The Virtual Jewel Box

Why are writers of literary fiction turning to detective stories, fantasy, science fiction, zombie novels, and other forms of popular fiction? In this episode, Tanner Humanities Center Director Scott Black talks with University of Utah literary scholar Jeremy Rosen about his new book, Genre Bending: The Plasticity of Form in Contemporary Literary Fiction (Stanford University Press). Rosen explains...

Can video games make us better human beings? In this episode, novelist and screenwriter Gabrielle Zevin, author of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow , joins University of Utah professor David Roh to discuss games as art, collaboration, failure, disability, and the pleasures and limits of virtual worlds. They also consider the nature of creative partnership, the place of play in everyday life, a...

Adaptations of ancient texts can reveal as much about the present as the past. What does Christopher Nolan’s film of The Odyssey tell us about how to think about war, heroism, and trauma? And what ideas from Homer does it leave behind? University of Utah faculty Paisley Rekdal and Margaret Toscano , with Tanner Humanities Center Director Scott Black, discuss hospitality, bed-making, and the compli...

In this episode, we discuss the Tanner Humanities Center’s symposium—Receipts, Proof, Timeline: How We Watch The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City—with Jordan Rullo ( Department of Psychology and therapist ), Marcie Young Cancio ( Department of Communication and founder of Amplify Utah ), and Renato Olmedo-González ( Salt Lake City Arts Council ). They explore the underground sophistication of tra...

How can scoring systems make games feel so joyful, fluid, and alive, yet drain the life from public institutions and everyday work? This is one of the central questions of a new book by University of Utah philosopher C. Thi Nguyen . In The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else’s Game , published this year by Penguin, Nguyen traces the philosophical and ideological aspects of scoring systems whe...

Nora Lange, author of Us Fools (2024), discusses her new collection of short stories, Day Care , with Erin Beeghly (Department of Philosophy). Their conversation touches on female desire, motherhood, mischief, and the strange pressures of contemporary life. They discuss the surreal charge of stories like “Hot Spot,” the autofictional elements of the title story, and Lange’s “careening” prose style...

In anticipation of our symposium on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City on April 10 , Marcie Young-Cancio, Robert Carson, and Scott Black discuss the show from a humanities perspective, examining its treatment of faith, femininity, Utah culture, entrepreneurship, fan loyalty, and camp sensibility.  Marcie Young-Cancio is Clinical Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Founder...

In this episode, Matt Potolsky (Professor of English) talks with writer and activist Cory Doctorow about digital privacy, platform decay, and the politics of monopoly. Drawing on his recent book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It , Doctorow argues that the erosion of privacy is inseparable from the rise of unchecked commercial surveillance, and that many p...

In a new series of episodes, The Virtual Jewel Box will feature conversations about great books. Scott Black and Jessica Straley discuss Mrs. Dalloway as a novel of thresholds: between past and present, sound and silence, intimacy and distance. Reading closely from the opening line through Big Ben’s leaden circles, they show how Woolf’s stream of consciousness turns a single June day, a walk throu...

In this episode, Scott Black talks with literary scholar Joseph Metz about The Feeling of the Form: Empathy and Aesthetics from Büchner to Rilke (Cornell University Press), Metz’s cultural and intellectual history of empathy that traces the origins of the concept back to 19th-century German art theory. Drawing on close readings of Georg Büchner, Adalbert Stifter, and Rainer Maria Rilke, Metz shows...

In this episode, Omi Salas-SantaCruz talks with Leandra Hernández about Queer, Women of Color, and Critical Approaches to Feminist Mentorship and Pedagogy (University of Illinois Press), co-edited by Hernández, Stevie M. Munz, and Jessica Pauly. Along the way, they discuss the power of feminist mentorship, the ecological webs of care that sustain scholars and students, and the forms of solidarity...

In this episode, Scott Black talks with poet and critic Craig Dworkin about his new book, The Sound of Thinking: A Listener’s Companion to Conceptual Music (University of Chicago Press), on music made from rules, systems, and procedures rather than personal expression. They explore pieces like György Ligeti’s 100 metronomes, Steve Reich’s swinging-microphone Pendulum Music, Enrique Udo’s braille-b...

Daniel Mendelsohn discusses his new translation of Homer’s Odyssey (University of Chicago Press) with Jordan Johansen , Assistant Professor of Classics in the Department of World Languages and Literatures at the University of Utah. They discuss the musicality of translating Homer’s poetry for the human voice, the discovery of sarcastic swineherd personalities, and the 15-hour marathon reading of T...

Award-winning author Jesmyn Ward  speaks with Kase Johnstun of Utah Humanities about the craft of writing, resilience, and historical memory, in anticipation of her 2025 David P. Gardner Graduate Lecture in the Humanities and Fine Arts . Ward’s lecture is hosted by the Tanner Humanities Center and the Salt Lake City Public Library, and is part of the Utah Humanities Book Festival .  This episode i...

The leaders of the University of Utah summer institute Humanities Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence , Elizabeth Callaway and Rebekah Cummings , join Scott Black to discuss the human limitations of AI, as well as the points of contact between AI and the humanities.  Links: Marriott Library, The ARPANET Project   Brigham Young University, Office Digital Humanities   Catherine D'Ignazio and Lau...

What are the humanities, and how do they function in our daily lives? It might be that they’re primarily academic disciplines studied in universities and cultural institutions. Or some say they're the everyday conversations and reflections that make us fully human—like discussing a movie with friends or questioning our assumptions. In this episode, Jodi Graham, Executive Director of Utah Humanitie...

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 Schoo...

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...

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 rol...

 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 (Oxfo...

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, A...

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 P...

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...

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 Techn...

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 Res...