The Emergence Room

New episode of The Emergence Room featuring Samiya Bashir. Poet, multimedia artist, educator, trailblazer, and the first Black woman to receive the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize in Literature at the American Academy in Rome.   We talked about poetry as a living architecture. About queer women navigating institutions while becoming "the first" in rooms not originally built for them. About leadership, v...

On this episode of The Emergence Room, we had the pleasure of talking with educator, researcher, and designer Iman Fayyad, whose work moves through conceptual drawing, sustainability, pedagogy, and spatial imagination with remarkable energy and curiosity. Our conversation moved between architecture and identity, teaching and movement, drawing and politics. We talked about the love of conceptual dr...

On this episode of The Emergence Room, we had the pleasure of talking with performance artist Jefferson Pinder, 2026 Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome, whose work moves between performance, sculpture, video, theater, ritual, and social history with extraordinary emotional and political force.  Cohost T.J. Dedeaux-Norris recently had the opportunity to perform collaboratively with J...

On this episode of The Emergence Room, we had the pleasure of talking with Adam Summers, scientist, educator, explorer, and 2026 Rome Prize Fellow in Environmental Arts & Humanities at the American Academy in Rome. Adam can almost always be found somewhere around the Academy wearing one of his now iconic fish shirts, which at this point feel less like clothing and more like a long-running conceptu...

This is a very special episode of The Emergence Room. On this episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Peter N. Miller, President and CEO of the American Academy in Rome, historian, scholar, and longtime advocate for interdisciplinary research and public intellectual life. (aarome.org (https://www.aarome.org/about/staff/peter-n-miller)) For cohost T.J. Dedeaux-Norris, whose current doctoral r...

On this episode of The Emergence Room, we are joined by Tameka Baba, a landscape architect, artist, curator, and Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Tameka is also a Professional Practice Assistant Professor in Landscape Architecture at the Knowlton School at Ohio State University, where her work explores public space, ecology, community, and the transformation of overlooked urban l...

On this episode of The Emerence Room, we are joined by Oswald Huỳnh, a Vietnamese American composer from Portland, Oregon, and a fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Recently named a 2026 Guggenheim Fellow, Oswald's work moves through questions of memory, heritage, language, identity, and the emotional textures carried across generations.   In our conversation, we talk about family, diaspora, s...

In this episode of The Emergence Room, I'm in conversation with Kendra-Nicole Stephens, a chef, mentor, and community-builder whose work lives at the intersection of craft, care, and purpose. Kendra joined us at the American Academy in Rome as a friend of the Academy, and what unfolded was more than a visit—it was an exchange rooted in generosity, curiosity, and deep presence. A graduate of Howard...

In this episode of The Emergence Room, T.J. Dedeaux-Norris hosts a conversation with Kaaj Tshikalandand – cultural mediator and anthropological researcher. Recorded at the closing of T.J.'s exhibition Black Body: Ancient City at Murate Arts District in Florence, Italy. This marks the podcast's first-ever live episode, held in the museum with a live audience, and the first time T.J. is hosting the...

In this episode of The Emergence Room, we sit down with Liz Glynn – a sculptor, performance artist, and current Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Known for her work navigating endurance, material transformation, and the politics of labor, Glynn has been in Rome working with wax and plaster – materials that hold memory, pressure, and impermanence, echoing her ongoing interest in ho...

On this episode of The Emergence Room, we are joined by Aliza Wong, Director of the American Academy in Rome and a professor of history at Texas Tech University, where she has spent over two decades teaching and mentoring students. Her scholarship centers on modern Italy and the Mediterranean, with a focus on race, nation, culture, and identity—work that feels deeply connected to the kinds of conv...

In this episode of The Emergence Room, we sit with João Salema, a fellow traveler whose practice feels as fluid and transient as the way she moves through the world. Our conversation unfolds around living between places—between homes, cities, languages, and selves. We talk about what it means to build an art practice while constantly in motion, and how João makes objects appear, disappear, and rea...

