Public History MA student, Andre Taylor launches podcast

The Department of History is pleased to announce that Public History MA student, Andre Taylor, has launched a podcast, “Speaking Culturally.” The podcast will explore various aspects of cultural heritage and methods used to preserve the heritage of each culture.

Having spent fifteen years as a print journalist and then coming to grad school as a Public History student, Taylor felt he was losing part of his own cultural heritage. He wanted to explore that idea of how people preserve their cultural heritage so utilizing the skill set he had gained as a journalist and the  methodology and concepts he learned as a public historian the podcast “Speaking Culturally” was born.  With help from DH Hill Library sound engineers, Taylor officially launched Friday, November 8.

The first episode of the podcast features Queen Quet of the Gullah Geechee people discussing cultural heritage, sea level rise, climate change and adaptation.  Because she also happens to be a very large part of Taylor’s thesis research and he had to meet with her anyway, he asked her if he could also interview her for his podcast. Having his first guest be an internationally known person was quite a coup for Taylor.

Each episode will launch on Friday. This Friday’s episode (Nov 15) will feature NC State Public History PhD candidate Matthew Champagne and is entitled “The importance of including the history and cultural heritage of LGBTQ+ people in interpreted spaces.”  The episode will discuss  how an inclusive interpretation is critical to the success of any museum or historic site. Presently, despite very tangible connections to the history and culture of the LGBTQ+ community, many public history arenas avoid curating conversations that center gender and sexual minorities in affirmative ways.

Listeners can find “Speaking Culturally” on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify and TuneIn+Alexa as well as through social media platforms, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.