AUDIO LIBRARY

Film Forum—Schools in Film
Schools provide the setting for a wide variety of films. There are cult classics like Fast Times at Ridgemont High — and the films keep coming. Recent releases include School of Rock and Elephant. What kind of place is school in the movies?
Guests:
Jonathan Miller — Teaches film studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology and is a film critic for Chicago Public Radio
Ellen Seiter — Media scholar at the University of Southern California and author of the books, Television and New Media Audiences, and Sold Separately: Children and Parents in Consumer Culture
originally broadcast December 12, 2003

The Meanings of Suicide
Suicide is a personal and private tragedy. But taking one's life can also be a cultural and political act.
Guests:
Margaret Higonnet — Teaches at the University of Connecticut is the author of Nurses at the Front: Writing the Wounds of the Great War and co-author of the forthcoming book, The Welcome Guest: The Debate on Suicide in Eighteenth-Century France
Jeffrey Timmons — Teaches at Virginia Wesleyan College and has written about suicide in the recent article "A Fatal Remedy: Eighteenth-Century Discourse on Melancholy and Murder"
originally broadcast January 13, 2004

Pornography and Culture
The glut of sexually explicit material on the internet is just one example of pornography's move from the seedy sidelines to the center of American culture.
Guests:
Linda Williams — Directs the film studies program at the University of California, Berkeley, author of Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible, and the editor of the forthcoming anthology, Porn Studies
Allison Pease — Professor of English at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York and author of
Modernism, Mass Culture, and the Aesthetics of Obscenity
originally broadcast February 3, 2004

Thrill Seeking
From mountain climbing to hang gliding to bungee jumping, some people just get a kick out of risking their necks.
Guests:
Elaine Freedgood — Literary scholar at New York University and author of the book, Victorian Writing about Risk: Imagining a Safe England in a Dangerous World
Jonathan Simon — Legal scholar at the University of California, Berkeley and co-editor of the book, Embracing Risk: The Changing Culture of Insurance and Responsibility
originally broadcast February 3, 2004

Is America a Religious Nation?
With most Presidential candidates discussing the connection between their politics and their faith, religion is not limited to the sidelines of American public life.
Jon Butler — On faculty at Yale University, co-director of the
Center for Religion and American Life, and author of Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People
Thomas Engeman — Political theorist at Loyola University and author of the forthcoming book, Protestantism and the American Founding
originally broadcast January 19, 2004

Folk Music in America
From Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan, folk music has been an important part of America's cultural and political life.
Guests:
Bryan Garman — Author of A Race of Singers: Whitman's Working Class Hero from Guthrie to Springsteen
William Roy — Sociologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is at work on a book about American folk music, social movements, and race entitled Reds, Whites, and Blues

Trying Saddam Hussein
Details are emerging about the expected trial of Saddam Hussein.
Guests:
Eric Posner — Legal scholar at the University of Chicago law school and co-author of the forthcoming article "Transitional Justice as Ordinary Justic"
Ruth Wedgwood — Director of the international law and organization program at John Hopkins University in Washington D.C. and author of the article "Post Conflict Reconstruction" which appeared in the American Journal of International Law

Presidential Politics and Vietnam
Who did what—and where—during the Vietnam War has become an issue in the presidential election.
Guests:
John Hellmann — Literary scholar at the Ohio State University in Lima, Ohio and author of American Myth and the Legacy of Vietnam
Jeremi Suri — Historian at the University of Wisconsin, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and author of Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente

Youth
They're the target of advertising, pop culture, and even politics. Why have youth become so central to modern life?
Guests:
Jed Esty — Literary scholar at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and author of the book A Shrinking Island: Modernism and National Culture in England. His forthcoming book is Empire of Youth: The Bildungsroman and Colonial Modernity.
Richard Jobs — Historian at Pacific University in Forest Grove, Oregon. His forthcoming book is Riding the New Wave: Youth and the Rejuvenation of France After World War II.

Imagining China
China is seen by the West as both an essential trade partner and a potential threat. For much of its history, the United States has entertained hopes that China would embrace Western style democracy but those expectations have been repeatedly dashed. How do these past conceptions shape our ideas of China today?
Guests:
Richard Madsen — Sociologist at the University of California and author of China and the American Dream: A Moral Inquiry
Kenneth Pomeranz — Historian at University of California and author of the book The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy
originally broadcast December 17, 2003

Film Forum—Films about Fate
The films Twenty-One Grams and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind both portray characters who are brought together by fate.
Guests:
Brad Prager — Film scholar in the department of German and Russian studies at the University of Missouri, Columbia. His writing about German cinema include the recent article "Werner Herzog's Hearts of Darkness: Fitzcarraldo, Scream of Stone and Beyond."
Jonathan Miller — Teaches film studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology here in Chicago and film critic for Chicago Public Radio

American Manufacturing
The manufacturing sector was once a dominant force in the American economy and it fueled the growth of the middle class.
Guests:
Kenneth Lipartito — Historian at Florida International University, and editor of the journal Enterprise and Society: The International Journal of Business History
Gary Herrigel — Political scientist at the University of Chicago and a fellow at the Industrial Performance Centerat the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is co-editor of Americanization and its Limits: Reworking US Technology and Management in Postwar Europe and Japan.

