LCLC Oral History

In this episode, conference director Matthew Biberman talks with Robert Tally about the seminar he organized for the 52nd LCLC on the legacy of Fredric Jameson and Jameson's study of post WW2 French Theory titled Years of Theory. Robert T. Tally Jr. is a Professor of English and an Honorary Professor of International Studies at Texas State University. He has written extensively on literature and t...

In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman talks with acclaimed war journalist and poet Tom Sleigh about Israel and making sense of the region while the 10/7 war rages on. Sleigh's most recent essay collection is The Land Between Two Rivers: Writing in an Age of Refugees. His mid-career turn to war journalism has garnered Sleigh a new audience while making him one America’s essential poe...

In this episode, conference director Matthew Biberman speaks with Sam Vaknin, Ph. D., Professor of Psychology and Management Studies at the Commonwealth Institute of Advanced Professional Studies (CIAPS) in Cambridge and Birmingham, UK; Ontario, Canada; and Lagos, Nigeria. A former Visiting Professor of Psychology at Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, Vaknin is a prolific writer...

In this episode, conference director Matthew Biberman speaks with Sam Vaknin, Ph. D., Professor of Psychology and Management Studies at the Commonwealth Institute of Advanced Professional Studies (CIAPS) in Cambridge and Birmingham, UK; Ontario, Canada; and Lagos, Nigeria. A former Visiting Professor of Psychology at Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, Vaknin is a prolific writer...

Join Matthew Biberman as he sits down with Adam Walker, a PhD candidate at Harvard and the creator of the popular YouTube channel, Close Reading Poetry. In this episode, Adam shares his journey from self-taught poetry reader to academic and public humanities educator. With a commitment to accessible and relatable education, he founded the Antrim Literature Project, an innovative platform where gra...

In this episode, conference director Matthew Biberman talks with Robert Archambeau about his novel, Alice B. Toklas is Missing, as well as the current state of humanities in academia. The Chair of English at Lake Forest College and an author, Archambeau discusses his view of the intersection of arts, culture, and higher education. This LCLC podcast episode is intended for graduate students, advanc...

IIn this episode, conference director Matthew Biberman talks with Ryan Engley about current topics and trends in media studies. Currently an Assistant Professor of English at Pomona College, Engley researches the intersection of psychoanalytic theory and media studies. Engley co-hosts the popular podcast Why Theory, along with Todd McGowan, which brings Continental philosophy and psychoanalytic th...

In this episode, Matthew Biberman talks with YouTube video essay creator Olivia Sun. With a subscriber base nearing one million, Olivia Sun has emerged as one of the first truly influential practitioners of the new art form of the social media-made video essay. Matthew and Olivia discuss her creative process and the potential for this new mode for thought. Of interest to media theorists and indivi...

In this episode, Conference Director Matthew Biberman talks with Aldon Lynn Nielsen, the George and Barbara Kelly Professor of American Literature at Penn State, about the African American Literature and Culture Society, its history and mission, as well as the two panels the group has organized for the 50th LCLC conference. In addition, Biberman and Nielsen discuss the Society of Umbra with a focu...

In this episode, Conference Director Matthew Biberman talks with Mark Alan Mattes about American Afterlives, a sequence of three panels he organized for the upcoming 50th LCLC conference to be held this February 2023. This episode is for scholars of American culture as well as enthusiasts of American multi-ethnic literature, including beloved writers such as Phillis Wheatley Peters, Leslie Marmon...

In this episode Conference Director Matthew Biberman talks with noted Charles Olson scholar, Josh Hoeynck about the Olson Society and their slate of panels at the upcoming 50th LCLC conference to be held in February 2023. This episode is for fans of Olson as well as aficionados of contemporary American poetry and the black mountain school of poetry.

In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman talks with Michael Anania who headlined the LCLC After Dark Reading this past February 2022 during the LCLC's 49th conference. Michael Anania is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. His published work includes twelve collections of poetry, among them Selected Poems (1994), In Natural Light (1999) and his most recent, Night Songs and Clamors (20...

