Introducing Ministry of Ideas, a podcast that explores the ideas that shape our lives.
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Introducing Ministry of Ideas

A podcast about the ideas that shape our lives. Hosted by Zachary Davis and produced at Harvard Divinity School.

Learn more at ministryofideas.org

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The great English essayist and linguist Samuel Johnson was writing during the Enlightenment – the period some historians identify as the beginning of the modern age. American author and philosopher David Foster Wallace worked more than two centuries later, in the “post-modern” style. But these two writers shared a common problem: once modernity fractured society’s sense of shared moral norms, how could you write persuasively about morality? This episode looks at how Johnson and Wallace attempted to solve this problem; what struggles plagued their solutions; and why our modern, pluralistic landscape makes their work more valuable than ever.

Researcher, writer, and episode producer: Kirsten Hall Herlin
Featured Scholars: 

Walter Jackson Bate (1918-1999), Professor of English, Harvard University


Matt Bucher, Managing Editor, The Journal of David Foster Wallace Studies



Jack Lynch, Professor of English, Rutgers University


D. T. Max, Staff Writer, The New Yorker



Special thanks: Dutton Kearney

For transcript, teaching aids, and other resources, click here.
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Genealogies of Modernity Episode 8: The Enemy of Morality Is Not Modernity, It’s Me

The problem of gun violence is as old as guns themselves. According to historian Priya Satia, America’s present epidemic of gun violence has its roots in the industrial revolution. Satia tells the story of British gun-maker Samuel Galton, Jr., who was called to task by his Quaker community for manufacturing rifles. As a professed pacifist, Galton had to wrestle with the large-scale uses to which his weapons were put. So where do we look for answers about how to regulate guns? Some claim the answer has to lie in the past, in the nation’s founding documents. Others argue that novel technologies demand novel solutions. Solving the problem of gun violence may be a case where we need to make a strong modernity claim. 

Researcher, writer, and episode producer: Christopher Nygren, Associate Professor, History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh

Featured Scholars: 
Catherine Fletcher, Professor of History, Manchester Metropolitan University
Priya Satia, Professor of History, Stanford University

Special thanks: James DeMasi, Chloé Hogg, Jonathan Lyonhart, Pernille Røge, Jennifer Waldron, Catherine Yanko.

For transcript, teaching aids, and other resources, click here.
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Genealogies of Modernity Episode 7: A Genealogy of Gun Violence

What if racism shared an origin with opposition to racism? What if the condemnation of injustice gave rise both to an early form of anti-racism and to the racial hierarchies that haunt the modern era? Rolena Adornol, David Orique, María Cristina Ríos Espinosa tell the story of how Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican missionary to New Spain, came to racial consciousness in the presence of slavery. His intellectual rebellion spurred slavery’s apologists to more strident and sinister modes of defense – but also laid a lasting Christian groundwork for the fight against racial injustice.
 
Researcher, writer, and episode producer: Terence Sweeney, Assistant Teaching Professor, Honors College, Villanova University
Featured Scholars: 
Rolena Adorno, Sterling Professor Emerita of Spanish, Yale University
María Cristina Ríos Espinosa, Professor of Arts, Humanities, and Culture, University of Sor Juana’s Cloister, Mexico City
David Orique, Professor of History, Providence College
Special thanks: Chiyuma Eliott, Michael Sawyer

For transcript, teaching aids, and other resources, click here.

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Genealogies of Modernity Episode 6: A Medieval Anti-Racist

Race is sometimes treated as a biological fact. It is actually a modern invention. But for this concept to gain power, its logic had to be spread – and made visible. Art historian Ilona Katzew tells the story of how Spanish colonists of modern-day Mexico developed theories of blood purity and used the casta paintings – featuring family groups with differing skin pigmentations set in domestic scenes – to represent these theories as reality. She also shares the strange challenges of curating these paintings in the present, when the paintings’ insidious ideologies have been debunked, but when mixed-race viewers also appreciate images that testify to their presence in the past.

Researcher, writer, and episode producer: Christopher Nygren, Associate Professor, History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh

Featured Scholar: Ilona Katzew, Curator and Head of Latin American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Special thanks: Elise Lonich Ryan, Nayeli Riano, Jennifer Josten

For transcript, teaching aids, and other resources, click here.
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Genealogies of Modernity Episode 5: Picturing Race in Colonial Mexico

What is the “traditional American family?” Popular images from the colonial and pioneer past suggest an isolated and self-sufficient nuclear family as the center of American identity and the source of American strength. But the idea of early American self-sufficiency is a myth. Caro Pirri tells the story of the precarious Jamestown settlement and how its residents depended on each other and on Indigenous Americans for survival. Early American history can help us imagine new kinds of interdependent and multi-generational family structures as an antidote to the modern crisis of loneliness and alienation. 

Researcher, writer, and episode producer: Caro Pirri, Assistant Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh

Featured Scholars: 
Jean Feerick, Professor of English, John Carroll University
Steven Mentz, Professor of English, St. John’s University

Special thanks: Molly Warsh

For transcript, teaching aids, and other resources, click here.
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Introducing Ministry of Ideas

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