Past Forward

Dr. Gioia Woods earned her Ph.D. in English with an emphasis in American and Environmental Literature from the University of Nevada, Reno in 1999. She is a Professor of Humanities in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies where she teaches classes in environmental humanities; race, ethnicity, and gender; and cultural studies. Her ongoing scholarship and publications are in American and comparative literatures, ecocriticism, and mid-twentieth-century cultural production.  Since 2013 Dr. Woods has directed the Summer Sustainability Program in Siena, a faculty-led interdisciplinary program designed to explore the relationship between nature and culture in Italy’s Tuscany region. Dr. Woods is the Past President of the Western Literature Association, a former board member and project leader for the Arizona Humanities Council, and a recent Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Milan. Since 2017 she has served as the NAU Faculty Senate President.  She is the author of the Western Writers Series monograph Gary Paul Nabhan, co-editor of Western Subjects: Autobiographical Writing in the North American West, and editor of Left in the West: Literature, Culture, and Progressive Politics in the American West. Her latest book is City Lights: Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Biography of a Bookstore. Medium History explores memories and moments through creativity and expression, capturing the cultural ethos of that time and place through storytelling and representation. Visual material culture, such as art, and other multimodal forms can elicit responses, emotions, and opinions—human expressions, tied to temporal and cultural aesthetics. This program explores how creative mediums provide context for history beyond dates, and names, and figures. Word Choice: The Structure, Form, and Discourse of History is a special series will explore how poetry consecrates the human experience during times of upheaval; civil unrest, climate crises, global conflict, and also in times of celebration; equity, freedom, progress. Poets capture the soul of history, giving words to the moments that leave us speechless. Produced with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University with support from the Orange County Community Foundation. Guest: Dr. Gioia Woods Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels Produced by: Past Forward Date recorded: March 12, 2025 Past Forward is providing this podcast as a public service. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Please read our Program and Product Disclaimer for more information.

Dr. Gioia Woods earned her Ph.D. in English with an emphasis in American and Environmental Literature from the University of Nevada, Reno in 1999. She is a Professor of Humanities in the Department of Comparative Cultural Studies where she teaches classes in environmental humanities; race, ethnicity, and gender; and cultural studies. Her ongoing scholarship and publications are in American and comparative literatures, ecocriticism, and mid-twentieth-century cultural production.  Since 2013 Dr. Woods has directed the Summer Sustainability Program in Siena, a faculty-led interdisciplinary program designed to explore the relationship between nature and culture in Italy’s Tuscany region. Dr. Woods is the Past President of the Western Literature Association, a former board member and project leader for the Arizona Humanities Council, and a recent Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Milan. Since 2017 she has served as the NAU Faculty Senate President.  She is the author of the Western Writers Series monograph Gary Paul Nabhan, co-editor of Western Subjects: Autobiographical Writing in the North American West, and editor of Left in the West: Literature, Culture, and Progressive Politics in the American West. Her latest book is City Lights: Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Biography of a Bookstore. Medium History explores memories and moments through creativity and expression, capturing the cultural ethos of that time and place through storytelling and representation. Visual material culture, such as art, and other multimodal forms can elicit responses, emotions, and opinions—human expressions, tied to temporal and cultural aesthetics. This program explores how creative mediums provide context for history beyond dates, and names, and figures. Word Choice: The Structure, Form, and Discourse of History is a special series will explore how poetry consecrates the human experience during times of upheaval; civil unrest, climate crises, global conflict, and also in times of celebration; equity, freedom, progress. Poets capture the soul of history, giving words to the moments that leave us speechless. Produced with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University with support from the Orange County Community Foundation. Guest: Dr. Gioia Woods Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels Produced by: Past Forward Date recorded: March 12, 2025 Past Forward is providing this podcast as a public service. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Please read our Program and Product Disclaimer for more information.

