Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchErin Webster, "The Curious Eye: Optics and Imaginative Literature in Seventeenth-Century England" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Episode 188
Today’s guest, Erin Webster, is the author of The Curious Eye: Optics and Literature in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 2020). A book …
3 years, 9 months ago
On John Milton's "Paradise Lost"
Episode 70
As a young student at Christ’s College Cambridge, John Milton announced to the world that he was going to write the greatest poem that the world has …
3 years, 9 months ago
On Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "The Social Contract"
Episode 69
The 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that humans are born good, but society corrupts them. He was unimpressed with the fixation …
3 years, 9 months ago
Joanna Ebenstein, "Frederik Ruysch and His Thesaurus Anatomicus: A Morbid Guide" (MIT Press, 2022)
Episode 14
Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731) was a celebrated Dutch anatomist, master embalmer, and museologist. He is best remembered today for strange tableaux, cra…
3 years, 9 months ago
Ksenia Chizhova, "Kinship Novels of Early Modern Korea: Between Genealogical Time and the Domestic Everyday" (Columbia UP, 2021)
Episode 471
In the face of a Korean cultural world preoccupied with newness, literary output from the more measured and regulated Choson period (1392-1910) can s…
3 years, 9 months ago
Timothy Murtagh, "Irish Artisans and Radical Politics, 1776-1820: Apprenticeship to Revolution" (Liverpool UP, 2022)
Episode 26
Tim Murtagh completed his PhD at Trinity College Dublin. He was a historical consultant on the Dublin Tenement Museum at No. 14 Henrietta Street and …
3 years, 9 months ago
Yuhua Wang, "The Rise and Fall of Imperial China: The Social Origins of State Development" (Princeton UP, 2022)
Episode 47
How social networks shaped the imperial Chinese state China was the world’s leading superpower for almost two millennia, falling behind only in the l…
3 years, 9 months ago
Sam W. Haynes, "Unsettled Land: From Revolution to Republic, the Struggle for Texas" (Basic Books, 2022)
Episode 111
The Texas Revolution has long been cast as an epic episode in the origins of the American West. As the story goes, larger-than-life figures like Sam …
3 years, 9 months ago
Victor Stater, "Hoax: The Popish Plot That Never Was" (Yale UP, 2022)
Episode 15
The extraordinary story of the Popish Plot and how it shaped the political and religious future of Britain In 1678, a handful of perjurers claimed th…
3 years, 9 months ago
Mackenzie Cooley, "The Perfection of Nature: Animals, Breeding, and Race in the Renaissance" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
Episode 176
The Renaissance is celebrated for the belief that individuals could fashion themselves to greatness, but there is a dark undercurrent to this fêted e…
3 years, 9 months ago