Our Guests

Matthew Potts grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and graduated from Notre Dame with a BA in English. After a brief stint in the Navy in Japan, he began graduate school and took both his M.Div. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard. He serves on the Harvard faculty now and teaches courses on religion and literature. He's also an Episcopal priest and has ministered to several congregations in Massachusetts. Currently he is the minister of Harvard’s University Church. Matt is the co-host of Harry Potter and the Sacred Text.

B6E6 The Soul with Matt Potts
B7E5 Resurrection with Matt Potts

Aspen is a white, transfemme writer who thinks about gendered experience, athletic movement, and trans embodiment. Their work explores trauma, sense memory, and interplays between pain and pleasure.

B6E4: Masculinity Studies with Aspen

Instagram: @urningbedfellow

Lydia loves ghosts & monsters & the gothic & the invisible. She believes all of these can be essential tools for radical political analysis, such as rethinking health inequality and medical marginalisation, critical discourse analysis, and gothic marxism. She is currently working on a project about hauntography & the coastal/seaside gothic

B6E2: Hauntology with Lydia

Substack

Erin Wunker is an Associate Professor of Canadian literature at Dalhousie University, which is located in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq Peoples. Her areas of research and teaching include Canadian poetry and poetics, feminist and affect theory, and creative non-fiction with a focus on the personal essay and authotheory. She is the author of Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: Essays on Everyday Life (Book*hug, 2016) and The Routledge Introduction to 20th and 21st Century Canadian Poetry (Routledge 2022). With Sina Queyras and Geneviéve Robichaud she edited Avant Desire: A Nicole Brossard Reader (Coach House, 2020). With Hannah McGregor and Julie Rak she edited Refuse: CanLit in Ruins (Book*hug, 2018). With Bart Vautour, Travis V. Mason, and Christl Verduyn she edited Public Poetics: Critical Issues in 20th and 21st Century Canadian Poetry and Poetics (WLUP, 2015). She is currently working on a creative non-fiction project about boredom, anxiety, and care work.

B7E3: Motherhood with Erin Wunker

Addie Merians, PhD, is a psychologist with a PhD in Counseling Psychology from the University of Minnesota. In her work, she provides psychotherapy, engages in research, and conducts educational programs. In her free time, she loves taking walks with her dog, crocheting, and listening to podcasts.

B5E2: PTSD with Addie Merians

Twitter: @anmerians

Shira Lurie is an Assistant Professor of American History at Saint Mary's University. She thinks, teaches, and writes about popular politics, protest, and historical memory. When she dies, she will absolutely NOT be returning to the classroom as a ghost.

B7E2: Historical Memory with Shira Lurie

Twitter: @ShiraLurie and @ZucchiniWarPod
Website: www.shiralurie.com

Aisha Rose Wilks is a PhD student in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University. Working at the intersection of Black Studies and Critical Disability / Mad Studies, she received a Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship in 2021. Her doctoral research will explore madness in literature of the black transatlantic, reflecting a long-standing interest in embodiment, diasporic kinship, and the intimacies of violence. In a previous life, Aisha worked in the non-profit sector and wrote mediocre fanfiction (but not at the same time).

B5E8: Mad Studies with Aisha Wilks

Twitter: @most_articulate

Amanda K. Allen is a Professor of English at Eastern Michigan University, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses within the Children’s and Young Adult Literature Program. Her research focuses primarily on the intersection of women’s literary and employment history (particularly as it relates to midcentury children’s/YA literature editors and librarians) and a genre of early young adult literature known as the “junior novels.” Because she’s a giant fangirl who just can’t help herself, she also researches and publishes on fan and fandom studies.

B5E4: Fan Studies With Amanda Allen

Website: https://amandakallen.wordpress.com/

Dr. Neale Barnholden is an Academic Teaching Staff teacher at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, on Treaty 6 territory. His research focuses on twentieth-century American consumer culture and comics from the perspective of Book History. He is currently writing a monograph on Richie Rich, Uncle Scrooge, and bubblegum comics.

OG RUN - Episode 6: Neale Barnholden and the Final Cut

OG RUN - A Holiday Special From the Archives Featuring Neale Barnholden

zirk.us: zirk.us/@nealpolitan

Andrea Dara Cooper is Associate Professor and Leonard and Tobee Kaplan Scholar in Modern Jewish Thought and Culture in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she teaches a range of courses on religion and culture, the history of Judaism, gender, and philosophy. She is the author of Gendering Modern Jewish Thought (Indiana University Press, 2021), and her research interests include cultural and literary theory, post-Holocaust ethics, and critical animal studies. She received her PhD from New York University’s Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and her combined honours BA from the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Appendix: Holocaust Studies with Andrea Dara Cooper

Twitter: @andreadaracoop

Aubrey Gordon is an author, columnist, and cohost of Maintenance Phase.

Her work has been published in The New York Times, Vox, Literary Hub, SELF, Health, Glamour and more. Her first book, What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About Fat was released in November 2020. Her second book, “You Just Need to Lose Weight” and 19 Other Myths About Fat People, is a New York Times and Indie bestseller.

She cohosts the podcast Maintenance Phase with journalist Michael Hobbes. Together, the two debunk and decode wellness and weight loss trends.

Appendix: Anti-Fatness with Aubrey Gordon

Website: https://www.aubreygordon.net/

Nia is a Chinese American adoptee, artist, and perpetual student. They received a master's degree in Performance Studies from Texas A&M University and a bachelor’s degree in Literature and Theatre from New York University Abu Dhabi.

Appendix: Critical Adoption Studies with Nia Wilson