This is an introduction to Season Five of Chapters. In this episode we document the year 2025, with context from our past, and we learn moving forward. Our goal with this new series is to explore the word incarceration as it relates to the experience of Japanese Americans following Executive Order 9066. We also want to consider the word incarceration and its effect on communities, families, and individuals through conversations with artists, community leaders, government officials, historians, journalists, lawyers, and nonprofit organizations.In this episode we highlight conversations with guests from this series, including Teresa Watanabe, a journalist at the Los Angeles Times for over three decades; Tarell Alvin McCraney, award-winning writer, producer, educator, and Artistic Director of the Geffen Playhouse; Kirn Kim, who, at 16 years old, was sentenced to 25 years to life as an adult; Donald K. Tamaki, a member of the pro bono legal team that reopened the landmark Supreme Court case Korematsu v. United States; Peggy Nagae, who served as lead counsel on the Coram Nobis case of Min Yasui 40 years after his conviction following Executive Order 9066; Dale Minami, coordinating attorney for the Coram Nobis case for Korematsu, Hirabayashi and Yasui, and lead counsel for Fred Korematsu; Ricardo D. García, Public Defender for Los Angeles County; Abdi Soltani, Executive Director of the ACLU of Northern California; Chessie Thacher, Senior Staff Attorney at the ACLU of Northern California; Soji Kashiwagi, Executive Director and playwright for the Grateful Crane Ensemble; Tamiko Nimura, co-author of the book, We Hereby Refuse, and author of the upcoming book, A Place for What We Lose, A Daughter's Return to Tule Lake; Kathryn Bannai, lead counsel for Gordon Hirabayashi’s Coram Nobis case which led to his conviction being vacated 40 years later; and Ann Burroughs, President and CEO of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.Chapters is a multi-part series concerning the history and the lessons of civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices carried out against communities or populations—including civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices that are perpetrated on the basis of an individual’s race, national origin, immigration status, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.This project was made possible with support from Chapman University and The California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library.Guests: Teresa Watanabe, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Kirn Kim, Donald K. Tamaki, Peggy Nagae, Dale Minami, Ricardo D. García, Abdi Soltani, Chessie Thacher, Soji Kashiwagi, Tamiko Nimura, Kathryn Bannai, and Ann BurroughsHost: Jon-Barrett IngelsProduced by: Past ForwardDate recorded: December 16, 2025Past Forward is providing this podcast as a public service. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Please read our Program and Product Disclaimer for more information.

When we started this project in August of 2024 we were focused on the fact that 18 out of the 20 most destructive fires in California’s history have happened in the last 25 years, and 15 of them in the last 10 years. Everything changed when we started recording and fires spread all over the region. If you live in the Western United States, there is a high likelihood you have been directly or indirectly affected by wildfires. That is why we launched this series, to explore this phenomenon and connect with those who have studied fires, written about fires, fought the fires on the ground, raised funds to protect the land, and created technology to keep all of us aware of where the fire is and where we need to be to remain safe.This is an introduction to Season One of The Fire Problem. In this episode we document the year 2025, with context from our past, and we learn moving forward. In this episode we highlight conversations with guests from this series, including award-winning author, John Vaillant, who talks about his book, Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World; Nick Mott and Justin Angle, award-winning podcasters and authors of This Is Wildfire; David Weinstein and Hugh Coxe of Trust for Public Land, serving as the Northern Rockies Program Director and Project Manager in California; Chief Brian Fennessy of the Orange County Fire Authority; and John Mills, CEO and co-founder of WatchDuty.The Fire Problem is an education program that considers unresolved symptoms of The Fire Problem. This special podcast series will examine and explain underlying challenges and vulnerabilities with our climate, environment, politics, and vegetation. Conversations with conservationists, first responders, historians, politicians, scientists, technologists, tribal leaders, and more will help diagnose our situation with opportunities for treatment. Human influence is at the heart of The Fire Problem and our goal is to learn from past neglect and failure and plan for a future of education and prevention. Produced with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University with support from the Orange County Community Foundation.Guests: John Vaillant, Nick Mott and Justin Angle, Chief Brian Fennessy, David Weinstein and Hugh Coxe, and John MillsHost: Jon-Barrett IngelsProduced by: Past ForwardDate recorded: December 2, 2025Past Forward is providing this podcast as a public service. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Please read our Program and Product Disclaimer for more information.

Martin Puchner is the Byron and Anita Wien Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, where he also serves as the founding director of the Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research. Puchner completed his BA at the Universität Konstanz; MA at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and at UC Irvine; and PhD at Harvard University. A recent fellow of both the Guggenheim Foundation and Cullman Center, he has published over a dozen books and anthologies, including Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes (Princeton, 2006), which won the MLA’s James Russell Lowell Award; The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy (Oxford, 2010), awarded the Joe A. Callaway Prize and the Walter Channing Cabot Prize; The Written World: How Literature Shaped Civilization (Random House, 2017); Literature for a Changing Planet (Princeton, 2022); and Culture: The Story of Us, From Cave Art to K-Pop (Norton, 2023). Puchner is the co-editor of Against Theatre: Creative Destructions on the Modernist Stage (Palgrave, 2006) and The Norton Anthology of Drama (2009), and the general editor of the Norton Anthology of World Literature.Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on the Environment and Building Resilient Futures is a series that explores how natural, social, and political climates both shape and are changed by institutions and social structures. We engage with artists, educators, activists and authors to examine where we live and how we live in our surrounding environment and what it takes to build a resilient future.Guest: Martin PuchnerHost: Jon-Barrett IngelsProduced by Past Forward in partnership with Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University.Date recorded: November 26, 2025Past Forward is providing this podcast as a public service. The views expressed by guests are their own and their appearance on the program does not imply an endorsement of them or any entity they represent. Please read our Program and Product Disclaimer for more information.