The Academic Life

Emily Dickinson was a letter writer before she was a poet. And it was through letters that she shared prose reflections–alternately humorous, provocative, affectionate, and philosophical–with her extensive community. While her letters often contain poems, and some letters consist entirely of a single poem, they also constitute a rich genre all their own. Through her correspondence, Dickinson appears in her many facets as a reader, writer, and thinker; social commentator and comedian; friend, neighbor, sister, and daughter.

The Letters of Emily Dickinson (Belknap Press, 2024) is the first collected edition of the poet’s correspondence since 1958. It presents all 1,304 of her extant letters, along with the small number available from her correspondents. Almost 300 are previously uncollected, including letters published after 1958, letters more recently discovered in manuscript, and more than 200 “letter-poems” that Dickinson sent to correspondents without accompanying prose. This edition also redates much of her correspondence, relying on records of Amherst weather patterns, historical events, and details about flora and fauna to locate the letters more precisely in time. Finally, updated annotations place Dickinson’s writing more firmly in relation to national and international events, as well as the rhythms of daily life in her hometown. What emerges is not the reclusive Dickinson of legend but a poet firmly embedded in the political and literary currents of her time.

Dickinson’s letters shed light on the soaring and capacious mind of a great American poet and her vast world of relationships. This edition presents her correspondence anew, in all its complexity and brilliance.

Guest: Dr. Cristanne Miller is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Edward H. Butler Professor of Literature, and serves on the advisory board of the Emily Dickinson Archive. Her scholarship on Dickinson includes Emily Dickinson: A Poet's Grammar; Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them; and The Letters of Emily Dickinson, which she co-edited with Domhnall Mitchell.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the creator, producer and host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

The World She Edited: Katharine S White at the New Yorker

Once Upon A Tome

Your Art Will Save Your Life

Wild Everything

The Banned Book

Becoming The Writer You Already Are

Archival Etiquette What To Know Before You Go

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!
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In Cast Out: A Call For A Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration (Beacon Press, 2026), civil rights lawyer Joseph Margulies insists that those who commit even the most heinous crimes are one of us and should be judged in a spirit of forgiveness. He explains that American society is too often unforgiving, preferring to cast out those we consider irredeemable by fixating narrowly on the question What did they do? and imagining that those who have done great wrongs have no past worth learning and no future worth preserving.Through intimate interviews, his rich chapters bring to life 6 men and women, sharing their (sometimes brutal) crimes, the grim but all-too-human paths that led them there, and their evolution and insights. Eye-opening and unflinching, Cast Out makes us truly see those society locks away—the so-called “worst of the worst.” It challenges the reader to see us in them and them in us, and in that way, to recognize the humanity we all share.

Guest: Joseph Margulies is a writer, litigator, Professor of the Practice of Law and Government at Cornell University. He was Counsel of Record in Rasul v. Bush (2004), and in Munaf v. Geren (2008). His books include Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power; and Cast Out.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the creator, producer and host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

The Coroner's Silence

Ghost In The Criminal Justice Machine

Hands Up Don't Shoot

Freemans Challenge

The Journal Of Higher Education In Prison

Education Behind The Wall

Secrets Of The Killing State

Stitching Freedom

The Emerson Prison Initiative

The Names Of All The Flowers

Pink Crime

Carceral Apartheid

The Criminal Record Complex

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!
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Heart-Centered Connections: Seven Essential Skills for Helping Neurodiverse and Marginalized Children Thrive is a transformative guide for working with a child who is left out, left behind, or labeled “difficult.” Dr. Niki Elliott teaches the best practices to support kids who are misunderstood and marginalized—those who are neurodivergent, have a learning disability, or are trauma survivors. In this practical book, Dr. Elliott brings clear guidance and a hopeful message: when safety, compassion, and trust come first, real learning can begin. Heart-Centered Connections shows you how to create that foundation.

