Shows
Off The ShelfAnalysing Taylor Swift with Sheffield's Tortured Poets DepartmentLooking at Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poets Department, this podcast demonstrates how literary criticism can help a better appreciation of contemporary pop culture. Join Dr Amber Regis, Dr Jonathan Ellis, and Dr Katherine Ebury to take a literary tour of some of Taylor Swift’s biggest hits, building on their recent Post45 journal, Tis the Damn Deason: Taylor Swift’s Evermore.
2025-08-1547 min
The American VandalLiterary Sociology a.k.a. The Institutional Turn a.k.a The Spreadsheet School of Literary CriticismA so-called Spreadsheet Man responds. Does the institutional turn have a distinctly feminine ethos? [27:30] How is it rooted in the Post45 Collective? [49:00] What are its debts to New Historicism and Marxist Literary Criticism? [69:00] And to Fredric Jameson? [84:30] And what has become of Economic Criticism? [94:00]
Cast (in order of appearance): Dan Sinykin, Matt Seybold, Brandon Taylor, Rachel Sagner Buurma, Laura Heffernan, J. D. Connor, Alexander Manshel, Fredric Jameson, Leigh Claire La Berge
Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective
Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio
For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/TheAmericanVandal/SpreadsheetMen, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter...
2025-07-011h 43
Pod45Episode 21: Samuel DelanyPod45 returns with a discussion on, in, and around our recent cluster Samuel R. Delany's Improbable Communities. Contemporaries co-editor Francisco Robles hosts a conversation with cluster editor Blake Stricklin, and cluster contributors Y Howard, Kirin Wachter-Grene, Rebekah Sheldon, and Christopher Breu.
2025-06-021h 28
Unpacking ZionismFrom Above: Hillel with Maura FinkelsteinThis is the second episode in our series From Above, in which we look at Zionist institutions that wield their power to advance fascist repression of anyone who speaks against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide of Palestinians. My guest today is herself an example of how this repression works. I am joined by writer and scholar Maura Finkelstein to talk about Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life. In 2024, Maura was fired from her tenured professorship at Muhlenberg College for a social media post critical of Zionism and Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. We discuss what it me...
2025-04-2239 minUnpacking ZionismFrom Above: Hillel with Maura FinkelsteinThis is the second episode in our series From Above, in which we look at Zionist institutions that wield their power to advance fascist repression of anyone who speaks against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide of Palestinians. My guest today is herself an example of how this repression works. I am joined by writer and scholar Maura Finkelstein to talk about Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life. In 2024, Maura was fired from her tenured professorship at Muhlenberg College for a social media post critical of Zionism and Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. We discuss what it me...
2025-04-2242 min
One Heat Minute ProductionsTHE DECADE PROJECT: EX MACHINA (2014) w/Veronica FitzpatrickIn the latest episode, I catch up with educator, writer and podcast host Veronica Fitzpatrick, to talk about Alex Garland's expression of the "vicious prosthesis" Ex Machina. Veronica Fitzpatrickis a film writer and professor based in Providence, Rhode Island. My writing has appeared in Bright Wall/Dark Room, Screen Slate, Post45, the Village Voice (rip), and elsewhere. In 2022, I contributed to BFI's Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll.Formerly a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, I teach in Brown's department of Modern Culture and Media...
2025-01-071h 00
University of Minnesota PressScience Fiction and the Alt-RightThe first major neo-Nazi party in the US was led by a science fiction fan. So opens Jordan S. Carroll’s Speculative Whiteness, a book that traces ideas about white nationalism through the entangled histories of science fiction culture and white supremacist politics, showing that debates about representation in science fiction films and literature are struggles over who has the right to imagine and inhabit the future. Here, Carroll is joined in conversation with David M. Higgins.Jordan S. Carroll is the author of Reading the Obscene: Transgressive Editors and the Class Politics of US...
2024-12-1052 minPod45Episode 20: SuspicionPod45's 20th episode spectacular!
To discuss our recent cluster on Suspicion, Contemporaries co-editor Francisco Robles is joined by cluster editor Eleanor Russell and cluster contributors Olivia Stowell, Sheera Talpaz, and Samuel Catlin.
You can read all the essays in the Suspicion cluster now at: https://post45.org/sections/contemporaries-essays/suspicion/
Hosted and produced by Michael Docherty.
2024-11-181h 26
One Heat Minute ProductionsMINHUNTER: SCENE FOURTEEN WITH VERONICA FITZPATRICK“Michael Mann films are for people who have been in love, which I really really appreciate.” The amazing educator, writer and podcast host Veronica Fitzpatrick, joins MINHUNTER to discuss the precision and the levity of one of MANHUNTER’s misdirections.Veronica FitzpatrickA film writer and professor based in Providence, Rhode Island. Her writing has appeared in Bright Wall/Dark Room, Screen Slate, Post45, the Village Voice (rip), and elsewhere. In 2022, I contributed to BFI's Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll.Formerly a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Cogut Institute for the Hum...
