Think About It
Summary: Think About It engages today's leading thinkers in conversations about powerful ideas and how language can change the world.
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- Artist: Ulrich C. Baer
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Podcasts:
Where, when, and how does American literature begin? What is the canon of U.S. literature, and how is it distinct? Why is it so important which authors are shared knowledge among all Americans? I spoke with Sarah Rivett, who is Professor of English & American Studies, and Affiliated Faculty of Indigenous Studies at Princeton University. She is the author of The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England and, Unscripted America: Indigenous Languages and the Origins of Literary Nation.
Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice delights, charms and entrances reader since its anonymous publication in 1813. The Bennett sisters need to marry rich, for otherwise they'll fall into poverty and social disgrace. I talked with one of the great Austen experts of our time, Professor Wendy Lee of New York University, who has published widely on Austen, including in Failures of Feeling: Insensibility and the Novel (Stanford UP).
BOOK TALK 47: Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, with Wendy A. Lee (New York University)
BOOK TALK 46: HAITIAN REVOLUTION IN LITERATURE, with Marlene Daut (University of Virginia)
BOOK TALK 45: Martin Buber's I AND THOU, with Paul Mendes-Flohr (University of Chicago and Hebrew University in Jerusalem)
BOOK TALK 44: HANNAH ARENDT by Samantha Hill (Assist. Director "Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities" | Professor of Politics Bard College, New York State)
BOOK TALK 43: RAINER MARIA RILKE by Mark Wunderlich (Poet/Writer/Teacher & Director of Creative Writing at Bennington College, Vermont)
BOOK TALK 42: Kate Chopin's The Awakening, with Rafael Walker (Baruch College, CUNY)
GREAT BOOKS 41: F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, with John Collins (Founding Artistic Director of Elevator Repair Service Theater Company)
The first Asian American writer to publish stories in the US, Sui Sin Far could have “passed” for a white woman but during a time of intense Sinophobia, aligned herself with Chinese Americans. I spoke with one of the great experts on Sui Sin Far, Professor Mary Chapman, at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada, and author of Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism and Travel Writing , who also directs a crucial website: https://www.winnifredeatonarchive.org/
GREAT BOOKS 39: Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, with Robert Dale Parker (University of Illinois)
GREAT BOOKS 38: James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, with Melissa Daniels-Rauterkus (University of Southern California)
To understand Poe, inventor of the detective story, tales of terror, and progenitor to Hitchcock, Stephen King and much of Netflix's programing, I spoke with J. Gerald Kennedy who's written award-winning books on Poe in American culture. I asked Professor Kennedy about his favorite stories and how to understand Toni Morrison's famous declaration that Poe is key to understanding American writers' use of Black characters in their construction of the white mythology of American culture.
GREAT BOOKS 36: Doon Arbus's The Caretaker, with Doon Arbus
GREAT BOOKS 35: Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, with Susan Weisser (Adelphi University)
