Discovery & Inspiration

While we often think of Renaissance-era Florence and the surrounding area as brimming with intellectual inquiry, artistic genius, and political intrigue, music and poetry were also important elements of life and to the Studia Humanitatis, the core of early modern education. In this podcast, Fellow Blake Wilson, professor of music at Dickinson College discusses his current project exploring the mus...

Surviving accounts of the foundation of the early Christian church are extremely limited, leaving scholars with few sources beyond the narrative found in the fifth book of the New Testament, the Acts of the Apostles. And, for centuries, questions have persisted about the book of Acts itself: Who wrote it and for whom? What was the document's purpose? And, how historically reliable is the account i...

Most people would agree that judging people based on generalizations related to their skin color or gender, religion or nationality is wrong. Yet ​this is a common practice in all societies​​. So the question arises, is it ever okay to use stereotypes? And, if so, when? Erin Beeghly is assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Utah,​ where her research focuses on the intersection of e...

Beyond their inspirational and devotional power, what other functions do religious works of art serve? From antiquity through the medieval period, ​​practitioners ​of many religious traditions ​throughout central Asia used ​works of art to teach​ followers religious histories, parables, and central tenets of their faith.​ How does this use inform our appreciation of these works and what can we lea...

For centuries before the arrival of Europeans, trade routes connected the various peoples who lived throughout the American Southwest and Mexico, and trade among these groups remained an important source of economic vitality and cultural exchange even after the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century. In later years, these routes formed the basis of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, connecting me...

Beginning as a small group of intellectual ideologues, the Shining Path grew to become a significant insurgency movement whose violent practices resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Peruvians in the late twentieth century. However, to understand the Shining Path's history and its influence, it is important to understand its origins and the motivations of the individuals who formed its le...

Since its founding over 50 years ago, perceptions of the Black Panther Party have varied widely, often shaped by misinformation — about the Party's motivations, its relations with other organizations, its influence in the U.S. and around the world. In this conversation, ​historian Jakobi Williams discusses ​the challenges facing scholars in reconstructing the history of the Black Panther Party, th...

Shakespeare's plays are full of the influences of the supernatural—spirits, magic, temptation—haunting the lives of characters and shaping their actions. In this conversation, literary scholar Mary Floyd-Wilson discusses how these demonic representations reflect questions that were very much on the minds of Elizabethan-era theater-goers and offer a valuable perspective on contemporary debates of t...

The use of geospatial technologies allows the interactions of place, space, time, and scale to be more obvious to teachers and students. Often there is an over-emphasis on the chronology of historical events without a strong consideration for their connections to geography. Geospatial technologies allow students to raise the critical ability to answer not only the important question of “where?” bu...

While historians have increasingly marked the Haitian Revolution as a key moment in the history of the Atlantic world, literary depictions of the revolution and events surrounding it have remained little known among contemporary readers. By exploring a broad range of works from writers living in the Atlantic world, Marlene Daut has uncovered a transatlantic abolitionist literary culture that was s...

The banjo links disparate musical and cultural traditions — from Africa to the Caribbean to the United States — and its history is deeply interwoven with the history of those places. In this podcast, host Robert Newman talks with Laurent Dubois about this history and his book, The Banjo: America’s African Instrument, published earlier this year by Harvard University Press. Laurent Dubois is profes...

Contention over questions surrounding immigration and citizenship have been foregrounded in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but how does the current debate relate to America’s historical treatment of foreigners and the establishment of birthright citizenship in the U.S. Constitution? In this podcast, host Richard Schramm talks with Kunal Parker about this history and helps frame current disco...

​In part 2 of this interview, Florence Dore and host Robert Newman ​continue to explore ​the surprising reciprocity between rock and literature​​.They also discuss the conference "Novel Sounds"—upcoming October 14-15 at the National Humanities Center—which will bring together scholars, critics, and performers to examine rock’s broader connections to a wide array of social, historical, and cultural...

While it is not difficult to perceive rock ‘n’ roll’s profound influence on American culture since the mid-1950s, we seldom consider the surprising reciprocity between rock and serious literature. In this podcast, host Robert Newman talks with Florence Dore about the rock-literature nexus and on the ways that rock has both reflected and helped shape our national heritage. They also discuss the con...

In recent years, historians, literary theorists, archaeologists, geographers and others have been exploring space—both physical and metaphorical—and the ways that it shapes, and is shaped by, us. In this podcast, host Richard Schramm talks with John Corrigan about “the spatial humanities,” a turn in academic research that brings together scholars from diverse fields, using new digital tools to bet...

Americans have long pictured themselves as all but free of religious intolerance and have difficulty coming to terms with the kinds of religious conflict and violence that occur in other parts of the world. In this podcast, host Richard Schramm talks with John Corrigan about America’s often forgotten history of religious intolerance despite our ideals and how that history has been all but lost. Th...