In this episode of BG Ideas, we welcome Rosemarie Poiarkov, Max Kade Writer in Residence in Fall 2025 at Bowling Green State University, where she was also featured in the Prout Chapel Reading Series. Throughout the episode we discuss how literature affects imagination and listening throughout society. Follow along, as she discusses the importance of listening in literature and the way that different perspectives can impact a story. Thinking about how we change as we grow older, she reflects on how in her different novels, youth novels and stories, she articulates that perspective shift. Rosemarie dives into the 1968 student movement in France and what that means for literature. Want to know more about Rosemarie Poiarkov’s writing and theater projects? Check out her website here.

A transcript for this episode can be found here.

In this episode of BG Ideas, we welcome Rebekah Monroe, a current Clinical Psychology PhD student at Bowling Green State University and recipient of the 2023-2024 Graduate Teacher of the Year Award. Throughout this episode, we explore the various ways religious trauma shapes identity, often producing both positive and negative effects. Listen as Rebekah discusses different forms of religious trauma, including betrayal trauma and cultural hegemony, alongside her own research on the relationship between adverse religious experiences, specifically their interpersonal dimensions. This conversation also addresses sexual harassment and trauma in relation to religion, and how these experiences can be intertwined as it is a spectrum rather than a fixed binary. Do you want to see more from Rebekah? Follow her on LinkedIn here.

A transcript for this episode can be found here.

This week, Claudia Salazar, an award-winning Peruvian Writer, literary critic, and scholar, joins us on BG Ideas. She has a PhD in Latin American Literature from New York University and is recognized internationally for her contributions both as a novelist and as a cultural critic. In this episode, we discuss how emotion can provoke a different way of understanding, conversations surrounding gender and sexuality in Peru and Latin America, and the process of navigating a novel through different translations. She wanted to find languages that addressed the violence of the war in Peru during the 1980s without reproducing violence and to center the experience of women during this time. Listen as Claudia Salazar reminds us of the many ways readers can understand a text, showing how meaning is constantly being formed, shaped, and contested. If you are interested in learning about Claudia Salazar’s book Blood of the Dawn, click here and follow her on Instagram @clausalazarjimenez.

A transcript for this episode can be found here.