2024-11-1748 min
The Katie Halper ShowJewish Tenured Prof Maura FInkelstein FIRED Over Tweet, Rami Younis on his Banned DocumentaryWatch more on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thekatiehalpershow
Katie is joined by Maura Finkelstein a tenured Jewish professor of Anthropology at Muhlenberg College fired over an Instragram repost about Zionism. Then Katie talks to Rami Younis, a Palestinian writer, journalist, activist and co-director of "Lyd," a science fiction documentary he co-directed about the once-thriving Palestinian city of Lyd. Rami reacts to Israel's recent decision to ban the film.
Maura Finkelstein is a writer, ethnographer, and associate professor of anthropology. She is the author of The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai, published by Duke University Press...
2024-10-221h 47Pod45Episode 19: American BimboWelcome back to another episode of Pod45, the podcast companion to Post45: Contemporaries, with your host Michael Docherty.
Today’s discussion responds to our recent cluster American Bimbo. Joining Michael in a conversation about the enduring potency and complexity of the bimbo as an American cultural figure, celebrity and media in the 2000s, and more recent hyperonline reclamations and revisions of bimbodom, are Emmeline Clein, who edited the cluster, and two of its fantastic contributors – Rax King and Rob Franklin.
Read American Bimbo now at https://post45.org/sections/cont...
2024-10-171h 09
Tender SubjectANOTHER BITE: Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Jo IsaacsonIn honor of Texas Chainsaw's 50th anniversary and Jo's Post45 cluster (Kayte's collage is in it!) we are re-publishing our TCM episode. Enjoy!
Did somebody order head cheese? If you did, you're in luck! This week, we're joined by Johanna Isaacson, author of Stepford Daughters: Weapons for Feminists in Contemporary Horror, to talk about the one, the only, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre! We ask the important questions, such as, "does Leatherface represent feminized labor?" and "is Leatherface trapped in an MLM?"
(We worry about Leatherface's wellbeing a lot.)
Readings:
...
2024-10-071h 24Tender SubjectANOTHER BITE: Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Jo IsaacsonIn honor of Texas Chainsaw's 50th anniversary and Jo's Post45 cluster (Kayte's collage is in it!) we are re-publishing our TCM episode. Enjoy!
Did somebody order head cheese? If you did, you're in luck! This week, we're joined by Johanna Isaacson, author of Stepford Daughters: Weapons for Feminists in Contemporary Horror, to talk about the one, the only, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre! We ask the important questions, such as, "does Leatherface represent feminized labor?" and "is Leatherface trapped in an MLM?"
(We worry about Leatherface's wellbeing a lot.)
Readings:
...
2024-10-071h 24Pod45Episode 18: Reading Disco ElysiumToday on Pod45 we turn our attention to our recent cluster Reading Disco Elysium, edited by Jess Anderson and Carl White.
Disco Elysium is a critically acclaimed videogame first released in 2019. It has been widely recognized for the richness of its storytelling, its political, moral, and ethical complexity, and how it plays with questions of choice, agency, and narrative structure in ways that fundamentally
destabilize the gaming experience. That is to say, Disco Elysium is an incredibly readerly text, one that we were delighted to invite Jess, Carl, and their brilliant contributors to reflect on in this...
2024-06-2555 minPod45Episode 17: Contemporary Literature from the ClassroomPod45 returns after a hiatus with a bumper episode responding to Contemporary Literature from the Classroom, a recent cluster edited by Rebecca Roach - available now at post45.org/contemporaries.
Today's episode is a departure from our usual format. We begin as we always do, with a rich and wide-ranging roundtable discussion building on the cluster at hand: Contemporaries co-editor Michael Docherty hosts; his guests are cluster editor Rebecca Roach, and cluster contributors John Roache (no relation) and Tim Lanzendörfer. But in the second half we bring you something different: a very special conversation between Rebecca a...
2024-05-271h 42
You’re Tall but I’m Standing in Front of YouS4E5: Face Slash Off (feat. Erik Baker)We're joined by Erik Baker to discuss John Woo's Face/Off (1997). We rank the performances and the performances within the performances, grapple with the power of Evil Howie Mandel, and ask what it means to swap faces at the end of history.
Follow Erik on Twitter at erikmbaker and check out his work at The Drift. Find more of his writing at https://www.erikmbaker.com.
Read Devin's piece on Face/Off, co-written with Kimberly Quiogue Andrews, at https://post45.org/2021/12/between-the-rock-and-a-hard-face-on-first-encounters-of-the-cage-kind.
Follow us on...
2024-05-222h 01
Close ReadingsMargaret Ronda on Walt Whitman ("This Compost")How does life grow from death? When we taste a fruit, are we, in some sense, ingesting everything the soil contains? Margaret Ronda joins the podcast to discuss a poem that poses these questions in harrowing ways, Walt Whitman's "This Compost."[A note on the recording: from 01:10:11 - 01:12:59, Margaret briefly loses her internet connection and I awkwardly vamp. Apologies! Rest assured the remainder of the episode goes off without a hitch!]Margaret Ronda is an associate professor of English at UC-Davis, where she specializes in American poetry from the nineteenth century to the present. She i...
