Amitava Kumar

January 29, 2020.

Vassar Professor of English on the Helen D. Lockwood Chair Amitava Kumar returns to the program to talk about his acclaimed novel Immigrant, Montana (Knopf, 2018). The novel was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by the New Yorker, was on the New York Times 100 Most Notable Books list of 2018, and on President Obama's Favorite Books list of the same year.  

"This is a deeply American novel, one that delves into the messiness of love (and sex!), and the meeting point between identity, character, place, and the constant cultural stuff floating around. . . . Kumar's novel is uproariously funny and deeply moving."
—David Means, author of Hystopia

"Amitava Kumar's Immigrant, Montana is a beguiling meditation on memory and migration, sex and politics, ideas and art, and race and ambiguity. Part novel, part memoir, this book is as sly, charming, and deceptive as its passionate protagonist, a writer writing himself into being."
—Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer

Molly Nesbit

Rachel Whiteread. Water Tower,  Lower Manhattan.  Public Art Fund, 1998.

February 21, 2018.

Molly Nesbit, Professor of Art at Vassar College, talks about her new book, Midnight: The Tempest Essays, just published in 2017 by Inventory Books.

“'What Was An Author?' Right from the opening words of these Tempest Essays, we see the great Molly Nesbit at work undoing and radically repositioning the time codes for the artist. She creates a living archive of critical debates, politics and philosophies. She paints a vivid picture of the many junctions between people, objects, quasi-objects and non-objects throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. This is a true protest against forgetting as well as a toolbox for contemporary art criticism. Call it a guidebook to the labyrinth of reality.” —Hans Ulrich Obrist

Ellen Condliffe Lagemann

January 31, 2018.

Ellen Condiffe Lagemann, Levy Institute Research Professor at Bard College and Distinguished Fellow in the Bard Prison Initiative, discusses her book Liberating Minds: The Case for College in Prison (New Press, 2017) in the next installment of our series on The Role of the Liberal Arts in Contemporary Society.

“An excellent new book that makes a compelling case. Lagemann’s is a reasoned, knowledgeable, and compassionate voice for higher education as a means to achieve the goal of prison as a place for rehabilitation.” —  Vartan Gregorian, president, Carnegie Corporation of New York
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Maureen Millea Smith

Rosemary Furtak and Maureen Millea Smith

February 1, 2017.

Minnesota writer and librarian Maureen Millea Smith, talks about her book of short stories, The Enigma of Iris Murphy (Livingson, 2016).

“Astonishing and original, these stories draw us into the singular world of Omaha public defender Iris Murphy and the interconnected relationships she shares with family, lovers and friends. Characters from all phases of her life serve as disparate lenses through which Iris and her fearless, compassionate vision is revealed. Iris is a force of love and sacrifice, guiding those around her to transform and redeem their lives.  Maureen Millea Smith gives us an unforgettable character who forever changes her corner of the world." -- Marianne Herrman, Signaling for Rescue.

“In her collection of linked stories, The Enigma of Iris Murphy, winner of the Tartt First Fiction Award, Edina author Maureen Millea Smith unpacks the enigma that is Iris by delving into the lives and the psyches of her friends, family members and lovers. The title story, for example, introduces us to Iris's confidant Paul Simmons, a gay recovering alcoholic ‘shoved out of the closet' by his ex-wife, newly in love with a man from his investment club. 'Life would have been far easier for him if he had married and divorced Iris Murphy,' he reflects over dinner, although he is not blind to her more irritating qualities. (‘It is the Irish in Iris that tends to make her a good girl martyr,' he observes, both annoyed and impressed.)" -- Rachel Sugar,  Minneapolis Star Tribune

57:56 minutes.

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Martha C. Nussbaum

September 28, 2016.

Martha C. Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, discusses her book Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice, just published by Oxford University Press.

"Written with her usual mix of grace, precision, passion, and breathtaking scope, Nussbaum probes two seemingly polar emotions underlying our notions of justice-anger and forgiveness. She finds them part of the same vindictive drama, and each problematic. Her call is to move beyond them to become 'strange sorts of people, part Stoic and part creatures of love.' The book offers an important and timely challenge, a most worthwhile and enlightening read for those interested in philosophy, psychology, law, politics, religion-or simply living in today's world." -- C. Daniel Batson, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of Kansas

45:14 minutes.

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Eileen Leonard

April 13, 2016:

Eileen Leonard, Professor of Sociology at Vassar College, talks about her book Crime, Inequality, and Power published in 2015 by Routledge.

‘In Crime, Inequality and Power, Leonard offers a powerful critique of our current system of justice and the underlying socially constructed biases that continue to focus upon specific types of criminal behavior, while minimizing others. Central to her thesis is that "…power and persistent inequality in America has more to do with our understanding of crime and our punishment of it, rather than the harm that behavior inflicts". Crime, Inequality and Power is an important addition to the discipline of criminology and an essential read for students, policymakers and scholars interested in this complex topic.’

 -- David Polizzi, Associate Professor, Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, Indiana State University, 

38:47 minutes.

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Mita Choudhury

March 30, 2016.

Mita Choudhury, Professor of History at Vassar College, discusses her book The Wanton Jesuit and the Wayward Saint: A Tale of Sex, Religion and Politics in Eighteenth-Century France, published by Pennsylvania University Press in 2015.

“Students of eighteenth-century France have long been aware of the importance of the Cadière affair. Fortunately, the case has now found its historian. Mita Choudhury, a leading expert on the politics of theological conflict in Old Regime France, has given us a rich account of the scandalous provincial encounter in the early 1730s that resounded all the way to the halls of Versailles and the Sorbonne.”—Jeffrey S. Ravel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
52:54 minutes.
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Stephen F. Eisenman

September 23, 2015.

Stephen F. Eisenman, Professor of Art History at Northwestern University, discusses our relationship with other species and his book, Cry of Nature: Art and the Making of Animal Rights (Reaktion, 2013).

"Stephen F. Eisenman shows how artists from William Hogarth to Pablo Picasso and Sue Coe have represented the suffering, chastisement, and execution of animals. These artists, he demonstrates, illustrate the lessons of Montaigne, Rousseau, Darwin, Freud, and others—that humans and animals share an evolutionary heritage of sentience, intelligence, and empathy, and thus animals deserve equal access to the domain of moral right."

52 :00 minutes.

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Laurence McGilvery

September 24, 2014. SPECIAL PROGRAM FOR BANNED BOOKS WEEK :

La Jolla Bookseller Laurence McGilvery talks about his role in one of the Twentieth Century's most important literary censorship battles, the attempt on the part of a coalition of conservative groups to censor Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, and McGilvery's own arrest and trial (People v. McGilvery, No. M-11466 San Diego Municipal Court, 1962) for selling a copy of the novel to an undercover San Diego police officer. His acquittal preceded by two years the U.S. Supreme court decision (Grove Press vs. Gerstein, 1964) that effectively put an end to the censorship of literary works on obscenity grounds.

This is a Twainesque story of epic strife, rife with humor and a remarkable cast of characters. For reasons that become clear in the telling, it may also be "the most remarkable censorship case that has ever been tried," as McGilvery and his lawyer turn the courtroom into a classroom and make close readers and discerning critics of the jury.

1:11:23 minutes.

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