The Iris Murdoch Society podcast

In this episode Miles is joined by Greg McElwain (College of Idaho, USA) and Ellie Robson (Birkbeck, University of London)to discuss the life and work of Mary Midgley. Greg is Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Religious Studies at The College of Idaho, USA. His research focuses on the thought of Mary Midgley and the intersection of animal and environmental ethics. He is the author of Mary Midgley: An Introduction (Bloomsbury, 2020) and is currently working on a book based on his interviews with Midgley from 2011-18 titled Mary Midgley on What Matters: Conversations on Science, Ethics, and Nature (Bloomsbury, forthcoming). You can buy 'Mary Midgley: An Introduction' here: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/9781350047563 Ellie recently completed her PhD at Birkbeck, University of London. In her thesis, Ellie argues that Midgley’s meta-ethics is best-read as a form of Neo-Aristotelian naturalism. Her research addresses the neglect of 20th century women philosophers from analytic philosophy and provides an explanation of Midgley’s relative oversight within this tradition.

A celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Iris Murdoch's 'The Black Prince'. Topics include the novel's emotional pull, exploration of moral and philosophical perspectives, humor, potential for adaptation, unique structure, author's fast writing process, philosophical ideas, character dynamics, use of comedy and landmarks as symbols, and the importance of the author and the reader.

In this episode Miles is joined by Nikhil Krishnan(University of Cambridge)to discuss his new book 'A Terribly Serious Adventure: Philosophy at Oxford 1900-1960'. https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/A-Terribly-Serious-Adventure-by-Nikhil-Krishnan/9781800812369 We cover the change in generational thinking, the rise of linguistic analysis and 'ordinary language philosophy', and the key figures of the time, including Ryle, Ayer, J.L. Austin and, of course, the Quartet: Anscombe, Foot, Midgley and Murdoch. Nikhil Krishnan is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Robinson College. He wrote his doctorate in Philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford and his work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New Statesman and he regularly reviews a wide range of books for the Daily Telegraph.

In this podcast is joined by Jan Skinner (Oxford) and Anne Rowe (Chichester and Kingston) to discuss the range of children and adolescents in Murdoch's work. What purpose do they serve? And why are so many damaged and dangerous? Novels discussed in depth include The Sandcastle, An Unofficial Rose, The Nice and the Good, The Sacred and Profane Love Machine, The Bell, The Green Knight, Jackson's Dilemma and The Italian Girl.

Miles is joined by Carole Sweeney (Goldsmiths University, London) and Joe Darlington (Futureworks Media, Manchester) to discuss a range of authors who emerged post-World War 2, inspired by the works of the high modernists and the French Nouveau Roman. They were writing at the same time as Murdoch, but in very different modes and genres. Do they even form a real grouping? Authors discussed, or mentioned, include: Brigid Brophy, Anthony Burgess, Christine Brooke-Rose, Angela Carter, Eva Figes, B.S. Johnson, Anna Kavan, Ann Quin, Muriel Spark, as well as those in their circles, and those who published them. Joseph Darlington is the author of The Experimentalists (Bloomsbury, 2021), as well as Christine Brooke-Rose and Post-War Literature (Palgrave, 2021), and British Terrorist Novels of the 1970s (Palgrave, 2018). He was editor of BSJ: The B.S. Johnson Journal and now co-edits the Manchester Review of Books. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/experimentalists-9781350244405/ https://www.waterstones.com/book/christine-brooke-rose-and-post-war-literature/joseph-darlington/9783030759056 Carole Sweeney is Reader in English Literature and Goldsmith University, London and focuses on the intersections of race, class, sexualities and gender in modern and contemporary literature and culture. Her first book, From Fetish to Subject: Race, Modernism and Primitivism, examined how the colonial iconography of the black body was deployed in cultural modernism and how anti-colonial and decolonising cultural movements emerged in opposition to this aesthetic racialisation. She followed up this work by publishing widely on Francophone-African writing, in particular by women writers and then by examining racism, anti-feminism and misogyny in contemporary fiction. Her most recent book Vagabond Fictions: Gender and Experiment in British Women's Literature 1945-1970 examines the evolution of feminism and sexual identity in post-war Britain. Carole's current research project is on the continuing battleground for women's bodies and sexualities in contemporary literature and culture and will include work on feminist creative criticism. https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-vagabond-fictions.html Carole and Joe both appear in this excellent collection: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-72766-6