2024-02-261h 49
Close ReadingsMichelle A. Taylor on Patricia Lockwood ("The Ode on Grecian Urn")What is a poem worth? What does beauty do to the person who wants it, or to the person who makes it? Michelle A. Taylor joins the pod to talk about Patricia Lockwood's poem "The Ode on a Grecian Urn," a wild and funny and ultimately quite moving poem (which is also, obviously, a riff on Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn").Michelle A. Taylor is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Emory University’s Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry. Michelle is a scholar of 20th century literature, and more specifically, literary modernism. She is currently finishing her first boo...
2024-02-191h 56Pod45Episode 16: The BachelorWelcome back to another year of Pod45! In today's episode, Post45: Contemporaries co-editor Francisco Robles sits down to discuss our recent cluster on The Bachelor with the cluster's editors, Rhya Moffitt and Annie Bares, and two of its contributors, Robin Hershkowitz and Emily Edwards.
You can read The Bachelor at https://post45.org/sections/contemporaries-essays/the-bachelor/ now.
Pod45 is hosted and produced by Michael Docherty.
2024-01-291h 27
New Books in Critical TheorySelf HelpIn this episode of High Theory, Angela Hume tells us about Self Help, not the neoliberal strategy of self-actualization through consumer choices, but the radical political movement of gynecological self-help, that flourished in the late twentieth century and created a set of portable political tactics based in anarchist feminist philosophy.In the episode, she references Alondra Nelson’s book Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination (Minnesota UP, 2013); Michelle Murphy’s Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience (Duke UP, 2012); and several health activist organizations, including the Women’s...
2023-12-0720 min
High TheorySelf HelpIn this episode of High Theory, Angela Hume tells us about Self Help, not the neoliberal strategy of self-actualization through consumer choices, but the radical political movement of gynecological self-help, that flourished in the late twentieth century and created a set of portable political tactics based in anarchist feminist philosophy.In the episode, she references Alondra Nelson’s book Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination (Minnesota UP, 2013); Michelle Murphy’s Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience (Duke UP, 2012); and several health activist organizations, including the Women’s...
2023-12-0720 min
New Books in Women's HistorySelf HelpIn this episode of High Theory, Angela Hume tells us about Self Help, not the neoliberal strategy of self-actualization through consumer choices, but the radical political movement of gynecological self-help, that flourished in the late twentieth century and created a set of portable political tactics based in anarchist feminist philosophy.In the episode, she references Alondra Nelson’s book Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination (Minnesota UP, 2013); Michelle Murphy’s Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience (Duke UP, 2012); and several health activist organizations, including the Women’s...
2023-12-0720 min
New Books in Public PolicySelf HelpIn this episode of High Theory, Angela Hume tells us about Self Help, not the neoliberal strategy of self-actualization through consumer choices, but the radical political movement of gynecological self-help, that flourished in the late twentieth century and created a set of portable political tactics based in anarchist feminist philosophy.In the episode, she references Alondra Nelson’s book Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination (Minnesota UP, 2013); Michelle Murphy’s Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience (Duke UP, 2012); and several health activist organizations, including the Women’s...
2023-12-0720 min
New Books in MedicineSelf HelpIn this episode of High Theory, Angela Hume tells us about Self Help, not the neoliberal strategy of self-actualization through consumer choices, but the radical political movement of gynecological self-help, that flourished in the late twentieth century and created a set of portable political tactics based in anarchist feminist philosophy.In the episode, she references Alondra Nelson’s book Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight against Medical Discrimination (Minnesota UP, 2013); Michelle Murphy’s Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience (Duke UP, 2012); and several health activist organizations, including the Women’s...
2023-12-0720 minPod45Episode 15: HeteropessimismContemporaries co-editor Michael Docherty discusses our recent Heteropessimism cluster with two of its co-editors, Annabel Barry and Caroline Godard. The cluster's third co-editor was Jane Ward.
You can read all the essays in the Heteropessimism cluster now at https://post45.org/sections/contemporaries-essays/heteropessimism/
2023-11-1040 minPod45Episode 14: Abortion Now, Abortion ForeverAfter a short summer hiatus, Pod45 is back! We're delighted to bring you an episode discussing our recent 16-piece marathon cluster Abortion Now, Abortion Forever, which was published to mark the anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in the case of Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization. This urgently important cluster can be found at https://post45.org/sections/contemporaries-essays/abortion-now-abortion-forever/.
In conversation on the cluster and the issues to which it responds are Contemporaries editor-in-chief Gloria Fisk and cluster editors Margaret Ronda, Jena DiMaggio, and Jeannette Schollaert.
As Margaret, Jena, and Jeannette write in...
2023-09-2559 minPod45Episode 13: Little MagazinesContemporaries co-editor Francisco Robles discusses our recent cluster Little Magazines with its editor Nick Sturm, and two of its contributors - Danny Snelson and Stephanie Anderson.
