In a new series of episodes, The Virtual Jewel Box will feature conversations about great books.

Scott Black and Jessica Straley discuss Mrs. Dalloway as a novel of thresholds: between past and present, sound and silence, intimacy and distance. Reading closely from the opening line through Big Ben’s leaden circles, they show how Woolf’s stream of consciousness turns a single June day, a walk through London, and a party into an inquiry into memory, war, love, and social life. They invite readers to consider how Woolf’s prose, down to its use of the semicolon, reflects on perception, privacy, and what it means to live with other minds.

Jessica Straley is Associate Professor of English at the University of Utah. 

See also: Jenny Noice, “A Hundred Years of Mrs. Dalloway,” JSTOR Daily. 

Episode art: Photo of Virginia Woolf, circa 1927. Virginia Woolf Monk's House photographs, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

In this episode, Scott Black talks with literary scholar Joseph Metz about The Feeling of the Form: Empathy and Aesthetics from Büchner to Rilke (Cornell University Press), Metz’s cultural and intellectual history of empathy that traces the origins of the concept back to 19th-century German art theory. Drawing on close readings of Georg Büchner, Adalbert Stifter, and Rainer Maria Rilke, Metz shows how empathy originated as Einfühlung, a theory of bodily projection into objects and forms, before later becoming a model for interpersonal feeling.

They also discuss Robert Vischer and Theodor Lipps, Kant and nineteenth-century neurophysiology, debates between vitalism and materialism, and the ethical limits of understanding others. 

Joseph Metz is Associate Professor of German in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at the University of Utah. 

Episode art: from Charles Le Brun, Expressions des passions de l’Ame, as a frontispiece to Henri Testelin, Sentimens des plus Habiles Peintres sur la Pratique de la Peinture et Sculpture, Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

In this episode, Omi Salas-SantaCruz talks with Leandra Hernández about Queer, Women of Color, and Critical Approaches to Feminist Mentorship and Pedagogy (University of Illinois Press), co-edited by Hernández, Stevie M. Munz, and Jessica Pauly. Along the way, they discuss the power of feminist mentorship, the ecological webs of care that sustain scholars and students, and the forms of solidarity that help communities thrive even in times of precarity.

Leandra Hernández is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, and Omi Salas-SantaCruz is Assistant Professor in the Department of Education, Culture and Society, at the University of Utah. 

See also: 

Episode art: Detail from Yreina D. Cervántez, Mujer de Mucha Enagua, PA' TI XICANA, 1999 Smithsonian American Art Museum. 

Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

In this episode, Scott Black talks with poet and critic Craig Dworkin about his new book, The Sound of Thinking: A Listener’s Companion to Conceptual Music (University of Chicago Press), on music made from rules, systems, and procedures rather than personal expression. They explore pieces like György Ligeti’s 100 metronomes, Steve Reich’s swinging-microphone Pendulum Music, Enrique Udo’s braille-based scores, Johannes Kreidler’s stock-market sonifications, and an uncanny note-for-note remake of Kind of Blue.

Along the way, they discuss John Cage, the boundaries between noise and music, how listening becomes a cognitive practice, and why conceptual sound works challenge us to rethink creativity, difficulty, and the very definition of music.

Craig Dworkin is Professor of English at the University of Utah. 

Episode art: Detail from Juan Gris, Le papier à musique (1913-1914), Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris.

Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Daniel Mendelsohn discusses his new translation of Homer’s Odyssey (University of Chicago Press) with Jordan Johansen, Assistant Professor of Classics in the Department of World Languages and Literatures at the University of Utah. They discuss the musicality of translating Homer’s poetry for the human voice, the discovery of sarcastic swineherd personalities, and the 15-hour marathon reading of The Odyssey at University of Utah. 

Links: 

Cover image: Odysseus, about 25 BCE, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum 

Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Award-winning author Jesmyn Ward speaks with Kase Johnstun of Utah Humanities about the craft of writing, resilience, and historical memory, in anticipation of her 2025 David P. Gardner Graduate Lecture in the Humanities and Fine Arts. Ward’s lecture is hosted by the Tanner Humanities Center and the Salt Lake City Public Library, and is part of the Utah Humanities Book Festival. 

This episode is a collaboration with the Utah Humanities podcast, Check Your Shelves. 

Books by Ward include:

Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

The leaders of the University of Utah summer institute Humanities Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence, Elizabeth Callaway and Rebekah Cummings, join Scott Black to discuss the human limitations of AI, as well as the points of contact between AI and the humanities. 

Links:

(Episode image: modified detail from Caspar David Friedrich, Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer/Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818.) 

Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

What are the humanities, and how do they function in our daily lives? It might be that they’re primarily academic disciplines studied in universities and cultural institutions. Or some say they're the everyday conversations and reflections that make us fully human—like discussing a movie with friends or questioning our assumptions. In this episode, Jodi Graham, Executive Director of Utah Humanities, discusses how both formal programming and informal human interactions serve the humanities mission.

With host Scott Black, she explores why face-to-face connection remains irreplaceable in our digital age, how community-driven programming strengthens Utah’s cultural infrastructure, and why the humanities’ role is to ask probing questions rather than provide predetermined answers.

They also examine how fifty years of state humanities work has evolved from simple grant-making to comprehensive community engagement, and why this work is especially urgent in a culture of mistrust and division. 

Episode image: Detail from Victor Arnautoff, City Life, mural in Coit Tower, 1934. 

Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Kate Bowler joins Gretchen Case to discuss authenticity in academic, spiritual, and medical life; the limits of toxic positivity; and how joy can be both a surprise and a discipline. Reflecting on her own experience, Bowler examines what it means to seek truth and integrity within imperfect systems and bodies. 

Gretchen Case is Director of the Center for Health Ethics, Arts, and Humanities and Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at the University of Utah.

Episode artwork: Detail from Edward Hopper, Soir Bleu, 1914, Whitney Museum of American Art. 

Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Historians Paul Reeve and Jordan Watkins discuss This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah (by Reeve, Christopher B. Rich, Jr., and LaJean Purcell Carruth), published by Oxford University Press in 2024.

Their discussion explores the origins and transcription of primary sources integral to the book, the legislative stance on slavery in 1850s Utah, the nuanced differences between various forms of unfree labor, and the perspectives of both white lawmakers and the enslaved people in the region. They also touch on the broader political and religious implications of these debates, offering listeners a comprehensive understanding of a complex and contentious period in Utah’s history.

Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.