Nhc Podcasts

Andrew Jewett (NHC Fellow, 2013–14), Elizabeth D. Rockwell Visiting Professor of Ethics and Leadership, University of Houston “Science under Fire” reconstructs a century of battles over the cultural implications of science in the United States, showing how suspicion of scientific methods and motivation has played a major role in American politics and culture since the 1920s with profound repercussions that continue to affect everyday life in the current moment. Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/eV6427lvAXM?t=171 https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/fresh-off-the-press-science-under-fire-challenges-to-scientific-authority-in-modern-america/

Thomas M. Lekan (NHC Fellow, 2009–10; 2010–11; 2022–23), Professor of History, University of South Carolina Demonstrating the conflicts between international conservation, nature tourism, decolonization, and national sovereignty, “Our Gigantic Zoo” explores the legacy of Bernhard Grzimek, Europe’s greatest wildlife conservationist, who portrayed himself as a second Noah, called on a sacred mission to protect the last vestiges of paradise for all humankind. Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/eu-NQrLFhLM?t=106 https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/fresh-off-the-press-our-gigantic-zoo/

Kim F. Hall (NHC Fellow, 2016–17), Lucyle Hook Professor of English and Professor of Africana Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University Since her first book, “Things of Darkness,” appeared in 1996, Kim F. Hall’s work has helped generate a new wave of scholarship on race in Shakespeare and Renaissance/Early Modern texts. For this talk, she places “Othello: The Moor of Venice” in an Afrodiasporic family story by exploring appearances of Othello and “Shakespeare” in the African Diaspora, specifically at sites of the Black freedom struggle. Hall suggests that we learn much about modern Blackness from how Afrodiasporic peoples evoke, appropriate, and contest “Shakespeare” in their quest to make legible new political Black identities. The talk covers the role of Shakespeare in constructions of Blackness and race; the appropriation of Shakespeare by Black communities; the policing of canonical literature along racial lines; and the race and gender politics of the American stage and popular media. Watch the ful

Tsitsi Ella Jaji (NHC Fellow, 2017–18), Associate Professor of English, Duke University Zimbabwean poet and scholar Tsitsi Ella Jaji discusses and reads selections from “Mother Tongues: Poems,” her award-winning second book of verse, in which she explores our relationships with language, from the first words we learn to the vows we swear, examining how generations of love and loss are inscribed in our every utterance. Winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, 2018 Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/VOqFPca5AoI?t=12 https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/fresh-off-the-press-mother-tongues-poems/

Annette Gordon-Reed (NHC Trustee), Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History, Harvard Law School; Peter S. Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor, Emeritus, University of Virginia Primarily set at Monticello, where Jefferson not only developed his Enlightenment values but oversaw the workings of a slave plantation, “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs” looks to shed light on perhaps the most complex of America’s Founding Fathers. Two of the world’s leading scholars of Jefferson’s life and accomplishments, Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf, join forces to fundamentally challenge much of what we think we know and help create a portrait of Jefferson that reveals some of the mystery at the heart of his character by considering his extraordinary and capacious mind and the ways in which he both embodied and resisted the dynamics of his age. Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/sTZ2uKmwP0k https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/virtual-book-club-most-blessed-of-the-patriarchs-thom

Martin Summers (NHC Fellow, 2013–14), Professor of History, Boston College Founded in 1855 to treat insane soldiers and sailors as well as civilian residents in the nation’s capital, Saint Elizabeths became one of the country’s preeminent research and teaching psychiatric hospitals. From the beginning of its operation, Saint Elizabeths admitted black patients, making it one of the few American asylums to do so. “Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions” charts the history of Saint Elizabeths and demonstrates how race was central to virtually every aspect of the hospital’s existence, from the ways in which psychiatrists understood mental illness and employed therapies to treat it to the ways that black patients experienced their institutionalization. Martin Summers argues that assumptions about the existence of distinctive black and white psyches shaped the therapeutic and diagnostic regimes in the hospital and left a legacy of poor treatment of African American patients, even after psychiatrists had beg

Alexis Pauline Gumbs (NHC Fellow, 2020–21), Independent Scholar, Writer, and Activist The second book in an experimental triptych, “M Archive ”is a series of poetic artifacts that speculatively documents the persistence of Black life following the worldwide cataclysm we are living through now. Engaging with the work of the foundational Black feminist theorist M. Jacqui Alexander, and following the trajectory of Alexis Pauline Gumbs’s acclaimed visionary fiction short story “Evidence,” “M Archive” is told from the perspective of a future researcher who uncovers evidence of the conditions of late capitalism, anti-Blackness, and environmental crisis while examining possibilities of being that exceed the human. By exploring how Black feminist theory is already after the end of the world, Gumbs reinscribes the possibilities and potentials of scholarship while demonstrating the impossibility of demarcating the lines between art, science, spirit, scholarship, and politics. Watch the full video on YouTube: https://

