Past Forward

Benjamin Henwood, PhD, LCSW is the Albert G. and Frances Lomas Feldman Professor of Social Policy and Health at the University of Southern California (USC). He directs the Center for Homelessness, Housing and Health Equity Research at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and also holds a secondary appointment as a professor in the USC Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy. Professor Henwood also serves as director for the Homelessness Policy Research Institute, a joint operation of USC Social Work and the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy.

Trained as a clinical...

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. Woo...

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. Woo...

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. Woo...

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. Woo...

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. Woo...

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 t...

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 fir...

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 Russ...

Heidi Beirich is the Co-Founder, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.  Beirich is also an Advisory Board Member of the Network for Hate Studies based out of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology and the former Intelligence Project Director of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) Intelligence Project, which publishes the award-winning Intelligence Report and the Hatewatch blog. Beirich is an expert on various forms of extremism, including the white supremacist, nativist and neo-Confederate movements, as well as racism in academia.

Beirich oversaw the SPLC’s yearly cou...

A Macondo fellow, Margaret Elysia Garcia is the author of the poetry collections Iconistas! (Lit Kit Collective, 2025), the daughterland poems (El Martillo Press, 2023), and Burn Scars, (Lit Kit Collective, 2022). She is the author of the short story collection Graft (Tolsun Books, 2022), and the forth coming collection Chicana Noir: Stories (El Martillo Press, 2026).  She’s the co-editor of the forthcoming Red Flag Warning: Mutual Aid and Community in California’s Fire Country, (AK Press, June 2025). She’s been awarded a non-tuition fellowship to work on her novel through Chapman University in Orange, CA.

Margaret’s is the recipient of multip...

Kristi Lippire is a Los Angeles–based sculptor and professor whose work investigates the intersections of material culture, urban infrastructure, and visual theory. A specialist in color theory, she conducts long-form research into the social, historical, and perceptual structures that shape the built environment. Her practice often draws on archives, photography, and site-specific observation, translating architectural elements into sculptural, textile, and graphic forms that reframe their cultural and political resonance. Lippire’s projects engage with histories of modernism, feminist interventions in design, and the role of ornament and color in shaping spatial experience. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, with...

Jaime L. Jacobsen is an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media Communication and the Director of the Center for Science Communication at Colorado State University. She is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker who has over a decade of experience collaborating with diverse communities across the globe to craft and share compelling social justice, human rights, and scientific stories. Jaime has worked in a variety of cross-cultural contexts across the globe, including leading Documentary and Photography expeditions for National Geographic Student Expeditions in Australia and Tanzania, producing films for Engineers Without Borders in Kenya and Pathfinder International in Mozambique, teaching documentary...

Ann Burroughs is the President and CEO of the Japanese American National Museum. She is an internationally recognized leader in the field of human rights and social justice. She is the Chair of the Board of Directors of Amnesty International USA and was formerly Chair of Amnesty International’s Global Assembly. Her life-long commitment to racial and social justice was shaped by her experience as a young activist in her native South Africa where she was jailed as a political prisoner for her opposition to apartheid. For over 25 years, she has worked with leaders, organizations, and networks in the US...

Kathryn Bannai was lead counsel in Gordon Hirabayashi's coram nobis case from 1982 to early 1985. Among other critical work, she successfully defeated the government’s effort to dismiss Hirabayashi’s case and persuaded the court to grant an evidentiary hearing. That hearing led to overturning Hirabayashi’s convictions for resisting the curfew and exclusion orders promulgated under E.O. 9066. 

In addition to practicing law, she adjudicated cases for the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal and Seattle’s Public Safety Civil Service Commission. She has served as president of the Seattle Chapter JACL; president of the New York Chapter JACL; member...

Tamiko Nimura, Ph.D., is an award-winning Asian American (Sansei/Pinay) creative nonfiction writer, community journalist, and public historian. She writes from an interdisciplinary space at the intersection of her love of literature, grounding in American ethnic studies, inherited wisdom from teachers and activists, and storytelling through history. Her work has appeared in a variety of national and international outlets, including San Francisco Chronicle, Smithsonian Magazine, Off Assignment, Narratively, The Rumpus, SFMOMA Open Space, and Seattle’s International Examiner.

