The BUCH Podcast creates a digital space for the personal and the global to intersect. Students, scholars and authors connect their experiences to larger societal challenges and conversations that remain at the fore of humanistic inquiry.
Season Four
Building Bridges
This season, we took time to speak with people who are bridging the gap between technology and the humanities by implementing new tools and methods in their own projects. Season Four invites voices from undergraduates and graduate students working in the digital humanities, who speak to intrinsic connection between technology and humanistic inquiry.
In Episode One, Center staff member Roni Lakin (’25) interviews Elizabeth Kostina (‘24), current BU undergraduate, co-founder of BU’s Armchair Journal, and digital scholar. The conversation explores the role of AI in scholarship and the expansion of the art history canon.
In Episode Two, Center Associate Director Margarita Guillory interviews Adrienne Vancura, a postdoc studying biomedical sciences at MIT, and Silvia Miotti, a BU PhD student in Classics, on how to connect ideas across disciplines.
Season Three
Inspiring Stories from BU Humanities
After turning outward to listen to conversations with major memoirists recounting their experiences of the Black Diaspora and global migration, Season Three turns inward to listen to the stories of two outstanding members of the humanities community at BU. Season Three features conversations with an undergraduate student and a faculty member, who reflect on their personal odysseys in community service, academia, and education, writ large. They discuss the ideas that inspired them and drew them into university life, the mentors who supported them, and their ambitions for the future, as scholars, teachers, and reformers at BU and in the larger society.
In Episode One, Center staff member Roni Lakin (’25) interviews Nevaèh Calliste (’26), current BU undergraduate, and founder of Survivor’s Awareness, on her transition to college and her continuing service work.
In Episode Two, Center Director Susan Mizruchi interviews Associate Professor of Religion and African American & Black Diaspora Studies Margarita Guillory on her journey from STEM to scholarship in the humanities.
Season Two
Migration Memoirs in the Global Age
At a time once more when skepticism about the contribution of immigrants to the success of the American story has become widespread, memoirists have seized the opportunity to remind us that migration stories are American stories, and migrants part of the lifeblood of the United States. Season Two features three conversations with authors who have written books relating personal stories of migrating from the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Asia, on their way to becoming Americans.
In Episode One, Junot Diaz interviews Dan-el Padilla Peralta about his memoir, Undocumented: A Dominican Boy’s Odyssey from a Homeless Shelter to the Ivy League.
In Episode Two, Claire Messud interviews Roya Hakakian about her book, A Beginner’s Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious.
In Episode Three, Sianne Ngai, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English at the University of Chicago interviews poet and professor of English and creative writing at Rutgers-Newark University Cathy Park Hong on her memoir, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning.
Season One
Black Memoirs in the Global Age
As we engage with an increasingly diverse array of media, life stories told from personal perspectives—memoirs—continue to captivate the public’s imagination. In Season One, three authors share their stories across three continents contending with mental health, overcoming the challenges of growing up, and navigating the opportunities and perils of lives lived as public intellectuals. They relate the joys, and the challenges of being African, Caribbean, and American—the doubleness of being both Black and diasporic—in the United States today.
In Episode One, Sandro Galea interviews Bassey Ikpi about her memoir, I’m Telling the Truth, but I’m Lying.
In Episode Two, Patricia Williams interviews Orlando Patterson about his 2019 book, The Confounding Island: Jamaica and the Postcolonial Predicament.
In Episode Three, Caryl Phillips interviews Louis Chude-Sokei about his 2021 book, Floating in a Most Peculiar Way: A Memoir.