Acocella, Joan. "Angela's Carter's Feminist Mythology." The New Yorker (March 5, 2017) ["A new biography shows how the British author made fairy tales psychological and sexy."]
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. "The Danger of a Single Story." TED Global (2009) ["Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding."]"Art and the Natural World: An Entangled Life." Bloomsbury Visual Arts (2024) ["Envisioning the artist as a kind of fruit-bearing tree, Dadaist painter-poet and sculptor Hans ‘Jean’ Arp conceives of art as an extension of our bodies. We produce art, he suggests, in the literal sense, as we move and grow, sprouting artworks like berries in season."]
"A Serious Man." Fifteen Minute Film Fanatics (November 17, 2024) ["A Serious Man (2009) may seem much different from the Coens’ adaptation of No Country for Old Men, which they released two years earlier. But they both concern a likable man who finds himself posing questions that the universe–or any of its wisest men–cannot answer. And even if there are glimpses of answers to the question “What does Hashem, or God, want,” neither late-thirties Larry or late-sixties Sheriff Bell can read the writing on the wall (or, in the case of A Serious Man, the writing on the teeth). The film begins with a quotation from Rumi, “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.” Join us for a conversation about one of the Coens’ best films and a terrific look at people to whom things happen and are forced to receive the will of a God who never tips His hand about His intentions."]
---. "The Frankfurt School (Part 7): The Great Refusal." Philosophize This (December 23, 2017)
Wilson, Jennifer. "Was Lolita About Race: Vladimir Nabokov on Race in the United States?" Los Angeles Review of Books (October 31, 2016)
Barnett, Katie. "Invisible Presences: The Elusive Twin and the Empty Screen in Personal Shopper." Revenant #8 (December 2022): 47 - 63. ["In psychological and therapeutic literature, the death of a twin is considered to be particularly traumatic and devastating for the surviving sibling, theorised variously as a unique form of sorrow, a ‘halving’, and a loss akin to the death of the self. Although the death of a twin is a recurrent narrative trope in literature and, subsequently, on screen, relatively few films are preoccupied with the aftermath of the twin’s death and the grieving process undergone by the surviving twin. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective, uniting film analysis with psychoanalysis, death studies and sibling psychology, this article explores one such representation of twin bereavement in Olivier Assayas’s 2016 Palme d’Or-winning film Personal Shopper. Assayas’s work frequently explores the complications of death, grief, and memory, and Personal Shopper offers a rare but compelling representation of twin bereavement in its depiction of the apparent haunting of protagonist Maureen (Kristen Stewart) by the spirit of her dead twin brother, Lewis. The article contends that through its use of mirrors, screens and reflections, the film offers a complex and thoughtful representation of grief, not least in its active refusal to offer either its protagonist or the audience a sense of closure or certainty. In doing so, the film seeks to capture not only the complexities and contradictions of grief, but the particular and under-explored experience of twin bereavement and the shattering of self that ensues from this loss."]
Bates, David. "The Artificiality of Natural Intelligence." Entitled Opinions (February 1, 2024) ["In this philosophy-heavy episode, Professor Robert Harrison and David Bates, Professor of Rhetoric at UC Berkeley, discuss the “unnatural” origins of human technology and the difficulty of drawing sharp distinctions between artificial and natural intelligence."]
Beslile, Brooke. "AI and the End of Photography." UC Press Blog (March 7, 2024) ["Recent headlines are announcing the end of photography, as AI changes what counts as a photograph or makes it impossible to judge. The New York Times has published multiple, interactive articles prompting readers to test whether they can “believe their eyes” by distinguishing between photographs and AI-generated images. Results suggest that most readers are so bad at this task that our performance skews past random: we are good at getting it wrong. The implications of this uncertainty—or overconfidence—extend beyond problems of fakery and tricks of photorealism to raise broader questions about visual mediation in our moment. As AI changes how images are understood to capture and convey whatever they depict, our everyday ways of seeing and knowing through images seems to be in crisis. What does it mean, if I am more likely to identify an AI-generated image of a human face—which was rendered entirely from patterns of data about other images—as a “real person” and more likely to label a photograph of an actual person a “fake”? This is not just about AI but about aesthetic and cultural logics that condition what a “person” looks like and how personhood is pictured in photographs. My recent book, Depth Effects: Dimensionality from Camera to Computation offers a long view of questions like these, which have become all the more important with the rise of AI."]
Benton, Michael D. "The Power of Stories." The Ryan Watts Life Coaching Podcast (September 4, 2023) ["Great conversation about the psychology of our personal narratives and beyond. Michael Benton is an associate professor of humanities and film studies at Bluegrass Community and technical College in Lexington, Kentucky. Narrative Psychology focuses on how we perceive the events of our lives through stories. One of the most powerful ways we can experience transformation is by changing our stories. This can be done in many ways."]
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. NY: Penguin Books, 1990. ["In Ways of Seeing, John Berger argues that throughout history, the way we see art has been manipulated by a privileged minority to preserve their social and economic dominance. This text challenges the idea that to understand and appreciate works of art, we need experts to “translate” them for us."]
Berkow, Ira. "Stealing Home: A Tribute to Jackie Robinson." Ideas (April 15, 2019) ["The National Baseball Hall of Fame quotes trailblazer Jackie Robinson: "a life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives." Robinson's life had a huge impact, especially when he broke down the colour barrier in Major League Baseball and American society. His rookie season still stands as one of the most politically profound events in the history of organized sport."]
Biagetti, Samuel. "Myth of the Month 4: Secularization -- or, Send in the Nones." Historiansplaining (June 11, 2019) ["Do societies become more "secular" as they become modern? Do science, technology, or democracy weaken religious belief? We consider theories of secularization ranging from Max Weber's story of "disenchantment" to Charles Taylor's "A Secular Age." Current survey data show a dramatic rise in the number of "nones" -- those who do not adhere to any particular religious group, even though most of them still pray, read scriptures, or express belief in God."]
Biller, Anna. "Let's Stop Calling Movies Feminist." Anna's Blog (February 5, 2018) ["By using the word feminism so often and indiscriminately, we are erasing feminist discourse. The over-use of the word feminism has rendered it entirely meaningless as a serious political topic, making it easier and easier for everyone to think of it as just a trendy subject or a buzzword rather than the very fabric of women’s lives. This is an effective way to kill a political movement, and it’s working."]
Borden, Carol. "The Act of Killing in Comics." The Cultural Gutter (November 30, 2017) ["For a while now I’ve been thinking about comic artists and writers of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. They were people directly affected by the wars and violence of their time. Some went on to create truly amazing and grisly horror and crime comics, in part reflecting on these experiences. Others, faced by the mechanized violence on a previously inconceivable scale, created heroes who did not kill. The creators of these characters and the writers and artists who fleshed them out have often been presented as products of a simpler, more naïve time, erasing the violence of wars, genocide, anti-Semitism, internment, segregation, lynching, occupation, colonialism, sexism, and so many other things in their lives. We create this past as our Eden and so don’t wonder why people in these circumstances and people who had seen war in societies completely mobilized for war would create heroes who do not kill. We do so ignoring both history and our own particular relationships with violence now–the distance with which wars can be fought; the distance some creators and readers can have from war; the distance people not living in areas in civil wars, occupations, or targeted by drones, suicide bombers, mass shooters or angry people with an ideology and a truck can choose to have. And so we can have idealized, distant ideas about just how easy it is to kill and ideas about how killing solves problems. We can act as if the only “realistic” consequences a superhero story can have are death or killing. And we take these superheroes and believe that they should kill, that the fact that they do not kill needs explanation and caveats."]
Bhimull, Chandra D. "In Black Panther and Wakanda Extraordinary Possibilities are Realized." From the Square (March 13, 2018)
Biagetti, Samuel. "Myth of the Month 4: Secularization -- or, Send in the Nones." Historiansplaining (June 11, 2019) ["Do societies become more "secular" as they become modern? Do science, technology, or democracy weaken religious belief? We consider theories of secularization ranging from Max Weber's story of "disenchantment" to Charles Taylor's "A Secular Age." Current survey data show a dramatic rise in the number of "nones" -- those who do not adhere to any particular religious group, even though most of them still pray, read scriptures, or express belief in God."]
Biller, Anna. "Let's Stop Calling Movies Feminist." Anna's Blog (February 5, 2018) ["By using the word feminism so often and indiscriminately, we are erasing feminist discourse. The over-use of the word feminism has rendered it entirely meaningless as a serious political topic, making it easier and easier for everyone to think of it as just a trendy subject or a buzzword rather than the very fabric of women’s lives. This is an effective way to kill a political movement, and it’s working."]
Binns, Rebecca. "Gee Vaucher: Beyond Punk, Feminism and the Avant-Garde (Manchester University Press, 2022)." New Books in Pop Culture (January 2, 2023) ["Rebecca Binn's Gee Vaucher: Beyond Punk, Feminism and the Avante Garde (Manchester University Press, 2022) is the first book-length work dedicated to the life and career of Vaucher. As one of the people who defined punk's protest art in the 1970s and 1980s, Gee Vaucher (b. 1945) deserves to be much better-known. She produced confrontational album covers for the legendary anarchist band Crass and later went on to do the same for Northern indie legends the Charlatans, among others. More recently, her work was recognized the day after Donald Trump's 2016 election victory, when the front page of the Daily Mirror ran her 1989 painting Oh America, which shows the Statue of Liberty, head in hands. This is the first book to critically assess an extensive range of Vaucher's work. It examines her unique position connecting avant-garde art movements, counterculture, punk and even contemporary street art. While Vaucher rejects all 'isms', her work offers a unique take on the history of feminist art. The book explores how her life has shaped her output, with particular focus on the open-house collective at Dial House in Essex, a centre for radical creativity."]
Blackie, Sharon. "Reclaiming the fierce women who are shapeshifters." To the Best of Our Knowledge (November 20, 2021) ["Bad things happen when people lose their connection to the more-than-human world. "Animals know something that we that don't," says psychologist and storyteller Sharon Blackie. That's one lesson you can take from shapeshifting myths and fairy tales. Luckily, they also show you the way back."]
Bogutskaya, Ana. "A Deep Fear of Things Sincere." Talking Scared #209 (August 28, 2024) ["Anna Bogutskaya is one of the UK’s most prominent film critics, with a penchant for horror. She knows her scary onions. And in her new book, Feeding the Monster [subtitled Why Horror Has a Hold On Us], she asks an important question (well, important to the likes of you and me) – Why does horror have a hold on us? In concise but free-ranging essays, she looks at the prominent themes that sets the horror oft the last decade apart, peeling back the skin of the genre to see how it’s muscle flex and grip, and also give you tons of films to watch in the process. We have a similarly freewheeling conversation in this episode, talking about everything from our primal horror movie experiences, to the meme-ification of monsters and why Mike Flanagan is both outlier and heart of the genre." She is also the author of Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You To Hate.]
Bortolotti, Lisa. "Irrationality." Philosophy Bites (March 19, 2015) ["We're all irrational some of the time. Yet many past philosophers have put a great emphasis on human rationality as what sets us apart, and even made it a condition of moral action. ... Lisa Bortolotti explores some different types of irrationality and the implications for human agency."]
Botton, Alain De. "The True Hard Work of Love and Relationships." On
Being (February 9, 2017) [This is a wise discussion about personal relationships that has ramifications for how we relate in general to the broader world! Doesn't this seem like something that should be taught at an early age and that we should be having very frank discussions about. Lets dispel the myths/mystification surrounding personal relationships!]
Boyle, T.C. "On Writing About LSD and Outside Looking In." Fiction/Non/Fiction (January 2, 2020) ["In this episode, taped live at the Miami Book Fair, writer T.C. Boyle talks to Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell about writing his latest novel, Outside Looking In. The novel looks at the history of LSD, and tracks the marriage of a Harvard graduate student who works with psychologist and LSD researcher Timothy Leary. Boyle offers candid insights into his research process, his own experiences with drugs, his relationship with nature, and how he writes and revises."]
Bragg, Billy. "Roots, Radicals and Rockers." Talkhouse (April 5, 2018) ["Today’s show features a talk the brilliant English folk-punk activist Billy Bragg gave on skiffle music at NYC’s Strand Bookstore last year upon the release of his book Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World. Bragg traces the little-known genre from its distinctly American roots to its British chart-topping success, and consequent all-conquering return to America repackaged as the British Invasion. He describes how the short-lived “hillbilly” sound forever changed the course of Western music via its teenaged adherents, who included Van Morrison and, crucially, the Beatles. This utterly fascinating tale also touches on questions of cultural appropriation (and appropriation of appropriation), how young women wanting to jive created a new gig infrastructure, calypso hitting the U.K. charts due to a cricket match, and how the spread of skiffle — and, for that matter, rap — mimics the fidget spinner."]
Braswell, Emory, et al. "Theater for the Mind." Imaginary Worlds (September 19, 2018) ["The "golden age of radio drama" may have been a stellar period for storytelling -- but the stories weren't all golden bright. Science fiction and horror were the ideal genres to explore the deep anxieties people felt from the Depression through the Cold War. And these radio dramas set the stage for fantastical stories that couldn't be told yet without advanced special effects. Dallas Taylor of the podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz co-hosts this episode as we hear from radio historians Neil Verma and Richard J. Hand, and radio drama veterans Dirk Maggs and Richard Toscan. Plus Emory Braswell recalls the day he thought Martians had invaded New Jersey."]
Breznican, Anthony. "Black Storytellers Are Using Horror to Battle Hate." Vanity Fair (August 3, 2020) ["After Get Out, movies such as Antebellum, the upcoming Candyman retelling, and other tales of terror and the macabre are part of a cultural exorcism centuries in the making."]
Bronson, Zak. "Thinking Weirdly with China Miéville." Los Angeles Review of Books (January 13, 2018) ["No matter how commodified and domesticated the fantastic in its various forms might be, we need fantasy to think the world, and to change it." — China Miéville]
Brotton, Jerry and Peter Frankopan. "Looking Eastwards: cultural exchange with the Islamic world." London School of Economics and Political Science (February 25, 2016) ["In this event we explore the rich interaction between east and west with Jerry Brotton, whose forthcoming book This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World explores Elizabethan England's relations with the Muslim world, and Peter Frankopan, whose recent book The Silk Roads: A New History of the World looks at world history from the perspective of this trading route of culture and ideas."]
Brown, Alex. "Black Excellence: Honoring Kwanza Through Science Fiction." TOR (December 5, 2017)
Brown, Adrienne Marie. "Love as Political Resistance: Lessons from Audre Lorde and Octavia Butler." Bitch (February 14, 2017)
Brown, Barrett. "The Barrett Brown Review of Arts and Letters and Prison: Stop Sending Me Jonathan Franzen Novels." The Intercept (October 6, 2015)
Brown, Eric. "Plato's Ethics and Politics in The Republic." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Last revised August 31, 2009)
Brown, Jitu, et al. "When We Fight, We Win: New Book Showcases Social Movements & Activists Transforming the World." Democracy Now (January 5, 2016)
Bursztynski, Maurice, Wendi Freeman and Tim Merrill. "Hated:GG Allin and The Murder Junkies." See Hear #1 (January 14, 2014) ["No gentle start for the team as they discuss the Todd Phillips documentary about notorious punk rock singer GG Allin. The film is not for the faint of heart (and our language may reflect the content discussed), but it is a fascinating look at a man who truly knew no boundaries in they way he lived his life. He is held in equal contempt and admiration by the public and ex-band members."]
Bush, George W., et al. "The Two Georges: A Dramatic Reading of George Orwell's Classic Work 1984 & Pres. George W. Bush." Democracy Now (June 25, 2003) ["On the 100th birthday of author and journalist George Orwell, we spend the hour featuring excerpts from his classic work, "1984," the book that introduced the terms "Big Brother," "thought police," "newspeak" and "doublethink." We broadcast portions of excerpts of 1984 read by Charles Morgan and June Foray and produced by Paul Vangelisti over a quarter of a century ago for Pacifica Radio. We also feature clips from President Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Fox New’s Bill O’Relly, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Sen. Robert Byrd and broadcast footage of Donald Rumsfeld meeting with Saddam Hussein in 1983."]
Castillo, Monica, et al. "Reckoning with Misogyny." Film Comment Podcast (January 2, 2018) ["Stories about Harvey Weinstein’s misconduct and cover-ups have opened the floodgates of revelations about other figures in the entertainment industry and beyond. Victims have finally been able to come forward and be heard, while the #metoo movement has fueled conversation and action, amidst an Internet outrage machine that can cheapen dialogue. In this episode of The Film Comment Podcast, Digital Producer Violet Lucca was joined by Molly Haskell, author of the landmark 1974 text From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies and regular critic to Film Comment; Monica Castillo, the film writer for The New York Times’s Watching; and Aliza Ma, head programmer at the Metrograph Theater, for an in-depth conversation about the implications of this historic moment."]
Chang, Jeff. "On Revolutions in Seeing and Being." Making Contact (October 11, 2017) ["“From almost every kind of responsibility and tie from engagement and from faith. So the artist–our task is to move ourselves and the rest of us in the opposite direction. Toward more engagement, towards stronger ethics, toward a social that’s open and inclusive to all toward seeing each other in full, to challenge us to recognize the debts, and yes, the reparations that we owe to each other.” – Jeff Chang offers ideas to reinforce the importance of art and artists in today’s sociopolitical climate. Chang presented a keynote address for the Art and Race conference, that took place at Oakland Impact Hub earlier this year."]
Chang, Lauren and Shira Taylor. "Sex Ed Through Social Action Theatre." Talking Radical Radio (November 6, 2018)
Charman, Helen. "'Learn to Love Your Claustrophobia': The False Feminism of Jason Reitman's Tully." Another Gaze (May 23, 2018)
"Chelsea Manning Talks with Nadya Tolokonnikova (Pussy Riot)." Talkhouse (April 26, 2018) ["The program includes a talk by Manning on resisting “the data-driven society and the police state”; a conversation between her and Tolokonnikova on their experiences in resistance, incarceration and prison reform; and a talk by Tolokonnikova on bringing “punk feminism” to Russia and the problems with Putin. The two also share their views on how neighborhood communities have better answers than think tanks, the ways empathy can help make real change, and — powerfully — how political action can be more than voting."]
"Chicano Park, Barrio Logan, San Diego: The Takeover of Chicano Park." History of Chicano Park (ND) [also "Murals Appear in Chicano Park" and "The Restoration of the Murals in Chicano Park"]
Christakis, Nicholas. "How Our Genes Build Good Societies." Ideas (June 13, 2019) ["We humans carry within us genes that help write a blueprint for a better world according to Nicholas Christakis. He argues that our genes help create societies, that are for the most part, intrinsically similar and good."]
Chu, Joyce. "The All-Girl Muslim Band Smashing Their Way Through Indonesia." The Week (ND) ["They're uprooting gender and religious stereotypes along the way."]
Chu, Seo-Young. "Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep?" Harvard University Press Blog (March 10, 2011) ["While most of us think of science fiction as a genre whose objects of representation are altogether imaginary, Seo-Young Chu argues that science fiction is instead a genre whose objects of representation are real but impossible to describe in a straightforward manner. In Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? ..., Chu presents a theory under which all representation is to some degree science-fictional. On the resulting continuum, realism is actually just a low-intensity variety of science fiction, and what most people call science fiction is a high-intensity variety of realism, one that requires exorbitant levels of energy to accomplish its representational work because its referents challenge simple representation. What allows science fiction to render such objects as globalization, cyberspace, and war trauma available for representation, Chu argues, is its dual status as both a narrative and a lyric artform, one that systematically literalizes poetic figures of speech. In the book’s Interlude, presented in full below, Chu draws out her title’s echo of the novel that became Blade Runner, and further reflects on what’s happening when metaphors dream."]
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. "Bodily Safety: Ta-Nehisi Coates on Police Shootings." Making Contact (July 1, 2015) ["When journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates set out to write about police killings he went to visit Mable Jones. Back in 2000, Jones son, a friend of Coates from their time at Howard University, was shot and killed by police in Virginia. He was twenty five years old. Written in the form of a letter to his own teenage son, Coates’ book “Between the World and Me” puts police shootings in a wider context."]
---. "On Police Brutality: 'The Violence is Not New, It’s the Cameras That are New.'" Democracy Now (September 7, 2015) ["Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of an explosive new book about white supremacy and being black in America. Titled "Between the World and Me," it is written as a letter to his teenage son, Samori. In July, Ta-Nehisi Coates launched the book in his hometown of Baltimore. He spoke at the historic Union Baptist Church."]
---. "Reads from His Block-Buster Memoir Between the World and Me." Building Bridges (August 11, 2015) €["Readers of his work in The Atlantic (including his June 2014 feature The Case for Reparations) and elsewhere know Ta-Nehisi Coates for his thoughtful and influential writing on race in America. Written as a series of letters to his teenaged son, his new memoir, Between the World and Me, walks us through the course of his life, from his neighborhood in Baltimore in his youth, to Howard University—which Coates dubs “The Mecca” for its revelatory community of black students and teachers —to the broader Meccas of New York and Paris. Coates describes his observations and the evolution of his thinking on race, from Malcolm X to his conclusion that race itself is a fabrication, elemental to the concept of American (white) exceptionalism. Ferguson, Trayvon Martin, and South Carolina are not bumps on the road of progress and harmony, but the results of a systemized, ubiquitous threat to “black bodies” in the form of slavery, police brutality, and mass incarceration."]
Cobb, William Jelani and Orlando Patterson. "‘The Changing Same’: Race in America." Open Source (March 12, 2015)
Cohen,Julie and Betsy West. "RBG: New Documentary Celebrates Life of Groundbreaking Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg." Democracy Now (January 22, 2018) ["One of the most talked-about documentaries at this year’s Sundance Film Festival looks at the groundbreaking life of the nearly 85-year-old Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 2018 marks her 25th year on the court, and she has no plans to retire. Ginsburg first gained fame in the 1970s when she co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, where she argued six gender discrimination cases before the Supreme Court. In recent years, Ginsburg’s public profile has soared as the court has swerved to the right. Ginsburg often now finds herself on the dissenting side of opinions. We feature excerpts from the new film and speak with its directors, Julie Cohen and Betsy West."]
["Colum McCann is the author of six novels and three collections of stories, including Let the Great World Spin, TransAtlantic, and Thirteen Ways of Looking. In a 2013 interview the author said, “I believe in the democracy of storytelling. That stories can cross all sorts of borders and boundaries. I don’t know of a greater privilege than being allowed to tell a story or to listen to a story.” McCann’s books cover a wide range of topics, including The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the life of Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev, the first attempted nonstop flight across the Atlantic in 1919, New York of the 1970s, and the tightrope walker who crossed the gap between the Twin Towers. Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1965, McCann crossed the United States on a bicycle in the 1980s, describing the trip as being “simply to expand my lungs emotionally.” He is the recipient of several honors, among them the National Book Award, the International DUBLIN Literary Award, and designation as a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. In 2012 McCann cofounded the nonprofit global story-exchange organization Narrative 4, whose mission is to use storytelling to inspire “fearless hope through radical empathy.” McCann lives in New York with his family and teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Hunter College."]
Conis, Elena. "A Social History of Vaccination." Against the Grain (October 23, 2017) ["It’s stating the obvious to observe that vaccination in the United States is a highly charged subject. But the heat of the controversies, as historian Elena Conis argues, obscures how vaccination — which has saved many lives when used against deadly illnesses — became so widespread, including for milder diseases. Conis discusses the cultural, political, and social forces that have shaped mass vaccination."]
Connolly, Nathan. "Looking for Wakanda." On the Media (February 26, 2019) ["A persistent site for utopian longing, Wakanda has once more captured the public imagination: endowed with unlimited access to the most precious natural resource in the world, unsullied by the ravages of colonialism, Wakanda has reignited conversations about what black liberation can and should look like. According to Johns Hopkins University history professor Nathan Connolly, this latest chapter is part of a much longer tradition of imagining and reimagining black utopias. Connolly speaks with Brooke about how Wakanda arises from a 500-year history — from Maroon communities to Haiti to the actual Black Panther movement — a journey that takes us from "dreams to art to life, and back again."]
Connor, J.D., Florence Dore and Dan Sinykin. "Rebel Yale: Reading and Feeling Hillbilly Elegy." Los Angeles Review of Books (January 10, 2018)
The Corporation (Canada: Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbot, 2003: 145 mins)
Critchley, Simon. "On Suicide." Philosophy Bites (February 16, 2015) ["According to Albert Camus it's the one really serious philosphical question: to live or die. In this episode of the Philosophy Bites podcast Simon Critchley discusses suicide with Nigel Warburton."]
"The Enright Files on suffering, sorrow and the search for meaning." Ideas (January 3, 2018) ["This month's edition of The Enright Files explores how the works of Viktor Frankl, Anton Chekhov and Joan Didion wrestle meaning and solace from tragedy, horror and suffering."]
Evans, Gavin. "The Unwelcome Revival of 'Race Science': Its defenders claim to be standing up for uncomfortable truths, but race science is still as bogus as ever." The Guardian (March 2, 2018)
Fales, Adam. "Horror in Revision: On the Contemporary Gothic." Los Angeles Review of Books (January 23, 2018)Fazli, Shehryar. "The Legacy of Eric Garner: Policing Still Going Wrong." Los Angeles Review of Books (December 11, 2017) ["A REPUBLIC, if you can keep it. So said Benjamin Franklin when asked in 1787 what form of government the United States was getting. But what kind of republic? Many would want to believe that it’s one that improves with time, and in critical ways the United States has, given its origins in Indian mass murder and black slavery. But the weight of malign history presses down on communities of color, and on July 17, 2014, it squeezed the plea, “I can’t breathe,” from a dying black man in Staten Island."]
Featherstone, Liza. "Consumer Society and the Curation of Culture." Citations Needed (November 21, 2018) ["Focus groups have long-been derided by the left, right, and center for watering down culture and reducing creative and political endeavors to dull, show-of-hand reductionism. But what if focus groups – which first arose from socialist experiments in 1920s Vienna – are not inherently bad? What if they've simply been exploited by the capitalist class and could, potentially, have much to offer a left-wing, democratic vision of the world? We are joined by author and professor Liza Featherstone to discuss the problems and potential of the much-maligned, but often scapegoated, focus group."]
Felber, Garrett. "The Missing Malcolm X." Boston Review (November 28, 2018) ["Our understanding of Malcolm X is inextricably linked to his autobiography, but newly discovered materials force us to reexamine his legacy. "]
Fernandez, Toniann. "White Man On a Pedestal." Paris Review (November 29, 2017)
Fhlainn, Sorcha Ní. "Postmodern Vampires." This Is Not a Pipe (November 26, 2020) ["Sorcha Ní Fhlainn discusses her book Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture with Chris Richardson. Ní Fhlainn is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies and American studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom. She is a founding member of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies and author of Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture (Palgrave, 2019). She has published widely on socio-cultural history, subjectivity and postmodernism in Film Studies, American studies, Horror studies, and Popular Culture. Previous books include Clive Barker: Dark imaginer (Manchester UP, 2017), and The Worlds of Back to the Future: Critical Essays on the Films (McFarland, 2010), and articles in Adaptation (Oxford UP), and Horror Studies (Intellect). She is currently leading a research project and writing a monograph on the popular culture of the 1980s."]
Finnerty, Paraic, Linda Freeman and Fiona Green. "Emily Dickinson." In Our Time (May 11, 2017) ["Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and works of Emily Dickinson, arguably the most startling and original poet in America in the C19th. According to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, her correspondent and mentor, writing 15 years after her death, "Few events in American literary history have been more curious than the sudden rise of Emily Dickinson into a posthumous fame only more accentuated by the utterly recluse character of her life and by her aversion to even a literary publicity." That was in 1891 and, as more of Dickinson's poems were published, and more of her remaining letters, the more the interest in her and appreciation of her grew. With her distinctive voice, her abundance, and her exploration of her private world, she is now seen by many as one of the great lyric poets. "]
Ford, Phil and J.F. Martel. "The Beauty and the Horror." Weird Studies #171 (June 12, 2024) ["This week on Weird Studies, Phil and JF explore the intersections of the beautiful and the terrible in art and literature. There is a conventional beauty that calms and placates, and there is a radical beauty which, taking horror’s pale-gloved hand, gives up all pretense to permanence and fixity and joins the danse macabre of our endless becoming."]
---. "On Lovecraft." Weird Studies #29 (October 9, 2018) ["Phil and JF indulge their autumnal mood in this discussion of Howard Phillips Lovecraft's work, specifically the essay "Notes on the Writing of Weird Fiction" and the prose piece "Nyarlathotep." Philip K. Dick, Algernon Blackwood, and David Foster Wallace make appearances as our fearsome hosts talk about how the weird story differs from conventional horror fiction, how Lovecraft gives voice to contemporary fears of physical, psychological and political infection, and how authors like Lovecraft and Dick can be seen as prophetic poets of the "great unbuffering of the Western self.""]
García, Alixa. "On Extinction & Enchantment." Sounds of Sand #58 (October 26, 2023) ["Alixa García is a Colombian born, globally-raised, multi-disciplinary artist, activist, and cultural activator whose work is imbued in ritual, spirit, and deep reverence for our Great Mother, Great Lover, our Earth. She is an award-winning activist, poet, and filmmaker. She is also a professional writer, visual artist, musician, and facilitator. Her work has been published by Whit Press, AK Press, Hatchett, & Daraja Press."]
George, Joe. "Watchmen: A Tale of Care and Understanding." TOR (December 6, 2017) ["Without question, Moore and Gibbons make superheroes look pretty bad. Their characters fight crime not because of their devotion to good over evil, but because of mental illness, self-delusion, and outright sadism. Daniel Dreiberg (aka Nite Owl) and Laurie Juspeczyk (aka Silk Spectre), the book’s most morally upright figures, suffer from literal and metaphorical impotence, while violent nihilists the Comedian (aka Eddie Blake) and Rorschach get most of the attention from creators and readers alike. The book’s overall plot concerns the world’s smartest man, Adrian Veidt (aka Ozymandias), thwarting World War III by faking an alien invasion, driving heretofore warring nations to join together against this manufactured threat, but killing millions of innocent New Yorkers in the process. Despite these elements, the book is not nearly as cynical as its reputation suggests. It gives full attention to the selfish motivations of those with power (super or otherwise), but ultimately discards them as fundamentally weak or unsustainable."]
George, Maxwell. "The Music of Kentucky." Oxford American (November 21, 2017)
Gladwell, Malcolm. "The Big Man Can't Shoot." Revisionist History 1.3 (ND) ["“The Big Man Can’t Shoot” is a meditation on the puzzle of why smart people do dumb things—why excellence is such a difficult and elusive goal, even for the best-intentioned."]
---. "The Lady Vanishes." Revisionist History 1.1 (ND) ["In the late 19th, a painting by a virtually unknown artist took England by storm: The Roll Call but after that brilliant first effort, the artist all but disappeared. Why?The Lady Vanishes explores the world of art and politics to examines the strange phenomenon of the “token”—the outsider whose success serves not to alleviate discrimination but perpetuate it. If a country elects a female president, does that mean the door is now open for all women to follow? Or does that simply give the status quo the justification to close the door again?"]
Gourgouris, Stathis. "On Edward Said's Orientalism." Writ Large (November 8, 2022) ["Beginning in the 17th century, European countries began colonizing countries east of Europe. They imposed their own ideas over local cultures and extracted free labor and resources. One way that European colonizers justified this exploitation was through an academic discipline called Orientalism. In 1978, Edward Said, a professor of literature at Columbia University, published a book of the same name, Orientalism. In his critique, he challenged Europeans’ construction of the so-called “East,” laid bare the biases of Orientalist study, and transformed the course of humanities scholarship. Stathis Gourgouris is a professor of classics, English, and comparative literature at Columbia University. He is the author of books such as Dream Nation: Enlightenment, Colonization, and the Institution of Modern Greece and Does Literature Think?: Literature as Theory for an Antimythical Era."]
Grandin, Greg. "On American Expansion, Part One: The Myth of the Frontier." On the Media (March 29, 2019) ["What are the stories that America has told about itself? In the first of a three-part series on the notion of American Exceptionalism, Brooke speaks with historian Greg Grandin about America's founding narrative: the country's expansion westward. In his new book, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, Grandin traces how the idea of endless, unstoppable growth has influenced US policy and psychology — and how President Trump’s call for a barrier at the southern border upends the idea of America as a country of boundless possibility."]
Gray, Briahna. "You Say You Want a Revolution? The Anti-Capitalist Film Sorry to Bother You Shows the Way." The Intercept (July 25, 2018)
Greenwald, Glenn. "Roger Waters, Marielle Franco, and the Power of Inspiration in the Face of Darkness and Danger." The Intercept (October 25, 2018) ["Impotence and hopelessness are a tactic, a lie told by those who wield power, to foster resignation, passivity, and acceptance."]
Griffin, Farah Jasmine and Mark Anthony Neal. "Respect: A Tribute to Aretha Franklin, an Icon of the Civil Rights & Feminist Movements." Democracy Now (August 17, 2018) ["Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, died Thursday at her home in Detroit at the age of 76. For decades, Aretha Franklin has been celebrated as one of the greatest American singers of any genre, who helped give birth to soul and redefined the American musical tradition. In 1987, Aretha Franklin became the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She held the record for the most songs on the Billboard Top 100 for 40 years. Rolling Stone ranked her the greatest singer of all time on its top 100 list, calling her “a gift from God.” Her hit single “Respect” became part of the soundtrack to the civil rights movement, which she also supported behind the scenes. We speak with professors Mark Anthony Neal of Duke University and Farah Jasmine Griffin of Columbia University." Part two: "Angela Davis: Aretha Franklin Offered to Post Bail for Me, Saying “Black People Will Be Free.”" and Part three: "Angela Davis: Aretha Franklin “Will Forever Animate Our Collective Sense of Desire for Change.”"]Gupta, Arun. "Anthony Bourdain (1956 - 2018)." Jacobin (June 11, 2018) ["Anthony Bourdain’s genius was not in the kitchen. His genius was in knowing which side he was on."]
