Reckoning and Repair
An experimental oral history podcast with artists, curators, and organizers speaking on the need for reckoning, and the (im?)possibilities of repair in art worlds and social spaces around the globe.
Season 2 of Reckoning and Repair: The Art of Resistance in Argentina endeavors to explore these stories and the legacy of art activists from Bueno Aires and beyond. Originally captured in Spanish from June to July 2022, these narratives have since been condensed and adapted into the English language to share these incredible artists and their activism more broadly.
Season 1, "The Art That's Touched Philadelphia", was recorded, written, and produced by students in "Conversations with Contemporary Artists" a course by Alissa Jordan at the Center for Experimental Ethnography. This CEE production runs alongside the 2023 exhibit "Rising Sun-Artists in an Uncertain America", an African American Museum of Philadelphia (AAMP) and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) collaboration. How do artists and organizers confront the troubling histories of Empire in their midsts? Is it even possible for colonially-based art institutions to meaningfully reckon with their own exclusionary histories? What models of reckoning and repair already exist in Philadelphia's art worlds?
Reckoning and Repair
S.3 E.4 // Anandabai Joshee's Thesis: The First Feminist Medical Ethnography?
Anandibai Joshee was the first South Asian woman to receive a degree in Western medicine in 1886 from the Women's College of Medicine of Pennsylvania, now known as the Drexel University School of Medicine. This speculative history and experimental audio piece by Mariam Rizvi brings life to the words of Anandibai's revolutionary 1886 thesis, exploring the dreams she carried for the field of obstetrics in Philadelphia in what may have been the very first insider feminist medical ethnography recorded in history.
This episode was written, recorded, and produced by Mariam Rizvi as part of Reckoning and Repair Season 3, "Black reproduction & justice in Philly," a set of immersive oral histories and multimedia figurations that engage with reproductive justice in Philly, drawing from the "Reproduction, Justice, and Care: Listening in Philly" course co-taught by Dr. Alissa Jordan and Dr. Daniela Brissett at the University of Pennsylvania.
For episode extras, and to learn more about the artists, hosts, and organizations involved, check out the Reckoning and Repair website: rnrphilly.com
Reckoning and Repair is part multimedia counter-archive, part laboratory, for telling stories and listening to stories in cities. Each season traces stories of resistance to (and repair from) the enduring and specific legacies of exclusion/withholding/erasure that haunt our cities. Through immersive oral histories and collaborative storytelling, student scholars, activists, and creatives illuminate the slow, difficult, yet vital work of accountability and healing in haunted worlds. The project is directed by Dr. Alissa Jordan at the Center for Experimental Ethnography at the University of Pennyslvania.