Vox Humanities

Professor Premesh Lalu is a distinguished scholar of the humanities and the Director of the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.

With decades of experience in the field, Professor Lalu is widely recognized as a leading voice in the study of African intellectual and cultural history. His research focuses on the intersections of race, politics, and identity in South Africa and the broader African continent, with a particular emphasis on the role of the humanities in shaping our understanding of these complex issues.

We recorded our conversation with Professor Lalu in March of 2023.

Philip Butler is an Assistant Professor of Theology and Posthuman Artificial Intelligence Systems at Iliff School of Theology. He is the founder of the Seekr Project, a distinctly Black conversational artificial intelligence with mental health capacities. His work primarily focuses on the intersection of neuroscience, technology, spirituality and race. He is the author of Critical Black Futures (2021) and Black Transhuman Liberation Theology: Spirituality and Technology (2019).

For this episode, we spoke with Dr. Tom Ewing, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research in Virginia Tech’s College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. He is an expert in Russian history, data and society, and modern medical history. Among his publications are: The Teachers of Stalinism, Education & the Great Depression, Separate Schools: Gender, Policy, and Practice in the Postwar Soviet Union. He has also co-edited, Viral Networks: Connecting Digital Humanities and Medical History, which was published by Virginia Tech Publishing in 2018.

His current research project explores the transmission of information about the co-called “Russian Influenza” (1889-1890) using data and digital humanities approaches to medical history. 

Professor Ewing also coordinates the Data in Social Context program, which sustains an interdisciplinary approach of data analytics, computational skills, and critical thinking in the humanities and social sciences. 

He has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to run workshops on the 1918 Spanish Influenza and on Images and Texts in Medical History.

We spoke with Professor Tom Ewing in the spring of 2022.

In January 2022, Sylvester Johnson spoke with Dr. Mxolisi Victor Mavi, a veteran activist of South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement and expert in the study of theology, race, politics, and global liberation movements. Dr. Mavi is a collaborator with the “Future Humans, Human Futures” project on religion, technology, and ethics that has been generously supported by the Henry Luce Foundation. They discussed Dr. Mavi’s advocacy for social justice in South Africa during both the period of formal racial apartheid and more recently under the system of multi-racial democracy that has been shaped by drastic inequality. Their conversation explores the global dimensions of economic change that technology innovation and the “digital divide” have created as major challenges that must be addressed to shape a more equitable future for the twenty-first century.

In December 2021, Sylvester Johnson spoke with Ed Falco and Amanda Hodes about the creation and development of New River, a journal of digital writing and art currently housed at Virginia Tech. Ed Falco founded the journal in collaboration with Len Hatfield in 1996 and describes the origins of the journal within the context of emerging digital humanities technologies. Amanda Hodes, who served as outreach coordinator at the time of this recording, explains the various ways the journal has positively shaped writing, art, and creativity since its founding.

During June of 2021, Sylvester Johnson spoke with Laura Belmonte, Dean of Virginia Tech’s College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences about her book The International LGBT Rights Movement: A History (2020). They were joined by Shaila Mehra, the college’s Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion who is a scholar of Black feminist theory. Belmonte, whose research examines international relations, gender and sexuality, and global politics, discusses the impetus for her research and the significance of a global approach to understanding the struggle for LGBTQ rights.

Professor John Modern, a scholar of religion and secularism, has written Neuromatic, an interdisciplinary study of religion and the brain that explores how religion and brain science have influenced each other as humans have sought to understand cognition, reality, and human identity. Professor Modern spoke with Sylvester Johnson for this episode in 2021, shortly before the book's release. They discussed some of the book's key insights and the broader implications for understanding the possibilities and limitations of religious and scientific efforts to understand humanity.

In the summer of 2020, Sylvester Johnson spoke with E. Patrick Johnson about his award-winning film Making Sweet Tea.

E. Patrick Johnson is the Dean of the School of Communication at Northwestern University, where he holds the Carlos Montezuma chair as Professor of Performance Studies and African American Studies.

He is a scholar and an artist who performs nationally and internationally and has published widely in the areas of race, gender, sexuality and performance. Johnson is a prolific performer and scholar, and an inspiring teacher, whose research and artistry has greatly impacted African American studies, Performance studies, and Gender and Sexuality studies. He has written two award-winning books, Appropriating Blackness: Performance and the Politics of Authenticity (Duke UP, 2003), which won the Lilla A. Heston Award, the Errol Hill Book Award, and was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and Sweet Tea: Black Gay Men of the South—An Oral History (University of North Carolina UP, 2008), which was recognized as a Stonewall Book Award Honor Book by the LGBT Round Table of the American Library Association.

He co-edited (with Mae G. Henderson) Black Queer Studies—A Critical Anthology (Duke UP, 2005). He is also the editor of Cultural Struggles: Performance, Ethnography, Praxis by Dwight Conquergood (Michigan UP, 2013) and co-editor (with Ramón Rivera-Servera) of solo/black/woman: scripts, interviews, and essays (Northwestern UP, 2013). Johnson edited No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies (Duke UP, 2016) and he also co-edited Blacktino Queer Performance (with Ramón Rivera-Servera (Duke UP, 2016). He recently published the creative nonfiction text titled Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women. He is also writing a companion volume (?) Black. Queer. Southern. Women. — An Oral History.

In late 2020, Sylvester Johnson sat down with Alex Munro, Claudia Hasenfang, and Cole Powell, three members of the award winning design team of Virginia Tech students and recent alumni.  The team is responsible for the creation of the T.E.A.R. Mask, a prototype pocket-sized anti-tear gas respirator that protects the eyes, nose, and mouth from the harmful effects of tear gas. Its design is compact enough fit in a pocket or purse, and incorporates a simple operation of use that can be deployed quickly and safely.  As the designers highlight, the T.E.A.R. Mask exemplifies the human centered technological design practices that animate the university's Tech for Humanity initiative.