Staying With The Question: Recent Episodes
OUAH.FM
OUAH.FM is a collection of audio resources produced by the OU Arts & Humanities Forum, including Staying With the Question and New Books and Projects.
In celebration of the Forum Annual 2023-24 Theme "Visible," the OU Arts & Humanities Forum welcomed Dr. Catherine Clark (MIT) for a Marquee Lecture in the "Paris Visible" Distinguished Lecture Series. This lecture reflects on Catherine Clark’s longstanding engagement with the photographic history of Paris. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the municipality invested heavily in creating and making accessible large collections of photographs in the hopes that they would serve the needs of future scholars. How have these efforts shaped history as it has been written since? In other words, do photographs make the past visible and, if so, how? The talk will draw on Clark’s research on the history of photographic history and street photography in the French capital as well as her forays into the utility of Artificial Intelligence for rendering the past not just visible but legible. You can find out more about Dr. Clark's work at https://history.mit.edu/people/catherine-clark/
Host Kim Marshall interviews OU Historian Jennifer J. Davis about her new book Bad Subjects: Libertine Lives in the French Atlantic 1619-1814 (University of Nebraska Press, 2023). In this book that spans continents, Davis considers what it meant to be called a libertine in early modern France and its colonies. The libertine life was not merely a subject for fiction nor a topos against which to play out potential revolutions. It was a charge authorities imposed on a startlingly wide array of behaviors, including gambling, selling alcohol to Native Americans, and secret marriages. Once invoked by family and state authorities, the charge proved nearly impossible for the accused to contest. The research in Bad Subjects provides a framework for analysis of libertinage as a set of anti-authoritarian practices and discourses that circulated among the peoples of France and the Atlantic World, ultimately providing a compelling blueprint for alternative social and economic order in the Revolutionary period.
Host Kim Marshall interviews OU Professor of Musicology Jennifer Saltzstein about her new book Song, Landscape, and Identity in Medieval Northern France: Toward an Environmental History (Oxford University Press, 2023). In this book, Saltzstein offers a new perspective on how medieval song expressed relationships between people and their environments. Informed by environmental history and harnessing musicological and ecocritical approaches, author Jennifer Saltzstein draws connections between the nature imagery that pervades songs written by the trouvères of northern France to the physical terrain and climate of the lands on which their authors lived. Saltzstein argues that trouvère songs influenced the ways particular groups of medieval people saw themselves through the lens of their environment, creating durable landscape-based identities that persisted even when the environment itself changed. This durable connection between identity and landscape has compelling implications for our own time.
Host Kim Marshall interviews OU Japanese Professor Joshua Frydman about his new book The Japanese Myths: A Guide to Gods, Heroes and Spirits. This book is a smart and succinct guide to the rich tradition of Japanese mythology, from the earliest recorded legends of Izanagi and Izanami, their divine offspring and the creation of Japan, to medieval tales of vengeful ghosts, through to the modern-day reincarnation of ancient deities as the heroes of Mecca anime. Join us for an irreverent and wide-ranging discussion about the Japanese myths from the ancient to the present day! As a bonus, get a preview of Dr. Frydman's other new book Inscribed Objects and the Development of Literature in Early Japan.
Host Kim Marshall interviews OU English Professor Joseph Mansky about his new book Libels and Theater in Shakespeare’s England: Publics, Politics, Performance(Cambridge University Press, 2023). This book traces the practice of libel across law, literature, and culture, outlining a viral and often virulent media ecosystem. It shows that our present-day preoccupation with free speech and fake news has a long literary history. Like social media today, libels gave ordinary people a public platform to criticize the ruling classes. But also like social media, the discourse they disseminated was often vicious and vitriolic, a volatile cocktail of rumors, threats, and populist grievance. Debate and defamation, free speech and fake news, went hand in hand. This paradox runs through the representations of libel on the early modern stage, and their plays chart a late Elizabethan public sphere animated by forces that remain uncannily familiar: partisanship and populism, misinformation and sectarian strife, proto-celebrity and political demagoguery.