Nick's introduction to the cluster: https://post45.org/2023/06/introduction-deep-immersion-in-the-little-mags/
Danny's essay, "An Elegy for Jimmy & Lucy’s House of 'K' (1984–1989)": https://post45.org/2023/06/an-elegy-for-ijimmy-and-lucys-house-of-k-1984-1989/
Stephanie's interview with Susan Sherman: https://post45.org/2023/06/interview-with-susan-sherman/
Read all of the Little Magazines cluster at Contemporaries now: https://post45.org/sections/contemporaries-essays/little-magazines/
Follow us on Twitter at @At...
2023-07-171h 10Close ReadingsKristin Grogan on Lorine Niedecker ("Poet's Work")What kind of work is the work of poetry, and how does it compare with other kinds of labor? We have the perfect pairing of poem and critic to think through that question on this episode: Kristin Grogan joins the podcast to talk about Lorine Niedecker's "Poet's Work."Kristin is assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, where she works on poetry, poetics, modernism, American literature, modernism, gender, and sexuality. She is nearing completion of her first book, Stitch, Unstitch: Poetry, Modernism, and the World of Work. You can find Kristin's essays and articles in such journals...
2023-07-031h 25Pod45Episode 12: Minimalisms NowThe cluster up for discussion today is Minimalisms Now: Race, Affect, Aesthetics, edited by Connor Bennett and Michael Dango. This is somewhat ironically a rather maximalist cluster on minimalism, comprising eleven fantastic essays, including Connor and Michael’s introduction, plus a great interview with Mark McGurl.
Contemporaries co-editor Michael Docherty sat down with Connor and Michael to think through some of the issues in contemporary minimalism with which the cluster engages, and the questions it invites. Joining us in our discussion were Annabelle Tseng and Tina Post.
Annabelle wrote “On Being Okay,” one of two essays...
2023-05-171h 01Close ReadingsSarah Osment on David Berman ("Governors on Sominex")I talked with my friend Sarah Osment about "Governors on Sominex," a poem by David Berman. In addition to being a poet, Berman was the frontman and lyricist of the band Silver Jews.Sarah works in the Writing Program at the University of Chicago, where she teaches courses in Media Aesthetics. She has devoted her intellectual energy to more public-facing projects since earning her PhD in English from Brown University in 2016: she is the co-founder of Hyped on Melancholy, an online magazine devoted to smart words about sad songs and the reasons we cleave to them. Sarah's o...
2023-05-081h 25Close ReadingsHarris Feinsod on William Carlos Williams ("To Elsie")Harris Feinsod joins the podcast to talk about William Carlos Williams, his great book of 1923, Spring and All, and one of its strange and unforgettable poems, "To Elsie."Harris is an associate professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Poetry of the Americas: From Good Neighbors to Countercultures (Oxford UP, 2017) and the co-translator (with Rachel Galvin) of Oliverio Girondo's Decals: Complete Early Poems (Open Letter, 2018). Harris's articles and essays have appeared in such publications as Comparative Literature, American Literary History, English Language Notes, Modernism/modernity, The Baffler, In...
2023-04-171h 21Pod45Episode 11: The Hallyu ProjectThis episode of Pod45 discusses our recent The Hallyu Project cluster, which was edited and introduced by Yin Yuan.
Contemporaries co-editor Francisco Robles sat down to chat about the cluster and the Hallyu phenomenon in some of its manifold dimensions with editor Yin Yuan (@yinyuanx) and three of the cluster's contributors: Eunjin Choi (@echoi_24), Rita Raley (@ritaraley), and Andrea Acosta (@a_priyd).
Eunjin and Rita co-wrote the essay "K-streams: Global Korea and the OTT Era." Eunjin is a lecturer at Sogang University in Seoul, South Korea. Rita is Professor of English at the University of...
2023-03-141h 08Close ReadingsKimberly Quiogue Andrews on Wallace Stevens ("Man Carrying Thing")"The poem must resist the intelligence / Almost successfully." So begins this episode's poem, "Man Carrying Thing," by the modernist American poet Wallace Stevens. I got to talk about it with the scholar and poet Kimberly Quiogue Andrews.Kim is an assistant professor of English at the University of Ottawa and the author of The Academic Avant-Garde: Poetry and the American University (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023). She's also a poet who has published two collections: A Brief History of Fruit (University of Akron Press, 2020) and BETWEEN (Finishing Line Press, 2018). She's the winner of the Akron Prize for Poetry...
2023-03-061h 12Pod45Episode 10: David Berman (w/ special guest Bob Nastanovich)Today's episode is a response to and continuation of our recent cluster on the work of songwriter, musician, poet, and cartoonist David Berman, which you can read at post45.org/contemporaries now.
Contemporaries co-editor Michael Docherty was joined by cluster co-editors David Hering and Sarah Osment to discuss Berman's life and artistry with his longtime friend and collaborator Bob Nastanovich. What transpired was a really special conversation, and we're very grateful to Bob for the insights he was willing to share with us.
You can read David and Sarah's introduction to the cluster at https...
2023-02-131h 07Pod45Episode 9: Fast and FuriousHappy New Year from Pod45. Sincere thanks to everyone who's listened to the podcast in its first year; we really appreciate your support and hope you've enjoyed listening to the episodes as much as we enjoyed making them. We're looking forward to bringing you more impassioned and informed conversations about contemporary culture in 2023.
