Category: 3-BookTalkSometimeCommentary

From the late nineteenth through most of the twentieth century, the evangelical Protestant Grenfell Mission in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, created a network of hospitals, schools, orphanages, stores, and industries with the goal of bringing health and organized society to settler fisherfolk and Indigenous populations. This infrastructure also served to support resource extraction of fisheries off Labrador's coast. 

In Slow Disturbance: Infrastructural Mediation on the Settler Colonial Resource Frontier (Duke UP, 2021), Rafico Ruiz engages with the Grenfell Mission to theorize how settler colonialism establishes itself through what he calls infrastructural mediation—the ways in which colonial lifeworlds, subjectivities, and affects come into being through the creation and maintenance of infrastructures. Drawing on archival documents, maps, interviews with municipal officials, teachers, and residents, as well as his field photography, Ruiz shows how the mission's infrastructural mediation—from its attempts to restructure the local economy to the aerial surveying and mapping of the coastline—responded to the colony's environmental conditions in ways that expanded the bounds of the settler frontier. By tracing the mission's history and the mechanisms that enabled its functioning, Ruiz complicates understandings of mediation and infrastructure while expanding current debates surrounding settler colonialism and extractive capitalism.

Rafico Ruiz is the Associate Director of Research at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. He holds an ad personam PhD in the History and Theory of Architecture and Communication Studies from McGill University. He is the author of Slow Disturbance: Infrastructural Mediation on the Settler Colonial Resource Frontier and the co-editor with Melody Jue of Saturation: An Elemental Politics.

Padmapriya Vidhya-Govindarajan is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at NYU Steinhardt. Her research interests lie at the intersection of environmental justice, digital and film cultures, and community media-use practices.

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On this week’s episode of The Waves, Slate homepage editor Sol Werthan sits down with trans rights activist and author, Paisley Currah. They discuss Paisley’s new book, Sex Is As Sex Does and discuss why “male” and “female” are used as a legal and social classifier. And why, even for cis people who identify with the gender binary, that might not be the right way to go.

In Slate Plus, Sol and Paisley talk about the politicization of trans kids.

Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus, Daisy Rosario and Alicia Montgomery.

Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com

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Greg Marchildon interviews Molly P. Rozum, the author of Grasslands Grown: Creating Place on the U.S. Northern Plains and Canadian Prairies (U of Nebraska P & U of Manitoba P, 2021). Molly Rozum is currently the Ronald R. Nelson Chair of Great Plains and South Dakota History at the University of South Dakota. She received her PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has worked on the history of this transnational region throughout her career. Although she grew up and was educated in the United States, she has spent time in Canada as a visiting professor and researcher. In this book, Rozum explores how the northern grasslands in North America were perceived by second and third generations of those who settled in the region to live, work, farm and ranch, including their relationship with the Indigenous peoples.

This interview was produced with the support of The Champlain Society. The mission of The Champlain Society is to increase public awareness of, and accessibility to, Canada’s rich store of historical records.

Gregory P. Marchildon is the Ontario Research Chair in Health Policy and System Design with the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.

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A year after John Bradstreet’s raid of 1758—the first and largest British-American riverine raid mounted during the Seven Years’ War (known in North America as the French and Indian War)—Benjamin Franklin hailed it as one of the great “American” victories of the war. Bradstreet heartily agreed, and soon enough, his own official account was adopted by Francis Parkman and other early historians.

In John Bradstreet's Raid 1758: A Riverine Operation in the French and Indian War (U Oklahoma Press, 2022), Ian Macpherson McCulloch uses never-before-seen materials and a new interpretive approach to dispel many of the myths that have grown up around the operation. The result is a closely observed, deeply researched revisionist microhistory—the first unvarnished, balanced account of a critical moment in early American military history.

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After three decades of marriage, Bernadette wasn’t exactly blindsided when Rodney asked for a divorce. Things had been rocky for awhile, but she always assumed they’d live the rest of their lives “unhappily ever after.” Now Bernadette is facing an uncertain future, wondering how she’s going to navigate her new life socially, emotionally, and financially. On this episode of How To!, we bring on Dr. Elizabeth Cohen, author of Light on the Other Side Of Divorce: Discovering the New You, and host of the podcast The Divorce Doctor. She helps Bernadette formulate a plan for keeping things civil, and handling everything from personal finances to awkward inquiries from well-meaning friends. 

