Nhc Podcasts

Next year will mark the centennial of the founding of Bauhaus, the German center for aesthetic thought founded by Walter Gropius. Known for its functionalist structures and unadorned style, the movement formally ended in 1933, the final year of the Weimar Republic. Still, its influence continues to this day, informing design choices in a wide variety of fields—from architecture to typography, fashion to household items. National Humanities Center Fellow Elizabeth Otto, associate professor of art history at the University of Buffalo, is completing a book that challenges conventional understandings of one of Europe’s most influential art institutions. Otto’s work uncovers new areas of inquiry, including the school’s engagement with the irrational, the spiritual, and the pursuit of functional perfection. In this podcast, Otto maps the aesthetic and intellectual lineage of the Bauhaus, paying special attention to the many figures—especially women—who’ve been overshadowed by more celebrated colleagues like Josef

In the 17th century, the notion of the infinite universe was so controversial that believers could be burned at the stake. Today, however, the concept of infinity is commonplace, integrated not only into science and math curricula, but how we understand our world. NHC Fellow John H. Smith, Professor of German at the University of California, Irvine, is currently at work on a project that explores how the concept of infinity not only gained acceptance but also reshaped our thinking in the seemingly disparate realms of mathematics, theology, philosophy, and poetry. In this podcast, Smith traces the shifting understandings of the infinite across the long 18th century, with particular focus on German figures such as Leibniz and Hegel, as well as intellectual movements including Romanticism and the Enlightenment. His project ultimately locates the infinite at an interdisciplinary crossroads, demonstrating the interconnectedness of the sciences and the humanities.

Historically, issues surrounding psychiatric care in the United States have produced crises of various kinds—perhaps nowhere more so than in the Deep South. Milledgeville, Georgia—featured in the literary works of authors such as Alice Walker, Flannery O’Connor, and Carson McCullers—is no exception. The antebellum state capitol, Milledgeville was also home to the state mental hospital, an institution founded in 1842 which eventually grew to become the largest mental hospital in the world. National Humanities Center Fellow Mab Segrest, Fuller-Maathai Professor Emeritus of Gender and Women’s Studies at Connecticut College, is currently at work on a project that considers how the history of Georgia's hospital reveals the intimate relationships between psychiatry and white settler colonialism. In this podcast, Segrest discusses the social function of mental hospitals in the South. Questions of race, gender, and class underscore her methodology, revealing how psychiatry often was a “handmaiden” to white supremaci

Legalized slavery has been abolished around the world, yet human trafficking remains a significant problem. Though slavery may not take the exact forms it did in the nineteenth century, approximately 45.8 million persons in 167 countries endure modern forms of slavery. National Humanities Center Fellow Laura Murphy, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Modern Slavery Research Project at Loyola University New Orleans, is currently at work on a book about the way survivors of forced labor have mobilized the discourse of slavery in the twenty-first century to reinvigorate their struggles for freedom. In this podcast, Murphy discusses the generic conventions of the slave narrative and how they complicate our notions of what it means to be free. For instance, in what she terms the “not-yet-freedom narrative,” survivors of slavery find their lives still circumscribed by systemic injustices, even after emancipation. By approaching the topic of slavery through the lens provided by literary analysis, Mu

First emerging in the Italian Renaissance, the sonnet was used to document and address a problem, such as the pain of unrequited love. Under the shadow of slavery and then Jim Crow, African American poets from Phillis Wheatley to Natasha Trethewey have adopted the sonnet’s 14-line form to poetically register political protest. National Humanities Center Fellow Hollis Robbins, from Johns Hopkins University, is currently at work on the first book-length examination of the African American sonnet tradition. In this podcast, Robbins discusses how the sonnet both emerges out of and transforms the tradition of Platonic metaphysical ideal love. Drawing on examples from writers such as Claude McKay and Gwendolyn Brooks, Robbins explains how the formal qualities of the sonnet—structured around an argument—exemplify what W.E.B. Du Bois famously called “double-consciousness.” To this day, writers such as Terrance Hayes and Tracy K. Smith enlist its octaves, voltas, and sestets to narrate the African American experience

The average American produces four and a half pounds of trash every single day, and, as a whole, the U.S. generates nearly a quarter of a billion tons of garbage each year. Yet one person’s trash is another’s treasure. For instance, entire television channels are devoted to hoarders, and artists around the world craft “garbage art” from found materials. So what can we learn about ourselves from what we discard and what we keep? What stories are contained in the detritus of contemporary life? National Humanities Center Fellow Stephanie Foote, Jackson and Nichols Professor of English at West Virginia University, is beginning to answer these questions. In this podcast, she discusses her current work on the “art of garbage” and the intersections of consumer culture, the global economy, and the environment. Foote also speculates about how contemporary literature (such as the emergence of “climate fiction”) mediates the presence of planetary waste. In one form or another, whether celebrated or spurned, garbage, i