A two-time VONA Voices fellow, she has received awards from the Ford Foundation, Artist Trust, City of Tacoma Ar...

Soji Kashiwagi has been the Executive Director and Playwright of the Grateful Crane Ensemble since its founding in 2001. As a playwright, Soji's works such as "The Camp Dance: The Music & The Memories" and "Nihonmachi: The Place to Be" have been seen nationally at JACL conventions in Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Chicago, and most recently at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Other works include "The J-Town Jazz Club," "Misora Hibari: A Tribute to a Legend," "Natsukashi no Kouhaku Uta Gassen" and the JA dysfunctional family comedy, "Garage Door Opener." Soji also wrote the scripts and Grateful...

John Mills has changed the way we live with fire through his 501c3 non-profit organization Watch Duty. John spent many years in Silicon Valley focusing on underserved markets that had been overlooked by technologists. In 2012 he founded Zenput as CTO, focused on retail food services operations which was acquired in 2022. 

After living in San Francisco for 16 years, he moved off-the-grid to Sonoma County in 2020 where he was faced with the terrifying reality of life in the wildlands without the information needed to make informed decisions. Having developed software for over 30 years beginning at age 8, John found himself w...

Chessie Thacher is a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California, where she devotes her time to First Amendment issues, government transparency, criminal justice reforms, and voting rights litigation.   Prior to joining the ACLU, Chessie worked as an attorney at Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP, a San Francisco-based law firm that focuses on high-stakes litigation and trials. While at the firm, Chessie developed a dynamic pro bono practice, partnering with the ACLU on several amicus briefs that advocated for criminal justice and immigration-related reforms. 

A graduate of Stanford Law School, Chessie won the school’s Deborah L. Rho...

Dr. Adwoa Opong is an Assistant Professor of History at Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chapman University. Dr Opong earned a BA in history in the study of religions from the University of Ghana. She continued at the University of Ghana to pursue an MPhil in History, focusing on women’s organization and the nationalist struggles in Ghana. Adwoa received her PhD in History and also received her graduate certificate in the women, gender and sexuality studies program at Washington University. In addition to women and gender history, Adwoa has interests in the area of se...

Takeo Rivera is a specialist in performance studies with a focus on race, sexuality, and gender in U.S. American cultural production. He is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Boston University.  His current project, Model Minority Masochism: Performing the Cultural Politics of Asian American Masculinity (Oxford University Press, April 2022) is focused on masochism and techno-orientalism in Asian American cultural production across multiple media, including theater, literature, graphic novels, historical archives, and video games.

Dr. Rivera is also a playwright whose plays have been staged in New York City, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay A...

Abdi Soltani has served as the executive director of the ACLU of Northern California since 2009. During his tenure, he has pursued long-term priorities to deepen the ACLU’s presence in the California Central Valley and elevate the ACLU’s voice on state policy at the California state capitol. Through 2015, he co-chaired the Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Policy with then Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, where he helped draft the blueprint for safe and equitable legalization of marijuana in California. He has also worked on campaigns for racial justice, criminal justice reform, voting rights, and immigrants’ rights.

Abdi is a g...

John Fischer has served as director of the Normal Public Library since 2023. In this role, Fischer leads teams responsible for the educational, cultural, informational and recreational resources provided by the library to enrich the quality of life for Normal citizens. Fischer has worked in public libraries for more than 20 years, including time at Bloomington Public Library and St. Louis County Library.

Without Libraries was created to provide librarians a platform to share stories about education, discuss current programs, and consider life without libraries. Libraries provide access to information and educational resources, promoting literacy, critical thinking skills, and...

