The MIT Press Podcast

Nicolas Collins, editor of Leonardo Music Journal and Chair of Sound at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, answered our questions about the 20th anniversary issue of LMJ. The issue's theme was improvisation. In the podcast, Nic explains how he chose the theme and shares insights about putting the issue together, as well as about how improvisation and composition have evolved during his tenure as editor of LMJ.

Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games (MIT Press, 2023) by Dr. Mary Flanagan & Dr. Mikael Jakobsson is a striking analysis of popular board games' roots in imperialist reasoning—and why the future of play depends on reckoning with it.Board games conjure up images of innocuously enriching entertainment: family game nights, childhood pastimes, cooperative board games centered around resource management and strategic play. Yet in Playing Oppression, Dr. Flanagan and Dr. Jakobsson apply the incisive frameworks of postcolonial theory to a broad historical survey of board games to show how these seemingly benign entertainments reinforce the logic of imperialism.Through this lens, the commercialized version of Snakes and Ladders takes shape as the British Empire's distortion of Gyan Chaupar (an Indian game of spiritual knowledge), and early twentieth-century “trading games” that fêted French colonialism are exposed for how they conveniently sanitized its brutality while also relying on crudely racist imagery. These games' most explicitly abhorrent features may no longer be visible, but their legacy still lingers in the contemporary Eurogame tendency to exalt (and incentivize) cycles of exploration, expansion, exploitation, and extermination.An essential addition to any player's bookshelf, Playing Oppression deftly analyzes this insidious violence and proposes a path forward with board games that challenge colonialist thinking and embrace a much broader cultural imagination.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

Paul Freedman, Chester D. Tripp Professor of History and Acting Chair, Department of History at Yale University, chats with Rebecca Federman, Culinary Collections Librarian at the New York Public Library. Paul provides insight into 19th-century American restaurant dining based on his recent article in The New England Quarterly, "American Restaurants and Cuisine in the Mid–Nineteenth Century" (March 2011). We hear about the most popular dishes, regional differences in menus, and which dishes could make a modern-day comeback.

Michael Gurevich, lecturer at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at the Queen’s University, Belfast School of Music and Sonic Arts, serves as guest editor of the Winter 2010 issue of Computer Music Journal. In this podcast, Michael discusses the fields of Computer Music and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). He describes how these fields intersect and what they can learn from each other, touching on how the field of Computer Music has grown and how this affects performance and composition of electronic music. This conversation was recorded on December 14, 2010.

Sean Lynn-Jones, editor of International Security, interviews author John Schuessler, whose article "The Deception Dividend: FDR's Undeclared War" appears in the Spring 2010 issue of the journal. Their conversation tackles the question of whether FDR willfully deceived the American public in order to persuade them to support WWII – and touches on perceptions of warring democracies as well as comparisons to the 2003 Iraq War. The conversation was recorded on May 21, 2010

In light of J.D. Salinger's recent passing and on reflection of his literary contributions, The New England Quarterly took a trip back to its December 1997 issue (70:4) and one of the journal's most popular articles. Pulitzer Prize-winner and NEQ editorial board member, Louis Menand interviews author Stephen J. Whitfield on his article "Cherished and Cursed: Toward a Social History of The Catcher in the Rye." They discuss the impact of Salinger, the political and social climate during the time of Catcher, and contemplate how Cold War is viewed today. The conversation was recorded on February 24, 2010.

Mary Kelley, member of the NEQ editorial board, interviews Deirdre Clemente about her article "'Prettier Than They Used to Be': Femininity, Fashion, and the Recasting of Radcliffe's Reputation, 1900-1950" which appears in the December 2009 issue of The New England Quarterly. The conversation was recorded on December 21, 2009.

Samuel Jay Keyser, Editor-in-Chief of Linguistic Inquiry, has shared a campus with Noam Chomsky for 40-odd years via MIT's Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. The two colleagues sat down in Mr. Chomsky's office to discuss ideas on language evolution and the human capacity for understanding the complexities of the universe. The unedited conversation was recorded on September 11, 2009.

Bill Fowler, Chair of NEQ's Board of Directors, speaks with Bob Gross about the events leading up to Shays's Rebellion and how they relate to today's circumstances. Mr. Gross's article, "A Yankee Rebellion? The Regulators, New England, and the New Nation" appears in the March 2009 issue of The New England Quarterly. The discussion was recorded at Northeastern University on April 10, 2009.

Artist Jan Harrison's work explores the connections between human and animal psyches and takes the form of painting, pastel, sculpture, and performance. Jan's essay in the current (January 2011) issue of PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, called "Singing in Animal Tongues: An Inner Journey", describes the origins and scope of Jan's work, including her ability to speak and sing in "Animal Tongues." In this podcast, Jan and curator Linda Weintraub discuss Jan's work and the animal beings who help Jan create it.