Based on decades of her groundbreaking research, Dr. Elliott offers seven pillars that will help you create environments where kids can achieve their full potential. You will learn how to: increase your ability to handle stress so you remain composed when a child acts out; establish stronger bonds, even with kids who initially seem defiant; teach in a way that creates joy and confidence; design neuro-inclusive environments in which youth of all abilities can flourish; view the child from a new perspective, offering them choice and dignity; and help the child settle their nervous system state so they can focus and learn.

Guest: Dr. Niki Elliott is a clinical professor and director of the Center for Embodied Equity and Neurodiversity at the University of San Diego SOLES, where she leads research, professional certificates, and statewide initiatives that transform K–16 learning environments through trauma-informed, neuro-inclusive design. A veteran educator of more than 30 years, Dr. Niki is known for translating complex neuroscience into powerful, accessible practices that strengthen belonging, emotional safety, and academic engagement for neurodiverse learners.

Host: Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for Listeners:

Teaching with Positive Psychology Skills

How To Organize Inclusive Events

How We Show Up

The Power of Play in Higher Education

The Burnout Workbook

Empathy Takes Action

Belonging

A Pedagogy of Kindness

How Can Mindfulness Help

Meditation

You Have More Influence Than You Think

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!
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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

More than eleven million children in the US live in doubled-up households, sharing space with extended family or friends. These households are even more common among low-income families, families of color, and single-parent families, functioning as a private safety net for many in a country with extremely limited public support for families. Despite their prevalence, we know little about how shared households form and how they shape family life. Doubled Up is an in-depth look at the experiences of families with children living in doubled-up households.

Drawing on extensive interviews with sixty parents living in doubled-up households, Dr. Hope Harvey examines what circumstances and motivations lead families to form doubled-up households, how living in shared households affects daily routines, and how families fare after these arrangements dissolve.Dr. Harvey shows that although families rely on doubling up to get by in the face of rapidly rising housing costs, precarious labor markets, and unaffordable childcare, these private arrangements are rarely sufficient to overcome such structural barriers. And doubling up incurs its own costs for both host and guest families. For doubled-up families, negotiating household relationships and navigating shared space reshapes family life. Understanding the dynamics of doubled-up households extends scholarship on family life beyond the nuclear family and points the way toward better policies that will serve all families.

Guest: Dr. Hope Harvey is an assistant professor at the Martin School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Kentucky and a research affiliate at the Center for Poverty Research. She is the author of the award-winning book Doubled Up.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

What's On Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life

The Fight To Save The Town

You're Doing It Wrong

Raising Them

What Do You Want Out Of Life

How Girls Achieve

What Might Be

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!
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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/academic-life

In Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory (UNC Press, 2026), historian John Garrison Marks tells the story of Americans’ long, fraught struggle to come to terms with Washington’s legacy of slavery. He traces how politicians, abolitionists, educators, activists, Washington’s former slaves and their descendants, and others have remembered, forgotten, and manipulated slavery’s place in Washington’s story, and how they have wielded versions of that story in the political and cultural fights of their time. Dr. Marks shows how generational struggles over our collective memory of Washington and slavery have always been part of a bigger conversation about defining the United States and its people. As debates about the founders’ participation in the system of slavery continue to roil public discourse, Dr. Marks shows with new clarity that Americans have never collectively reconciled Washington’s conflicted legacy. By truly grappling with Washington’s role as enslaver and emancipator, we may come to better understand the nation and ourselves.

This episode considers: the life and legacy of George Washington, the role of myth and memory in the New Republic, and how conflicted legacies continue.

Guest: Dr. John Garrison Marks holds a Ph.D. in history from Rice University. He is a New Jersey native currently living outside Washington, DC. He is the author of Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler holds a Ph.D. in history which she uses to explore the stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. She is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast, and writes the newsletter at christinagessler.substack.com.

Playlist for listeners:

Never Caught

Running From Bondage

No Common Ground

The Vice-President's Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn

Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom

The Social Constructions of Race

What Might Be

The Untold Story of President Lincoln

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