Athenaeum Review

An interview with artist and gallerist David Quadrini, on the occasion of the exhibition "An Artists' Homage to the Dynamic Influence of Rick Brettell," curated by Greg Metz at SP/N Gallery, UT Dallas, Sept. 10 to Oct. 9, 2021.

https://calendar.utdallas.edu/event/art_exhibition_brettell_an_artistshomageto_the_dynamic_influence_of_rick_brettell

http://athenaeumreview.org/podcasts

Lauren Brazeal, Matthew Baker and Rebecca Cai interview poet Roy G. Guzmán.

http://athenaeumreview.org/podcasts/

Shannon Schaffer and Thomas Rocha nterview Toni Jensen, author of Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land (Ballantine).

Our guest today is Chris Arnade, the author of Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America. He is a freelance writer and photographer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Atlantic, Guardian, Washington Post, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal among many others.

In this podcast:

What does “dignity” mean, and how do you recognize it when you see it? (1:30) — How the bureaucracy of “helping institutions” can have a bad effect on the people they are trying to serve (6:30) — What would be a better way for us to think about social issues in America? (11:30) — Growing up in small-town Florida, and views of the class structure in America (13:30) — What public policies do you think would help people who are struggling? (16:30) — Has writing this book changed your views on the role of religion? (20:30) — What America can learn from the virtues of El Paso and East L.A. (25:00) — Race, racism and the working class (30:00) — How do you approach the craft of photography? (33:30) — Techniques of storytelling: the influence of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 and the feminicides in Ciudad Juárez (37:30) — Alternatives to mainstream journalism: the interviews of Nobel prize winner Svetlana Alexievich (44:00) — What are the ethics of interviewing people who are struggling? (46:00) — Has moving out of New York City affected your perspective? (48:30) — Observing American politics: Glenn Greenwald and The American Compass (51:30) –Fort Dodge, COVID at meatpacking plants , and truck stops in Missouri (55:15)

On this episode, we talk with Justin Shubow, President of the National Civic Art Society, about modernism and classicism, the profession of architecture and its role in civil society, public monuments in Washington, D.C., the philosopher Michael Oakeshott, and much more.

On the Eisenhower Memorial, and the role of the General Services Administration in Federal patronage of architecture, for example the Salt Lake City courthouse (2:00) — Is it affordable to build classically today? (8:00) — Can classicism be creative and innovative? (10:30) — Starchitects and expressionism (14:00) — Modernists against classicism: Harvard’s Joseph Hudnut critiques John Russell Pope’s Jefferson Memorial (17:00) — Philosophy, the Zeitgeist and architecture (19:30) — Roger Scruton, the vernacular and architecture (21:30) — Is there anything to learn from Las Vegas vernacular architecture? (25:00)

What are the institutional prospects for architectural classicism in America? (29:00) — Are modernism and classicism simply culturally relative phenomena, or can they somehow transcend their place and time? (34:30) — The virtues of the Chrysler Building and Art Deco, the last of the classical styles (40:00) — Classical architecture today: David M. Schwarz, Robert A. M. Stern, Allan Greenberg, Roman and Williams (42:00) — On Michael Oakeshott, rationalism and architecture (44:30) — Oakeshott’s political philosophy (50:00) — On philosophy and men’s clothing (53:30) — Joseph Shubow, and the beginnings of an interest in architecture and design (58:15)

Our guest on this podcast is Xiangdong Ji, project leader for the PandaX dark matter search collaboration in China’s JinPing Deep-Underground Lab in Sichuan, China, and Distinguished University Professor of physics at the University of Maryland. We discuss the history of the search for dark matter, and the beauty and simplicity of physics.

Our guest on this episode is Mark Roseman, the Pat M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies at Indiana University Bloomington and author of Lives Reclaimed: A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany.

In Part One:

How did the members of the Bund come to be part of such a cohesive and tightly-knit group? (3:00) — The charismatic style of leadership, and how such groups declined after 1945 in Germany (5:15) — The tension between democratic and authoritarian aspects of leadership in social groups (7:00) — How can small-scale actions, such as bringing flowers to the victims of an attack, or sending packages to a displaced-persons camp, have any effect in the larger society? (9:00) — What is the importance of exercise, and physical fitness, for the formation of the group? (13:00) — Writing the history of the Wannsee Conference: What if a key document such as the Wannsee Protocol had not survived? (18:30) — How do you deal with the different kinds of language used by the Nazi government in its planning? Rhetorically violent, vs. bureaucratically euphemistic and evasive (22:30)

Our guest on this episode of the podcast is Nils Roemer, interim dean of the School of the Arts and Humanities, director of the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies, and the Stan and Barbara Rabin Professor in Holocaust Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas.

Our guest on this episode is the poet, translator, and critic A. M. Juster, whose next book, Wonder and Wrath, will be published by Paul Dry Books in early 2021.

Our guest on this episode is Sean Valles, the author of Philosophy of Population Health.