I can point you to mountains of research about prisons. I can also recommend at least a dozen Netflix documentaries, and highlight a handful of radical activists and scholars. There’s a lot of intellectual work doneabout prison.But what about intellectual work donein prison? As part of this week’s “ideas in strange places” theme, we want to play you this episode from right near when we started Darts and Letters, where we ask what kind of radical thought can come from the extreme oppression prisoners endure. We’ll be back with brand new episodes on September 18th, until then we’re replaying the best of our catalogue with a different theme each week. In Prison Notebooks… First, in the opening essay, hostGordon Katicdiscusses the long history of radical prison writing.From Thoreau to Gramsci, MLK, Oscar Wilde, Eugene Debs, Emma Goldman, and even Wittgenstein. Next (@5:36),Chandra Bozelkoserved 6 years, three months, and 11 days in a women’s prison in Connecticut. While inside, she started an award-winning newspaper column. She tells us what writing did for her while inside, and what everyday prison intellectualism really looks like. Then (@42:30),Justin Pichéedits one of the most amazing academic journals you will ever come across. It’s called theJournal of Prisoners on Prisons. It has been around for over thirty years. In each and every edition, you will see brilliant scholarly work—it just so happens that this work is written by prisoners themselves. —————————-SUPPORT THE SHOW—————————- You can support the show for free by following or subscribing onSpotify,Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we’d really appreciate you clicking that button. If you want to do a little more we would love if you chip in. You can find us onpatreon.com/dartsandletters. Patrons get content early, and occasionally there’s bonus material on there too. —————————-CONTACT US————————- To stay up to date, follow us onTwitterandInstagram. If you’d like to write us, email darts@citedmedia.ca or tweetGordondirectly. —————————-CREDITS—————————- This episode of Darts and Letters was produced byJay Cockburn. Research and support fromDavid MoscropandAddye Susnick. Our theme song and music was created byMike Barber, and our graphic design was created byDakota Koop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
Labor's End: How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work(U Illinois Press, 2021) traces the discourse around automation from its origins in the factory to its wide-ranging implications in political and social life. As Jason Resnikoff shows, the termautomationexpressed the conviction that industrial progress meant the inevitable abolition of manual labor from industry. But the real substance of the term reflected industry's desire to hide an intensification of human work--and labor's loss of power and protection--behind magnificent machinery and a starry-eyed faith in technological revolution. The rhetorical power of the automation ideology revealed and perpetuated a belief that the idea of freedom was incompatible with the activity of work. From there, political actors ruled out the workplace as a site of politics while some of labor's staunchest allies dismissed sped-up tasks, expanded workloads, and incipient deindustrialization in the name of technological progress. A forceful intellectual history,Labor's Endchallenges entrenched assumptions about automation's transformation of the American workplace. Jason Resnifoff is Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Groningen (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) in the Netherlands. Tom Discenna is Professor of Communication at Oakland University whose work examines issues of academic labor and communicative labor more broadly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
Behold the history of a film so scandalous, so outrageous, so explosive it disappeared from print for over a quarter century! A film so dangerous, half its cast and crew met their demise bringing eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes’ final cinematic vision to life! Starring All-American legend John Wayne in full Fu Manchu make-up as Mongol madman Genghis Khan! Featuring sultry seductress Susan Hayward as his lover! Killing John Wayne(Lyons Press, 2021) is the true story ofThe Conqueror(1956), the worst movie ever made. Filmed during the dark underbelly of the 1950s—the Cold War—when nuclear testing in desolate southwestern landscapes was a must for survival, the very same landscapes were where exotic stories set in faraway lands could be made. Just 153 miles from the St. George, Utah, set, nuclear bombs were detonated regularly at Yucca Flat and Frenchman Flat in Nevada, providing a bizarre and possibly deadly background to an already surreal moment in cinema history. This book tells the full story of the making ofThe Conqueror, its ignominious aftermath, and the radiation induced cancer that may have killed John Wayne and many others. Ryan Uytdewilligen attended Lethbridge College in Alberta and earned a degree in Broadcast Journalism, leading to work in radio anchoring, reporting, and media coordinating for the prestigious Vancouver International Film Festival. After writing-producing his first short film,Tea Time(2014), he optioned two feature film scripts and has worked as a script doctor/writer for hire. In 2016, he published his first non-fiction work, a film history examination called101 Most Influential Coming of Age Movies.Ryan currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia. He would like to express his sympathy to everyone who lost a loved one that worked onThe Conqueror. Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcastFifteen-Minute Film Fanatics(Twitter @15MinFilm). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
The era of modern warfare introduced in World War II presented the Allied Powers with one of the more complicated logistical challenges of the century: how to develop an extensive support network that could supply and maintain a vast military force comprised of multiple services and many different nations thousands of miles away from their home ports. The need to keep tanks rolling, airplanes flying, and food and aid in continuous supply was paramount to defeating the Nazi regime. InWar of Supply: World War II Allied Logistics in the Mediterranean(University Press of Kentucky, 2022), Dr. David Dworak takes readers behind the scenes and breaks down the nuances of strategic operations for each of the great Mediterranean military campaigns between 1942 and the conclusion of World War II on May 8, 1945. Dr. Dworak gives readers a glimpse behind the curtain, to show how the vast administrative bureaucracy developed by the Allies waged a literal "war of matériel" that gave them a distinct, strategic advantage over the Axis powers. From North Africa to Southern France, their continued efforts and innovation developed the framework that helped create and maintain the theater of war and, ultimately, paved the path to victory. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
Since slavery, Black women have struggled to liberate themselves from racism and sexism. Yet despite these hurdles and under the most difficult circumstances, they managed to achieve greatness.Trailblazers: Black Women Who Helped Make America Great, American Firsts/American Icons(2leaf Press, 2021)shines a light on these their accomplishments, which often led to widespread cultural change.Trailblazersis a six-volume series that examines the lives and careers of over four hundred brilliant women from the eighteenth century to the present who blazed uncharted paths in every conceivable way. EachTrailblazersvolume is organized into several sections. Along with biographical information and powerful photographs, David provides a historical timeline for each section--written from the viewpoint of Black women--that maps out the significance of the featured women that follow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https:...
