Smarty Pants

In the 1860s, Chinese immigrants built vast stretches of railroad in the American West. But two decades later, they found themselves the targets of the first federal law restricting immigration by race and nationality: the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which remained on the books until 1943. One of writer Ava Chin’s forefathers worked on the railroad, and much of her family suffered from the consequences of the Exclusion Act. The violence it enabled pushed both sides of her family east, to New York City. Chin, raised by her mother’s relatives in Queens, had grown up without meeting her father or his family—until years of research led her to a building on Mott Street where, she soon learned, both sides of her family spent decades living, squabbling, and loving. Chin’s new book, Mott Street, is the result of painstaking research across continents and oceans, into oral and written records, to trace five generations of Chinese-American history.Go beyond the episode:Ava Chin’s Mott Street: A Chinese American Family's Story of Exclusion and HomecomingRead her reflections on her railworker great-great-grandfather and contemporary immigration controlHer columns as the Urban Forager for The New York Times grew into Eating Wildly, her 2015 bookVisit our website for a selection of family photographs Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are mass graves all over Latin America, but the concentration of dead and disappeared in Guatemala and Argentina is staggering: more than 200,000 killed by the state in Guatemala’s 36-year conflict, known simply as “La Violencia;” up to 30,000 disappeared by the Argentine military dictatorship over the course of its reign of terror in the 1970s and ’80s. How does a country reckon with crimes against humanity? How do the families of the missing find the truth? “Forensic exhumation is practiced at the crossroads of two ways of thinking about the body,” anthropologist Alexa Hagerty writes, “as a scientific object to be analyzed for evidence of crimes against humanity, and as a subject, an individual, someone loved and mourned.” In her new book, Still Life with Bones, Hagerty documents her training with forensic teams in Guatemala and Argentina, where members have devoted their lives to unearthing the bones of the disappeared, reconstructing not only their skeletons but the stories of their lives.Go beyond the episode:Alexa Hagerty’s Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What RemainsHer latest on human rights and surveillance: “In Ukraine, Identifying the Dead Comes at a Human Rights Cost”If in Buenos Aires, take a day to visit the Museum and Site of Memory ESMAGuatemala’s dictator Efraín Ríos Montt slithered out of an 80-year conviction for genocide; Jayro Bustamante’s incredible film La Llorona imagines a different kind of justice for his fictional analogueIn the experimental film Los Rubios, Albertina Carri investigates what happened to her parents during the Argentine dictatorshipTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A visit from Aunt Flo, being on the rag, riding the crimson wave, girl flu, even the red wedding … menstruation is something that half of the world’s population experiences for a week at a time, for years on end, and yet we struggle to talk about it directly. But the uterus is capable of incredible things, as anthropologist Kate Clancy explains in her new book, Period: The Real Story of Menstruation: menstrual fluid contains chemicals that repair tissue, the cervix contains crypts for storing sperm for later use, and periods might even be the body’s way of improving its inner architecture. But shockingly, doctors viewed periods as useless—even toxic—well into the 20th century, and some still believe that it’s unsafe to swim with a tampon in (it’s not). Clancy, a professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, joins the podcast to challenge uterine myths, expose the eugenic roots of gynecology, and bring a feminist perspective to that special time of the month.Go beyond the episode:Kate Clancy’s Period: The Real Story of MenstruationRead Emily Martin’s paper “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles”Anatomy is amazing: the cervix contains crypts to store sperm for later usageA new generation of artists is making art with menstrual blood, The Guardian reportsTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On March 20, 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, and shortly thereafter, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad became an accidental journalist. Originally trained as an architect, he fell in as a translator with a group of foreign journalists, then as a photographer and war reporter for The Guardian and The Washington Post. In his new book, A Stranger in Your Own City, Abdul-Ahad documents the devastation of Baghdad, from the sanctions of the 1990s to the aftermath of Saddam Hussein’s fall. Punctuating his account are revealing interviews with his fellow Iraqis—Sunni commanders, schoolteachers, old high school friends, insurgents of every stripe—about the war and its effects, which continue to shape life in the region years after the American withdrawal.Go beyond the episode:Ghaith Abdul-Ahad’s A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East’s Long WarRead the anniversary piece Abdul-Ahad wrote for The Guardian: “Guns, cash, and frozen chicken: the militia boss doling out aid in Baghdad”Roughly 2,500 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, twenty years after the invasionSome of Abdul-Ahad’s illustrations from the bookTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hanging out. All of us could probably stand to do more of it, especially if it doesn’t come with a calendar invite. In her new book, Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time, Sheila Liming writes that she’s found herself “an accidental witness to a growing crisis: people struggling to hang out, or else voicing concern and anxiety about how to hang out.” The coronavirus may have heightened this struggle, but its root causes—our increased obsession with our phones, the shrinking of public spaces, widening income inequality, American individualism—predate the pandemic. Liming, a professor of communications at Champlain College, joins us on the podcast to discuss both what we have to lose by not spending unstructured time together and how we can get it back. Go beyond the episode:Sheila Liming’s Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing TimeLiming learned a lot about the art of the hang through her time playing in the Catamount Pipe Band and the jam band The ArmadillosRay Oldenburg celebrated all the “third places” where people hang out in The Great Good PlaceYou know what would make hanging out a lot easier? The 15-minute cityPractice doing nothing much with one of these great hangout filmsTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wild, blossoming cherries are native to many diverse lands, from the British Isles and Norway to Morocco and Tunisia. But they’re most associated with Japan, where the sakura is the national flower. These days, though, you’ll find blossoming