S5E3 - Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall
This week’s guest is Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall, Professor of History at Cal State San Marcos where she teaches comparative history with courses focused around Haitian history, revolutionary Europe, women in Jewish history and travel and contact in the early modern world.
Dr. Goldstein Sepinwall thought she’d go to law school initially but inspiring debates and discussions with friends in the dorms, including at Oxford University, started to change that. After undergrad, she applied to law school and PhD History programs and got into both! She even interned at the Supreme Court and worked as a legal secretary but the history program ultimately won out.
Dr. Goldstein Sepinwall is trained as a historian of France. She became captivated with the 18th century ideals of equality and how they applied to the conflicting existence of slavery in the French colony of Haiti. This led to her own studies of Haiti and the lack of knowledge around Haiti has motivated her to teach about it too.
It is clear that Dr. Goldstein Sepinwall loves her students and learning about their backgrounds. She seeks to build community in her classroom and students find themselves immersed in multi-sensory experiences that include the incorporation of food and dance breaks. It isn’t surprising that she took home a student-nominated award, the Harry E. Brakebill Outstanding Professor Award which is a top honor at Cal State San Marcos.
She has published three books books including her most recent, Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games”. It is one of the first books about video games written by a historian.
In her spare time, and outside of pandemic times, Dr. Goldstein Sepinwall is also active with the San Diego Jewish Film Festival volunteering her time as an academic, speaker and chaffeur. We also talk about her parents who are also academics. You’ll have to listen to learn more!
Official Bio:
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall is Professor of History at California State University – San Marcos and past winner of the university’s Brakebill Distinguished Professor Award. She received her BA in History and Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and her MA and PhD in History from Stanford University. Her research specialties include the French and Haitian Revolutions, modern Haitian history, Slavery and Film, French colonialism, French-Jewish history, history and video games, and the history of gender. Her most recent book, Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games, was published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2021. Her previous works include the biography The Abbé Grégoire and the Making of Modern Universalism (University of California Press, new in paperback, 2021), and Haitian History: New Perspectives (Routledge, 2012).
Note from Rabiah (Host):
I had an incredible time speaking with Dr. Goldstein Sepinwall. If you haven’t listened already, you’ll find her to be enthusiastic and open and quite frankly someone you could talk to all day. One thing that resonated with me is that as a student, she reached out to a respected professor for advice. That’s what I did just over a year ago when I was working on my short-term path. That really resonated with me. People want to help. Reach out to them. Also, in talking about her students, I learned she has a true interest in people and their backgrounds. The fact that she teaches non-history majors history and takes the time to know them and care made me think of the pivotal time I had at UCSD when I took science classes for non-science majors and had some incredible professors who also cared (and some who did not).
Rabiah and Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall reuniting over Squadcast. Rabiah is in L.A. for the holidays and her guest is in San Diego.
Transcript
Rabiah (Host): [00:04:13] This is More Than Work, the podcast reminding you that your self worth is made up of more than your job title. Each week, I'll talk to a guest about how they discovered that for themselves. You'll hear about what they did, what they're doing and who they are. I'm your host, Rabiah. I work in IT, perform standup comedy, write, volunteer and of course podcast. Thank you for listening.
Hey everyone,. So this week, my guest is Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall . She is a history professor at Cal State University, San Marcos, and an amazing woman. I mean, she, as a guest was fire. She just, she hit everything. I really love talking to her. She was funny. She was able to talk about serious things and she's just really a cool, reflective person.
I met her quite a few years ago, probably 15 years ago [00:05:13] when I was working with her husband at a company in the past and not even that closely, but, um, we just, we connected at some holiday party I'm sure. Or some charity event that the company did and connected on LinkedIn. And I followed her for years and just through what she posts, I've always had a lot of respect for her, but she wrote a book and we talked about the book.
It looks at the Haitian revolution, which admittedly I didn't know much about until talking to her. And it's something I need to dive more into. But what I like too about talking to her is just at one point, when she was deciding what to do, she talked to someone and asked them for help. And they, they did, they, they gave her advice.
And one thing I just keep trying to encourage people to do is to reach out and talk to people. And that's how you'll figure out maybe your best path next. Not to get people to tell you what. But just to get information so you can decide what you want to do next. And you know, this podcast has enabled me to do that in a way. Uh, [00:06:13] almost selfishly I get good information and get advice from people without that being the initial intention.
Also just to reiterate, people's stories matter.
What I like talking to Dr. Sepinwall about really too, is how she approaches her students in her classroom and she gets to know them and spends the time knowing them. And I do think that's very, very critically important. That's important in our business interactions. It's important in our personal interactions.
Now, look, we can't spend an hour a day talking to each person about how they're doing, but I do think that if you're going to ask how someone is, you're going to ask someone something it's probably good to remember what they've told you before. And it's probably good to be doing it in it from a genuine place rather than not.
And she forms a real, genuine connection with her students. And she said, you know, she loves hearing about them. And she loves just kind of knowing about them. And I think it just shows that everyone's story matters and you're not going to know how interesting someone is until you talk to them. And a lot of people will tell me how boring they are.
I'm going to interview a guest [00:07:13] pretty soon that told me several times that she has nothing to say. And well, I hope that's not true. It's going to be a short episode if it is, but I also think that's just not true. I think everyone has a story and maybe their story doesn't apply to this podcast but, their story applies somewhere.