On November 19, 1895, eighteen year old Lloyd Montgomery murdered his parents and their neighbor at his home in rural Linn County, Oregon. InPioneering Death:The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century Oregon(U Washington Press, 2022), Peter Boag, professor of history at Washington State University, tries to explain how this horrific crime came to pass. Boag explains that rural America in the late nineteenth century was in a state of crisis, and rural boyhood in particular was an experience fraught with both symbolism and peril. With an ongoing economic crisis and with violence and death everywhere, young American boys in places like Linn County found themselves with fewer future prospects and more expectations upon their shoulders than ever. The Montgomery murder thus spoke directly to the fears and the hopes that many Americans had for their nation's future, as well as to the inherentviolence at the core of the American Western experience. Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistan...
InThe Emancipation Circuit: Black Activism Forging a Culture of Freedom(Duke UP, 2022)Thulani Davis provides a sweeping rethinking of Reconstruction by tracing how the four million people newly freed from bondage created political organizations and connections that mobilized communities across the South. Drawing on the practices of community they developed while enslaved, freedpeople built new settlements and created a network of circuits through which they imagined, enacted, and defended freedom. This interdisciplinary history shows that these circuits linked rural and urban organizations, labor struggles, and political culture with news, strategies, education, and mutual aid. Mapping the emancipation circuits, Davis shows the geography of ideas of freedom---circulating on shipping routes, via army maneuvers, and with itinerant activists---that became the basis for the first mass Black political movement for equal citizenship in the United States. In this work, she reconfigures und...
As a way to comment on a person’s style or taste, the word “tacky” has distinctly southern origins, with its roots tracing back to the so-called “tackies” who tacked horses on South Carolina farms prior to the Civil War. The Tacky South (LSU Press, 2022) presents eighteen fun, insightful essays that examine connections between tackiness and the American South, ranging from nineteenth-century local color fiction and the television seriesMurder, She Wroteto red velvet cake and the ubiquitous influence of Dolly Parton. Charting the gender, race, and class constructions at work in regional aesthetics,The Tacky Southexplores what shifting notions of "tackiness" reveal about US culture as a whole and the role that region plays in addressing national and global issues of culture and identity. Editors Katharine Burnett and Monica Carol Miller have created aSpotify playlistcelebrating tackiness. Follow them on Twitter @thetackysouth or visit theirwebsite. Carrie Helms Tippenis Associate...
Darts and Letters is a show about the politics of ideas, and this week we’re searching for progressive politics in strange places… such as pro-wrestling. There have been 37 Wrestlemanias. That’s a lot of wrestling. And a lot of entertainment for the millions of people who enjoy watching wrestling, including our host, Gordon Katic. Maybe you’re a fan, maybe not. Fans and non-fans alike have often dismissed wrestling as frivolous. But there’s more to wrestling than meets the tombstone piledriver. Pro wrestling is like a Rosetta Stone for our politics; It brought usone President, and arecent pollsuggests it might give us another. On this episode, we jump from the top rope into the wild, layered, complex world of pro wrestling and the folks who love it. This is part of the week’s theme of “ideas in strange places”. Darts and Letters is doing a different theme each week until we launch the new season on September 18. First (@10:46),Steve and Larsonare the hosts ofGoing in Raw: A ...
Patti Smith arrived in New York City at the end of the Age of Aquarius in search of work and purpose. What she found—what she fostered—was a cultural revolution. Through her poetry, her songs, her unapologetic vocal power, and her very presence as a woman fronting a rock band, she kicked open a door that countless others walked through. No other musician has better embodied the “nothing-to-hide” rawness of punk, nor has any other done more to nurture a place in society for misfits of every stripe. Why Patti Smith Matters(University of Texas Press, 2022)is the first book about the iconic artist written by a woman. The veteran music journalistCaryn Rosecontextualizes Smith’s creative work, her influence, and her wide-ranging and still-evolving impact on rock and roll, visual art, and the written word. Rose goes deep into Smith’s oeuvre, from her first album,Horses, to acclaimed memoirs operating at a surprising remove from her music. The portrait of a ceaseless inventor,Why Patt...