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Big Idea Article/Podcast/Music List

Check out engaging articles, podcasts, and musical selections about Big Idea topics and spark a rich, enlightening conversation.

Sharing Women's Stories in Museums

By Dr. Sarah Bell, Director of the Museum and Education Division, Kansas Historical Society, and Donna Rae Pearson, Msueum Specialist, Kansas Historical Society. 
Read Bell & Pearson's Big Idea

 

African American Storytelling in Museums

by Denise Sherman, Executive Director, The Kansas African American Museum, Brittany Beck, Curator, The Kansas African American Museum, and Dr. Carmaletta Williams, CEO, Black Archives of Mid-America. 

Read Sherman, Beck, and Williams' Big Idea

  • LISTEN to the Kansas 1972 podcast episode "Uprooted" to hear the story of urban renewals impact on Wichita and the preservation of the Calvary Baptist Church. 
  • LEARN a more robust history of Black cowboys from the Library of Congress, "Black Cowboys at Home on the Range."

 

The Power of Imagery and the Civil Rights Experience

by Ann Dean, artist and freelance photographer who teachers photography at the Lawrence Arts Center.
Read Dean's Big Idea

Beyond Brown: Mexican Struggles for Equality in Kansas

by Dr. Valerie Mendoza. 
Read Dr. Mendoza's Big Idea

  • LISTEN Hear the story of John Mendoza, Valerie's father, and his fight for equality in the 1970s Chicano movement in Topeka.
  • LISTEN Learn more about the high school walkout in Topeka and how it informed the Chicano movement of 1972 and beyond on the Kansas 1972 podcast episode, “Get Up, Stand Up.”

  • LISTEN to filmmaker Lourdes Kalusha-Aguirre recounts the story of La Yarda, an East Lawrence community of Mexican railroad workers and their families.

It's Time to Tell the Stories of African American Entrepreneurs

by Robert E. Weems, Jr., Willard W. Garvey Distinguished Professor of Business History, Wichita State University

Read Weems' Big Idea

Audio interviews from the “Wichita African American Business History Project”

Images from the Mind of a Bi-Racial Black Woman

by Ann Dean, professional photographer

Read Dean's Big Idea  

 

It's Time to Reconnect with Nature

by Leslie VonHolten, writer and executive director of Symphony in the Flint Hills

Read VonHolten's Big Idea

 

Changing How We Talk About the Civil Rights Movement

by Clarence Lang, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Penn State University

Read Lang's Big Idea

What Happened to the Civil Rights Movement After 1965? Don't Ask Your Textbook?

How Do You Teach the Civil Rights Movement -- NPR

K-12 Educators Workshop: The Long Civil Rights Movement -- with Carol Anderson and Brenda Santos (video)

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall on Civil Rights (video)

How Do You Teach the Civil Rights Movement -- New York Times

How the Civil Rights Movement embodied a time of change -- PBS

The Long Civil Rights Movement Initiative 

It's Time to Change How We Talk About Immigrants

by Kandace Creel Falcón, Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Minnesota State University Moorhead

Read Falcón's Big Idea

 

My Life as an Undocumented Migrant by Jose Antonio Vargas -- New York Times Magazine

Illegal vs. Undocumented: The Heated Divide Over How We Talk About Immigration

Latino USA -- Podcasts on Immigration

It's Time to Change the Way We Talk About Poverty

by Jason Wesco, Executive Vice-President of the Community Health Care Center

Read Wesco's Big Idea

Natives Making News: Toward a More Authentic and Ethical Representation of American Indian Identity, Issues, and Individuals 

By Dr. Melissa Greene-Blye (Miami Tribe of Oklahoma), Assistant Professor in the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas

Read Greene-Blye's Big Idea

  • This New York Times list of Indigenous podcasts highlights strong storytelling by Natives themselves. 
  • ​This list of recommended films and readings from the American Indian Resource Center at UC Santa Cruz ranges from Indigenous environmental theory to the history of Natives in rock-and-roll, and more.

 

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