Claus Elholm Andersen talks about autofictionalization, a mode of narration that characterizes autotfiction, where the narrative consciousness or voice is placed with the experiencing character and not the narrator. Of particular interest here are texts produced after the financial crisis of 2008 which exemplify this mode, most importantly Karl Ove Knausgård’s series My Struggle (2009-2011). […]

Elizabeth McHenry talks about the moment in the history of African American literature in the decade following the 1896 legalization of segregation, the subject of her new book To Make Negro Literature: Writing, Literary Practice, and African American Authorship. She redirects attention to overlooked archives of unpublished and unsuccessful literary production and thereby offers a […]

Abhishek Avtans talks about the apabhraṃśa, a word that refers to the middle stage of the Indo-Aryan languages, crucial links between ancient languages like Sanskrit, and modern South Asian languages such as Hindi, Bangla, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Marathi, Nepali, and others. The first mention of apabhraṃśas is in Mahabhasya, a 2nd century BCE text by Patanjali, […]

Laura Portwood-Stacer talks with Kim about book proposals. Laura is a consultant for academic authors. Her book, titled, appropriately, The Book Proposal Book (Princeton UP, 2021), is a how-to-guide for writing an outstanding book proposal. Through her business, Manuscript Works, Laura runs courses, workshops, and provides editorial assistance, to help academics navigate the world of […]

Kyung Hyun Kim talks about the Netflix series Squid Game, its economic and political contexts, and its cultural potential. He also talks about his new book, Hegemonic Mimicry, out from Duke University Press. Prof. Kyung Hyun Kim is a creative writer, a scholar, and a film producer, who is currently a professor in the Department […]

Carl Hart speaks with Kim about America’s punitive drug laws, and how we might change them for the better. He argues that we should legalize and regulate the sale of all drugs, in the same way we regulate the sale of alcohol, to improve the health, equity, and liberty of our society. Dr. Hart is […]

Ella Hawkins talks about the biscuits she makes, inspired by her research on Elizabethan dress, and on everything from William Morris wallpapers to TV shows like Outlander and Game of Thrones. She also talks about her upcoming monograph, titled Shakespeare in Elizabethan Costume: ‘Period Dress’ in Twenty-First-Century Performance (forthcomin from Bloomsbury), which examines how early modern […]

Farah Bakaari talks about Trace, a core concept in deconstruction, that denotes an absent presence, a mark of something that is no longer there. She talks about how in her own work she has used the concept of trace to write about legacies of colonialism and slave trade in the Atlantic and Indian oceans, for […]

Hannah Zeavin talks about teletherapy, from Freud’s letters to suicide hotlines to therapy apps. If therapy is always mediated, teletherapy is any form of therapy in which that mediation is more clearly legible. This mediated practice is the topic of her new book The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy (MIT Press, 2021). Hannah is […]

Stephen Guy-Bray talks about sexuality, a concept that brings together the the use of sexual metaphors in the description of textual production and the erotics that inhere in reading praxes. Among other things, this concept is a critique of the use of popular heteronormative metaphors of reproduction to describe the creation of literature. Stephen Guy-Bray […]