Humanities Viewpoints

Today I’m talking with Dr. Charles Wilkins, Wake Forest Associate Professor of History, Wake Forest Senior Reid Simpson, and Dr. Anke Scharrahs, independent scholar and conservator.Dr. Scharrahs is an internationally recognized conservator specializing in Islamic art and currently living in Germany. She is visiting Wake Forest as a scholar in residence from February 10th through the 20th. The focus of her attention will be a space in Graylyn Manor House known as the Persian Card Room, an early example of an Ottoman residential space dating from the early 18th century. The panels decorating the room were acquired by Reynolds Tobacco Company President Bowman Gray and his wife Natalie Lyons Gray during their tours of the Mediterranean in the 1920s. During her stay, Dr. Scharrahs will personally examine the Persian Card Room. Since early 2019, she has been conducting research on the room remotely by using an online gallery of digital images provided by University photographer Ken Bennett. Her personal examination

Today on the podcast, I talk with Lynn Book and Carrie Johnston about the Lynn Book Project, an uncommon Digital Humanities pilot project that preserves and reinvents the multimedia creative and scholarly work of Lynn Book at the nexus of the Arts and the Humanities. Since 2017, Book has been developing her archive that spans a framework of interrogations and serves as a pilot for Digital Humanities archiving practices with support from the Humanities Institute and the Digital Scholarship Initiative at Wake Forest University.Lynn Book is a Teaching Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Wake Forest University with areas of expertise in Performance Art, Interdisciplinary Arts, New Media, and Creativity. Her 40-year history of interdisciplinary, transmedia practice cuts across boundaries between performance art, theater, dance, visual art, humanities, language and new music forms. She is active internationally, creating original, hybrid, experimental projects that have received citations, fellowshi

My guests for this episode are Professor John Curley and Professor Leigh Ann Hallberg. They have both led the Wake Forest University Art Acquisitions Trip in which a group of six Wake Forest students purchase art from New York galleries to add to the Student Union Collection. Our conversation will touch on a number of topics related to this trip, including the history of the trip itself and how students prepare for it, the role of art in public spaces, what it means to build a collection, and how art can capture and reflect the cultural and political concerns of a particular time and place.The exhibition from the most recent trip, ex postGlobal: New Acquisitions to the WFU Student Union Collection of Contemporary Art, is currently on view through October 15th at the Charlotte and Philip Hanes Art Gallery on the Wake Forest Reynolda campus. For more information, visit hanesgallery.wfu.edu.John Curley is Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art in the Department of Art, where he teaches courses in twe

Today on Humanities Viewpoints I talk with professors Gillian Overing and Ulrike Wiethaus about the recent publication of the book they co-edited: American/Medieval: Nature and Mind in Cultural Transfer. The project began with the Humanities Institute-sponsored interdisciplinary faculty seminar called American/Medieval, which led to the group representing the institute and Wake Forest in organizing a roundtable discussion on the American/Medieval at the Leeds International Medieval Congress in 2014. We discuss this project from a number of different angles, including developing a definition, connections between American/Medieval and our contemporary world, approaching these topics in the classroom, and future projects inspired by all of these collaborations.To hear even more about the book and to meet some of the contributors, Wake Forest faculty, staff, and students are invited to attend a Book Launch Celebration for American/Medieval at 4:00pm on Tuesday, March 14th in the Ammons Lounge of Tribble Hall. Joi

Samuel F.B. Morse is perhaps best known for his invention of the single-wire telegraph system and the co-inventor of Morse code. However, he was also an artist, and his work, The Gallery of the Louvre, is the subject of today’s episode, a conversation with Morna O’Neill, Associate Professor of Art History at Wake Forest University. Professor O’Neill discusses Morse’s identity as an artist, his intentions in creating The Gallery of the Louvre, his relationship to technology, and the questions this particular painting raises for contemporary audiences.Professor O’Neill will also moderate the special event for Wake Forest Faculty, “Decoding Morse”: Cross-Disciplinary Conversation and a Viewing of Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre at 3:00pm on Friday, February 24th. You can find more information about this event at humanitiesinstitute.wfu.edu/decodingmorse.Morse’s painting is on display during the exhibition Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre and the Art of Invention at the Reynolda House Museum