Harris, Mark. "Still Looking: Is the representation of gays in today’s American cinema stuck in gear?" Film Comment (November/December 2016)
Harrison, Robert Pogue. "Happy Hour with Jimi Hendrix."Entitled Opinions (April 17, 2020)
Hartman, Andrew. "The Culture Wars are Dead: Long Live the Culture Wars!" The Baffler #39 (May 2018) ["A 2016 study by the sociologists James Davison Hunter and Carl Desportes Bowman, The Vanishing Center of American Democracy: The 2016 Survey of American Political Culture, finds that Americans are more divided than ever. The study also shows that one of the principal effects of persistent and worsening polarization is a crisis of legitimacy: an overwhelming majority of Americans are disaffected with government and other elite institutions, including media and higher education. One example of such alienation is opposition to “political correctness,” a term that arose in the early 1990s as part of a critique of universities that sought to regulate speech. Such regulations often reflected latent racial and sexual tensions as new peoples and perspectives were welcomed into the American system of higher education. For these demographic reasons, some degree of conflict on college campuses was unavoidable, and the growing adoption of measures such as campus speech codes prohibiting discriminatory language was unsurprising."]
Hope, Clover. "The Effects of #MeToo on Film's Violent Male Gaze." Jezebel (April 6, 2018)
Hovey, Jed. "The Spectacle of the Scaffold – Foucault, Corporal Punishment, and the Digital Age." Blue Labyrinths (January 6, 2016)
Hutton, Belle. "Photographs Documenting the Darker Side of Hollywood’s Golden Age." AnOther (March 5, 2018)
Hypernormalisation (BBC: Adam Curtis, 2016: 166 mins) ["HyperNormalisation wades through the culmination of forces that have driven this culture into mass uncertainty, confusion, spectacle and simulation. Where events keep happening that seem crazy, inexplicable and out of control—from Donald Trump to Brexit, to the War in Syria, mass immigration, extreme disparity in wealth, and increasing bomb attacks in the West—this film shows a basis to not only why these chaotic events are happening, but also why we, as well as those in power, may not understand them. We have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. And because it is reflected all around us, ubiquitous, we accept it as normal. This epic narrative of how we got here spans over 40 years, with an extraordinary cast of characters—the Assad dynasty, Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger, Patti Smith, early performance artists in New York, President Putin, Japanese gangsters, suicide bombers, Colonel Gaddafi and the Internet. HyperNormalisation weaves these historical narratives back together to show how today’s fake and hollow world was created and is sustained. This shows that a new kind of resistance must be imagined and actioned, as well as an unprecedented reawakening in a time where it matters like never before."]
Jilanu, Zaid. "The Hilarious, Terrifying, British Death of Stalin Shows How American Comedy's Gone Wrong." The Intercept (March 17, 2018)
Johnson, Adam and Nima Shirazi. "Hollywood & Anti-Muslim Racism (Part 1) - Action and Adventure Schlock." Citations Needed #113 (July 8, 2020) ["The United States and its close allies Saudi Arabia and Israel have been bombing and occupying large sections of the so-called “Muslim world” for decades – drastically ramping up after the 9/11 attacks and seemingly with no end in sight. The U.S., like all empires, cannot operate a large, complex system premised on violence, meddling and subjugation without a moral pretext. This moral pretext, even before 9/11, was primarily about fighting a war on so-called “Terrorism” or “Islamic extremism” while allegedly promoting “stability,” “freedom” and “democracy.” Along with American news media’s constant fear-mongering over scary Muslims lurking in the shadows, a major pillar propping up this moral pretext is pop culture – namely the cultural products coming out of Hollywood. Our decades-long "War on Terror" would no doubt be much more difficult to sustain without a constant reminder from TV and film that, despite the fact that the average American is more likely to be killed by a vending machine than a terrorist attack, the threat of Islamic terrorism remains ever-present and existential, marked by an inevitable “clash of civilizations” devoid of context or any notion that the U.S. is a primary driver of violence across the globe. Over the course of three episodes, we'll be taking a look at how Hollywood’s television and studio film output helps prop up America’s military aggression in the Middle East, engages in both casual and explicit racism, strips conflicts of any historical or imperial context pushes the idea the only Good Muslim is a snitch or CIA agent, and generally leaves its audience angry and ill-informed. In this episode, we review Hollywood’s long history of anti-Muslim racism in both classic and campy action/adventure films and TV and how it both primed us for – and sustains – the never-ending and self-perpetuating "War on Terror.""]
Keeley, Matthew. "The Best Way to Approach The Book of the New Sun." TOR (December 4, 2017)
Keene, John. "Reimagining History." On the Media (October 10, 2018) ["Last week, the MacArthur Foundation awarded genius grants to 25 creatives in art, literature, science and music. John Keene, a writer of poetry, fiction and cultural criticism, was one of them. He was recognized for his innovative use of language and form, and the way his work “exposes the social structures that confine, enslave, or destroy” people of color and queer people. Keene spoke to Brooke back in 2015 about his story collection, Counternarratives, which centers the voices of the marginalized in both imagined and reimagined historical moments."]
Kirshner, Jonathan. "Who Knew it Could Get Worse?: When Nixon Haunted the New Hollywood." Cineaste (Spring 2018)
Klein, Ezra. "Book excerpt: A better theory of identity politics." The Ezra Klein Show (January 23, 2020) ["A core argument of the book is that identity is the central driver of political polarization. But to see how it works, we need a better theory of how identities form, what happens when they activate, and where they fit into our conflicts. We’ve been taught to only see identity politics in others. We need to see it in ourselves."]
Lamb, Robert and Christian Sager. "Laughing During Horror Movies." Stuff to Blow Your Mind (October 3, 2017) ["Have you ever heard inappropriate laughter during a horror movie? For that matter, are you the guilty party? Join Robert and Christian as they explore our curious reactions to frightful cinema and how horror and comedy converge in the human mind."]
Landrieu, Mitch, et al. "Confronting the Legacy of the Confederacy." Best of the Left #1186 (May 29, 2018) ["Today we take a look at the legacy of the Confederacy, the monuments and white supremacy it left behind and the racial terror institutionalized in America based on upholding its values."]
Lebron, Christopher, Robyn C. Spencer and Carvell Wallace. "Afrofuturism, Liberation & Representation in Black Panther: A Roundtable Discussion." Democracy Now (February 28, 2018) ["While “Black Panther” has broken box office records, it has also generated an intense debate. We host a roundtable with three guests: Christopher Lebron, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who recently wrote “Black Panther Is Not the Film We Deserve”; Robyn C. Spencer, a professor at Lehman College, who wrote “Black Feminist Meditations on the Women of Wakanda”; and Carvell Wallace, author of The New York Times Magazine story “Why Black Panther Is a Defining Moment for Black America.”"]
"The Lectures of Joseph Campbell." Spotify (Playlist) ["Joseph John Campbell was an American mythologist who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience."]
Leigh, Megan. "Subverting Social Norms with Adrian Tchaikovsky." Breaking the Glass Slipper (November 23, 2017) ["Most science fiction and fantasy focus on humans – or at least societal structures that are recognisable from within cultures on Earth. Given that genre fiction is meant to be one of unlimited imagination, why do we find it so difficult to imagine societies where hierarchies aren’t defined by gender, and more specifically, where the default gender in power is male?"]
Lennard, Natasha. "The Kids Aren't Alright." Dissent (Winter 2018)
Levin, Yuval. "The Conservative Mind of Yuval Levin." The Ezra Klein Show (January 9, 2020) ["Something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is the way we often conflate two very distinct things when we assign political labels. The first is ideology, which describes our vision of a just society. The second is something less discussed but equally important: temperament. It describes how we approach social problems, how fast we think society can change, and how we understand the constraints upon us. Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, the editor-in-chief of the public policy journal National Affairs, and the author of the upcoming book A Time to Build. Levin is one of the most thoughtful articulators of both conservative temperament and ideology. And, perhaps for that reason, his is one of the most important criticisms of what the conservative movement has become today.There’s a lot in this conversation, in part because Levin’s book speaks to mine in interesting ways, but among the topics we discuss are: The conservative view of human nature Why the conservative temperament is increasingly diverging from the conservative movement What theories of American politics get wrong about the reality of American life The case Levin makes to socialists How economic debates are often moral debates in disguise Levin’s rebuttal to my book The crucial difference between “formative” and “performative” social institutions Why the most fundamental problems in American life are cultural, not economic Why Levin thinks the New York Times should not allow its journalists to be on Twitter Whether we can restore trust in our institutions without changing the incentives and systems that surround them There’s a lot Levin and I disagree on, but there are few people I learn as much from in disagreement as I learn from him."]
Loewinger, Micah. "How Youtube's Left is Changing Minds." On the Media (July 19, 2019) ["The president’s racist tweets this weekend provoked revulsion throughout the mainstream media. But on YouTube, America’s most popular social media site, racism has found a home. Free of old-school gate-keeping, YouTube hosts a much wider political spectrum, reaching very impressionable eyes and ears. On the Media producer Micah Loewinger tells the story of three young viewers whose right-wing beliefs melted away after encountering videos by an informal movement of leftist creators known as Left Tube. He spoke with two of Left Tube's most famous personalities, Natalie Wynn (ContraPoints) and Oliver Thorn (Philosophy Tube) about how they think about crafting compelling videos. "]
Smith, Jordan. "The Authors of The Cadaver King and The Country Dentist on the Legacy of Junk Forensics in Mississippi and Beyond." The Intercept (April 22, 2018)
Springer, Claudia. "Shadow Films: Picturing the Environmental Crisis." Jump Cut #58 (Spring 2018) ["For the powerful forces invested in preserving the status quo, even limited environmental protections that threaten traditional modes of corporate profit-making provoke fierce opposition. Corporate stakeholders wield political power through lobbying and donations, and, increasingly, they hold government positions. A 2016 study by the Center for American Progress Action Fund found that 34% of American Congress members denied climate change and had been paid over $73 million in contributions by oil, gas, and coal companies. Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who famously claimed that climate change is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," has reportedly accepted more than $2 million from the fossil fuel industry (Herzog). The fallout from political inaction means that people have lost their lives in the U.S., China, Nigeria, Ecuador, and Peru, among other countries, because of the oil, gas, and mining industries' toxic practices and attacks on opponents. The propaganda battles fought with images inflame a war with catastrophic consequences."]
Staal, Jonas. Propaganda Art: From the 20th to the 21st Century. (Dissertation: University of Amsterdam, 2018)
---. "Propaganda (Art) Struggle." October #94 (October 2018) ["To oppose the various propagandas discussed above, we will need infrastructures and narratives that mobilize the imagination to construct a different world. To achieve this, we will need an emancipatory propaganda and an emancipatory propaganda art. There is no prior reality to which we should strive to return; there will only be the realities that we will author collectively ourselves."]
Stevenson, Bryan. "On Challenging the Legacy of Racial Inequality in America: the Work of the Equal Justice Initiative." Slavery and Its Legacies (February 6, 2017) ["Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. Mr. Stevenson is a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill and aiding children prosecuted as adults. Mr. Stevenson has successfully argued several cases in the United States Supreme Court and recently won an historic ruling that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger are unconstitutional. Mr. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief or release for over 115 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row. Mr. Stevenson has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge the legacy of racial inequality in America, including major projects to educate communities about slavery, lynching and racial segregation. Mr. Stevenson is also a Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law."]
Taibbi, Matt. "If We Want Kids to Stop Killing, the Adults Have to Stop, Too: America's Rage-Sickness Trickles Down from the Top." Rolling Stone (February 16, 2018)
Talaga, Tanya. "Big Brother's Hunger." Ideas (March 25, 2019) ["In her 2018 CBC Massey Lectures series, titled All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward, prize-winning journalist Tanya Talaga (author of Seven Fallen Feathers) explores the legacy of cultural genocide against Indigenous peoples."]
Being (February 9, 2017) [This is a wise discussion about personal relationships that has ramifications for how we relate in general to the broader world! Doesn't this seem like something that should be taught at an early age and that we should be having very frank discussions about. Lets dispel the myths/mystification surrounding personal relationships!]
Boyle, T.C. "On Writing About LSD and Outside Looking In." Fiction/Non/Fiction (January 2, 2020) ["In this episode, taped live at the Miami Book Fair, writer T.C. Boyle talks to Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell about writing his latest novel, Outside Looking In. The novel looks at the history of LSD, and tracks the marriage of a Harvard graduate student who works with psychologist and LSD researcher Timothy Leary. Boyle offers candid insights into his research process, his own experiences with drugs, his relationship with nature, and how he writes and revises."]
Bragg, Billy. "Roots, Radicals and Rockers." Talkhouse (April 5, 2018) ["Today’s show features a talk the brilliant English folk-punk activist Billy Bragg gave on skiffle music at NYC’s Strand Bookstore last year upon the release of his book Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World. Bragg traces the little-known genre from its distinctly American roots to its British chart-topping success, and consequent all-conquering return to America repackaged as the British Invasion. He describes how the short-lived “hillbilly” sound forever changed the course of Western music via its teenaged adherents, who included Van Morrison and, crucially, the Beatles. This utterly fascinating tale also touches on questions of cultural appropriation (and appropriation of appropriation), how young women wanting to jive created a new gig infrastructure, calypso hitting the U.K. charts due to a cricket match, and how the spread of skiffle — and, for that matter, rap — mimics the fidget spinner."]
Braswell, Emory, et al. "Theater for the Mind." Imaginary Worlds (September 19, 2018) ["The "golden age of radio drama" may have been a stellar period for storytelling -- but the stories weren't all golden bright. Science fiction and horror were the ideal genres to explore the deep anxieties people felt from the Depression through the Cold War. And these radio dramas set the stage for fantastical stories that couldn't be told yet without advanced special effects. Dallas Taylor of the podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz co-hosts this episode as we hear from radio historians Neil Verma and Richard J. Hand, and radio drama veterans Dirk Maggs and Richard Toscan. Plus Emory Braswell recalls the day he thought Martians had invaded New Jersey."]
Breznican, Anthony. "Black Storytellers Are Using Horror to Battle Hate." Vanity Fair (August 3, 2020) ["After Get Out, movies such as Antebellum, the upcoming Candyman retelling, and other tales of terror and the macabre are part of a cultural exorcism centuries in the making."]
Bridle, James. "The Intelligence Singing All Around Us." On Being (March 2, 2023) ["You might want to take a walk with this one. It is big and full of brain food and an enlivening opening of imagination to possibilities that are emergent now: the notion of the “broad commonwealth of life” that we are “inextricably entangled with and suffused by”; the paradox that the more accurately you try to measure some things, the more unmeasurable they become; the way words we use all the time have kept our cellular belonging to the natural world alive, even as civilization forgot. The technologist/artist James Bridle brings all of this into interplay with an intriguing, refreshing lens on our lives with technology — and with all that artificial intelligence is and might become. You might not think of intelligence the same way again, or the truth of mythology, or the letters of the alphabet, or what it means to be human. And you will smile next time you access the place where your digital life is stored and realize what it says about us that we named it The Cloud. James Bridle is an artist and technologist and author of the books Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence and New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future."]
Brotton, Jerry and Peter Frankopan. "Looking Eastwards: cultural exchange with the Islamic world." London School of Economics and Political Science (February 25, 2016) ["In this event we explore the rich interaction between east and west with Jerry Brotton, whose forthcoming book This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World explores Elizabethan England's relations with the Muslim world, and Peter Frankopan, whose recent book The Silk Roads: A New History of the World looks at world history from the perspective of this trading route of culture and ideas."]
Brown, Alex. "Black Excellence: Honoring Kwanza Through Science Fiction." TOR (December 5, 2017)
Brown, Adrienne Marie. "Love as Political Resistance: Lessons from Audre Lorde and Octavia Butler." Bitch (February 14, 2017)
Brown, Eric. "Plato's Ethics and Politics in The Republic." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Last revised August 31, 2009)
Brown, Jitu, et al. "When We Fight, We Win: New Book Showcases Social Movements & Activists Transforming the World." Democracy Now (January 5, 2016)
Burr, Ty. "What Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘The Conversation’ tried to tell us." The Washington Post (August 9, 2024) ["The surveillance state that seemed so far-fetched in 1974 turned out to be a mild harbinger of the state of surveillance 50 years later."]
Bush, George W., et al. "The Two Georges: A Dramatic Reading of George Orwell's Classic Work 1984 & Pres. George W. Bush." Democracy Now (June 25, 2003) ["On the 100th birthday of author and journalist George Orwell, we spend the hour featuring excerpts from his classic work, "1984," the book that introduced the terms "Big Brother," "thought police," "newspeak" and "doublethink." We broadcast portions of excerpts of 1984 read by Charles Morgan and June Foray and produced by Paul Vangelisti over a quarter of a century ago for Pacifica Radio. We also feature clips from President Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Fox New’s Bill O’Relly, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Sen. Robert Byrd and broadcast footage of Donald Rumsfeld meeting with Saddam Hussein in 1983."]
Butcher, John. "Mythology (Storytelling)." Ologies (February 26, 2018) ["Superhero movies. Bastardized fairy tales. The psychology of celebrity. Star Wars. And yes, some ancient Greek and Roman myths. Professional mythologist and screenwriting consultant John Bucher spins some yarns and unravels some mysteries behind what makes a good story, and why we so desperately need them. Also: rethinking your own life's narrative and gaining a greater appreciation for Elvira. Trust me."]
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge, 2006. ["One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years, Judith Butler's Gender Trouble is as celebrated as it is controversial. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential' notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine'. Best known however, but also most often misinterpreted, is Butler's concept of gender as a reiterated social performance rather than the expression of a prior reality. Thrilling and provocative, few other academic works have roused passions to the same extent."]
Callanan, John, Alison Hills and David Oderberg. "Kant's Categorical Imperative." In Our Time (September 21, 2017) ["Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, in the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) sought to define the difference between right and wrong by applying reason, looking at the intention behind actions rather than at consequences. He was inspired to find moral laws by natural philosophers such as Newton and Leibniz, who had used reason rather than emotion to analyse the world around them and had identified laws of nature. Kant argued that when someone was doing the right thing, that person was doing what was the universal law for everyone, a formulation that has been influential on moral philosophy ever since and is known as the Categorical Imperative. Arguably even more influential was one of his reformulations, echoed in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which he asserted that humanity has a value of an entirely different kind from that placed on commodities. Kant argued that simply existing as a human being was valuable in itself, so that every human owed moral responsibilities to other humans and was owed responsibilities in turn."]
Carey, Alex. Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Studies in Corporate Propaganda. (Posted on Youtube: June 4, 2012) [""The twentieth century has been characterised by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy." - Alex Carey This compelling book examines the twentieth-century history of corporate propaganda as practiced by U.S. businesses and its export to and adoption by other western democracies, chiefly the United Kingdom and Australia. A volume in the series The History of Communication, edited by Robert W. McChesney and John C. Nerone."]
Callanan, John, Alison Hills and David Oderberg. "Kant's Categorical Imperative." In Our Time (September 21, 2017) ["Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how, in the Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) sought to define the difference between right and wrong by applying reason, looking at the intention behind actions rather than at consequences. He was inspired to find moral laws by natural philosophers such as Newton and Leibniz, who had used reason rather than emotion to analyse the world around them and had identified laws of nature. Kant argued that when someone was doing the right thing, that person was doing what was the universal law for everyone, a formulation that has been influential on moral philosophy ever since and is known as the Categorical Imperative. Arguably even more influential was one of his reformulations, echoed in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which he asserted that humanity has a value of an entirely different kind from that placed on commodities. Kant argued that simply existing as a human being was valuable in itself, so that every human owed moral responsibilities to other humans and was owed responsibilities in turn."]
Carey, Alex. Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Studies in Corporate Propaganda. (Posted on Youtube: June 4, 2012) [""The twentieth century has been characterised by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy." - Alex Carey This compelling book examines the twentieth-century history of corporate propaganda as practiced by U.S. businesses and its export to and adoption by other western democracies, chiefly the United Kingdom and Australia. A volume in the series The History of Communication, edited by Robert W. McChesney and John C. Nerone."]
Carr, Jeremy. "Notebook Primer: Film Noir." Notebook (Aug 27, 2020) ["Film noir revels in a realm of desperation, despair, and dread, engineering an entertaining and engaging descent into humanity’s dark side."]
---. "Notebook Primer: Ida Lupino." Notebook (July 30, 2020) ["As an actress, writer, producer, and director, Ida Lupino was a revolutionary female filmmaker and a forerunner of independent cinema."]
---. "Notebook Primer: Sergei Eisenstein." Notebook (August 13, 2020) ["A hugely influential filmmaker and theorist, Sergei Eisenstein epitomized the uneasy, if often dynamic, synthesis of art and politics."]
---. "Notebook Primer: Werner Herzog." Notebook (July 2, 2020) ["Becoming something of an existential philosopher in the process, Herzog’s career-long presentation of a mysterious, multifaceted world is an overwhelming collective exhibition. While he is not religious, his films — transcendent meditations on faith, superstition, and sublime experience — have a pronounced spiritual constitution. He finds humanity within pure chaos and mysticism in the ostensibly banal. Perhaps more than anything, however, Herzog is driven by an unceasing search for new visual encounters. As he notes when discussing the enigmatic mirages of Fata Morgana (1971), he remains occupied by a “quest for images that you haven’t really seen yet,” and, he affirms, “I’ve not stopped searching.”]
---. "Notebook Primer: The Western." Notebook (July 16, 2020) ["The Western is a compendium of cultural dichotomies and iconic symbols, locations, and characters, with countless variations."]
Cave, Nick. "Loss, Yearning, Transcendence." On Being (November 22, 2020 ["Here are some experiences to which Nick Cave gives voice and song: the “universal condition” of yearning, and of loss; a “spirituality of rigor”; and the transcendent and moral dimensions of what music is about. This Australian musician, writer, and actor first made a name in the wild world of ’80s post-punk and later with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. He also underwent public struggles with addiction and rehab. Since the accidental death of his 15-year-old son Arthur in 2015, and a few years later, the death of his eldest child Jethro, he has entered yet another transfigured era, co-created an exquisite book called Faith, Hope and Carnage, and become a frank and eloquent interlocutor on grief. As a human and a songwriter, Nick Cave is an embodiment of a life examined and evolved. He sat with Krista in the On Being studio in Minneapolis, and the gorgeous conversation that followed is woven in this episode with his gorgeous music."]
---. "Nick Cave on the encounters that brought him to 'Wild God'." All Songs Considered (August 20, 2024) ["On August 30, the Australian-born rock titan Nick Cave will release Wild God, a new album with his band The Bad Seeds. It's a high point in Cave's career, and NPR Music's Ann Powers spoke with him about the struggles — personal, musical and religious — he faced on the road to making the album. Wild God is filled with songs about encounters with the divine, which does not always take a benevolent form. And it follows a decade in which Cave, having publicly faced tragedy in his own life, has evolved from post-punk's louchest fallen angel into a revered figure among his audience in a new way: a dignified seeker whose courage and wisdom resounds beyond musical boundaries thanks to advice he has shared in interviews, writing projects and public appearances. Perhaps it's not surprising that so many of the songs reckon with the moment of revelation or transformation, or the demand for conversion from a ... As for the state of his own religious conviction, Cave says that the struggle is the point: "I would say I'm in the process of conversion," he tells Powers. Wherever he is on that road, he's found something ecstatic to share."]
Chang, Jeff. "On Revolutions in Seeing and Being." Making Contact (October 11, 2017) ["“From almost every kind of responsibility and tie from engagement and from faith. So the artist–our task is to move ourselves and the rest of us in the opposite direction. Toward more engagement, towards stronger ethics, toward a social that’s open and inclusive to all toward seeing each other in full, to challenge us to recognize the debts, and yes, the reparations that we owe to each other.” – Jeff Chang offers ideas to reinforce the importance of art and artists in today’s sociopolitical climate. Chang presented a keynote address for the Art and Race conference, that took place at Oakland Impact Hub earlier this year."]
Chang, Lauren and Shira Taylor. "Sex Ed Through Social Action Theatre." Talking Radical Radio (November 6, 2018)
"Chelsea Manning Talks with Nadya Tolokonnikova (Pussy Riot)." Talkhouse (April 26, 2018) ["The program includes a talk by Manning on resisting “the data-driven society and the police state”; a conversation between her and Tolokonnikova on their experiences in resistance, incarceration and prison reform; and a talk by Tolokonnikova on bringing “punk feminism” to Russia and the problems with Putin. The two also share their views on how neighborhood communities have better answers than think tanks, the ways empathy can help make real change, and — powerfully — how political action can be more than voting."]
Christakis, Nicholas. "How Our Genes Build Good Societies." Ideas (June 13, 2019) ["We humans carry within us genes that help write a blueprint for a better world according to Nicholas Christakis. He argues that our genes help create societies, that are for the most part, intrinsically similar and good."]
Chu, Joyce. "The All-Girl Muslim Band Smashing Their Way Through Indonesia." The Week (ND) ["They're uprooting gender and religious stereotypes along the way."]
Chu, Seo-Young. "Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep?" Harvard University Press Blog (March 10, 2011) ["While most of us think of science fiction as a genre whose objects of representation are altogether imaginary, Seo-Young Chu argues that science fiction is instead a genre whose objects of representation are real but impossible to describe in a straightforward manner. In Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? ..., Chu presents a theory under which all representation is to some degree science-fictional. On the resulting continuum, realism is actually just a low-intensity variety of science fiction, and what most people call science fiction is a high-intensity variety of realism, one that requires exorbitant levels of energy to accomplish its representational work because its referents challenge simple representation. What allows science fiction to render such objects as globalization, cyberspace, and war trauma available for representation, Chu argues, is its dual status as both a narrative and a lyric artform, one that systematically literalizes poetic figures of speech. In the book’s Interlude, presented in full below, Chu draws out her title’s echo of the novel that became Blade Runner, and further reflects on what’s happening when metaphors dream."]
Chu, Shanti. "Food." Overthink #88 (October 10, 2023) ["In episode 88 of Overthink, your favorite podcasters explore the philosophy of food, discussing everything from Glaucon’s plea for fancy meals in the Republic, to the rich ways in which food is intertwined with our individual and cultural identities. They welcome food critic and philosophy professor Shanti Chu for a lively conversation about the gendering of meals, the ethics of food systems (lab-grown meat, anyone?), the future of restaurants, and much more. Bon appetit!"]
Churchwell, Sarah. "The Lehman Trilogy and Wall Street's Debt to Slavery." NYR Daily (June 11, 2019) ["For a century and more, the conventional wisdom about the evolution of the financial systems embodied in institutions like Lehman Brothers was that modern American capitalism was built not on the slave economy, but on its collapse. That story retains its cultural grip."]
Claverie, Ezra. "From off-brand to franchise: Watchmen as advertisement." Jump Cut #58 (Spring 2018)Churchwell, Sarah. "The Lehman Trilogy and Wall Street's Debt to Slavery." NYR Daily (June 11, 2019) ["For a century and more, the conventional wisdom about the evolution of the financial systems embodied in institutions like Lehman Brothers was that modern American capitalism was built not on the slave economy, but on its collapse. That story retains its cultural grip."]
---. "On Police Brutality: 'The Violence is Not New, It’s the Cameras That are New.'" Democracy Now (September 7, 2015) ["Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of an explosive new book about white supremacy and being black in America. Titled "Between the World and Me," it is written as a letter to his teenage son, Samori. In July, Ta-Nehisi Coates launched the book in his hometown of Baltimore. He spoke at the historic Union Baptist Church."]
---. "Reads from His Block-Buster Memoir Between the World and Me." Building Bridges (August 11, 2015) €["Readers of his work in The Atlantic (including his June 2014 feature The Case for Reparations) and elsewhere know Ta-Nehisi Coates for his thoughtful and influential writing on race in America. Written as a series of letters to his teenaged son, his new memoir, Between the World and Me, walks us through the course of his life, from his neighborhood in Baltimore in his youth, to Howard University—which Coates dubs “The Mecca” for its revelatory community of black students and teachers —to the broader Meccas of New York and Paris. Coates describes his observations and the evolution of his thinking on race, from Malcolm X to his conclusion that race itself is a fabrication, elemental to the concept of American (white) exceptionalism. Ferguson, Trayvon Martin, and South Carolina are not bumps on the road of progress and harmony, but the results of a systemized, ubiquitous threat to “black bodies” in the form of slavery, police brutality, and mass incarceration."]
Cobb, William Jelani and Orlando Patterson. "‘The Changing Same’: Race in America." Open Source (March 12, 2015)
Cohen,Julie and Betsy West. "RBG: New Documentary Celebrates Life of Groundbreaking Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg." Democracy Now (January 22, 2018) ["One of the most talked-about documentaries at this year’s Sundance Film Festival looks at the groundbreaking life of the nearly 85-year-old Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. 2018 marks her 25th year on the court, and she has no plans to retire. Ginsburg first gained fame in the 1970s when she co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, where she argued six gender discrimination cases before the Supreme Court. In recent years, Ginsburg’s public profile has soared as the court has swerved to the right. Ginsburg often now finds herself on the dissenting side of opinions. We feature excerpts from the new film and speak with its directors, Julie Cohen and Betsy West."]
Cohn, Jonathan. "The Burden of Choice." This is Not a Pipe (December 20, 2020) ["Jonathan Cohn discusses his book The Burden of Choice: Recommendations, Subversion, and Algorithmic Culture with Chris Richardson. Cohn is an assistant professor of digital cultures and head of the digital humanities program at the University of Alberta. His research focuses on digital culture and history, critical algorithmic studies, film and media, postfeminist and postracial discourses…and television. With Dr. Jennifer Porst, he is co-editing Very Special Episodes: Event Television and Social Change (Rutgers, forthcoming) on the history of how the television industry has confronted traumatic events and cultural change. In the meantime, he is thinking a lot about what differences might exist between algorithmic and AI culture, and the experiences of incoherence endemic to our current moment. In an effort to make our relationship with AI more collaborative, ethical and egalitarian, he is also creating a program to help humanities scholars co-write and research with AI."]
Cole, Sarah. "On H.G. Wells The Time Machine." Writ Large (November 15, 2022) ["When H.G. Wells was growing up in England in the 1860s, science wasn’t part of education or everyday life the way it is now. Even though the 19th century was an era of dramatic technological invention, the professionalization of science was still developing. Wells viewed science as an incredibly powerful force. He knew it could either help or hurt humanity--even with that risk, he believed society should fully embrace science. When Wells wrote his first novel, The Time Machine, in 1895, he kicked off a 50-year-long writing career. He was a pioneer in the science fiction genre, and his stories have inspired generations of audiences, artists, filmmakers, and other writers around the world. Sarah Cole is the Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Dean of Humanities at Columbia University. She is the author of Inventing Tomorrow: H.G. Wells and the Twentieth Century and At the Violet Hour: Modernism and Violence in England and Ireland, among other works."]
"Colum McCann with Gabriel Byrne." Lannan Podcasts (January 31, 2018)["Colum McCann is the author of six novels and three collections of stories, including Let the Great World Spin, TransAtlantic, and Thirteen Ways of Looking. In a 2013 interview the author said, “I believe in the democracy of storytelling. That stories can cross all sorts of borders and boundaries. I don’t know of a greater privilege than being allowed to tell a story or to listen to a story.” McCann’s books cover a wide range of topics, including The Troubles in Northern Ireland, the life of Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev, the first attempted nonstop flight across the Atlantic in 1919, New York of the 1970s, and the tightrope walker who crossed the gap between the Twin Towers. Born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1965, McCann crossed the United States on a bicycle in the 1980s, describing the trip as being “simply to expand my lungs emotionally.” He is the recipient of several honors, among them the National Book Award, the International DUBLIN Literary Award, and designation as a Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. In 2012 McCann cofounded the nonprofit global story-exchange organization Narrative 4, whose mission is to use storytelling to inspire “fearless hope through radical empathy.” McCann lives in New York with his family and teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Hunter College."]
Connolly, Nathan. "Looking for Wakanda." On the Media (February 26, 2019) ["A persistent site for utopian longing, Wakanda has once more captured the public imagination: endowed with unlimited access to the most precious natural resource in the world, unsullied by the ravages of colonialism, Wakanda has reignited conversations about what black liberation can and should look like. According to Johns Hopkins University history professor Nathan Connolly, this latest chapter is part of a much longer tradition of imagining and reimagining black utopias. Connolly speaks with Brooke about how Wakanda arises from a 500-year history — from Maroon communities to Haiti to the actual Black Panther movement — a journey that takes us from "dreams to art to life, and back again."]
Currie, Ron and Martin Skladany. "The Next Netflix Should Be Owned By Screenwriters." NOEMA (September 21, 2023) ["Industry upheaval is an opportunity for Hollywood’s screenwriters to wrest back control of their stories — and their livelihoods."]
Curtis, Adam and John Taylor Gatto. "Slaphappiness Machines (Engineering America's Faux Democracy - Part 1)." Unwelcome Guests #315 (July 16, 2006)
---. "Ephors and Citizens (Engineering America's Faux Democracy - Part 2)." Unwelcome Guests #316 (July 23, 2006)
---. "The Policeman in Your Head (Engineering America's Faux Democracy - Part 3)." Unwelcome Guests #317 (July 30, 2006)
---. "Gilded Cage (Engineering America's Faux Democracy - Part 4)." Unwelcome Guests #318 (August 6, 2006)
Dargis, Manohla. "What the Movies Taught Me About Being a Woman." The New York Times (November 30, 2018)
Dargis, Manohla and A.O. Scott. "28 Days, 28 Films for Black History Month." The New York Times (February 1, 2018)
"David Harvey’s Course on Marx’s Capital: Volumes 1 & 2 Now Available Free Online." Open Culture (November 20, 2014)
Davis, Angela, Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez. "'Toni Morrison Will Always Be with Us.'" Democracy Now (August 7, 2019) ["Toni Morrison, one of the nation’s most influential writers, died this week at the age of 88 from complications of pneumonia. In 1993, Morrison became the first African-American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. She also won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for her classic work “Beloved.” Much of Morrison’s writing focused on the Black female experience in America, and her writing style honored the rhythms of Black oral tradition. Her work was deeply concerned with race and history, especially the sin of transatlantic slavery and the potentially restorative power of community. In 2012, President Obama awarded Morrison the Presidential Medal of Freedom. We speak with three legendary writers and close friends of Toni Morrison: Angela Davis, author and activist; Nikki Giovanni, poet, activist and educator; and Sonia Sanchez, award-winning poet."]
