Bios

Kathryn Hobson

My great grandmother and step-father died precisely the same day a year apart. August 27. I used to pretend this day did not exist, I crossed it off my calendars with a permanent black pen. I acquired dandelion skulls, lit candles, and burned incense on a homemade altar. I wrote and delivered eulogies at both funerals–a divinatory moment of profound loss. My pieces began as explorations of haunted memories and the collective trauma of the women in my family. From Sara, Beulah, Jane, Dawn and me, we pass from mother to daughter and back again. As a white, mixed-class, chronically-ill queer-femme, my body has often not been mine, but something others have tried to own. Violence, pain, and ambivalence move in relationship with one another, permeable to environments, affects, and multiple intersections of identities. Through the women’s stories I began to search out and make meaning of mine.

I hold an M.A. and Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Denver, and I am an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication at James Madison University and Affiliate Faculty in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. My research focuses on critical intercultural communication, queer and feminist performance, and arts-based qualitative methods. I primarily teach courses in  Cultural Communication, like Intercultural Communication, Ethnographic Approaches to Communication, and Critical Sexuality and Communication. I have created “Safer” spaces for folks of difference to gather and build community, foster mentoring relationships, and co-create areas of empowered learning.

Michael Broderick

I prefer to think of myself as an Eastern Cottonwood tree.   The Eastern Cottonwood is related to the American Aspen: Populus tremuloides.  Tremuloides means to quake or tremble.  Its leaf petiole is flat vertically.  Most leaf petioles are rounded and in cross section resemble manhole covers after a light spring rain.  A small wet circle.  The Cottonwood petiole’s cross section looks more like a cigar that’s been trampled at the intersection of West Beverley and Jefferson.  Discarded by one of the would-be patrons at the Acme tattoo studio.  Just under the puckered red pulse pulse pulse of the ACME sign.

The flat petiole gives the Cottonwood leaf form and unbound spiraled potential in the same way that a ballerina’s training—the constant strain of sculpting bone, muscle, and sinew—generate scripted unbound movement.  The movements do not proceed the form.

When the wind blows the waxy, bright-green Cottonwood leaf, it sounds like a muffled train car headed into a high-mountain climb.  Just behind the hills.  The deltoid-leaf and flat petiole catch the coal dust and smoke.  In the distance.  Quaking.  Tremulous.

When not inhabiting the Cottonwood trees, or collecting wild edibles in the woods of greater Appalachia, I work at James Madison University in the Shenandoah Valley.  My areas of interest include critical approaches to food and culture, post-humanisms/new materialisms, material ecology, vibrant matter assemblages, and aesthetic/performative approaches to understand our shared social world.  I am currently conducting research in rural Alaska on the ways that environmentally vulnerable populations (e.g., the Yu’pik) are making sense of global warming in Anthropocene.

You can find some of my work in Qualitative Inquiry and, most recently, an article entitled “We Kill Our Own: Towards a Material Ecology of Farm Life” in Text and Performance Quarterly.  Please feel free to reach out.  You can find me at: broderml@jmu.edu

Michael

Amy Broderick

I held my own camera for the first time on my twelfth birthday. A point and shoot Vivitar, my first photograph a picture of my father with his head inadvertently cut off. Since then, I’ve never stopped taking pictures; my life is documented in painful abundance. I worked my way up to a ‘real’ camera, eventually hitting a magic number of photographs, and granted myself the right to be called an artist.

Imagery, whether real or evoked, conveys with greatest accuracy the human experience, sometimes more so than the experience itself. The image waits until you are ready to immerse yourself into the space it creates and permits you to visit over and over again.  The image of walking through a grove of cherry trees while a cool, spring breeze showers the petals down around you is palpable, and seeing the literal image or reading its inspired prose, can transport you immediately- so much so you can almost smell the sweetness of the nectar. Imagery, transcending our cultural boundaries, allows us to share a feeling, joyful or tragic, dreadful or dripping with sensuality. My imagery is inspired by the aesthetics of the natural world and the human condition and where the two intersect.

Amy Farmer Broderick holds a BFA in Photography from Ohio University and is also an experienced ceramist. She is an independent artist running her business, QuietSide Arts, as well as working a ‘real job’ in higher education administration. Currently residing and working in Staunton, Virginia. Inquiries can be directed to quietsidearts@gmail.com.

Justin Gordon

Justin Gordon has spent most of his life moving from one place to the next, for better or for worse, rarely settling long enough to really become comfortable.  As such, his music draws from many sources, and together they populate his songs with stories that are compelling insofar as they are honestly told.  “Some people say all you have at the end of your life is the people you’ve loved and the things you’ve done.  My songs make an attempt to tell the stories and honor the people in them in the most natural way I can find to express them in hopes that I will be able to remember what it was like and that someone else will feel that, and that feeling is one of being connected.  These songs are records of moments that have passed, and in a futile attempt to preserve those moments in my life I can only hope they exhibit some kind of unique quality.”  Gordon produced and released his sixth full-length album Backwater in January 2019 and is experimenting with tape recorders in the back yard shed at night.

“We performed with Justin the first time we played in Athens, Ohio and were told how great he was. Sure enough, his original songs were thoughtful and perfect and his acoustic blues convinced me he was and is the real deal. Since then, I have listened to and been inspired by everything he makes. He is a brilliant artist and a treasure to any place he inhabits.” -Scott Avett (The Avett Brothers)

A link to Justin’s work: justingordon.bandcamp.com.