cherries everywhere, on practically every continent. For that, we must thank a lot of dedicated botanists, who braved world wars and long sea voyages—and endured repeated failures—to spread the sakura around the world. But there’s one naturalist in particular we can thank: Collingwood “Cherry” Ingram. Journalist Naoko Abe joins us on the podcast to share how this English eccentric saved some of Japan’s most iconic cherry blossoms—from the spectacular Great White Cherry to the pink Hokusai—from extinction. This episode originally aired in 2019.Go beyond the episode:Naoko Abe’s The Sakura ObsessionIf you’re in Washington, D.C., you need not visit the (closed) tidal basin to view the cherries—here is a map trees blossoming all over the cityThe National Park Service created a guide to the cherry blossom varieties in the citySmithsonian’s list of the best places to see cherry blossoms around the worldCherry varieties discussed:Taihaku / Prunus serrulata taihaku / Great white cherrySomei-yoshino / Prunus x yedoensis / Tokyo cherryTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Stitcher • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Greek poet Sappho’s reputation looks something like a parabola: at the height of her powers, her lyrics were so beloved that grammarians quoted them as exemplars of the Greek language; Plato called her the “Tenth Muse.” Then, after a thousand years of exaltation, she tumbled from the pantheon. Today, we know very little of her life and precious few of her works remain, most of them recovered from ancient garbage heaps in the 19th century. The surviving 306 fragments of her verse—dozens of them but a single word or phrase—are compiled in a new and updated translation by classicist Diane J. Rayor, simply titled Sappho, out this month from Cambridge University Press. Rayor, Professor Emerita of Classics at Grand Valley State University, joins us on the podcast to discuss the difficulties—and joys—of rediscovering Sappho and translating her verse into English.Go beyond the episode:Diane J. Rayor’s Sappho: A New Translation of the Complete Works, with an introduction by André LardinoisCambridge University Press has made professional recordings of all of the fragments available for free, performed by Kate ReadingRead more about the murky provenance of the newest Sappho papyri unearthed in 2014The music used in this episode is the song “Seikilos Epitaph,” performed by Lina Palera on the Lyre of Apollo, a recreation of the ancient instrument by the Lyre 2.0 ProjectTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Stitcher • Spotify  • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

America in the 1830s was stranger than we might think: cities were made of wood, primeval forests towered above East and West coasts alike, and the Great Dismal Swamp still swallowed more than a million acres of Virginia. Alexander Nemerov, an art historian at Stanford University, brings this unruly and uncanny world to life in his new book, The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s. Neither history nor fiction, the book offers dozens of gem-like stories of man’s last real encounters with these ancient forests: Nat Turner’s woodland hiding place, the inscription of the Cherokee language both in trail trees and on paper, Harriet Tubman’s view of the Leonid meteor shower, the painter Thomas Cole’s top hat of felted beaver fur. Nemerov joins us on the podcast to discuss what his unusual approach reveals about this turning point between civilization and the wild.Go beyond the episode:Alexander Nemerov’s The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830sSaidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments is a luminous work of historical imaginationYou can walk along Chicago’s lone wooden block alley, a remnant of the world that went up in smoke in the Great Fire of 1871The Great Dismal Swamp may have shrunk, but it’s still thereVisit the episode page for a selection of paintings by Thomas Cole and Sanford Robinson GiffordTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Stitcher • Spotify  • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We first spoke to Marion Turner, an English professor at Oxford University, in 2019, about her award-winning biography of Geoffrey Chaucer. In her latest book, The Wife of Bath: A Biography, Turner paints an unconventional portrait of Chaucer’s most famous—and clearly favorite—character: a bawdy, middle-aged, middle-class woman of multiple marriages. Alison of Bath is but one of the pilgrims Chaucer gathers around the table in his Canterbury Tales, but she is the only one to have inspired everyone from Shakespeare to James Joyce to Zadie Smith—and an equal number of misogynist critics, whether they were writing on vellum or in a 20th-century academic journal. Turner joins us on the podcast to discuss the Wife of Bath in her time and beyond, and why her voice still rings out with such force today.Go beyond the episode:Marion Turner’s The Wife of Bath: A BiographyListen to our previous interview with Turner about Geoffrey Chaucer’s lifeWatch Jean “Binta” Breeze perform her adaptation of Chaucer’s tale, “The Wife of Bath in Brixton Market”Read Zadie Smith’s play, The Wife of Willesden (which you can see performed this month with its original star if you happen to find yourself in Cambridge, Massachusetts)Read Patience Agbabi’s poem “The Wife of Bafa” or watch her perform it at the modern version of the Tabard Inn—a breweryTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Stitcher • Spotify  • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the world of Gunnhild Øyehaug’s fiction, the mechanics of the short story are constantly being pulled apart and played with: characters we’ve followed on a bus turn out to be the inventions of the narrator on page four; an omniscient “analysis department” argues with the author about the validity of a story ending; Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil turn out to be real flowers growing by the side of the road and the cause of a woman’s broken foot. But the magic of Øyehaug’s latest collection, Evil Flowers, translated from Norwegian by Kari Dickson, is how these subversions still manage to awaken us to the wonder of real, ordinary, corporeal life, whether our main character is a loner searching for connection on a travel forum or a girl who turns everything she touches into slime eels.Go beyond the episode:Gunnhild Øyehaug’s Evil Flowers, translated by Kari DicksonRead “Nice and Mild,” from Knots, her first collection to be translated into EnglishCheck out her two novels, Present Tense Machine and Wait, Blink, adapted into the film Women in Oversized Men’s Shirts (sadly only available in Norwegian)Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek. Follow us on Twitter @TheAmScho or on Facebook.Subscribe: iTunes • Stitcher • Spotify • Google Play • AcastHave suggestions for projects you’d like us to catch up on, or writers you want to hear from? Send us a note: podcast [at] theamericanscholar [dot] org. And rate us on iTunes! Our theme music was composed by Nathan Prillaman. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.