A podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Created and produced by Dr. Christina Gessler, the Academic Life podcast is inspired by today’s knowledge-producers around the world, working inside and outside the academy. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life
The Academic Life
Claim This Podcastby Christina Gessler
4.8(18 reviews)
328 episodes
Updated Daily
Accepts GuestsHas Sponsors
79
Podcast Authority
BetaGoodBased on show quality, social media presence, reviews, charts, and more
Quality95
Social0
YouTube72
Engagement85
Podcast Overview
A podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Created and produced by Dr. Christina Gessler, the Academic Life podcast is inspired by today’s knowledge-producers around the world, working inside and outside the academy. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
11/5/2020
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BetaGoodBased on show quality, social media presence, reviews, charts, and more
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Recent Episodes
June 18, 2026
Pink Crime: Fighting Against the Criminalization of Motherhood, Pregnancy, and Queer Identity
A woman miscarries and is charged with murder. A new mother tests positive for a drug her hospital administers and loses custody of her newborn. Four women are convicted of horrific crimes against children they never touched, based on junk science and homophobia and spend nearly twenty years in prison before being exonerated. A queer teenager takes a photo of a child’s diaper rash at work and is sentenced to 126 years. These cases are not aberrations. They are symptoms of a system that punishes women and queer people not for what they have done, but for who they are. In the United States, nearly three-quarters of all wrongly convicted women were convicted of crimes that never occurred at all. Valena Beety, co-founder of the Indiana Innocence Project and award-winning legal scholar cited by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, reveals how ordinary tragedies—a child’s sudden death, a husband who dies in his sleep—are transformed by prosecutors into murders that never happened. These “no crime” convictions disproportionately target women and queer people, whose identities are recast as evidence of guilt through bias, junk science, and entrenched stereotypes. Drawing on devastating real-life cases, Professor Beety exposes how prosecutorial overreach, flawed forensic science, and cultural panic converge—and how fetal personhood laws, the fall of Roe v. Wade, and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation have dramatically expanded the reach of criminal law. What emerges is a chilling portrait of a legal system that increasingly criminalizes pregnancy outcomes, motherhood, and queer identity itself. Guest: A wrongful convictions litigator and former federal prosecutor, Valena Beety is the McKinney Professor of Law at Indiana University-Bloomington Maurer School of Law and a co-founder of the Indiana Innocence Project. Her coursebook The Wrongful Convictions Reader is used in classrooms nationwide to teach about wrongful convictions. Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She uses her Ph.D. in history to explore which stories we tell, and what happens to those we never tell. She is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Reproductive Justice Stitching Freedom You're Doing It Wrong Witchcraft: A History In 13 Trials The Turnaway Study The Coroner's Silence Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine Secrets of the Killing State Carceral Apartheid Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life
June 11, 2026
Can I Say That: Your Go-To Guide for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Can I Say That: Your Go-To Guide for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is your safe space to learn more about diversity, equity and inclusion, and how you can be a force for change. Most DEI books focus on gender, race or the intersection of those two dimensions. This book adopts a broader intersectional lens while also providing concrete tools for allyship.This book is for you if: you want to know more about diversity, equity, and inclusion but don't know where to start; are worried about saying the wrong thing; feel uncomfortable talking about DEI; are worried conversations might escalate or end in conflict; or don't want to be the only one fighting for change. By explaining the common fears we all face about DEI, you'll feel empowered to talk with confidence and take action. Guest: Dr. Poornima Luthra is an author, keynote and Tedx speaker, business consultant, and leading practitioner-academic in the field of talent management and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). As a senior faculty at Imperial Business School and external faculty at Copenhagen Business School, she bridges cutting-edge scholarship with real-world impact. She draws on eighteen years of research, teaching experience, and expertise in the field of talent management and DEI in Asia and Europe. She is the author of Leading Through Bias; The Art of Active Allyship; and Diversifying Diversity, and contributor to Harvard Business Review. Can I Say That? was named as one of the 10 best new management books of 2025. Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Doing The Work of Equity Leadership For Justice And Systems Change How To Organize Inclusive Events and Conferences What Might Be Transforming HSIs for Equity and Justice Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom Black Women Ivory Tower We Are Not Dreamers Jumping Through Hoops Speaking While Female Leading From The Margins Gay On God's Campus Empathy Takes Action Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life
June 4, 2026
Mollie Barnes, "Paper Heroines: Women Writers in Conversation and Community Across the Sea Islands, 1838-1902" (U South Carolina Press, 2026)
In Paper Heroines: Women Writers in Conversation and Community Across the Sea Islands, 1838-1902 (U South Carolina Press, 2026), Dr. Mollie Barnes studies the ways women represented their own and one another's lives in their personal diaries and their biographies of their contemporaries. By reading these women writers—Black and white, obscure and well-known—in conversation, Dr. Barnes presents entirely new portraits of these freedom fighters of the nineteenth-century South Carolina Lowcountry. Like feminist and anti-racist leaders in our own moment, the women in Paper Heroines were often flawed. White women reformers sometimes created tensions, silences, revisions, and erasures within their print-culture networks, obscuring the lives and contributions of Black women. Black women developed counternarratives and counter-networks as they sought to reclaim their own life histories. What emerges from Barnes's exploration of these textual conversations is a story of complicated relationships that reveal the dynamism of women's lives in a place and time that was equally tumultuous and consequential. Key terms and names is this episode include: close reading, archival silences, the peripheries, life writing, The Penn School, Port Royal, Beaufort, Combahee River, St. Helena, Relief Workers, Harriet Tubman, Fanny Kemble, Psyche, Teresa, Laura Towne, Charlotte Forten, Mr. Holland, and Sarah Hopkins Bradford. Guest: Dr. Mollie Barnes is Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina Beaufort, Vice President of the Margaret Fuller Society, and Vice President of Organizational Matters for the Society for the Study of American Women Writers. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on 19th century women writers, and is the author of Paper Heroines, which received funding support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Host: Dr. Christina Gessler holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore which stories we tell, and what happens to those we never tell. She is an academic writing coach and editor. She created, produces and hosts of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Writing Biography Running From Bondage Jumping Through Hoops Never Caught Speaking While Female Women Reformers and The House on Henry Street We Refuse Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life
328 total episodes available
Recent guests on The Academic Life
Guests from recent episodes — sign up to see every guest that has ever appeared on this show.
Corinna Barrett Lain
Guest
Dr Sophia Basaldua-Sun
Guest
Dr Laura C Chávez-Moreno
Guest
Dr Oliver L Haimson
Guest
Lisa Kay Solomon
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Asha Rangappa
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Brittany Friedman
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Katherine Rye Jewell
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Tara Dorabji
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Dr. Michelle Miller
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Frequently asked questions
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- What is The Academic Life?
- How often does this podcast release new episodes?
This podcast updates daily.
- Where can I listen to this podcast?
This podcast is available on 10 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
- Does this podcast accept guests?
Yes, this podcast regularly features guests.
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