In this episode, we are joined by Christine Sun Kim, an artist whose work rigorously examines sound, language, power, and access. Christine's practice challenges assumed hierarchies of communication and invites us to reconsider how meaning is produced, circulated, and authorized. Her work moves across drawing, installation, performance, and social engagement, often asking who systems are built for...

On this episode of The Emergence Room, we're so honored to sit down with Sean Mooney — American Academy in Rome Fellow, artist, curator, and longtime collaborator with Chuna McIntyre. This conversation unfolds around music and singing, and how sound becomes a way of holding memory, devotion, and care. We talk about what it means to live as an artist who is also a caretaker — of ideas, of objects,...

Okay – today's episode is one of those conversations that reminds us why we love doing this podcast. We're so excited to share this conversation with Paula Gaither – and truly, talking with Paula was such a gift. She is equal parts party, equal parts scholar, equal parts absolute bright light of a human being. Paula is a PhD candidate at Stanford and a Rome Prize Fellow here at the American Academ...

Just moments before we recorded this episode of The Emergence Room, roles briefly reversed. Anita Contini – founder of Creative Time and longtime leader at Bloomberg Philanthropies – was in the midst of conducting interviews for her current research project, Origins and Outcomes. As part of that work, she interviewed T.J. while T.J. is working at the American Academy in Rome. Then we pressed recor...

We're excited to welcome Timothy Darden, also known as @blackostume, to The Emergence Room. Timothy is a filmmaker and musician currently completing his BFA in Film, and during his time as a Fellow Traveler at the American Academy in Rome, he's been immersed in cinema, sound, and study — watching Italian films, listening deeply, and learning how culture, language, and rhythm shape storytelling. In...

This week in The Emergence Room, we sit down with someone whose presence feels like stepping into a poem — David Keplinger, poet, translator, teacher, and Rome Prize Fellow. David moves through the world with a quiet radiance, shaped by years of listening: to language, to silence, to the histories that live between words. Our conversation traces an emergence arc from stillness to voice, from inter...

This week we sit down with Margo Weitzman, Rome Prize Fellow and PhD candidate at Rutgers University, whose research traces a sixteenth-century merchant moving between India and Italy—translating worlds through trade, language, and desire. Margo opens up about her own emergent journey: being adopted, navigating queerness, partnership, travel, and the ongoing search for belonging. We explore how he...

In this episode of The Emergence Room, we sit down with the extraordinary duo Bonnie Fisher and Boris Dramov of the ROMA Design Group—partners in life, in practice, and in purpose. This married team of architects has shaped communities, cities, and cultural memory through their work, including the iconic Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. Our conversation moves from the foundation...

In this episode of The Emergence Room, we sit down with Pythagoras The Sage — artist, philosopher, musician, and fellow traveler at the American Academy in Rome — to explore how flow, music, and philosophy merge in a practice rooted in transformation and queerness. Pythagoras moves fluidly through electronic sound, ritual, and reflection, accessing multiple modalities and inversions of self to com...

Rick Luttmann – Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Sonoma State University – joins The Emergence Room as a Rome Fellow Traveler at the American Academy in Rome. A mathematician, public servant, and lifelong wanderer of unconventional paths, Rick brings a generosity of spirit and a catalog of stories that simply do not fit into one episode. Rick's second arc continues with the beaten-path to off-...

Rick Luttmann – Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Sonoma State University – joins The Emergence Room as a Rome Fellow Traveler at the American Academy in Rome. A mathematician, public servant, and lifelong wanderer of unconventional paths, Rick brings a generosity of spirit and a catalog of stories that simply do not fit into one episode. In fact, Rick's life has been so full of adventure that,...

In this powerful and expansive episode, we sit down with Chuna McIntyre, Founder and Director of the Nunamta Yup'ik Eskimo Singers and Dancers and current American Academy in Rome Fellow, to talk about his work with the Yup'ik Masks in the "Anima Mundi" of the Vatican Museums. Our conversation weaves together memory, ancestry, and care — from Chuna's reflections on his grandmother and the Vatican'...