Being Human: Recent Episodes
WPTS Radio
An interview with Min Song, professor of English at Boston College University. The interview focuses on Professor Song's most recent book, Climate Lyricism.
An interview with Kelly Wisecup, professor of English at Northwestern University. The interview focuses on Professor Wisecup's most recent book Assembled for Use: Indigenous Compilation and the Archives of Early Native American Literatures.
An interview with Marlon Ross, professor of English at the University of Virginia. The interview focuses on Professor Ross's most recent book Sissy Insurgencies: A Racial Anatomy of Unfit Manliness.
An interview with Gayle Rogers, professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh. The interview focuses on Professor Rogers's most recent book Speculation: A Cultural History from Aristotle to AI.
An interview with Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, professor of English at Bryn Mawr College. The interview focuses on Professor Sullivan's most recent book The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora.
Information on the essay collection Teaching Black, from the University of Pittsburgh Press, can be found here: upittpress.org/books/9780822946953/.
The webpage for Professor Sullivan's upcoming novel can be found here: www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/712169…781324091417.
An interview with Heather Love, professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. The interview focuses on Professor Love's most recent book Underdogs: Social Deviance and Queer Theory.
An interview with Michael Clune, Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Professor of Humanities at Case Western University. The interview focuses on Professor Clune's most recent book A Defense of Judgment. Professor Clune's essays at the Chronicle of Higher Education, including one that reproduces the core argument of A Defense of Judgment, are available here: www.chronicle.com/author/michael-clune.
An interview with Charles Exley, professor of Japanese literature and film and Associate Director of film and media studies at the University of Pittsburgh. The interview focuses on Professor Exley's work with Screenshot:Asia, a project to promote Asian film and culture in Pittsburgh. The website for Screenshot:Asia is here: www.screenshot.pitt.edu/. The essay we discuss on Takagi Tokuko and Japanese popular opera can be found here: www.jstor.org/stable/44508506?se…_info_tab_contents.
In this episode, Dr. Alaina Roberts discusses her upcoming book, I've Been Here All The While, that focuses on the contemporary impact of the intersection between enslaved African-Americans and indigenous people during the 19th century.
Check out Jacqui's podcast, Backbone:
https://www.spreaker.com/show/backbone
An interview with Allen MacDuffie, professor of English at the University of Texas, Austin. The interview focuses on Professor MacDuffie's work as a scholar of Victorian literature and the environment. The essay we discuss, "Charles Darwin and the Victorian Pre-History of Climate Denial," is currently available on Jstor, here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/victorianstudies.60.4.02#metadata_info_tab_contents
Professor MacDuffie also mentions Rob Nixon's work during the conversation. A Being Human interview with Professor Nixon is available here: https://soundcloud.com/humanities-pitt/slow-violence-and-a-repertoire-of-selves-an-interview-with-rob-nixon
Music: Poddington Bear, Pives & Flarinet
An interview with Merry Wiesner-Hanks, distinguished professor emerita of history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The interview focuses on Professor Wiesner-Hanks' career as a world historian and a historian of women and gender. The Masha Gessen essay that she references can be found here: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-queer-opposition-to-pete-buttigieg-explained For even more insight into the experiences of the earliest wave of feminist scholars in the American academy, listen to the Being Human interview with Margaret Homans.
Music: Poddington Bear, Pives & Flarinet
An interview with Kate Hope Day, author of the novel If, Then. The interview focuses on Day's book, and also her life as a writer, mother, and scholar. It was recorded live at the East Liberty branch of the Carnegie Library on October 22, 2019. Special thanks to Jon Engel for help with the recording.
Music: "Pives and Flarinet" by Poddington Bear
An interview with Clay Risen, deputy op-ed editor at the New York Times and author of The Crowded Hour: Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and the Dawn of the American Century. The interview focuses on Risen's book on Roosevelt, as well as his general approach to writing popular American history.
Music: Podington Bear, "Pives & Flarinet"
An interview with Rebecca Jordan-Young, professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College. The interview focuses on Professor Jordan-Young's research into the science of gender and sexuality, particularly her most recent book Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography, which she co-authored with Katrina Karkazis.
An interview with Simon Gikandi, professor of English at Princeton University and President of the Modern Language Association (MLA). The interview focuses on Professor Gikandi's life and career, and the role that literature and art played for him growing up in a postcolonial setting. We also discuss the upcoming MLA conference, the theme of which is...Being Human!
An interview with Angie Cruz, Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and author of the novel Dominicana (2019). The interview focuses on Professor Cruz's recent novel and her work editing the literary journal Aster(ix). Link to Aster(ix) here: asterixjournal.com/. The interview "Editing with Love and Openness is Activism" is available here: www.thereviewreview.net/interviews/ed…hat-angie-cru. The essay "What We Deserve" from the Paris Review is available here: www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/08/…t-we-deserve/.
An interview with David Crandall and Elizabeth Dowd of Theatre Nohgaku, an international performance ensemble whose members share a passion for noh theater and a conviction that it has profound power for audiences today. The interview took place on September 11, 2019, ahead of their upcoming performance of Gettysburg: An American Noh in Pittsburgh. For more information on the company, the performance, or noh theater in general, visit their website here: www.theatrenohgaku.org/.