And I hope that you guys hearing the stories that other people have to tell helps you form those relationships in your life too. But, um, I just, I really appreciate everyone listening again. I always say that, but I really appreciate it. And anything you can do to like share subscribe, review, that's all really appreciated.
I always say that too, but it's something I have to say because. You know, that's the name of the game? I'm using the Goodpods app and it's pretty cool because you can share what you're listening to and people who follow you can see. And, I'm ranking there and a couple of categories and that's pretty fun.
And I really appreciate that people are listening there, but, whatever app you choose, if you can do that, that'd be awesome. And that's the [00:08:13] whole marketing part, I guess. But, I really hope you enjoy this guest and we have some exciting stuff coming up this season. So keep listening.
Rabiah (Host): Hi everyone. So today my guest is Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall. She's a professor of history at California State University of San Marcos. So thanks for being on Alyssa.
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Thank you so much, Rabiah. I'm looking forward to chatting with you.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah, same. So, first of all, I kind of gave it away by where you're teaching, but can you just kind of introduce yourself a little bit and where, where we're talking from?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Sure. I live in San Diego, California. San Marcos is a suburb in San Diego County. So here I am on a gray day and otherwise beautiful san Diego.
Rabiah (Host): Of course, right? Like the one day that I'm not in London, I'm actually in Los Angeles for a little
while. And it's, and it's sunny here, but of course it's gray there, so we can't escape gray if I'm on a call basically.
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: That's okay. Sometimes it's good. You know, we need it. I do. I do miss that about England. When I studied [00:09:13] abroad there, I liked the fog and the gray.
Rabiah (Host): I don't think it's that bad. Speaking of that, like I said, you're a professor of history. I know I studied political science. I did not proceed with it anywhere in my career at all. And so how did you go about choosing history and then just basically pursue academia after that?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: I'll tell you that I did not start college thinking I was going to be an academic. I imagined more professional paths. You know, growing up in the suburbs, I wanted something more exciting. So I thought I'd be a journalist or a politician. And I was planning to go to law school. But when I started to take classes, I saw that there were certain things that I really loved to learning.
And I really loved some of the topics of the history classes that I was doing. I did a class on the French enlightenment and the kinds of issues that philosophers debated in the 18th century seemed not so different from the things that my friends and I were talking about late at night in the dorms about [00:10:13] the meaning of life or how society should be organized or even sexual morality.
And I just thought that was cool. So my junior year I went and I studied at Oxford and I got an opportunity there, which was really fun because the system is structured different to do lots of independent research under the supervision of my graduate student Don and I was getting to go to archives and look at manuscripts and I thought that was really cool.
So when I came back to Philadelphia, I kept doing that. I wrote a thesis, but I still hedged my bets Rabiah. So I applied to both law school and history PhD programs. And for law schools, when I was accepted, I got what do you call it? Deferrment on my admission so that I could start history PhD program.
And if I'd made a terrible mistake, I could switch. And so after a year I realized, no, I really love doing this. I love studying these topics. It's wonderful to have people pay me to be able to think [00:11:13] and read and write. So, yes, that's the path that study.
Rabiah (Host): That's great. So you actually had law school as a backup, which is very unusual?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Right, because that's what I had thought I'd wanted to do, but I'll, I'll tell you I had an internship my junior year at the Supreme Court, and I thought that was so cool working for these justices whose decisions I'd read in my constitutional theory class. But I also worked as a legal secretary to pay my expenses for college in New York and corporate.
And the things that I saw my boss is working on looked, no offense to anyone, so boring that I just started to imagine, right. If I go to a good law school and these are the recruiters, I might get sucked into this and this future looks miserable and bleak. I don't want that future. So it was like, okay, law school might be interesting if you become a Supreme Court Justice, but that's not really likely.
So I think [00:12:13] that the history is going to be a better path. And I'll tell you one other thing I actually wrote to a scholar whose bio I found online. He had a large degree and he had a PhD in his. He was at Stanford law school. He was very nice to write me back. And I said to him, you know, I'm thinking of these two paths.
What do you recommend? And he was so nice. And he said, okay, if you're in a history department, your colleagues will be historians. And if you're in a law school, your colleagues will be lawyers who work on other things like torts or other things that are less because he's a legal historian. And I thought that was good advice also.
Rabiah (Host): yeah, that is great. I, it sounds similar. I mean, I did this thing last year where I got in part of when I started the podcast, just some conversations I had led me to figure out the subject of my podcast. Right. But it was conversations with people about like, for me, the nonprofit space to see if I should pivot or transition into that.
And my conclusion was not. But it was very similar to the conversations I [00:13:13] had about like who you're going to be working with, what you're going to be, making kind of things.
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: It's helpful to talk to other people and to draw on their wisdom and people are often willing to talk. So it's a great resource for people or thinking about shifting careers.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah, So as a history professor, is there something about the job that surprised you? I mean, you spent a lot of time in school, work, working with different professors and grad students and stuff.
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Yeah, I'm trying to think of how to answer that. And I think one of the things about it that great, but not necessarily a surprise is that no semester is the same. I think that if I was just teaching the same things all of the time, and I had, I don't know the same students, it might become boring, but there's always something different that's happening.
So, first of all, I teach a lot of students who are working class and a lot of them are returning to school after doing other things and so they're so interesting. I never know who's going to walk into my class, whether it's[00:14:13] a Marine veteran who you know, has certain life experiences or a grandmother or someone who's really brilliant but had undiagnosed learning disabilities or a student who's undocumented and has certain life experiences.