Host Kim Marshall talks to OU Philosopher Dr. Sherri Irvin about her new book Immaterial: Rules in Contemporary Art. Contemporary art can appear to be a space unencumbered by rules, where paintings can be hung upside down, instructions to hum are considered art, piles of candy invite you to eat one, and bananas rot on the floor of a museum. However, as Dr. Irvin discusses in this episode, making rules is a key part of what many contemporary artists do. In contemporary art, she argues, rules are now an artistic medium, and they help to activate the expressive potential of material objects.
For transcripts and show notes, see our website.
Host Kim Marshall interviews OU Musicologist Dr. Michael Lee about his recently published book Music in the Horror Films of Val Lewton. Written in an accessible and engaging voice, this book offers a fascinating look at the role of the RKO Studio’s Music Department in contributing to the revolutionary horror films of director Val Lewton between 1942 and 1946. In an era of big monster movies, Lewton’s films brought subtleness to the horror genre, emphasizing the terror of the shadows and the unseen. Lee calls attention to the role of music in this contribution, from the first “jump scare” to rich orchestral scores that highlighted the tortured inner state of main characters.
For transcripts and show notes, see our website.
Host Kim Marshall interviews award-winning American novelist and short story Oklahoma author Rilla Askew (associate professor of English at OU) about her new novel Prize for the Fire, the harrowing tale of Early Modern Reformist and writer Anne Askew, who was burned as a heretic in 1546.
Order is all around us, like air. Before we are even aware of our surroundings, we have entered a humanly-ordered world. Order can be used to punish creativity and keep people in their place. But it is also order that guarantees the rule of law, a fair shot, and democratic governance. Host Kim Marshall talks to OU scholars Sherri Irvin, Jermaine Thibodaux, Katie Schumaker,and Wanda Katja Liebermann about the ways that order helps us make sense of the world around us. Throughout time and across the globe, how have we have made humanly-ordered worlds meaningful?
Can we train our senses to listen better, observe more closely, and savor the world around us? In this episode, host Kim Marshall talks to OU Faculty Roxanne Lyst, Jennifer Saltzstein, Konstantinos Karathanasis, and Marwin Begay from the Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts. In this discussion covering modern dance, medieval love songs, electro-accoustic composition, and Indigenous printmaking we explore the ways that the arts help us to expand our palate of the senses; to create, contemplate and communicate the fundamental meanings of human existence.
Host Kim Marshall interviews OU Historian Dr. Kathryn Schumaker about her recently published book Troublemakers: Students' Rights and Racial Justice in the Long 1960s.
For transcripts and show notes, see our website.
Host Kim Marshall talks to OU Historian Dr. Adam Malka about his recently published book The Men of Mobtown: Policing Baltimore in the Age of Slavery and Emancipation.
For transcripts and show notes, see our website.
Kim sits down with Marwin Begaye, OU Associate Professor of Painting and Printmaking in the School of Visual Arts. Begay (Diné/Navajo) discusses his current monumental-scale printmaking project "Keyah" - where fragmented connections to land and community are acknowledged and the path toward healing and relationality are inscribed through the feet of a dancer who becomes the agent of print transfer.
For upcoming performances in Santa Fe, NM see here.
And for information about the First Americans Museum in OKC see here.
How can we do better scholarship in the arts and humanities, and even in science, if we start by listening carefully to others, and valuing what they have to say? By… making kin? Host Kim Marshall talks to OU scholars Zoe Sherinian, Sam Duwe, and Laurel Smith about the innovative reciprocal methodologies they are using to answer questions about the deep past, social inequality in the present, and our global environmental future.
Kim sits down with OU Archaeology Professor Sam Duwe to talk about Dr. Duwe's new book Tewa Worlds: An Archaeological History of Being and Becoming in the Pueblo Southwest.
Kim sits down with OU Native American Studies Professor Farina King to talk about Dr. King's book Returning Home: Diné Creative Works from the Intermountain Indian School.
