The American Vandal

A ranging conversation with two scholars - Heather Berg (Porn Work: Sex, Labor, & Late Capitalism) and Michelle Chihara ("Radical Flexibility: Driving for Lyft & The Future of Work in The Platform Economy") - about platform capitalism from the perspective of gigworkers.

For more about this episode, including a bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Gigwork

"The World's Work" begins with a discussion of student debt, faculty deskilling, outsourcing, adjunctification, EdTech, and the financialization of U.S. higher education.

Special theme music: "Work Song" by Dan Reeder

For more information, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/EdWork

The season finale of Billions aired exactly 17 months after the season premiere. This was not by design. In this episode, scholars of finance and popular culture discuss the popular Showtime series and how its handling of the pandemic disruption is represented in both content and form.

For more about this episode, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Billions

A discussion of the Antiracism project sponsored by University of Maryland's Center For Literary & Comparative Studies with three faculty members heavily involved in the project, as well as their insights into the Netflix original series, The Chair, which dramatizes a contemporary university English department.

In her recent PMLA essay, "The Shush," Kyla Wazana Tompkins writes, "The future of the English department cannot be the same as its past." The recent Netflix original series, "The Chair," offers one vision of that past and thus serves to generate conversation about "The Shush," the state of literary studies, and higher education.

To learn more, including an episode bibliography, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/TheShush

The new Netflix original series, The Chair, focus on the first woman of color to Chair the English Department at fictional Pembroke University. Dr. Karen Tongson (University of Southern California) can empathize with this character, played by Sandra Oh, but she is also an exceptional media critic. She talks with Matt Seybold about the reception of The Chair, its representation of literary studies, and where it fits in the history of the U.S. sitcom.

For more about this episode, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/TheChair

On a special Emancipation Week episode, three scholars with both personal and professional ties to the Southern Tier of New York, discuss the recently-reconstructed speech by Frederick Douglass which was part of the Emancipation Day celebration which took place in Elmira in August of 1880.

For more information about this episode, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/InvisibleHome

To read Frederick Douglass's "Lessons of Emancipation To The New Generation" & other Emancipation Week materials, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/LessonsOfEmancipation

With a series of recent events indicating bipartisan interest in antitrust reform from Congress and the Supreme Court, host Matt Seybold speaks with Law Professor, Sanjukta Paul, and economist, Marshall Steinbaum, about the history of antitrust movements in the United States from Mark Twain's Gilded Age to the New Gilded Age, as well as why they advocate for antitrust as a mechanism for improving worker welfare, reducing inequality, and protecting democracy.

For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Antitrust

The coordinators of the 2021 Summer Teachers Institute sponsored by the Center For Mark Twain Studies converse about the upcoming event, the state of U.S. education, the resonance of Mark Twain for contemporary students, and much more.

For more about the Institute, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/2021-Summer-Teachers-Institute/

The co-editors of a new collection on "Race, Resistance, & Reality in The Classroom" discuss the "flash point" of 2008 for American education, the recent Critical Race Theory panic, pedagogical strategies for teaching with tension, and Mark Twain's 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.'

For more information about this episode, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/TeachingWithTension

To Register for the 2021 Summer Teachers Institute, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/2021-Summer-Teachers-Institute