#lucy maddox

[lingthusiasm]

Bonus 71: Parrots, art, and what even is a word - Deleted scenes from Kat Gupta, Lucy Maddox, and Randall Munroe interviews

We've interviewed lots of great people on Lingthusiasm, and sometimes there's a story or two that we just don't have space for in the main episode, so here's a bonus episode with our favourite recent outtakes! Think of it as a special bonus edition DVD from the past two years of Lingthusiasm with director's commentary and deleted scenes.

In this bonus episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about some of our favourite deleted bits from previous interviews that we didn't quite have space to share with you. First, we go back to Kat Gupta, previously seen talking corpus linguistics, about what interacting with their parrot has taught them about consent. Then we go back to Lucy Maddox, previously talking about combining linguistics and art, about how she balances the art that feeds you with the art that feeds your brain. Finally, we go back to Randall Munroe, previously asking us absurd hypothetical questions about linguistics, to ask him about the linguistics-related question that didn't quite make the cut for the pages of What If? 2.

Listen to this episode with our favourite recent outtakes and get access to many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.

[lingthusiasm]

Bonus 67: Behind the scenes on making an aesthetic IPA chart - Interview with Lucy Maddox

The International Phonetic Alphabet chart is an iconic reference image which many linguists have pinned up somewhere to refer to. But its most familiar form is a not-especially-aesthetic technical diagram and we wondered, what if we made a more artistic version?  

In this episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic with Lucy Maddox, Lingthusiasm's resident artist, about redesigning the IPA! We talk about how Lucy got interested in linguistics, how she got into art, how we started working with her, and the many design considerations that went into making a redesigned IPA chart: using New York City subway icons as inspiration for the circles, adding colours and a sans-serif font to differentiate it from the classic IPA chart (and why we definitely couldn't use capitals), and integrating the vowel chart and the two consonant charts all into one diagram.  

Announcements:

We’ve teamed up with linguist/artist Lucy Maddox to create a fun, minimalist version of the classic International Phonetic Alphabet chart, which you can see here (plus more info about how we put together the design). It looks really cool, and it’s also a practical reference tool that you can carry around with you in a convenient multi-purpose format: lens cloths!

We’re going to place ONE (1) massive order for aesthetic IPA chart lens cloths on October 6, 2022. If you want one, be a patron at the Lingthusiast tier or higher on October 5th, 2022, timezone: anywhere in the world. If you’re already a patron at that tier, then you’re set!

Lucy Maddox

Historical versions of the International Phonetic Alphabet

A thread from Gretchen on alternative versions of the IPA

Listen to the episode about our process to make an aesthetic IPA chart, get the lens cloth itself, and get access to our archive of many more bonus episodes by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon. Sign up by October 6, 2022 for the lens cloth special offer.

[snappingthewalls]

[litrant]

#BringBackOurGirls

The Parker Sisters: A Border Kidnapping by Lucy Maddox (Temple University Press, $28.50).

For those who thought the case of Solomon Northrup (famously told in the 2014 Best Picture Oscar-winning movie Twelve Years a Slave) was an isolated case, here’s the antidote to that wishful thinking. 

In The Parker Sisters, Lucy Maddox tells the gripping story of two free Black children, Elizabeth and Rachel Parker, who were kidnapped by slavers and sold South in the period after the 1850 passage of the Fugitive Slave Act.

As Maddox carefully provides context for the situation in the border between free Pennsylvania and slave Maryland, she makes clear how the Fugitive Slave Act--ostensibly designed to return escaped slaves to their Southern owners--managed to make the lives of free Blacks incredibly tenuous, as the burden of proving their state as free people fell on them. 

In the case of the Parker sisters, aged 10 and 13, Maddox weaves in the elements of poverty, perceived “easy money,” and the murder of the white man who employed the older girl (and which, although the killer was not convicted, may have helped create the local outrage that eventually resulted in the return of the two children).

It’s easy to get bogged down in detail in a complicated story like this, but Maddox never does. Instead, she illuminates the subtle distinctions that made life in the border states so complex: Quakers divided between those who saw slavery as a sin only, between their neighbors and God, and those who saw it as both a sin and a social evil, to be combatted with every tool available; escaped slaves who had settled within communities of free Blacks, but could never be safe from slavers; the communities of free Blacks who were also divided between those committed to helping enslaved Blacks find freedom and those who simply wanted to be left alone; and of course, a particular kind of white person who hated slavery only slightly more than he hated Blacks.

This is a fascinating look at a decade that led us inexorably to the Civil War and the Fourteenth Amendment by focussing on the particular stresses of the border areas and the personal travails of free children who could so easily be kidnapped into slavery. This is a must-read for those interested in the period, in Black history, or in our complex relationship to race in the United States.