Can you tell a story with a map? Host Kim Marshall talks to OU Scholars Rangar Cline, Farina King, and Asa Randall about the possibilities for learning, teaching, and building community using digital, interactive maps that help us make meaningful connections.
Find transcripts and show notes on our website.
Kim sits down with OU Native American Studies professor Dustin Tahmahkera to discuss his new book Cinematic Comanches: The Lone Ranger in the Media Borderlands.
Check out Dr. Tahmahkera's book, and find transcripts and show notes on our website.
In celebration of the Forum Annual Theme "Porous" Dr. Julian Lim (ASU) presented "Porous Borders and Absolute Powers to Exclude" for the Forum's Marquee Speaker Series. Dr. Lim's talk examines the experiences of Mexican, Chinese, and African American people who moved through the El Pas0-Ciudad Juarez border region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Find show notes and transcripts on our website.
Kim sits down with OU Native American Studies Professor Laura Harjo to talk about Dr. Harjo's book Spiral to the Stars: Mvskoke Tools of Futurity.Find show notes and transcripts on our website.
What do you know about the American West? What do you still have to learn? Host Kim Marshall talks to OU scholars Kalenda Eaton, Anne Hyde, and Robert Conn Davis-Undiano about the alluring, confounding, ever-changing multiplicity of the West.
Host Kim Marshall sits down for a chat with the curators and librarians of OU's world-class Western History Collections.
Kim talks to Professor Ann Hyde about her book Born of Lakes and Plains
Mixed-Descent Peoples and the Making of the American West.
Check out Dr. Hyde's book, and get transcripts and show notes on our websites.
Kim talks to Professor Kimberly G. Wieser about her poetry collection Texas...to Get Horses.
Check out Dr. Wieser's book, and get show notes and transcripts on our website.
Kim is joined by Dr. Rhona Seidelman to discuss her new book Under Quarantine
Immigrants and Disease at Israel’s Gate.Check out Dr. Seidelman's book and find transcripts and show notes on our website.
Kim talks to Dr. Kyle Harper about his recent book Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History.
Check out Dr. Harper's book here: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691192123/plagues-upon-the-earth
Transcripts and notes here: https://www.ou.edu/humanitiesforum/OUAHFM
Kim Marshall talks to University of Oklahoma Scholars Sarah Tracy, Rhona Seidelman, and Miriam Gross about the slippery and contingent concepts of health and disease. Show notes and transcripts available at https://www.ou.edu/humanitiesforum/OUAHFM.
Host Kimberly Marshall talks to Professor Lucas Bessire about his new book *Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains.
Check out Dr. Bessire's book here: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691212647/running-out
Transcripts available on our website: https://www.ou.edu/humanitiesforum/OUAHFM*
Host Kim Marshall talks to Professor Sarah Hines about her new book Water for All: Community, Property, and Revolution in Modern Bolivia.Check out Dr. Hines' book at: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520381643/water-for-all
Transcript available at https://www.ou.edu/humanitiesforum/OUAHFM
Host Kim Marshall talks to Professor Traci Brynne Voyles about her new book The Settler Sea: California's Salton Sea and the Consequences of Colonialism.
- Check out Dr. Voyles' book at https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496216731/
- Transcript available at https://www.ou.edu/humanitiesforum/OUAHFM
Kim Marshall talks to University of Oklahoma Scholars Traci Brynne Voyles, Daniel Mains, and Sarah Hines about the ways that water shapes our environment. Show notes and transcripts available at https://www.ou.edu/humanitiesforum/OUAHFM
Host Kim Marshall talks to Professor Alison Fields about her new book Discordant Memories: Atomic Age Narratives and Visual Culture.
- Check out Dr. Fields' book at https://www.oupress.com/9780806164595/discordant-memories/
- Transcript available at https://www.ou.edu/humanitiesforum/OUAHFM
Kim Marshall talks to University of Oklahoma scholars Alison Fields and Elyssa Faison about how we remember the atomic age. Show notes and transcripts available at https://www.ou.edu/humanitiesforum/OUAHFM