New Outsider/Insider Episodes!
An eye-opening discussion with historian Lerna Ekmekcioglu
I’m proud to share the news that the fourth and fifth episodes of Ray Reagans & my podcast, Outsider/Insider have dropped.
These episodes are a two-part discussion with our wonderful, and wonderfully insightful colleague, the historian Lerna Ekmekcioglu.
I learned so much from our conversation and I think listeners will learn a great deal as well. Lerna, who grew up in Turkey as an Armenian Christian with Turkish citizenship, and then moved to the United Statues for graduate school, has a tremendous amount to teach us about social identity that adds depth and nuance to various themes Ray and I developed in the first three episodes. And as an historian of the Ottoman and post-Ottoman world whose community has significant overlap with both the Jewish/Israeli and Palestinian/Arab experience and narratives, Lerna is able to identify with both sides to this conflict in a way that is extremely rare. She also has unusual insight into what it means for a scholar and teacher to transcend these divides.
You can find the episodes linked on the intro page of the Outsider/Insider site on Substack or reach them directly here: episode 4 (which focuses on historical and biographical context and is entitled “Outsider/Insider Embodied) & episode 5 (which focuses on Lerna’s perspective on the campus crisis in the wake of 10/7 and is entitled “Identifying with Each Side & with a Community that Transcends Sides.”
You can find Outsider/Insider by clicking to its page on your favorite podcast app: