The Virtual Jewel Box

Kate Bowler joins Gretchen Case to discuss authenticity in academic, spiritual, and medical life; the limits of toxic positivity; and how joy can be both a surprise and a discipline. Reflecting on her own experience, Bowler examines what it means to seek truth and integrity within imperfect systems and bodies.  Kate Bowler is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Duke Divinity School. Her books include:

• Have a ...

Historians Paul Reeve and Jordan Watkins discuss This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah (by Reeve, Christopher B. Rich, Jr., and LaJean Purcell Carruth), published by Oxford University Press in 2024.

Their discussion explores the origins and transcription of primary sources integral to the book, the legislative stance on slavery in 1850s Utah, the nuanced differences between va...

This episode features Bryan Counter (Framingham State University) discussing his new book Four Moments of Aesthetic Experience: Reading Huysmans, Proust, McCarthy, and Cusk (published by Anthem Press) with Nathan Wainstein (Department of English, University of Utah). Counter theorizes aesthetic experience as something that mediates between subjective judgment and objective art, emphasizing the role of chance, atmosphere, and embodi...

 A slave becomes Queen and later is sainted for her work as an abolitionist.

A new book by Isabel Moreira (Distinguished Professor of History, University of Utah) explores not only the life of Balthild of Francia (c. 633-80), but also the methods of late-medieval historical research. Professor Moreira discusses Balthild of Francia: Anglo-Saxon Slave, Merovingian Queen, and Abolitionist Saint (Oxford University Press, Women in Antiq...

This episode explores Obert C. Tanner’s life and legacy, which includes the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center and the Tanner Lectures on Human Values.

Mark Matheson, Lecturer in English at the University of Utah and Director of the Tanner Lectures on Human Values, discusses Obert’s remarkable journey from poverty to philanthropy, including his upbringing by his extraordinary mother, Annie Clark Tanner, who used J.S. Mi...

Under what conditions do people trust the news, if at all? How did Covid lockdown change news consumption? What are we to think of journalists who leave establishment news organizations and build their own following on platforms like Substack?  And does our mistrust of news organizations mirror mistrust of other professional sectors, like health care and higher education? 

Jake Nelson, Associate Professor of Communication at the U ...

Matt Basso and Megan Weiss discuss the iconic film, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. They explore the film’s historical context, its satirical take on Cold War politics, and its depiction of gender. The Red and Lavender Scares, consumerism, and militarization all helped set the stage for the Cold War culture lampooned in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film. 

Matt Basso is Associate Professor of History ...

Louis Chude-Sokei, author of Floating in a Most Peculiar Way, discusses the Black diaspora, sound, accent, masculinity, Afrofuturism, dub music, and AI with Scott Black. Links: 

• Louis Chude-Sokei, Floating in a Most Peculiar Way
• Louis Chude-Sokei, The Last “Darky”: Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora 
• Louis Chude-Sokei, The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics
• Carnegie Hall’s Afrofu...

Why learn to write in the age of artificial intelligence? Elizabeth Callaway, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Utah, talks with Scott Black about writing pedagogy with and about AI. Links: 

• Josh Dzieza, “Inside the AI Factory” 
• Ethan Mollick, “I, Cyborg: Using Co-Intelligence” 
• NYT review of Chris Hayes, The Siren’s Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource, and Nicholas Carr, Superbloo...

In 1882, Oscar Wilde visited Utah during his famous lecture tour of the United States. Local historian Randell Hoffman discusses the scandals of Wilde's visit, and the Victorian-era conventions that Wilde challenged. Robert Carson examines Wilde's lectures on the importance of beauty and his provocations about taste and artificiality.  

Links:

• Michèle Mendelssohn, Making Oscar Wilde (Oxford University Press) 
• The Mildred Berry...

What if advances in technology were already changing the causal logic of human reproduction which is now taken for granted? Could pregnancy shift from an event which some opt out of through prevention or termination, to an intentional, elective choice? How should such a system work, and what would be its likely consequences?

These questions comprise the “opt-in conjecture” by University of Utah Distinguished Professor of Philosophy...

Nathan Wainstein (Assistant Professor of English at the University of Utah) discusses his new book, Grant Us Eyes: The Art of Paradox in Bloodborne. Joining him is Michael W. Clune (Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Professor of Humanities at Case Western Reserve University). 

See also: Video Games: The Artistic Medium of the Future. 

Introduced by Robert Carson, Associate Director of the Tanner Humanities Center.

Episode edited by ...

Alice Dailey recounts the life and death of her mother, who was “a gifted teacher, a passionate reader, and a pathological liar.”

Dailey is Professor of English and Director of Faculty Affairs at Villanova University. She discusses her scholarly memoir, Mother of Stories: An Elegy, with Lindsey Drager (Assistant Professor of English, University of Utah). 

Episode edited by Matty Glasgow and Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our semina...