BG Ideas

In this episode of the BG Ideas podcast, we’ll be sitting down with botanist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer and communications specialist for the Wood County Park District Jessie Walton-Summers. Kimmerer is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass, which explores how humans might live in more respectful relationships with the land. Walton-Summers is a Bowling Green State University alumna whose work conn...

This episode of the BG Ideas podcast features ICS Faculty Fellow Dr. Rebecca Kinney, a professor in the School of Cultural & Critical Studies, who shares the thought-provoking findings of her research project “Making Home in Korea” about the “Transactional Lives of Adult Korean Adoptees.” In our conversation, Dr. Kinney takes us through the history of the South Korean transnational program, ex...

In this episode of the BG Ideas podcast, we’ll be sitting down with Dr. Bill Mullen, a renowned scholar and professor of African American Literature and American Studies. As the author of James Baldwin: Living in Fire , Dr. Mullen believes Baldwin is more than a liberal figure: he was a radical revolutionary. Listen how he explains Baldwin’s suggestion that racism and homophobia harm not only thos...

In this new episode of BG Ideas, Dr. Valeria Grinberg Pla sits down with previous ICS director Dr. Jolie Sheffer and founding director Dr. Vivian Patraka to look back on the foundation of ICS in 1996 and what ICS means today. As founding director, Dr. Patraka built ICS from the ground up and through many challenges saw how it evolved from an idea to a desk and a copy machine, to now a public human...

In this episode of the BG Ideas Podcast hosted by Halima Lul Ali, a graduate research assistant with ICS, we’ll be sitting down with Dr. Erik Garabaya Casado, a teaching professor of Spanish at BGSU’s World Languages and Cultures department, as he discusses the future of language learning in relation to the rise of generative AI. Listen along as Dr. Garabaya explains how generative AI can help rai...

In this new eye-opening episode of the BG Ideas podcast we’llbe sitting down with Bowling Green State University Associate Professor of History Dr. Rebecca Mancuso as she engages in the shocking—but much needed—conversation on hazing in Northwest Ohio. Following her ICS Faculty Fellowship Public Talk, How Many Times Can You Learn That Lesson? A History of Hazing at an Ohio Public University, 1920-...

This episode of the BG Ideas podcast features Dr. Olga Sanz Casasnovas and Dr. Pedro Porbén, professors of Spanish at BGSU’s World Languages and Cultures Department, as they discuss the significance of José Lezama Lima’s first novel  Paradiso  60 years after its publication. Listen along, as they examine how the protagonist, José Cemí, breaks the mold for expectations of Cuban men at that time and...

In this special episode of the BG Ideas podcast, we celebrate 30 years of the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society (ICS) and seven years of the BG Ideas podcast itself. To celebrate, ICS Director Dr. Valeria Grinberg Pla takes us back to several discussions, speakers and topics from rethinking human potential to our justice system and how individuals can spark change to capture what ICS...

In this episode of  BG Ideas,  we welcome Rosemarie Poiarkov, Max Kade Writer in Residence in Fall 2025 at Bowling Green State University, where she was also featured in the Prout Chapel Reading Series. Throughout the episode we discuss how literature affects imagination and listening throughout society.  Follow along, as she discusses the importance of listening in literature and the way that dif...

In this episode of  BG Ideas,  we welcome Rebekah Monroe, a current Clinical Psychology PhD student at Bowling Green State University and recipient of the 2023-2024 Graduate Teacher of the Year Award. Throughout this episode, we explore the various ways religious trauma shapes identity, often producing both positive and negative effects. Listen as Rebekah discusses different forms of religious tra...

This week, Claudia Salazar, an award-winning Peruvian Writer, literary critic, and scholar, joins us on  BG Ideas . She has a PhD in Latin American Literature from New York University and is recognized internationally for her contributions both as a novelist and as a cultural critic. In this episode ,  we discuss how emotion can provoke a different way of understanding, conversations surrounding g...

We welcome Haley Shipley on this week's episode of  BG Ideas . Haley is a Doctoral Student in American Culture Studies at BGSU, Co-President of the Ray Brown Association, and a Graduate Student Supervisor at the Browne Popular Culture Library. In this episode we discuss how the Browne Popular Culture Library earned its name, what materials you can find in the archive, and what makes this archi...