Today's episode of Pod45 takes us to a cluster we published last month – For Speed and Creed: The Fast and Furious Franchise. For a great discussion of these much loved and wildly successful movies, Post45 co-editor Michael Docherty was joined by cluster editor Maggie Bo...
2022-12-311h 11Pod45Episode 8: Gestures of RefusalThis episode of Pod45 discusses our recent Gestures of Refusal cluster, co-edited by Sarah Bernstein and Yanbing Er.
Contemporaries co-editor Francisco Robles sat down to chat about the cluster (as well as broader questions and themes it suggests) with Sarah and Yanbing, alongside Akwugo Emejulu, who contributed the essay "Ambivalence as Misfeeling, Ambivalence as Refusal" to the cluster, and Xine Yao, whose writing doesn't feature in the cluster but whose work and thought on (dis)affect, (un)feeling, and refusal articulates closely related concerns.
Pod45 host and Contemporaries co-editor Michael Docherty also provides some information o...
2022-11-241h 07
New Books in Communications100th Episode: Public HumanitiesSaronik Bosu talks about humanities work engaging diverse communities and publics, misconceptions about what the ‘public’ in public humanities might mean as well as the recent attention paid to it by academic departments. In a longer version of the conversation, some individual instances of various digital humanities and archival projects are discussed. Here he speaks mainly from the perspective of his own work as a humanities podcaster and creator of humanities programming.Saronik Bosu is a doctoral candidate at the Department of English, New York University. He researches literary rhetoric and economic thought in contexts of decolonization. He i...
2022-11-1113 min
Scholarly Communication100th Episode: Public HumanitiesSaronik Bosu talks about humanities work engaging diverse communities and publics, misconceptions about what the ‘public’ in public humanities might mean as well as the recent attention paid to it by academic departments. In a longer version of the conversation, some individual instances of various digital humanities and archival projects are discussed. Here he speaks mainly from the perspective of his own work as a humanities podcaster and creator of humanities programming.Saronik Bosu is a doctoral candidate at the Department of English, New York University. He researches literary rhetoric and economic thought in contexts of decolonization. He i...
2022-11-1113 min
New Work in Digital Humanities100th Episode: Public HumanitiesSaronik Bosu talks about humanities work engaging diverse communities and publics, misconceptions about what the ‘public’ in public humanities might mean as well as the recent attention paid to it by academic departments. In a longer version of the conversation, some individual instances of various digital humanities and archival projects are discussed. Here he speaks mainly from the perspective of his own work as a humanities podcaster and creator of humanities programming.Saronik Bosu is a doctoral candidate at the Department of English, New York University. He researches literary rhetoric and economic thought in contexts of decolonization. He i...
2022-11-1113 minHigh Theory100th Episode: Public HumanitiesSaronik Bosu talks about humanities work engaging diverse communities and publics, misconceptions about what the ‘public’ in public humanities might mean as well as the recent attention paid to it by academic departments. In a longer version of the conversation, some individual instances of various digital humanities and archival projects are discussed. Here he speaks mainly from the perspective of his own work as a humanities podcaster and creator of humanities programming.Saronik Bosu is a doctoral candidate at the Department of English, New York University. He researches literary rhetoric and economic thought in contexts of decolonization. He i...
2022-11-1113 min
Smarty Pants#253: The Fantasy of Real LifeIn 2018, the writer Ling Ma published Severance, which promptly won several literary prizes but only hit the big time in 2020. The novel follows Candace Chen, who continues to go to her unfulfilling job in the middle of a worldwide pandemic that slowly fills the world with slack-jawed zombies. You can guess why it was popular. This fall, Ma is back with a new collection of stories, Bliss Montage, which imagines a number of other surreal scenarios, such as a drug that makes you invisible, a dream job that just might open a literal door into a dream world, and...
2022-10-2129 minPod45Episode 7: W(h)ither the Christian Right?Today our discussion takes us to a cluster we published last month, W(h)ither the Christian Right?
This cluster, a wide-ranging exploration of relationships between literature, broadly conceived, and American evangelical Christianity, was edited by Christopher Douglas and Matthew Mullins. It feels like an especially urgent and timely cluster, given the religious contexts surrounding the recent overturning of Roe vs. Wade, the January 6th insurrection and QAnon, and the evangelical movement’s embrace of Trumpism more generally, as we approach the 2022 midterms and look forward nervously to the presidential election of 2024.
To discuss the ro...
2022-10-141h 10
LOL My PraxisEp.34 – The War on PraxisEpisode Notes
WERE BACK, BABY! Did you miss us? We’re celebrating our emergence from hot burn-out summer by speaking with Dr Arin Keeble about the literature of Terror and collective trauma. Arin is Lecturer in Contemporary Literature and Culture at Edinburgh Napier University, he has written on everything from hurricanes and punk rock to Stranger Things and contemporary literary TV studies. In this episode we talk about counternarratives to the War on Terror, what objects we would throw at War Criminal George W. Bush Jr., and conditions of radicalisation in relation to White Nationalism. We ask wh...
