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6.5 Minutes With... | Charmaine Lang

6.5 Minutes With... C21

Release Date: 03/11/2025

6.5 Minutes With... | Samira Payne show art 6.5 Minutes With... | Samira Payne

6.5 Minutes With... C21

In this episode of C21’s 6.5 Minutes With…, graduate fellow Jamee Pritchard interviews Samira Payne, an educator and outdoor enthusiast, who discusses her journey into hiking and her role as a volunteer leader for Outdoor Afro, a nonprofit organization that reconnects Black people to nature. She emphasizes the importance of slow care and defines it as being present and actively listening to one's surroundings. Payne highlights the benefits of nature for self-care, health, and community building, encouraging newcomers to start with simple outdoor activities and gradually engage in group...

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6.5 Minutes With... | Charmaine Lang show art 6.5 Minutes With... | Charmaine Lang

6.5 Minutes With... C21

C21 Graduate Fellow, Jamee Pritchard, interviews Charmaine Lang, Ph.D, a certified healing centered coach and organizational development consultant, about her work on slow care. Lang helps clients find joy and balance in their personal lives and careers and specializes in creating sustainable, people-centered operations and cultures of care. Her work is deeply rooted in Black Feminist Praxis. Charmaine earned a Ph.D. in African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Lang defines slow care as intentional pausing and community support, a practice she observed in...

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6.5 Minutes With... | Desiree McCray show art 6.5 Minutes With... | Desiree McCray

6.5 Minutes With... C21

Desiree McCray, a womanist scholar, explores the intersections of race, gender, class, and Black religion and culture. She advocates for "slow knowing" and "slow care" in education, public theology, and activism, emphasizing intentionality, community, and radical empathy. McCray describes slow knowing as a radical act of resistance against the frantic pace of modern life, promoting rest and mindful engagement. Slow care, she explains, involves resisting the urge to overload students with information, instead fostering an inclusive space for critical engagement. She highlights the value of...

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6.5 Minutes With... C21

Mark Freeland, Director of the Electa Quinney Institute and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, discusses the cyclical nature of time in indigenous worldviews, particularly among the Anishinaabe. He contrasts this with the linear time concept in Western cultures, emphasizing the importance of place and relationships in indigenous understanding. Freeland highlights the challenges of translating indigenous concepts into Western languages and the need for dialogical knowledge production. He also addresses the intergenerational process of decolonization,...

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6.5 Minutes With... C21

In this episode, Jennifer Johung, director of the Center for 21st Century Studies, spends 6.5 minutes with Yevgeniya Kaganovich, a Belarus-born, Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based artist, whose hybrid practice encompasses jewelry and metalsmithing, sculpture, and installation. She is also a professor at the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.   Kaganovich discusses her on-going projects and installations at the Lyden Sculpture Garden and explains the implications of tree time, earth time, and human time within the context of C21’s theme of Slow Knowing. Her...

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UWM Professor of Sociology, Jennifer Jordan, talks about her book project, Before Craft Beer: Lost Landscapes of Forgotten Hops, and the importance of studying the history of the interactions between commodity, craft, and landscape.

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6.5 Minutes With... C21

Mishiikenh (Vernon) Altiman talks about his role at the Electa Quinney Center at UWM, working with trees and maple sugaring, as well as alternatives to "trust."

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6.5 Minutes With... C21

Leah Penniman, co-founder and co-director of Soul Fire Farm, talks about Black Earth Wisdom - Penniman's newest collection of essays and interviews that speaks to the multidimensional scientific and spiritual expertise of Black environmentalists.

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6.5 Minutes With... C21

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American Studies professor Psyche Williams-Forson talks about her most recent book project and the importance of digging deep into understanding individual food choices.

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C21 Graduate Fellow, Jamee Pritchard, interviews Charmaine Lang, Ph.D, a certified healing centered coach and organizational development consultant, about her work on slow care. Lang helps clients find joy and balance in their personal lives and careers and specializes in creating sustainable, people-centered operations and cultures of care. Her work is deeply rooted in Black Feminist Praxis. Charmaine earned a Ph.D. in African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Lang defines slow care as intentional pausing and community support, a practice she observed in her dissertation on Black women activists in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, titled “Learning to Take the Excess Baggage Off”: An Ethnographic Study of Black Women Activists’ Self-Care Practices.

She emphasizes the importance of self-care practices like meditation, therapy, and journaling, and acknowledges the difficulty that many Black women face in asking for help due to societal expectations. As a healing-centered coach, Lang supports her clients avoid burnout by encouraging them to meditate and reflect on their needs to foster their healing journey.

For further information on the topic of slow care and healing, check out the following recommedations:

1.      In Our Mother’s Gardens (2021), directed by Shantrelle P. Lewis, is a 2021 documentary that celebrates the resilience, strength, and healing practices of Black women across generations. The film highlights how Black women have passed down love, wisdom, and resilience through their matrilineal lines, emphasizing how they care for themselves and their communities despite enduring trauma and oppression. The documentary features stories from Black women across the African diaspora, particularly in the United States and the Caribbean, showcasing how these women have preserved their mental, spiritual, and emotional health through practices rooted in cultural traditions and communal care. This documentary is available on Netflix.

2.     How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell challenges the relentless drive for productivity in a capitalist society by advocating for intentional withdrawal of attention from exploitative systems. Blending philosophy, nature writing, and cultural critique, Odell emphasizes the importance of observation, presence, and deep engagement with the natural world. She argues that resisting the attention economy is an act of reclaiming personal autonomy and creativity. Through concepts like ecological attention and collective care, the book offers a powerful framework for slowing down, reconnecting with ourselves, and finding fulfillment beyond constant productivity and societal expectations.