Episode 20: Dr. Ben Johnson on Texas History and Refusing to Forget

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Welcome back to Yeah, I Got an F#%*ing Job with a Liberal Arts Degree. Join Cal Poly Humboldt Dean Jeff Crane as he interviews a range of guests about the value of the liberal arts and the fight for its survival. This week's episode features a conversation with Dr. Ben Johnson, who is a Professor in History and the School of Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University Chicago. His areas of research include Environmental history, North American borders, and Latino history. He received his Ph.D  M.A. from Yale and his B.A., from Carleton College.  He has taught courses on North American and world environmental history, natural disasters, immigration and ethnicity in the United States, and border and transnational history more generally. He helps run the organization Refusing to forget, an award-winning public history project committed to sharing the history of state-sanctioned violence against Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Texas. Jeff and Ben go back and forth about what Texas means symbolically on national level and how the narrative can be corrected to be more honest. They also discuss the flexibility, skills and possibilities that come with a liberal arts degree. In this episode, Ben refers to two books that have been very impactful on his work: Goodbye to a River by John Graves and On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed. Follow us on X: ⁠@JobLiberalArts⁠ ⁠@BenjaminHJohns1⁠ @Refusing2Forget Instagram: @LiberalArtsJobPod ⁠⁠⁠Music by Silverman Sound Studios⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Yeah, I Got an F#%*ing Job with a Liberal Arts Degree is produced by Abigail Smithson