If you liked this episode, check out: “How To Save Your Marriage,” “How To Have a Fight That Actually Helps Your Relationship,” and “How To Reconnect With Your Kid After a Nasty Divorce.”

Do you have a question without an answer? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show.

If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you’ll also be supporting the work we do here on How To!. Sign up now at slate.com/howtoplus to help support our work.

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On this episode: Carrie James and Emily Weinstein, principal investigators at Harvard’s Project Zero, join to discuss their book, Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (and Adults Are Missing). They’ve been researching teens and screens for over a decade and not only did they collect insights from 3,500 teens, they worked “side-by-side with teens every step of the way.” They learned that teens still want adults’ help with navigating tech and social media—they just need the conversations and support to be a lot more nuanced. 

Recommendations: 

Jamilah recommends This Is Major: Notes on Diana Ross, Dark Girls, and Being Dope by Shayla Lawson. 

Zak recommends Björk: Mother, Daughter, Force of Nature by Jazz Monroe

Join us on Facebook and email us at momanddad@slate.com to ask us new questions, tell us what you thought of today’s show, and give us ideas about what we should talk about in future episodes. 

Podcast produced by Kristie Taiwo-Makanjuola and Rosemary Belson.

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This week, host June Thomas talks to Annie Duke, an author and former professional poker player whose latest book is Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away. In the interview, Annie explains why she’s trying to rehabilitate the word “quit.” She also uses examples to illustrate why quitting is sometimes the best option and why people often stick to projects and jobs that aren’t working. 

After the interview, June and co-host Isaac Butler discuss their own experiences with quitting and saying “no” to things. 

In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, Annie talks about balancing individual goals with the goals of your community. She also gives some possible explanations for why there aren’t more women in professional poker. 

If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows—you’ll also be supporting the work we do here on Working. Sign up now at slate.com/workingplus to help support our work.

Send your questions about creativity and any other feedback to working@slate.com or give us a call at (304) 933-9675.

Podcast production by Cameron Drews.

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This month, in the next in our season celebrating The Exuberance of Youth, we talk to American writer Brit Bennett about her unputdownable novel, The Vanishing Half.

The Vanishing Half charts the rollercoaster parallel lives of estranged twin sisters who choose to live in two very different worlds - one black and one white.

Stella and Desiree are identical twins, growing up together in a small, Southern black community. Until, at age sixteen, they run away. Decades later, still separated by many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

Weaving together multiple stories and generations of one family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Bennett has produced both a riveting, emotional family drama and an unforgettable exploration of the American history of passing as White.

(Picture: Brit Bennett. Photo credit: Emma Trim.)

Greg Marchildon interviews Benjamin Hoy, author of A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada-United States Border across Indigenous Lands (Oxford UP, 2021). Hoy’s book is a history of the infrastructure, policies, and personnel that were put in place over the past three centuries to create a boundary between the United States and British North America and, subsequently, Canada after 1867. Hoy also examines the impact of this boundary on Indigenous peoples who lived on either side of this border, or on both sides simultaneously. A transnational historian and a dual citizen of both Canada and the United States, Benjamin Hoy is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Saskatchewan.

This interview was produced with the support of The Champlain Society. The mission of The Champlain Society is to increase public awareness of, and accessibility to, Canada’s rich store of historical records.

Gregory P. Marchildon is the Ontario Research Chair in Health Policy and System Design with the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.

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Greg Marchildon interviews historian and ethnographer Jennifer Brown on her two most recent books. The first, Ojibwe Stories from the Upper Berens River: A Irving Hallowell and Adam Bigmouth in Conversation (U of Nebraska Press, 2018) concerns the interactions of American anthropologist A. Irving Hallowell with the Berens River band on the east side of Lake Winnipeg. The second book, An Ethnohistorian in Rupert’s Land: Unfinished Conversations (Athabasca UP, 2017), is a compilation of Professor Brown’s most influential articles– essays that have reshaped the historiography of Indigenous-settler relations and the role of women. From 1983 until 2008, Jennifer Brown was a professor as well as Director of the Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies at the University of Winnipeg. Since retirement, she has continued to research and write.

This interview was produced with the support of The Champlain Society. The mission of The Champlain Society is to increase public awareness of, and accessibility to, Canada’s rich store of historical records.

Gregory P. Marchildon is the Ontario Research Chair in Health Policy and System Design with the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.

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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies