Dialogic | The DHI Podcast

In this episode, we invite Dr. Daniela Gutiérrez Flores to discuss Dia de los Muertos. Also known as Day of the Dead, this Mexican holiday celebrates and honors those who have passed away. Dr. Gutierez Flores explains the history of this holiday, describes some of the traditional foods associated with it, and invites listeners to participate in the festivities at UC Davis.

Dr. Daniela Gutiérrez Flores is a visiting assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese at UC Davis. She specializes in early modern Spanish and colonial Latin American studies, with a focus on the relations between texts, food, and culinary practices. She is interested in tracing the cultural meanings of food through textual and social practices, visual and material culture, and embodied and intellectual labor.

This episode dives into digital humanities and public-facing research through a conversation with Dr. Michael Subialka about his collaborative digital publication project, Pirandello in Translation. This project aims to bring the entirety of Luigi Pirandello’s short stories into English for the very first time. For more information and further readings, check out the resource guide.

In this episode, we chat with Dr. Mairaj Syed about Ramadan, a holy month for practicing Muslims around the world that includes multiple festivities and rituals, including fasting. Dr. Syed discusses the significance of Ramadan to our own Aggie community and offers resources for Muslim students and faculty, as well as ways non-Muslim UC Davis members can help support their colleagues and students during Ramadan. Be sure to also tune in to this episode for some personal stories and anecdotes about celebrating this holiday in the U.S. versus abroad and to learn about the types of food that different cultures traditionally eat in order to break their fast!

In this episode, we are joined by Law Professor Aaron Tang to discuss his new book, Supreme Hubris: How Overconfidence is Destroying the Court—and How We Can Fix It (forthcoming from Yale University Press in August 2023). Prof. Tang shares invaluable insights into the reasoning behind several court cases, addresses some of the major issues with the Supreme Court today, and offers ways in which we, as voters, can unite to create a more balanced system.

IThis episode is brought to you as part of UC Davis’ Punjab Week of programs related to cultivation, farming, and food production. Join us as your hosts, Dr. Nicole Ranganath and Elmira Louie, chat with Dr. Gurdev Khush, a world-renowned agronomist and geneticist who has won the agriculture-equivalent of the Nobel Prize thanks to his tremendous research in increasing the global supply of rice during a time of exponential population growth. Dr. Khush has worked with many diverse nations as part of his 35 year career at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, created the Khush Foundation to provide scholarships to future punjabi scholars, and is among first people of Asian descent to have been offered an assistant professorship position at UC Davis.

In this episode of Dialogic, Elmira Louie is joined by Dr. Nicole Ranganath and PhD student Harleen Bal to discuss the dynamic and influential histories of Punjabi communities in the Central Valley of California.

In this episode of Dialogic, Natalie Robertson interviews UCD English PhD student Yasmin Mendoza, a 2023 GradSlam finalist. GradSlam is “an annual competition where master’s and doctoral students are invited to share their research in a compelling presentation that is three minutes or less.” Yasmin shares with us her award-winning pitch, “Don't Say --- : An Exploration of the Censorship of Literature in the United States,” and discusses the importance of humanistic research methods to censorship research and where her work is headed next.

In this episode of Dialogic, Natalie Robertson interviews Samtso, a dedicated leader and beekeeper from Shangri-La, Tibet, and a Fulbright-Humphrey Scholar here at UC Davis for the 2022-23 academic year. Samtso speaks about the traditional beekeeping methods her community uses and the future of her grassroots non-profit’s work, and shares her story of empowering women through education.

Podcast Description: In this episode of Dialogic, Natalie Robertson interviews Sikkil Gurucharan, the Spring 2023 Artist-in-Residence here at the Davis Humanities Institute, and a leading musician and youth ambassador for South Indian Classical music, know as Carnatic music. They speak about Charan’s love for and the history of Carnatic music, the innovations and collaborations inherent to the art form, and the many senses of “cultivation” Charan discovered during his recent concert at Davis, “Bijam.”

Podcast Description: In this episode of Dialogic, Natalie Robertson interviews Dr. Mauricio E. Ramirez, who is currently a UC President’s and Andrew Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Chicana/o Studies Department at UC Davis. Together, they discuss the history of politically-engaged murals, mural preservation, and Mauricio’s extensive and exciting work on the origins and significance of Central American solidarity murals that emerged within San Francisco's Mission District in 1984.

Podcast Description: In the last episode of Dialogic’s first season, Natalie Robertson speaks with outgoing Interim Director of the Davis Humanities Institute Dr. Archana Venkatesan about the role of the humanities in her life, in contemporary society, and whether the humanities are in “crisis.”