In this episode of  BG Ideas , Dr. Kristine Ketel joins us to discuss the relationship between humans and robots. Kristine recently earned her PhD in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University in the Spring of 2025. Based on her research on the cultural and ethical implications of artificial intelligence and human robot interaction, she argues that robots aren’t all bad. She high...

In this episode of  BG Ideas,  we are joined by two guests, Joe Macdonald and Garrett Scherff. Joe Macdonald is a Popular Culture Graduate Student at BGSU studying counterculture, the goth subculture, and the capacity of fandoms to evolve into spaces of cultural resistance. Garrett Scherff is an instructor in the Department of Popular Culture within the School of Cultural and Critical Studies at B...

In this episode of  BG Ideas,  Dr. Clayton Rosati, Associate Professor in the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University and ICS Fall 2025 Faculty Fellow, discusses how the raise of artificial intelligence (AI) impacts our landscapes, communities and resources. Specifically, he focuses on the growing infrastructure that is being built around the country, from Virginia, the...

In this episode of  BG Ideas , Dr. Rachel Walsh, Associate Teaching Professor of English and International Studies at Bowling Green State University and ICS Faculty Fellow in the fall of 2025, discusses Pat Heartly and Dick Fontaine's recently restored documentary on James Baldwin,  I Heard It Through the Grapevine  (1982) and how it foreshadows the current backlash to diversity, equity and in...

In this vibrant episode of BG Ideas, Arigon Starr, award-winning Kickapoo artist and performer, joins us for a powerful conversation on Native storytelling as an avenue of resistance and healing through music, theatre, and comics. In our conversion, Arigon  conveys the importance of using art to illuminate, respond to, and challenge injustices, emphasizing the transformational effect of balancing...

In this exciting new episode of BG Ideas, we sit down with Dr. Clayton Rosati, Associate Professor of Media Studies at Bowling Green State University and Claire Cromly, an undergraduate student who took Dr. Rosati’s course about media, place, and power through the works of James Baldwin. During this conversation, our guests navigate the construction of social environments, the values within them,...

In this episode of BG Ideas, we welcome two inspiring guests: Heather Andolina, President of the Melungeon Heritage Association and host of the Melungeon Voices Podcast, and Dr. Muhammad Sheeraz Dasti, a literary scholar and translator, specializing in linguistic criticism. Both were presenters at ClassCon , a conference hosted at BGSU, inspired by Ray Brown, that seeks to give, “education a broad...

In this exciting episode of BG Ideas , we sit down with Jay Grummel, a BGSU creative writing student and recipient of the Hoskins Global scholarship, as well as BGSU creative writing Professor and Jay’s research advisor, Abby Cloud, to delve into her transatlantic exploration of opera libretti in Europe. Their conversation brings light into the specifics of writing libretti and how it requires a d...

In this episode of BG Ideas , we speak with Dr. Sidra Lawrence, Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology, and Dr. Amy-Rose Forbes-Erickson, Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at Bowling Green State University. Together, they were recipients of the ICS Interdisciplinary Team-Teaching Program, through which they co-designed and co-taught a course titled Africana Performance and the...

In this utterly informative sit-down session, we got to speak with assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at BGSU and Spring 2025 ICS Faculty Fellow Meagan Docherty to talk about gun violence reduction and prevention in Toldeo, Ohio.   She identifies gun violence as a public health crisis that disproportionately impacts children and minority communities. Docherty stresses the idea tha...

In this episode of BG Ideas we engage with Dr. Thomas Roberts, ICS Faculty Fellow in Spring 2025 and Assistant Director of Undergraduate Education and Associate Professor in the School of Inclusive Education at BGSU, to discuss the importance of access to STEM education in primary schools.   Throughout his diverse teaching experiences, Dr. Roberts has identified a resource-based disparity in STEM...

In this episode of BG Ideas, award-winning writer Saeed Jones reveals how writing became his refuge. Jones shares the intimate history of his creative journey, revealing how it became his escape as a young Black and queer person navigating life and identity in the South.   Believing that safety can be found between the pages in books, Jones uncovers how writing provides a space for one to explore...

In this episode of BG Ideas, we talk to Dr. Kristina Richardson, a visiting Phi Beta Kappa Historian from the University of Virginia. Listen as Dr. Richardson explores the hidden histories of marginalized peoples in the medieval world, and through her focus on the technological innovations of the Roma to the complex global networks of slave trades,  Dr. Richardson challenges traditional historical...