What does it mean to claim translation as an artform unto itself? In episode 76 of the Podcast for Social Research, recorded live at BISR Central while a wicked Nor’easter raged outside, BISR welcomed Ugly Duckling Presse, Barricade journal, and the Leipzig/Vienna-based collective TRANSLETTING for an evening of presentations and panel discussion addressed to the ethics, politics, and embodied practice of literary translation in the 21st century. With Walter Benjamin’s “Task of the...

In this edition of the Podcast for Social Research, recorded live before of a screening of Michael Haneke’s 2001 The Piano Teacher, BISR faculty Lauren K. Wolfe, Rebecca Ariel Porte, and Paige Sweet take up impinging mothers, absent fathers, and the variable affordances of literary and cinematic media, as they compare and interpret Haneke’s film and the eponymous novel by Elfriede Jelinek from which it was adapted. Topics touched on include: the reactionary milieu of 1980s Austria; ways of...

What does culture look like in a “sustainable” world? In episode of 10 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay, Isi, and guest Rebecca Ariel Porte examine the problems with “green” technology and consumption—which, it turns out, do little, nothing, or less than nothing to sustain the environment—and talk about the kinds of cultural forms, from literature to architecture to games, that are not only sustainable in terms of ecology and society but also aesthetically compelling and beautiful. How does...

In episode 74 of the Podcast for Social Research, BISR faculty Ajay Singh Chaudhary sits down with writer and artist Molly Crabapple to discuss his new book, The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World (Repeater). Live-recorded at P&T Knitwear in New York City, the conversation encompasses, among other things: the ubiquity of exhaustion (and how feelings of exhaustion might form the basis for new international solidarities); right-wing approaches to climate mitigation (and...

In episode 73 of the Podcast for Social Research, recorded live following a screening of Daniel Goldhaber’s cinematic adaptation of Andreas Malm’s polemic against pacifism How to Blow Up a Pipeline, BISR faculty Isi Litke, RH Lossin, and Ajay Singh Chaudhary explore the aesthetic, historical, and thorny practical terrain of violence as activist strategy and political tool in the face of climate crisis. With Goldhaber’s film as a jumping off point, they ask—and answer—questions like: how can...

In episode 72 of the Podcast for Social Research, Nara Roberta Silva, Rebecca Ariel Porte, Lauren K. Wolfe, Mark DeLucas, and Ajay Singh Chaudhary look back at their 2023 in cultural objects, or their 2023 experiences of objects washed up on present shores from other times, observing as they do how year-end compendia reveal surprising throughlines. A tally, in brief, of their preoccupations include: the itinerant dance party Laylit celebrating Arab/SWANA music, Argentina, 1985 (and why...

In the final episode for 2023, Isi, Ajay, and Joseph address the vexing nature of End-of-Year lists—and then go through the vexing process of assembling our own! Isi leads us through our year in cinema; Ajay, the year in games; and Joseph, the year in television, culminating in three top picks (and some honorable mentions) for the year in each category. Discussions range from the surprising success of cinematic restorations to films which shape, subvert, and show the optical unconscious;...

In episode 67 of Practical Criticism, Rebecca and Ajay surprise each other with songs and compositions drawn exclusively from their respective algorithmically-generated Spotify "Wrapped" playlists! Pieces include Erza Furman's "Can I Sleep in Your Brain"; Linked Horizon's "Guren No Yumiya" (from the Attack on Titan soundtrack); Lucy Dacus's "Night Shift"; The Smashing Pumpkins's "Mayonaise"; Monteverdi's "Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria"; Phish's "Cavern" (from Atlantic City, 10/30/2010); CeeLo...

Is a recipe a text? What happens when it’s translated, via cooking, into food? In episode 71 of the Podcast for Social Research, live-recorded at BISR Central, author Rebecca May Johnson joins BISR faculty Sophie Lewis and Rebecca Ariel Porte and Dilettante Army's Sara Clugage to read from her autotheoretical "epic in the kitchen" Small Fires and discuss the ways cooking relates to language, the body, knowledge, politics, power, and thinking. What's creative about cooking from a recipe? What...

In this very special crossover episode, the compound cast—Isi, Rebecca, and Ajay—are back together after hiatuses of various lengths to discuss the Talking Heads and A24's recent re-release of Jonathan Demme’s much-celebrated 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense. Kicking off with some reunion talk (to wit: research rabbit holes, early modern gardens, avant-garde architecture, automata, and, naturally, more Zelda), the trio then sets out to explore what it is that makes this film such a...

In episode seven of Faculty Spotlight, Mark and Lauren sit down to chat with two BISR faculty whose interests, scholarly and otherwise, dovetail in fascinating ways—Sophie Lewis, writer, critic, and leading scholar of family abolition and the politics of reproduction; and Paige Sweet, writer, practicing psychoanalyst, and founder of the experimental writing project Infinite Text Collective. Following Sophie’s personal reflections on her early experiences of the injustices in-built into...

In episode six of Faculty Spotlight, Mark and Lauren sit down with R.H. Lossin, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Warren Center of Studies in American History and a leading scholar of the theory and practice of sabotage. The three discuss: what led R.H. to the study of sabotage; why sabotage is more ordinary than you think; R.H.’s beef with the “universal library”—i.e., the total digitization of books; how readers have become producers; why Luddites have a bad rap; the meaning of “capitalist...