Deleuze, Gilles. Essays: Critical and Clinical. trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco. Verso, 1998.
Diamond, Adele. "The Science of Attention." On Being (2014) ["What Adele Diamond is learning about the brain challenges basic assumptions in modern education. Her work is scientifically illustrating the educational power of things like play, sports, music, memorization, and reflection. What nourishes the human spirit, the whole person, it turns out, also hones our minds."]
Diaz, Junot. "Radical Hope is Our Best Weapon." On Being (September 14, 2017) ["'From the bottom will the genius come that makes our ability to live with each other possible. I believe that with all my heart.' These are the words of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz. His hope is fiercely reality-based, a product of centuries lodged in his body of African-Caribbean suffering, survival, and genius."]
Dickey, Colin. "The Suburban Horror of the Indian Burial Ground." The New Republic (October 19, 2016) ["In the 1970s and 1980s, homeowners were terrified by the idea that they didn't own the land they'd just bought."]
Dobb, Edwin. "Nothing But Gifts: Finding a Home in a World Gone Awry." Harper's (October 2018) ["One of the discouraging developments of recent times is that qualities often associated with homelessness—paranoia, a sense of grievance, defensive solitude—are increasingly influential factors in the day-to-day affairs of the wealthiest nation on earth. Instead of acknowledging and reinforcing what we hold in common, a proposition that should be easier to accept in a context of plenty, too many of us succumb to fear and prejudice. From there it is a small step to the belief that solidarity is for suckers; that it is a suicidal illusion fostered by those who don’t understand, or won’t admit, that not everyone is equal, not everyone deserves the same consideration, not everyone belongs here (this neighborhood, this country, this world). Under such poisonous conditions, tyranny can flourish, often obscured by bankrupt slogans like “makers and takers,” which is of a piece with another worrisome trend in the United States—the conflation of democracy and commerce, liberty and acquisition, a situation in which, perversely, freedom has come to mean the conditions that allow the affluent to accumulate ever more wealth, while for the rest of us, first the suburban mall and now its always expanding digital equivalent have replaced the town hall as the primary domain for the exercise of citizenship. Against this backdrop, it’s no surprise that our success narrative now culminates in endorsement deals and advertisement appearances, including by artists and writers; that serving as a marketing prop has become synonymous with having made it. ... My prayer for my grandchildren, then, is that they defy their circumstances rather than despair of them; that they possess the audacity, moral imagination, and tough-minded humor to make this heartbreaking, too-often-alien world their own, thereby transforming it into a place where they always feel at home if not always at peace, always enjoying access to existential solidarity and the solace and inspiration it provides, always acting in the knowledge that the good that graces their lives remains so only if they keep it in play, and this despite the anguish and disappointment that surely await them, along with every other child of the twenty-first century."]
Doidge, Kristin Marguerite. "A Star's Voice is Born: A Path Forward." Los Angeles Review of Books (October 24, 2018) ["What could happen if we were surrounded by men and women who actually do have integrity, who might give us — and the next generation — an opportunity to be vulnerable and safe at the same time? Most importantly, how much magic are we missing out on when we don’t create that kind of atmosphere every day for our children, artists, athletes, students, colleagues, friends, family, and lovers?"]
Dorfman, Ariel and Thanh Nguyen. "The Displaced: Refugee Writers Ariel Dorfman & Viet Thanh Nguyen on Migration, US Wars & Resistance." Democracy Now (May 4, 2018) ["As dozens of migrants from Central America remain camped out at the U.S.-Mexico border attempting to seek asylum in the United States, we spend the hour with two of the nation’s most celebrated writers, both refugees themselves. Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam in 1971. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, he and his family fled to the United States. He is the author of three books, including “The Sympathizer,” which won the Pulitzer Prize, and he teaches at the University of Southern California. He is also the editor of a new collection titled “The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives.” We are also joined by the Chilean-American writer Ariel Dorfman, who has been described as one of the greatest Latin American novelists. Forty-five years ago, he fled Chile after a U.S.-backed coup displaced President Salvador Allende. Dorfman had served as Allende’s cultural adviser from 1970 to 1973. Living in exile, he became one of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s most vocal critics, as well as a celebrated playwright and novelist. Dorfman, who teaches at Duke University, has just published a new novel, “Darwin’s Ghosts,” and a new collection of essays titled “Homeland Security Ate My Speech.” He also contributed an essay to “The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives.”]
---. "On the Vietnam War, How Hollywood Reframes U.S. Imperialism & More." Democracy Now (May 4, 2018) ["Extended interview with the writers Viet Thanh Nguyen and Ariel Dorfman, who have both contributed essays to the new collection, “The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives.” Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel “The Sympathizer.” Dorfman has been described as one of the greatest Latin American novelists. His latest novel is “Darwin’s Ghosts.”"]
Due, Tannarive, et al. "The Horror Noire Education Guide." The Graveyard Shift Sisters (February 11, 2019)
Egan, Jennifer."On Cops and Mobsters." New Yorker Radio Hour (October 6, 2017) ["A lot of people first heard the name Jennifer Egan when her innovative book “A Visit from the Goon Squad,” which contained a chapter written as a teen-ager’s PowerPoint presentation, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, in 2011. But Egan was no overnight success: Goon Squad was her fourth novel—if it was a novel—and she published her first story in The New Yorkernearly thirty years ago. But she’s kept experimenting since then, and a few years ago she wrote a short story entirely in tweets, called “Black Box.” Compared to that, Egan’s new novel, “Manhattan Beach,” is “more of an escapist book,” she tells David Remnick. It starts during the Depression, and it’s about a girl who goes to work in a shipbuilding yard in Brooklyn during the Second World War. It involves false identities, a possible murder, and the mob—an old-fashioned page turner. It also reflects her ethnic identity as an Irish-American, and her grandfather’s life in the Chicago police. But that didn’t make it any easier to write. Putting out a novel, Egan finds, is murder no matter how you slice it."]
Ehrenreich, Barbara. "Body Work: The Curiously Self-Punishing Rites of Fitness Culture." The Baffler #38 ["An excerpt from the book Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer © 2018 by Barbara Ehrenreich, forthcoming from Twelve on April 10, 2018."]
Eisen, Arnold. "The Opposite of Good is Indifference." On Being (September 21, 2017) ["'In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.' A mystic, a 20th-century religious intellectual, a social change agent, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., famously saying afterwards that he felt his legs were praying. Heschel’s poetic theological writings are still read and widely studied today. His faith was as much about 'radical amazement' as it was about certainty. And he embodied the passionate social engagement of the prophets, drawing on wisdom at once provocative and nourishing."]
Curtis, Adam and John Taylor Gatto. "Slaphappiness Machines (Engineering America's Faux Democracy - Part 1)." Unwelcome Guests #315 (July 16, 2006)
---. "Ephors and Citizens (Engineering America's Faux Democracy - Part 2)." Unwelcome Guests #316 (July 23, 2006)
---. "The Policeman in Your Head (Engineering America's Faux Democracy - Part 3)." Unwelcome Guests #317 (July 30, 2006)
---. "Gilded Cage (Engineering America's Faux Democracy - Part 4)." Unwelcome Guests #318 (August 6, 2006)
Dargis, Manohla. "What the Movies Taught Me About Being a Woman." The New York Times (November 30, 2018)
Dargis, Manohla and A.O. Scott. "28 Days, 28 Films for Black History Month." The New York Times (February 1, 2018)
"David Harvey’s Course on Marx’s Capital: Volumes 1 & 2 Now Available Free Online." Open Culture (November 20, 2014)
Davis, Angela, Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez. "'Toni Morrison Will Always Be with Us.'" Democracy Now (August 7, 2019) ["Toni Morrison, one of the nation’s most influential writers, died this week at the age of 88 from complications of pneumonia. In 1993, Morrison became the first African-American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. She also won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for her classic work “Beloved.” Much of Morrison’s writing focused on the Black female experience in America, and her writing style honored the rhythms of Black oral tradition. Her work was deeply concerned with race and history, especially the sin of transatlantic slavery and the potentially restorative power of community. In 2012, President Obama awarded Morrison the Presidential Medal of Freedom. We speak with three legendary writers and close friends of Toni Morrison: Angela Davis, author and activist; Nikki Giovanni, poet, activist and educator; and Sonia Sanchez, award-winning poet."]
Deibler, Emily. "The Sublime's Effects in Gothic Fiction." The Artifice (December 29, 2015)
Diamond, Adele. "The Science of Attention." On Being (2014) ["What Adele Diamond is learning about the brain challenges basic assumptions in modern education. Her work is scientifically illustrating the educational power of things like play, sports, music, memorization, and reflection. What nourishes the human spirit, the whole person, it turns out, also hones our minds."]
Diaz, Junot. "Radical Hope is Our Best Weapon." On Being (September 14, 2017) ["'From the bottom will the genius come that makes our ability to live with each other possible. I believe that with all my heart.' These are the words of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Dominican-American writer Junot Díaz. His hope is fiercely reality-based, a product of centuries lodged in his body of African-Caribbean suffering, survival, and genius."]
Dickey, Colin. "The Suburban Horror of the Indian Burial Ground." The New Republic (October 19, 2016) ["In the 1970s and 1980s, homeowners were terrified by the idea that they didn't own the land they'd just bought."]
Dion, Dennis. "Priming the Pump of War: Toward a Post-Ethnic, Post-Racial Fascism." C-Theory (November 6, 2002)
Dobb, Edwin. "Nothing But Gifts: Finding a Home in a World Gone Awry." Harper's (October 2018) ["One of the discouraging developments of recent times is that qualities often associated with homelessness—paranoia, a sense of grievance, defensive solitude—are increasingly influential factors in the day-to-day affairs of the wealthiest nation on earth. Instead of acknowledging and reinforcing what we hold in common, a proposition that should be easier to accept in a context of plenty, too many of us succumb to fear and prejudice. From there it is a small step to the belief that solidarity is for suckers; that it is a suicidal illusion fostered by those who don’t understand, or won’t admit, that not everyone is equal, not everyone deserves the same consideration, not everyone belongs here (this neighborhood, this country, this world). Under such poisonous conditions, tyranny can flourish, often obscured by bankrupt slogans like “makers and takers,” which is of a piece with another worrisome trend in the United States—the conflation of democracy and commerce, liberty and acquisition, a situation in which, perversely, freedom has come to mean the conditions that allow the affluent to accumulate ever more wealth, while for the rest of us, first the suburban mall and now its always expanding digital equivalent have replaced the town hall as the primary domain for the exercise of citizenship. Against this backdrop, it’s no surprise that our success narrative now culminates in endorsement deals and advertisement appearances, including by artists and writers; that serving as a marketing prop has become synonymous with having made it. ... My prayer for my grandchildren, then, is that they defy their circumstances rather than despair of them; that they possess the audacity, moral imagination, and tough-minded humor to make this heartbreaking, too-often-alien world their own, thereby transforming it into a place where they always feel at home if not always at peace, always enjoying access to existential solidarity and the solace and inspiration it provides, always acting in the knowledge that the good that graces their lives remains so only if they keep it in play, and this despite the anguish and disappointment that surely await them, along with every other child of the twenty-first century."]
Doidge, Kristin Marguerite. "A Star's Voice is Born: A Path Forward." Los Angeles Review of Books (October 24, 2018) ["What could happen if we were surrounded by men and women who actually do have integrity, who might give us — and the next generation — an opportunity to be vulnerable and safe at the same time? Most importantly, how much magic are we missing out on when we don’t create that kind of atmosphere every day for our children, artists, athletes, students, colleagues, friends, family, and lovers?"]
---. "On the Vietnam War, How Hollywood Reframes U.S. Imperialism & More." Democracy Now (May 4, 2018) ["Extended interview with the writers Viet Thanh Nguyen and Ariel Dorfman, who have both contributed essays to the new collection, “The Displaced: Refugee Writers on Refugee Lives.” Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel “The Sympathizer.” Dorfman has been described as one of the greatest Latin American novelists. His latest novel is “Darwin’s Ghosts.”"]
Dorian, MJ. "Creativity Tip 23: Be Driven By A Vision." Creative Codex #23 (March 26, 2024) ["All creative geniuses have visions throughout their lives which guide their work. What does it mean to have a vision? How does a vision differ from a goal? How do you discover your own vision? Let's talk about it. This insight developed from recent studies and reflections I've been engaged in, it is part of my current attempt to define creative genius through several traits which all creative geniuses seem to share. In searching through all of the insights gathered over five years of doing this show, I've noticed that all of the figures we have covered have a vision which, in some way, guides their creativity."]
---. "Marina Abramović • IMMATERIAL • Part 1: Life or Death." Creative Codex #36 (February 2, 2023) ["This is Part 1 of a three part series about the legend of performance art: Marina Abramović. On this episode, we explore her childhood, Marina's first forays into art, and her controversial Rhythm series. In a first for podcasting, we explore her performance art through sonic simulations of the works as they are discussed."]
---. "Marina Abramović • IMMATERIAL • Part II: Conjunction." Creative Codex #37 (March 3, 2023) ["This is Part 2 of a three part series about the legend of performance art: Marina Abramović. On this episode, we explore her intense relationship and art partnership with Ulay. The narrative weaves its way through their thirteen year collaboration, focusing on their early years, first performances together, and their Art Vital manifesto which encapsulated their life and art."]
---. "The Subtle Art of Mirroring." Creative Codex (December 6, 2022) ["Have you ever noticed that you mirror your closest friend's habits and interests? Have you ever wondered: 'how do I think like Leonardo da Vinci or Albert Einstein?' On this creativity tip, we are going to explore something we all do naturally: mirroring. And how we can use to inspire our creative work in new and unexpected directions."]
---. "William Blake • On Vision's Wing • Part 1: The Marriage of Heaven & Hell." Creative Codex #47 (August 7, 2024) ["William Blake is considered one of the greatest artists and poets of the English language, yet he lived most of his life in poverty. Why? Many of his acquaintances considered him mad while friends who knew his art considered him 'brilliantly mad'. What was so different about Blake? Join me on this William Blake series as we pry open the mind of this celebrated creative genius to find the true meaning of his enigmatic works."]
---. "William Blake • On Vision's Wing • Part 2: Innocence & Experience." Creative Codex (September 30, 2024) ["What makes Blake's Songs of Innocent & of Experience a work of genius? What is the nature of vision? What is Blake's concept of fourfold vision? Is it even graspable by the intellect? We will make the attempt. Join us for a deep dive into all of this and much more."]
Doyle, Emily. "On Sex, Soul Loneliness, and Walking toward Terror: A Conversation with R. O. Kwon." World Literature Today (January 2023) ["Writing toward fear, toward terror, tends to be fruitful. If nothing else, you’re not bored. ... When people are engaged in sex or thinking about or wanting sex, they’re vulnerable. Literature loves vulnerability."]
Due, Tannarive, et al. "The Horror Noire Education Guide." The Graveyard Shift Sisters (February 11, 2019)
---. "Locked in With Monsters." Talking Scared #168 (November 7, 2023) ["History is haunted. Ghosts are injustice persevering. So many horror stories hinge on that idea, but for Tananarive Due it’s more personal than that. Her new novel, The Reformatory, is borne from the ghosts hidden in her own family history. The story takes place in a hideously cruel juvenile correction facility, in a racist town, in the 1950s. As you can imagine, very few good things happen to her child protagonist. We talk about the link between horror and history, about writing from her family tree, about the very real reformatories that persisted into the modern era, and about looking cruelty full in the face and wrestling it into story."]
Durham, Chris. "The Road to Guantanamo (2006): A Commentary." Film and History (ND)
Ecott, Tim. "Sigmundur and the Golden Ring." New Books in Historical Fiction (November 3, 2024) ["Tim Ecott, who is well-known as a journalist and writer, has, in his last several books, turned his attention to the history and culture of the Faroe Islands. High in the North Atlantic, half-way between Scotland and Iceland, the islands' inhabitants remain closely connected to the Viking settlers who established communities on Faroe over one thousand years ago. Tim's most recent book, Sigmundur and the Golden Ring (Sprotin, 2024), offers a compelling re-telling of the Faroese saga. It's a complex Viking revenge tragedy: two teenage cousins are wronged by an older distant relative; they set out to right those wrongs; but their success begs the question of who the story's hero might be. "]
Ehrenreich, Barbara. "Body Work: The Curiously Self-Punishing Rites of Fitness Culture." The Baffler #38 ["An excerpt from the book Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer © 2018 by Barbara Ehrenreich, forthcoming from Twelve on April 10, 2018."]
Elkin, Lauren. Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art. Macmillan, 2023. ["What kind of art does a monster make? And what if monster is a verb? Noun or a verb, the idea is a dare: to overwhelm limits, to invent our own definitions of beauty. In this dazzlingly original reassessment of women’s stories, bodies, and art, Lauren Elkin—the celebrated author of Flâneuse—explores the ways in which feminist artists have taken up the challenge of their work and how they not only react against the patriarchy but redefine their own aesthetic aims. How do we tell the truth about our experiences as bodies? What is the language, what are the materials, that we need to transcribe them? And what are the unique questions facing those engaged with female bodies, queer bodies, sick bodies, racialized bodies? Encompassing with a rich genealogy of work across the literary and artistic landscape, Elkin makes daring links between disparate points of reference— among them Julia Margaret Cameron’s photography, Kara Walker’s silhouettes, Vanessa Bell’s portraits, Eva Hesse’s rope sculptures, Carolee Schneemann’s body art, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s trilingual masterpiece DICTEE—and steps into the tradition of cultural criticism established by Susan Sontag, Hélène Cixous, and Maggie Nelson. An erudite, potent examination of beauty and excess, sentiment and touch, the personal and the political, the ambiguous and the opaque, Art Monsters is a radical intervention that forces us to consider how the idea of the art monster might transform the way we imagine—and enact—our lives."]
Fales, Adam. "Horror in Revision: On the Contemporary Gothic." Los Angeles Review of Books (January 23, 2018)
Fawaz, Ramzi. "The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics (New York University Press, 2016)." New Books in Literary Studies (August 17, 2023) ["Ramzi Fawaz, the Romnes Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Published by NYU Press in 2016, The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics is his first book. In 2022, Ramzi published Queer Forms, for which he was interviewed by Lilly Goren for the New Books in Political Science channel. He is also the co-editor of Keywords for Comics Studies, with Deborah Whaley and Shelley Streeby, both with NYU Press. Ramzi’s recently published articles include “Legions of Superheroes: Diversity, Multiplicity, and Collective Action Against Genocide in the Superhero Comic Book,” in Social Text; and wrote the introduction to “Queer About Comics,” a special issue of American Literature, with Darieck Scott. A bit about the book: In 1964, noted literary critic Leslie Fiedler described American youth as "new mutants," social rebels severing their attachments to American culture to remake themselves in their own image. 1960s comic book creators, anticipating Fiedler, began to morph American superheroes from icons of nationalism and white masculinity into actual mutant outcasts, defined by their genetic difference from ordinary humanity. These powerful misfits and "freaks" soon came to embody the social and political aspirations of America's most marginalized groups, including women, racial and sexual minorities, and the working classes. In The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics (NYU Press, 2016), Ramzi Fawaz draws upon queer theory to tell the story of these monstrous fantasy figures and how they grapple with radical politics from Civil Rights and The New Left to Women's and Gay Liberation Movements. Through a series of comic book case studies--including The Justice League of America, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, and The New Mutants--alongside late 20th century fan writing, cultural criticism, and political documents, Fawaz reveals how the American superhero modeled new forms of social belonging that counterculture youth would embrace in the 1960s and after. The New Mutants provides the first full-length study to consider the relationship between comic book fantasy and radical politics in the modern United States."]
Featherstone, Liza. "Consumer Society and the Curation of Culture." Citations Needed (November 21, 2018) ["Focus groups have long-been derided by the left, right, and center for watering down culture and reducing creative and political endeavors to dull, show-of-hand reductionism. But what if focus groups – which first arose from socialist experiments in 1920s Vienna – are not inherently bad? What if they've simply been exploited by the capitalist class and could, potentially, have much to offer a left-wing, democratic vision of the world? We are joined by author and professor Liza Featherstone to discuss the problems and potential of the much-maligned, but often scapegoated, focus group."]
Felber, Garrett. "The Missing Malcolm X." Boston Review (November 28, 2018) ["Our understanding of Malcolm X is inextricably linked to his autobiography, but newly discovered materials force us to reexamine his legacy. "]
Fhlainn, Sorcha Ní. "Postmodern Vampires." This Is Not a Pipe (November 26, 2020) ["Sorcha Ní Fhlainn discusses her book Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture with Chris Richardson. Ní Fhlainn is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies and American studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom. She is a founding member of the Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies and author of Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture (Palgrave, 2019). She has published widely on socio-cultural history, subjectivity and postmodernism in Film Studies, American studies, Horror studies, and Popular Culture. Previous books include Clive Barker: Dark imaginer (Manchester UP, 2017), and The Worlds of Back to the Future: Critical Essays on the Films (McFarland, 2010), and articles in Adaptation (Oxford UP), and Horror Studies (Intellect). She is currently leading a research project and writing a monograph on the popular culture of the 1980s."]
Finnerty, Paraic, Linda Freeman and Fiona Green. "Emily Dickinson." In Our Time (May 11, 2017) ["Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and works of Emily Dickinson, arguably the most startling and original poet in America in the C19th. According to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, her correspondent and mentor, writing 15 years after her death, "Few events in American literary history have been more curious than the sudden rise of Emily Dickinson into a posthumous fame only more accentuated by the utterly recluse character of her life and by her aversion to even a literary publicity." That was in 1891 and, as more of Dickinson's poems were published, and more of her remaining letters, the more the interest in her and appreciation of her grew. With her distinctive voice, her abundance, and her exploration of her private world, she is now seen by many as one of the great lyric poets. "]
Flight, Thomas. "Why The Zone of Interest Does Not Let You See." (Posted on Youtube: May 2024) ["A look at how The Zone of Interest uses off-screen space and sound design in one of the most hauntingly powerful ways I've ever seen in a film. Featuring an interview with Johnnie Burn, sound designer who just won an Oscar for his work on this film."]
Flynn, Catherine. "On James Joyce's Ulysses." Writ Large (December 12, 2022) ["Perhaps more than any other book, Ulysses has the reputation of being difficult—it is dense, allusive, and often hard to follow. But Joyce wasn’t trying to be challenging for its own sake, or because he sadistically wanted to punish future students assigned his book. Quite the contrary. With Ulysses, Joyce wanted to explore and convey what it is to be alive. And just like his book, life is difficult and confusing, but also thrilling and joyful. Catherine Flynn is Associate Professor, Affiliate of the Program in Critical Theory, Director of Berkeley Connect in English, and Director of Irish Studies at the University of California Berkeley. She is the author of James Joyce and the Matter of Paris."]
Fontainelle, Earl. "Methodologies for the study of Magic." The Secret History of Western Esotericism (September 20, 2017) [MB - OK, quick, what comes to your mind when you hear the word magic? I'm really grooving on this podcast. I like the way Earl Fontainelle looks at these subjects from multiple angles. Here in order to start off an exploration of of understandings/histories of magic, he breaks down the etymology, histories, and disinformation surrounding the word/concept. Highly recommended for those that practice magic, those that think magic is silly/dangerous, those that have deep religious beliefs (especially of a Manichean nature), those that are rigidly atheist (I would say fundamentalist), and definitely those that are wrapped up in fanatical ideologies (the type where whole groups of beings/cultures are the enemy and need to be wiped out). What is good or bad - how do we decide? what are the consequences of those decisions? The overall series is a treasure for artists/creatives/seekers (and Humanities professors like me :) What comes to your mind when you think of magic - what happens when we actual explore a concept and think about the multiple ways it is framed?]
---. "We’re Together In Dreams: Dreaming and Western Esotericism." The Secret History of Western Esotericism #7 (October 4, 2017) ["In approaching the western esoteric traditions, we are confronted by visions, magic, esoteric interpretations, and fantastical otherworldly journeys. Luckily, everyone on earth has experience with all of these strange phenomena, because everyone dreams. In this episode we formulate some preliminary musings on the importance of dreams for western esotericism, and discuss some of the theories about dreams and their significance that we find in the earliest texts of the western tradition. Ranging from lying gods in the Homeric corpus to dæmonic hypnagogic possession in the late antique Platonist writer Iamblichus, this episode sets the stage for things to come."]
Ford, Phil and J.F. Martel. "The Beauty and the Horror." Weird Studies #171 (June 12, 2024) ["This week on Weird Studies, Phil and JF explore the intersections of the beautiful and the terrible in art and literature. There is a conventional beauty that calms and placates, and there is a radical beauty which, taking horror’s pale-gloved hand, gives up all pretense to permanence and fixity and joins the danse macabre of our endless becoming."]
---. "Ecstacy, Sin and 'The White People.'" Weird Studies #3 (February 21, 2018) ["JF and Phil delve deep into Arthur Machen's fin-de-siècle masterpiece, "The White People," for insight into the nature of ecstasy, the psychology of fairies, the meaning of sin, and the challenge of living without a moral horizon."]
---. "Make Believe: On the Power of Pretentiousness." Weird Studies #166 (April 3, 2024) ["In culture and the arts, labeling something you don't like (or don't understand) "pretentious" is the easy way out. It's a conversation killer, implying that any dialogue is pointless, and those who disagree are merely duped by what you've cleverly discerned as a charade. It's akin to cynically revealing that a magic show is all smoke and mirrors—as if creative vision doesn't necessitate a leap of faith. In this episode, Phil and JF explore the nuances of pretentiousness, distinguishing between its fruitful and hollow forms. They argue that the real gamble, and inherent value, of daring to pretend lies in recognizing that imagination is an active contributor to, rather than a detractor from, reality."]
---. "The Medium is the Message." Weird Studies #71 (April 15, 2020) ["On the surface, the phrase "the medium is the message," prophetic as it may have been when Marshall McLuhan coined it, points a now-obvious fact of our wired world, namely that the content of any medium is less important than its form. The advent of email, for instance, has brought about changes in society and culture that are more far-reaching than the content of any particular email. On the other hand, this aphorism of McLuhan's has the ring of an utterance of the Delphic Oracle. As Phil proposes in this episode of Weird Studies, it is an example of what Zen practitioners call a koan, a statement that occludes and illumines in equal measures, a jewel whose shining surface is an invitation to descend into dark depths. Join JF and Phil as they discuss the mystical and cosmic implications of McLuhan's oracular vision."]
---. "Morning of the Mutants: On the Castrati." Weird Studies #72 (April 29, 2020) ["For over two centuries in early modern Italy, boys were selected for their singing talent castrated before the onset of puberty. The goal was to preserve the qualities of their voice even as they grew into manhood. The procedure resulted in other physiological changes which, combined with an unnaturally high voice, made the castrati the most prodigious singers on the continent. As Martha Feldman shows in her book The Castrato, a masterpiece of cultural history, the castrated singer was such a singular figure that he invited comparisons with angels, animals, and kings, attracting adoration and ridicule in equal measures. The castrato was a true liminal being, and as JF and Phil discover in this episode of Weird Studies, an unlikely herald of the present age."]
---. "On Lost Highway." Weird Studies #83 (September 30, 2020) ["David Lynch's Lost Highway was released in 1997, five years after Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me elicited a fusillade of boos and hisses at Cannes. The Twin Peaks prequel's poor reception allegedly sent its American auteur spiralling into something of an existential crisis, and Lost Highway has often been interpreted as a response to -- or result of -- that crisis. Certainly, the film is among Lynch's darkest, boldest, and most enigmatic. But of course, we do the film an injustice by reducing it to the psychological state of its director. Indeed, one of the contentions of this episode is that all artistic interpretation constitutes a kind of injustice. But as you will hear, that doesn't stop Phil and JF from interpreting the hell out of the film. Just or unjust, fair or unfair, interpretation may well be necessary in aesthetic matters. It may be the means by which we grow through the experience of art, the way by which art makes us something new, strange, and other. Perhaps the trick is to remember that no mode of interpretation is, to borrow Freud's phrase, the one and only via regia, but that every one is just another highway at night..."]
---. "The Medium is the Message." Weird Studies #71 (April 15, 2020) ["On the surface, the phrase "the medium is the message," prophetic as it may have been when Marshall McLuhan coined it, points a now-obvious fact of our wired world, namely that the content of any medium is less important than its form. The advent of email, for instance, has brought about changes in society and culture that are more far-reaching than the content of any particular email. On the other hand, this aphorism of McLuhan's has the ring of an utterance of the Delphic Oracle. As Phil proposes in this episode of Weird Studies, it is an example of what Zen practitioners call a koan, a statement that occludes and illumines in equal measures, a jewel whose shining surface is an invitation to descend into dark depths. Join JF and Phil as they discuss the mystical and cosmic implications of McLuhan's oracular vision."]
---. "Morning of the Mutants: On the Castrati." Weird Studies #72 (April 29, 2020) ["For over two centuries in early modern Italy, boys were selected for their singing talent castrated before the onset of puberty. The goal was to preserve the qualities of their voice even as they grew into manhood. The procedure resulted in other physiological changes which, combined with an unnaturally high voice, made the castrati the most prodigious singers on the continent. As Martha Feldman shows in her book The Castrato, a masterpiece of cultural history, the castrated singer was such a singular figure that he invited comparisons with angels, animals, and kings, attracting adoration and ridicule in equal measures. The castrato was a true liminal being, and as JF and Phil discover in this episode of Weird Studies, an unlikely herald of the present age."]
---. "On Lost Highway." Weird Studies #83 (September 30, 2020) ["David Lynch's Lost Highway was released in 1997, five years after Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me elicited a fusillade of boos and hisses at Cannes. The Twin Peaks prequel's poor reception allegedly sent its American auteur spiralling into something of an existential crisis, and Lost Highway has often been interpreted as a response to -- or result of -- that crisis. Certainly, the film is among Lynch's darkest, boldest, and most enigmatic. But of course, we do the film an injustice by reducing it to the psychological state of its director. Indeed, one of the contentions of this episode is that all artistic interpretation constitutes a kind of injustice. But as you will hear, that doesn't stop Phil and JF from interpreting the hell out of the film. Just or unjust, fair or unfair, interpretation may well be necessary in aesthetic matters. It may be the means by which we grow through the experience of art, the way by which art makes us something new, strange, and other. Perhaps the trick is to remember that no mode of interpretation is, to borrow Freud's phrase, the one and only via regia, but that every one is just another highway at night..."]
---. "On Lovecraft." Weird Studies #29 (October 9, 2018) ["Phil and JF indulge their autumnal mood in this discussion of Howard Phillips Lovecraft's work, specifically the essay "Notes on the Writing of Weird Fiction" and the prose piece "Nyarlathotep." Philip K. Dick, Algernon Blackwood, and David Foster Wallace make appearances as our fearsome hosts talk about how the weird story differs from conventional horror fiction, how Lovecraft gives voice to contemporary fears of physical, psychological and political infection, and how authors like Lovecraft and Dick can be seen as prophetic poets of the "great unbuffering of the Western self.""]
---. "The Only Possible End: On Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History'." Weird Studies #156 (October 25, 2023) ["There are works of weird fiction that dispense their strangeness so subtly that many readers never pick up on it, books that allow themselves to be passed for mundane, the better to haunt us after we put them down. Donna Tartt's debut novel The Secret History, published in 1992, is such a work. On the surface, it is a brilliant, yet completely naturalistic, telling of the lead-up and aftermath of a murder. But The Secret History is also a work of the depths, and readers who go in seeking the Weird will find it lurking on every page. More than a masterpiece of psychological exploration, it is a story about the resurgence of the old god Dionysus, and a chronicle of fate; fate conceived, in the manner of the Ancient Greeks, as a cosmic force."]
---. "Philip K. Dick: Adrift in the Universe." Weird Studies #10 (April 18, 2018) ["In 1977, Philip K. Dick read an essay in France entitled, "If You Find this World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others." In it, he laid out one of the dominant tropes of his fictional oeuvre, the idea of parallel universes. It became clear in the course of the lecture that Dick didn't intend this to be a talk about science fiction, but about real life - indeed, about his life. In this episode, Phil and JF seriously consider the speculations which, depending on whom you ask, make PKD either a genius or a madman. This distinction may not matter in the end. As Dick himself wrote in his 8,000-page Exegesis: "The madman speaks the moral of the piece.""]
---. "On the I Ching." Weird Studies #82 (September 16, 2020) ["The Book of Changes, or I Ching, is more than an ancient text. It's a metaphysical guide, a fun game, and -- to your hosts at least -- a lifelong, steadfast friend. The I Ching has come up more than once on the show, and now is the time for JF and Phil to face it head on, discussing the role it has played in their lives while delving into some of its mysteries."]
---. "Orbis Tertius: Borges on Magic, Conspiracy and Idealism." Weird Studies #32 (October 31, 2018) ["Jorge Luis Borges's story "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" is a metaphysical detective story, an armchair conspiracy thriller, and a masterpiece of weird fiction. In this tale penned by a true literary magician, Phil and JF see an opportunity to talk about magic, hyperstition, non-linear time, and the power of metaphysics to reshape the world. When Phil questions his co-host's animus against idealist doctrines, the discussion turns to dreams, cybernetics, and information theory, before reaching common ground with the dumbfound appreciation of radical mystery."]
