mark sit down with Joseph Earl Thomas, BISR faculty and author the acclaimed memoir Sink. The three discuss: memoir-writing and the art of "un-knowing" writing; literary realism in the 21st century; having, or faking, a "world picture"; how, with Sylvia Wynter, we can think trans-culturally; Gayl Jones and the art of literary maximalism (and why it's not just for "white boys"); why "resignification" can't change the material world; and what it's like to live, work, and think in Philadelphia.

Episode 64 of the Podcast for Social Research is a live-recording of mezzo-soprano Lucy Dhegrae's sound lecture, Music and Trauma, recently delivered at BISR Central. Between performances of selections from her acclaimed Processing Series, including the frenetic "Dithyramb" and the ethereal "No," Dhegrae talks to BISR faculty Paige Sweet and Danielle Drori about the interrelationship—the push-pull—between trauma, body, psyche, and sound—particularly in the wake of traumatic experience. What does it mean to sublimate trauma, and how is it "felt" and processed in the body? How, moreover, is trauma expressible (and what does Julia Kristeva have to say about it)? How can we understand the difference between language and music, words and sounds? And how can we think about the interrelationship of the voice and the body, of "vibration against bone"?

In episode 63 of the Podcast for Social Research, a live-recording of our Wednesday, May 3rd event Cop City: Police, Protest, and Social Control, BISR faculty Nara Roberta Silva, Patrick Blanchfield, Geo Maher, and guests Natasha Lennard and Kamau Franklin examine and contextualize the planned construction of "Cop City"—the Atlantan “state-of-the-art public safety training academy” that features classrooms, firing ranges, and a “mock city” in which police trainees can practice the methods of tactical urban warfare. Who and what is driving the creation of Cop City—and why is it a phenomenon of national significance?  How can we understand the "boomerang" effect that has brought imperial counterinsurgency "back," as it were, to U.S. shores? What is the nature of the opposition to Cop City? How, here and elsewhere, have authorities wielded statutory law to intimidate protesters and effectively prohibit protest? What are the politics on the ground, in Atlanta, a majority black city with a majority black political leadership? Finally, for a society unwilling to address extreme racial and material stratification, is Cop City its inevitable future?