Blue Humanities

With sail came trade—and with trade came connection between cultures. When did that begin in the West? In this episode we go to ancient Mesopotamia, the Levant, Egypt, and the islands of the Mediterranean; we learn about the Phoenicians (who didn’t call themselves Phoenicians); we set sail with Odysseus; and Carthage meets Rome. Josephine Quinn, the first woman to hold the distinguished Professors...

In this episode of the Blue Humanities podcast, we turn from the oceans to the rivers that feed the sea. Host Jonathan Bate joins Britain’s leading writer of the natural world, Robert Macfarlane , to discuss his new book Is a River Alive? Their discussion ranges from the “Rights of Nature” movement to Macfarlane’s breathtaking journeys along great rivers in Ecuador, India and Canada, where he imme...

When, why and in what ways did modern historians turn their attention to oceanic encounters and crossings? In this episode of the Blue Humanities podcast, presenter Jonathan Bate talks to David Armitage , Lloyd Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University, about the Atlantic and Pacific turns in historiography. Professor Armitage has written, edited and contributed to many books in the fie...

How do we imagine the ocean bed? Who owns the sea floor? What does our obsession with shipwrecks such as the Titanic tell us about ourselves? What is the history of the deepwater extractive economy? And its future? In this episode of the Blue Humanities podcast, Jonathan Bate talks to Lisa Han, Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Pitzer College about her new book, Deepwater Alchemy: Extractive...

“There are some who are oceanic in effect,” pronounced Victor Hugo with regard to Shakespeare. “As for the sea, it thunders in passage after Shakespearian passage, and is indeed Shakespeare’s main poetic symbol, its roughness especially being used over and over again to impress on us a sense of man’s turbulent existence,” wrote the critic G. Wilson Knight. In the first of a series of five new Blue...

In a world of torrential storms and rising sea levels, what can we learn from the ancient and enduring story of Noah's ark? In this episode, Jeffrey J. Cohen and Julian Yates talk about their wittily-titled book  Noah's Arkive . Animals going in two by two (or in some cases fourteen by fourteen), the raven, the dove, the rainbow, the curse upon Ham, above all the ark itself as a place of...

In this episode of the Blue Humanities podcast of the Humanities Institute at Arizona State University,  presenter Jonathan Bate is in conversation with CHamoru poet, critic, environmentalist and activist Craig Santos Perez (X: @craigsperez ). They talk about the history of his native island of Guam in the Pacific -- from Spanish colonial outpost to American military base and tourist destination....

In this episode of the Blue Humanities podcast of the Humanities Institute at Arizona State University,  presenter Jonathan Bate is in conversation with maritime voyager, historian and literary scholar Richard J. King . They talk about lobsters, cormorants (why was this bird associated with the devil?), whales, coral, frigatebirds, walruses and why people are moved to sail the oceans alone -- and...

How do the oceans work? And how have they influenced human history? In this episode of the Blue Humanities podcast of the Humanities Institute at Arizona State University, Jonathan Bate interview Helen Czerski - Professor of Mechanical Engineering at University College London, presenter of TV science documentaries, and author of Blue Machine: How the Ocean Shapes our World (subtitle of US edition:...

From Homer's Odyssey to Shakespeare's tempestuous late plays to Melville's Moby Dick to recent writings by authors immersed in the Indian and Pacific oceans, literature has again and again gone down to the sea, to - in the words of poet John Masefield - "the lonely sea and the sky." But what can this vast body of watery wisdom teach us in times of environmental crisis and...