So my students are really fascinating. I'll say it was a shift to go from a wealthy institution like Stanford where I did my degree to a much less resourced state institution but I really love my students. They're so interesting. And they really like learning. I think that at Stanford, my students were going to have a bright future whoever they studied with and no matter anything I did so they were more jaded, but my students really appreciate learning interesting things. So I have a lot of fun.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah, that's cool. And as far as what subject you're teaching right now, and you said maybe every semester can be different, are you sticking with the same vein of history, but just different classes?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: So, yeah, one of the great things about Cal State San Marcos is that people have given me, we're on [00:15:13] the radio, so you can't see it, but I'm moving my elbows, room to move around. If I was at a research university,. I might be focusing on one country and one decade for my entire career. And so I started my career studying the French Revolution.
And I think the 1790s are very interesting. I also studied them when I was at Oxford junior year. And so I still think the 1790s are interesting. But, staying there my whole career, working on the same sources would have been really boring for me because I'm very curious. So I've had the freedom in a small department and as the person whose job is supposed to be comparative history, rather than just one place to teach a lot of different things.
So this semester I'm doing Haitian history. And I'm also teaching a seminar for graduate students, but I teach a course on revolutionary Europe. I teach a course on women in Jewish history. I teach a class on travel and contact in the early modern world, which a traveler like you might like. And one of the things that I really love Rabiah is [00:16:13] teaching non majors.
I teaching history majors, but it's also a super challenge to convince people who are computer science majors, or kinesiology, and are stuck in my class because they need to fulfill a requirement. Why history is much more interesting than they thought.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah, for sure. I think I know I, a lot of times just relate stuff to me and my experiences that they're the ones I know, but when I was in undergrad my most interesting year was the one where I deviated from my major entirely, which caused me to do another year of college, but whatever, just,
Where
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: did you study, Rabiah?
Rabiah (Host): UC San Diego, but I focused on writing and sociology and all these other things.
And it was the coolest thing because it's when you're in your major, though, you're interested in it, your, your ideas, like don't expand at all. You're just kind of in those classes with those same professors learning the same style of thing. So it is cool that you'll experience different types of students, and I'm sure that their feedback and input [00:17:13] that you get from them too also kind of changes, right?
Yeah. That's cool. So when one thing I want to point out is you did get an award in 2015, the Harry E. Brakebill Outstanding Professor Award. So can you talk a little bit about that?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Sure. So that's the top honor at Cal State San Marcos for outstanding professor of the year. And I must say I was nominated for it a few times before I won it. But it was really wonderful. It's an award that students nominate you for. And I'd had a number of students who'd nominated me across the years.
But my students really appreciated my teaching and my connecting them with each other. I try to build community in the classroom. And the break bill is for teaching research and for your service and committee work. So I had actually one earlier in my career when I was young, the President's Award for Innovation and Teaching, which is just for the teaching part.
And so that was great. But this is like the best, all around award so for research and committee work and teaching too. So it, it [00:18:13] was nice to be recognized. I'll say, right, we're talking frankly, on a podcast in mid-career you can start to feel a little burned out and you're working and you're saying, does anyone see how hard I'm working?
And does anyone realize what I'm doing? And it was, it was really nice to, to get that award and to have people see that. And I will add that since I won it. And since my picture is on the wall, along with the other winners, it makes me feel a little more empowered to be able to point to practices or things that I think might need to be changed in ways that other people might feel less comfortable speaking up.
So I've tried to use the, dunno, the respect that might come with that, right? People can accuse me of not caring about students or the campus since I won the award. So I try to marshall that to work for change.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah, yeah. That's great. And can you talk about one or two things that maybe either in the classroom that you [00:19:13] might think set you apart and just, I think ideas around maybe how you handle learning or teaching?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Well, I I'll say I have a lot of great colleagues who do a lot of exciting things in the class. And I always say that it might seem shameful then for someone to drop in and say, wow, this is really traditional. How did she win the award? But one thing that I do is I try to connect with my students. I try to get to know them and to see them as people and to have them feel comfortable.
And then I like to talk about things with them, which is maybe a more old fashioned ideal than if I'm using clickers and a ton of technology but I like to make the things that I'm teaching interesting and engage them and talking about them. But I do do other things that are maybe more innovative.
So, when I teach women and Jewish history I'd make the class multi-sensory. So there are certain things that if you're just reading texts,
Rabiah (Host): Yeah.
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Then you're not really getting the experience of Jewish women in history. They were [00:20:13] cooking where they were at celebrations and they weren't reading texts, especially if writing and literacy was kept for them.
So I bring in food for people to taste. People cook at the end of the semester to think about different dishes from different regions. I bring in guest speakers who sing to class. I don't want to talk too much because we say what happens in 383 stays in 383 and, you know, we don't want to ruin the surprises.
But currently on Zoom, I have a three hour class. A three hour block is pretty long for Zoom, so I try to break it up. And one of the things that I do, and this is Haitian history, every class is that a cameras off optional dance break. Five minutes. You've been on, you've been looking at each other. Turn your camera off. Dance.
If you want don't dance, if you don't want, but it's some kind of song that's tied to the curriculum for the day, whether it's a protest song, whether it's a song from the era we're studying. And so that's been a lot of fun too. Those are just some samples of the kinds of things that I do and normally Rabiah, [00:21:13] when I have a crazy idea in my head, and I say, I can't do that in class, can I? Usually those are the most successful things.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah. Oh, I'm sure.