Kathleen DuVal (NHC Fellow, 2008–09), Bowman & Gordon Gray Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Over the last decade, award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal has revitalized the study of early America’s marginalized voices. Now, in “Independence Lost,” she recounts an untold story as rich and significant as that of the Founding Fathers: the history of the Revolutionary Era as experienced by slaves, American Indians, women, and British loyalists living on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Winner of the Journal of the American Revolution Book of the Year Award, 2015; Winner of the Society of the Cincinnati in the State of New Jersey History Prize, 2016; Finalist for the George Washington Book Prize, 2016 Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4fmEZJhe7w8 https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/virtual-book-club-independence-lost/

Joseph Luzzi (NHC Fellow, 2004–05), Professor of Comparative Literature, Bard College On a cold November morning, Bard College professor Joseph Luzzi found himself racing to the hospital—his wife, Katherine, eight-and-a-half months pregnant, had been in a horrible car accident. In an instant, Luzzi became both a widower and a first-time father. In the aftermath of unthinkable tragedy, Luzzi relied on the support of his Italian immigrant family to grieve and care for his infant daughter. But it wasn’t until he turned to the Divine Comedy—a poem he had devoted his life to studying and teaching—that he learned how to resurrect his life, passing from his own grief-stricken inferno through the purgatory of healing, and ultimately stepping into the paradise of rediscovered love. “In a Dark Wood” is a beautifully written hybrid of heartrending memoir and a meditation on the power of great art to give us strength in our darkest moments. Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JcL4go2pnf0 https://national

Laura T. Murphy (NHC Fellow, 2017–18), Professor of Human Rights and Contemporary Slavery, Sheffield Hallam University “Freedomville” is the story of a small group of enslaved villagers in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, who founded their own town of Azad Nagar—Freedomville—after staging a rebellion against their slaveholders. But Laura T. Murphy, a leading scholar of contemporary global slavery, who spent years researching and teaching about Freedomville, found that whispers and deflections suggested that there was something troubling about Azad Nagar’s success. Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Z4BvpfGfNvQ https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/fresh-off-the-press-freedomville-story-of-21st-century-slave-revolt/

David Bromwich (NHC Trustee), Sterling Professor of English, Yale University Since at least as far back as the expansion of the Vietnam War and the lies and coverups that brought down Richard Nixon, every presidency has further centralized and strengthened executive power, producing the political conditions for our present crisis. In “American Breakdown,” David Bromwich provides an essential analysis of the forces in play beneath the surface of our political system. His portraits of political leaders and overarching narrative bring to life the events and machinations that have led America to a collective breakdown. Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/8w4KtFCgHZc https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/virtual-book-club-american-breakdown-the-trump-years-and-how-they-befell-us/

Laura F. Edwards (NHC Fellow, 2007–08), Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty, Princeton University Laura F. Edwards’s compelling book considers the sweeping transformation of American law produced in the wake of the Civil War. Through her analysis of constitutional amendments, Supreme Court decisions, and legal claims espoused by everyone from national politicians to everyday citizens, Edwards demonstrates how the notion of rights became so integral in post-Civil War America, especially in the lives of African Americans, women, and organized laborers. Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/1AP81lTCJ0U https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/virtual-book-club-a-legal-history-of-the-civil-war-and-reconstruction/

John McGowan (NHC Fellow, 2017–18), John W. and Anna H. Hanes Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill In “Pragmatist Politics,” John McGowan suggests that perhaps the best response to the cynicism and despair that permeate contemporary American politics is a return to pragmatism. Offering an expansive vision of what the United States should be, McGowan combines the thinking of philosophers like John Dewey and William James with the ethos of comedy to imagine what American life could be like if we more fully embraced values such as love, forgiveness, and generosity that are too often left out of our political discourse. Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rND1RsZb3sI https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/virtual-book-club-pragmatist-politics-making-the-case-for-liberal-democracy/

