This episode features a conversation between Alex Alston, Assistant Professor of Literatures in English at Bryn Mawr College, and Maurice O. Wallace, Professor of English at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, revolving primarily around the presence of nonhuman animals in nineteenth-century Antebellum slave narratives and related literature. The discussants explore the evolution of Frederick Douglass’s rhetoric and thinking around nonhuman animal life throughout his career as an editor, activist, and intellectual. They focus on The Heroic Slave, Douglass’s fictional account of a historical revolt aboard the Creole, wherein the fictional protagonist, Madison Washington, is inspired by birds and a snake to escape bondage. From Douglass’s oeuvre Alston and Wallace think out toward how the narratives of other enslaved persons and Black authors of the 19th century contemplated the condition of nonhuman animals alongside their own in a range of asymmetrical and conflicting ways. Other narratives discussed include those of Mary Prince, Moses Roper, Henry Bibb, and Jacob D. Green. The conversation also delves into relevant and recent criticism on questions of race, gender, species, etc. in 19th century texts. Post-production support by Jess Van Gilder (Georgia Tech). Transcript and bibliography available at https://bit.ly/S09E05Transcript

On this episode, Aíne Norris (Old Dominion University), guides us through one story of an age-old accusation levied against women throughout colonial and early American history: witchcraft.

In 1891, newspapers across America printed a story about known witches in the Appalachian Mountains and their supernatural powers. “Sally Friddly” of Potts Creek, Alleghany County, Virginia, was among those named, accused of enchanting a milk pail to steal cream from her neighbors. The blurb and alleged incantation were picked up and re-printed in papers across the country for the next five years, but Fridley’s name was not otherwise associated with witchcraft within public records. Today, the allegation remains, forever naming Fridley, and others, as Virginia witches. Researching their footsteps for over a year led Norris through the mountain roads of Alleghany County and to the doorsteps of descendants, all in a larger discussion of power, lore, and legacy. Production support by Crystal Donkor (Southern Methodist University). Transcript available at bit.ly/S09E04Transcript Resources: bit.ly/S09E04Resources

In 1888, James Chesser and Georgianna Holly married in the growing city of Fort Smith, Arkansas. A few months later during James's arrest, courts argued that Georgianna was legally a man. Legal and social structures at the time struggled for language to define this mixed-race couple in a time before rampant anti-sodomy and anti-miscegenation laws. In this episode, Rachel Trusty (Bucknell University) lays out what is known about their lives before and after arrest, and contextualizes their situation in the broader local-national politics of a post-Civil War border town. Full transcript available at https://bit.ly/S09E03ChesserAndHolly. Post-production support by Genevieve Johnson (Newcastle University) and Ryan Charlton (Georgia State University).

This episode addresses the elephant slouching on its phone in the corner of many literature classrooms. Mary Isbell (University of New Haven) describes her search for a solution to the student reading crisis, incorporating conversations recorded as she was writing Searching for Wonder: Teaching Literature with Student-Selected Texts. These conversations reveal the many reasons faculty may be hesitant to set aside their carefully curated reading lists. With her guests, Isbell explores the history of literature instruction, the firm hold of close reading on the teaching of literature, the role of scholarly expertise in the humanities classroom, and the challenge of assessing process in literature courses. Production support by Stefan Schöberlein (Texas A&M University-Central Texas). Transcript available at bit.ly/S0902Transcript. To read the conclusion of Isbell's book Searching For Wonder, visit bit.ly/S09E02Resources.

In this episode, Christopher Douglas (Jacksonville State University) leads Ashley Rattner (Jacksonville State University) through some of the most popular late 18th and early 19th-century content available on YouTube: period cooking recreation. If one were to search "18th century America" or "early America" on YouTube, the top results are short videos of people making food in recreation settings. This episode focuses specifically on Townsends, which covers 18th-century America and Early American, which focuses on the early 19th century. The ways these channels recreate the past omits voices that had fewer opportunities to publish during these periods, minimizing or ignoring the ways in which enslaved persons and Indigenous peoples made food, thus creating a limited recreation of America's historical past. The episode ends with suggestions for including more authentic recreation in the general-education classroom. Post-production support by Ryan Charlton (Georgia State University). Works Referenced at bit.ly/S09E01WorksReferenced. Transcript available at bit.ly/S09E01Transcript.