In the decades following the American Civil War, African American intellectuals focused much of their attention beyond the borders of the United States and, in doing so, engaged global histories of colonization, slavery, immigration, and imperialism. They also found occasion to celebrate the traditions, achievements, and contributions made by Africans around the world. While a significant body of scholarship attends to the work of politicians, clergy, actors, and artists, relatively little attention has been paid to the role of black historians. National Humanities Center Fellow Stephen G. Hall might be called a “historian of historians.” His current research, spanning the era between 1885 and 1960, focuses on the global engagement of African American historians, many of whom were trained and taught in historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). In this podcast, Hall introduces and expands on important issues at play in his study: the sources black historians enlisted to frame critical events, the

Over the past century, revolutions in technology and increased mobility have fostered connections across vast spaces and among different cultures. Still, Americans’ sense of regional identity remains strong. NHC Fellow Wendy Griswold, Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities and professor of sociology at Northwestern University, has studied how literary culture helps produce and maintain regional identity for much of her career. In this podcast, she discusses the third installment of her ongoing project exploring how art and literature are integral to American “place-making.” Building on her previous work, she argues that by drawing on the fields of neurobiology and neuroaesthetics—examining how our brains respond to different sensations and stimuli—we may be able to shed new light on the ways we experience places and form lasting emotional attachments to them.

A democratic society relies on the ability of citizens to address one another in a measured and temperate fashion, yet civil debate in recent years has become increasingly contentious and polarized. In this podcast, NHC Fellow John McGowan, professor of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discusses how literature—specifically comedy—can help us recognize our shared humanity and help us find ways to transcend our differences. Touching on works as diverse as James Joyce's “Ulysses,” the novels of Anthony Trollope and Iris Murdoch, and situation comedies like “30 Rock” and “Parks and Recreation,” McGowan explains how the conventions of comedy such as happy endings, vernacular language, and plots involving relatable, everyday characters offer models for managing change and dealing with the messiness of human interactions. Ultimately, McGowan suggests, these works may provide alternative social blueprints for a public sphere that is more conducive to courtesy and

For years, public discourse and policy debates about people with disabilities have focused on the rights of those with medically recognized impairments. Increasingly, however, scholars in the field of disability studies, including Fellow Nancy J. Hirschmann, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, are reshaping the way we see our bodies, the range of freedoms we enjoy, and the limitations we experience. In this podcast, Hirschmann helps us to begin to make sense of the complex relationship between freedom and disability. She speaks with NHC Vice President for Scholarly Programs Tania Munz about her latest book project, Freedom, Power, and Disability, which builds on her previous scholarship on the intersections of politics, gender, and philosophy. As Hirschmann notes, thinkers for centuries framed disability as a problem or disorder to be overcome or cured—a phenomenon now known as the “medical model.” Beginning in the 1960s, however, disability scholars began to offer a new “socia

Since the early modern era, history has been largely viewed through an anthropocentric lens, skewing towards the involvement of humans. David Christian (National Humanities Center Fellow 2006–07) flips this narrative by zooming out to see history—specifically, Big History—on a larger scale, measured by geological and cosmological time. Big History is a model that embeds human history within the history of the larger universe, including the biosphere, the Earth, and the solar system. Interdisciplinary in scope, it brings together fields as seemingly disparate as cosmology, anthropology, and geology. In terms of narratology, Big History offers what Christian calls “a unifying origin story” that explains our origin and place in the universe, bridging together the humanities with the social sciences. Turning to pedagogical implications, Christian also discusses how we can harness technology to help younger students conceptualize various time scales—human, geological, and cosmological—in mapping a digital landsca

Scholars in gender and sexuality studies have largely ignored or dismissed attempts to explain the causes of sexual deviation for a variety of reasons. In this podcast, National Humanities Center Fellow Benjamin Kahan discusses how his work, exploring “the historical etiology of sexuality,” moves past those scholars’ dismissal of early sexuality theories in hopes of producing a fuller understanding of how contemporary attitudes and notions about sexuality developed. By considering lost models of sexuality and sexual aberration—dating back to the 1840s—Kahan describes the emergence of ideas that can be found in the work of researchers such as Havelock Ellis as well as in the writings of authors like Djuna Barnes and Virginia Woolf. Benjamin Kahan is an assistant professor of English and Women’s and Gender Studies at Louisiana State University. He is the author of “Celibacies: American Modernism and Sexual Life” (2013) and the editor of Heinrich Kaan’s “‘Psychopathia Sexualis’ (1844): A Classic Text in the His

Non-human, post-human, anti-human. In recent years, historians, political theorists, philosophers and others have increasingly tried to think beyond an anthropocentric perspective to gain insights on a wide range of questions. But these ways of thinking have a long precedent in American fiction. In this podcast, NHC Fellow Kate Marshall, associate professor of English at the University of Notre Dame, discusses how weird fiction, cosmic realism, and pseudo-science fiction have imaginatively grappled with non-human points of view from the late 19th century to the present.

