Podcasts Archives | Page 3 of 13 | National Humanities Center

Podcasts

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

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.

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

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.

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Robert D. Newman, “Time Out with Bill Hendrickson”

Time Out with Bill Hendrickson is a weekly radio program on WCOM–LP 103.5 FM, community radio for Chapel Hill and Carrboro, NC. The show features in-depth interviews with interesting figures from education, business, sports, entertainment, and other arenas of public life. In this episode, host Bill Hendrickson interviews Robert D. Newman, president and director of the National Humanities Center.

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

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.

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Molly Worthen, “From St. Paul to Populist Politics: The Evolution of Charismatic Leadership”

Charisma is a concept we typically use to refer to individuals who fascinate, attract, and captivate us in some way. The word’s modern usage, however, obscures its origins in Christian doctrine. In such contexts, charismatic figures were understood to have a kind of divinely ordained authority and spiritual influence. In this podcast episode, Molly Worthen, associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, explores the evolution of charisma in the popular consciousness and its role in various historical epochs and movements.

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NHC Virtual Book Talk: Performance and the Afterlives of Injustice

Catherine M. Cole 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, and others, Cole demonstrates how the arts are “helping to conjure, anticipate, and dream a world that is otherwise.”

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NHC Virtual Book Talk: A Legal History of the Civil War and Reconstruction

Laura F. Edwards’s compelling book considers the sweeping transformation of American law produced in the wake of the Civil War. Through her analysis of constitutional amendments, Supreme Court decisions, and legal claims espoused by everyone from national politicians to everyday citizens, Edwards demonstrates how the notion of rights became so integral in post-Civil War America, especially in the lives of African Americans, women, and organized laborers.

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NHC Virtual Book Talk: The Life of Roman Republicanism

Joy Connolly argues in her most recent book, The Life of Roman Republicanism that “Cicero, Sallust, and Horace inspire fresh thinking about central concerns of contemporary political thought and action” including the role conflict plays in the political community, the conditions needed to promote an equal and just society, citizens’ interdependence on one another for senses of selfhood, and the uses and dangers of self-sovereignty and fantasy.

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NHC Virtual Book Talk: The War Before the War: Fugitive Slaves and the Struggle for America’s Soul from the Revolution to the Civil War

By awakening northerners to the true nature of slavery, and by enraging southerners who demanded the return of their human "property," fugitive slaves forced the nation to confront the truth about itself, and led inexorably to civil war. Andrew Delbanco's masterful examination of the fugitive slave story illuminates what brought us to war with ourselves and the terrible legacies of slavery that are with us still.