---. Our Old Friend the Monolith: On Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey." Weird Studies #75 (June 10, 2020) ["'You don't find reality only in your own backyard, you know,' Stanley Kubrick once told an interviewer. 'In fact, sometimes that's the last place you'll find it.' Oddly, this episode of Weird Studies begins with Phil Ford hatching the idea of putting a replica of the monolith from 2001 in his backyard. As the ensuing discussion suggests, this would amount to putting reality -- or the Real, as we like to call it -- in the place where it may be least apparent. Perhaps that is what Kubrick did when he planted his monolithic film in thousands of movie theatres back in 1968. Moviegoers went in expecting a Kubrickian twist on Buck Rogers; they came out changed by the experience, much like the hominids of great veld in the "Dawn of Man" sequence that opens the film. This is what all great art does, and if you look closely, maybe 2001 can tell you something about how it does it. Because in the end, the film is the monolith, and the monolith is all art."]---. "Philip K. Dick: Adrift in the Universe." Weird Studies #10 (April 18, 2018) ["In 1977, Philip K. Dick read an essay in France entitled, "If You Find this World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others." In it, he laid out one of the dominant tropes of his fictional oeuvre, the idea of parallel universes. It became clear in the course of the lecture that Dick didn't intend this to be a talk about science fiction, but about real life - indeed, about his life. In this episode, Phil and JF seriously consider the speculations which, depending on whom you ask, make PKD either a genius or a madman. This distinction may not matter in the end. As Dick himself wrote in his 8,000-page Exegesis: "The madman speaks the moral of the piece.""]
---. "Visions of the Wasteland: On George Miller's 'Mad Max' Films." Weird Studies #168 (May 1, 2024) ["There are artists who express the vision of a place, person, or thing so vividly and originally that it sets the bar for all future imaginings. With his four Mad Max films, this is what George Miller did with the image of the Wasteland. No one has been able to capture the stark, raw energy and chaotic beauty of a post-apocalyptic desert quite like Miller. His portrayal not only defines the aesthetic of a cinematic world but also prompts us to think about the meaning of civilization, technology, humanity, and how they intertwine. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss how Mad Max challenges our perception of civilization, and our conception of the human."]
---. "Weird Music, Part One." Weird Studies #27 (September 26, 2018) ["In this first of two episodes devoted to the music of the weird, Phil and JF discuss two works that have bowled them over: the second movement of Ligeti's Musica Ricercata, used to powerful effect in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and the opening music to Cronenberg's film Naked Lunch, composed by Howard Shore and featuring the inimitable stylings of Ornette Coleman. After teasing out the intrinsic weirdness of music in general, the dialogue soars over a strange country rife with shadows, mad geniuses, and skittering insects. And to top it all off, Phil breaks out the grand piano."]
---. "What a Fool Believes: On the Unnumbered Card in the Tarot." Weird Studies #77 (July 8, 2020) ["'What a fool believes he sees, no wise man can reason away.' This line from a Doobie Brothers song is probably one of the most profound in the history of rock-'n'-roll. It is profound for all the reasons (or unreasons) explored in this discussion, which lasers in on just one of the major trumps of the traditional tarot deck, that of the Fool. The Fool is integral to the world, yet stands outside it. The Fool is an idiot but also a sage. The Fool does not know; s/he intuits, improvises a path through the brambles of existence. We intend this episode on the Fool to be the first in an occasional series covering all twenty-two of the major trumps of the Tarot of Marseilles."]
---. "Weird Music, Part One." Weird Studies #27 (September 26, 2018) ["In this first of two episodes devoted to the music of the weird, Phil and JF discuss two works that have bowled them over: the second movement of Ligeti's Musica Ricercata, used to powerful effect in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and the opening music to Cronenberg's film Naked Lunch, composed by Howard Shore and featuring the inimitable stylings of Ornette Coleman. After teasing out the intrinsic weirdness of music in general, the dialogue soars over a strange country rife with shadows, mad geniuses, and skittering insects. And to top it all off, Phil breaks out the grand piano."]
---. "What a Fool Believes: On the Unnumbered Card in the Tarot." Weird Studies #77 (July 8, 2020) ["'What a fool believes he sees, no wise man can reason away.' This line from a Doobie Brothers song is probably one of the most profound in the history of rock-'n'-roll. It is profound for all the reasons (or unreasons) explored in this discussion, which lasers in on just one of the major trumps of the traditional tarot deck, that of the Fool. The Fool is integral to the world, yet stands outside it. The Fool is an idiot but also a sage. The Fool does not know; s/he intuits, improvises a path through the brambles of existence. We intend this episode on the Fool to be the first in an occasional series covering all twenty-two of the major trumps of the Tarot of Marseilles."]
---. "Whirl Without End: On M.C. Richards' Centering." Weird Studies #35 (December 5, 2018) ["The first step in any pottery project is to center the clay on the potter's wheel. In her landmark essay Centering: In Pottery, Poetry and the Person (1964), the American poet M. C. Richards turns this simple action into a metaphor for all creative acts, including the act of living your life. The result is a penetrating and poetic reflection on the artistic process that values change, unknowing, and radical becoming, making Richards' text a guide to creativity that leaves other examples of that evergreen genre in the dust. Phil and JF get their hands dirty trying to understanding what centering is, and what it entails for a life of creation and becoming. The discussion brings in a number of other thinkers and artists including Friedrich Nietzsche, Norman O. Brown, Carl Jung, Antonin Artaud, and Flannery O'Connor."]
Ford, Phil, Conner Habib and J.F. Martel. "On Clive Barker's Hellraiser and The Hellbound Heart." Weird Studies #144 (April 12, 2023) ["In the 1980s, Clive Barker burst onto the cultural scene with The Books of Blood, collections of unforgettable tales of horror, depravity, and decadence the likes of which had been seldom seen since the days of Lautréamont's Les Chants de Maldoror and Huysmans' Là-Bas. In the decades that followed, he went on to create an astounding body of work in fantasy and horror as a writer, artist, and film director. In this episode, author, lecturer, and podcaster Conner Habib joins JF and Phil to discuss what is arguably Barker's best-known work, the 1987 horror classic Hellraiser, as well as the novella that inspired it, "The Hellbound Heart.""]
Fontainelle, Earl. "So What is Western Esotericism, Anyway?" The Secret History of Western Esotericism (September 5, 2017) ["This episode introduces the SHWEP project, designed to be a tool for anyone wishing to explore the often misunderstood or overlooked byways of western culture; the aim is to be accessible to anyone with an interest in the history of ideas, while maintaining a standard of evidence-based, reliable, and balanced scholarship which will make the podcast useful to high-level academic specialists as well. The SHWEP is a long-form historical investigation, starting from as far back in history as we can go and attempting to trace the genealogies of important streams of esotericism all the way from the beginning to the present day. By engaging in dialogue with leading experts and specialists in every branch of the amazing field of western esoteric studies, SHWEP aims to provide the most complete, detailed, and up-to-date resource for studying these currents available anywhere outside of formal academe."]
Ford, Phil and J.F. Martel. "Art is Another Word for Truth: On Orson Welles's F is for Fake." Weird Studies (May 29, 2024) ["Orson Welles made F for Fake in the early seventies, while still bobbing in the wake of a Pauline Kael essay accusing him of being cinema's greatest fraud. Ostensibly a documentary on the famous art forger Elmyr de Hory and his biographer Clifford Irving (a talented faker in his own right), the film blurs the line between fact and fiction in an effort to explore art's weird entanglement with illusion, magic, and ultimately, the search for truth. This is a film unlike any other, and it is arguably Welles's most important contribution to the evolution and theory of film aesthetics."]
Francis, Marc. "Smoke and Mirrors: The Bio-Con Documentary in the Age of Trump." Film Quarterly (September 23, 2020) ["Back in 2016, when Donald J. Trump was elected president of the United States, there was considerable public discussion about whether or not he would be able to govern by trafficking in the same falsehoods and public prejudices that he peddled as a candidate. To much horror and dismay, four years later, he has proven unequivocally that he can. Popular film and television have answered this mass erosion of truth and justice with narratives about powerful deceivers and sophists. Some, such as festival hit Bad Education (Cory Finley, 2019) and Ryan Murphy’s The Politician (2019–), are vehicles for political commentary, while others, such as Evan Peters’s story line in Pose (2018–), directly link to Trump.1 No fiction, though, has yet to offer as cohesive and relevant a response to the Trump era as the recent cycle of documentaries that I would term the “bio-con” (biographical con) documentary."]
The Frankfurt School (Critical Theory) Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Archive)Freeberg, Ernst. "A Traitor to His Species: Henry Bergh and the Birth of the Animal Rights Movement (Basic Books, 2020)." New Books in Biography (October 13, 2020) ["In Gilded Age America, people and animals lived cheek-by-jowl in environments that were dirty and dangerous to man and animal alike. The industrial city brought suffering, but it also inspired a compassion for animals that fueled a controversial anti-cruelty movement. From the center of these debates, Henry Bergh launched a shocking campaign to grant rights to animals. Ernest Freeberg's book A Traitor to His Species: Henry Bergh and the Birth of the Animal Rights Movement (Basic Books, 2020) is revelatory social history, awash with colorful characters. Cheered on by thousands of men and women who joined his cause, Bergh fought with robber barons, Five Points gangs, and legendary impresario P.T. Barnum, as they pushed for new laws to protect trolley horses, livestock, stray dogs, and other animals. Raucous and entertaining, A Traitor to His Species tells the story of a remarkable man who gave voice to the voiceless and shaped our modern relationship with animals. Ernest Freeberg is a distinguished professor of humanities and head of the history department at the University of Tennessee. He has authored three award-winning books, including The Age of Edison. He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee."]
Gagliano, Rudy, et al. "The Harder They Come: Reggae Catches Fire on Film." MUBI Podcast (April 13, 2023) ["In 1972, director Perry Henzell set a gritty crime thriller in Jamaica's exploding, politically charged music scene, and came up with The Harder They Come —the cult-movie spark that started reggae music's slow burn around the world. Host Rico Gagliano tells the story of a film and a soundtrack that inspired rebels and rockers from the Clash to Willie Nelson. Guests include Henzell's daughter Justine, UK music writer Lloyd Bradley, and Paul Douglas—drummer and bandleader of reggae legends The Maytals."]
García, Alixa. "On Extinction & Enchantment." Sounds of Sand #58 (October 26, 2023) ["Alixa García is a Colombian born, globally-raised, multi-disciplinary artist, activist, and cultural activator whose work is imbued in ritual, spirit, and deep reverence for our Great Mother, Great Lover, our Earth. She is an award-winning activist, poet, and filmmaker. She is also a professional writer, visual artist, musician, and facilitator. Her work has been published by Whit Press, AK Press, Hatchett, & Daraja Press."]
Gardner, Caden Mark. "Bridging the Gaps in Trans History: A Conversation with K. J. Rawson." Current (January 27, 2021) ["Since launching in 2016, the Digital Transgender Archive has functioned as an international collaboration among more than sixty colleges, universities, nonprofit organizations, public libraries, and private collections. Gathering a wide range of trans-related materials, including photos, magazines, newspaper clippings, and newsletters, the website opens up new possibilities for those who research trans history and those who seek to educate on the topic. The wealth of archival materials it contains shows the root of evolving identities, language, and perceptions tied to current concepts of being transgender. The DTA shows trans history and culture as it was, the small but vibrant pockets of brave people who defied social norms. Often these narratives have been intentionally hidden from mainstream society or ignored by the public at large, but access to this archive opens a door to seeing how communities and individuals reacted to the world around them."]
Gardner, Caden Mark and Willow Catelyn Maclay. "On the Trans Film Image." The Film Comment Podcast (June 25, 2024) ["In April 2021, Film Comment published a Trans Cinema Roundtable Podcast, in which two trans film critics and two trans filmmakers answered questions submitted by listeners on what constitutes a cinema of transness. Now, two of those panelists—Caden Mark Gardner and Willow Catelyn Maclay—are about to publish a new book on that very subject. Corpses, Fools and Monsters is a thorough inquiry into the history, present, and future of what Caden and Willow call the “trans film image”—not a fully developed cinema, yet, but gestures, glimpses, and traces that have been visible in film from its earliest days and have now gained a renewed creative force. On today’s episode, Caden and Willow join Film Comment Editor Devika Girish to talk about the extensive research they undertook for the book, why representation can be a complex term for trans cinephiles, and films from reappraised classics like Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Toshio Matsumoto’s Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) to new works by trans filmmakers, including Vera Drew’s The People’s Joker and Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow."]
Gardner, Nathaniel. "The Study of Photography in Latin America: Critical Insights and Methodological Approaches." New Books in Latin American Studies (April 18, 2024) ["The Study of Photography in Latin America: Critical Insights and Methodological Approaches (University of New Mexico Press, 2023) provides an insider's perspective to the study of photography. Nathanial Gardner provides readers with a carefully structured introduction that lays out his unique methodology for this book, which features over eighty photographs and the insights from sixteen prominent Latin American photography scholars and historians, including Boris Kossoy, John Marz, and Ana Mauad. The work reflects the advances of the study of photography throughout Latin America with certain emphasis on Brazil and Mexico. The author further underlines the role of important institutions and builds context by discussing influential theories and key texts that currently guide the discipline. The Study of Photography in Latin America is critical to all who want to expand their current knowledge of the subject and engage with its experts."]
George, Maxwell. "The Music of Kentucky." Oxford American (November 21, 2017)
Gilbert, Sophie. "The Lazy Trope of the Unethical Female Journalist." The Atlantic (August 20, 2018)
Gillepsie, Michael, et al. "Thinking About Watchmen: A Roundtable." Film Quarterly 73.4 (Summer 2020)
Gioia, Dana. "On Charles Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil." Sacred and Profane #56 (December 2022) ["I am joined by the poet and critic Dana Gioia to discuss Charles Baudelaire's famous book of poems, Les Fleurs du Mal, or The Flowers of Evil. We tackle some big questions in this episode, such as whether and how evil can be beautiful, the nature of Catholic art and poetry, original sin, and the poet as a damned figure."]
Giovanni, Nikki. "In Her Revolutionary Dream." Los Angeles Review of Books (January 10, 2019) ["Nikki Giovanni — a “queen mother of movements” — whose positions on the issues are just as potent now as they were over half a century ago. Giovanni’s first book, Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968), sold over 10 thousand copies in its first year. She has been dubbed “Poet of the Black Revolution,” and is one of the foremost authors of the Black Arts movement, influenced by the Civil Rights movement and Black Power movement. Since then, she has completed 20 books of poetry, about a dozen children’s books (from Spin a Soft Black Song [1971] to I Am Loved [2018]), and seven recording albums. She has received dozens of awards — honorary doctorates and the keys to cities — and recognition for her social impact on women and African-American communities."]
Giroliman, Mars. "What is Speculative Fiction?" Southern New Hampshire University (September 21, 2021) ["With subgenres like fantasy, science fiction, horror, alternate history and more, speculative fiction is an encompassing genre that freely explores possibility and impossibility alike."]
Gladwell, Malcolm. "The Big Man Can't Shoot." Revisionist History 1.3 (ND) ["“The Big Man Can’t Shoot” is a meditation on the puzzle of why smart people do dumb things—why excellence is such a difficult and elusive goal, even for the best-intentioned."]
---. "The Lady Vanishes." Revisionist History 1.1 (ND) ["In the late 19th, a painting by a virtually unknown artist took England by storm: The Roll Call but after that brilliant first effort, the artist all but disappeared. Why?The Lady Vanishes explores the world of art and politics to examines the strange phenomenon of the “token”—the outsider whose success serves not to alleviate discrimination but perpetuate it. If a country elects a female president, does that mean the door is now open for all women to follow? Or does that simply give the status quo the justification to close the door again?"]
Grandin, Greg. "On American Expansion, Part One: The Myth of the Frontier." On the Media (March 29, 2019) ["What are the stories that America has told about itself? In the first of a three-part series on the notion of American Exceptionalism, Brooke speaks with historian Greg Grandin about America's founding narrative: the country's expansion westward. In his new book, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, Grandin traces how the idea of endless, unstoppable growth has influenced US policy and psychology — and how President Trump’s call for a barrier at the southern border upends the idea of America as a country of boundless possibility."]
Greenwald, Glenn. "Roger Waters, Marielle Franco, and the Power of Inspiration in the Face of Darkness and Danger." The Intercept (October 25, 2018) ["Impotence and hopelessness are a tactic, a lie told by those who wield power, to foster resignation, passivity, and acceptance."]
Greenwell, Garth. "An Unquiet House: Jonathan Glazer's The Zone of Interest." To a Green Thought (February 5, 2024) ["I wasn’t sure what I thought after seeing the film for the first time. All I knew was that something had happened to me: the film wouldn’t let me go, it was like a dark stain spreading in my interior. The film disquieted me in a way that felt more important than whether it was “good” or “bad,” certainly more important than any argument I might make justifying my response. I talked about it with friends. I bought the Martin Amis novel on which the film is putatively based (it’s also up for the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, though it’s hardly an adaptation at all) and read it in a day. I went to the film again, this time not in a little art cinema but in the huge AMC in Times Square, my first time in that bizarre labyrinth of a space, where I felt a little like a lost figure in an Escher engraving, riding endless escalators up and up. Ten minutes into the movie—maybe it didn’t even take that long—I felt sure I was seeing something great."]
Griffin, Farah Jasmine and Mark Anthony Neal. "Respect: A Tribute to Aretha Franklin, an Icon of the Civil Rights & Feminist Movements." Democracy Now (August 17, 2018) ["Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, died Thursday at her home in Detroit at the age of 76. For decades, Aretha Franklin has been celebrated as one of the greatest American singers of any genre, who helped give birth to soul and redefined the American musical tradition. In 1987, Aretha Franklin became the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She held the record for the most songs on the Billboard Top 100 for 40 years. Rolling Stone ranked her the greatest singer of all time on its top 100 list, calling her “a gift from God.” Her hit single “Respect” became part of the soundtrack to the civil rights movement, which she also supported behind the scenes. We speak with professors Mark Anthony Neal of Duke University and Farah Jasmine Griffin of Columbia University." Part two: "Angela Davis: Aretha Franklin Offered to Post Bail for Me, Saying “Black People Will Be Free.”" and Part three: "Angela Davis: Aretha Franklin “Will Forever Animate Our Collective Sense of Desire for Change.”"]
Griffiths, David. "Queer Theory for Lichens." Undercurrents #19 (2015) ["The symbiotic view of life suggests that we are not individuals, and that we have never been individuals. While the traditional view of organisms (including humans) is that they are self-contained, discrete, and autonomous individuals, scientific research is increasingly suggesting that this is misleading; the view of organisms as individuals is perhaps no longer viable. This is illustrated in the symbiotic bacterial ancestry of the mitochondria in “human” cells, as well as in the contemporary symbiotic relationships that are at work in the human gut microbiota. Eating, digesting and living are impossible without our symbiotic relationships. The brief natural cultural history of lichens that I have offered illustrates these points and demonstrates that if life and nature are to be found anywhere, it is not autonomous individuals but the constitutive comminglings, involvements, and interconnected relationships that make up the ecological mesh."]
Gunderman, Richard. "John Keats’ concept of ‘negative capability’ – or sitting in uncertainty – is needed now more than ever." The Conversation (February 22, 2021) ["Keats coined the term negative capability in a letter he wrote to his brothers George and Tom in 1817. Inspired by Shakespeare’s work, he describes it as “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” Negative here is not pejorative. Instead, it implies the ability to resist explaining away what we do not understand. Rather than coming to an immediate conclusion about an event, idea or person, Keats advises resting in doubt and continuing to pay attention and probe in order to understand it more completely. ... It is also a good idea to take the time to look at matters from multiple perspectives. Shakespeare’s comedies are full of mistaken identities and misconceptions, including mixed-up genders. Keats reminds us that we are most likely to gain new insights if we can stop assuming that we know everything we need to know about people by neatly shoehorning them into preconceived boxes. Negative capability also testifies to the importance of humility, which Keats described as a “capability of submission.” As Socrates indicates in Plato’s “Apology,” the people least likely to learn anything new are the ones who think they already know it all. By contrast, those who are willing to question their own assumptions and adopt new perspectives are in the best position to arrive at new insights. Keats believed that the world could never be fully understood, let alone controlled."]
Habib, Connor. "The Archangel Michael and the Challenges of Our Time." Against Everyone #275 (September 29, 2024) ["Michaelmas is the esoteric christian celebration of the Archangel Michael. How can connecting with the impulses of the holiday show us how to co-share their burden of those who are suffering; strengthen love through our will; and leave the path of empowering violence?"]
Hack, Matt. "Ambivalent cops and institutional eyes: the neoliberal police state in Japanese animation." Jump Cut #62 (Winter 2023-2024) ["This essay will examine police fiction in Japanese animation or “anime,” focusing on two series connected to Japan’s experience of neoliberalism. As David Harvey (2007: 198-206) famously theorized, the neoliberal phase of capitalism has worked to close off alternatives, often resorting to authoritarian methods. Neoliberalism’s dominance rests not only on policies of privatization, deregulation, and crisis manipulation, but also on the cultivation of a particular relation to the world that becomes “rational” in social institutions governed by neoliberal logics. In Michel Foucault’s (2008: 277-278) formulation, neoliberal governmentality situates the “individual subject of interest within a totality which eludes him [sic]” but “nevertheless founds the rationality of his egoistic choices.” Building on Foucault’s work, Wendy Brown (2015: 35-41) argues that this “neoliberal reason” recasts thought and action as individual “investments” that must adapt to the demands of an essentialized, all-consuming market. Collective politics and democratic organization are thereby erased from public discussion (201-203). Like Harvey, Brown associates neoliberal reason with authoritarianism, since “we are human capital not just for ourselves, but also for the firm, state, or postnational constellation…concerned with their own competitive positioning” (37). I will use Brown’s term “neoliberal reason” throughout the essay to describe this mode of experience that internalizes individual self-management and acceptance of authoritarian systems as the only rational way of seeing the world."]
Hall, Amy. "On the Magical Life and Art of Ithell Colquhoun." Oddcast (December 20, 2021) ["We speak with Amy Hale, anthropologist, folklorist, and writer of many facets, on the life, art, and legacy of Ithell Colquhoun, one of the 20th century’s most important (if widely overlooked) esoteric artists. Born in colonial India in 1906, Colquhoun moved with her family back ‘home’ to England soon thereafter; she later relocated from London to Cornwall, where she lived out her latter decades deeply embedded in the landscape and lore of the south-west’s furthest promontory. She was interested in elements of western esotericism – particularly alchemy and magic – from a young age, and had a lifelong spiritual practice, which expressed itself most notably in her incredible body of work, but also in her involvement with British Surrealism and a number of initiatic organisations, from the O.T.O. to Druidic orders. We discuss Colquhoun’s life, work, and esoteric thought, attempting (and profitably failing) to pin down the multifaceted esoteric life and identity of this crucial figure of twentieth century esoteric art."]
Hampton, Timothy. "Bob Dylan's Poetics: How the Songs Work." Berkeley Book Chats (April 17, 2019) ["The 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature recognized Bob Dylan as a major modern artist, elevating his work beyond the world of popular music. In his book Bob Dylan's Poetics (Zone, 2019), Timothy Hampton (Comparative Literature and French, Townsend Center director) focuses on the details and nuances of Dylan's songs, showing how they work as artistic statements designed to create meaning and elicit emotion. Locating Dylan in the long history of artistic modernism, Hampton offers both a nuanced engagement with the work of a major artist and a meditation on the contribution of song at times of political and social change."]
Hanich, Julian. "The journeys of a film phenomenologist: An interview with Vivian Sobchack on being and becoming." NECSUS (December 6, 2017)Harris, Mark. "Still Looking: Is the representation of gays in today’s American cinema stuck in gear?" Film Comment (November/December 2016)
Harrison, Robert Pogue. "Happy Hour with Jimi Hendrix."Entitled Opinions (April 17, 2020)
Hartman, Andrew. "The Culture Wars are Dead: Long Live the Culture Wars!" The Baffler #39 (May 2018) ["A 2016 study by the sociologists James Davison Hunter and Carl Desportes Bowman, The Vanishing Center of American Democracy: The 2016 Survey of American Political Culture, finds that Americans are more divided than ever. The study also shows that one of the principal effects of persistent and worsening polarization is a crisis of legitimacy: an overwhelming majority of Americans are disaffected with government and other elite institutions, including media and higher education. One example of such alienation is opposition to “political correctness,” a term that arose in the early 1990s as part of a critique of universities that sought to regulate speech. Such regulations often reflected latent racial and sexual tensions as new peoples and perspectives were welcomed into the American system of higher education. For these demographic reasons, some degree of conflict on college campuses was unavoidable, and the growing adoption of measures such as campus speech codes prohibiting discriminatory language was unsurprising."]
Hedges, Inez. "Introduction: Seeing Gaza Differently." Jump Cut #62 (Winter 2023-2024) ["The air, land, and sea blockade of Gaza is now in its 16th year. Children that were 5 and 6 years old when the blockade started are now in their 20s and trying to plan their professional futures within the travel limits set by Israel and Egypt. According to OCHA (the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), even before the outbreak of new hostilities between Hamas and Israel, of the more than 2.3 million people living in Gaza, 26 % of the workforce was unemployed, including 38% of youth; 75% of the population required food aid; over 90 % of the water was undrinkable and had to be purified. Residents were subjected to rolling electricity blackouts. Since the start of the blockade, Gaza has endured four major bombing attacks by Israel, in 2009, 2014, 2021 and just now in 2023. Despite all this, Gaza has refused to be reduced to the world’s image of suffering and disaster. Women worked to support their families (see the UNRWA video by Motaz Azaiza, https://www.instagram.com/p/CrMBXJLglOW/). Talented musicians took up the violin. Families enjoyed time at the beach. Young people learned computer skills—there is no blockade in cyberspace. Children played hide-and-seek, soccer, hopscotch—and sometimes made sorties to throw stones at soldiers manning the border crossings."]
---. "Gaza Screened." Jumped Cut #62 (Winter 2023 - 2024) ["Perhaps nowhere on Earth is the power of film more striking than in its portrayal of the Gaza strip. The seismic shifts in Israeli policy, military intervention, and access rules that have affected this narrow stretch of territory, lying between Israel and Egypt along the Mediterranean sea, have resulted in a landscape so transformed and traumatized that fiction films from a few years ago become documentaries of what was, while documentaries evoke ravaged science fiction dystopias."]
---. "Resilience under fire: Gaza on film, video and television." Jump Cut #62 (Winter 2023 - 2024) ["This important book comes out of the 2019 film festival held at Columbia University curated by Nadia Yaqub, the book’s editor. The festival was sponsored by the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia, founded in 2010 in honor of legendary Palestinian author and critic Edward Said. Yaqub is a professor at the University of North Carolina, where she put together a second Gaza film festival also in 2019. This was sponsored by the Duke-UNC consortium for Middle Eastern studies and UNC Middle East and Islamic Studies. Here, as Yaqub reports, things did not go as smoothly: the 2019 Gaza Conference, of which the film festival was a part, was attacked by anti-Palestinian racists (as often happens with events highlighting Palestinian issues). Yaqub reports that as a result of these attacks, the Duke-UNC Consortium was investigated by the US Dept. of Education, and that one of the contributors was later attacked as being “anti-Semitic” at her home institution."]
Hendel, Ronald. "Genesis." Writ Large (December 7, 2022) ["The Book of Genesis is an account of the origins of the world, human beings, and the Jewish people. It is a foundational text for three world religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For thousands of years, Genesis has given its readers an existential foundation, an account of why the world exists, who we are, and how we should act. In a chaotic and unpredictable world, Genesis, this ancient set of stories, offers grounding, continuity, and deep meaning. Ronald Hendel is the Norma and Sam Dabby Professor of Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of The Book of Genesis: A Biography."]
Heumann, Joseph K. and Robin L. Murray. "Mother! and the Cli-fi Conundrum." Jump Cut #58 (Spring 2018)
Hill, Samantha Rose. "Crises in Academia Today." Medium (September 21, 2018)
Heumann, Joseph K. and Robin L. Murray. "Mother! and the Cli-fi Conundrum." Jump Cut #58 (Spring 2018)
Hinojosa, Maria. "From the Front Lines." The UO Channel (October 9, 2018)
["The first Latina reporter to be hired by NPR, Hinojosa helped to launch Latino USA, one of the earliest public radio programs devoted to the Latino community. She has anchored the show for its entire 22-year run, and since 2000 has also been the program’s executive producer. In 2010 she became the founder, president, and CEO of Futuro Media Group, an independent nonprofit organization producing multimedia journalism that explores and gives a critical voice to the diversity of the American experience. She is also the anchor and Executive Producer of the PBS show America By the Numbers with Maria Hinojosa, through which she has informed millions about the changing cultural and political landscape in America and abroad. In her nearly 30 years as a journalist, Hinojosa has worked for CNN, PBS, CBS, WNBC, and WGBH. Her previous projects include PBS’ Need to Know series, and the WGBH/La Plaza program Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One, a talk show featuring interviews with diverse guests including actors, writers, activists, and politicians. She served for five years as a Senior Correspondent for NOW on PBS. Additionally, Hinojosa was the first Latina to anchor a FRONTLINE report: aired in October 2011, “Lost in Detention” explored abuse at immigrant detention facilities, garnering attention from Capitol Hill to both the mainstream and Spanish-language media. Throughout her career, Hinojosa has been drawn to the mission behind public media and its power to give voice to the diversity of opinions that represent the complexity of our country. Her goal as a journalist is to share America’s untold stories and to highlight today’s critical issues in a responsible and respectful manner. Hinojosa has won numerous awards for her work, including four Emmys; the 2012 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism; the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Reporting on the Disadvantaged; and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club for best documentary for her groundbreaking “Child Brides: Stolen Lives.” In addition to broadcast work, Hinojosa has been a syndicated columnist and is the author of two books."]
["The first Latina reporter to be hired by NPR, Hinojosa helped to launch Latino USA, one of the earliest public radio programs devoted to the Latino community. She has anchored the show for its entire 22-year run, and since 2000 has also been the program’s executive producer. In 2010 she became the founder, president, and CEO of Futuro Media Group, an independent nonprofit organization producing multimedia journalism that explores and gives a critical voice to the diversity of the American experience. She is also the anchor and Executive Producer of the PBS show America By the Numbers with Maria Hinojosa, through which she has informed millions about the changing cultural and political landscape in America and abroad. In her nearly 30 years as a journalist, Hinojosa has worked for CNN, PBS, CBS, WNBC, and WGBH. Her previous projects include PBS’ Need to Know series, and the WGBH/La Plaza program Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One, a talk show featuring interviews with diverse guests including actors, writers, activists, and politicians. She served for five years as a Senior Correspondent for NOW on PBS. Additionally, Hinojosa was the first Latina to anchor a FRONTLINE report: aired in October 2011, “Lost in Detention” explored abuse at immigrant detention facilities, garnering attention from Capitol Hill to both the mainstream and Spanish-language media. Throughout her career, Hinojosa has been drawn to the mission behind public media and its power to give voice to the diversity of opinions that represent the complexity of our country. Her goal as a journalist is to share America’s untold stories and to highlight today’s critical issues in a responsible and respectful manner. Hinojosa has won numerous awards for her work, including four Emmys; the 2012 John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism; the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Reporting on the Disadvantaged; and the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Overseas Press Club for best documentary for her groundbreaking “Child Brides: Stolen Lives.” In addition to broadcast work, Hinojosa has been a syndicated columnist and is the author of two books."]
Holland, Tom and Dominic Sandbrook. "Baghdad: Arabian Nights." The Rest is History #379 (October 2023) ["The setting for so many of the Arabian Nights, like the stories of Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, or Aladdin, Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age had a shimmering image, a dimension of mystery and wonder… Join Tom and Dominic in the final part of our series on the history of Baghdad, as they explore the tales of One Thousand and One Nights, and the city of Caliphs, Hadiths, thieves, and of course, pigeon racing!"]
---. "Christmas: Pagan or Christian?" The Rest is History (December 24, 2023) ["Is Christmas as we know it merely an invention, created by plagiarising from rival cults, such as the worship of Mithra, the Iranian sun god, during the days of the Roman Empire? Is Christmas in fact based on a pagan festival, that Christians have made their own? Or has Christmas always been an authentically Christian celebration, born of its tradition and rituals? Join Tom and Dominic as they delve into the roots of Christmas, the importance of the Roman festival of Saturnalia, the cult of Sol Invictus, and much more."]
---. "Lord Byron: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know (Part 1)." The Rest is History (April 14, 2024) ["Few lives from history can have contained as many strange and exciting strands as that of Lord Byron's, whose story reflects the great dramas of the Napoleonic era. A vampiric hero of devilish charisma; a martyr for liberty, a licentious lothario; Byron’s cultural and literary impact cannot be underestimated. The remarkable course of his life, and his mercurial nature can in part be explained by the dark events of his childhood, and the outlandish history of his own family. Born with a club foot - his “satanic mark” - to “Mad Jack” Byron, a former gigolo dogged by incest and financial ruin, and an unpredictable mother, a strange curse seemed to lie over the family. Impoverished before the inheritance of his title and a romantic ruin in Nottinghamshire, the plump and provincial boy would finally find solace at school and university, where he transformed into the glamorous rake he would become. There too would he discover the dubious sexual passions that would haunt his life…"]
Homberg, Jan, et al. "The Seventh Seal." In Our Time (September 21, 2023) ["Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most celebrated film of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007). It begins with an image that, once seen, stays with you for the rest of your life: the figure of Death playing chess with a Crusader on the rocky Swedish shore. The release of this film in 1957 brought Bergman fame around the world. We see Antonius Block, the Crusader, realising he can’t beat Death but wanting to prolong this final game for one last act, without yet knowing what that act might be. As he goes on a journey through a plague ridden world, his meeting with a family of jesters and their baby offers him some kind of epiphany."]