While we often think of Renaissance-era Florence and the surrounding area as brimming with intellectual inquiry, artistic genius, and political intrigue, music and poetry were also important elements of life and to the Studia Humanitatis, the core of early modern education. In this podcast, Fellow Blake Wilson, professor of music at Dickinson College discusses his current project exploring the music and oral performance traditions of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance — how it was composed and performed as well as its relationship to other art forms in creating the rich civic and cultural life of the Renaissance.

Surviving accounts of the foundation of the early Christian church are extremely limited, leaving scholars with few sources beyond the narrative found in the fifth book of the New Testament, the Acts of the Apostles. And, for centuries, questions have persisted about the book of Acts itself: Who wrote it and for whom? What was the document's purpose? And, how historically reliable is the account it provides? In this podcast, Fellow Douglas Campbell, professor of New Testament in the Divinity School at Duke University discusses his current project to address some of these questions. Campbell is one of the world's foremost authorities on the life and thought of the apostle Paul. His publications ​on the topic include, most recently, "​​Framing Paul: An Epistolary Biography" (2014) as well as ​​"The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul" (2009) and "​​The Quest for Paul's Gospel: A Suggested Strategy" (2005).

Most people would agree that judging people based on generalizations related to their skin color or gender, religion or nationality is wrong. Yet ​this is a common practice in all societies​​. So the question arises, is it ever okay to use stereotypes? And, if so, when? Erin Beeghly is assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Utah,​ where her research focuses on the intersection of ethics, epistemology, political philosophy and moral philosophy. This year, as the Philip L. Quinn Fellow at the National Humanities Center, she is working on "Seeing Difference: The Ethics and Epistemology of Stereotyping," which examines the conditions under which judging people by group membership is wrong. ​

Beyond their inspirational and devotional power, what other functions do religious works of art serve? From antiquity through the medieval period, ​​practitioners ​of many religious traditions ​throughout central Asia used ​works of art to teach​ followers religious histories, parables, and central tenets of their faith.​ How does this use inform our appreciation of these works and what can we learn from examining these religious practices? ​​Zsuzsanna ​​Gulácsi is professor of ​art history, Asian studies, and comparative religious studies at ​Northern Arizona University​. She has written extensively on art and religion across Asia in the late ancient and medieval periods. ​​Gulácsi was previously a Fellow at the Center in 2006–07 and has returned this year to work on a new project comparing the use of art by various religions in the region to attract and instruct converts.

For centuries before the arrival of Europeans, trade routes connected the various peoples who lived throughout the American Southwest and Mexico, and trade among these groups remained an important source of economic vitality and cultural exchange even after the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century. In later years, these routes formed the basis of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, connecting merchants and communities from Mexico City to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Tatiana Seijas is associate professor of history at Pennsylvania State University where her research focuses on early modern economics, global Spanish empire, and the American Southwest. ​This year, as a Fellow at the Center she is working on "First Routes: Indigenous Trade and Travel between the American Southwest and Mexico".

Beginning as a small group of intellectual ideologues, the Shining Path grew to become a significant insurgency movement whose violent practices resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Peruvians in the late twentieth century. However, to understand the Shining Path's history and its influence, it is important to understand its origins and the motivations of the individuals who formed its leadership. ​​Miguel La Serna is associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where his research focuses on the relationship between culture, memory, and political violence in twentieth-century Latin America. ​This year, as a Fellow at the Center he is working on a ​narrative history about the Shining Path, titled "The Last Revolution: Shining Path and the War of the End of the World".

Since its founding over 50 years ago, perceptions of the Black Panther Party have varied widely, often shaped by misinformation — about the Party's motivations, its relations with other organizations, its influence in the U.S. and around the world. In this conversation, ​historian Jakobi Williams discusses ​the challenges facing scholars in reconstructing the history of the Black Panther Party, the common misconceptions that continue to shape views of the movement and its leaders, and the ways that the organization helped inspire resistance groups in other countries. Jakobi Williams is associate professor of history at Indiana University Bloomington where his research focuses on twentieth-century U.S. history and African American history. This year, as a Fellow at the Center he is working on "'Neighborhoods First': The Black Panther Party as a Model for Community Organizing in the U.S. and Abroad," expanding on his previous work on the history of resistance and social justice revolutions found within the his