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Playing music in class and encouraging them to dance with their cameras off- that might sound corny, but they like it. Whether or not they're dancing. It's just nice to have that break and to engage yourself using music.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah, I mean, in the three hours on Zoom, that's so long for anyone, for any reason, right? I mean, even getting people to sit and watch a movie at this point for two hours, it's hard sometimes, you know? Cause we're so used to having so many other distractions going on while we're doing things at home.
With Haiti specifically and your interest there and your curriculum, so you've written two books. I want to talk about your book, but first I want to start with where your interest started with Haiti. And we had a previous guest on this podcast, Nicole Pearson, and she worked with this organization called Outside the Bowl, that worked on food insecurity and trying to help people feed each other, basically there.
But [00:22:13] she said that trip that she took to Haiti changed her life because just, she had not seen those conditions before in her life and was shocked in a way. And so what, what made you um, interested in Haiti and pursuing that study?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: So you can stop me at any point if I get into the weeds, start to get too academic here. But so I'm actually trained as a historian of France. When I went to college and graduate school, people were not teaching, for the most part, the history of Haiti. It might crop up, but there were almost no courses in American universities on Haitian history.
There still are very few courses on modern Haitian history. So I was studying France and the history of slavery and France was also something that was hardly ever discussed. But it was something that I started to study during my dissertation. I was interested. And these 18th century ideas all matter equal that you have in France in the United States.
And I started to look at this more. [00:23:13] What did this statement mean? In France and the declaration of the rights of man, for members of groups that had been marginalized. And I was looking at women and I was looking at Jews and I started also to look at enslaved people. And so that took me to start studying Haiti, which had been a French colony as part of this work.
And so I was part of a wave in the small wave and the 1990s of starting to look at. And overtime, Haitian history has taken up more and more of my work, even though I still work on France partially because it's fascinating and partially because not enough people know about it and because they don't know about it, they make decisions that are harmful to Haitians.
So food insecurity, there's an example. And dental, try not to get too deep into. Some people might think, okay, Haitians need help. They don't know how to feed themselves, let me come up with a plan to help them. But they don't know that U S foreign policy [00:24:13] deliberately decided that Haitians should not feed themselves. US foreign policy under Bill Clinton purposely destroyed the Haitian rice industry so that Haitians could go work in factories and be in the modern world. And what this means is Haitian rice farmers went out of this. And then Haitians were forced to go if they couldn't be farmers anymore and they couldn't sell the rice.
And I'll explain how this worked. We set quote unquote food aid Arkansas rice farmers got paid for their rice from us tax dollars. We sent it quote unquote, free, to Haiti for a few years. If you're a rice farmer, you can't sell your rice again, something that's free so they went out of business and then these former farmers had to start going to these sweatshops to work. So when people don't have that historical context, you have all these NGOs with well-meaning people who say they want to attack a problem and they don't understand the roots. And so just [00:25:13] again, it's, it's powerful to realize these things that no one had told you in my students find that too. And I'll say that Haitians appreciate what I'm able to speak up and be an ally
so that's one reason I've been working more and more in Haiti and less on France.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I think just even what you're saying about Haiti reminds me of the whole critical race theory discussion, right? Which I'm not prepared to have in depth at this point, but it's like, if you don't know the background of things, then you just think that what you've always thought was true. There's no context as to why or anything. And I, and people like the US won't look good in a lot of situations if we look at the roots of things.
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Certainly the larger issue, and when people start talking about critical race theory in schools, it's crazy because this is a set of theories taught in, in law schools that are not taught if people are not reading Kimberlé Crenshaw in third grade. It's ridiculous. But the larger issue is, are we going to teach students [00:26:13] history as it actually happened or are we going to sanitize it the way that it was sanitized for decades? Because it makes people feel more comfortable. And as a historian, I am committed whether it's studying Haiti, France, or the US, to study history, warts and all. Because having amnesia and pretending that things are different than they were, is not healthy for society
just like it's not healthy for a person to not understand their pasts. So yeah. It's distressing when people are using this bogeyman of CRT to argue for banning books or other kinds of things or changing the way history is taught just at a moment when K to 12 teachers have started to try to teach more complete history.
So we'll, we'll see, this is certainly an issue that I am watching.
Rabiah (Host): yeah. I mean, it's like, if you it's just people who were present somewhere are being gaslit at this point, like, yeah, that didn't happen the way you think. And when that happens in our lives, when you tell a story about your experience with someone [00:27:13] just tells you, that's not what happened, because it's actually more comfortable to say that didn't happen.
It's it's really hard. And so I, yeah, I mean, I appreciate you're, you're teaching what you are and making that effort and no matter what it's met with. So let's talk about then your book, Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games. The title is great, I think. So,
can you talk a little bit about the book?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Sure. So my book is one of the first books by a historian on video games. It's the first book on films on the Haitian revolution. And so the question is first, how did I end up writing a book on video games? I'm not a gamer. I, I played games when I was younger, but I'm not a gamer. So this comes again from my interest in Haiti and the.
That its history is relatively. So obscured, many people know very little about it. You say you study Haiti and they say "Tahiti". They haven't heard of the Haitian revolution, which was a [00:28:13] major revolution in the same period as the American and the French revolution. It was the first successful revolt by enslaved people and the new world that led to an independent country.
And yet. That the ed is doing a lot of work there. And yet there are a lot of people who don't know about it. And part of this stems from the issue, we just discussed the reasons that people have sanitized history, because they were worried about talking about it openly. So certainly the Haitian revolution created a lot of fear.