Catherine M. Cole (NHC Fellow, 2006–07), Divisional Dean of the Arts and Professor of Dance and English, University of Washington “Performance and the Afterlives of Injustice” reveals how the voices and visions of artists in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo can help us see what otherwise evades perception from the injustices produced by apartheid and colonialism. Examining works by contemporary performing artists Brett Bailey, Faustin Linyekula, Gregory Maqoma, Mamela Nyamza, Robyn Orlin, Jay Pather, and Sello Pesa, Cole demonstrates how the arts are “helping to conjure, anticipate, and dream a world that is otherwise.” Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_BlCyoW6rD4 https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/virtual-book-club-performance-and-the-afterlives-of-injustice/

Bart D. Ehrman (NHC Fellow, 2009–10; 2018–19), James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill In clear and compelling terms, Bart D. Ehrman recounts the long history of the afterlife, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the writings of Augustine, focusing especially on the teachings of Jesus and his early followers. He discusses ancient guided tours of heaven and hell, in which a living person observes the sublime blessings of heaven for those who are saved and the horrifying torments of hell for the damned. As a historian, Ehrman obviously cannot provide a definitive answer to the question of what happens after death, but by helping us reflect on where our ideas of the afterlife come from, he assures us that even if there may be something to hope for when we die, there is certainly nothing to fear. Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/zGzXbZCHddw https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/virtual-book-club-heaven-and-hell-a-history-of-the-afterlife

Joseph Allen Boone (NHC Fellow, 2009–10), Gender Studies Professor in Media and Gender and Professor of English, Comparative Literature and Gender Studies, University of Southern California Taking its inspiration from “Great Expectations,” “Furnace Creek” teases us with the question of what Pip might have been like had he grown up in the American South of the 1960s and 1970s and faced the explosive social issues—racial injustice, a war abroad, women’s and gay rights, class struggle—that galvanized the world in those decades. Deftly combining elements of coming-of-age story, novel of erotic discovery, Southern Gothic fiction, and detection-mystery thriller, Furnace Creek offers a contemporary meditation on the perils of desire, ambition, love, loss, and family. Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/G2VorSEJWVk https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/fresh-off-the-press-furnace-creek-a-novel/

William D. Cohan (NHC Trustee) Written by their Andover classmate, journalist William D. Cohan, “Four Friends” tells the stories of Jack Berman, the child of impoverished Holocaust survivors, who used his unlikely Andover pedigree to achieve the American dream, only to be cut down in an unimaginable act of violence; Will Daniel, Harry Truman’s grandson and the son of the managing editor of The New York Times, who does everything possible to escape the burdens of a family legacy he’s ultimately trapped by; Harry Bull, a careful, successful Chicago lawyer and heir to his family’s fortune who took an inexplicable and devastating risk on a beautiful summer day; and John F. Kennedy, Jr., whose story we think we know, told here with surprising new details that cast it in an entirely different light. Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gwokOKLPxzI https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/virtual-book-club-four-friends-promising-lives-cut-short/

Contemporary audiences may be familiar with the phenomenon of “breaking the fourth wall” in television, film, theater, and other forms of media. In these instances, creators and performers address the audience directly or draw attention to the conventions of a performance in a way that disrupts its immersive or continuous nature. In this podcast, Mark Evan Bonds (NHC Fellow, 1995–96; 2021–22), professor of music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, examines what it means to break the fourth wall in classical music composition and performance. Understanding the way that composers like Franz Joseph Haydn used their compositions to subvert audience expectations can help us to understand the ways that styles of music appreciation have changed from the Enlightenment to the present day.

The emergence of commercial aviation in the early twentieth century redefined global commerce by facilitating the movement of people and goods at previously unimaginable speeds. In Hong Kong, however, this phenomenon was not an inevitable development, and the growth of its aviation industry reflected a complex interplay between political interests, geographical realities, and economic alliances. In this podcast, John D. Wong(NHC Fellow, 2021–22), associate professor of humanities and social sciences at The University of Hong Kong, traces the ways in which the growth of commercial aviation in Hong Kong turned the city and surrounding region into an economic powerhouse while facilitating an exchange of ideas that shaped the modern age.

In 70 CE, the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans led early Christians to claim that this event was an example of divine retribution for the death of Jesus. Narratives promoting this cause-and-effect story of vengeance circulated widely throughout Europe in the medieval period, with frequent alterations designed to appeal to local constituencies and to advance particular political and religious agendas. In this podcast, Timothy L. Stinson(NHC Fellow, 2021–22), associate professor of English at North Carolina State University, explores the way that these “vengeance narratives” were both perennial and adaptable. Although the medieval versions of these stories encouraged anti-Judaic bias and persecution, the template of such narratives persisted throughout later ages even while featuring different groups. By understanding how these stories were continuously transformed over time, we can develop a better sense of the way that they helped to shape religious and national forms of identity across Europe.