Human Conditions: ‘Hope against Hope’ by Nade...

'Hero and Leander' was published in 1598, and anyone who came across it in a stationer’s shop in Elizabethan London would have known that its author was dead, killed in a brawl in Deptford in 1593. Christopher Marlowe’s sensational life as playwright and spy is matched by the wit ...  Show more

After following up a lead from a birdwatcher, Rachel Carson drew a web of connections that led to one of the most influential books of the 20th century. Silent Spring (1962) investigated the synthetic pesticides that proliferated after the Second World War, which were assiduously ...  Show more

World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth: Anticolonial Aesthetics, Postcolonial Politics (Fordham UP, 2020) recovers a genealogy of anticolonial thought that advocated collective inexpertise, unknowing, and unrecognizability. Early-twentieth-century anticolonial thinkers en ...  Show more

Irina Mashinski is a bilingual Russophone American writer, poet, essayist, teacher, and translator, whose works include Giornata and eleven books of poetry and essays in Russian. She is also the co-editor of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry. In this episode, Irina talks with Ja ...  Show more

🎙️ This week on the Sumud Podcast, we’re joined by Ahmad Ibsais, a law student, writer, and poet whose work captures life, loss, and defiance under siege. Through his acclaimed newsletter State of Siege, Ahmad documents a generation’s struggle for justice, blending legal insight ...  Show more

The relationship between literature and "madwomen" has deep roots. In this episode, Jacke talks to author Suzanne Scanlon (Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen) about her efforts to reclaim the idea of the madwoman as a template for insight and transcendence. PLUS Jacke talks to A ...  Show more