Miles is joined by Larry Blum (U-Mass) to discuss the life and work of Dorothy Emmet, a philosopher of the prior generation to Murdoch who work in numerous different areas of the subject. Later in her life she and Murdoch became friends ; Larry sees her work as in some ways very much in the spirit of the Quartet’s, though in other ways quite different.. Emmet and Murdoch had some significant areas of professional and personal contact. You can find out more about Larry here: www.lawrenceblum.net/ You can hear more about Larry's journey on the wonderful Five Questions Podcast: anchor.fm/kieran-setiya

Miles is joined by Megan Laverty (Columbia, USA) and Evgenia Mylonaki (Patraas, Greece) to discuss their joint reading of Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. You can find out substantive handout for the podcast where they highlight their reading here: Megan is an Associate Professor and Director of the Philosophy and Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University. She teaches graduate courses on ethics, aesthetics, and philosophy of education. Megan is the author of Iris Murdoch’s Ethics: A Consideration of her Romantic Vision (Bloomsbury, 2007) and contributed a chapter on civility to The Murdochian Mind (Routledge, 2022) https://www.tc.columbia.edu/faculty/ml2524/ Evgenia is assistant professor of Practical Philosophy at the Philosophy Department of the University of Patras, Greece. Her written work is primarily in ethics (moral experience and virtuous reasoning) and the philosophy of action (metaphysics of action, practical knowledge, and rationality). She is the co-editor of the book Reason in Nature (out in 2022 by HUP, co-edited with Matthew Boyle, University of Chicago). https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674241046 She works on the philosophies of Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot and I have a special philosophical interest in animal lives, in the collapse of ways of living and in art (film, photography and the novel). I am currently working on a book project with the title "Moral Growth; A Study of Ethics in Experience". You can find her published work, and her website, via these links. https://www.springerprofessional.de/en/the-individual-in-pursuit-of-the-individual-a-murdochian-account/16322292 https://periodicos.sbu.unicamp.br/ojs/index.php/manuscrito/article/view/8654130/18852 https://www.evgeniamylonaki.net/

Joining Miles to discuss Murdoch's sixth novel are Dr Frances White and Lucy Oulton, both from the Iris Murdoch Research Centre at the University of Chichester.

In this episode Miles is joined by Justin Broackes (Brown, USA) and Meredith Trexler-Drees (Notre Dame, US) to discuss and celebrate Justin's edited collection 'Iris Murdoch, Philosopher' which was published in 2012. We range across the collection, the work it inspired including Meredith's latest monograph, and discuss Justin's latest work on Murdoch's Heidegger Manuscript and his commentary on the Sovereignty of Good, both forthcoming with OUP. You can find the collection here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/iris-murdoch-philosopher-9780198701200?cc=ro&lang=en& Justin is Professor of Philosophy at Brown, and his present research focuses on issues in metaphysics and the theory of perception, and their connections with the history of the subject. Special areas of interest include: Theory of Color and Color-Perception, from the Ancient Greeks to the present; Color-Blindness; and the Notion of Substance, and what became of that idea in the 17th and 18th centuries and after. In addition, he is working on a book on Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignty of Good and editing her monograph on Martin Heidegger. Meredith is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Kansas Wesleyan University. Her recent book, Aesthetic Experience and Moral Vision in Plato, Kant, and Murdoch: Looking Good/Being Good (Palgrave 2021) presents an extended version of Iris Murdoch’s moral vision. She is currently continuing her work on Murdoch and Kant at the Centre for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame. You can find her latest monograph here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-79088-2

In this episode I'm joined by Professor Larry Blum (U-Mass, USA) to discuss his recent entry on Murdoch in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. We discuss his early interest in Murdoch in the 70s, her connections with his philosophical life and the construction of the article, as well as the difficulties in reading Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. You can find the article here: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/murdoch/ You can find out more about Larry here: http://www.lawrenceblum.net/ You can hear more about his own journey on the wonderful Five Questions Podcast: https://anchor.fm/kieran-setiya