On episode 252, welcome Benjamin Saltzman to discuss the gesture of turning away, the shame and grief behind it, how it became a moral topic, turning away in art and Timanthes's lost painting of Agamemnon, Plato's tripartite concept of the soul and turning away as a mark of confusion, rigidity and steadfastness as signs of courage and character, cognitive flexibility and knowing when to turn away, Hannah Arendt and misinterpreting averted gazes as the foundation of totalitarianism, and understanding aversion without its moral trappings.

Benjamin A. Saltzman is associate professor of English at the University of Chicago, where he coedits the journal Modern Philology. Saltzman is the author of Bonds of Secrecy: Law, Spirituality, and the Literature of Concealment in Early Medieval England and the coeditor of Thinking of the Medieval: Midcentury Intellectuals and the Middle Ages. His new book, available April 6, 2026, is called Turning Away: The Poetics of an Ancient Gesture.

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Use the code "UCPNEW" for a 30% discount on Turning Away when ordering from the link above!

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