This article (2025) shares a unique methodology and form for public humanities - an engaged podcast - involving an ethical community partnership between a university team, a community nonprofit organization, and a museum. Introduces concepts of: building trust as pre-production, storytelling as methodology, aurality as scholarly ethics, partnerships as research, shared authority as praxis, shared resources as equity, minimalism as accessibility, podcasts as co-created knowledge. Draws from: public humanities, critical community engagement, ethnic studies, digital humanities, and podcast studies. As a case study, this article examines a podcast produced with the staff at the American Civic Association (affiliated with the International Rescue Committee), a non-profit that resettles refugees, asylees, and immigrants. Given historical cycles of intense anti-immigrant sentiment, this podcast serves for conversation and education about immigration and belonging in small cities and towns. 

The Coolie Speaks provides the first critical analysis of nearly 3,000 testimonies written by 19th century Chinese coolies in colonial Cuba. Deeply moving and startling for their insights, these testimonies trace the human struggle and toll under new contract slavery, wherein the contract, taken to its extreme, was wielded as the most potent form of enslavement and exploitation. This book lays out methods for reading such testimonies as a literary and historical form - the "coolie narrative" or "coolie testimonio."  The book also brings forward and critically examines a communal biography written by an Afro-Chinese Cuban author. The Coolie Speaks raises theoretical questions regarding race, resistance, and unfree labor.

Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Book

Introduction (pdf) and Reviews