Season 5

Season 6

Unlike our usual Discovery & Inspiration podcasts, this special set of episodes focuses on NHC Fellows and Trustees discussing work that has already been published, including many books that were researched and written during their time at the Center. These conversations were originally streamed on YouTube with a live audience as part of the NHC's Virtual Book Talk series in 2020–22.

NHC Virtual Book Talks

Season 7

We came to Tulsa to explore the city’s history and culture. We came to ask questions and learn about what Tulsans think about themselves and, by listening, to think a little deeper about what it means to be Americans.

Between People and a Place: The American Cities Project, Tulsa

Though debates about water usage and environmental justice are often conducted in the future tense—with one eye trained on impending catastrophes—the causes are usually rooted in past injustices. For this reason, attempts to understand and avert these crises necessarily involve attending to the voices of those who have suffered them in the past—including the indigenous people of North Carolina.

In this podcast, Ryan E. Emanuel, professor of forestry and environmental resources at North Carolina State University, discusses how members of the Lumbee tribe can provide important insights into both the conservation and protection of the river that bears their name. By attending to their centuries-long and location-specific knowledge of this region, he suggests, we can develop a better understanding of how best to allocate the valuable water resources found in this part of the state.

nationalhumanitiescenter.org/ryan-e-emanuel-water-in-the-lumbee-world-indigenous-rights-and-the-transformation-of-home

Ryan Emanuel, “Water in the Lumbee World: Indigenous Rights and the Transformation of Home”

When we read most novels, we assume that characters are the most important components of a story. However, in noteworthy American literature of the segregation era, it is often forms of evidence that structure novelistic worlds, making us recognize and question the ways that details of ordinary life can take on particular significance. 

In this podcast episode, Rachel Watson, assistant professor of American literature at Howard University, considers how the treatment of evidence in literature can help us to illuminate the simultaneous development of discourses around race, criminology, and crime science. She suggests that at its best, the crime genre can challenge readers by encouraging them both to question the world around them and to suspend widely held assumptions about identity and typology.

nationalhumanitiescenter.org/rachel-watson-evidence-racial-discourse-segregation-era-literature

Rachel Watson, “Evidence and Racial Discourse in Segregation-Era Literature”

Scholars have traditionally translated the ancient Greek virtue of Sôphrosunê  as “temperance” or “chastity,” implicitly suggesting that it is concerned with forms of self-control in the face of desire or dramatic bodily sensations. As a result, this concept has often been downplayed and relegated to the forgotten corners of philosophical inquiry.

In this podcast, Christopher Moore, associate professor of philosophy and Classics at The Pennsylvania State University, restores and explains the complexities of Sôphrosunê for a contemporary audience. Instead of understanding this virtue as a means of moderating and restraining our behavior, we can recognize and celebrate its power to catalyze self-interrogation through an embrace of discipline.

nationalhumanitiescenter.org/christopher-moore-sophrosune-self-knowledge

Christopher Moore, “Sôphrosunê and Self-Knowledge: An Ancient Greek Virtue and the Modern Condition”

As more of our lives shift online, the question of how speech should be regulated in this digital space becomes increasingly relevant. In response, social media companies have set precedents for regulating language on their private platforms. However, these mechanisms are often designed in order to work in tandem with artificial intelligence-based algorithms that have not yet been fully developed, leaving them instead to be administered inconsistently by human content moderators.

In this podcast, Janny HC Leung, professor of linguistics in the School of English at the University of Hong Kong, addresses the ethical and legal questions that arise from these attempts to monitor and evaluate—and sometimes even to block—individuals’ language on social media. As she points out, the evolution of standards and practices around digital discourse has the potential to reshape the concept of free speech as we know it.

nationalhumanitiescenter.org/janny-leung-language-law-and-the-limits-of-digital-autonomy

Janny HC Leung, “Language, Law, and the Limits of Digital Autonomy”

Though modernist ballet is often associated with European companies such as the Ballets Russes, the ideas and concepts that emerged from this movement soon found their way around the globe. In Latin countries such as Cuba, this foreign cultural form was adapted to meet local needs and provided an important way to articulate national identity.