It was 1791 to 1804. Among white enslavers at that time, we still had slavery right until the 1860s. So there was a lot of fear in the US that if you help Haiti or you talk about Haiti that, oh no, America's enslaved people might, I should say the US' enslaved people might get the same idea. And so there was a really an effort to isolate Haiti and to try not to [00:29:13] talk about Haiti. The Haitian scholar, Michel-Rolph talked about this most famously in his book Silencing the Past (20th Anniversary Edition): Power and the Production of History. I wanted to throw that in because sometimes people talk about how on podcasts, people don't cite things.
So
Rabiah (Host): Yeah.
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: important for me to bottle, right?
That
Rabiah (Host): That's no, that's great. And I actually started putting the links to what people are citing. So we're going to work together on that one.
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Excellent. Okay. So. People have started to look in the last few decades that how Haitian history has been silenced. And this is something I've looked at myself in textbooks. How is the Haitian Revolution discussed or not discussed? I've looked at it among other historians. When white historians in particular are writing about this period, do they include Haiti? How do they talk about it?
And so pop culture is then just the next step beyond that. I realized that there were some films on the Haitian revolution. And I also realized that there were projects that had been [00:30:13] proposed that were never made. Danny Glover. Famously tried to make a Haitian revolution, a movie for a few decades.
And he recounts that when he told people, when he spoke to producers, they said, great, great, great, where are the white heroes? And it was this idea that when you're making a film about black history, that the white guys, green lighting films, that studios think that unless they're friendly white people in the films that quote unquote audiences by which they are imagining white audiences, they won't go see the film.
And so this is part of a larger pattern that when you have films on black history, there is almost inevitably a friendly white person, 12 Years a Slave, very difficult film about slavery, but the hero is Brad Pitt who manages to free Solomon Northrup. And the Haitian revolution does not have a built-in white hero, so I wanted to look at films that had been made andfilms that had not been made. And then a student told [00:31:13] me, oh, Dr. S you know, there's a new video game coming out on this subject. I said, what do you mean a new video game on this subject? And he said on slave resistance in colonial Haiti and Saint-Domingue, which was named for colonial Haiti.
And I was like, what are you talking about? I didn't even know that video games tackled these subjects. And that's when I discovered Assassin's Creed Freedom Cry. And then after that, as I told more people, I was working on this project, I discovered other video games as far back as the 1980s, that had looked at this history of slave resistance in this form, in this genre. So I realized, okay, I really need to write about this. And I still wasn't sure if anyone would care, it's kind of a niche subject, but I really thought it spoke to the issue of how black history is presented in pop culture to general audiences. And so it's been, it's been nice.
I [00:32:13] think the book cover is awesome. The University Press of Mississippi designed a really nice cover and that helped communicate to people that the issues involved are bigger.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah, that's incredible really, just to think about that. I mean, I'm thinking of too, when you said about the white here, like Green Book, I mean, that was one that really rubbed people the wrong way. And I think justifiably where even the best the Oscar nominations, which say they're stupid or not, I love the Oscars, but you know, the, the black character was the supporting actor in a film about him.
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: And his family said, like he didn't even know that dude very well.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah. Yeah. Like none of it was true and it's so interesting because with so many things that you think our times are changing, quote unquote, but then there's so much of the same. And it's just that maybe more people are talking about something or pointing it out, but what's being done?
So the fact that you then wrote a book and to the research and brought that to light is [00:33:13] great.
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: So I don't know if you've seen Rabiah this, I know you're in comedy. This really hilarious parody that Seth Meyers and Amber Ruffin did on White Savior: The Movie.
Rabiah (Host): No.
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: watch it. It is so funny. So it came out while I was writing, making fun of Green Book and Hidden Figures. It is hilarious. And so that also helped me see, okay. I am looking at these larger issues that people are talking about outside Haiti, that deal with how does Hollywood handle black history?
And do they imagine it only is something where white people drive the change and blacks are passing. So, yeah, it's definitely worth watching, Rabiah.
Rabiah (Host): Okay. So as far as the book, what are the plans, cause it's an academic book, but, and I actually interviewed someone else who's at University of Washington. She's doing a neuroscience book, similar like academic, but also of interest to the general public. What do you do with this book? Are you going to teach from it [00:34:13] or do you try to market it to non-academics?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Some academics write books just for other academics. And I've tried with all three of my books;. The first was a biography of a French priest involved in the French revolution, and then the second book was a survey of Haitian history. I try to write them so they're clear to the general public also. If, if they're, again, people like you who went to UCSD, and are still used to reading academic books that have footnotes, but I try to make them lively and interesting.
So the hope is always that non-academic readers will find out about it. But I'll say they don't always. So my second book, Haitian History - New Perspectives, I really hoped that I could help drive policy changes by helping people to know more about Haitian history and. I'll tell you that when general readers find out about it, they really like it.
You'll see like a missionary group recommending it to people. [00:35:13] I'll say a good missionary group. Cause some of them don't really care about the impact of what they're doing, but some of them are being more self-aware. Haitians who are not academics, really love the book also. It's exciting for them that it presents Haitian history in a way that's different than Americans usually talk about it. And then it's one volume. But it's, It's sometimes hard to communicate to those audiences. So I'm doing my best to let people know. One thing that's been great so far is that people are hearing about it outside of Haitian history and outside of French history.