The Cosmopolitan
Cosmopolitanism, or the ability to travel, work, and reside across cultures, is both a promise and a peril of the global world.
Guests:
Mica Nava — Teaches cultural studies at the University of East London in England, is the author of Changing Cultures: Feminism, Youth and Consumerism, and of the forthcoming book is Visceral Cosmopolitanism and Everyday Culture: Imaginaries, Practices and the Normalization of Difference in 20th century England
Rebecca Walkowitz — Literary scholar at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Walkowitz is the co-editor of The Turn to Ethics. She's currently at work on a book about the aesthetics of cosmopolitanism in twentieth-century fiction and cultural theory.

Vulgarity
With Howard Stern's radio hijinks, vulgarity—and the efforts to police it—are once again at the center of public debate.
Guests:
Rochelle Gurstein — Author of The Repeal of Reticence: A History of America's Cultural and Legal Struggles Over Free Speech, Obscenity, Sexual Liberation and Modern Art
Jeffrey Sconce — Media studies scholar at Northwestern University
in Evanston, Illinois. He's at work on an edited volume entitled Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style and Politics.

Mob Violence
The recent attacks against American citizens in Falluja, Iraq were described as mob violence. What makes mob action different from other forms of aggression?
Guests:
Fitzhugh Brundage — Historian at the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill and author of Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930. He is also the editor of Under Sentence of Death: Essays on Lynching in the South.
Clark McPhail — Sociologist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and author of The Myth of the Madding Crowd. His recent work on protest and mobilization includes the article, Who Counts and How: Estimating the Size of Protests.

Globalization
Global economic integration is generating criticism and debate around the world.
Guests:
Robert Wade — Professor of political economy at the London school of economics in London, England, and author of Governing the Market: Economic Theory and The Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization
Jagdish Bhagwati — Economist at Columbia University in New York City and author of In Defense of Globalization

The Mind and Thought
We all understand that humans are capable of thought. But what does it mean to think?
Guests:
Stephen Jacyna — Historian of science at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London in London, England. He is the author of Lost Words: Narratives of Language and the Brain, 1825-1926.
Sebastian Rodl — Philosopher at the University of Leipzig. Rodl's work on language and thought includes the recent article, "Semantic Structure of Belief and Meaning."

Human Evolution
Scientists are claiming that a mutation in the gene controlling jaw size led to early humans branching off from other primates.
Guests:
Bruce Lahn — Geneticist at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the study of mammalian development and evolution, with an emphasis on the brain.
Kenneth Weiss — Biological anthropologist at Penn State University in University Park, Pennsylvania and co-author of Genetics and the Logic of Evolution

Museums and Displays of Knowledge
Whether in science, nature, or human cultures, museums attempt to transmit knowledge through the presentation of objects and information.
Guests:
Alison Griffiths — Film historian at Baruch College, City University of New York and author of the book, Wondrous Difference: Cinema, Anthropology, and Turn-of-the-Century Visual Culture
Harriet Ritvo — Historian of natural history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is the author of The Platypus and the Mermaid, and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination, and is currently at work on the forthcoming book The Dawn of Green: Manchester, Thirlmere, and the Victorian Environment.

The Politics of September 11th
With the Presidential election drawing near, September 11, 2001, has become a powerful and volatile political issue.
Guests:
Peter Feaver — Political scientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina and co-author of Choosing Your Battles: American Civil-Military Relations and the Use of Force
Daron Shaw — Political scientist at The University of Texas at Austin. He has written extensively on campaigns and elections.

Film Forum—European Movies about America
In many films, from Paris, Texas to the forthcoming Dogville, European directors turn their cameras on America. What do their films reveal?
Guests:
Natasa Durovicova — Writes about the connection between European and American film, including the recent article, "The Paris Lot: Franco-American Film Relations in the Early 1930s," and editor of 91st Meridian, a literary journal based at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa
Peter Lev — Teaches in the department of electronic media and film at Towson University in Towson, Maryland and the author of The Euro-American Cinema which explores the economic and cultural links between European and American filmmaking

Allegiance and Democracy
Rituals of loyalty, like reciting the Pledge of Allegiance or flying the flag, abound in our country. What value do they hold?
Guests:
Mathew Crenson — Political scientist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland and co-author of Downsizing Democracy: How America Sidelined its Citizens and Privitized its Public
Gary Gerstle — Historian at the University of Maryland in College Park and author of American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century