In this podcast, Lester Tomé, associate professor of dance at Smith College, discusses how artists such as Alejo Carpentier adopted and reimagined the formal methods of modernist ballet in order to promote an indigenous form of Afro-Cuban culture. In doing so, he suggests, they developed a distinctive visual language through which to resist and oppose widespread colonial stereotypes.

nationalhumanitiescenter.org/lester-tome-movement-modernism-carpentiers-transatlantic-ballet

Lester Tomé, “Movement and Modernism: Carpentier’s Transatlantic Ballet”

Over the past several decades, neuroscientific studies have been invoked in order to justify policy decisions and associated legislation. Although such scientific findings are always subject to change or re-interpretation, increasingly, the logic of “brain science” is being equated with a kind of fundamental truth. Practically, this often leads to justifications for programs ranging from cursive writing educational mandates among primary school students to holistic medical interventions intended to prevent mental decline in older age. In this podcast, Jordynn Jack, Chi Omega Term Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, explores how contemporary public rhetorical strategies have advanced the idea that we are “neurological subjects,” with identities located in and constructed through our cognitive abilities. Ultimately, Jack’s work invites us to consider how we understand and use science in our personal lives and in the public sphere.

Jordynn Jack, “Training the Brain: Rhetoric, Neuropolicy, and Education”

For the past several decades, authorities have become increasingly concerned about the threat posed by emerging diseases—not only to public health, but also to political and economic stability at a global scale. Attention has been particularly focused on tropical hotspots such as west and central Africa, where human encroachment has increased the likelihood of encountering novel pathogens, with potentially disastrous consequences.

In this podcast episode, Gregg Mitman, Vilas Research and William Coleman Professor of History, Medical History, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, explores the ecological, economic, political, and social forces that have simultaneously turned regions of west Africa into profitable sites of natural resource extraction, productive enclaves of biomedical research, and hot zones for pandemic threats.

nationalhumanitiescenter.org/gregg-mitman-bloodborne-invasion-politics-of-disease

Gregg Mitman, “Bloodborne: Invasion and the Politics of Disease”

In the early twentieth century, psychoanalytic ideas based on the work of Sigmund Freud were taken up, translated, and even challenged by practitioners from a variety of geographic regions and backgrounds. However, the importance of psychoanalytic thought in China has not always been given adequate attention.

In this podcast, Howard Chiang (NHC Fellow, 2021–22), associate professor of history at the University of California, Davis, discusses how tracking the emergence and adaptation of psychoanalysis in China allows us to understand the effects of cultural and disciplinary exchange on emerging intellectual discourses. By examining China’s influence on psychoanalysis, we can tell a better and more global story about the origins of this field of study.

Howard Chiang, “Psychoanalysis in China”

Mia Bay (NHC Fellow, 2009–10), Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Chair in American History, University of Pennsylvania

From stagecoaches and trains to buses, cars, and planes, “Traveling Black” explores when, how, and why racial restrictions took shape and brilliantly portrays what it was like to live with them. It also recounts the many forms of resistance deployed in the prolonged fight for freedom of movement across the United States.

Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/sJW0wRhtMc4?t=113

https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/fresh-off-the-press-traveling-black/

Mia Bay, “Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance”

Cara Robertson (NHC Trustee; NHC Fellow, 2004–05; 2005–06)

When Andrew and Abby Borden were brutally hacked to death in Fall River, Massachusetts, in August 1892, the arrest of the couple’s younger daughter Lizzie turned the case into international news and her trial into a spectacle unparalleled in American history. Everyone—rich and poor, suffragists and social conservatives, legal scholars and laypeople—had an opinion about Lizzie Borden’s guilt or innocence. The popular fascination with the Borden murders and its central enigmatic character has endured for more than one hundred years. Scholar Cara Robertson explores the stories Lizzie Borden’s culture wanted and expected to hear and how those stories influenced the debate inside and outside the courtroom, offering a window into America in the Gilded Age.

Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/iBSkm11B0Vo

https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/virtual-book-club-the-trial-of-lizzie-borden/

Cara Robertson, “The Trial of Lizzie Borden”

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/

Andrew Jewett, “Science under Fire: Challenges to Scientific Authority in Modern America”

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 begun to reject racialist conceptions of the psyche. Yet black patients and their communities asserted their own agency and exhibited a “rights consciousness” in large and small ways, from agitating for more equal treatment to attempting to manage the therapeutic experience.

Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/yF6kTij23vY

https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/virtual-book-club-madness-in-the-city-of-magnificent-intentions/

Martin Summers, “Madness in the City of Magnificent Intentions”

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://youtu.be/JNf8XMg2a7Q

https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/virtual-book-club-m-archive-after-the-end-of-the-world/

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “M Archive: After the End of the World”

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/

David Bromwich, “American Breakdown: The Trump Years and How They Befell Us”

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/

John McGowan, “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/

Catherine M. Cole, “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/

Bart D. Ehrman, “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/

Joseph Allen Boone, “Furnace Creek”

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/

William D. Cohan, “Four Friends: Promising Lives Cut Short”

Widely understood as a destination for leisure and pleasure, the Caribbean has drawn visitors from the global north for over a century. Women have played a central role in establishing this image of the islands, from the proliferation of women's travel writing beginning in the late nineteenth century to their active roles in shaping the tourism and hospitality industry.