So I did a podcast with a scholar of African American history. I did a podcast and I'm going to try to go on Clubhouse soon with a Haitian PR guy who's not an academic, but loves well-written interesting books. So yeah, trying to get the word out. And video gamers and video game designers have also been reading it, which has been wonderful.
I know some professors are teaching with it already, which
Rabiah (Host): [00:36:13] that's amazing
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: to see. One posted on LinkedIn, professor Ronald Angelo Johnson at Baylor that his students were having a great time with it so that's great to hear.
Rabiah (Host): that's really cool, actually. So, and then as far as outside of all of this, outside of your work and at the university and any writings you're doing, do you have any other like hobbies or interests that you pursue?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: It's, you know, it's funny to think of this during the pandemic. It's like, I barely leave my house.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah. You're like leaving your room as a hobby
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: So before the poor, before the pandemic, we used to go to the theater. We used to like to go out to restaurants. I was involved with the San Diego Jewish Film Festival, which is one of the things that helped drive my becoming more and more interested in historical film. Since the pandemic, hanging out with my family streaming.
So, you know, eventually. Yeah, I'd like to do [00:37:13] more things outside my house but I will say I'm a foodie. So that's one of the things in San Diego that's fun is just tasting, um, different things from all of the different cultures who have moved to San Diego.
Rabiah (Host): that's true. Well, and one thing about, you mentioned the Jewish film festival, and then you talked about teaching women, Jewish women in history, right? So can you talk a little bit- I just had someone on the podcast actually. Is Orthodox Jewish. I forgot what sect exactly, but, and she talked a lot about that and how it influences her life, but how are, how are you taking being Jewish and like applying it in the academic sense and what brought you, I mean, I could state say, oh, it's obvious what had you do that but I don't think it might be so kind of, how do you use that focus?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Yeah. So, so from an academic standpoint, I'm really interested in most in history and identity. So this issue of Jews, like other groups coming to the United States, what does it [00:38:13] mean to have their own culture that they're trying to preserve and then becoming Americans? So that's definitely something that is a, a research question for me.
And as someone who is Jewish and a scholar, I also love learning all of these hidden parts of history that were not taught to me before, either in regular school or in Hebrew school. So that's one thing that I really love about Jewish film and Jewish filmmakers now that are uncovering stories that I might not have heard about.
And I'll say Palestinian filmmakers too, because there are stories that I'm learning in films from Palestinian filming. And from Israeli filmmakers that are discussing things that I hadn't learned before. So yeah, that the San Diego Jewish film festival is something that I got involved with. I don't know, maybe in 2003, and it's so much fun when a person to have this group outside of academia, academia, these amazing women, most of whom are retired and who are grandparents and who are so intellectually curious and devote the whole year [00:39:13] to curating,
choosing from among hundreds of films, maybe the 40 that they think are the most interesting. And again, when we're in person, I've gotten to be a chauffeur. I volunteer not just to speak and introduce films, but to drive filmmakers. And so I've had some really interesting conversations. One of my favorite chauffeuring experiences was Sheldon Harnick, who co-wrote Fiddler on the Roof. that was so cool. I'm driving him in my car, you know, the person who wrote if I were a rich
Rabiah (Host): Yeah,
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: man...
Rabiah (Host): Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
You're trying not to turn it into a musical yourself, you know? Like how do I avoid singing at the traffic fine
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: know, to share the version that my mother used to sing to me, "Alyssa is a good girl."
I'm actually, she's saying this more for my brother and my son, but still.
Rabiah (Host): That's [00:40:13] awesome. That's great. Yeah. And hopefully, you know, you can get back to all that because it's, that's one thing that the pandemics done for sure, has changed our focus a little bit. So speaking of, well, you mentioned your mother, but speaking also just your parents in general. I mean, they had an influence on you, right?
Being as curious as you are, I'd say. So can you talk a little bit about,
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Sure.
Rabiah (Host): about that.
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: So my parents were both first generation college students. My mother's parents were immigrants from Poland. My mother's mother, my grandmother lost all of her family in the Holocaust. Everyone was murdered except for one nephew. So, and when she, she survived only because she had come as a teenager in the 1920s, by herself. And so she stayed in touch with her family, but then she lost all of her sisters. And everyone also. My mother was right, she and her sister were the first generation to be able to go to college. And my mother went to City College in [00:41:13] New York city, which serves great immigrant students and low-income students.
And she went on while I was in high school to get her EDD from Rutgers. And she was a social studies teacher and she retired recently as a professor of social studies education. And she had come to specialize in Holocaust education. She decided to integrate that family history into teaching others. Um, New Jersey, where we're from actually was one of the first states to require Holocaust education in public schools.
So she held workshops. And so I'm very proud of mom. She just got a, an award this past weekend for her work in that area. So she definitely encouraged me to read and ask questions and we went to museums. She was surprised that I wanted to become a professor though. She said, but Alyssa, you've never liked teaching.
When I started this, it was really cause I didn't care about teaching, but I liked researching and reading and writing, but I realized later how much [00:42:13] I love teaching. And my father, he was not first-generation in North America. His parents were also born in Canada in the 19-zeros, but their parents were Eastern European Jews who had come to North America seeking a more safety.
And my father, I think, was the first person in the family, 17 cousins to go to college. And he started at McGill university in Montreal and he ended up getting scholarships to go to Cornell. And then the university of Pennsylvania. So my father was the elder, Dr. Sepinwall. And one thing that was amazing about him that maybe you're experiencing today Rabiah is that he could never answer a question quickly.