In this shortcast edition of the Podcast for Social Research, recorded live at BISR Central, BISR’s Rebecca Ariel Porte, Paige Sweet, and special guest Sonia Werner take an in-depth look back at Jamie Babbit’s 1999 queer cult classic But I’m a Cheerleader—a campy send-up of gay conversion therapy and compulsory heterosexuality. What are the “roots” of sexual desire? Rebecca, Paige, and Sonia parse the film’s playful mockery of the very notion—spoiler alert!—that sexuality (of any stripe) has...

Episode 70 of the Podcast for Social Research is a live recording of the concluding panel of BISR’s July symposium Frankfurt School and the Now: Critical Theory in the 21st Century. To what extent, 100 years later, can critical theory help us make sense of the particular conditions, crises, and prospective futures of the contemporary twenty first-century moment? Panelists Isi Litke, Barnaby Raine, Samantha Hill, Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Moira Weigel, and Jodi Dean consider big data and social...

In episode 69 of the Podcast for Social Research, live-recorded (like episodes 67 and 68) at BISR’s recent symposium Frankfurt School and the Now, BISR faculty Ajay Singh Chaudhary, Isi Litke, and Nathan Shields and guests Adam Shatz and Kate Wagner ask about the uses of critical theory for thinking about contemporary culture and cultural production, from Twitter to architecture to media mega-conglomerates like Disney. How does social media structure and even produce certain kinds of...

In episode 68 of the Podcast for Social Research, live-recorded at BISR’s recent symposium The Frankfurt School and the Now, panelists William Paris, Nathan Duford, Eduardo Mendieta, and Paul North tackle the question: What use does Frankfurt School critical theory, a thought movement composed largely of mid-20th-century white men, have for contemporary thinking about race, sex and gender? The conversation touches on, among other things, the Frankfurt School’s amalgam of Marx and Freud; the...

In episode 67 of the Podcast for Social Research, a live recording of the opening panel of two-day symposium Frankfurt School and the Now, BISR’s Ajay Singh Chaudhary and Rebecca Ariel Porte and guests Seyla Benhabib and Aaron Benanav answer the perennial question, What is Critical Theory? As they trace a line from Kant to Marx to the classic and latter-day Frankfurt School critical theorists, they grapple with a wide range of attending questions: How can we understand the concept of critique...

After a brief hiatus, Ajay and Isi are back with another episode of (Pop) Cultural Marxism! In episode 7, they sojourn amidst the splendid ruins of Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the much celebrated 2023 game from Nintendo’s EPD development group, directed and produced by Hidemaro Fujibayashi and Eiji Aonuma. Before delving into the series’ past and present iterations, the two spend some time catching up on what’s new at the movies—including the expected summer...

In episode 66 of the Podcast for Social Research, recorded live at BISR Central, Daniel M. Lavery, erstwhile “Prudence” of Slate’s popular advice column, dropped by to discuss his latest book—a collection of “greatest hits” from his tenure as “Prudie,” interspersed with reflections on the uses and affordances of the advice column, the role and persona of the advice-giver, and the varieties of human experience, from the sacred to the profane, that the advice column offers up to view. Danny sat...

In episode 65 of the Podcast for Social Research, recorded live at BISR Central, songwriter, improviser, and ecumenical instrumentalist Wendy Eisenberg took to the “stage” for an intimate solo performance of new acoustic work. They then sat down with BISR faculty Jude Webre for a wide-ranging discussion of their musical formation, theoretical inspirations, and promiscuous reading habits. Topics touched on include being the “type of guy” who’s inspired by Tom Verlaine; implicating others in...

In episode five of Faculty Spotlight, Lauren and Mark sit down with Joseph Earl Thomas, BISR faculty and author the acclaimed memoir Sink. The three discuss: memoir-writing and the art of "un-knowing" writing; literary realism in the 21st century; having, or faking, a "world picture"; how, with Sylvia Wynter, we can think trans-culturally; Gayl Jones and the art of literary maximalism (and why it's not just for "white boys"); why "resignification" can't change the material world; and what...

Episode 64 of the Podcast for Social Research is a live-recording of mezzo-soprano Lucy Dhegrae's sound lecture, Music and Trauma, recently delivered at BISR Central. Between performances of selections from her acclaimed Processing Series, including the frenetic "Dithyramb" and the ethereal "No," Dhegrae talks to BISR faculty Paige Sweet and Danielle Drori about the interrelationship—the push-pull—between trauma, body, psyche, and sound—particularly in the wake of traumatic experience. What...

In episode 63 of the Podcast for Social Research, a live-recording of our Wednesday, May 3rd event Cop City: Police, Protest, and Social Control, BISR faculty Nara Roberta Silva, Patrick Blanchfield, Geo Maher, and guests Natasha Lennard and Kamau Franklin examine and contextualize the planned construction of "Cop City"—the Atlantan “state-of-the-art public safety training academy” that features classrooms, firing ranges, and a “mock city” in which police trainees can practice the methods of...