Hope, Clover. "The Effects of #MeToo on Film's Violent Male Gaze." Jezebel (April 6, 2018)
Hovey, Jed. "The Spectacle of the Scaffold – Foucault, Corporal Punishment, and the Digital Age." Blue Labyrinths (January 6, 2016)
Huberman, Andrew. "The Science of Creativity & How to Enhance Creative Innovation." The Huberman Lab (December 19, 2022) ["MB: An understanding of creativity from a neuroscientist. The base line definition and explanation of creativity is excellent, the explanation of how we all are essentially creative is helpful (use it or lose it, but even more, you need to cultivate it), the functionality of our brain and the centers which control and modulate our creative impulses is enlightening, also ways to increase your creativity and hindrances to your potential creativity (some which literally kill it). At the bottom of the page there are links to more resources. "In this episode, I explain how the brain engages in creative thinking and, based on that mechanistic understanding, the tools to improve one’s ability to think creatively and innovate in any area. I discuss how convergent and divergent thinking are essential for generating creative ideas and provide three types of meditation tools (open monitoring meditation, focused attention meditation & non-sleep deep rest; NSDR), which improve our ability to engage in these creative thinking patterns in specific and powerful ways. I also discuss how dopamine and mood contribute to the creative process and describe behavioral, nutritional and supplementation-based approaches for increasing dopamine to engage in creative thought and implementation. I explain how movement and storytelling (narrative) approaches can generate novel creative ideas and how substances like alcohol, cannabis, and psilocybin impact our creative ability. Excitingly, creativity is a skill that can be cultivated and enhanced; this episode outlines many tools to help anyone access creativity and apply."]
Huh, Minj. "Embodied allegory in Sorry to Bother You: art, performance and movement in neoliberal capitalist ruins." Jump Cut #62 (Winter 2023 - 2024) ["In this paper, I examine how Riley brings art and politics together in Sorry to Bother You, specifically through embodied allegory. Such a deployment of allegory in recovering the bodies of the marginalized—in this case racially- and gender-marked laborers—resonates with how Annabel Patterson in Fables of Power (1991) shifts our attention towards Aesop as a “philosopher of materialism and the body” (38), an essential facet of Aesop which has long been eclipsed by “the legend of the witty Aethiopian slave” (34). To be sure, many episodes in Aesopian fables function as a critique of unequal power relations. The political message of these fables grasps wage laborers’ attention to this day when the urge to liberate oneself from the social hierarchy is still founded in capitalism, whose internal mechanism has an uneasy proximity to enslaved labor in pre-capitalist societies. I propose that Sorry to Bother You is a viable fable for this day and age, alerting us to the possible subversion of official values and dominant culture, and at the same time, encouraging us to attend to another device of allegory, which is the historical situatedness of its current author."]
Hyden, Steven. "Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation (Hachette Books, 2022)." New Books in Music (February 6, 2023) ["Ever since Pearl Jam first blasted onto the Seattle grunge scene three decades ago with their debut album, Ten, they have sold 85M+ albums, performed for hundreds of thousands of fans around the world, and have even been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of A Generation (Hachette 2022), music critic and journalist Steven Hyden celebrates the life, career, and music of this legendary group, widely considered to be one of the greatest American rock bands of all time. Long Road is structured like a mix tape, using 18 different Pearl Jam classics as starting points for telling a mix of personal and universal stories. Each chapter tells the tale of this great band -- how they got to where they are, what drove them to greatness, and why it matters now. Much like the generation it emerged from, Pearl Jam is a mass of contradictions. They were an enormously successful mainstream rock band who felt deeply uncomfortable with the pursuit of capitalistic spoils. They were progressive activists who spoke in favor of abortion rights and against the Ticketmaster monopoly, and yet they epitomized the sound of traditional, male-dominated rock 'n' roll. They were looked at as spokesmen for their generation, even though they ultimately projected profound confusion and alienation. They triumphed, and failed, in equal doses -- the quintessential Gen-X tale. Impressive as their stats, accolades, and longevity may be, Hyden also argues that Pearl Jam's most definitive accomplishment lies in the impact their music had on Generation X as a whole. Pearl Jam's music helped an entire generation of listeners connect with the glory of bygone rock mythology, and made it relevant during a period in which tremendous American economic prosperity belied a darkness at the heart of American youth. More than just a chronicle of the band's career, this book is also a story about Gen- X itself, who like Pearl Jam came from angsty, outspoken roots and then evolved into an establishment institution, without ever fully shaking off their uncertain, outsider past. For so many Gen-Xers growing up at the time, Pearl Jam's music was a beacon that offered both solace and guidance. They taught an entire generation how to grow up without losing the purest and most essential parts of themselves."]
Hypernormalisation (BBC: Adam Curtis, 2016: 166 mins) ["HyperNormalisation wades through the culmination of forces that have driven this culture into mass uncertainty, confusion, spectacle and simulation. Where events keep happening that seem crazy, inexplicable and out of control—from Donald Trump to Brexit, to the War in Syria, mass immigration, extreme disparity in wealth, and increasing bomb attacks in the West—this film shows a basis to not only why these chaotic events are happening, but also why we, as well as those in power, may not understand them. We have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. And because it is reflected all around us, ubiquitous, we accept it as normal. This epic narrative of how we got here spans over 40 years, with an extraordinary cast of characters—the Assad dynasty, Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger, Patti Smith, early performance artists in New York, President Putin, Japanese gangsters, suicide bombers, Colonel Gaddafi and the Internet. HyperNormalisation weaves these historical narratives back together to show how today’s fake and hollow world was created and is sustained. This shows that a new kind of resistance must be imagined and actioned, as well as an unprecedented reawakening in a time where it matters like never before."]
Jilanu, Zaid. "The Hilarious, Terrifying, British Death of Stalin Shows How American Comedy's Gone Wrong." The Intercept (March 17, 2018)
Johnson, Adam and Nima Shirazi. "Hollywood & Anti-Muslim Racism (Part 1) - Action and Adventure Schlock." Citations Needed #113 (July 8, 2020) ["The United States and its close allies Saudi Arabia and Israel have been bombing and occupying large sections of the so-called “Muslim world” for decades – drastically ramping up after the 9/11 attacks and seemingly with no end in sight. The U.S., like all empires, cannot operate a large, complex system premised on violence, meddling and subjugation without a moral pretext. This moral pretext, even before 9/11, was primarily about fighting a war on so-called “Terrorism” or “Islamic extremism” while allegedly promoting “stability,” “freedom” and “democracy.” Along with American news media’s constant fear-mongering over scary Muslims lurking in the shadows, a major pillar propping up this moral pretext is pop culture – namely the cultural products coming out of Hollywood. Our decades-long "War on Terror" would no doubt be much more difficult to sustain without a constant reminder from TV and film that, despite the fact that the average American is more likely to be killed by a vending machine than a terrorist attack, the threat of Islamic terrorism remains ever-present and existential, marked by an inevitable “clash of civilizations” devoid of context or any notion that the U.S. is a primary driver of violence across the globe. Over the course of three episodes, we'll be taking a look at how Hollywood’s television and studio film output helps prop up America’s military aggression in the Middle East, engages in both casual and explicit racism, strips conflicts of any historical or imperial context pushes the idea the only Good Muslim is a snitch or CIA agent, and generally leaves its audience angry and ill-informed. In this episode, we review Hollywood’s long history of anti-Muslim racism in both classic and campy action/adventure films and TV and how it both primed us for – and sustains – the never-ending and self-perpetuating "War on Terror.""]
Jones, Grant. "Music, Meditation, and Healing." Mind & Life (November 15, 2023) ["Wendy speaks with musician, contemplative, researcher, and activist Grant Jones. Grant is working to develop and implement contemplative and liberatory tools for underserved populations."]
Jones, Matthew. "10 Metaphysical Films for Philosophy Students." Philosophy in Film (December 8, 2019) ["To be considered a metaphysical work, a film must possess all of the following characteristics: 1) A metaphysical film addresses questions related to the field of metaphysics in its narrative, either directly or indirectly. 2) A metaphysical film uses the unique elements of the filmmaking process (cinematography, editing, special effects, etc.) to direct attention to the question of “reality.” 3) A metaphysical film uses visual effects to transcend reality in a way that implicitly asks (or attempts to answer) metaphysical questions."]
"Joy Harjo." UO Channel #698 (February 15, 2018) ["Joy Harjo, an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, is a poet, musician, and author. She is the Professor and Chair of Excellence at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Harjo discusses and reads her poetry. Her eight books of poetry include the recent Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, How We Became Human-New and Selected Poems: 1975–2001, and The Woman Who Fell From the Sky. Her memoir Crazy Brave, was published in 2012."]
Kaplan, Alice. "Albert Camus and The Stranger." Entitled Opinions (May 18, 2016)
Keel, Eli. "How a kiss is not a kiss, and punches are pulled in acting." LEO Weekly (August 2, 2017)
Jones, Matthew. "10 Metaphysical Films for Philosophy Students." Philosophy in Film (December 8, 2019) ["To be considered a metaphysical work, a film must possess all of the following characteristics: 1) A metaphysical film addresses questions related to the field of metaphysics in its narrative, either directly or indirectly. 2) A metaphysical film uses the unique elements of the filmmaking process (cinematography, editing, special effects, etc.) to direct attention to the question of “reality.” 3) A metaphysical film uses visual effects to transcend reality in a way that implicitly asks (or attempts to answer) metaphysical questions."]
"Joy Harjo." UO Channel #698 (February 15, 2018) ["Joy Harjo, an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, is a poet, musician, and author. She is the Professor and Chair of Excellence at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Harjo discusses and reads her poetry. Her eight books of poetry include the recent Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, How We Became Human-New and Selected Poems: 1975–2001, and The Woman Who Fell From the Sky. Her memoir Crazy Brave, was published in 2012."]
Kan, Elianna. "Buy High, Sell Cheap: An Interview with Alejandro Jodorowsky." The Paris Review (March 8, 2018)
Kaplan, Alice. "Albert Camus and The Stranger." Entitled Opinions (May 18, 2016)
Keene, John. "Reimagining History." On the Media (October 10, 2018) ["Last week, the MacArthur Foundation awarded genius grants to 25 creatives in art, literature, science and music. John Keene, a writer of poetry, fiction and cultural criticism, was one of them. He was recognized for his innovative use of language and form, and the way his work “exposes the social structures that confine, enslave, or destroy” people of color and queer people. Keene spoke to Brooke back in 2015 about his story collection, Counternarratives, which centers the voices of the marginalized in both imagined and reimagined historical moments."]
Kelley, Robin D.G. "Transcendental Monk." Open Source (October 12, 2017) ["At Thelonious Monk’s hundredth birthday, it’s our ears that have changed, not his sound. Instead of odd angles and eccentricity we hear orchids in music, various and beautiful. The truth of the man’s life is clearer, too: drawn back from the ragged edge to the creative center of classically American music."]
---. "What Did Cedric Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism?" Boston Review (January 12, 2017)
---. "What Did Cedric Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism?" Boston Review (January 12, 2017)
King, Billie Jean. "A Conversation with Billie Jean King." For the Ages (March 7, 2017) ["Billie Jean King—former No. 1 tennis player in the world and the first female athlete and first member of the LGBT community to be honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom—speaks with David M. Rubenstein about her iconic life and career, highlighting pivotal moments including her historic victory in the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” match and underlining her mission to incorporate equality into the larger fabric of the American story."]
Kingston, Maxine Hong. "Warrior of Peace." LARB (March 23, 2018) ["The great author reflects on a lifetime of writing, an unorthodox career, and her current work as a teacher and healer, which couldn’t be more relevant for our troubled times."]
King, Charles. "How A Few 'Renegade' Thinkers Helped Usher In A New Era Of Anthropology." Fresh Air (August 20, 2019) ["In his new book, Gods of the Upper Air, Charles King tells the story of Franz Boas, Margaret Mead and the other 20th century anthropologists who challenged outdated notions of race, class and gender."]
Klein, Ezra. "Book excerpt: A better theory of identity politics." The Ezra Klein Show (January 23, 2020) ["A core argument of the book is that identity is the central driver of political polarization. But to see how it works, we need a better theory of how identities form, what happens when they activate, and where they fit into our conflicts. We’ve been taught to only see identity politics in others. We need to see it in ourselves."]
Klemp, Nate. "Mindfulness in a Distracted World." Entitled Opinions (February 15, 2024) ["A conversation with Nate Klemp, a philosopher, writer, and founding partner at Mindfulness Magazine, on practicing mindfulness in our fast-paced, technology-dependent world. He is also co-author of the New York Times bestseller Start Here."]
Klemperer, Victor. Language of the Third Reich. Continuum, 2010. ["Victor Klemperer (1881-1960) was Professor of French Literature at Dresden University. As a Jew, he was removed from his university post in 1935, only surviving thanks to his marriage to an Aryan. First published in 1957, The Language of the Third Reich arose from Klemperer's conviction that the language of the Third Reich helped to create its culture. As Klemperer writes: 'It isn't only Nazi actions that have to vanish, but also the Nazi cast of mind, the typical Nazi way of thinking, and its breeding ground: the language of Nazism.' This brilliant book is by turns entertaining and profound, saddening and horrifying. It is deservedly one of the great twentieth-century studies of language and its engagement with history."]
Knust, Jennifer, Scott Lewis and Delphine Lourtau. "The First Stone: Jesus, The Accused, and Us." Ideas (April 18, 2019) ["Sean Foley asks: what does the story say to us about some of our deepest dilemmas?"]
Koresky, Michael and Jeff Reichert. "This Means War! Introduction." Reverse Shot (June 23, 2003) ["Project for a New American Criticism,Or: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Hate the War."]
Kushner, Rachel. "Reading from The Mars Room." Lannan (April 18, 2018)
["Rachel Kushner’s first novel, Telex from Cuba, is set in Oriente, Cuba, in an expat community funded by the United Fruit Company and a nickel mine, during the years leading up to Castro’s revolution. Of the book, the New York Times wrote, “Out of tropical rot, Kushner has fashioned a story that will linger like a whiff of decadent Colony perfume.” Her second novel, The Flamethrowers, is set mostly in the mid-1970s and follows the life of Reno, so named for her place of birth, a young artist who comes to New York intent on marrying her love of motorcycles, speed, and art. The title takes its name from weapons used by the Italian Arditi, a division of elite shock troops that operated during the First World War. Kushner has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award and is a Guggenheim Fellow. Her fiction and essays appear regularly in the New York Times, the Paris Review, The Believer, Artforum, Bookforum, Fence, Bomb, and Grand Street." Post-Reading Conversation with Michael Silverblatt.]
Laino, Paige. "Painting the American Dream at Guantánamo." The Paris Review (November 30, 2017)Knust, Jennifer, Scott Lewis and Delphine Lourtau. "The First Stone: Jesus, The Accused, and Us." Ideas (April 18, 2019) ["Sean Foley asks: what does the story say to us about some of our deepest dilemmas?"]
["Rachel Kushner’s first novel, Telex from Cuba, is set in Oriente, Cuba, in an expat community funded by the United Fruit Company and a nickel mine, during the years leading up to Castro’s revolution. Of the book, the New York Times wrote, “Out of tropical rot, Kushner has fashioned a story that will linger like a whiff of decadent Colony perfume.” Her second novel, The Flamethrowers, is set mostly in the mid-1970s and follows the life of Reno, so named for her place of birth, a young artist who comes to New York intent on marrying her love of motorcycles, speed, and art. The title takes its name from weapons used by the Italian Arditi, a division of elite shock troops that operated during the First World War. Kushner has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award and is a Guggenheim Fellow. Her fiction and essays appear regularly in the New York Times, the Paris Review, The Believer, Artforum, Bookforum, Fence, Bomb, and Grand Street." Post-Reading Conversation with Michael Silverblatt.]
Lain, Douglas. "How I Accidentally Wrote the Antithesis of a Spielberg Blockbuster." Los Angeles Review of Books (April 18, 2018)
Lamb, Robert and Christian Sager. "Laughing During Horror Movies." Stuff to Blow Your Mind (October 3, 2017) ["Have you ever heard inappropriate laughter during a horror movie? For that matter, are you the guilty party? Join Robert and Christian as they explore our curious reactions to frightful cinema and how horror and comedy converge in the human mind."]
Landrieu, Mitch, et al. "Confronting the Legacy of the Confederacy." Best of the Left #1186 (May 29, 2018) ["Today we take a look at the legacy of the Confederacy, the monuments and white supremacy it left behind and the racial terror institutionalized in America based on upholding its values."]
Lawrence, Novotny. "White mansions, black bodies: Get Out and the New Age slave plantation." Jump Cut #62 (Winter 2023/2024) ["This article is divided into three sections, the first of which discusses Hollywood films’ presentations of slave plantations as inspired by the Lost Cause Tradition, demonstrating the ways in which mainstream cinema has depicted, distorted, and policed the “right ways” to exist as Black. The second section focuses on independent cinema’s presentation of what I refer to as the Panoptic plantation, a horrific construct that reveals the depths of slave states’ surveillance and control of Black bodies. The article concludes by detailing how Get Out is endemic of what I assert is an original and frightening construct of slavery and plantations that functions as a harrowing metaphor for contemporary racism and the ways in which it polices and haunts Black bodies."]
Laycock, Joseph. "Late Night With the Devil Reflects The Role of Talk Shows in Sensationalizing the Satanic Panic of the 1980s." Religion Dispatches (March 26, 2024) ["Despite its supernatural premise, Late Night with the Devil is a work of realism. Most of the characters and events in the film are references to actual figures from 1970s occulture. It also reflects on the way that talk shows became a vector through which rumors of Satanic cults spread, fueling the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. As described in my book The Exorcist Effect, filming a live exorcism was a goal of network news media for two decades."]
"The Lectures of Joseph Campbell." Spotify (Playlist) ["Joseph John Campbell was an American mythologist who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience."]
Lee, Jason. Nazism and Neo-Nazism in Film and Media. Amsterdam University Press, 2018. ["This timely book takes an original transnational approach to the theme of Nazism and neo-Nazism in film, media, and popular culture, with examples drawn from mainland Europe, the UK, North and Latin America, Asia, and beyond. This approach fits with the established dominance of global multimedia formats, and will be useful for students, scholars, and researchers in all forms of film and media. Along with the essential need to examine current trends in Nazism and neo-Nazism in contemporary media globally, what makes this book even more necessary is that it engages with debates that go to the very heart of our understanding of knowledge: history, memory, meaning, and truth."]
Levin, Yuval. "The Conservative Mind of Yuval Levin." The Ezra Klein Show (January 9, 2020) ["Something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently is the way we often conflate two very distinct things when we assign political labels. The first is ideology, which describes our vision of a just society. The second is something less discussed but equally important: temperament. It describes how we approach social problems, how fast we think society can change, and how we understand the constraints upon us. Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, the editor-in-chief of the public policy journal National Affairs, and the author of the upcoming book A Time to Build. Levin is one of the most thoughtful articulators of both conservative temperament and ideology. And, perhaps for that reason, his is one of the most important criticisms of what the conservative movement has become today.There’s a lot in this conversation, in part because Levin’s book speaks to mine in interesting ways, but among the topics we discuss are: The conservative view of human nature Why the conservative temperament is increasingly diverging from the conservative movement What theories of American politics get wrong about the reality of American life The case Levin makes to socialists How economic debates are often moral debates in disguise Levin’s rebuttal to my book The crucial difference between “formative” and “performative” social institutions Why the most fundamental problems in American life are cultural, not economic Why Levin thinks the New York Times should not allow its journalists to be on Twitter Whether we can restore trust in our institutions without changing the incentives and systems that surround them There’s a lot Levin and I disagree on, but there are few people I learn as much from in disagreement as I learn from him."]
Lewis, Pericles. "On Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain." Writ Large (November 1, 2022) ["When Thomas Mann published The Magic Mountain in 1924, tuberculosis had a deadly hold on Europe and the United States, killing one in seven adults in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. If that wasn’t enough, Mann’s writing was interrupted by the First World War, so it took him twelve years to finish the book. Mann was a modern, experimental writer who wrote about the major issues of his time—not only the war and the pandemic, but also industrialization, class resentment, and rising nationalism. The characters of The Magic Mountain live in a sanitorium, recovering from tuberculosis. The experiences they have and the people they meet there symbolize many of the big ideas circulating Europe at the time. Professor Pericles Lewis of Yale University discusses Thomas Mann’s literary legacy and the encyclopedic nature of The Magic Mountain."]
Like Stories of Old. "Why Apocalypse Stories Feel Different Now." (Posted on Youtube: February 21, 2023) ["An exploration of the evolution of apocalypse stories, and of how The Last of Us, Station Eleven, and The Leftovers are shifting the emphasis of the genre towards a more hopeful and humanistic tone."]
Like Stories of Old. "Why Apocalypse Stories Feel Different Now." (Posted on Youtube: February 21, 2023) ["An exploration of the evolution of apocalypse stories, and of how The Last of Us, Station Eleven, and The Leftovers are shifting the emphasis of the genre towards a more hopeful and humanistic tone."]
---. "In Search of Absolute Beauty." (Posted on Youtube: March 26, 2021) ["Media included:A Hidden Life; A Star is Born; Amadeus; Annihilation; At Eternity’s Gate; Baby Driver; Before Midnight; Before Sunset; Black Swan; Cloud Atlas; Days of Heaven; Doctor Who; Dreams; Equilibrium; First Man; For vs. Ferrari; Gravity; Her; Interstellar; Into the Wild; Knight of Cups; Loving Vincent; Nomadland; Portrait of a Lady on Fire; Soul; Sound of Metal; Sunshine; The Thin Red Line; The Counselor; The End of the Tour; The Great Beauty; The Greatest Showman; The Grey; The Intouchables; The New World; the Perks of Being a Wallflower; The Secret Life of Walter Mitty; The Shawshank Redemption; The Tree of Life; To the Wonder; Voyage of Time."]
Lindsay, Greg, et al. "The Future of Cities in the Anthropocene." Open Source (October 5, 2017)
Lish, Atticus. "On Becoming a Scumbag." Harper's (October 2018) ["A poignant, profane novel of addiction."]
Lock, Margaret. "How To Think About Science (Part 3)." Ideas (February 11, 2015) ["In 1993 medical anthropologist Margaret Lock published Encounters with Aging: Mythologies of Menopause in Japan and North America. The book explores dramatic differences in the way women experience menopause in each place. Such variation is usually taken as purely cultural, but, in her book, Margaret Lock makes a surprising suggestion. She proposes that there are biological differences between Japanese and North American women. Culture doesn't just interpret biology, she says, it also shapes it. Margaret Lock is a professor in the Department of Social Studies of Medicine at McGill. In this episode you'll hear her current reflections on what she calls "local biologies" later in the hour. David Cayley begins his conversation with a discussion of another pathbreaking book of hers called Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death."]
Lindsay, Greg, et al. "The Future of Cities in the Anthropocene." Open Source (October 5, 2017)
Lish, Atticus. "On Becoming a Scumbag." Harper's (October 2018) ["A poignant, profane novel of addiction."]
Loewinger, Micah. "How Youtube's Left is Changing Minds." On the Media (July 19, 2019) ["The president’s racist tweets this weekend provoked revulsion throughout the mainstream media. But on YouTube, America’s most popular social media site, racism has found a home. Free of old-school gate-keeping, YouTube hosts a much wider political spectrum, reaching very impressionable eyes and ears. On the Media producer Micah Loewinger tells the story of three young viewers whose right-wing beliefs melted away after encountering videos by an informal movement of leftist creators known as Left Tube. He spoke with two of Left Tube's most famous personalities, Natalie Wynn (ContraPoints) and Oliver Thorn (Philosophy Tube) about how they think about crafting compelling videos. "]
Longworth, Karina. "The Blacklist." You Must Remember This! (2016) ["In the 1940s and 50s, dozens of writers, producers, directors and stars were pushed to the margins of the film industry due to the perception of their personal politics. Though socialism and anti-Fascism had been in vogue just a few years earlier, now an affiliation with such movements was considered tantamount to treason. The Blacklist traces how this happened, through the stories of The Hollywood Ten, Dorothy Parker, Charlie Chaplin, Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, John Garfield, Kirk Douglas and more."]
---. "Erotic 80s." You Must Remember This! (2022) ["Here in 2022, there is more public conversation about the nuances of human sexuality–and sexual abuse and harassment–than at any time in modern history. And yet, sex has all but disappeared from mainstream American movies, most of which would pass the sexual standard set by the strict censorship of the Production Code of the 1930s. This season of You Must Remember This will explore the relatively brief period, beginning in the 1970s and ending around the end of the millennium, when Hollywood movies explored the sexual lives, mores and fantasies of adults with degrees of candor, realism and imagination not seen before or since. Why did genres like the erotic thriller, body horror, neo-noir and the sex comedy flourish in the 80s and 90s, what was happening culturally that made these movies possible and popular, and why did Hollywood stop taking sex seriously? Each episode of Erotic 80s examines a single year, and one or more films that share a genre, a theme or a star, with topics ranging from the politics of porn, to the first camcorder sex tape scandal, to the sexualization of teens, to Hollywood’s lingering fear of interracial coupling. Some of the stars and filmmakers covered include Tom Cruise, Melanie Griffith, Richard Gere, Glenn Close, Rob Lowe, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Costner, Sean Young, Adrian Lyne, Amy Heckerling, Brian DePalma and much, much more."]
Loofbourow, Lili. "The Male Glance: How We Fail to Take Women's Stories Seriously." The Guardian (March 6, 2018) ["Male art is epic, universal, and profoundly meaningful. Women’s creations are domestic, emotional and trivial. How did we learn to misread stories so badly?"]
Lyonhart, Jonathan D. "Peele’s Black, Extraterrestrial, Critique of Religion." Journal of Religion & Film (October 2023) ["While Jordan Peele’s films have always held their mysteries close to the chest, they eventually granted their viewers some climactic clarity. Get Out (2017) used an 1980s style orientation video to clear up its neuroscientific twist, while Us (2019) had Lupita Nyongo’s underworld twin narratively spell out the details of the plot. Yet Nope (2022) refuses to show its hand even after the game is over, never illuminating the connection between its opening scene and the broader film, nor a myriad of other questions. As such, critics complained that it stitched together two seemingly incongruent plots without explanation; one where a chimp attacks the crew of a successful Hollywood show, the other where an alien organism haunts a small ranch in the middle of nowhere. In this paper, I will argue that a theological interpretation of Nope helps explain some of these mysteries at its center, while revealing Peele’s underlying religious critique and its place within his broader oeuvre."]
Mandel, Joan. "Gaza Ghetto: How to Make a Film Under Military Occupation." Jump Cut #62 (Winter 2023 - 2024) ["Last year, I was asked by Jump Cut to write an article about the making of our film, Gaza Ghetto. The times that the film portrays, from 1948 to 1984, seem almost innocent by comparison with today. (December 2023) From outside the killing fields of Gaza, we have watched the destruction of the lives and livelihood of two million people. Homes, schools, mosques and churches blasted into archaeological ruin with more still happening. Our brains seek safe spaces to absorb the shock of the murder of children and adults by high-powered Israeli bombs, sent and funded by the United States. With all our fervent prayers, protests and petitions, we have not been able to stop this calamity. Palestinian poets and painters, students and teachers, journalists and farmers have scattered, clutching each other in tiny shelters, nursing the wounds and deaths of loved ones. Scrambling to find food, water and fuel as winter settles, trying to stay alive and to connect with each other. Among these people are the residents of Jabalia Refugee Camp portrayed in our documentary. Abdullah, who appeared in the film as a child, and is now a father of teenagers, had this to say in a recent phone conversation: “This film was the first documentary to tell the history of Gaza in a brave way, against what the formal news was showing and what pro-Israel media was saying. It shows how my grandmother died, and how my brother was born. It shows how to advocate for people’s rights and for anti-colonialism, and how to tell the truth even if everyone is saying it differently.” I hope that you will take this opportunity to watch Gaza Ghetto, to learn about Palestinian history through the stories of Abdullah’s family and their neighbors in Jabalia. That you will hold them in your hearts, as you find your own ways to advocate for people’s rights, for peace and justice. Even if the powers-that-be tell you differently.]
Manne, Kate, et al. "The Logic of Misogyny." Boston Review (July 11, 2016) ["Moralistic or not, misogyny is not about hating women. It is about controlling them."]
McBride, Eimear. "In Conversation with Jacqueline Rose." The Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities (January 25, 2017) ["Since the publication of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing in 2014 and The Lesser Bohemians this year, Eimear McBride has caused a literary sensation of a unique kind. Pushing modernism and the psyche each to their limits with her extraordinary rendering of bodies and minds in anguish (and sometimes joy), she confronts her reader with a set of challenges that many of us have not encountered before. She has been described by Jacqueline Rose as the writer of trauma in the modern world. In this conversation, Eimear McBride and Jacqueline Rose will talk of the future of modernism, sex and writing, and the forms of – not always welcome – attention paid to a woman writer who ventures down these paths."]
McCall, Leyla. "Leyla McCall Has The Capitalist Blues." World Cafe (May 8, 2019) ["As you may guess from the title of her third solo album, Leyla McCalla tackles social and economic issues pretty directly on The Capitalist Blues. The multi-instrumentalist and Carolina Chocolate Drops alumna sings about everything from injustice and poverty to her daughter's experience with elevated levels of lead. And although the topics are heavy, the music is danceable — a treatment informed by the troubadour traditions of McCalla's Haitian roots and the Cajun and Zydeco traditions of her adopted home in New Orleans. In this session, McCalla talks about her parents' work as Haitian human rights activists and how the history of her people and the attitudes of her parents inspired her to tackle social issues through art. And McCalla performs live."]
McChesney, Robert and John Nichols. "Who Will Win the Digital Revolution?" Needs No Introduction (April 21, 2016)
McGill, Hannah. "Girl friends on film: the rare case of lifelike female friendships on the big screen." Sight & Sound (March 5, 2018) ["While male ‘buddy’ movies are a genre to themselves, films about women’s relationships are remarkable for their scarcity – to say nothing of those that dare to depict the bonds of female kinship in the round."]
McIntosh, Erik. "Viewer Beware: We Need More LGBTQ TV Role Models For Kids." The Los Angeles Review of Books (November 30, 2017) ["Gender identity and sexual orientation are essential factors of diversity, just like race, disability, gender, or culture. The Legend of Korra and Steven Universe are currently the only children programs that represent main LGBTQ characters and storylines. This poor representation would not be acceptable in terms of race, disability, gender, or culture. So why is it ok for LGBTQ representation?"]
Manne, Kate, et al. "The Logic of Misogyny." Boston Review (July 11, 2016) ["Moralistic or not, misogyny is not about hating women. It is about controlling them."]
Marshall, Kate. "Weirding Out." Novel Dialogue (September 21, 2023) ["We kick off Season 6 with Kate Marshall, friend of the show and author of the forthcoming book Novels by Aliens: Weird Tales and the Twenty-First Century. Hosts and producers Chris Holmes and Emily Hyde ask Kate about the pulpy literary history of weird tales and learn how in the 21st-century weirdness emerges as both genre and mood. The conversation roves from the weirdness of the weather to novels that long for the nonhuman and reach for alien perspectives to the genres responding to our climate crisis. Join us to hear about the novelists and critics appearing in Season 6 of Novel Dialogue and to explore our contemporary state of weird. Mentions: -- Sheila Heti, Pure Colour -- Roberto Bolaño on Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian -- Megan Ward, Seeming Human: Artificial Intelligence and Victorian Realist Character -- David Herman, Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind -- Kasuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun -- Elvia Wilk, Oval -- Olga Ravn’s The Employees -- Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable -- Colson Whitehead, Zone One"]
Marshall, Nowell. "Inverting Lovecraftian Racial and Sexual Monstrosity in Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water ." Supernatural Studies 8.2 (Summer 2023) ["This essay reads Guillermo del Toro’s award-winning 2017 film The Shape of Water as a rewriting and inversion of key racial and sexual tropes about H.P. Lovecraft’s Deep Ones. Rather than abjecting interracial/interspecies and queer forms of desire as Lovecraft did in “Dagon” and The Shadow Over Innsmouth, del Toro’s film deploys an oppositional gaze to recenter the narrative on diverse characters and sexual experiences, ultimately representing Elisa as a hybrid woman who finds a place to belong."]
Martel, James. "Histories of Violence: Why We Should All Read Walter Benjamin Today." Los Angeles Review of Books (February 3, 2020) ["THIS IS THE 36th in a series of dialogues with artists, writers, and critical thinkers on the question of violence. This conversation is with James Martel, professor of political science at San Francisco State University. He is the author of seven books, the most recent of which are Unburied Bodies: Subversive Corpses and the Authority of the Dead (Amherst College Press, 2018) and The Misinterpellated Subject (Duke University Press, 2017). He has also written a trilogy of books on the life and works of Walter Benjamin."]
Martel, J.F. "Consciousness in the Aesthetic Imagination." Metapsychosis (July 11, 2016)
Martin, Alfred L., Jr. "Racquel J. Gates, Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture (Duke University Press, 2018)." Film Criticism 44.3 (Spring 2019)
Mason, Liliana. "The Age of 'Mega-Identity' Politics." The Ezra Klein Show (April 30, 2018) ["Yes, identity politics is breaking our country. But it’s not identity politics as we’re used to thinking about it. In Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, Lilliana Mason traces the construction of our partisan “mega-identities”: identities that fuse party affiliation to ideology, race, religion, gender, sexuality, geography, and more. These mega-identities didn’t exist 50 or even 30 years ago, but now that they’re here, they change the way we see each other, the way we engage in politics, and the way politics absorbs other — previously non-political —spheres of our culture. In making her case, Mason offers one of the best primers I’ve read on how little it takes to activate a sense of group identity in human beings, and how far-reaching the cognitive and social implications are once that group identity takes hold. I don’t want to spoil our discussion here, but suffice to say that her recounting of the “minimal group paradigm” experiments is not to be missed. This is the kind of research that will change not just how you think about the world, but how you think about yourself. Mason’s book is, I think, one of the most important published this year, and this conversation gave me a lens on our political discord that I haven’t stopped thinking about since. If you want to understand the kind of identity politics that’s driving America in [2020], you should listen in."]
