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Humanities Viewpoints is a podcast featuring a conversation between host and Wake Forest University Humanities Institute Program Coordinator, Aimee Mepham, and a WFU faculty member working in the humanities. The conversations focus on a timely subject - a current event, holiday, cultural experience - and how this subject connects to the faculty member's field, teaching, and expertise.
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Today I’m talking with Dr. Charles Wilkins, Wake Forest Associate Professor of History, Wake Forest Senior Reid Simpson, and Dr. Anke Scharrahs, independent scholar and conservator. Dr. Scharrahs is an internationally recognized conservator specializing in Islamic art and currently living in Germany. She is visiting Wake Forest as a scholar in resi…
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Today on the podcast, I talk with Lynn Book and Carrie Johnston about the Lynn Book Project, an uncommon Digital Humanities pilot project that preserves and reinvents the multimedia creative and scholarly work of Lynn Book at the nexus of the Arts and the Humanities. Since 2017, Book has been developing her archive that spans a framework of interro…
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My guests for this episode are Professor John Curley and Professor Leigh Ann Hallberg. They have both led the Wake Forest University Art Acquisitions Trip in which a group of six Wake Forest students purchase art from New York galleries to add to the Student Union Collection. Our conversation will touch on a number of topics related to this trip, i…
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Today on Humanities Viewpoints I talk with professors Gillian Overing and Ulrike Wiethaus about the recent publication of the book they co-edited: American/Medieval: Nature and Mind in Cultural Transfer. The project began with the Humanities Institute-sponsored interdisciplinary faculty seminar called American/Medieval, which led to the group repre…
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Samuel F.B. Morse is perhaps best known for his invention of the single-wire telegraph system and the co-inventor of Morse code. However, he was also an artist, and his work, The Gallery of the Louvre, is the subject of today’s episode, a conversation with Morna O’Neill, Associate Professor of Art History at Wake Forest University. Professor O’Neil…
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This month’s episode marks the first Roundtables episode of Humanities Viewpoints in which a group of Wake Forest faculty gather to discuss a topic from the lens of their respective fields. Today, our topic is “Familiar Prejudices from Unexpected Sources.” Our conversation includes discussions of anti-Greek sentiments in Roman satire, Ancient Greek…
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Welcome back! Hamilton: An American Musical tells the story of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton. It was written by Lin-Manuel Miranda who also starred in the title role. It debuted Off-Broadway at the Public Theatre to critical acclaim and transferred to Broadway in August 2015. Since then it was nominated for a record-setting 16 Tony Awards, win…
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This month's guest is Dr. Sarah Hogan. She’ll be talking about utopian literature, specifically Thomas More’s Utopia from 1516. We’ll discuss the etymology of the word utopia, the history of More’s book and its relevance today, as well as the current pervasiveness of dystopias, utopian literature's sister genre. Sarah Hogan is an Assistant Professo…
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This past May, the ancient Roman-era city and UNESCO World Heritage site of Palmyra in Syria was seized by ISIS. Later in the summer, Khaled al-Asaad, an 82-year-old archaeologist and renowned antiquities scholar, was brutally murdered in Palmyra by Islamic State militants when he refused to reveal where valuable artifacts had been moved. Since the…
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This past June, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples can marry nationwide, an historic victory for gay rights. While this landmark decision was cause for much celebration, marriage equality is hardly the end of the struggle for LGBTQ rights. This issue and many others will be discussed at Rising Voices: A Wake Forest Alumni LGBTQIA Confere…
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Last week it was released that work will soon begin on a church planned to honor the deaths of a group of Egyptian Coptic Christians who were killed earlier this year by a Libyan militant group affiliated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). This is just one instance of violence against Coptic Christians in the Middle East, part of…
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It’s good to be back after the summer break, and we have some interesting episodes lined up for the fall. Look for a new episode on the first of every month (with the possibility of bonus episodes throughout the semester). Ronald Neal, Assistant Professor in the Wake Forest University Department for the Study of Religions, is our guest today and wi…
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This episode of Humanities Viewpoints, our first for 2015, is about Public History. Academics engaging and working with public audiences is getting a good deal of attention. The annual meeting of the American Historical Association earlier this month included a panel session called, “Being a Public Intellectual: Historians and the Public.” Also, ju…
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Happy Holidays, listeners! Today on the podcast, we’re taking a look at Christmas traditions. Decorating the Christmas tree, sending cards, and buying presents. Some of you may be planning (or fretting over) some of these activities at the moment, but where do these traditions come from? My guest, Dr. Melissa Shields Jenkins, explains that many of …
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The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or ISIS, also known as ISIL, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or just the Islamic State, started as an al Qaeda splinter group. Its aim is to create an Islamic state across Sunni areas of Iraq and Syria and is known for killing dozens of people at a time and carrying out public executions. The group curr…
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Diwali has become a national festival that is celebrated throughout India and other parts of South Asia by many different faiths including Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs. The main festival night of Diwali coincides with the darkest, new moon night of the Hindu calendar (between mid-October and mid-November in the Gregorian calendar), and this year the da…
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Halloween, thought to be rooted in the Gaelic harvest festival Samhain, is seen as a time for ghosts, ghouls, and all things terrifying. Contemporary celebrations of Halloween often include trick-or-treating, costume parties, visiting haunted houses, watching horror films, and of course, telling scary ghost stories. But some of these activities are…
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When I say the word Oktoberfest, you might immediately think of oompah bands, lederhosen, and, of course, beer. But what is the history of this event, and how might our vision of this celebration be influenced by an American appropriation of the festival? My guest today, Dr. Grant McAllister, Associate Professor of German and Chair of the German & …
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My guest today, Dr. Annalise Glauz-Todrank, talks about the history of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the meaning of their connection, as well as her approach to teaching their history in her courses. Annalise Glauz-Todrank is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at Wake Forest University. She is a historian of religions and critical ra…
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My guest is Ryan Shirey, Director of the Writing Center and Assistant Teaching Professor in the Writing Program at Wake Forest University as well as a scholar of Scottish literature. He has written and presented on a number of topics related to Scottish literature, most recently contributing a chapter on John Buchan’s use of dialect Scots in his po…
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Humanities Viewpoints is a podcast featuring a conversation between host and Wake Forest University Humanities Institute Program Coordinator, Aimee Mepham, and a WFU faculty member working in the humanities. The conversations focus on a timely subject - a current event, holiday, cultural experience - and how this subject connects to the faculty mem…
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continue reading