In this episode, conference director Matthew Biberman talks with the celebrated feminist poet Brenda Hillman, who read at the LCLC in February 2022 as the creative keynote for its 49th annual conference. Brenda Hillman teaches at Saint Mary College of California. She is the Poetry Director of Community of Writers as well as Chancellor emerita of The Academy of American Poets and has authored 11 bo...

In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman talks with Ryan Engley. Currently an Assistant Professor of English at Pamona College, Engley researches the intersection of psychoanalytic theory and media studies. Along with Todd McGowan, Engley co-hosts the popular podcast Why Theory, which brings Continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine contemporary phenomena. Th...

In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman talks with Alan Nadel. Currently the William T Bryan Chair of American Literature and Culture at the University of Kentucky, Nadel has published numerous books on post-WW2 American film, drama, fiction, and popular culture generally. In addition to being a well-noted poet, Alan is also a leading expert on August Wilson and Cold War Studies. Our...

In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman concludes his conversation with acclaimed war journalist and poet Tom Sleigh. Sleigh reads two poems ("Clearance" and the title piece) from his latest collection The King's Touch (Graywolf 2022). Other topics include surfing and dog sledding, as well as the tradition of the American long poem. While illuminating his own poems "Ending" and "Homag...

In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman talks with acclaimed war journalist and poet Tom Sleigh. The author of 11 books of poetry including The Kings Touch, Tom has enjoyed sustained critical praise since the appearance of first collection After One. He has also published translations, plays and two collections of his nonfiction prose, the most recent being The Land Between Two Rivers...

In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman talks with noted feminist scholar Judith Roof. Now retired, Judith taught at 5 institutions, the last being Rice University where she was William Shakespeare Chair in English. She is the author of The Comic Event: Comedic Performance from the 1950s to the Present (Bloomsbury, 2018), What Gender Is, What Gender Does (2016), The Poetic of DNA (200...

In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman talked with the noted poet and critic Norman Finkelstein who has been regularly attending LCLC conferences since 1982. The author of thirteen books of poetry including his New and Selected collection entitled the Ratio of Reason to Magic as well as the forthcoming Thirty-Six/Two Lives coauthored with the poet Tirzah Goldenberg. His critical work...

In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman talks with noted feminist scholar Jane Gallop. Currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Gallop burst onto the literary scene with the publication of her 1982 book, The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis. Biberman and Gallop discuss her 1990 LCLC Keynote whi...

In this episode, Conference Director Matthew Biberman concludes his discussion with Stanley Fish. Fish's analysis of first amendment law and matters of free speech has had a sustained influence on American culture and legal practice. Fish talks about his recent books The First, and How to Write a Sentence, as well as reminiscing about Hugh Kenner, Fredric Jameson, Arnold Stein, and David Lodge amo...

In this episode Conference Director Matthew Biberman talks with Stanley Fish. First rising to prominence as the Milton scholar who unknowingly inaugurated that branch of literary theory later dubbed "reader-response criticism," Fish then spearheaded a critique of liberalism, transforming him into a key early proponent of CLS (critical legal studies). Fish's analysis of first amendment law and matt...

In this episode Conference Director Matthew Biberman talks with noted EE Cummings scholar, Gillian Huang-Tiller about the Cummings panels at the LCLC. This episode is for fans of Cummings and T.S. Eliot as well as aficionados of high modernist culture and the lost generation. http://www.eecsocietyblog.org/?p=175

When Paolo Solari died in 2013, the New York Times dubbed him "the architect of the counterculture." An apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright's, Solari founded Arcosanti, a projected visionary city embodying Solari's philosophy of "archology"--a life affirming melding of architecture and ecology. Ada Louise Huxtable, writing in Time magazine, called Solari's renderings “some of the most spectacularly s...

In our first podcast our exiting Conference director, Alan Golding, talks with our in-coming director, Matthew Biberman, offering advice along with cherished memories of several major American poets and scholars including Frank Bidart, Robert Creeley, Clayton Eshleman, Susan Howe, W. S. Merwin, Harryette Mullen, Marjorie Perloff, and Nathaniel Mackey.