February 7 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm, 909 Renaissance Park
Join us for “Punching History in the Face: how podcast journalism is challenging the dominant narrative of America’s Past,” a talk by Jack Hitt and Chenjerai Kumanyika, co-creators of Gimlet Media’s new Peabody award-winning history podcast “Uncivil.”
About Uncivil: “Uncivil brings you stories that were left out of the official history of the Civil War, ransacks America’s past, and takes on the history you grew up with. We bring you untold stories about resistance, covert operations, corruption, mutiny, counterfeiting, antebellum drones, and so much more. And we connect these forgotten struggles to the political battlefield we’re living on right now. The story of the Civil War — the story of slavery, confederate monuments, racism — is the story of America.”
Jack Hitt contributes regularly to the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker and the public radio program, This American Life. His work can be found anthologized in Best American Travel Essays, The Oxford American Book of Great Music Writing, Best Food Writing, and Best American Science Writing. His one-man show, entitled “Making Up the Truth,” toured the country in 2012 from Charleston’s Spoleto Festival to New York City’s Public Theatre. His book about walking the road to Santiago in Spain, Off the Road, was made in the movie “The Way” last year by Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez, and his Esquire article on early computer amateurs was made into the cult movie classic, Hackers. He won a Peabody Award in 2008 for his This American Life hour special on Guantanamo Bay, being the first to interview detainees who had been held there, and another Peabody Award in 2018 for the history podcast, “Uncivil”. His most recent book explores the idea of self-invention, entitled Bunch of Amateurs.
Dr. Ch
enjerai Kumanyika is a researcher, journalist, and activist who works as an assistant professor in Rutgers University’s Department of Journalism and Media Studies. His research, and teaching focus on the intersections of social justice and emerging media in the cultural and creative industries. He writes about these issues in journals such as Popular Music & Society, Popular Communication, Popular Music, and Pedagogy and Education. In the realm of public scholarship, Chenjerai is the co-executive producer and co-host and of Gimlet Media’s new Peabody award-winning history podcast “Uncivil”, a consultant and guest contributor to Scene on Radio’s Peabody award nominated Seeing White series. Chenjerai has also contributed to public media such as Transom, NPR Codeswitch, All Things Considered, Invisibilia, The Moth, Vice, Rising Up Radio with Sonali Kolhatkar. His January 2015 article on Vocal Color in Public Radio produced for Transom.org spawned a nationwide discussion of diversity and voices in public media.
This event is co-sponsored with the NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks, the College of Arts, Media and Design; the Program in African and African-American Studies; the School of Journalism; and the Departments of Communication Studies and History.
This event is free and open to the public, but if you are not a member of the Northeastern community, please email Sarah Connell (sa.connell[at]northeastern[dot]edu) to RSVP.