This month’s episode marks the first Roundtables episode of Humanities Viewpoints in which a group of Wake Forest faculty gather to discuss a topic from the lens of their respective fields. Today, our topic is “Familiar Prejudices from Unexpected Sources.” Our conversation includes discussions of anti-Greek sentiments in Roman satire, Ancient Greek and Roman anti-Semitism, women’s involvement in the second era Ku Klux Klan, imagined histories, and the rhetoric of the 2016 Presidential campaign.My guests are T.H.M Gellar-Goad, Jeffrey D. Lerner, and Lynn S. Neal.T. H. M. Gellar-Goad is Assistant Professor of Classical Languages at Wake Forest University. He specializes in Latin poetry, especially the funny stuff: Roman comedy, Roman erotic elegy, Roman satire, and — if you believe him — the allegedly philosophical poet Lucretius.Jeffrey D. Lerner is a Professor of History at Wake Forest University. His research focuses on the Hellenistic Period in the East. He teaches a variety of courses on Ancient History, i

Welcome back!Hamilton: An American Musical tells the story of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. It was written by Lin-Manuel Miranda who also starred in the title role. It debuted Off-Broadway at the Public Theatre to critical acclaim and transferred to Broadway in August 2015.Since then it was nominated for a record-setting 16 Tony Awards, winning 11, including Best Musical as well as awards for Best Book and Best Score for its creator, Miranda. It was also the recipient of the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album and the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It’s even made its way into Wake Forest University’s undergraduate admissions application as a short-answer question. You can read the full story about that at news.wfu.edu.Today on Humanities Viewpoints, Jake Ruddiman from the History Department talks with me about the Hamilton phenomenon. We discuss what Hamilton, the musical, gets right, what it leaves out, and what may have captivated Lin Manuel-Miranda’s imagination, inspiring the creation o

This month's guest is Dr. Sarah Hogan. She’ll be talking about utopian literature, specifically Thomas More’s Utopia from 1516. We’ll discuss the etymology of the word utopia, the history of More’s book and its relevance today, as well as the current pervasiveness of dystopias, utopian literature's sister genre.Sarah Hogan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Wake Forest University. Her teaching and research interests are in early modern British literature, Utopian Studies, and cultural theory. She is currently at work on a book, Island Worlds and Other Englands: Utopia, Capital, and Empire (1516-1660). Her writing has appeared in The Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies, The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, and Upstart: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies.To hear about more on the subject of utopias, don't miss Utopia: Dreaming the Social, a one-day, interdisciplinary symposium. It takes place from 10:00am-4:30pm on Wednesday, March 2nd at the Reynolda House Museum

This past May, the ancient Roman-era city and UNESCO World Heritage site of Palmyra in Syria was seized by ISIS. Later in the summer, Khaled al-Asaad, an 82-year-old archaeologist and renowned antiquities scholar, was brutally murdered in Palmyra by Islamic State militants when he refused to reveal where valuable artifacts had been moved. Since then, ISIS has set about demolishing the architectural riches of the city. Why is the preservation of these sites and the objects within them so important, a life or death matter for someone like al-Asaad?Dr. Laura Veneskey joins Humanities Viewpoints this month to discuss this and other questions related to the systematic destruction of one of the world’s most important ancient sites.Laura Veneskey (Sarah Lawrence College, B.A.; Northwestern University, Ph.D.) teaches courses in ancient, medieval, and Byzantine art. Her research explores the visual culture of the late Roman and early medieval Mediterranean, particularly Syria-Palestine, with special focus on issues of

