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, explaining how the Korean industrial rise and state propaganda impacted adoptions.

Listen to find out how babies from South Korea ended up in the Midwest, and to learn about the market demand for babies outside the country’s borders.

A transcript for this episode can be found here.

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 those who suffer perpetration, but also the perpetrators themselves. Finally, Dr. Mullen discusses the relationship between class and race within academia, with an emphasis on Baldwin’s thoughts on this matter. Did you know that James Baldwin taught at BGSU? Listen to this episode to find out more!

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 humanities center. Listen along, as Dr. Sheffer shares her motivation to introduce the ICS internship program, allowing students to build research, communication, and media production skills while working for ICS. Find out how the BG Ideas Podcast fits into the mission of ICS as a public humanities center, and how both, Dr. Patraka and Dr. Sheffer envision the future of the institute.

A transcript for this episode can be found here.