Martel, James. "Histories of Violence: Why We Should All Read Walter Benjamin Today." Los Angeles Review of Books (February 3, 2020) ["THIS IS THE 36th in a series of dialogues with artists, writers, and critical thinkers on the question of violence. This conversation is with James Martel, professor of political science at San Francisco State University. He is the author of seven books, the most recent of which are Unburied Bodies: Subversive Corpses and the Authority of the Dead (Amherst College Press, 2018) and The Misinterpellated Subject (Duke University Press, 2017). He has also written a trilogy of books on the life and works of Walter Benjamin."]
Martel, J.F. "Consciousness in the Aesthetic Imagination." Metapsychosis (July 11, 2016)
Martin, Alfred L., Jr. "Racquel J. Gates, Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture (Duke University Press, 2018)." Film Criticism 44.3 (Spring 2019)
Mason, Liliana. "The Age of 'Mega-Identity' Politics." The Ezra Klein Show (April 30, 2018) ["Yes, identity politics is breaking our country. But it’s not identity politics as we’re used to thinking about it. In Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, Lilliana Mason traces the construction of our partisan “mega-identities”: identities that fuse party affiliation to ideology, race, religion, gender, sexuality, geography, and more. These mega-identities didn’t exist 50 or even 30 years ago, but now that they’re here, they change the way we see each other, the way we engage in politics, and the way politics absorbs other — previously non-political —spheres of our culture. In making her case, Mason offers one of the best primers I’ve read on how little it takes to activate a sense of group identity in human beings, and how far-reaching the cognitive and social implications are once that group identity takes hold. I don’t want to spoil our discussion here, but suffice to say that her recounting of the “minimal group paradigm” experiments is not to be missed. This is the kind of research that will change not just how you think about the world, but how you think about yourself. Mason’s book is, I think, one of the most important published this year, and this conversation gave me a lens on our political discord that I haven’t stopped thinking about since. If you want to understand the kind of identity politics that’s driving America in [2020], you should listen in."]
Mattson, Kevin. "We're Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America (Oxford University Press, 2020)." New Books in Pop Culture (November 11, 2020) ["In his new book, We're Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America (Oxford UP, 2020), Kevin Mattson documents punk rock in the early 1980s through a comprehensive look into the music, zines, films, bands, and punk Do-It-Yourself (DIY) tactics. He shows how widespread the punk movement was in creating a counterculture that challenged the conservative narrative of 1980s America. Mattson places the punk countercultural movement into the wider context of Reagan’s America and the cultural war that his presidency created. In opposition to Reagan’s panic narratives of nuclear wars, his tax cuts for the rich, and cuts to public education and other social services, punks saw themselves as everything they rejected about the US. Mattson’s extensive archival research into the punk counterculture makes for an informative and captivating read into the larger ways in which punk impacted American cultural identities and challenged 1980s conservativism."]
Maude, Kit, Rob Prouse and Sam Pulham. "The Naked Woman by Armonía Somers." Sherds Podcast #27 (February 8, 2020) ["The Naked Woman by Armonía Somers was originally published in Spanish in 1950. The translation was made by Kit Maude and the book is published by The Feminist Press. On her thirtieth birthday, the main character, Rebeca Linke undergoes a violent physical and mental transformation. She leaves her home in only an overcoat and wanders through the local forests and fields. When she is spotted in broad daylight, divested of her clothes, the event sends tremors through the rural village, penetrating the hearts, bodies and minds of its inhabitants. Some view her as the return of Eve, some as a malignant curse. In either case, the village must confront this happening, and undergo its own transformation. Over the course of the episode, we discuss the author’s violent expression of feminine autonomy, consider it in the context of the gothic, and examine the response of a staid patriarchal society to the concept of feminine desire. The readings in this episode are by Gaja Hajdarowicz."]
May, Todd. "A Fragile Life." This Is Not a Pipe (November 23, 2017) ["Todd May discusses his book A Fragile Life: Accepting Our Vulnerability with Chris Richardson. May is the Class of 1941 Memorial Professor of the Humanities at Clemson University. He is the author of fourteen books of philosophy, most recently A Fragile Life: Accepting our Vulnerability and A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe, both from University of Chicago Press."]
Mayer, Danny. "Northside Gentrification." (Posted on Youtube: December 18, 2017)May, Todd. "A Fragile Life." This Is Not a Pipe (November 23, 2017) ["Todd May discusses his book A Fragile Life: Accepting Our Vulnerability with Chris Richardson. May is the Class of 1941 Memorial Professor of the Humanities at Clemson University. He is the author of fourteen books of philosophy, most recently A Fragile Life: Accepting our Vulnerability and A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe, both from University of Chicago Press."]
McBride, Eimear. "In Conversation with Jacqueline Rose." The Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities (January 25, 2017) ["Since the publication of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing in 2014 and The Lesser Bohemians this year, Eimear McBride has caused a literary sensation of a unique kind. Pushing modernism and the psyche each to their limits with her extraordinary rendering of bodies and minds in anguish (and sometimes joy), she confronts her reader with a set of challenges that many of us have not encountered before. She has been described by Jacqueline Rose as the writer of trauma in the modern world. In this conversation, Eimear McBride and Jacqueline Rose will talk of the future of modernism, sex and writing, and the forms of – not always welcome – attention paid to a woman writer who ventures down these paths."]
McCall, Leyla. "Leyla McCall Has The Capitalist Blues." World Cafe (May 8, 2019) ["As you may guess from the title of her third solo album, Leyla McCalla tackles social and economic issues pretty directly on The Capitalist Blues. The multi-instrumentalist and Carolina Chocolate Drops alumna sings about everything from injustice and poverty to her daughter's experience with elevated levels of lead. And although the topics are heavy, the music is danceable — a treatment informed by the troubadour traditions of McCalla's Haitian roots and the Cajun and Zydeco traditions of her adopted home in New Orleans. In this session, McCalla talks about her parents' work as Haitian human rights activists and how the history of her people and the attitudes of her parents inspired her to tackle social issues through art. And McCalla performs live."]
McGrath, Callum. "Looking to the other side: Dismantlement and reimposition of borders in Sicario and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada." Senses of Cinema #108 (January 2024) ["Two films that engage in ideas of the permeability of the US-Mexico border are Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, 2015) and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones, 2005). This article will explore how these films either reimpose or dismantle the border. To construct these arguments, an analysis of cinematic techniques will be undertaken for each film, with a focus on mise-en-scène. It will be argued that the negative depiction of Mexico in Sicario reimposes border ideology. Subsequently, the article will assert that The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada instead dismantles the border division. In both texts, however, there are challenges and nuances to these arguments, as will be explored. These include border permeability in instances that are beneficial to the hegemony of the US in Sicario, and some aspects of Mexico’s romanticised portrayal that reinforce a divide in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada."]
McKim, Kristi Irene. "Rushmore." New Books in Film (May 3, 2024) ["Earning critical acclaim and commercial success upon its 1998 release, Rushmore-the sophomore film of American auteur Wes Anderson-quickly gained the status of a cult classic. A melancholic coming-of-age story wrapped in comedy drama, Rushmore focuses on the efforts of Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman)-a brazen and precocious fifteen-year-old-to find his way. Restless, energetic, struggling, and overcompensating for his insecurities, Max pursues a dizzying range of possible futures, leading him into the orbit of local steel magnate Herman Blume (Bill Murray), elementary school teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams), and a host of cooperative schoolmates who help him to stage lavish film-derivative plays.
Kristi McKim's book Rushmore (British Film Institute, 2023) argues that despite the film's titular call for haste and excess (rush/more), it challenges a drive toward perfectionism and celebrates the quiet connections that defy such passion and speed. After establishing Rushmore's history and reception, McKim closely reads Rushmore's energetic musical montages relative to slower moments that introduce tenderness and ambiguity, in a form subtler than Max's desire-built drive or genre-based plays."]
McNeil, Leila. "Surely You're a Creep, Mr. Feynman: On Toxic Moral License and the Mythos of Male Scientific Genius." The Baffler #43 (February 2019)
Meek, Esther. "On Knowledge, Philosophy and Wisdom." Face 2 Face (April 11, 2016) ["Esther talks about her love for knowledge, philosophy and wisdom, defective approaches to knowing, how "it's all connected" and why she is concerned about others as a philosopher."]
Miéville, China. "A Strategy for Ruination." Boston Review (January 8, 2018) ["Writing about China Miéville in the Guardian, fantasy luminary Ursula K. Le Guin opined, “You can’t talk about Miéville without using the word ‘brilliant.’” Miéville is a rare sort of polyglot, an acclaimed novelist—he has won nearly every award for fantasy and science fiction that there is, often multiple times—who is equally comfortable in the worlds of politics and academia. Combining his skills as a storyteller and Marxist theorist, his most recent book, October, regales readers with the key events of the Russian Revolution. In this interview, Miéville discusses the intersections between his creative oeuvre and the political projects of utopia and dystopia."]
Newman, Ben. "The Canon Revisited." Imaginary Worlds (December 27, 2017) ["The Last Jedi may be the most controversial film in the Star Wars series. While the movie has been critically acclaimed, many Star Wars fans have argued that the film violated canon in a number of ways, especially how it depicted Luke Skywalker. This week, I revisit my 2014 episode “The Canon,” and I have a follow-up conversation with Rabbi Ben Newman about the state of the Star Wars canon. Until now, Ben and I had been on the same page about the new films, but like many fans, we found ourselves at odds when evaluating The Last Jedi."]
Ng, Alan. "Rodents of Unusual Size." Film Threat (September 12, 2018)
Nicholson-Smith, Donald. "May 1968 and the Situationist International." Against the Grain (November 28, 2018) ["Half a century ago, revolt broke out around the world, making the year 1968 synonymous with left-wing rebellion. In France, students and workers paralyzed the country during a heady month of massive wildcat strikes and factory occupations, during which the government feared it would be toppled. Donald Nicholson-Smith discusses May ’68 and the Situationist ideas that helped fuel the upheaval."]
Okeowo, Alexis. "A Devastating, Overdue National Memorial to Lynching Victims." The New Yorker (April 26, 2018)
Oliver, John, et al. "Confronting the Legacy of the Confederacy." Best of the Left #1186 (May 29, 2018) ["Today we take a look at the legacy of the Confederacy, the monuments and white supremacy it left behind and the racial terror institutionalized in America based on upholding its values."]
Oliver, Manuel and Patricia Oliver. "Parents of Murdered Parkland Student Joaquin Oliver on Using Art to Demand End to Gun Violence." Democracy Now (August 15, 2018) ["Students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, return to class today, amid heavy security, after summer break. It was six months ago Tuesday when a former student, armed with a semiautomatic AR-15, gunned down 17 students, staff and teachers in just three minutes. It was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. After the horrific attack, many of the students who survived the shooting became leading activists for gun control. Among the students killed at Stoneman Douglas High School was Joaquin Oliver. On Tuesday, Democracy Now! spoke to Joaquin’s parents, Manuel and Patricia Oliver, who have started a new nonprofit called Change the Ref to promote the use of urban art and nonviolent creative confrontation to expose the disastrous effects of gun violence."]
Phelan, Stephen. "Watching the End of the World." The Boston Review (June 11, 2019) ["The Doomsday Clock is set to two minutes to midnight—the same position it held in 1953, when the United States and USSR detonated their first hydrogen bombs. So why don't we make movies about nuclear war anymore? "]
Piepenburg, Eric. "At This Film Institute, the Course Material Is Killer." The New York Times (February 11, 2018)
Pilger, John. "Why the Documentary Must Not Be Allowed to Die." Counterpunch (December 12, 2017)
Pinn, Anthony. "Humanism, Theology, and the Black Community." Mindscape (July 12, 2018) ["According to atheism, God does not exist. But religions have traditionally done much more than simply proclaim God’s existence: they have provided communities, promoted the arts, handed down moral guidance, and so on. Can atheism, or perhaps humanism, replicate these roles? Anthony Pinn grew up as a devout Methodist, but became a humanist when he felt that religion wasn’t really helping the communities that he cared about. Today he is a professor of religion who works to bring together atheism and the black community. We talk about humanism, identity politics, and the way forward."]
Schwarz, Jon. "New Dark Money Documentary Shines Light Into the Shadows Cast by the Super-Rich." The Intercept (October 1, 2018)
Schyler, Krista. "Butterflies, Bison and the Border Wall." She Explores (2019)
["Conservation photographer Krista Schlyer describes the almost 2,000-mile border between the US and Mexico as a vibrant landscape teeming with life. Raising awareness for its biodiversity has become an integral part of her life’s work and is the focus of a new documentary film she directed, Ay Mariposa, which came out in May. We hear a lot about the border wall in the news, but we don’t often talk about the wildlife and landscape that its construction impacts.
Note: We want to emphasize that while there’s a lot of talk about flora and fauna in this episode, it’s not to discount the very human elements of the US/Mexico border – it’s simply to highlight what exists alongside it."]
Scialabba, George. "Back to the Land: Wendell Berry in the Path of Modernity." The Baffler (January 2020)
Scott, James C. Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play. Princeton University Press, 2012.
Self, Will. "The Printed Word in Peril." Harper's (October 2018) ["The age of Homo virtualis is upon us."]
Serpe, Nick. "Bisbee's Ghosts." Dissent (Winter 2019) ["A forced exodus haunts a border town’s past. Can a new documentary force a reckoning?"]
Serpell, Namwali. "Does Fiction Promote Empathy?" Against the Grain (October 22, 2019) ["Do fictional narratives, like those found in novels, plays, and films, promote empathy? Does emotion-based empathy spur people to alleviate suffering in the real world? Namwali Serpell calls into question much of the conventional thinking about empathy in relation to art. Drawing on thinkers like Arendt and Brecht, Serpell points to fiction’s capacity to enlarge our understanding to encompass the positions of others."]
Seymour, Gene. "Taming the Savage White Man: The Western Mythos Remade in the Age of Trump." The Baffler #43 (February 2019)
Shafaieh, Charles. "Art et Liberté: Egypt’s Surrealists." The New York Review of Books (February 3, 2018)
Shaviro, Steven. "Monster Portraits (Del Samatar and Sofia Samatar)." The Pinocchio Theory (March 6, 2018)
Sheehan, Helena and Sheamus Sweeney. "The Wire and the World." Jacobin (March 10, 2018) ["No other program has ever done anything remotely like what this one does, namely to portray the social, political, and economic life of an American city with the scope, observational precision, and moral vision of great literature. . . . The drama repeatedly cuts from the top of Baltimore’s social structure to its bottom, from political fund-raisers in the white suburbs to the subterranean squat of a homeless junkie. . . . The Wire’s political science is as brilliant as its sociology. It leaves The West Wing, and everything else television has tried to do on this subject, in the dust."]
Shumsky, Susan. "The Inner Light: How India Influenced the Beatles." Booked on Rock (November 17, 2022) ["The spiritual journey of the Beatles is the story of an entire generation of visionaries in the sixties who transformed the world. The Beatles turned Western culture upside down and brought Indian philosophy to the West more effectively than any guru. "The Inner Light" illumines hidden meanings of the Beatles’ India-influenced lyrics and sounds, decoded by Susan Shumsky—a rare insider who spent two decades in the ashrams and six years on the personal staff of the Beatles’ mentor, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This eye-opening book draws back the curtain on the Beatles’ experiments with psychedelics, meditation, chanting, and Indian music. Among many shocking revelations never before revealed, we discover who invented "raga rock" (not the Beatles), the real identity of rare Indian instruments and musicians on their tracks, which Beatle was the best meditator (not George), why the Beatles left India in a huff, John and George’s attempts to return, Maharishi’s accurate prediction, and who Sexy Sadie, Jojo, Bungalow Bill, Dear Prudence, Blackbird, My Sweet Lord, Hare Krishna, and the Fool on the Hill really were. Half a century later, the Beatles have sold more records than any other recording artist. A new generation wants to relive the magic of the flower-power era and is now discovering the message of this iconic band and its four superstars. For people of all nations and ages, the Beatles’ mystique lives on. “The Inner Light” is Susan Shumsky’s gift to their legacy. Susan Shumsky holds a Doctor of Divinity degree and has authored twenty books in English. She’s released thirty-six foreign editions, won forty-one book awards, and done 1,300 media appearances. A rare insider, she was on the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s personal staff for six years and lived in his ashrams for twenty years."]
Simon, David. "The Deuce Charts the Rise of Pornography." The New Yorker Radio Hour (September 29, 2017) ["David Simon believes in the dignity of labor, “even when it’s undignified.” What “The Wire” (which he created) did for the drug trade in Baltimore, “The Deuce,” also on HBO, does for sex work and the beginnings of the pornography industry in New York, in the seventies. Critics have compared Simon not so much to other television showrunners as to novelists like Dickens; Simon’s work is similarly wide in scope, with large casts, and aims to create a picture of a whole world. At bottom, he wants to follow the money from the street to the bosses to the politicians. But though Simon is sympathetic to the sex workers he depicts in “The Deuce,” and even to some of the pimps and mobsters who exploit them, he is unambiguously critical of porn’s effect on America. He tells David Remnick that porn—universally available on the Internet in its most extreme forms—has warped a whole culture toward misogyny."]
Kristi McKim's book Rushmore (British Film Institute, 2023) argues that despite the film's titular call for haste and excess (rush/more), it challenges a drive toward perfectionism and celebrates the quiet connections that defy such passion and speed. After establishing Rushmore's history and reception, McKim closely reads Rushmore's energetic musical montages relative to slower moments that introduce tenderness and ambiguity, in a form subtler than Max's desire-built drive or genre-based plays."]
McNeil, Leila. "Surely You're a Creep, Mr. Feynman: On Toxic Moral License and the Mythos of Male Scientific Genius." The Baffler #43 (February 2019)
Meek, Esther. "On Knowledge, Philosophy and Wisdom." Face 2 Face (April 11, 2016) ["Esther talks about her love for knowledge, philosophy and wisdom, defective approaches to knowing, how "it's all connected" and why she is concerned about others as a philosopher."]
Menkes, Nina. "The Visual Language of Oppression: Harvey Wasn’t Working in a Vacuum." Filmmaker (October 30, 2017) ["Like many others who work in the film business, I find none (zero) of the revelations about Harvey Weinstein’s behavior even remotely surprising. His abusive work style was widely known, and, until two weeks ago, even admired by many of his male colleagues and/or competitors. And as is becoming increasingly clear, he was most definitely not alone."]
Midgley, Mary. Myths We Live By. Taylor & Francis, 2005. ["How myths work -- Our place in the world -- Progress, science and modernity -- Thought has many forms -- The aims of reduction -- Dualistic dilemmas -- Motives, materialism and megalomania -- What is action -- Tidying the inner scene : why memes? -- The sleep of reason produces monsters -- Getting rid of the ego -- Cultural evolution? -- Selecting the selectors -- Is reason sex-linked? -- The journey from freedom to desolation -- Biotechnology and the yuk factor -- The new alchemy -- The supernatural engineer -- Heaven and earth, an awkward history -- Science looks both ways -- Are you an animal? -- Problems about parsimony -- Denying animal consciousness -- Beasts versus the biosphere? -- Some practical dilemmas -- Problems of living with otherness -- Changing ideas of wildness."]
Miéville, China. "A Strategy for Ruination." Boston Review (January 8, 2018) ["Writing about China Miéville in the Guardian, fantasy luminary Ursula K. Le Guin opined, “You can’t talk about Miéville without using the word ‘brilliant.’” Miéville is a rare sort of polyglot, an acclaimed novelist—he has won nearly every award for fantasy and science fiction that there is, often multiple times—who is equally comfortable in the worlds of politics and academia. Combining his skills as a storyteller and Marxist theorist, his most recent book, October, regales readers with the key events of the Russian Revolution. In this interview, Miéville discusses the intersections between his creative oeuvre and the political projects of utopia and dystopia."]
Milton, Chris. "Rosemary's Baby: The World as Coven." Bright Lights Film Journal (July 27, 2023) ["Rosemary’s Baby has been seen as eerily prescient, predictive, but in fact it looked back; Polanski already knew evil and horror, and specifically the horror of the giant covens of Nazi Germany and communist Eastern Europe. For just as the “banality of evil” can be reversed to the “evil of banality,” so “collective madness” can be reversed to the “madness of the collective,” and this is the true theme of this film. Rosemary’s Baby is about the glamour of evil, misogyny, the absolute unknowability of others, however intimate, and their potential for betrayal; but above all it is about the evil of ideologies, conformism, the inherent evil of joining in."]
Minutaglio, Bill. "The Most Dangerous Man in America." Radio West (April 2, 2018) ["Monday, we’re talking about Richard Nixon’s obsession with the person he dubbed “the most dangerous man in America.” Timothy Leary was serving a 10-year prison term - for possession of two marijuana cigarettes - when he broke out. Leary’s goal was no less than the overthrow of the U.S. government, and his drug-fueled escapades made him the perfect scapegoat for Nixon. The result was a global manhunt for the bungling, “Fugitive King of LSD.” Author Bill Minutaglio joins us to tell the story."]
Mitchell, W.J.T. "The Trolls of Academe: Making Safe Spaces into Brave Spaces." Los Angeles Review of Books (January 5, 2018) [ Response by Horowitz with a rejoinder by Mitchell ]
"Molly Haskel." Supporting Characters #31 (December 11, 2017) ["Bill talks to author and film critic Molly Haskell about some of the many contributions she’s made to film culture, from writing film criticism for publications like The Village Voice and Vogue to developing books like her landmark FROM REVERENCE TO RAPE: THE TREATMENT OF WOMEN IN THE MOVIES and the recent STEVEN SPIELBERG: A LIFE IN FILMS. Other topics covered include: Feminism, Andrew Sarris, Leo McCarey, DIABOLIQUE, the Sarasota French Film Festival, Twitter, Pauline Kael, women’s films of the 1970s, film theory, Agnes Varda, the origins of the National Society Of Film Critics and New York film culture in the 1960s."]
Moodie, Megan. "Handmade Feminism: Irene Lusztig’s Yours in Sisterhood." Los Angeles Review of Books (May 11, 2018)
Moreci, Michael. "Five Sci-Fi Books That are More Relevant Now Than Ever." TOR (January 31, 2018)
Morris, Wesley. "The Morality Wars." The New York Times (October 3, 2018)
Moskowitz, P.E. "The Problem of Free Speech in an Unfree World." This is Hell! #1070 (August 24, 2019) ["Writer P.E. Moskowitz examines the limits of the First Amendment in American society - as a concept rooted in an equality that will never exist in a capitalist society, and as a cultural battleground almost exclusively fought on the right's terms - for the right's gains. P.E. is author of The Case Against Free Speech: The First Amendment, Fascism, and the Future of Dissent from Bold Type Books."]
Movius, Geoffrey. "An Interview with Susan Sontag." Boston Review (June 1, 1975) [Photography, memory, history, identity (cultural & individual), and representation]
Narula, Neha and Lawrence Weschler. "Ceci N'est Pas Un Dollar." On the Media (October 12, 2018) [When I discuss/lecture about the social construction of reality an initial touchstone is money - this short (12 mins) episode from On the Media is a good intro to thinking about this through money (also a provocative discussion of art).]
Nelson, Josiah H. "Louis Althusser, the Ideological State Apparatus, and Interpellation." Blue Labyrinths (June 25, 2015)
Mitchell, W.J.T. "The Trolls of Academe: Making Safe Spaces into Brave Spaces." Los Angeles Review of Books (January 5, 2018) [ Response by Horowitz with a rejoinder by Mitchell ]
"Molly Haskel." Supporting Characters #31 (December 11, 2017) ["Bill talks to author and film critic Molly Haskell about some of the many contributions she’s made to film culture, from writing film criticism for publications like The Village Voice and Vogue to developing books like her landmark FROM REVERENCE TO RAPE: THE TREATMENT OF WOMEN IN THE MOVIES and the recent STEVEN SPIELBERG: A LIFE IN FILMS. Other topics covered include: Feminism, Andrew Sarris, Leo McCarey, DIABOLIQUE, the Sarasota French Film Festival, Twitter, Pauline Kael, women’s films of the 1970s, film theory, Agnes Varda, the origins of the National Society Of Film Critics and New York film culture in the 1960s."]
Moodie, Megan. "Handmade Feminism: Irene Lusztig’s Yours in Sisterhood." Los Angeles Review of Books (May 11, 2018)
Morris, Wesley. "The Morality Wars." The New York Times (October 3, 2018)
Moskowitz, P.E. "The Problem of Free Speech in an Unfree World." This is Hell! #1070 (August 24, 2019) ["Writer P.E. Moskowitz examines the limits of the First Amendment in American society - as a concept rooted in an equality that will never exist in a capitalist society, and as a cultural battleground almost exclusively fought on the right's terms - for the right's gains. P.E. is author of The Case Against Free Speech: The First Amendment, Fascism, and the Future of Dissent from Bold Type Books."]
Movius, Geoffrey. "An Interview with Susan Sontag." Boston Review (June 1, 1975) [Photography, memory, history, identity (cultural & individual), and representation]
Napper, Lawrence. "They Shall Not Grow Old (Peter Jackson, 2018) and the Elephant in the Room." The International Association for Media and History (October 23, 2018)
Narula, Neha and Lawrence Weschler. "Ceci N'est Pas Un Dollar." On the Media (October 12, 2018) [When I discuss/lecture about the social construction of reality an initial touchstone is money - this short (12 mins) episode from On the Media is a good intro to thinking about this through money (also a provocative discussion of art).]
Nelson, Victoria. "On The Secret Life of Puppets." Weird Studies (November 13, 2022) ["Victoria Nelson saw it first: Popular culture teems with occult ideas, vestiges of bygone belief, fragments of ancient magic disguised as common entertainment. Her 2001 work The Secret Life of Puppets is in many ways the ur-text of weird studies, so prescient and probing it is even more relevant now than it was when it first appeared. In episode 128, Phil and JF discussed Nelson's wonderful first novel Neighbor George (2021). In this episode, Nelson joins the hosts of Weird Studies to talk about the vision that drove her to write Secret Life along with its equally insightful follow-up, Gothicka."]
Newman, Ben. "The Canon Revisited." Imaginary Worlds (December 27, 2017) ["The Last Jedi may be the most controversial film in the Star Wars series. While the movie has been critically acclaimed, many Star Wars fans have argued that the film violated canon in a number of ways, especially how it depicted Luke Skywalker. This week, I revisit my 2014 episode “The Canon,” and I have a follow-up conversation with Rabbi Ben Newman about the state of the Star Wars canon. Until now, Ben and I had been on the same page about the new films, but like many fans, we found ourselves at odds when evaluating The Last Jedi."]
Nicholson-Smith, Donald. "May 1968 and the Situationist International." Against the Grain (November 28, 2018) ["Half a century ago, revolt broke out around the world, making the year 1968 synonymous with left-wing rebellion. In France, students and workers paralyzed the country during a heady month of massive wildcat strikes and factory occupations, during which the government feared it would be toppled. Donald Nicholson-Smith discusses May ’68 and the Situationist ideas that helped fuel the upheaval."]
O'Connor, Rory. "Berlinale Review: Powerful West Bank Documentary No Other Land Gives Voice to the Palestinian Cause." The Film Stage (February 17, 2024) ["Some years ago, an uncle of mine traveled to Palestine with a group of volunteers. It was a time of fewer videophones, certainly in the region, and the organisation involved had asked for volunteers to visit the West Bank and document what they saw. After a few days, my uncle circulated an email in which he recounted the story of a mechanic who had had his tools and equipment arbitrarily confiscated by the Israeli army. The equipment, valued in the region of €50,000, provided for him and his fourteen employees and their families––entire livelihoods vanished with the flick of a pen. The suspicion amongst locals was that the garage, which was also frequented by settlers, was doing too well: “Part of the West Bank operation is to destroy the local economy,” my uncle wrote, before adding, “One got the feeling that the relationship between the settlers and the Palestinians also needed to be destroyed.”"]
Offerman, Nick. "Working with Wood, and the Meaning of Life." On Being (February 23, 2023) ["Nick Offerman has played many great characters, most famously Ron Swanson in Parks and Recreation, and he starred more recently in an astonishing episode of The Last of Us. But he is driven by passionate callings older and deeper than his public vocation as an actor and comedian. He works with wood, and he works with other people who work with their hands making beautiful, useful things. And this, it turns out, is also a primary source of his tethering in values. It’s a source of a spiritual thoughtfulness that runs through this conversation with Krista. So is his love and study of the farmer-poet Wendell Berry, whose audiobook The Need to Be Whole Nick just recorded. This is a moving and edifying conversation that is also, not surprisingly, a lot of fun."]
Oliver, John, et al. "Confronting the Legacy of the Confederacy." Best of the Left #1186 (May 29, 2018) ["Today we take a look at the legacy of the Confederacy, the monuments and white supremacy it left behind and the racial terror institutionalized in America based on upholding its values."]
Oliver, Manuel and Patricia Oliver. "Parents of Murdered Parkland Student Joaquin Oliver on Using Art to Demand End to Gun Violence." Democracy Now (August 15, 2018) ["Students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, return to class today, amid heavy security, after summer break. It was six months ago Tuesday when a former student, armed with a semiautomatic AR-15, gunned down 17 students, staff and teachers in just three minutes. It was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. After the horrific attack, many of the students who survived the shooting became leading activists for gun control. Among the students killed at Stoneman Douglas High School was Joaquin Oliver. On Tuesday, Democracy Now! spoke to Joaquin’s parents, Manuel and Patricia Oliver, who have started a new nonprofit called Change the Ref to promote the use of urban art and nonviolent creative confrontation to expose the disastrous effects of gun violence."]
Olsson, Tore C. "What Red Dead Redemption II Reveals About Our Myths of the American West." Literary Hub (August 28, 2024) ["This near-universal decision to foreground the game’s western-ness was not inevitable. Of the ninety-six main story missions in Red Dead Redemption II (by my count), only a thin majority of fifty-one take place in a western setting, while forty-five are set in the Deep South, Appalachia, or the Caribbean. Why then is the game almost exclusively classified as a western? It is due to the simple fact that in American popular culture, there are no established genres called “southerns,” “Appalachians,” or “Caribbeans.” But for more than a century, there have been a jaw-dropping preponderance of “western” films, TV series, comics, novels, and, of course, games. Both the producers and reviewers of Rockstar’s game knew that of all the regions it showcases, only one is a deep-rooted genre and a national obsession."]
Pavlic, Ed. "Baldwin's Lonely Country." Boston Review (March 29, 2018) ["When Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, James Baldwin made a final attempt to reconcile the generational divide between the civil rights movement and Black Power."]
Paxton, Robert O. "Melville's French Resistance." The Daily (January 11, 2011) ["Jean-Pierre Melville’s film Army of Shadows (1969) gives a dramatic account of the extreme dangers faced by the French who resisted the German occupation of 1940–1944. The time of the story is unspecified, but it is probably 1943, late enough for the Germans to have occupied the formerly unoccupied south (this occurred in November 1942), but early enough for the Resistance to still be concerned mainly with the struggle to survive."]
Pavlic, Ed. "Baldwin's Lonely Country." Boston Review (March 29, 2018) ["When Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, James Baldwin made a final attempt to reconcile the generational divide between the civil rights movement and Black Power."]
Pelan, Tim. "Trickle Down Robonomics—The Predatory Capitalism of ‘RoboCop.’" Cinephilia & Beyond (August 21, 2023) ["RoboCop, Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 American debut, was a prescient satire on Reagan-era American values and predatory capitalism, with Omni Consumer Products (OCP) contracted to run the police force in crumbling Old Detroit, whilst ramping up a tank-like robotic enforcement program (ED 209) to militarise the war on crime. This OCP action is in advance of the gentrification of Detroit’s rebirth as “Delta City,” complete with 2 million jobs. But number two executive Dick Jones’ project has a few “glitches” and hungry underling Dick Morton (Miguel Ferrer) has a backup plan—RoboCop, an anonymous cybernetic cop, loyal to the company. All he needs is a “volunteer,” transferring suitable candidates into the worst precinct in town to be declared legally dead—their contracts say they are property of OCP when gunned down on duty. Dick is also in cahoots with sociopathic criminal Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) to feast upon the migrant workforce that will be assembled to create the new utopia."]
Pfeifer, Annie. "On Grimm's Fairytales." Writ Large (November 2, 2022) ["You probably already know the story of Snow White—as well as Little Red Riding Hood, Briar Rose, The Frog Prince, and so many others. These tales have a rich history of oral storytelling. They’ve travelled through culture, adapted and readapted in each retelling and reaching as far as the popular Disney movies that our kids watch over and over. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm saw the power of this folklore and made it their life’s mission to compile and preserve it. But while we tend to think of Grimms’ Fairy Tales as stories for children, the themes found in Jacob and Wilhelm’s book can be pretty mature…and a little dark. Columbia professor Annie Pfeifer discusses how the Grimm brothers ended up creating a whole new literary genre and their stories have been shaped and molded throughout history. Annie Pfeifer is an Assistant Professor of Germanic Languages at Columbia University."]
