Podcast Episodes

The Remarkable Life and Afterlife of Sholem Aleichem

Novelist, playwright, journalist, essayist, and editor, Sholem Aleichem was one of the founding giants of modern Yiddish literature. The creator of a…

3 months ago

Prolepsis

In this episode of High Theory, Gloria Fisk talks to Kim about Prolepsis. Defined by Gerard Genette in the 1970s, prolepsis is a flash forward, the o…

3 months ago

David Bather Woods, "Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy's Greatest Pessimist" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy’s Greatest Pessimist by David Bather Woods

An engaging biography of one of the most influenti…

3 months ago

Imagining Independence; or, Why Does Rip Van Winkle Sleep Through the Revolution?

Thursday, March 12—Inaugurating a series of programs to mark the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, authors and scholars Michael …

3 months, 1 week ago

Hiromi Ito, "The Thorn Puller" (Stone Bridge Press, 2022)

Hiromi Ito author of The Thorn Puller (originally published in Japanese as Toge-nuki Jizo: Shin Sugamo Jizo engi) came to national attention in Japan…

3 months, 1 week ago

Pedro Thiago Ramos Bassoe, "Supernatural Japan: Izumi Kyoka and the Global Fantastic" (U Michigan Press, 2026)

Supernatural Japan: Izumi Kyoka and the Global Fantastic  (U Michigan Press, 2026)examines the role of Japanese writer Izumi Kyōka (1873–1939) in th…

3 months, 1 week ago

Suzanne Bost, "Quiet Methodologies: Humility in the Humanities" (U Minnesota Press)

What would it mean to disentangle humanities scholarship from combative, extractive, and colonial ways of knowing and writing? This is the question t…

3 months, 1 week ago

E. and H. Heron, "Flaxman Low: Occult Detective" (MIT Press, 2026)

Flaxman Low, literature’s first professional, full-time “occult detective”—that is, an intrepid investigator who deploys the scientific method when t…

3 months, 1 week ago

William H. F. Altman, "Ascent to the Good: The Reading Order of Plato’s Dialogues from Symposium to Republic" (Lexington, 2018)

At the crisis of his Republic, Plato asks us to imagine what could possibly motivate a philosopher to return to the Cave voluntarily for the benefit …

3 months, 2 weeks ago

An Evening with Philip Roth: A Conversation with Bernard Avishai, Igor Webb, and Steven Zipperstein

The YIVO Institute was pleased to present a special evening with acclaimed novelist Philip Roth. Roth read excerpts from his new novel, Nemesis (2010…

3 months, 2 weeks ago