Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchPeter Ramey, "The Word-Hoard Beowulf: A Translation with Commentary" (Angelico Press, 2023)
Episode 334
Beowulf is the product of a profoundly religious imagination, but the significance of the poem’s Christianity has been downplayed or denied altogethe…
1 year, 4 months ago
Tabish Khair, "Literature Against Fundamentalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Episode 337
Acclaimed novelist and academic Tabish Khair argues that literature as a distinct mode of thinking can counteract fundamentalism.
Literature is a mode…
1 year, 4 months ago
Shay A. Pilnik, "The Ravine of Memory: Babyn Yar Between the Holocaust and the Great Patriotic War" (Purdue UP, 2025)
Episode 610
The Nazis and their collaborators buried over 100,000 victims at Babyn Yar, a ravine in modern-day Ukraine. Most of the individuals were Jewish, maki…
1 year, 4 months ago
Mary Flannery, "Geoffrey Chaucer: Unveiling the Merry Bard" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
Episode 273
For over six centuries, Chaucer has epitomized poetic greatness, though more recent treatments of The Canterbury Tales’ lively and often risqué style…
1 year, 4 months ago
Preetha Mani, "The Idea of Indian Literature: Gender, Genre, and Comparative Method" (Northwestern UP, 2022)
Episode 266
Indian literature is not a corpus of texts or literary concepts from India, argues Preetha Mani, but a provocation that seeks to resolve the relation…
1 year, 4 months ago
Poetry
Episode 154
In this episode of High Theory, Ryan Ruby talks to us about Poetry. Our standard definition of poetry today is an institutional one, much like contem…
1 year, 4 months ago
Xian Wang, "Gendered Memories: An Imaginary Museum for Ding Ling and Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs" (U Michigan Press, 2025)
Episode 555
Gendered Memories: An Imaginary Museum for Ding Ling and Chinese Female Revolutionary Martyrs (U Michigan Press, 2025) takes readers on a journey thr…
1 year, 4 months ago
The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker
Episode 256
Our book is: The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker (Mariner Books, 2024) by Dr. Amy Reading, which is a lively and intimate biog…
1 year, 4 months ago
Peter Boxall, "The Possibility of Literature: The Novel and the Politics of Form" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Episode 335
The Possibility of Literature: The Novel and the Politics of Form (Cambridge University Press, 2024) is a collection of Peter Boxall's essays over tw…
1 year, 4 months ago
Ruby Lowe on John Milton’s Definition of Free Speech
Episode 137
British poet John Milton published one of the earliest and still tremendously important defenses of free speech for our modern world. From his famous…
1 year, 4 months ago