2022-09-3050 minPod45Episode 6: Lydia DavisPod45 has been on a short hiatus over the summer but we are delighted to be back and delighted to have you back with us.
Today our discussion takes us to a cluster we published earlier in the summer, at the very end of June, on the writer and translator Lydia Davis. That cluster is edited by Julie Tanner and features, alongside a wonderful range of responses to Davis’s work, previously unseen journal excerpts from Davis herself, which we were honoured to be given by Davis to publish.
As Julie suggests in her introduction to...
2022-09-071h 29
New Books in FilmReality TVIn this episode of High Theory, Olivia Stowell speaks with Saronik about Reality TV.In the episode she talks about the genesis of the genre in Candid Camera, An American Family, COPS and America’s Most Wanted, before the watershed moment of The Real World in the 1990s. She references the work of June Deery, and Pier Dominguez on the commercial realism and affective economies of reality tv, and Susan Douglass’s article “Jersey Shore: Ironic Viewing.” She reminds us that Reality TV dramatizes the life of the neoliberal subject under surveillance, and explicates our “trashy” desires.Olivia Stowell is...
2022-08-2316 minHigh TheoryReality TVIn this episode of High Theory, Olivia Stowell speaks with Saronik about Reality TV.In the episode she talks about the genesis of the genre in Candid Camera, An American Family, COPS and America’s Most Wanted, before the watershed moment of The Real World in the 1990s. She references the work of June Deery, and Pier Dominguez on the commercial realism and affective economies of reality tv, and Susan Douglass’s article “Jersey Shore: Ironic Viewing.” She reminds us that Reality TV dramatizes the life of the neoliberal subject under surveillance, and explicates our “trashy” desires.Olivia Stowell is...
2022-08-2316 minNew Books in CommunicationsReality TVIn this episode of High Theory, Olivia Stowell speaks with Saronik about Reality TV.In the episode she talks about the genesis of the genre in Candid Camera, An American Family, COPS and America’s Most Wanted, before the watershed moment of The Real World in the 1990s. She references the work of June Deery, and Pier Dominguez on the commercial realism and affective economies of reality tv, and Susan Douglass’s article “Jersey Shore: Ironic Viewing.” She reminds us that Reality TV dramatizes the life of the neoliberal subject under surveillance, and explicates our “trashy” desires.Olivia Stowell is...
2022-08-2316 min
New Books in Popular CultureReality TVIn this episode of High Theory, Olivia Stowell speaks with Saronik about Reality TV.In the episode she talks about the genesis of the genre in Candid Camera, An American Family, COPS and America’s Most Wanted, before the watershed moment of The Real World in the 1990s. She references the work of June Deery, and Pier Dominguez on the commercial realism and affective economies of reality tv, and Susan Douglass’s article “Jersey Shore: Ironic Viewing.” She reminds us that Reality TV dramatizes the life of the neoliberal subject under surveillance, and explicates our “trashy” desires.Olivia Stowell is...
2022-08-2316 min
Clio/Mireille: A Fanfiction PodcastTaylor Swift/Karlie Kloss Part OneMireille and Clio discuss the fanfiction pairing of Karlie Kloss and Taylor Swift. This episode was originally recorded for the podcast Studies in Taylor Swift but we thought you might be interested in hearing where our conversations about fanfiction began! We discuss fan fiction tropes, real person fiction, and the depiction of Taylor Swift in "Daylight" by GetMeDietCoke and "Under the Sun" by today. Also discussed is the chapter "Intimate Intertextuality and Performative Fragments in Media Fanfiction" by Kristina Busse in Fandom, Second Edition, edited by Jonathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington and "Tis the D...
2022-08-0845 min
Pod45Episode 5: Bored As Hell, Part 2Today’s episode is the second of two responding to our recent cluster Bored as Hell, a series of essays all about being bored and being boring, why we get bored and how we unbore ourselves, depicting and manifesting boredom in art and literature. You can read Bored as Hell, as well as all our other clusters, at post45.org/contemporaries.
Joining Contemporaries co-editor Michael Docherty (@maybeavalon on Twitter) are:
Busra Copuroglu (@buscopur on Twitter), a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Western Ontario, who edited the cluster and wrote its introduction.
...
2022-06-201h 03Pod45Episode 4: Bored As Hell, Part 1This episode is the first of two responding to our most recent cluster, which is titled Bored as Hell, and was edited by Busra Copuroglu.
Bored as Hell is a cluster of seven essays thinking about, thinking through, and thinking with ideas of boredom and boringness. It covers a lot of ground — boredom in academia, boredom in bureaucracy, the boredom of capitalism, the boredom of domestic labor, intersections between boredom and humor, and boredom as a gift, something that shows us the value of our time and spurs us to do something with it. The cluster has muc...
2022-06-101h 04You’re Tall but I’m Standing in Front of YouEp. 21: Avatar: The Last JamesbenderWhat can blue do for you?
Ethan and Devin are joined by the great J.D. Connor (@jdconnor) for their return to the mind palace of James Cameron and his 2009 master/disasterpiece, Avatar. They discuss the contradictions of the film's immense financial success and limited cultural impact, its relationship to the MCU-type blockbusters that followed, and that sweet, sweet putter.
