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Podcasts

Meta DuEwa Jones

Meta DuEwa Jones, “Mapping Black Diasporic Memory: The Alchemy of Ekphrasis”

Poets have long used ekphrasis—the vivid description of a piece of visual art—as a way of exploring the deep complexity of representation, the relationship between the artist and her art, and to make legible things which may otherwise seem inexpressible. Fellow Meta DuEwa Jones is herself a poet and a scholar of poetry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is an associate professor of English. She is currently working on a new project exploring the relationship between African American poets and visual artists and the ways that their works speak to one another.

Robert G. Morrison

Robert Morrison, “Translating Shared Economies of Knowledge in the Renaissance”

Traditionally, accounts of the scientific advances of the Renaissance have focused on the contributions of famous individuals like Copernicus whose theories about heavenly bodies radically altered how we understood the arrangement of the universe and our place in it. Increasingly, though, historians have noted striking parallels between the work of figures like Copernicus and their contemporaries in the Islamic world though they’ve not been able to fully explain how these similarities arose. Fellow Robert Morrison, professor of religion at Bowdoin College, has been working to trace the connections between these thinkers.

Gretchen Murphy

Gretchen Murphy, “How Federalist Women Shaped America”

Though its viability as a political party was short-lived, the influence of the Federalists extended well beyond the early years of the American republic. After the election of 1800, the party’s fortunes dimmed, and the party dissolved in 1824, but its ideas have continued to shape American institutions and political attitudes up to the present day. Fellow Gretchen Murphy has researched the ways in which women writers have shaped and preserved the Federalist legacy.

Alka Patel

Alka Patel, “Architectural Matrices: Uncovering the History of the Ghurid Dynasty”

Though it lasted for only a brief period, the Ghurid dynasty provides a fascinating lens through which to consider the religious and political forces that shaped Central Asia during the medieval period. Fellow Alka Patel has spent years in the region examining architectural structures and archival materials to help better understand the Ghurids, situated as they were between the Persianate and Indic worlds, straddling and connecting the traditions of Islamic and Hindu cultures. Patel, an associate professor of art history at the University of California, Irvine, is currently writing what she describes as an “architectural biography” closely examining the archaeological remnants of the Ghurid dynasty.

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Harriet Ritvo, “Understanding the Animal, Understanding Ourselves”

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 … Continued

Matthew Rubery

Matthew Rubery, “Methodologies of Reading in a Neurodiverse World”

For most of us, learning to read is an important milestone in our intellectual development. This accomplishment is a cornerstone on which our educations and professional lives are built, and one of the primary mechanisms through which we connect with the world. But for some people, specifically those affected by neurological disorders such as dyslexia or dementia, reading can be an experience fraught with challenges. Fellow Matthew Rubery seeks to understand how such “neurodivergent” individuals employ different methodologies of reading, ultimately experiencing and analyzing the world in more complex ways.

Matthew Smith

Matthew J. Smith, “Roots, Rock, Reggae: The Social & Political History of an Island’s Music”

Since the 1950s, the sounds of Jamaican reggae have drawn global attention to the Caribbean island and its culture. Yet, few critics have examined reggae’s social origins or fully accounted for its phenomenal rise as the music of disaffected youth. Fellow Matthew Smith, professor of history at the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, is working to situate reggae within the larger social dynamics of post-World War II Jamaica.

Joseph Taylor III

Joseph E. Taylor III, “Conservation Controversies: Public Lands in the American West”

Between 1891 and 1939 a substantial portion of the land area of states in the American West were set aside for management by the federal government. These so-called “public lands” have been a source of contention ever since, engendering conflict among an assortment of stakeholders looking to use the lands for a variety of purposes—from conservation and habitat protection to mining, grazing, and logging. Fellow Joseph E. Taylor, professor of history at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, is working on a new project examining the legislative history surrounding land conservation in the Progressive era—a story that gave shape to 47% of the West.

Ted Underwood

Ted Underwood, “Distant Horizons: Reading in the Age of Algorithms”

Proponents of distant reading practices in which computers are used to analyze vast quantities of textual material assert that their quantitative methods simultaneously complement and complicate traditional literary criticism. Fellow Ted Underwood, professor of Information Sciences and of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and an innovative leader in the use of digital reading practices, is working on a new book that continues his research using algorithmic models to better understand fiction from the nineteenth century to the present.

Peter B. Villella

Peter Villella, “The Immediacy of Antiquity: Reconstructing Aztec Epic History”

Five hundred years ago—in February 1519—Hernán Cortés set out from Cuba with an expeditionary force heading for a confrontation with the Mexica, rulers of the Aztec Empire. Two years later, with the sacking of the capital, Tenochtitlan, the Spanish conquest was complete. Over the course of the following century filled with radical upheaval, demographic collapse, plague, mass migration, economic transformation, and cultural dislocation. Much of the history and culture of the Aztecs was lost, but what remained was pieced together by indigenous descendants who helped reconstruct an epic history of the Aztec civilization. Fellow Peter Villella, associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, is currently examining the basis for one of the modern world’s great national stories.