In this podcast, Elizabeth S. Manley (NHC Fellow, 2021–22), associate professor of history at Xavier University of Louisiana, analyzes the contradictions that have fueled narratives of the Caribbean from the colonial period to the present. By examining the ways that notions of gender, commerce, global mobility, and discourses of exoticism have changed in the region over time, we can better understand how the Caribbean has been culturally constructed as a site for escape and rejuvenation.

Elizabeth S. Manley, “Imagining the Tropics: Women and Tourism in the Caribbean”

Nineteenth-century American paintings frequently depict foreign settings, from the Caribbean to the Arctic. Many of these artworks seem to reveal moments of cultural exchange or scientific inquiry, but they have rarely been seen as evidence of the growing imperialist tendencies of the United States throughout this century.

In this podcast, Maggie Cao (NHC Fellow, 2021–22), associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, considers how the aesthetics and subject matter of nineteenth-century American art can better help us to understand imperialism as a global and historical concept. By examining paintings from this period, we can trace how complex attitudes about cultural relations were represented and disseminated to a wider public.

Maggie M. Cao, “Imperial Painting: Nineteenth-Century Art and the Making of American Empire”

For the past twenty years, Nigerian filmmaking has dominated media production in Africa and among African diasporic communities. One of the most influential figures in this industry is the writer, director, and producer Femi Odugbemi, whose work is an example of the "socially responsible cinema" that has been under-explored in scholarly analyses of Nollywood.

In this podcast, Paul Ushang Ugor (NHC Fellow, 2021–22), associate professor of English at Illinois State University, considers how Odugbemi’s screen media uses popular cultural forms to encourage public awareness of political and ethical issues in Nigeria and across Africa. By exploring this national film tradition, we can examine both the transformative power of art in a postcolonial context and the global influences that have informed the development and popularization of Nollywood.

Paul Ushang Ugor, “Socially Responsible Cinema: Femi Odugbemi’s Artistic Vision”

When the Panama Canal opened in 1914, it not only revolutionized international trade, but brought about new developments in public health. While diseases like yellow fever and malaria were seen as an inherent threat of “the tropics” by the Americans and French, the process of constructing the canal actually created conditions in which such diseases could proliferate more freely.

In this podcast, Paul S. Sutter (NHC Fellow, 2021–22), professor of history at the University of Colorado, Boulder, discusses the complex interplay of natural and cultural catalysts that can produce and spread disease. Understanding the ways that human activity can bring vectors and viral pathogens together is crucial to reckoning with historical, contemporary, and future public health challenges.

Paul S. Sutter, “Public Health and the Panama Canal”

Theatrical productions allow playwrights and audiences alike to engage with historical and contemporary social realities. But what are the consequences when particular types of dramatic texts and performances are inadequately disseminated and preserved? Elena Machado Sáez (NHC Fellow, 2022–23) is analyzing the ways that Latinx theater in the United States depicts forms of activism and resistance while building shared archives and communities.

Elena Machado Sáez, “Activism and Resistance in Contemporary Latinx Theater”

In March 1850, five men and two women were photographed in the studio of South Carolina artist Joseph Zealy. When these daguerreotypes were uncovered in 1976, they quickly became some of the best-known pre-Civil War images of enslaved African Americans. Gregg Hecimovich (NHC Fellow, 2015–16; 2022–23) is asking important questions about why these images were captured, how they were lost for so long, and what they might tell us about legacies of white supremacy and enslavement in the United States.

Gregg Hecimovich, “The Zealy Daguerreotypes: Confronting Images of Enslavement”

As an art form, opera has proven to be simultaneously entertaining and relatable to diverse audiences, even though it has also been characterized by associations with whiteness and elitism. Naomi André (NHC Fellow, 2022–23) is working to tell a more comprehensive and inclusive story of this genre by constructing a history of Blackness in opera from the nineteenth century to the present.

Naomi André, “A History of Blackness in Opera”

The British writer, reformer, and criminologist George Cecil Ives lived through a transformation in our collective understanding of sexuality. Born in 1867, Ives found early inspiration in the Classical tradition and witnessed the rise of sexology and psychoanalysis before his death in the mid-twentieth century. But Ives did not simply observe these social changes; he chronicled them exhaustively through his published works, correspondence, scrapbooks, and a three-million-word diary. Brian Lewis (NHC Fellow, 2022–23) has analyzed these records to help us to understand how individuals actually experienced these philosophical and social shifts.