David Weinstein has been Trust for Public Land’s Western Conservation Finance Director for a decade. He advises local and state governments throughout the Western United States on how to design, pass, and implement legislative initiatives and ballot measures that create funding for land and water conservation and climate-smart solutions. A Wyss Foundation Fellow and Coloradoan, David has been involved in conservation politics and policy for more than a decade, formerly working for Outdoor Industry Association, U.S. Senator Mark Udall, and on Colorado Governor Hickenlooper’s first gubernatorial campaign. He chaired the Board of Directors for the Montana Cons...

Selicia Applegate is the Workshop Manager at Palatine Public Library. With over 10 years at the library, Selicia helped grow the department from a traditional tech support desk into a bustling makerspace that can run over 20 pieces of equipment at once—especially during the holidays.

“I focus on hands-on, inclusive learning experiences through our makerspace. In 2024, I was honored with the ILA Crosman Memorial Award for innovation, dedication, and leadership potential. One highlight has been creating programs like our community freedom quilt and later teaching other librarians how to replicate that outreach. I deeply believe that libraries and make...

Micol Hebron is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice includes studio work, curating, writing, social media, crowd-sourcing, teaching, public-speaking, and both individual and collaborative projects. She has been engaged in individual and collaborative projects in Los Angeles since 1992. Hebron is an Associate Professor of Art at Chapman University; the founder/director of The Situation Room resource space for the creative community; the Gallery Tally Poster Project about gender equity in contemporary galleries; and the Digital Pasty/Gender Equity initiative for the internet.

In the past she has been the Chief Curator at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art...

Amy Vidlak Girmscheid is a professional librarian with over 30 years of experience in public and special libraries. She has served the Library community as an archivist, Collection Development Librarian, reference librarian, library director and overall change agent.

Without Libraries was created to provide librarians a platform to share stories about education, discuss current programs, and consider life without libraries. Libraries provide access to information and educational resources, promoting literacy, critical thinking skills, and community building by offering a safe space for people to learn, research, and connect with others. Join the conversation at Past Forward.

...

Brian Fennessy became Fire Chief of the Orange County Fire Authority on April 16, 2018.

Chief Fennessy began his career in 1978 with the US Department of Agriculture's United States Forest Service and the US Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management working as a hotshot crewmember, hotshot/helishot/helitack captain and ultimately crew superintendent.

In 1990, Fennessy joined the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department (SDFD) and ultimately became Chief of the Department in 2015. One of his many accomplishments while with the SDFD was developing & establishing a multi-mission Fire/Rescue/EMS helicopter program designed to serve the citizens of the...

Alea Perez is a Youth Services Manager in the Chicago suburbs and she has worked in libraries for 16 years (10 in management). Alea grew up in libraries while her mother served as a Youth Services librarian for 30 years, starting when she was in elementary school. 

"Everyone thought I loved to read when I was young, but it wasn’t until I discovered sci-fi in 7th grade that I really fell in love with books and libraries. I have fond memories of spending time in the supply room of my childhood library, as I got roped into program preparation and...

Ricardo D. García serves as the Los Angeles County Public Defender, the first and largest public defender agency in the United States. He received his Juris Doctorate in 1995 from the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law, and his Bachelor of Art in Politics in 1991 from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

García started his legal career in 1995 with the San Diego Public Defender’s Office. In 1998, he was recruited to the Alternate Public Defender’s Office as the youngest attorney in that office. He has handled several high-profile cases in the San Diego...

Kate Buckson serves as the library director of St. Charles Public Library in Illinois. She has worked in public libraries for over twenty years.

Without Libraries was created to provide librarians a platform to share stories about education, discuss current programs, and consider life without libraries. Libraries provide access to information and educational resources, promoting literacy, critical thinking skills, and community building by offering a safe space for people to learn, research, and connect with others. Join the conversation at Past Forward.

Guest: Kate Buckson
Produced by: Past Forward

Past Forward is...

Resa Mai is a hands-on public library Director in Illinois. She facilitates partnerships within her community and across the state to create engaging exciting programs.  Currently while negotiating a large library addition she is a Lions Club International Vice President and Management Mentor. She has been an active Library advocate since early elementary school when she fell in love with the Velveteen Rabbit and with the idea that the entire world was accessible to her just inside the doors of her library.