This past June, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples can marry nationwide, an historic victory for gay rights. While this landmark decision was cause for much celebration, marriage equality is hardly the end of the struggle for LGBTQ rights. This issue and many others will be discussed at Rising Voices: A Wake Forest Alumni LGBTQIA Conference which will be held on the Wake Forest University campus October 23rd and 24th. You can register for the Rising Voices Conference by visiting lgbtq.wfu.edu/risingvoices.In this month’s bonus episode of Humanities Viewpoints, Wake Forest LGBTQ Center Director Angela Mazaris and I discuss the upcoming conference, the founding of the LGBTQ Center at Wake Forest, and her own work on queer public histories.Dr. Angela Mazaris is the founding director of the LGBTQ Center at Wake Forest University, where she also teaches in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program. As LGBTQ Center Director, she provides education, advocacy, and support to the campus community a

Last week it was released that work will soon begin on a church planned to honor the deaths of a group of Egyptian Coptic Christians who were killed earlier this year by a Libyan militant group affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). This is just one instance of violence against Coptic Christians in the Middle East, part of a complex history of persecution that goes back hundreds of years and continues today. On this episode of Humanities Viewpoints, Dr. Nelly van Doorn-Harder talks with me about the history of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt, sectarian violence, and the current state of the church. Nelly van Doorn-Harder is Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department for the Study of Religions at Wake Forest University. Her research straddles issues concerning women and religion, human rights in Muslim countries, and the interreligious encounter between Muslims and Christians. She was born and raised in the Netherlands where she earned her PhD on the topic of women in the Copt

It’s good to be back after the summer break, and we have some interesting episodes lined up for the fall. Look for a new episode on the first of every month (with the possibility of bonus episodes throughout the semester).Ronald Neal, Assistant Professor in the Wake Forest University Department for the Study of Religions, is our guest today and will talk with me about the tragic shooting in Charleston this summer. Nine people were shot and killed during a Bible study session at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17th. This church is one of the largest and oldest black congregations in the South, and the recent massacre is not the first time it has been the target of a hate crime. Black churches have been the target of violence throughout the history of the United States – one of the most well-known being the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four African American girls. Dr. Neal and I discuss the history of African A

This episode of Humanities Viewpoints, our first for 2015, is about Public History. Academics engaging and working with public audiences is getting a good deal of attention. The annual meeting of the American Historical Association earlier this month included a panel session called, “Being a Public Intellectual: Historians and the Public.” Also, just this past December, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced the creation of their new “Public Scholar Grant Program” that encourages the publication of nonfiction books that apply serious humanities scholarship to subjects of general interest and appeal.Dr. Lisa Blee, Assistant Professor of History at Wake Forest University, joins me today to talk about Public History, the background of the field, as well as her definition and how it applies to her teaching.blee23Dr. Blee will also talk a bit about the upcoming exhibition, Release: From Stigma to Acceptance. This exhibition features the words and art of formerly incarcerated offenders and was a colla

Happy Holidays, listeners! Today on the podcast, we’re taking a look at Christmas traditions. Decorating the Christmas tree, sending cards, and buying presents. Some of you may be planning (or fretting over) some of these activities at the moment, but where do these traditions come from? My guest, Dr. Melissa Shields Jenkins, explains that many of the traditions we take for granted during the Christmas season are rooted in the Victorian period. During the 19th Century, a kind of re-creation of Christmas took place, and the texts and images created during this period helped to not only shape the seasonal customs but also to inspire reflection upon the meanings of this holiday. Melissa Shields Jenkins is an assistant professor in the English department at Wake Forest University. She is also a Wake Forest University alum, receiving her BA in 2001 before receiving her PhD from Harvard University. She specializes in 19th century British literature and culture, the history of the novel, and gender studies. In 2014,

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or ISIS, also known as ISIL, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or just the Islamic State, started as an al Qaeda splinter group. Its aim is to create an Islamic state across Sunni areas of Iraq and Syria and is known for killing dozens of people at a time and carrying out public executions. The group currently controls hundreds of square miles in Iraq and Syria. On June 29, 2014, ISIS announced the creation of a caliphate, claiming to erase all state borders and declaring leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the authority over the world’s estimated 1.5 billion Muslims.While you have likely been following news coverage of ISIS, you may not know the history of the caliphate in the Middle East. Today on Humanities Viewpoints, Dr. Charles Wilkins, Associate Professor of History at Wake Forest University, outlines the history of the caliphate in the Middle East, providing historical and cultural context that illustrates how al-Baghdadi’s claim as caliph is a distorted misrepresen

