Open Stacks Podcast

This week on Open Stacks, we're talking hegemonies and tech. Marie Hicks tells the story of British women codebreakers during World War II, as detailed in their book, Programmed Inequality. And Tom Mullaney talks about the century-long quest to create a tyepwriter capable of handling Chinese characters. 

It goes without saying that women have a long history in computer science. Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, worked on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine in...

This week on Open Stacks, signs of life in film and filmic renditions of life. Noa Steimatsky, Robert Pippin, and Carl Skoggard share in the cinematic tradition of building and relaying stories and worlds with the smallest of details. 

Steimatsky guides us through the power of the human visage as it is wielded on the screen. Not mentioned in this clip, but given ample attention in her book is Carl Dreyer's gem of a silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc. Renée Jeanne Falconetti’s performance in the movie is often applauded due to the actress's remarkably expressive face. For example:

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Welcome back from our winter break, and welcome to 2018 with Open Stacks! This week on the show, empires are falling. Alfred McCoy talks In the Shadows of the American Century and Mike Duncan recalls Rome and his book The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic. 

Destruction, from Thomas Cole's The Course of Empire...

This week, we explore modernist art and literature from Chicago to Paris to Tokyo.

Art critic Jed Perl talks about his new biography of Alexander Calder, Calder: The Conquest of Time. Liesl Olson shares revelations from Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis. Poet and translator Sho Sugita reads poems by Japanese futurist poet Hirato Renkichi.

The music from this episode is clipped from John Cage's Living Room Music, which you can hear in full here.

Below are his instructions for playing the piece. The lyrics are taken from Gertrude Stein's...