In this episode, Marlene L. Daut (Yale University) and Grégory Pierrot (UConn-Stamford) revisit Ridley Scott's big-budget 2023 biopic, Napoleon, out of Apple Studios. The film’s writers promised to tell the story of France’s first emperor, Napoléon Bonaparte, in a novel way. Designed to focus on his relationship with his wife Joséphine de Beauharnais, the film instead harnessed much of its energy on rehearsing Bonaparte’s well-known wins and losses at the Battles of Toulon, Austerlitz, Wagram, the Russian campaign and Waterloo. But there were important battles in Napoléon’s life that viewers did not get to witness—namely, those Bonaparte ordered across the Atlantic in France’s Caribbean colonies in Saint-Domingue (today Haiti) and Guadeloupe. With this conversation, Daut and Pierrot hope to engage the public in one of the most relevant conversations of our time: how to teach histories of slavery, racism, and colonialism in both national and international contexts. Post-production support by Genevieve Johnson-Smith (Newcastle University). Full transcript available at https://bit.ly/S08E05Transcript.

In this episode, Jean Pfaelzer (Prof. Emerita, University of Delaware) describes the untold history of slavery, slave revolts, and resistance in California, based on her award-winning book California, A Slave State. Interviewed by Karen Clopton, JD, Chair of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission and Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow, Pfaelzer looks West to upend the notion of slavery in the United States as only a North-South struggle. Pfaelzer establishes that freedom from slavery is a struggle, not a status. Slavery endures even to the present day in the sex trade, field work, sweat shops, and marijuana industry. This is the history of how California’s distinct multi-racial population rose from the struggles and ranks of the unfree. Full transcript available at https://bit.ly/S08E04Transcript.

In this episode, Fiona Maxwell (University of Chicago) highlights the presence and power of youth voices in the collaborative print culture of Progressive Era Club Newspapers. Through a close look at Northwestern University Settlement House, Fiona illustrates the varied, and often fun, ways in which children and youth from marginalized communities utilized the power of collective imagination to reimagine their public sphere. The episode highlights entertaining archival materials that feature youth voices to demonstrate how collaborative creative projects such as club news inspired working-class young people to use their enhanced facility with print and spoken discourse to become community advocates. Finally, the episode returns to the present and Fiona's work at the Piven Theatre Workshop to discuss the enduring appeal and relevancy of club newspapers to the current generation of young people, who have transformed the genre into a means of fostering resilience and finding belonging in a time of crisis and isolation. Post-production support provided by Jess Van Gilder (Bluegrass Community and Technical College). Full transcript available at https://bit.ly/S08E03Transcript.

“The Time and Place of Performance” looks at the vast circuits of nineteenth-century performance. Amy Huang (Bates College) and Kellen Hoxworth (University at Buffalo, SUNY) consider how nineteenth-century performances move backward and forward, citing past moments, and themselves undergoing processes of recycling and re-presentation to move into the future and challenge the framework of the nation-state. This conversation explores the transoceanic circuits of plays and artists (such as Ira Aldridge and Rose Quong) and the unexpected connections between blackface and yellowface performance to consider how and whether it might be important to teach nineteenth-century theatre and performance. Although Huang and Hoxworth both find some of this theatre “bad,” they discuss how we might teach these plays and performances in ways that do not depend on shoring up these works’ exemplariness or exceptionality. How might we stay with the “bad,” the partial, and the minor moments of theatre and performance history? Full transcript available at https://bit.ly/S08E02Transcript.

Generally associated with postbellum regionalism, mutinous heroines feigning New England propriety, and consumable literature for the urban elites, recent re-readings of Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman’s fiction have uncovered its nuanced, surreptitious, and explosive quality. Much of this disquiet is concentrated in the bodies of barely domesticated animals. Contributors to this episode – Elena Furlanetto (host, University of Duisburg-Essen), Cécile Roudeau (Université Paris Cité), Emma Thiébaut (Université Paris Cité), and Emily Coccia (Carleton College) – propose to take a deeper look at parrots, cats, dogs, squirrels, and monkeys in Understudies (1901), a collection of short stories about New England’s nonhuman nature, and other works by the same author. In Wilkins Freeman’s animals, anthropomorphic and sentimentalist guidelines for animal representation which inform much 19th-century animal fiction burst at the seams to reveal creatures of ambiguity who disturb the quiet of New England living rooms, demonstrate the potential of cages not quite shut, and tread the unstable borders between garden and wilderness. The voices in this podcast follow Stephanie Palmer’s encouragement to “listen to the ambivalences” of Wilkins Freeman’s fiction and treat animals as a productive site of confluence for different foci: from animal studies to queer and feminist ecologies, Indigenous studies, and ambiguity studies among others. Shownotes: https://bit.ly/S08E01_Shownotes Transcript Available at https://bit.ly/S08E01Transcript