Phelan, Stephen. "Watching the End of the World." The Boston Review (June 11, 2019) ["The Doomsday Clock is set to two minutes to midnight—the same position it held in 1953, when the United States and USSR detonated their first hydrogen bombs. So why don't we make movies about nuclear war anymore? "]
Philo, Kaila. "Fear of a Black Universe: Can Marvel's Black Panther help carry the torch of Black radicalism?" The Baffler (February 21, 2018)
Pinn, Anthony. "Humanism, Theology, and the Black Community." Mindscape (July 12, 2018) ["According to atheism, God does not exist. But religions have traditionally done much more than simply proclaim God’s existence: they have provided communities, promoted the arts, handed down moral guidance, and so on. Can atheism, or perhaps humanism, replicate these roles? Anthony Pinn grew up as a devout Methodist, but became a humanist when he felt that religion wasn’t really helping the communities that he cared about. Today he is a professor of religion who works to bring together atheism and the black community. We talk about humanism, identity politics, and the way forward."]
Poole, W. Scott. Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror and the Origins of American Empire. Catapult, 2022. ["The panoramic story of how the horror genre transformed into one of the most incisive critiques of unchecked American imperial power. The American empire emerged from the shadows of World War II. As the nation’s influence swept the globe with near impunity, a host of evil forces followed—from racism, exploitation, and military invasion to killer clowns, flying saucers, and monsters borne of a fear of the other. By viewing American imperial history through the prism of the horror genre, Dark Carnivals lays bare how the genre shaped us, distracted us, and gave form to a violence as American as apple pie. A carnival ride that connects the mushroom clouds of 1945 to the beaches of Amity Island, Charles Manson to the massacre at My Lai, and John Wayne to John Wayne Gacy, the new book by acclaimed historian W. Scott Poole reveals how horror films and fictions have followed the course of America’s military and cultural empire and explores how the shadow of our national sins can take on the form of mass entertainment."]
Popova, Maria. "Adrienne Rich on Lying, What “Truth” Really Means, and the Alchemy of Human Possibility." Brain Picking (November 13, 2014)
---. "Adrienne Rich on Why an Education Is Something You Claim, Not Something You Get." Brain Pickings (May 21, 2014)
---. "How Relationships Refine Our Truths: Adrienne Rich on the Dignity of Love." Brain Pickings (July 2, 2013)
---. "The Mushroom Hunters: Neil Gaiman’s Subversive Feminist Celebration of Science and the Human Hunger for Truth, in a Gorgeous Animated Short Film." Brain Pickings (November 25, 2019)
---. "What Power Really Means: Cheryl Strayed Reads Adrienne Rich’s Homage to Marie Curie." Brain Pickings (April 24, 2018)
Powers, Richard. "Richard Powers with Tayari Jones." Lannan Podcasts (February 27, 2019) ["Richard Powers is the author of 12 novels. These works employ multiple narrative frames to explore connections among disciplines as disparate as photography, artificial intelligence, musical composition, genomics, game theory, virtual reality, race, business, and ecology. He has said, “Science is not about control. It is about cultivating a perpetual condition of wonder in the face of something that forever grows one step richer and subtler than our latest theory about it. It is about reverence, not mastery.” His novels include Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance (1985), inspired by German photographer August Sander’s 1914 image of the same title; The Gold Bug Variations (1991), a double love story of two young couples separated by a distance of 25 years; and The Echo Maker(2007), whose main character, Mark, suffers a traumatic brain injury in a car accident and becomes convinced that the woman who looks, acts, and sounds just like his sister Karin is actually an imposter. His most recent book, The Overstory (2018), is a tale of activism and resistance, about the secret language of trees and the people they bring together to save the last few remaining acres of virgin forest. In the New York Times Book Review, author Barbara Kingsolver called it “monumental… The Overstory accomplishes what few living writers from either camp, art or science, could attempt. Using the tools of the story, he pulls readers heart-first into a perspective so much longer-lived and more subtly developed than the human purview that we gain glimpses of a vast, primordial sensibility, while watching our own kind get whittled down to size… A gigantic fable of genuine truths.”"]
Pray, Jennifer. "Embodied Feminism." Feminist Killjoys #61 (2017) ["“Even though a space is female-dominated doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a space where it’s about female empowerment." -J. Pray In this episode, Melody talks with Jennifer Pray, a Twin Cities-based dance artist and yoga teacher. Jennifer discusses how her dance and yoga work intersect with each other and with feminism. More specifically, Jennifer digs into what an embodied feminism can look like. A lot of good gems to listen for."]
Prentice, Deborah and Robb Willer. "Pluralistic Ignorance: The psychology behind why people defend the norms they secretly despise." You Are Not So Smart #181 (July 30, 2020)
Purnell, Derecka. "Radical Political Action." Boston Review (March 7, 2016) ["In the Black Study, Black Struggle forum, Robin D. G. Kelley advocates for a rebirth of grassroots political education. A forum contributor, Derecka Purnell, informed us that some groups of student-activists are already doing exactly that. At Harvard Law School, a group called Reclaim Harvard Law has occupied one of the school's lounges and is holding weekly political education sessions there. Purnell shared with us her list of the texts that have been circulating in the group. It reveals an investment in liberation from not only racial oppression, but from all forms of oppression, including sexual and financial. This is informed by a commitment to "intersectionality," Kimberlé Crenshaw's insight that various forms of oppression are entangled and amplify one another, and thus must be fought in concert. We present this list, in the form it was presented to us, as the current pulse of the movement and a testament to its members' brilliance."]
Quinley, Caleb. "The artists promoting peace in Thailand's conflict-plagued south." Al Jazeera (January 8, 2019) ["Saiburi Looker is a group of artists aiming to rebuild communal ties and promote peace by using art as their main tool."]Radsch, Courtney and Sarah Leah Whitson. "Netflix Censors Hasan Minhaj in Saudi Arabia, Sparking Backlash over Khashoggi Killing, War in Yemen." Democracy Now (January 3, 2019) ["Netflix is under fire for pulling an episode of U.S. comedian Hasan Minhaj’s show “Patriot Act” from Saudi Arabia, after officials from the kingdom complained to the streaming company that it violated Saudi cybercrime laws. The episode was posted in late October, a few weeks after Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Hasan Minhaj sharply criticized the Saudi royal family and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The censored episode has been viewed more than 1.6 million times on YouTube, where it remains available to viewers in Saudi Arabia. On Wednesday, Minhaj tweeted, “Clearly, the best way to stop people from watching something is to ban it, make it trend online, and then leave it up on YouTube. Let’s not forget that the world’s largest humanitarian crisis is happening in Yemen right now. Please donate: help.rescue.org/donate/yemen.” We speak with Courtney Radsch, advocacy director at the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa Division."]
---. "Adrienne Rich on Why an Education Is Something You Claim, Not Something You Get." Brain Pickings (May 21, 2014)
---. "How Relationships Refine Our Truths: Adrienne Rich on the Dignity of Love." Brain Pickings (July 2, 2013)
---. "The Mushroom Hunters: Neil Gaiman’s Subversive Feminist Celebration of Science and the Human Hunger for Truth, in a Gorgeous Animated Short Film." Brain Pickings (November 25, 2019)
---. "What Power Really Means: Cheryl Strayed Reads Adrienne Rich’s Homage to Marie Curie." Brain Pickings (April 24, 2018)
Powers, Richard. "Richard Powers with Tayari Jones." Lannan Podcasts (February 27, 2019) ["Richard Powers is the author of 12 novels. These works employ multiple narrative frames to explore connections among disciplines as disparate as photography, artificial intelligence, musical composition, genomics, game theory, virtual reality, race, business, and ecology. He has said, “Science is not about control. It is about cultivating a perpetual condition of wonder in the face of something that forever grows one step richer and subtler than our latest theory about it. It is about reverence, not mastery.” His novels include Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance (1985), inspired by German photographer August Sander’s 1914 image of the same title; The Gold Bug Variations (1991), a double love story of two young couples separated by a distance of 25 years; and The Echo Maker(2007), whose main character, Mark, suffers a traumatic brain injury in a car accident and becomes convinced that the woman who looks, acts, and sounds just like his sister Karin is actually an imposter. His most recent book, The Overstory (2018), is a tale of activism and resistance, about the secret language of trees and the people they bring together to save the last few remaining acres of virgin forest. In the New York Times Book Review, author Barbara Kingsolver called it “monumental… The Overstory accomplishes what few living writers from either camp, art or science, could attempt. Using the tools of the story, he pulls readers heart-first into a perspective so much longer-lived and more subtly developed than the human purview that we gain glimpses of a vast, primordial sensibility, while watching our own kind get whittled down to size… A gigantic fable of genuine truths.”"]
Prentice, Deborah and Robb Willer. "Pluralistic Ignorance: The psychology behind why people defend the norms they secretly despise." You Are Not So Smart #181 (July 30, 2020)
Purnell, Derecka. "Radical Political Action." Boston Review (March 7, 2016) ["In the Black Study, Black Struggle forum, Robin D. G. Kelley advocates for a rebirth of grassroots political education. A forum contributor, Derecka Purnell, informed us that some groups of student-activists are already doing exactly that. At Harvard Law School, a group called Reclaim Harvard Law has occupied one of the school's lounges and is holding weekly political education sessions there. Purnell shared with us her list of the texts that have been circulating in the group. It reveals an investment in liberation from not only racial oppression, but from all forms of oppression, including sexual and financial. This is informed by a commitment to "intersectionality," Kimberlé Crenshaw's insight that various forms of oppression are entangled and amplify one another, and thus must be fought in concert. We present this list, in the form it was presented to us, as the current pulse of the movement and a testament to its members' brilliance."]
Quinley, Caleb. "The artists promoting peace in Thailand's conflict-plagued south." Al Jazeera (January 8, 2019) ["Saiburi Looker is a group of artists aiming to rebuild communal ties and promote peace by using art as their main tool."]
Quiroga, Rodrigo Quian. "Neuroscience Fiction." New Books in Neuroscience (September 10, 2020) ["In NeuroScience Fiction (Benbella Books, 2020), Rodrigo Quian Quiroga shows how the outlandish premises of many seminal science fiction movies are being made possible by new discoveries and technological advances in neuroscience and related fields. Along the way, he also explores the thorny philosophical problems raised as a result, diving into Minority Report and free will, The Matrix and the illusion of reality, Blade Runner and android emotion, and more. A heady mix of science fiction, neuroscience, and philosophy, NeuroScience Fiction takes us from Vanilla Sky to neural research labs, and from Planet of the Apes to what makes us human. The end result is a sort of bio-technological “Sophie’s World for the 21st Century”, and a compelling update on the state of human knowledge through its cultural expressions in film and art. Dr. Rodrigo Quian Quiroga is the director of the Centre for Systems Neuroscience and the Head of Bioengineering at the University of Leicester. His research focuses on the principles of visual perception and memory, and is credited with the discovery of "Concept cells" or "Jennifer Aniston neurons" - neurons in the human brain that play a key role in memory formation."]
Randall, Alice. "Beyoncé country." Today, Explained (March 22, 2024) ["Beyoncé has a new country album. The first single has already broken records and drawn criticism from those who think of country music as a “white” genre. Except it’s not. Author and songwriter Alice Randall tells the story of country music’s very Black roots."]
Rengifo, Alci. "Love in the Shadowland of Myth: Rainer Sarnet’s November." Riot Material (March 2, 2018) ["Cinema has the capacity to become a conduit for dreams and nightmares, combining both into something the ancients could have scarcely imagined- the physical manifestation of myth. If critics such as Roland Barthes and Octavio Paz are correct, then the ritual of cinema or television has replaced the pagan rituals of old. Yet the primitive force of myth remains embedded in human expression, no matter if the medium has changed. Estonian filmmaker Rainer Sarnet’s new film, November (2017), is pure myth, a fairy tale lifted from the page and given life by moving images, the reverie of cinematography and the atmosphere of music. It is imagined and produced with a vivid sense of time and place, yet creating an environment outside of time. And like all myths, its grand and magical flourishes are decorations for a story that is simple in its evocation of human feelings, desires and experiences."]
Reskinoff, Ned. "Hollywood’s Nomads: On Pamela Robertson Wojcik’s Unhomed." Los Angeles Review of Books (April 10, 2024) ["In Unhomed, Wojcik demonstrates at length that Hollywood’s denialism is a break from precedent: earlier American films show a consistent preoccupation, even fascination, with homelessness and housing insecurity. A professor of film studies at the University of Notre Dame, Wojcik is the author of two other books about the role of home and place in American cinema—Fantasies of Neglect: Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction (2016) and The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture, 1945 to 1975 (2010). In her latest, she traces the evolution of film’s itinerant wanderers from the tramps and hobos of the silent era up to the titular drifters of Nomadland (2020). According to the book’s introduction, “Unhomed is about a curiously neglected dominant in American culture: mobility without Manifest Destiny, movement without terminus, geographic mobility that does not produce hope of social mobility.”"]
Revoyr, Nina. "The Invisible Aristocracy." Against the Grain (April 1, 2019) ["Class divides and racial dynamics are explored in Nina Revoyr’s new novel “A Student of History.” In it, a biracial graduate student with a blue-collar background gains access to a very different world, that of the superrich descendants of the founders of Los Angeles. Many of them, he discovers, exert tremendous power and influence behind the scenes."]
Riley, Boots. "Boots Riley on His Anti-Capitalist Film Sorry to Bother You, the Power of Strikes & Class Struggle." Democracy Now (September 3, 2018) ["In a Labor Day special, we air an extended conversation with Boots Riley, writer and director of “Sorry to Bother You,” his new film about an evil telemarketing company, a corporation making millions off of slave labor, and one Oakland man at the center of it all who discovers a secret that threatens all of humankind. His dystopian social satire is being hailed as one of the best movies of the summer. Riley is a poet, rapper, songwriter, producer, screenwriter, humorist, political organizer, community activist, lecturer and public speaker—best known as the lead vocalist of The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club."]
Robin, Corey. "The United States of Amnesia." On the Media (March 29, 2019) ["The end to the Mueller investigation has been wholly unsatisfying for those who see Trump’s presidency as an aberrant detour on conservatism’s march. This presidency, this in-your-face self-dealing, this breakdown in civility: it seems altogether new. Of course, it's not. Political science professor Corey Robin argues that the Trump era is merely an extension of the same movement that gave us the Iraq War — and much that preceded it. He and Brooke discuss our collective failure to draw connections between Trump and what came before, and how it forms part of a longer pattern of forgetting in American culture."]
Robinson, Andrew. "Bakhtin: Carnival against Capital, Carnival against Power." Cease Fire (September 9, 2011) ["The dominant worldview of medieval Europe was of a natural order which is hierarchical, stable, monolithic and immutable, but poised on the brink of disaster or ‘cosmic terror’, and hence in need of constant maintenance of order. This is similar to Aristotle’s view. For Bakhtin, such a view is oppressive and intolerant. It closes language to change. The fear of ‘cosmic terror’, the pending collapse of order if things got out of control (or the threat posed by the Real to the master-signifier), was used by elites to justify hierarchy and to subdue popular revolt and critical consciousness. Today, we might think of this vision of monolithic order in terms of fantasies of ‘broken Britain’, of civilisation under siege from extremists, and a discourse of risk-management (and the crisis-management of ‘ungovernability’) in which ‘terrorism’, disease, protest, deviance and natural disaster fuse into a secularised vision of cosmic collapse. This vision of collapse has infiltrated legal and political discourse to such a degree that any excess of state power seems ‘proportionate’ against this greater evil. The folk view expressed in carnival and carnivalesque, and related speech-genres such as swearing and popular humour, opposes and subverts this vision. For Bakhtin, cosmic terror and the awe induced by the system’s violent power are the mainstays of its affective domination. Folk culture combats the fear created by cosmic terror.""]
---. "Bakhtin: Dialogism, Polyphony and Heteroglossia." CeaseFire (July 29, 2011) ["Mikhail Bakhtin was one of the most important theorists of discourse in the twentieth century. He is sometimes termed the most important Soviet thinker in the social sciences. His work also has substantial importance for issues of political resistance. Working under the shadow of Stalinism, he was certainly a controversial figure. He was refused his doctorate because of the controversial nature of his work on Rabelais, and subsequently sentenced to internal exile in Kazakhstan during Stalin’s purges. He also had a disability for much of his life, and while he does not write directly on disability issues, his concern with embodiment is apparent."]
Robson, Leo. Under Western Eyes: Milan Kundera." The New Left Review (September 1, 2023) ["Milan Kundera, the Czech writer who died earlier this summer aged 94, represented a number of things, but they were all variations – to borrow one of his own favourite words – on the theme of freedom. To the Western readership which embraced his work perhaps as eagerly as that of any non-Anglophone writer during the final quarter of the twentieth century (Marquez was the obvious competitor) he seemed to offer a distinctive, unorthodox and unassailably authoritative approach to novelistic form, literary history and the sanctity of private life. But no less important to Kundera’s project and legacy were the liberties he took, the freedoms he granted himself – from responsibility and rigour, from his obligations to coherence and even reality."]
Rogers, Amanda and Adam Shatz. "Forty years on, Edward Said's 'Orientalism' still groundbreaking." Ideas (October 23, 2019) ["Edward Said's seminal book, Orientalism (1978), proposed one of the most influential and enduring analyses of the relationship between the West and the Middle East. In many ways, his ideas seem uncontroversial, perhaps even obvious today. But four decades ago, what Said proposed was radical. It still is."]
Revoyr, Nina. "The Invisible Aristocracy." Against the Grain (April 1, 2019) ["Class divides and racial dynamics are explored in Nina Revoyr’s new novel “A Student of History.” In it, a biracial graduate student with a blue-collar background gains access to a very different world, that of the superrich descendants of the founders of Los Angeles. Many of them, he discovers, exert tremendous power and influence behind the scenes."]
Rhoads, Kelton. "Propaganda Tactics and Fahrenheit 9/11." Film and History (September 11, 2004)
Riley, Boots. "Boots Riley on His Anti-Capitalist Film Sorry to Bother You, the Power of Strikes & Class Struggle." Democracy Now (September 3, 2018) ["In a Labor Day special, we air an extended conversation with Boots Riley, writer and director of “Sorry to Bother You,” his new film about an evil telemarketing company, a corporation making millions off of slave labor, and one Oakland man at the center of it all who discovers a secret that threatens all of humankind. His dystopian social satire is being hailed as one of the best movies of the summer. Riley is a poet, rapper, songwriter, producer, screenwriter, humorist, political organizer, community activist, lecturer and public speaker—best known as the lead vocalist of The Coup and Street Sweeper Social Club."]
---. "On Sorry to Bother You and Communism." The Dig (August 9, 2018) ["Sorry to Bother You is a hilarious film about the dead serious shitiness of life under neoliberalism's flexibilized and precarious labor regime, a system teetering upon a thin line between free labor exploitation and a form of expropriation reminiscent of full-on slave labor—all at the mercy of the thinly-veiled barbarity of Palo Alto-style techno-utopianism. It's about how capitalist society divides and conquers friends and family to claim not only our obedience but also our very souls, and about how the task of left organizing is to see through that game and fight together. Dan's guest today is Boots Riley, who wrote and directed the film and also fronts the left-wing hip hop group The Coup."]
Roberts-Miller, Patricia. "Teacher Neutrality and Fairness in a Culture of Demagoguery." (Personal/teaching website: February 23, 2018)
Robin, Corey. "The United States of Amnesia." On the Media (March 29, 2019) ["The end to the Mueller investigation has been wholly unsatisfying for those who see Trump’s presidency as an aberrant detour on conservatism’s march. This presidency, this in-your-face self-dealing, this breakdown in civility: it seems altogether new. Of course, it's not. Political science professor Corey Robin argues that the Trump era is merely an extension of the same movement that gave us the Iraq War — and much that preceded it. He and Brooke discuss our collective failure to draw connections between Trump and what came before, and how it forms part of a longer pattern of forgetting in American culture."]
Robinson, Andrew. "Bakhtin: Carnival against Capital, Carnival against Power." Cease Fire (September 9, 2011) ["The dominant worldview of medieval Europe was of a natural order which is hierarchical, stable, monolithic and immutable, but poised on the brink of disaster or ‘cosmic terror’, and hence in need of constant maintenance of order. This is similar to Aristotle’s view. For Bakhtin, such a view is oppressive and intolerant. It closes language to change. The fear of ‘cosmic terror’, the pending collapse of order if things got out of control (or the threat posed by the Real to the master-signifier), was used by elites to justify hierarchy and to subdue popular revolt and critical consciousness. Today, we might think of this vision of monolithic order in terms of fantasies of ‘broken Britain’, of civilisation under siege from extremists, and a discourse of risk-management (and the crisis-management of ‘ungovernability’) in which ‘terrorism’, disease, protest, deviance and natural disaster fuse into a secularised vision of cosmic collapse. This vision of collapse has infiltrated legal and political discourse to such a degree that any excess of state power seems ‘proportionate’ against this greater evil. The folk view expressed in carnival and carnivalesque, and related speech-genres such as swearing and popular humour, opposes and subverts this vision. For Bakhtin, cosmic terror and the awe induced by the system’s violent power are the mainstays of its affective domination. Folk culture combats the fear created by cosmic terror.""]
---. "Bakhtin: Dialogism, Polyphony and Heteroglossia." CeaseFire (July 29, 2011) ["Mikhail Bakhtin was one of the most important theorists of discourse in the twentieth century. He is sometimes termed the most important Soviet thinker in the social sciences. His work also has substantial importance for issues of political resistance. Working under the shadow of Stalinism, he was certainly a controversial figure. He was refused his doctorate because of the controversial nature of his work on Rabelais, and subsequently sentenced to internal exile in Kazakhstan during Stalin’s purges. He also had a disability for much of his life, and while he does not write directly on disability issues, his concern with embodiment is apparent."]
Robson, Leo. Under Western Eyes: Milan Kundera." The New Left Review (September 1, 2023) ["Milan Kundera, the Czech writer who died earlier this summer aged 94, represented a number of things, but they were all variations – to borrow one of his own favourite words – on the theme of freedom. To the Western readership which embraced his work perhaps as eagerly as that of any non-Anglophone writer during the final quarter of the twentieth century (Marquez was the obvious competitor) he seemed to offer a distinctive, unorthodox and unassailably authoritative approach to novelistic form, literary history and the sanctity of private life. But no less important to Kundera’s project and legacy were the liberties he took, the freedoms he granted himself – from responsibility and rigour, from his obligations to coherence and even reality."]
Rogers, Amanda and Adam Shatz. "Forty years on, Edward Said's 'Orientalism' still groundbreaking." Ideas (October 23, 2019) ["Edward Said's seminal book, Orientalism (1978), proposed one of the most influential and enduring analyses of the relationship between the West and the Middle East. In many ways, his ideas seem uncontroversial, perhaps even obvious today. But four decades ago, what Said proposed was radical. It still is."]
Romm, Jake. "We Never Left The Zone of Interest." Verso Books (June 28, 2024) ["Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest was fated for an odd reception. Not simply because he has produced another of the always controversial films about the Shoah. Not only because the film was released while Israel, which has used the Shoah as both a shield and a bludgeon, is perpetrating its own genocide against the Palestinians. But because Glazer’s film is materialist, implicating not just the viewer but the world itself."]
Rosenfeld, Kat. "Sensitivity Readers Are the New Literary Gatekeepers." Reason (September 2022) ["
Overzealous gatekeeping on race and gender is killing books before they're published—or even written."]Rushdie, Salman. "David Remnick Speaks to Salman Rushdie About Surviving the Fatwa." On the Media (February 8, 2023) ["Thirty-four years ago, the Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwa calling for the assassination of the novelist Salman Rushdie, whose book “The Satanic Verses” Khomeini declared blasphemous. It caused a worldwide uproar. Rushdie lived in hiding in London for a decade before moving to New York, where he began to let his guard down. “I had come to feel that it was a very long time ago and, and that the world moves on,” he tells David Remnick. “That’s what I had agreed with myself was the case. And then it wasn’t.” In August of last year, a man named Hadi Matar attacked Rushdie onstage before a public event, stabbing him about a dozen times. Rushdie barely survived. Now, in his first interview since the assassination attempt, Rushdie discusses the long shadow of the fatwa; his recovery from extensive injuries; and his writing. It was “just a piece of fortune, given what happened,” that Rushdie had finished work on a new novel, “Victory City,” weeks before the attack. The book is being published this week. “I’ve always thought that my books are more interesting than my life,” he remarks. “Unfortunately, the world appears to disagree.”"]
Rushton, Michael. "The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts (Palgrave Macmillan 2023)." New Books in Critical Theory (November 25, 2023) ["Should governments fund the arts? In The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), Michael Rushton, Co-Director of the Center for Cultural Affairs and a Professor at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, explores a variety of frameworks for thinking about this question, from liberal and egalitarian justifications, through to communitarian, conservative, and multiculturalist ideas. The book outlines the economic method for thinking about the arts, and uses this as a starting point to understand what various political philosophies might tell policymakers and the public today. A rich and deep intervention on a pressing social and governmental question, the book is essential reading across the arts, humanities, and social sciences, as well as for anyone interested in arts and cultural policy. Prof Rushton blogs at both Substack and Artsjournal and you can read open access papers covering some of the key ideas in the book here and here."]
Sanchez-Taylor, Joy. "What Can Double Estrangement Reveal about Speculative Fiction?" Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research 10.1 (January 2023) ["What each of these definitions of double estrangement demonstrates is an awareness that speculative fictions work to place readers in a liminal position: between the “real” world and the world of the speculative text, or between a fantasy world and its “rational” alternative. I am using quotation marks around the terms “real” and “rational” here because these terms come from a Eurocentric perspective. European colonizers believed that their sciences and technologies were superior to those of the peoples they colonized, and therefore the only rational option, a fact that John Rieder documents thoroughly in Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction. The rational vs. irrational binary is one of the cornerstones of definitions of speculative fiction and also serves as a boundary denoting the difference between the genres of science fiction and fantasy."]
Saraiya, Sonia. "Through a Glass Darkly: The 1980s Through Current Television." Historiansplaining (February 17, 2020) ["What is with the spate of 1980s themes on current "prestige" television? Is it Gen. X. nostalgia for their youthful days in suburban malls? Or something more? Television critic Sonia Saraiya discusses how our unresolved identity crises seem to have led us into a fascination with the last years of the Cold War, and with the secret mistakes and machinations that took place on both sides of the old Iron Curtain."]
Schyler, Krista. "Butterflies, Bison and the Border Wall." She Explores (2019)
["Conservation photographer Krista Schlyer describes the almost 2,000-mile border between the US and Mexico as a vibrant landscape teeming with life. Raising awareness for its biodiversity has become an integral part of her life’s work and is the focus of a new documentary film she directed, Ay Mariposa, which came out in May. We hear a lot about the border wall in the news, but we don’t often talk about the wildlife and landscape that its construction impacts.
Note: We want to emphasize that while there’s a lot of talk about flora and fauna in this episode, it’s not to discount the very human elements of the US/Mexico border – it’s simply to highlight what exists alongside it."]
Scialabba, George. "Back to the Land: Wendell Berry in the Path of Modernity." The Baffler (January 2020)
Scialabba, George and Cornel West. "Public Thinking: Social Media and the New Public Intellectual." Ministry of Ideas (January 30, 2023) ["We have usually relied on public intellectuals to provide facts, ideas, and cultural leadership--though not all have lived up to the ideal of “speaking truth to power.” Today, however, online networks and social media mean we are all public intellectuals, and we have new responsibilities that come with this role. Guests: Cornel West, professor at Union Theological Seminary and author of, among other works, Black Prophetic Fire. George Scialabba, author of What Good Are Intellectuals Good For?, and many other works."]
Scott, James C. Two Cheers for Anarchism: Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play. Princeton University Press, 2012.
Self, Will. "The Printed Word in Peril." Harper's (October 2018) ["The age of Homo virtualis is upon us."]
Serpe, Nick. "Bisbee's Ghosts." Dissent (Winter 2019) ["A forced exodus haunts a border town’s past. Can a new documentary force a reckoning?"]
Serpell, Namwali. "Does Fiction Promote Empathy?" Against the Grain (October 22, 2019) ["Do fictional narratives, like those found in novels, plays, and films, promote empathy? Does emotion-based empathy spur people to alleviate suffering in the real world? Namwali Serpell calls into question much of the conventional thinking about empathy in relation to art. Drawing on thinkers like Arendt and Brecht, Serpell points to fiction’s capacity to enlarge our understanding to encompass the positions of others."]
Seymour, Gene. "Taming the Savage White Man: The Western Mythos Remade in the Age of Trump." The Baffler #43 (February 2019)
Shafizadeh, Nafis. "Reagan at the Movies: Make My Day: Movie Culture in the Age of Reagan, by J. Hoberman." Senses of Cinema #95 (July 2020)
Shaviro, Steven. "Monster Portraits (Del Samatar and Sofia Samatar)." The Pinocchio Theory (March 6, 2018)
Sheidlower, Jesse. "A Brief History of the Most Famous Swear Word in the World." Literary Hub (November 5, 2024) ["In all of English there are few words rich enough in their history and variety of use to warrant a dedicated dictionary that runs to hundreds of pages and multiple editions. That fuck is at the same time one of the most notorious, popular, and emotive words in the language makes it all the more fascinating—and deserving of the attention given to it in this volume."]
Shumsky, Susan. "The Inner Light: How India Influenced the Beatles." Booked on Rock (November 17, 2022) ["The spiritual journey of the Beatles is the story of an entire generation of visionaries in the sixties who transformed the world. The Beatles turned Western culture upside down and brought Indian philosophy to the West more effectively than any guru. "The Inner Light" illumines hidden meanings of the Beatles’ India-influenced lyrics and sounds, decoded by Susan Shumsky—a rare insider who spent two decades in the ashrams and six years on the personal staff of the Beatles’ mentor, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This eye-opening book draws back the curtain on the Beatles’ experiments with psychedelics, meditation, chanting, and Indian music. Among many shocking revelations never before revealed, we discover who invented "raga rock" (not the Beatles), the real identity of rare Indian instruments and musicians on their tracks, which Beatle was the best meditator (not George), why the Beatles left India in a huff, John and George’s attempts to return, Maharishi’s accurate prediction, and who Sexy Sadie, Jojo, Bungalow Bill, Dear Prudence, Blackbird, My Sweet Lord, Hare Krishna, and the Fool on the Hill really were. Half a century later, the Beatles have sold more records than any other recording artist. A new generation wants to relive the magic of the flower-power era and is now discovering the message of this iconic band and its four superstars. For people of all nations and ages, the Beatles’ mystique lives on. “The Inner Light” is Susan Shumsky’s gift to their legacy. Susan Shumsky holds a Doctor of Divinity degree and has authored twenty books in English. She’s released thirty-six foreign editions, won forty-one book awards, and done 1,300 media appearances. A rare insider, she was on the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s personal staff for six years and lived in his ashrams for twenty years."]
Skiveren, Nicolai. "Cinematic Waesthetic: Wasted Worlds, Wasted Lives and Becoming-Waste in Contemporary Science Fiction Film." Revenant #10 (March 2024) ["This article explores the aesthetic, affective, and epistemological connections that bind together science fiction (SF) as a genre of cognitive estrangement, and the varied forms of waste that have come to permeate the genre’s filmic depictions of the future. Whether it be in the shadowy alleyways of Blade Runner 2049 (2017), the shantytowns of District 9 (2009), or the ravaged environments of Idiocracy (2006), waste is always there, lurking in the background, enveloping its human and nonhuman subjects with its elusive yet distinct atmosphere. And yet, it remains unclear what purpose(s), if any, waste might serve within these film-worlds. Because despite the seemingly central place that waste occupies in our cultural imaginaries of the future, no one has yet presented a systematic reflection on its affective, symbolic, and narrative significance. This article therefore brings together writings on ecological SF (Caravan 2014) and critical waste studies (Bauman 2004; Hawkins 2005; Viney 2014) to scrutinize the waste found across the above SF films. The article proposes that waste in contemporary SF film can be seen to operate mainly within three overlapping modes: ‘Wasted worlds,’ ‘Wasted lives,’ and ‘Becoming-waste.’ Drawing especially on Adrian Ivakhiv’s tripartite model for an eco-philosophy of the cinema, this article calls attention to the often subtle ways in which waste participates in (i) cinematic world-building, (ii) representations of otherness, and (iii) depictions of radical forms of change. Taken together, these three modes represent a suggestive image of how waste forms part of contemporary SF film."]
Slotkin, Richard. "American Disorder: The Origin of the Culture War." Open Source (April 25, 2024) [MB: I'm currently reading this book. Essential history to understand how stories/myths are used to create a sense of national identity (and who does and does not belong) and the current narratives being deployed in our acrimonious cultural wars. "The key battle taking place in this American crisis year of 2024 is happening in our heads, according to the master historian Richard Slotkin. He’s here to tell us all that we’re in a 40-year culture war and an identity crisis by now. It’s all about drawing on legendary figures like Daniel Boone and Frederick Douglass, Betsy Ross and Rosa Parks, Robert E. Lee and G.I. Joe for a composite self-portrait of the country. Richard Slotkin says we’re in a contest of origin stories, in search of a common national myth. His book is A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America. It is the Trump-Biden fight, of course, but with centuries of history bubbling under it."]
Solloway, Jack. "How to Be Original." Bloomsbury Visual Arts (June 2024) ["It’s a truism that art is not created in a vacuum and that artists are always indebted to a wider community of creators and facilitators in the industry which provides the conditions for their work. Yet when something is truly original and singular in its execution, it is undeniably so. How can this be? In this featured content, we examine originality, its myths and characteristics, as well the dance between inspiration and influence in creating original artwork."]
