In this episode of The Emergence Room, we sit down with Liz Glynn – a sculptor, performance artist, and current Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Known for her work navigating endurance, material transformation, and the politics of labor, Glynn has been in Rome working with wax and plaster – materials that hold memory, pressure, and impermanence, echoing her ongoing interest in how bodies, histories, and systems leave their imprint.
Together, we move through a layered conversation on teaching, motherhood, and research, tracing how these roles intersect and sometimes collide within contemporary academic life. We reflect on what equity might actually require of institutions, and where accountability begins – and too often dissolves. What does it mean to sustain a practice – intellectually, creatively, physically – inside structures that are not always designed for care?
Glynn, who teaches at University of California, Irvine, brings a grounded and generous perspective on navigating these tensions, offering insight into how wellness is not separate from the work, but deeply entangled within it. This episode holds space for the ongoing negotiation between making, teaching, caregiving, and becoming – and the quiet, radical insistence on doing so with integrity.