She has worked in libraries for over 15 years, has been a public speaker and presenter f...

Enyce Smith, born in Los Angeles, CA, is a multi-talented creator whose work includes music, dance, choreography, filmography, and ballroom MC known in the scene as “King of the West Coast.” Enyce has been voguing in ballroom since the age of 18 and writing and publishing music tracks for more than 10 years. Currently, Enyce is a vogue instructor, ballroom MC, and Beyond the Runway documentary director and producer. Beyond the Runway aims to highlight issues and luminaries within the Ballroom scene.

Engaging the World: Leading the Conversation on Gender and Sexuality is a series that explores how culture, powe...

Dale Minami is a partner with Minami Tamaki in San Francisco specializing in the area of Personal Injury for which he has been named a SuperLawyer in Northern California for each year from 2004 through 2017 and a Top Ten SuperLawyer for the last 5 years.

He received a law degree at Berkeley Law during a formative time of anti-war, counterculture, civil rights, and ethnic studies movements in the San Francisco Bay Area. After he graduated, Minami and fellow Asian American law students and graduates started a collective to help poor Asian Americans in the Bay Area. He then opened...

Dr. Ronald J. Rivera is an Assistant Clinical Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of California, Irvine and the Associate Clerkship Director for emergency medicine rotations.

He completed medical school at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, and residency at SUNY Downstate / Kings County in Brooklyn, New York. After being elected to Chief of Education, he discovered a passion for teaching his peers much in the same way he advocates for improving bedside patient education as part of patient centered care. To further that goal, he did a medical education fellowship in Mu...

Dr. Mark Skousen, Ph. D., editor of Forecasts & Strategies, is a nationally known investment expert, economist, university professor and author of more than 25 books. In July 2018 Dr Skousen was awarded the inaugural Triple Crown in Economics for his work in economic theory, history and education, is known as “America’s Economist” and has been identified as one of the 20 most influential living economists.

He earned his Ph. D. in monetary economics at George Washington University in 1977. He has taught economics and finance at Columbia Business School, Columbia University, Barnard College, Mercy College, Rollins College and Chapman University, where...

Mitchell Kaplan is best known for the creation of the Miami Book Fair International, the largest community book festival in the United States and a model for book fairs across the country.

Kaplan began his working career as a high school English teacher. Two years after opening an independent bookstore, Books & Books, Kaplan, along with the Dade County Library and other independent bookstore owners, was asked by the president of the downtown Wolfson campus of the Miami-Dade College, Eduardo J. Padrón, to help put on a book fair, originally called “Books by the Bay.”

In ad...

Arianna Barrios has spent her life living, working, and volunteering in her hometown of Orang where she serves on the Orange City Council, representing the Old Towne Orange area of the City in District One. Today, Arianna lives and runs a small business in the City’s historic district as the owner of Communications LAB, a boutique Public Relations and Community Outreach firm that employs 11 communications professionals. In 2018, Arianna was recognized by Assembly Member Dr. Steven Choi and the State of California as the Woman of the Year in the 68th Assembly District. She was named to the National Ad...

Peggy Nagae received her A.B., cum laude, from Vassar College in East Asian Studies, a J.D. degree with honors from Northwestern School of Law at Lewis and Clark College, a M.A in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica, and a Bachelor of Illumination Sciences from the Jwalan Muktikã School for Illumination.

She has practiced law as a criminal and civil trial attorney, worked as director of associates at a Seattle litigation firm, Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Oregon School of Law, Affirmative Action Director at Northwestern School of L...

Nick Mott is a journalist and podcast producer. His podcast work has received a Peabody and two National Edward R. Murrow Awards. His print and audio reporting has been published in the Atlantic, NPR, High Country News, and the Washington Post, among many other outlets. 

Justin Angle is a professor and the Poe Family Distinguished Faculty Fellow at the University of Montana College of Business. His work has been published in Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, and the Washington Post.

Nick Mott and Justin Angle are authors of the book, This is Wildfire: How to Pr...