Spencer, Robyn C. and Carvell Wallace. "How the Black Panther Movie is a Defining Moment for Black America." Democracy Now (February 28, 2018) ["As Black History Month wraps up, we look at the record-breaking movie “Black Panther.” Since the release of “Black Panther” earlier this month, fans have crowdfunded campaigns to ensure children can see the film in theaters, teachers have incorporated the movie’s core themes of anti-colonialism and cultural representation into their curriculum, and activists have used film screenings to hold mass voter registration drives. The movie has also renewed calls for the release of more than a dozen imprisoned members of the real Black Panther Party. “Black Panther” has also ignited a firestorm of impassioned social commentary online among fans and detractors alike. We speak to historian Robyn C. Spencer, who wrote a piece, “Black Feminist Meditations on the Women of Wakanda,” and Carvell Wallace, whose piece, “Why Black Panther Is a Defining Moment for Black America,” appeared in The New York Times Magazine."]
Sperling, Alison and Jeff Vandermeer. "Desolation Tries to Colonize You." Novel Dialogue (October 5, 2023) ["Our season of the weird starts off with a conversation between the writer The New Yorker called “the weird Thoreau”, Jeff VanderMeer, and a scholar of the modernist weird, Alison Sperling (FSU). With ND host Chris Holmes, Jeff and Alison delve into how the ugly politics of Lovecraft’s “old” weird gives rise to the stylistic panoply of the New Weird movement. Jeff discusses the ways in which nature writing's sublime and ecstatic moments are their own category of the weird. The three consider ways to represent unrepresentable species, the limits of human intelligence in perceiving animal intelligence, the nonhuman narrative perspective, and the infinite weirdness of government bureaucracy. Along the way, Alison and Jeff dig into the “Florida man” trope and investigate Jeff’s attempts to outwit Florida zoning to re-wild his backyard with native plants. And if you harbor any suspicions about the temperaments of penguin researchers, you won’t want to miss Jeff’s answer to this season’s signature question."]
Springer, Claudia. "Shadow Films: Picturing the Environmental Crisis." Jump Cut #58 (Spring 2018) ["For the powerful forces invested in preserving the status quo, even limited environmental protections that threaten traditional modes of corporate profit-making provoke fierce opposition. Corporate stakeholders wield political power through lobbying and donations, and, increasingly, they hold government positions. A 2016 study by the Center for American Progress Action Fund found that 34% of American Congress members denied climate change and had been paid over $73 million in contributions by oil, gas, and coal companies. Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who famously claimed that climate change is "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," has reportedly accepted more than $2 million from the fossil fuel industry (Herzog). The fallout from political inaction means that people have lost their lives in the U.S., China, Nigeria, Ecuador, and Peru, among other countries, because of the oil, gas, and mining industries' toxic practices and attacks on opponents. The propaganda battles fought with images inflame a war with catastrophic consequences."]
Staal, Jonas. Propaganda Art: From the 20th to the 21st Century. (Dissertation: University of Amsterdam, 2018)
---. "Propaganda (Art) Struggle." October #94 (October 2018) ["To oppose the various propagandas discussed above, we will need infrastructures and narratives that mobilize the imagination to construct a different world. To achieve this, we will need an emancipatory propaganda and an emancipatory propaganda art. There is no prior reality to which we should strive to return; there will only be the realities that we will author collectively ourselves."]
Stevenson, Bryan. "On Challenging the Legacy of Racial Inequality in America: the Work of the Equal Justice Initiative." Slavery and Its Legacies (February 6, 2017) ["Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. Mr. Stevenson is a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who has dedicated his career to helping the poor, the incarcerated and the condemned. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill and aiding children prosecuted as adults. Mr. Stevenson has successfully argued several cases in the United States Supreme Court and recently won an historic ruling that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger are unconstitutional. Mr. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief or release for over 115 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row. Mr. Stevenson has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge the legacy of racial inequality in America, including major projects to educate communities about slavery, lynching and racial segregation. Mr. Stevenson is also a Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law."]
Talaga, Tanya. "Big Brother's Hunger." Ideas (March 25, 2019) ["In her 2018 CBC Massey Lectures series, titled All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward, prize-winning journalist Tanya Talaga (author of Seven Fallen Feathers) explores the legacy of cultural genocide against Indigenous peoples."]
Tavanier, Yana Buhrer. "Fight Injustice with Art and Empathy." TED Talks (Posted on Youtube: December 5, 2017)
Taylor, Astra. "Who, the People?: The central truths of democracy are not always self-evident." The Baffler #43 (February 2019)
Tebbe, Jason. "Twenty-First Century Victorians." Jacobin (October 31, 2016) ["The nineteenth-century bourgeoisie used morality to assert class dominance — something elites still do today."]
Thacker, Eugene. "Horror of Philosophy: Three Volumes." New Books Network Seminar (September 28, 2015) ["Eugene Thacker‘s wonderful Horror of Philosophy series includes three books – In the Dust of this Planet (Zero Books, 2011), Starry Speculative Corpse (Zero Books, 2015), and Tentacles Longer than Night (Zero Books, 2015) – that collectively explore the relationship between philosophy (especially as it overlaps with demonology, occultism, and mysticism) and horror (especially of the supernatural sort). Each book takes on a particular problematic using a particular form from the history of philosophy, from the quaestio, lectio, and disputatio of medieval scholarship, to shorter aphoristic prose, to productive “mis-readings” of works of horror as philosophical texts and vice versa. Taken together, the books thoughtfully model the possibilities born of a comparative scholarly approach that creates conversations among works that might not ordinarily be juxtaposed in the same work: like Nishitani, Kant, Yohji Yamamoto, and Fludd; or Argento, Dante, and Lautramont. Though they explore topics like darkness, pessimism, vampiric cephalopods, and “black tentacular voids,” these books vibrate with life and offer consistent and shining inspiration for the careful reader. Anyone interested in philosophy, theology, modern literature and cinema, literatures on life and death, the history of horror…or really, anyone at all who appreciates thoughtful writing in any form should grab them – grab all of them! – and sit somewhere comfy, and prepare to read, reflect, and enjoy."]
Theoharis, Jeanne. "A More Beautiful & Terrible History: The Whitewashing & Distortion of Rosa Parks and MLK’s Legacies." Democracy Now (February 6, 2018) ["On February 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic “The Drum Major Instinct” sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, two months before his assassination. On Sunday, 50 years later, the words of his sermon were used to in a Dodge Ram truck advertisement at the Super Bowl. The ad sparked widespread criticism for the obvious distortion of Dr. King’s message. But other revisions to civil rights history are often more subtle. For more, we speak with the author of a new book showing how the legacy of the civil rights movement in the U.S. has been distorted and whitewashed for public consumption. Professor and historian Jeanne Theoharis’s new book is titled “A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History.” She is also the author of the award-winning book The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks."]
Tompkins, Joseph. "Woke Hollywood? The Marketing of Black Panther." Counterpunch (March 30, 2018)
Thompson, Clifford. "Toni Morrison's Big Bang." Los Angeles Review of Books (February 1, 2019)
Thompson, Tade. "Alien Invasion, Smalltown Insurrection, and the Neverending Fight for Resources." New Books Network (March 26, 2019) ["This week on New Books in Science Fiction, Rob Wolf interviews Tade Thompson about The Rosewater Insurrection (Orbit, 2019), which explores the devastating impact on a Nigerian city of an invasion by aliens, who sweeten their assault by healing human beings of their physical afflictions. The book is the second in a planned trilogy and the follow up to Rosewater, which earned Thompson the inaugural Nommo Award for Best Novel, Africa’s first-ever prize for speculative fiction.
In most tales of alien invasion, mankind and the invaders battle to the death. In Thompson’s tale, however, humans are more likely to fight with each other than with aliens, with the insurrection in the title referring to the city of Rosewater’s rebellion against greater Nigeria. Meanwhile, the invaders from outer space have their own internecine conflicts, as Wormwood—a powerful consciousness that reads minds and invades human bodies—battles for its survival against a fast-growing plant from its home planet. There are hints of Thompson’s own life in the details—as an emergency department psychiatrist, as a Londoner of African heritage, as a student of history. The book reflects a subtle grasp of war and politics with characters capable of eliciting a reader’s empathy even as they sometimes behave in less than admirable ways."]
Tobin, Vera, et al. "Spoiler Alert! The Psychology Of Surprise Endings." Hidden Brain (December 3, 2018)
Valentine, Ben. "A New Kind of Cinema Meditates on What It Means to Belong." Hyperallergic (January 8, 2019) ["Nguyen Trinh Thi’s “Fifth Cinema” imagines a new kind of film for people between bordered nations who defy neat dichotomies."]
VanderMeer, Jeff. "When Science Fiction is Fiction." On the Media (August 14, 2020) ["While apocalyptic narratives have been part of popular culture for centuries and are common subject matter for films and literature, such stories now seem scarily realistic given the increasing impact of climate change. Brooke speaks with science fiction writer Jeff VanderMeer about the responsibility of fiction to illuminate the threats of climate change and human degradation of the planet, and how he imagines what our existence will look like in the coming years. His novel is Borne, and part of his Southern Reach Trilogy has been adapted as a movie."]
Vint, Sherryl. "Don’t Let the Future Be Written For You: Sabrina Vourvoulias’s Ink." Los Angeles Review of Books (December 27, 2012)
Vogel, Joseph. "The Forgotten Baldwin." The Boston Review (May 14, 2018)
Wallis, Victor. "13th and the Culture of Surplus Punishment." Jump Cut #58 (Spring 2018) ["Ava DuVernay undertook the documentary 13th in order to explore and bring attention to the Prison Industrial Complex. The film’s title refers to the 1865 amendment to the U.S. constitution, in which slavery was abolished “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” The story told by 13th thus goes back to the early chain-gangs of black prisoners – men arrested for petty offenses under the post-Civil War Black Codes who were then contracted out to perform labor that they had previously performed as privately-owned slaves. Now they were under state control, but they still worked for no pay."]
Watanabe, Kazu. "A Tale of Two Hiroshimas." Current (May 3, 2018)
Watson, Renée. "Teaching for Black Lives and Bearing Witness Through Poetry." TruthOut (August 9, 2018)
Weiwei, Ai. "Chinese Artist & Filmmaker Ai Weiwei on State Violence from Mexico to Hong Kong to Xinjiang." Democracy Now (January 28, 2020) ["In 2014, 43 students from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College disappeared after they were abducted in Iguala, Mexico. More than five years after their disappearance, the families of the students are still fighting for justice. The story is the subject of a stunning new documentary by the world-renowned Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei. The film, “Vivos,” follows the families of the disappeared students in their daily lives as they grapple with the absence of their loved ones and attempt to hold the Mexican government accountable for their disappearance. We sat down with Ai Weiwei earlier this week at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, to speak with him about “Vivos,” why his next project will focus on Hong Kong, and more."]
Taylor, Astra. "Who, the People?: The central truths of democracy are not always self-evident." The Baffler #43 (February 2019)
Thacker, Eugene. "Horror of Philosophy: Three Volumes." New Books Network Seminar (September 28, 2015) ["Eugene Thacker‘s wonderful Horror of Philosophy series includes three books – In the Dust of this Planet (Zero Books, 2011), Starry Speculative Corpse (Zero Books, 2015), and Tentacles Longer than Night (Zero Books, 2015) – that collectively explore the relationship between philosophy (especially as it overlaps with demonology, occultism, and mysticism) and horror (especially of the supernatural sort). Each book takes on a particular problematic using a particular form from the history of philosophy, from the quaestio, lectio, and disputatio of medieval scholarship, to shorter aphoristic prose, to productive “mis-readings” of works of horror as philosophical texts and vice versa. Taken together, the books thoughtfully model the possibilities born of a comparative scholarly approach that creates conversations among works that might not ordinarily be juxtaposed in the same work: like Nishitani, Kant, Yohji Yamamoto, and Fludd; or Argento, Dante, and Lautramont. Though they explore topics like darkness, pessimism, vampiric cephalopods, and “black tentacular voids,” these books vibrate with life and offer consistent and shining inspiration for the careful reader. Anyone interested in philosophy, theology, modern literature and cinema, literatures on life and death, the history of horror…or really, anyone at all who appreciates thoughtful writing in any form should grab them – grab all of them! – and sit somewhere comfy, and prepare to read, reflect, and enjoy."]
Theoharis, Jeanne. "A More Beautiful & Terrible History: The Whitewashing & Distortion of Rosa Parks and MLK’s Legacies." Democracy Now (February 6, 2018) ["On February 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic “The Drum Major Instinct” sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, two months before his assassination. On Sunday, 50 years later, the words of his sermon were used to in a Dodge Ram truck advertisement at the Super Bowl. The ad sparked widespread criticism for the obvious distortion of Dr. King’s message. But other revisions to civil rights history are often more subtle. For more, we speak with the author of a new book showing how the legacy of the civil rights movement in the U.S. has been distorted and whitewashed for public consumption. Professor and historian Jeanne Theoharis’s new book is titled “A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History.” She is also the author of the award-winning book The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks."]
Tompkins, Joseph. "Woke Hollywood? The Marketing of Black Panther." Counterpunch (March 30, 2018)
Thompson, Clifford. "Toni Morrison's Big Bang." Los Angeles Review of Books (February 1, 2019)
Thompson, Tade. "Alien Invasion, Smalltown Insurrection, and the Neverending Fight for Resources." New Books Network (March 26, 2019) ["This week on New Books in Science Fiction, Rob Wolf interviews Tade Thompson about The Rosewater Insurrection (Orbit, 2019), which explores the devastating impact on a Nigerian city of an invasion by aliens, who sweeten their assault by healing human beings of their physical afflictions. The book is the second in a planned trilogy and the follow up to Rosewater, which earned Thompson the inaugural Nommo Award for Best Novel, Africa’s first-ever prize for speculative fiction.
In most tales of alien invasion, mankind and the invaders battle to the death. In Thompson’s tale, however, humans are more likely to fight with each other than with aliens, with the insurrection in the title referring to the city of Rosewater’s rebellion against greater Nigeria. Meanwhile, the invaders from outer space have their own internecine conflicts, as Wormwood—a powerful consciousness that reads minds and invades human bodies—battles for its survival against a fast-growing plant from its home planet. There are hints of Thompson’s own life in the details—as an emergency department psychiatrist, as a Londoner of African heritage, as a student of history. The book reflects a subtle grasp of war and politics with characters capable of eliciting a reader’s empathy even as they sometimes behave in less than admirable ways."]
Tobin, Vera, et al. "Spoiler Alert! The Psychology Of Surprise Endings." Hidden Brain (December 3, 2018)
Tulenko, Abigail. "Folklore is Philosophy." Aeon (February 26, 2024) ["
Both folktales and formal philosophy unsettle us into thinking anew about our cherished values and views of the world"]
Both folktales and formal philosophy unsettle us into thinking anew about our cherished values and views of the world"]
VanderMeer, Jeff. "When Science Fiction is Fiction." On the Media (August 14, 2020) ["While apocalyptic narratives have been part of popular culture for centuries and are common subject matter for films and literature, such stories now seem scarily realistic given the increasing impact of climate change. Brooke speaks with science fiction writer Jeff VanderMeer about the responsibility of fiction to illuminate the threats of climate change and human degradation of the planet, and how he imagines what our existence will look like in the coming years. His novel is Borne, and part of his Southern Reach Trilogy has been adapted as a movie."]
Vint, Sherryl. "Don’t Let the Future Be Written For You: Sabrina Vourvoulias’s Ink." Los Angeles Review of Books (December 27, 2012)
Wallis, Victor. "13th and the Culture of Surplus Punishment." Jump Cut #58 (Spring 2018) ["Ava DuVernay undertook the documentary 13th in order to explore and bring attention to the Prison Industrial Complex. The film’s title refers to the 1865 amendment to the U.S. constitution, in which slavery was abolished “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” The story told by 13th thus goes back to the early chain-gangs of black prisoners – men arrested for petty offenses under the post-Civil War Black Codes who were then contracted out to perform labor that they had previously performed as privately-owned slaves. Now they were under state control, but they still worked for no pay."]
Walsh, Brendan C. "Colonising the Devil's Territories: The Historicity of Providential New England Folklore in the VVitch." Revenant #5 (March 2020) ["This article contextualises the historical and demonological beliefs prevalent in the early modern setting of The VVitch. It argues that early modern folklore is invoked in this film to convey the experiences and worldview of the New World Puritans, illustrating how Robert Eggers has used fantastical source material to achieve a certain historical authenticity. This focus on the ‘historicity’ of the New World setting, as it was established in early modern demonological tracts, is central to the construction of The VVitch. Eggers states that he spent almost five years researching material for the film, poring over early modern texts in order to effectively recreate the historical tone of the era (Rife 2016). The closing text of the film communicates that it ‘was inspired by many folktales, fairy tales and written accounts of historical witchcraft, including journals, diaries and court records. Much of the dialogue comes directly from these period sources’. This array of sources, taken from different English, New England, and even broader Continental textual formats, are used to craft a seemingly authentic piece of Puritan folklore. As such, Eggers employs early modern folklore and English Protestant demonological traditions in The VVitch to reconstruct the formative years of the New England colony and to establish a historical window into the ‘supernatural reality’ of the Puritan worldview. Eggers clarifies that ‘because witches don’t exist today, I felt it was essential to create an utterly believable 17th century world where witches really did exist’ (Young 2016). The VVitch thus provides insight into how folklore (specifically supernatural folklore) can be adapted by writers and directors to encapsulate an authentic historical tonality within the folk horror cinematic subgenre."]
Washburn, Michael. "Tom Petty's Southern Accents (33 1/3)." Booked on Rock #120 (March 18, 2023) ["Michael Washburn is our guest to talk about his book Tom Petty’s Southern Accents, part of the 33 1/3 series published by Bloomsbury Academic. Tom Petty’s album Southern Accents was released on this month back in 1985. This is my personal favorite Petty album but this book isn’t one that praises everything about this particular Petty recording. It’s an honest assessment of the music, which Michael says is "a mix of classic rock songs mixed with nearly unlistenable 80s music". Michael also gets into Petty’s use of the iconography of the American Confederacy, something Petty soon came to regret. But Michael also says Southern Accents is an important album for Petty; a pivot point in his career. I ask Michael about that and his examination of how the record both grew out of and reinforced enduring but flawed assumptions about Southern culture and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. We also get into the songs recorded during the album sessions but left off, our favorite deep track from the album and more."]
Watson, Renée. "Teaching for Black Lives and Bearing Witness Through Poetry." TruthOut (August 9, 2018)
Weiwei, Ai. "Chinese Artist & Filmmaker Ai Weiwei on State Violence from Mexico to Hong Kong to Xinjiang." Democracy Now (January 28, 2020) ["In 2014, 43 students from Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College disappeared after they were abducted in Iguala, Mexico. More than five years after their disappearance, the families of the students are still fighting for justice. The story is the subject of a stunning new documentary by the world-renowned Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei. The film, “Vivos,” follows the families of the disappeared students in their daily lives as they grapple with the absence of their loved ones and attempt to hold the Mexican government accountable for their disappearance. We sat down with Ai Weiwei earlier this week at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, to speak with him about “Vivos,” why his next project will focus on Hong Kong, and more."]
Wells, Sam. "Being With." Everything Happens (November 19, 2024) ["How do you stay close to someone whose pain you can’t fix, whose questions you can’t answer? In this episode, Kate sits down with her dear friend, the Rev. Dr. Sam Wells, a longtime advocate of “being with,” a theology that goes beyond advice and into the sacred space of simply staying. Sam–vicar at London’s St.-Martin-in-the-Fields, an astonishingly wise thinker, and one of Kate’s favorite people on Earth–invites us into a deeper courage: to show up without trying to tidy things up. In this beautifully honest conversation, Kate and Sam talk about: 1) Why love can be so hard. 2) What it means to let go of the need to “help.” 3) The surprising beauty of just… showing up. For everyone exhausted by easy answers, this episode is a hand to hold in the dark."]
West, Stephen. "Antonio Gramsci on Cultural Hegemony." Philosophize This! #131 (May 23, 2019) ["Gramsci begins his explanation by evoking and repurposing a word that had been thrown around all throughout human history but it was a word that he thought in recent years was starting to take on an entirely new meaning. The thing that was responsible for allowing a particular social class to ascend to power and then maintain a privileged status…was what he called Cultural Hegemony. This concept of hegemony is going to become massively important to the political conversation of the 20th and 21st centuries and by the end of this arc of the show we’re going to have looked at it from a lot of different perspectives. Maybe we should start from the origins of the word…the word hegemony originates in ancient Greece…the root of the word comes from the greek word meaning “to lead”, some translators say it’s closer to “to rule over”…but either way during antiquity there were things called hegemons…now in the context of ancient Greece a hegemon was typically a state that had a significant military advantage over another state…the arrangement being that if the weaker state didn’t comply with certain demands from the hegemon they would be annexed or dominated militarily or burned to the ground, take your pick. The term hegemony implied the threat of physical dominance over a population of people…this was the case all throughout human history. But Gramsci is going to say that in our modern world the definition of the word hegemony needs to evolve with the political reality we are living in. We are no longer living in a world where most political control is exercised by military dominance over a population of people. Since the advent of mass media people in positions of power have realized that a much more effective way of controlling populations is by manipulating the cultural parameters that citizens have to navigate. The general idea is this: to be a human being living a life in our modern world…you always HAVE to be living that life immersed within a particular culture. But what IS a culture other than an elaborate collection of norms, rules, structures, mores, taboos, rituals, values, symbolic gestures…these things are not exactly abstract concepts…they are acute. They are visible. This is the cultural custom of a handshake to pay deference to someone else. This is not talking with your mouth full. This is the sum total of every ritual we engage in on a daily basis that all come together to create a cohesive society. But what Gramsci is going to ask is: who exactly created all of these norms and taboos that we abide by?"]---. "Are we heading for a digital prison? - Panopticon (Foucault, Bentham, Cave)." Philosophize This! #186 (August 23, 2023) ["Today we talk about Jeremy Bentham's concept of the Panopticon. Michel Foucault's comparison to society in 1975. The historical role of intelligence as a justification for dominance. The anatomy of free will, and how a digital world may systematically limit our free will without us knowing it."]
---. "The Creation of Meaning: Nietzsche's Amor Fati." Philosophize This! #159 (November 10, 2021) ["Whether it’s desires within your own internal experience. Whether it’s PEOPLE in the political realm that have different VALUES than you do...maybe this is a good place to just pause and reflect on the fact that...you can tell a LOT about somebody by looking at who their enemies are. And often times your enemies...can teach you A LOT MORE about yourself than your friends, ever can. Think of the college education we stand to gain if we just LISTEN to what the counter forces in our life have to say rather than just labeling them as evil or dumb— when it comes to your internal desires: When we don’t negate... the short term desire that’s not in KEEPING with the values we want to live by...think of the lessons we can learn about ourselves...think of how much more pleasant it might be to exist instead of just boiling in your own soup all the time. When it’s other people— family, career, political realm...When we don’t silence, or hate or seek to eliminate the people that hold values contrary to our own...think of all there is to learn...when these people are no longer seen as evil demons in your field of view...when their existence as a counter-force in the world is VIEWED through the lens of affirmation...these people BASICALLY become your personal employees working for you...they show you the strengths and weaknesses in your own positions…they help you calibrate which values and at what intensity actually SERVE yourself and society...they essentially train you in some crazy Nietzschean Rocky Montage on how to beat them...how to overcome resistance, how to exert your will to power, and BE the values you want to promote better. "]
---. "David Hume, Part 1." Philosophize This! #51 (February 24, 2015) ["On this episode of the podcast, we talk about David Hume! First, we learn about Hume’s ‘is’ versus ‘ought’ distinction and how not being mindful of this pitfall can lead us down a dangerous path. Next, we discuss the limitations of science and learn what Hume thought should fill in the gaps it leaves (spoiler alert: it’s not religion). Finally, we discuss Hume’s thoughts on causality and ensure that you’ll never think about playing pool the same way again."]
---. "David Hume, Part 2." Philosophize This! #52 (March 4, 2015) ["On this episode of the podcast, we continue our discussion of David Hume. This time, we focus on Hume's response to the Teleological Argument, which goes a little something like this: “Look at how perfectly everything works! All of this must have been designed by God.” We also learn about Hume’s view on miracles, and find out how unimpressed he is that Bruce Willis was the sole survivor of that train accident. "]
---. "David Hume, Part 2." Philosophize This! #52 (March 4, 2015) ["On this episode of the podcast, we continue our discussion of David Hume. This time, we focus on Hume's response to the Teleological Argument, which goes a little something like this: “Look at how perfectly everything works! All of this must have been designed by God.” We also learn about Hume’s view on miracles, and find out how unimpressed he is that Bruce Willis was the sole survivor of that train accident. "]
---. "David Hume, Part 4 - Art." Philosophize This! #54 (March 27, 2015) ["On this episode of the podcast, we discuss Hume’s views on taste and find out whether or not all of our opinions about art are equally valid. First, we compare the poetry of Shakespeare and Shel Silverstein, the music of Beethoven and Skrillex, and throw in the profound prose of Spongebob Squarepants just for good measure. Next, we examine some of the biases that influence our ability to judge art, and Stephen correctly guesses your favorite song of all time by throwing a dart at the Top 40 chart from your senior year of high school. Finally, we learn how to be better art critics by employing the five qualities Hume sets out as pre-requisites for Art Appreciation 101."]
---. "Derrida and Words." Philosophize This (June 25, 2018) ["On this episode, we begin our discussion of the work of Jacques Derrida. It is going to take time to set up properly. "]
---. "The Frankfurt School - Introduction." Philosophize This #108 (August 17, 2017) ["The Frankfurt School, also known as the Institute of Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung), is a social and political philosophical movement of thought located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It is the original source of what is known as Critical Theory. The Institute was founded, thanks to a donation by Felix Weil in 1923, with the aim of developing Marxist studies in Germany. The Institute eventually generated a specific school of thought after 1933 when the Nazis forced it to close and move to the United States, where it found hospitality at Columbia University, New York."]
---. "The Frankfurt School (Part 2) - The Enlightenment." Philosophize This #109 (August 26, 2017)
---. "The Frankfurt School (Part 3) - The Culture Industry." Philosophize This #110 (September 7, 2017)
---. "The Frankfurt School (Part 4) - Eros." Philosophize This #111 (October 20, 2017)
---. "The Frankfurt School (Part 5) - Civilization." Philosophize This #112 (November 6, 2017)
---. "The Frankfurt School (Part 6) - Art As a Tool for Liberation." Philosophize This (December 2, 2017)
---. "Derrida and Words." Philosophize This (June 25, 2018) ["On this episode, we begin our discussion of the work of Jacques Derrida. It is going to take time to set up properly. "]
---. "The Frankfurt School (Part 2) - The Enlightenment." Philosophize This #109 (August 26, 2017)
---. "The Frankfurt School (Part 3) - The Culture Industry." Philosophize This #110 (September 7, 2017)
---. "The Frankfurt School (Part 4) - Eros." Philosophize This #111 (October 20, 2017)
---. "The Frankfurt School (Part 5) - Civilization." Philosophize This #112 (November 6, 2017)
---. "The Frankfurt School (Part 6) - Art As a Tool for Liberation." Philosophize This (December 2, 2017)
---. "The Frankfurt School (Part 7): The Great Refusal." Philosophize This (December 23, 2017)
---. "The Frankfurt School - Walter Benjamin, Part 1." Philosophize This! (March 19, 2021) [With a focus on "The Task of the Translator."]
---. "The Improbable Slavoj Zizek - Pt. 1." Philosophize This! #196 (February 26, 2024) ["Complexity of Zizek's Ideas: The episode discusses Slavoj Zizek's philosophy, highlighting the challenge of making his complex ideas accessible to a broad audience. Zizek's provocative style is not mere trolling but aims to disorient and awaken people from ideological complacency. Zizek's Philosophical Influences: Zizek's philosophical framework is deeply influenced by Hegel, Marx, and Lacan. This combination allows Zizek to offer unique interpretations of culture and society, particularly in critiquing global capitalism and exploring human subjectivity. Ideology and Subjectivity: The episode emphasizes Zizek's view on ideology. Zizek argues that everyone is influenced by ideology, and it's crucial to be aware of this in our pursuit of truth. This perspective challenges the simplistic view of ideology as something only others possess, highlighting its universal impact on human subjectivity. Analyzing Zizek's Communication Style: Zizek's method of delivering his philosophy is analyzed. He often starts with a progressive position, makes it appealing, then flips it to show its contradictions. This disorienting style is intentional, designed to reveal the limitations of ideology and encourage deeper critical thinking."]
---. "Nietzsche and Critchley on the tragic perspective. (Amor Fati pt. 2)." Philosophize This! #212 (September 30, 2024) ["Today we begin by talking about Nietzsche's concept of life-affirmation. Contrasting it with the renunciative, rational traditions of Western thought. The episode then delves into Greek tragedy through the lens of Simon Critchley's work; making a case for how these ancient plays offer a life-affirming perspective by embracing the ambiguity of human existence."]
---. "Susan Sontag - Do you criticize yourself the way you criticize a movie?" Philosophy This! (March 1, 2023) [A discussion of Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation." "This is the basis of what made her start to think that every truth needs to have a martyr associated with it. Because in a world where critics are always trying to moderate and understand and link everything to some normative theory … critics are not people indulging in the margins of society. These are people that take the margins of society, and spend their career trying to silence the margins for fear that they might call into question the normative, reasonable middle… of the way things are for most people. These are people…that generally speaking that have never had to sacrifice anything to be able to get to what they call the truth. But to Susan Sontag…if we’re truly committed to progess as a society…then the voices we need to hear the most, are the ones that have been marginalized. She says Simone Weil … to be one of these voices…if you think about it…simply… marginalized herself to try to access these perspectives. She’d say: In a world dominated by people that claim to bring a voice of reason to public discourse…what we need, are the voices that at first might seem, a little unreasonable. Because there’s nothing more boring to Susan Sontag…nothing more committed to keeping things exactly how they are…than the type of non-critical critics that hide behind what she calls the impersonal tones of sanity. And to tie this back to her thoughts on art…i’ll leave you with one of my favorite lines from her. She says: “I never trust novels which fully satisfy my passion to understand.”"]
---. "Susan Sontag - Do You Speak the Language of Images and Videos." Philosophize This! #177 (March 22, 2023) ["Fact is: pictures and videos don't have to come with a disclaimer on them that says everything we’ve already said in this episode…as Susan Sontag says a picture doesn't need to come with a caption on it that says: This is the truth. The people looking at the picture or the video just assume that it’s the truth, on a level they never did with paintings or the written word. And if you say back to this well… not me. Not me, I’m not one of these morons that just accepts things as the truth. Well, to use one of Sontag’s own rebuttals to this kind of person…she’d probably say back to them: hey, so…when you watch a video or see a picture of something that you think is really cool…and then afterwards you find out that it was completely fake or staged. Are you disappointed when you hear that? Little bit? Well why are you disappointed? If you’re not bringing to the image a stamp of legitimacy that it probably doesn’t deserve yet. I mean knowing as much as we do in 2023 about how images are used to get you to feel a certain way…why would everyone not be taking every image they see with a grain of salt at first? And that’s part of her larger point here. You know, if any portion of this episode so far has come off like its obvious to you, of course images always have an agenda behind them…then why do so many intelligent people continue living their lives, consuming content every day, giving images a free pass on any level? When you’re shopping for a car and a used car salesman comes up to you and starts telling you about how the car you’re looking at is perfect for you…you’re thinking oh really? Is that what the car is? The car is perfect for me huh…hmm you’re always looking for what his angle is…and rightfully so be cause he’s trying to sell you something. When an advertisement comes on you’re thinking what are they trying to sell me and how are they trying to sell it? This is a healthy way of thinking about these interactions. Well, whenever a picture or a video is presented to you…to Susan Sontag you should be putting those images through a similar type of critical analysis. The default orientation towards anything that’s claiming to represent complex reality in the two dimensional image form, should BE one where you’re asking follow up questions…you should at least be asking: who is giving me this image? why are they giving me this image? What do they want me to feel having seen this image? How is this image being presented? How is it edited? Knowing that a picture is always obscuring something…what might be obscured about reality if I took this picture to be the gospel truth? Human beings… have learned to adapt and survive in a lot of different environments over the course of history…we’ve learned to survive from the Serengeti all the way to the arctic tundra. Well the environment you have to survive in now is one where you are saturated by images that are trying to get you to feel a certain way. And if you don’t develop and practice this critical thinking about the images that you’re consuming, and then bring those skills to every moment…you’re going to always be at the mercy of the person that’s giving you your images."]
Yunkaporta, Tyson. "Deep Time Diligence." Emergence (February 19, 2024) ["Aboriginal scholar and author Tyson Yunkaporta illustrates how deep time thinking, born of an intimate relationship between a place and its community, can radically reshape our relationship to the cosmic order."]
Zayd, Yhara. "A Monstress Comes of Age: Horror & Girlhood." (Posted on Youtube: October 16, 2020) [Examination of horror films on this theme.]
Zhao, Ben and Heather Zheng. "Fighting Back Against AI Piracy." Hidden Brain (August 8, 2024) ["If you’ve spent any time playing with modern AI image generators, it can seem like an almost magical experience; but the truth is these programs are more like a magic trick than magic. Without the human-generated art of hundreds of thousands of people, these programs wouldn’t work. But those artists are not getting compensated, in fact many of them are being put out of business by the very programs their work helped create. Now, two computer scientists from the University of Chicago, Ben Zhao and Heather Zheng, are fighting back. They’ve developed two programs, called Glaze and Nightshade, which create a type of “poison pill” to help protect against generative AI tools like Midjourney and DALL-E, helping artists protect their copyrighted, original work. Their work may also revolutionize all of our relationships to these systems."]
Zoellner, Tom. "The Serial Killer as a Marketing Genius." Los Angeles Review of Books (May 21, 2018) ["
Tom Zoellner on the Zodiac Killer and the man who's still searching for him."]
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This Video Essay Was Not Built on an Ancient Burial Ground from Offscreen on Vimeo.
Tom Zoellner on the Zodiac Killer and the man who's still searching for him."]
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This Video Essay Was Not Built on an Ancient Burial Ground from Offscreen on Vimeo.
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