Princeton UP Ideas Podcast

Questions: A Discussion with Leslie Butler and Holly Case


Listen Later

BOOKS UNDER DISCUSSION:

Leslie Butler, Consistent Democracy: The "Woman Question" and Self-Government in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 2023).

Holly Case, The Age of Questions: Or, A First Attempt at an Aggregate History of the Eastern, Social, Woman, American, Jewish, Polish, Bullion, Tuberculosis, and Many Other Questions over the Nineteenth Century, and Beyond by Holly Case (Princeton University Press, 2018)

Civilizations have faced challenges and debated how to manage them probably as long as civilization has existed. In our era we talk about these challenges as issues, or crises when perceived as more urgent. In the nineteenth century, what we now call issues or problems tended to be spoken of as questions. In this sprawling conversation, ranging from nineteenth-century “trolls” to the scalability of democracy in a various media ecosystems, Leslie Butler and Holly Case talk not only about the 19th-century questions that have captivated them as scholars, but also how, where, by whom, and to what ends these questions were discussed. When did posing questions serve to bring rationality and even-handedness to debates and when was it a rhetorical strategy intended to steer towards a particular end? Butler’s analysis of the “Woman Question” in America’s pursuit of “consistent democracy” distinguished between public opinion and published opinion while Case implicates the internationalization of the public sphere in the emergence of an “Age of Questions.” Have a listen as these erudite scholars contemplate the ways historians might navigate between the Scylla of cynicism and Charybdis of overly earnest naiveté in analyzing the past as well as in our current moment.

Leslie Butler is a Professor of History at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH. She is an American intellectual and cultural historian, with an emphasis on the nineteenth century.

Holly Case is a historian of modern Europe at Brown University in Providence, RI. Her work focuses on the relationship between foreign policy, social policy, science, and literature in the European state system of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

Princeton UP Ideas PodcastBy New Books Network

  • 4.1
  • 4.1
  • 4.1
  • 4.1
  • 4.1

4.1

11 ratings


More shows like Princeton UP Ideas Podcast

View all
Behind the News with Doug Henwood by Doug Henwood

Behind the News with Doug Henwood

494 Listeners

Philosopher's Zone by ABC listen

Philosopher's Zone

209 Listeners

The LRB Podcast by The London Review of Books

The LRB Podcast

290 Listeners

New Books in Critical Theory by Marshall Poe

New Books in Critical Theory

143 Listeners

London Review Bookshop Podcast by London Review Bookshop

London Review Bookshop Podcast

128 Listeners

The Dig by Daniel Denvir

The Dig

1,551 Listeners

The Nation Podcasts by The Nation Magazine

The Nation Podcasts

416 Listeners

The Gray Area with Sean Illing by Vox

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

10,653 Listeners

The Good Fight by Yascha Mounk

The Good Fight

900 Listeners

Why Theory by Why Theory

Why Theory

563 Listeners

Know Your Enemy by Matthew Sitman

Know Your Enemy

1,961 Listeners

What's Left of Philosophy by Lillian Cicerchia, Owen Glyn-Williams, Gil Morejón, and William Paris

What's Left of Philosophy

264 Listeners

Ones and Tooze by Foreign  Policy

Ones and Tooze

333 Listeners

Close Readings by London Review of Books

Close Readings

66 Listeners

Past Present Future by David Runciman

Past Present Future

300 Listeners