Project Narrative

In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan and Faye Halpern discuss Edgar Allan Poe’s 1843 short story, “The Black Cat.” Faye Halpern is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Calgary and is the author of Sentimental Readers: The Rise, Fall, and Revival of a Disparaged Rhetoric as well as of numerous articles. Halpern has recently signed a contract for her second book, The Afterlife of Sympathy: Reading American Literary Realism in the Wake of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Halpern is co-editor with Michael T. Clarke of the journal ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature and is co-editor with Katra Byram and Jim Phelan of Theory and Interpretation of Narrative.

In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan and Amanpal Garcha discuss Salman Rushdie’s 1997 short story, “The Firebird’s Nest.” Amanpal Garcha is an Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Ohio State University’s English department, and he has recently become a member of the Core Faculty of Project Narrative. Garcha specializes in nineteenth-century British literature, the theory and history of the novel and literary theory. Garcha is the author of From Sketch to Novel: The Development of Victorian Fiction as well as numerous essays and reviews about Victorian literature and culture. Garcha’s current project is about narrative and choice.

In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan and Simone Drake discuss two oral narratives by Scotia Brown, which were told as a part of an ongoing research project on African American women’s stories of everyday racism. Simone Drake is the Hazel C. Youngberg Trustees Distinguished Professor of English at Ohio State and a Core Member of the Project Narrative faculty. Drake is a faculty affiliate at the Moritz College of Law, the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, the Department of African American and African Studies and the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Drake is the author of When We Imagine Grace: Black Men and Subject Making and Critical Appropriations: African American Women and the Construction of Transnational Identity. She co-edits with Dwan Henderson Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century and numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is the editor of The Oxford Handbook on African American Women’s Writing, which is currently in progress.

In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan and Jared Gardner discuss Chris Gethard’s 2017 stand-up comedy special, Career Suicide, which is currently available on HBO. Jared Gardner is the Joseph V. Denney Designated Professor of English and Director of Popular Culture Studies at the Ohio State University, as well as a Core Faculty Member of Project Narrative. In addition to being a narrative theorist, Jared is a print and media historian, and he has made valuable contributions to our understanding of American literary history, film, graphic narrative, including graphic medicine, and popular culture. Gardner is the author of Master Plots: Race and the Founding of an American Literature, 1787-1845; Projections: Comics and the History of 21st-century Storytelling; and The Rise and Fall of Early American Magazine Culture. 

In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim sits down with Sarah Iles Johnston to read and discuss her own retelling of the myth of Arachne and Athena from her new book to be published later this year by Princeton University Press, Gods and Mortals: Ancient Greek Myths for Modern Readers. In Gods and Mortals, Sarah retells an incredible 140 Greek myths.

Sarah Iles Johnston is college of arts and sciences Distinguished Professor of Religion at the Ohio State University and a Core Faculty Member of Project Narrative. Sarah also holds an appointment in the department of Classics.

In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan and Leigh Gilmore read and discuss the first chapter from Maggie O’Farrell’s 2018 memoir, I am, I am, I am: Seventeen Brushes with Death, entitled, “Neck.” Leigh Gilmore is a Visiting Professor of English at the Ohio State University and a Core Faculty Member of Project Narrative.

In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Frederick Luis Aldama reads Julio Cortázar’s two-paragraph short story and discusses it with our host, Jim Phelan. Frederick Aldama, also known as @ProfessorLatinx, is the Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas, Austin, where he is also founder and director of the Latinx Pop Lab. Frederick is an award winning author, coauthor, editor, and coeditor of over 48 books, and is a founding member of Project Narrative.

In this episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Ashley Hope Pérez sits down with Jim Phelan to read and discuss Silvina Ocampo’s four-paragraph short story, “Report on Heaven and Hell” first in its original Spanish and then in its English translation. “Report on Heaven and Hell” is included in Thus Were their Faces, a 1968 compilation of Ocampo’s stories. Ashley Hope Pérez is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Studies at the Ohio State University and a Core Faculty Member of Project Narrative. She is both an accomplished literary critic and an award-winning novelist.

In this month’s episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, Jim Phelan sits down with Sean O’Sullivan to read and discuss “Black Box,” a short story by Jennifer Egan that was originally published as a series of tweets before being published in the New Yorker in June of 2012. Sean O’Sullivan is Associate Professor of English at the Ohio State University and a Core Faculty Member of Project Narrative. Sean’s expertise includes Narrative Theory, Victorian Studies, and Film and Television Studies.

In this month’s episode of the Project Narrative Podcast, our faithful host, Jim Phelan, finally finds himself in the guest chair! Alongside today’s host, Brian McHale, Jim reads and discusses “Chicxulub” by prolific American author, T.C. Boyle. Jim is a Distinguished University Professor of English at the Ohio State University, Director of the Medical Humanities Program, and co-founder and Director of Project Narrative. To borrow Brian McHale’s words, Jim “has a keen eye for stories that invite and reward the narrative theorist’s close attention. The story he selected for today is case in point.”