In this episode of Faculty Spotlight, hosts Mark and Lauren sit down with faculty Alfred Lee and Xafsa Ciise, colleagues whose shared concerns—with race, bias, politics, human consciousness, and the history of science—have cultivated a fascinating and fruitful cross-disciplinary conversation. Xafsa, a social psychologist by training, kicks off the conversation with description of how she found her way into a historical investigation of trauma and its discourses, after which Alfred, a physicist by training and data scientist in practice, details the social and political questions that animate his concern with digital innovation and data applications. Along the way, their conversation touches on the surprising origins of trauma in mesmerism and animal magnetism; the experimenter’s effect; simulation and deception in both trauma studies and AI discourse; scientism’s bracketing of politics, and politics’ return by way of history; conflicting concepts of “intelligence”; contextuality and relationality versus the conceit of universality; Freud, Fanon, and how psychoanalysis thinks about Blackness; the return of eugenics and race IQ discourses; longtermism and what a view to the far-distant future implies about the present; and the dangerously autarkic character of big tech.

The Podcast for Social Research is produced by Ryan Lentini.

Learn more about upcoming courses on our website.

Follow Brooklyn Institute for Social Research on Twitter / Facebook / Instagram / Bluesky.

Episode 90 of the Podcast for Social Research—TRANSgressions: Rights Wrongs, and Liberal Pieties—was recorded (mostly) live at BISR Central, as we celebrated Pride Month by asking: What happens when trans people in the public eye commit real or perceived wrongs? By what criteria—or liberal pieties or social justice aims—are these so-called wrongs evaluated? And what kind of trans experience even gets a public airing at all—why and in service of what? We submitted these questions to BISR faculty Sophie Lewis, Hannah Leffingwell, and Ruth Averbach, each of whom approached it in a way apropos of their own scholarly and activist priorities. The first voice you’ll hear is Sophie’s, speaking from Philadelphia about a very specific form of Enemy Transfeminism: Trans Zionism. Ruth picks up from there to track the ideologically bewildering reception of a counterrevolutionary trans writer in 19th century Russia. After which we hear from Hannah on how trans life has historically interacted with the clinic and been represented in film. In conversation with one another and with a live BISR audience, Ruth and Hannah then embark on a freewheeling conversation that touches on, among other persons and things, Representative Sarah McBride, attorney Chase Strangio, the recent Supreme Court decision on trans-affirming healthcare, and much else besides.

The Podcast for Social Research is produced by Ryan Lentini.

Learn more about upcoming courses on our website.

Follow Brooklyn Institute for Social Research on Twitter / Facebook / Instagram / Bluesky.