On Open Stacks, the podcast from the Seminary Co-op Bookstores, we dig through our shelves, cracking open new books and old, and speak with writers, publishers, editors, booksellers, and readers.
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Read something great lately? Read it out loud to us!
On Open Stacks, the podcast from the Seminary Co-op Bookstores, we dig through our shelves, cracking open new books and old, and speak to publishers, authors, and booksellers about the cultural value of their work. Available wherever you get your podcasts. Tune in and browse along with us.
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China Mieville reads from his latest book October and discusses the haunting legacy of the Russian Revolution. Editors Norma Field and Heather Bowen-Struyk read from their anthology of Japanese proletarian writings For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution. Plus, University of Chicago Professor Robert Bird reads and discusses Vladimir Mayakovsky's poem "Our March".
This episode was produced by Kit Brennen and Imani Jackson.
Philosopher Simon Critchley reads and discusses recent works, Bowie and Notes on Suicide, touching on the beauty of endurance, the dangers of optimism, and the power of tragedy. Poet Nathan McClain reads from his debut collection, Scale.
This episode was produced by Kit Brennen.
Colson Whitehead & Deepak Unnikrishnan read from their latest novels, The Underground Railroad and Temporary People, each a work of hallucinatory dystopian fiction that uses surreal elements to convey the very real terrors of societies past and present.
This episode was produced by Kit Brennen.
Poet Clint Smith discusses his debut collection, Counting Descent, growing up black in America, and our society's problems with historical amnesia and cultural pathology. Critic Donna Seaman tells the story of forgotten artist Gertrude Abercrombie.
This episode was produced by Kit Brennen.
Paleontologist Lance Grande gives a behind-the-scenes look into the world of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. Intellectual historian Lorraine Daston discusses scientific archives as a locus of scholarly utopianism and melancholy.
This episode was produced by Kit Brennen.
Poet Kevin Coval, NPR Weekend Edition’s Scott Simon, and WBEZ Chicago's Natalie Moore share stories and reflections on their home town of Chicago, from corner stores and food deserts on the city's South Side to the North Side's once-cursed Cubs.
This episode was produced by Kit Brennen.
Radical feminist lawyer and scholar Catharine MacKinnon's book Butterfly Politics argues that seemingly minor interventions in the legal realm can affect major social and cross-cultural transformations. MacKinnon discusses the butterfly effect through the lens of her pioneering work in helping shape and articulate sex discrimination law and the legal concept of sexual harassment as we know it. Kimberly Kay Hoang questions conventional narratives of power and victimhood in Vietnam's sex trade in Dealing in Desire.
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What role does sickness play in health; irrationality in reason? And how does literature complicate and contribute to our understanding of a life well lived? Philosophers Jonathan Lear and Martha C. Nussbaum discuss Lear's book, Wisdom Won from Illness, which offers rich readings of some of contemporary literature's greatest practitioners, including J. M. Coetzee and Marilynne Robinson. We'll also hear from Michael Eric Dyson, author of Tears We Cannot Stop and The Black Presidency, on the 2016 Election and Obama's complicity in white racial indifference.
This episode was produced by Kit Brennen. Special thanks...