Brian Lewis, “George Cecil Ives and the Transformation of Discourses on Sexuality”

In 1996, an exhibition entitled “Bearing Witness: Contemporary Works by African American Women Artists,” was produced for the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art’s contribution to the Olympic games held in Atlanta, Georgia. Today, Jontyle Theresa Robinson (NHC Fellow, 2022–23) is undertaking a multi-tiered initiative to reflect upon and advance the work of that exhibition thirty years later.

Jontyle Robinson, “Curating Change: ‘Bearing Witness’ and Legacy of African American Women Artists”

Bill Leuchtenburg speaks about presidential history at the National Humanities Center Board of Trustees reception at the Morgan Library, New York, NY on June 8, 2016.

Bill Leuchtenburg: NHC Board of Trustees Keynote Address, June 8, 2016

As executive director of Tulsa Educare, Cindy Decker leads one of the nation’s premier early childhood education programs which aims to break the cycle of poverty in Tulsa.

Between People and a Place: Cindy Decker

Writer and political commentator Jim Hightower has garnered a national following as a radio personality, syndicated columnist, and author speaking to the concerns of everyday Americans in much the same way as Woody Guthrie, the artist and activist who inspires him.

Between People and a Place: Jim Hightower

Best-selling author Michael Wallis is a leading chronicler of the American West and its place in the American imaginary—with books on everything from Billy the Kid, “Pretty Boy” Floyd, and Wilma Mankiller to the legacy of America’s “Mother Road,” Route 66.

Between People and a Place: Michael Wallis

Jeff Stava is Chief Program Officer of the George Kaiser Family Foundation, Chief Operating Officer at the Tulsa Community Foundation, and Executive Director of the Gathering Place, Tulsa’s 100-acre, riverfront park which was named USA Today’s top new attraction for 2019, and one of Time Magazine’s 100 Greatest Places in the World.

Between People and a Place: Jeff Stava

Community activist and entrepreneur Onikah Asamoa-Caesar is the founder and CEO of Fulton Street Books & Coffee, a retail business and gathering place in the heart of Tulsa’s historic Greenwood neighborhood.

Between People and a Place: Onikah Asamoa-Caesar

As Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation, Chuck Hoskin Jr. has not only helped improve the economic and physical well-being of his fellow Cherokees, he has also secured the largest language investment in the tribe’s history to expand Cherokee cultural preservation.

Between People and a Place: Chuck Hoskin Jr.

While historians have increasingly marked the Haitian Revolution as a key moment in the history of the Atlantic world, literary depictions of the revolution and events surrounding it have remained little known among contemporary readers. By exploring a broad range of works from writers living in the Atlantic world, Marlene Daut has uncovered a transatlantic abolitionist literary culture that was shaped in many ways by imagining Haiti.

Marlene L. Daut is associate professor of English at the University of Virginia. Her first book, Tropics of Haiti: Race and the Literary History of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, 1789–1865 (2015), examined the connection between 18th- and 19th-century scientific debates about race and the Haitian Revolution in U.S., Haitian, and European colonial literatures. Her second book, Baron de Vastey and the Origins of Black Atlantic Humanism (forthcoming) will be the first single-authored, book-length exploration of the Haitian author and politician Baron de Vastey. This year, as the Josephus Daniels Fellow at the National Humanities Center she is working on An Anthology of Haitian Revolutionary Fictions (Age of Slavery).

National Humanities Center

Marlene Daut, "The Haitian Revolution in Literature"

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 community they engaged beyond the walls of the academy, and the ways their discourse was intertwined with activism, from anti-imperialism to Pan-Africanism to the Civil Rights Movement. Illuminating the often overlooked scholarly productions of African American historians, Hall’s findings are enriching our understanding of black intellectual history.

Stephen G. Hall, “Exploring the Legacy of Black Historians”

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 supremacist practices in the Jim Crow South, including lynching and the eugenics movement. At the nexus of U.S. psychiatry and the emergence of racism, the history of the Milledgeville asylum has broad and urgent implications for today’s mental health facilities and their treatment of patients.

