The Literature Humanities Radio Hour on WKCR 89.9FM: Literary Classics in Conversation

Thomas, Katrina & Mia discuss Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon.

Thomas, Katrina and Alec discuss Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, published 1927.

Thomas, Katrina & Hamid join to discuss Jane Austen's "half satire, half romance" novel Pride & Prejudice. Their conversation begins at the end, considering who the novel's unabashedly "happy ending" is for, and what love even is in this novel.

Thomas, Katrina & Tamara discuss the poetry of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a 17th Century Mexican literary figure who swore off the life of the court (and the requirements to marry) in order to preserve her intellectual independence, writing instead from her cloister. Alongside her poetic verses, they discuss in particular Sor Juana's First Dream, a strange abstract journey into the body towards the soul, and follow it on its strange hovering movements.

Thomas, Larry & Katrina spend a good half an hour discussing the opening scene of King Lear and the mad king's division of his kingdom among his three daughters, all the while discussing the problems of intrigue, inheritance, betrayal, trust and (human) nature in Shakespeare's big beast of a play.

Thomas, Katrina & Larry join to discuss Dante Alighieri's Inferno, published after Dante's exile from Florence in the early 13th Century. They discuss the text's allegorical and richly intertextual opening passages, the Ancient Greek philosophical basis of this Roman Catholic text, and its metanarrative commentary on reading and interpreting.

Thomas, Katrina & Larry meet to discuss Ibn Arabi's Translator of Desires, a collection of 61 poems that propose a theological concept of the Divine that sees its collapse into the Beloved and the natural world. Born in Al-Andalus (today Andalucia), Ibn Arabi lived from 1165 until 1240, journeying to Mecca in 1202 and subsequently publishing a series of poetic and philosophical works that would cement his status as a preeminent Sufi mystic philosopher and spiritual authority.

Thomas, Larry & Katrina grapple with Augustine's Confessions - a text which combines highly stylized autobiographical writing with philosophical meditations on the the divine, the presence of evil in the world, and how one must go inside oneself to come closer to the divine. To what extent does both the self, and the divine, remain a mystery? Join us as we grapple with this incredibly complex text.

Thomas Preston is joined by colleagues Katrina & Larry to discuss the first text on the Spring syllabus, Claudia Rankine’s Citizen (2014), an award-winning, essayistic-poetic work that “recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media” (Graywolf Press).

Thomas & Katrina are joined by Nicholas Dames, Chair of Literature Humanities, to discuss the Gospels of Luke & John through the lens of literary study.

Thomas, Katrina and Larry are joined by Geoff to discuss their favorite bits of an Aeneid: its strange ambiguity vis-a-vis its own political project, Aeneas as a less than ideal hero, a paranoid stance regarding excessive affect and some very choice Latin terms.

Larry takes Thomas & Katrina on a journey through Plato's Symposium, a literary and philosophical work presenting a series of speeches on the nature of love, reading the Symposium through lens of Socrates' execution in 399BCe as the originary trauma of philosophy.

Thomas, Larry and Katrina discuss the story of Agamemnon's bloody return home: his death in the bathtub at the hands of his wife, Clytaemestra; his wife's death at the hands of HER OWN SON ORESTES; and the eventual establishment of a court after Orestes is hounded by vengeful spirits with eyes oozing slime and blood. Turn up, tune in, get grossed out.

Thomas, Katrina, Larry & Rosalie round off their conversation on Emily Wilson's translation of Homer's Odyssey

Thomas, Larry and Katrina are joined by Rosalie Stoner (Classics) to discuss Homer's The Odyssey, the Emily Wilson translation. This text tells the story of Odysseus' journey home and the reclamation of his household, and its twists and turns through many strange places in the Homeric universe.

Thomas, Katrina and Larry are joined by Nadrah Mohammed to discuss the end of the Iliad along with Sappho's fragments.

Thomas Preston is joined by Katrina Dzyak and Larry Jackson to discuss the Iliad

Thomas Preston is joined by Larry Jackson, Katrina Dzyak and Jennifer Rhodes to discuss the Book of Genesis as literature.

Thomas Preston is joined by Katrina Dzyak, Tamara Hache and Geoff Harmsworth to discuss ancient mesopotamian texts