You can read J.D.'s work at https://www.johnconnorlikeintheterminator.com. His piece on Nicolas Cage ("Cage Register"), which we reference in the episode, can be read at https://post45.org/2021/12/cage-register.
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2022-06-061h 38Pod45Episode 3: Ali Smith Now, Part 2This episode of Pod45 is the second part of a discussion emerging from our recent cluster responding to and reflecting on the work of the Scottish novelist Ali Smith. That cluster is titled Ali Smith Now and you can find it now at post45.org/contemporaries. In our previous episode, Contemporaries editors Gloria Fisk and Francisco Robles were in conversation with cluster editors Debra Rae Cohen and Cara L. Lewis alongside two of the cluster’s contributors, Deidre Lynch and Amy Elkins.
In this discussion Gloria, Francisco, Debra Rae and Cara are joined by a different pair of...
2022-05-2853 minPod45Episode 2: Ali Smith Now, Part 1Pod45 is the discursive cultural criticism podcast from Post45: Contemporaries.
This episode is the first of two discussions responding to our recent Ali Smith Now cluster, which takes the publication of Smith's latest novel Companion Piece as an opportunity to reflect on her unique oeuvre. Contemporaries editorial team members Gloria Fisk and Francisco Robles sit down for a conversation with cluster editors Debra Rae Cohen and Cara L. Lewis, alongside Deidre Lynch and Amy Elkins, who collaborated on a piece for the cluster.
The novel form, technologies of reading, connection and disconnection, collaboration and collegiality...
2022-05-161h 08
Midnight Laundry010 - 莎莉魯尼的《正常人》是披著現代外衣的19世紀小說？本集推薦：《Normal People》 參考資料： https://austenconnection.substack.com/p/sally-rooney-jane-austen-sexual-tension?s=r https://slate.com/culture/2019/04/sally-rooney-normal-people-austen-james-lawrence.html https://post45.org/2020/06/what-are-feelings-for/ / 想聽兩個女生聊天，請來主Podcast: 午後女子會 Instagram: @andrealin8511 https://www.instagram.com/andrealin8511/ 邀約請來信：a850101xa@gmail.com 小額贊助支持本節目： https://open.firstory.me/join/andrealin8511 / 片頭音樂： 七十億分之一 Instrumental 演唱： Julia 吳卓源、婁峻碩SHOU 編曲： terrytyelee 梁永泰、Tower Da Funkmasta 陶逸群 、Julia 吳卓源 作曲： Julia 吳卓源、婁峻碩SHOU 製作： terrytyelee 梁永泰 發行： ChynaHouse 授權： https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/deed.zh_TW 連結： https://kkbox.fm/KsYmHa?utm_source=firstory&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=audio_library Powered by Firstory Hosting
2022-04-1830 minPod45Episode 1: Dark AcademiaWelcome to Pod45, the new discursive cultural criticism podcast from Post45: Contemporaries.
In our first episode, Contemporaries Co-Editor Michael Docherty discusses our recent Dark Academia cluster with cluster editors Mitch Therieau and Olivia Stowell, alongside Gunner Taylor and Dylan Davidson who contributed essays to the cluster.
This wide-ranging conversation explores Donna Tartt and her incredible speaking voice, the performativity of academic Twitter, the localities and temporalities of dark academia, resistance to and complicity with the many ills of the contemporary university, collective scholarship as a form of solidarity, and going "Goblin mode."
Read...
2022-04-051h 27
The American VandalDecommodified Labor, Selling Out, & Other Compromises of The Great Resignation with Leigh Claire La Berge & Rachel Greenwald SmithHow do we explain the Great Resignation? Or, for that matter, other mysteries of the contemporary economy, like the high price of culture work and the low wages of culture workers? Two scholars of Post45 literature and culture discuss the work of art and the art of work.
For more about this episode, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/GreatResignation
2022-02-231h 22
Know Your EnemyJoan Didion, Conservative (w/ Sam Tanenhaus)When Joan Didion died at the age of 87 in December, her early conservatism figured into a number of obituaries and commentaries, but was rarely discussed in detail. Matt and Sam turned to Sam Tanenhaus, William F. Buckley, Jr.'s biographer and knower of all things National Review, to discuss Didion's early writing for the magazine, her roots in California conservatism, and how her politics changed—and didn't—over the course of her long career. Along the way, they discuss why she loved Barry Goldwater and hated Ronald Reagan, why she finally stopped writing for National Review, and how she compar...
2022-01-131h 39
Better Read than Dead: Literature from a Left PerspectiveEpisode 88: The Talented Mr. RipleyFriend, comrade, fellow podcaster, and University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. candidate Devin Daniels joins us to discuss Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955)! Devin is the co-host of You’re Tall but I’m Standing in Front of You, and he’s with us for a fun romp about an ordinary guy who likes maps and trips to Italy and is in no way weird or sinister. He is not a confidence man in any way and definitely doesn’t kill people with ashtrays. We discuss gender construction, surveillance mechanisms, self-making, and queerness. We also consider the ethics of telling...
