EP #239 - 03.15.2021 - Cities and Suburbs in the Pandemic

Today I speak with historians Kyle Riismandel and Mary Rizzo about the impact of COVID on cities and suburbs.

Kyle Riismandel is a Senior University Lecturer and the Interim Director of the Law, Technology, and Culture Program in the Federated Department of History at the New Jersey Institute of Technology/Rutgers-Newark. He is a cultural historian of cities, suburbs, media, and technology in recent American history. In addition to teaching courses in those areas, he is the author

Neighborhood of Fear: The Suburban Crisis in American Culture, 1975-2001, a Smithsonian scholars favorite book of 2020. 

Mary Rizzo is Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark. She is the author of Come and Be Shocked: Baltimore Beyond John Waters and The Wire (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020) and Class Acts: Young Men and the Rise of Lifestyle (University of Nevada Press). She is also the founder of the Chicory Revitalization Project, which uses the black community poetry magazine Chicory to spur dialogue on place and identity.