He thought that if someone asked a question, they deserved a thorough answer. So if you ask dad a question he would give you and he didn't try to sugar coat things orlie or do things. He figured children deserved truthful answers. He might just have to think and reflect about what exactly to [00:43:13] say.
And so I definitely take that from them and I appreciate my, my parents for giving me this love of learning and support.
Rabiah (Host): No. That's cool. And I think, I mean, I agree with your dad and it's fine. I prefer if a guest actually talks on the podcast, it makes it easier. Cause otherwise I'll do a solo episode, first of all, that's fine. And I don't think everything I have to say is that interesting for an hour. But also I think yeah, with telling people the truth and giving kids information, sometimes I'll my nephews and niece are a little older now, but I would say something, answer them as though they were an adult.
And then my mom would be like, well, she probably doesn't understand you. And I'm like, then she can tell me she doesn't understand my niece, and I'll talk to her and they won't always, but I think it's important just to talk to everybody and with the same respect and if they're an adult or kid and they can know.
So that's good. That's
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: they often understand more than people give them credit for. Thinking again of history. People think if you tell children what really happened instead of a fairytale that somehow they'll be wounded or stressed out. My students love learning [00:44:13] about what really happened in the past. It's empowering to have more information.
Rabiah (Host): Well, and it informs the present day. I mean, if you seriously think certain things and then you saw what's happened in the last couple of years, you would never understand why are these people? It was like, I mean, I can relate it to even pre-METOO, when there was still just early talk about how in the workforce for women, they don't get paid as much and whatever.
If you didn't experience that, you're like, I don't understand what they're talking about, right? And then you have other things that have happened. And that was the most innocuous one to pick for me that I won't get fired up about as much at the moment as a moment. But if you have no understanding or context of the past, then you're not gonna understand what's presently going on to me, right? And it's so important that We do because that's one way to have empathy is to understand where people are even coming from. And your dad, you guys set up a scholarship in your dad's name?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: We did, yeah. At Cal State San Marcos.
Rabiah (Host): That's really cool. Good way to
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: To help [00:45:13] other students to be able to achieve their dreams.
Rabiah (Host): That's great. It's so important. So, do you have any, I just have to ask, like, do you have any advice or mantra You like to share? Some people just like to share what works for them or what something they like to talk about?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: You know, it's hard to say because I feel like some of the advice that I might have might come from a place of privilege. So saying, you know, you're, you should love your job, only do something you love. I know that there's so many people who don't have the flexibility to do that. But I'll definitely for me the fact that I do love, what I get to do is really important. I guess,
okay, so what I would say is, and again, I know some people, if you have to drive two hours to get to work then you're too exhausted for other things, but I try to realize with my students, that what I get out is going to be what I put in. And if I spend more time, especially at the beginning of the [00:46:13] semester, investing in trying to connect with them, to email them individually, they're going to appreciate that they're going to feel seen and they're going to show up and they're going to do their work.
And they're going to say interesting things for the rest of the semester. So, to the extent that this is applicable to others and it doesn't sound like, oh, good for you, yeah, that, that would be it.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah, no, I think that's, that's fair though. And it's it's I can relate to that in a sense that some people have told me, Oh, you're lucky you have a relationship with this person, or you're lucky to have these friends. Well, or I put in a lot of work and they're meeting me there, you know, and I think that's true.
So I think what you're saying can apply in many ways, right? If there's someone at work you want to connect with former connection . Don't just sit and wish at your desk that they would talk to you. If you're a high school or trying to go to the dance, you might want to sit and wait a little while.
Just kidding.
Rabiah (Host): I have a set of questions. I ask every guest called the Fun Five.
[00:47:13] We'll go, we'll go through those. So what's the oldest t-shirt you have and still wear?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: I have some from college, but I think that the answer might be, I worked, as I said before at the Supreme Court when I was in college and I did aerobics in the morning with Sandra Day O'Connor and we got t-shirts thatsummer. So I have my t-shirt "Witness to Fitness" which is Supreme Court, our Supreme court t-shirts so yeah, no one knows what it's about.
And I will say Rabiah that there might be a couple of holes, but I'm very attached to that t-shirt.
Rabiah (Host): That's that's amazing. That's that's I like that. Okay. So it has seemed a bit like Groundhog's Day for awhile. So if you think about the movie, Bill Murray listened to the same song on his alarm clock every day, what song would you pick if it was really Groundhog's Day?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: That is so hard because I get tired of music quickly. And I think if I heard the same song every morning, I [00:48:13] would go nuts. In fact, I do, because my husband sets the same song to wake him up every morning, which I is a mashup of Dear Evan Hansen and Hamilton with Ben Platt singing with Lin-Manuel Miranda. And I really like Dear Evan Hansen soundtrack, but I'm getting pretty sick of that song.
So I'd say that one is too hard for me, but I really do like the Groundhog Day soundtrack from the musical. And I've only heard it a few times. So there might be a song from there that if it was Groundhog Day that I'd hear it and I'd laugh because I would think of it.
Rabiah (Host): I'll try to find it. a song from there. I haven't heard the soundtrack. All right.
Cool. Yeah, but I will not pick, "I Got You Babe" because that one just destroyed me in that movie.
All right, so next one, coffee or tea, or neither?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Oh coffee. That's an easy one. When I, when I studied in England, then I drank tea with my friends, but no coffee, all the way. A hundred percent coffee.