2021-12-191h 29
Craft TalksCraft Talks at Saint Louis University: A Conversation with Essayist and SLU English Professor, Rachel Greenwald SmithRachel Greenwald Smith is a scholar and storyteller who seamlessly connects topics ranging from poetry to governing systems, punk music, economics, aesthetic innovations in the art and culture, motherhood, social unrest, and more. This interview delves into her new book, On Compromise: Art, Politics, and the Fate of an America Idea, as well as Ms. Greenwald Smith's literary (and musical) influences, writing habits, and the craft of research and composition.
Rachel Greenwald Smith is the author of On Compromise: Art, Politics, and the Fate of an American Ideal (Graywolf Press, 2021) and Affect and American Literature in the A...
2021-10-221h 05
Write On, Mississippi!Write On, Mississippi: Season 4, Chapter 23: UPM 50th AnniversaryKey stakeholders delve into the decades-long history of the only non-profit publisher in the state, with a focus on its storied commitment to publishing a wide range of scholarly books that are culturally important not only to the state, but to the world at large. Panelists:Ann J. Abadie is former associate director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi and coeditor of numerous scholarly collections from the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. Among those many volumes, Fifty Years after Faulkner was released in paperback in July 2020....
2021-10-1259 minWrite On, Mississippi!Write On, Mississippi: Season 4, Chapter 23: UPM 50th AnniversaryKey stakeholders delve into the decades-long history of the only non-profit publisher in the state, with a focus on its storied commitment to publishing a wide range of scholarly books that are culturally important not only to the state, but to the world at large. Panelists:Ann J. Abadie is former associate director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi and coeditor of numerous scholarly collections from the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. Among those many volumes, Fifty Years after Faulkner was released in paperback in July 2020....
2021-10-1259 min
THEORY TO NO ENDChristopher T. Fan on Science Fictionality and Post-65 Asian American LiteratureChristopher T. Fan is Assistant Professor at UC Irvine in the departments of English, Asian American Studies, and East Asian Studies, and a senior editor at Hyphen magazine, which he also co-founded. His research and writing focus on 20/21st c. Anglophone and Asian/American cultural production, speculative fiction, and racial form. He received his PhD in English literature from UC Berkeley in 2016, and was formerly a UC Chancellor’s postdoctoral fellow in the English department at UC Riverside. In addition to Hyphen, his writing has appeared or is forthcoming in American Literary History, American Quarterly, the Journal of Asian...
2021-09-241h 16
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2020-11-1700 minThe American VandalThe New Black Gothic & Lovecraft Country with Sheri-Marie HarrisonThe Gothic has been, since Mark Twain's time, a popular way for artists to reckon with the life and afterlife of American slavery. But only recently has a Gothic tradition emerged which places black protagonists and black perspectives at its center. The recent HBO series, Lovecraft Country, is exemplary of what Sheri-Marie Harrison has dubbed New Black Gothic. In this episode she talks about the show and the artistic movement it is a part of.
Show Bibliography:
"The New Black Gothic" (LA Review of Books, 2018)
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/new-black-gothic/
"Global Horror: An Introduction" (Post45, 2019)
https://post45.org/2019/04/global-horror-an-introduction/
"I'll...
2020-11-1155 min
Confessions of a Go Getter PodcastNo Approval NecessaryThis episode is not only an assignment from my Black Feminist Thought class this Fall semester but this episode is also a testament of how I want to continue to inspire education and awareness throughout my community. What is it about Black women that society loves to hate? How can I as a Black woman increase my awareness of my own identity? How are you choosing to educate and engage with your community?Let's continue to Grow & Glow.Connect with me on Instagram & Facebook:https://www.instagram.com/confessionsofagogetterpodcast/https://www...
2020-09-1507 min
GALACTIC PROGENYPHOO A. CRSLX“Condor is an amateur," Joubert explains, "He's lost, unpredictable, perhaps even sentimental. He could fool a professional, not deliberately, but precisely because he is lost. He doesn't know what to do."
In this episode Carroll will take you through a short history on the development, design and procedure of The Chrysalis as a breakthrough entry tech for the galactic progeny.
CRSLX is the place dissecting the field of two inter-connected planes of existence. It is, not a question of being either “in” or “out” of these fields—it is rather a question of levels or degrees of involvement, an acute awareness of...
2019-08-041h 08
Concavity ShowEpisode 41 - Discussing David Foster Wallace with Tim PersonnIn Episode 41, we talk to Dr. Tim Personn (in person!) from the University of Victoria about his recently-defended dissertation, "Fictions of Proximity: The Wallace Nexus in Contemporary Literature." Buckle up for a philosophical discussion, as Tim takes us on a ride through the work of Wittgenstein, Derrida, and other thinkers whose work informed Wallace's fiction and influence on the modern literary landscape. Other topics include tacos, seeing Parquet Courts live, and potential future podcast beefs!
Show Notes:
Shazia Hafiz Ramji's book Port of Being - https://invisiblepublishing.com/product/port-of-being/
Kieran Seti...
2018-10-251h 27