Recall This Book Podcast By Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz cover art

Recall This Book

Recall This Book

By: Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
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 Free-ranging discussion of books from the past that cast a sideways light on today's world.Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz Art Literary History & Criticism Social Sciences World
Episodes
  • 153: What Hannah Arendt Has to Teach Us about Anticipatory Despair (JP)

    153: What Hannah Arendt Has to Teach Us about Anticipatory Despair (JP)
    Jul 3 2025
    John recently published “Lying in Politics: Hannah Arendt’s Antidote to Anticipatory Despair" in Public Books. It makes the case against anticipatory despair in the face of the Trump administration's relentless campaign of lies, half-lies, bluster, and bullshit by turning for inspiration to his favorite political philosopher, Hannah Arendt. Half a century ago, in "Lying in Politics: Reflections on the Pentagon Papers" (1971) she showed how expedient occasional lies spread to become omnipresent--not just in how America's campaigns in Vietnam were reported, but throughout Nixon-era governance. Recall this Book 153 is simply John reading the article aloud. It is an experiment (akin to Books in Dark Times and Recall This Story and Recall This B-Side) in soliloquy. Reach out and let us know if you think it should be the first of many, or simply a one-off. Mentioned in the episode: M. Gessen, Surviving Autocracy Harry Frankfurt, "On Bullshit" Vaclav Havel, "The Power of the Powerless" (1978) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    27 mins
  • 152 Why I Paneled: A Backwards Glance by Kristin Mahoney and Nasser Mufti (JP)

    152 Why I Paneled: A Backwards Glance by Kristin Mahoney and Nasser Mufti (JP)
    Jun 7 2025
    In RTB 151, you heard the Kristin, Nasser and John discussing what might happen before their Northeastern Victorian Studies Association conference actually took place. This episode, recorded a few weeks later, looks back at what actually occurred and see how it aligned with or defied the panelists' prior expectations. The three discuss what it means to have an emergent and residual shticks; differences between how you prepare to talk to undergraduates and your peers matter, and the three agree that going in without any expectations of your audience makes for a weaker presentation. Imaginary interlocution makes for better pre-gaming. Kristin Mahoney 's books include Literature and the Politics of Post-Victorian Decadence (Cambridge UP, 2015) and Queer Kinship After Wilde: Transnational Decadence and the Family. Nasser Mufti 's first scholarly book was Civilizing War and he is currently working on a monograph about what Britain’s nineteenth century looks like from the perspective of such anti-colonial thinkers as C.L.R. James and Eric Williams. (RTB listeners don't need to hear about John or his Arendt obsession). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    44 mins
  • 151 Why I Panel, Part One: Kristin Mahoney, Nasser Mufti (JP)

    151 Why I Panel, Part One: Kristin Mahoney, Nasser Mufti (JP)
    Jun 5 2025
    Most scholars are both haunted, even undone, by the task of writing papers for peers and traveling to strange campuses to deliver them. Yet we keep it up--we inflict it on our peers, we inflict it on ourselves. Why? To answer that question, Recall This Book assembled three (if you count John) scholars of Victorian literature asked to speak at the Spring 2025 Northeastern Victorian Studies Association conference. Their discussion began with the idea that agreeing to give papers is an act of “externalized self-promising” and ranged across the reasons that floating ideas before our peers is terrifying, exhilarating and ultimately necessary. Kristin Mahoney's books include Literature and the Politics of Post-Victorian Decadence (Cambridge UP, 2015) and Queer Kinship After Wilde: Transnational Decadence and the Family. Nasser Mufti 's first scholarly book was Civilizing War and he is currently working on a monograph about what Britain’s nineteenth century looks like from the perspective of such anti-colonial thinkers as C.L.R. James and Eric Williams. RTB listeners don't need to hear about John or his Arendt obsession. Mentioned in the episode Theosophical Society in Chennai Annie Besant Jiddu Krishnamurthi in his early life was a not-quite-orphan child guru for Besant. Eric Williams, British Historians and the West Indies on grand theorizations of race by folks like Acton C L R James Adorno’s Minima Moralia provides Nasser with an importantreminder of the importance of “hating tradition properly.” H G Wells, The Time Machine and its modernist aftermath eg in the opening pages of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past and in Ford Madox Ford’s The Inheritors and The Good Soldier, which is in its own peculiar way a time-travel novel. The three discuss Foucault’s notion of capillarity a form of productive constraint, which Nasser uses to characterize both early 20th century Orientalism, and the paradigms of postcolonialism that replaced it, Paul Saint Amour’s chapter on Ford Madox Ford is in Tense Future. John Guillory on the distinctions between criticism and scholarship in Professing Criticism; the rhizomatic appeal of B-Side Books. The “hedgehog and the fox” as a distinction comes from a poem by Archilochus—and sparked Isaiah Berlin’s celebrated essay of the same name. Pamela Fletcher the Victorian Painting of Modern Life . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    33 mins
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