Rabiah (Host): [00:49:13] Nice. Yeah, the tea. I mean, I'll have tea, but that's an addition to coffee for sure. Okay. Can you think of something that just makes you like laugh so hard and you cry when you think of it or the last time that happened?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: So Steve Martin makes me laugh really hard and my family does not understand this because I just think that he's brilliant and they think that he's silly. And then I am a snob who looks down on other things that are silly. But I'm gonna share this and it's going to sound ridiculous, but right, you're looking at the whole person here.
So as a parent, one of the most stressful parts of my day, I don't know why, is when my child says to me, what can I have for lunch? Now I give him a list of things that he can have for lunch, but he usually says no. Nah I don't think so. And I know that there are families where it's just you're having what you're having, but we're a last minute, last minute kind of family.
So it gets really tiring every day to go through the same [00:50:13] list of choices. And then even to think of the same restaurants that I could get him Subway, Rubio's, Chipotle. So one day when I was just like, oh my God, I want to get back to work or do something else other than answer this question, I started to look around to the room.
Okay. What would you want for lunch? Table? Desk? And I laughed so hard. It was some kind of cathartic release and my family, they think this is so funny that makes me laugh so hard, but it's like, I don't know. It's like shifting the power or something. You see I'm laughing even now from my being hostage to coming up with an endless list of lunch items to which the answer is no. And instead being able to say ridiculous things. Stapler? Telephone? Until my child just says fine, I'll have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and we have [00:51:13] succeeded.
Rabiah (Host): Perfect. Yeah. You, yeah, but I think the silly, I I'm the same. Some stuff that people find like TikTok. I don't find most of the funny, I'm just like, I can't. But Steve Martin is someone to where if I even see him, I just start laughing because I just know it's going to be
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Have you seen Only Murders In the Building, yet?
Rabiah (Host): I started watching it.
My mom watched it. I didn't finish it yet because it wasn't on, in the same way over in the UK, but I'm going to watch it.
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: I wasn't sure at first if I was going to like it, but I think it's really good. And towards the end of the season, just keep watching, there's going to be something where he's like in I guess it's a Dolly, it's not a stroller, and the faces that he makes, oh my God, I lost it.
Rabiah (Host): That's brilliant. Awesome. Well, good. Good. All right. And the last one is who inspires you
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: So I would say friends in Haiti who are existing and still hoping for the future despite all of the political problems and instability there right now, much of which it's another topic but is driven by our foreign [00:52:13] policy decisions. And also, I have a friend here who is Haitian American named Guerline Jozef, and she is an activist on behalf of immigration.
And she testified before the House Foreign Relations Committee earlier this year. And she is a mom who lived in Orange County. She's still living in Orange County, but she got a call in 2015 that there were Haitians showing up at the border in Tijuana and the organizations in San Diego that work with immigrants were used to working with Spanish speakers.
They didn't know what to do with Haitians and someone basically called her and said, come get your people. They knew that she was involved in Haitian organizations. So since then she's been thrust into this role. Trying to help families not be separated. And she's just amazing. I don't know how she does all the things she does.
And she got an award. She got the RFK Human Rights Award.
Rabiah (Host): Wow.
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Wyclef Jean came to sing and honor her. And they did it at the border in Otay [00:53:13] Mesa. I'm just mad Rabiah, that I didn't realize it was going to be there. I was planning to watch it stream on Facebook and I was like, what? They're in San Diego? Why didn't I drive there? This is outdoors. I could still be there.
Rabiah (Host): Oh, man. That's cool though. That's great. Well, those are good,. Those are good inspirations, especially like this last one. I mean, how cool, right?
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: I suppose I should say my family too, right? So my sister is battling cancer.
My is really amazing. My son, it's not easy to come out of a pandemic and to start high school. And he got sick a ton in September and October. So to start high school after pandemic missing like 12 days for being sick.
So he has been really amazing. And my husband, we haven't mentioned who used to work with is also very inspiring. He has been also trying to follow different paths and figure out what kinds of work things will most satisfy him while also leaving him time to be an involved [00:54:13] parent. So that's also really inspiring.
Rabiah (Host): Yeah, and we did work together and that's how, that's how I met you a long time ago. Cool. Well, thank you so much for doing this. So if people want to find you or find your book or whatever, where where's the best place for them.
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: So if they go to the University Press of Mississippi website. So for anyone who's interested in video games or film or black history, it is lovely to read.
Rabiah (Host): And good to support the university press
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Rather than just that mammoth bookseller.
Rabiah (Host): right. Yeah. And rockets and the space and all that stuff. Cool. Well, thanks so much,
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: people, I have to say working long hours with no breaks, right? So
Rabiah (Host): Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. Exactly. I know we could do a whole episode on that. Well, thank you so much for being on more than work. I really appreciate it.
Dr. Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall: Thank you, Rabiah. This was a lot of fun.
Rabiah (Host):
Thanks for listening. You can learn more about the guest and what was talked about in the show notes. Joe Maffia created the music you're listening to. [00:55:13] You can find him on Spotify. It Joe M A F F I A. Rob Metke does all the design for which I am so grateful. You can find him online by searching Rob M E T K E.
Please leave a review if you like the show and get in touch if you have feedback or guest ideas. The pod is on all the social channels at at more than work pod (@morethanworkpod) or at rabiah comedy (@rabiahcomedy) on TikTok. And the website is More Than Work Pod dot com (morethanworkpod.com). While being kind to others, don't forget to be kind to yourself.