Diwali has become a national festival that is celebrated throughout India and other parts of South Asia by many different faiths including Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs. The main festival night of Diwali coincides with the darkest, new moon night of the Hindu calendar (between mid-October and mid-November in the Gregorian calendar), and this year the darkest night was October 23rd.In this episode, Dr. Tanisha Ramachandran, Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Religion at Wake Forest University, talks about the history and cultural significance of the Diwali festival including how the celebration varies by region and religious tradition. Tanisha Ramachandran earned her Ph.D from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. She is currently working on a monograph tentatively titled, Idolized Representations which deals with issues of colonialism and the transmission and commoditization of Hindu imagery in the Euro-American world. Prior to joining Wake Forest University, she taught in the Department of Religi

Halloween, thought to be rooted in the Gaelic harvest festival Samhain, is seen as a time for ghosts, ghouls, and all things terrifying. Contemporary celebrations of Halloween often include trick-or-treating, costume parties, visiting haunted houses, watching horror films, and of course, telling scary ghost stories. But some of these activities are not limited to October 31st. Horror movies fill movie theatres all year round, and vampires and zombies are pervasive in popular culture. Where does this enjoyment in scaring ourselves come from? Dr. Elizabeth Way, Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Wake Forest University, talks with me about Gothic literature and how the elements of this genre have influenced the literature and popular culture of today. Dr. Way specializes in British Romanticism and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and teaches courses in British and world literature, the Gothic, and science fiction. She holds graduate degrees in English from the University of Georgia and the Universi

When I say the word Oktoberfest, you might immediately think of oompah bands, lederhosen, and, of course, beer. But what is the history of this event, and how might our vision of this celebration be influenced by an American appropriation of the festival? My guest today, Dr. Grant McAllister, Associate Professor of German and Chair of the German & Russian Department at Wake Forest University, discusses the historical roots of Oktoberfest, the ways in which it has changed and been Americanized and how that may have influenced the way it is celebrated in Germany today. Dr. McAllister received his PhD in 2001 from the University of Utah and began teaching at Wake Forest shortly thereafter.His primary research interests focus on eighteenth and nineteenth century literature, with specific emphasis on Heinrich von Kleist, early Romantic aesthetic and philosophical theory, and questions of gender and the formation of the subject. He has written and presented papers on Romanticism, Kleist, Lessing and Lola Rennt

My guest today, Dr. Annalise Glauz-Todrank, talks about the history of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the meaning of their connection, as well as her approach to teaching their history in her courses. Annalise Glauz-Todrank is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Wake Forest University. She is a historian of religions and critical race theorist who studies Jews and Judaism in a variety of modern contexts. Currently, she is completing a manuscript entitled Jewish Identity between “Religion” and “Race” in Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb, in which she examines the 1987 U.S. Supreme Court case that provided race-based civil rights protection to Jews for the first time. She has recent publications in Critical Research on Religion, Religion Compass, and an edited volume entitled Who Is a Jew?I hope you enjoy our conversation.

My guest is Ryan Shirey, Director of the Writing Center and Assistant Teaching Professor in the Writing Program at Wake Forest University as well as a scholar of Scottish literature. He has written and presented on a number of topics related to Scottish literature, most recently contributing a chapter on John Buchan’s use of dialect Scots in his poetry for the edited collection: /John Buchan and the Idea of Modernity/. He has another chapter forthcoming for the Association for Scottish Literary Studies companion to the work of Scottish novelist Lewis Grassic Gibbon.He offers his thoughts on the upcoming referendum for Scottish independence that will take place on Thursday, September 18th. The Scottish Referendum Bill was passed by the Scottish Parliament in November 2013, following an agreement between the Scottish and the United Kingdom governments. Voters can answer only Yes or No to the question “Should Scotland be an independent country?” The independence proposal requires a simple majority to pass, and a