Mab Segrest, “A Metahistory of Suffering: Race, Lunacy, and Psychiatry in Milledgeville, Georgia”

As it has taken shape as a distinct field of scholarly inquiry, animal studies has significantly contributed to our understanding of other species and our relationships with them. Drawing on a variety of disciplinary approaches across the humanities and sciences, animal studies has challenged traditional categories that have long gone unquestioned, such as “nature” and “wildness” that not only clarify perspectives on the lives of animals but human experiences and concepts.

In this podcast, we talk with Harriet Ritvo, who has been a leading voice in animal studies for over 30 years. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and past president of the American Society for Environmental History. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Humanities Center (twice), and the Stanford Humanities Center. Ritvo currently serves as the Arthur J. Connor Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and as a trustee of the National Humanities Center.

Harriet Ritvo, “Understanding the Animal, Understanding Ourselves”

The 15th-century Wars of the Roses between Yorkist and Lancastrian factions often summon images of royal intrigue and courtly splendor. Whether it is one of Shakespeare’s plays or a more scholarly account, histories of this struggle for the English throne tend to privilege the nobility. Art historian and NHC Fellow Sonja Drimmer offers a far different perspective of the era. By extending the political sphere beyond the royal court and into the court of public opinion, Drimmer explores how a newly-formed, larger public played an important role in this decades-long conflict. 
 
In this podcast, Drimmer turns to objects that tell a broader story about how the public participated in a shifting landscape of political language. Ranging from the “funny, to the inept, to the gruesome,” these objects include everything from scrolls testifying to the genealogical legitimacy of nobility, to livery badges that functioned like campaign buttons, to descriptions of severed heads. By delving into the art and objects of 15th-century England, Drimmer recasts the Wars of the Roses as an extended political campaign that cultivated, and depended upon, public support and engagement.

https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/sonja-drimmer-wars-of-the-roses-and-the-court-of-public-opinion/

Sonja Drimmer, “Wars of the Roses and the Court of Public Opinion”

In the 1930s, the writer Ursula Parrott used her novels, short stories, and screenwriting ventures to portray independent women during a period of immense social change in America. Despite this, like many women writers, Parrott’s legacy has been all but erased from the popular imagination.

In this podcast, Marsha Gordon, professor of film studies at North Carolina State University, delves into the way that Parrott’s independence and professional success existed in a complex relationship to her rather conservative views on gender. Understanding Parrott as a woman out of sync with her own time allows us to understand how she was influenced by the limitations of her society even while she envisioned a more progressive future.

https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/marsha-gordon-complex-legacy-ursula-parrott/

Discovery & Inspiration

Marsha Gordon, “Narrating Modern Women’s Experiences: The Complex Legacy of Ursula Parrott”

For the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States, the changing nature of American immigration law and policy is not merely an abstract concern. The rise in anti-immigrant sentiment has transformed the lives of young people, who must contend with the uncertainty of their own legal status even as they fear for the safety of their families.

In this podcast episode, Angela Stuesse, associate professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discusses her latest collaborative project, which seeks to understand the reality of contemporary immigration in the United States through a personal lens. Animating discourses of ethnography, testimony, and social analysis, Stuesse uses one Mississippi family’s story to illuminate the space between the statistics on American immigration.

nationalhumanitiescenter.org/angela-stuesse-story-american-immigration

Angela Stuesse, “Making the Story of American Immigration Come Alive”

After the ancient Roman Empire embraced Christianity under Emperor Constantine in the fourth century A.D., the empire’s culture and politics were significantly transformed. Records of poetic inscriptions found throughout Rome can help us to understand how these public displays both recalled an earlier model of poetic discourse and established new forms of spiritual authority and civic instruction.

In this podcast, Dennis Trout, professor of ancient Mediterranean studies at the University of Missouri, shares insights from his interdisciplinary study of such inscriptions. By considering the way that these epigrams were embedded in the architecture of a city and displayed to an empire in transition, he suggests they go beyond considerations of religion, literature, and culture to illuminate the ways that visual and textual cues were used to send messages to a diverse audience in the ancient world.

https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/dennis-trout-poetic-inscriptions-ancient-rome/

Dennis Trout, “Embedded Epigrams: Poetic Inscriptions of Ancient Rome”

Discovery & Inspiration asks “What can we learn by talking to scholars about their research? What makes them so passionate about the subjects they study? What is it like to make a new discovery? To answer a confounding question?”

For over 40 years the National Humanities Center has been a home away from home for scholars from around the world—historians and philosophers, scholars of literature and music and art and dozens of other fields.

Join us as we sit down with scholars to discuss their work—to better understand the questions that intrigue and perplex them, the passion that drives them, and how their scholarship may change the ways we think about the world around us.

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