Genealogies of Modernity

About Genealogies of Modernity

Season 2 of Genealogies of Modernity is a limited series from the Genealogies of Modernity Project and Ministry of Ideas. Each episode takes up a well-worn story about what it means to be modern and how we got here, and then challenges that narrative with recent humanities scholarship. Genealogies of Modernity illuminates lesser-known pathways to the present and unearths overlooked resources from the past for flourishing in the future. Genealogies of Modernity is a project of Beatrice Institute and Collegium Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture, with major support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. For responses to the series, teaching aids, as well as artwork and videos, visit genealogiesofmodernity.org. Ryan McDermott, Producer and Genealogies of Modernity Project Director . Maria Devlin McNair, Senior Producer and Script Editor Jack Pombriant, Sound Designer Zachary Davis, Executive Producer (Ministry of Ideas) Special thanks: Dan Cheely, James DeMasi, Peter Fristedt, Max Glider, Jake Grefenstette, Darrah McDermott, Jess Sweeney, University of Pittsburgh Department of English and Humanities Center, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture Season 1 was written and produced by Ena Gojak and Owen Joyce-Coughlan with the support of Collegium Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture.

Publisher

Ryan McDermott

Category

history · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

21 Oct 2019

Latest episode

20 Dec 2023

Latest episodes

12 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   20 Dec 2023

   The Enemy of Morality Is Not Modernity, It’s Me

   The great English essayist and linguist Samuel Johnson was writing during the Enlightenment – the period some historians identify as the beginning of the modern age. American author and philosopher David Foster Wallace worked more than two centuries later, in the “post-modern” style. But these two writers shared a common problem: once modernity fractured society’s sense of shared moral norms, how could you write persuasively about morality? This episode looks at how Johnson and Wallace attempted to solve this problem; what struggles plagued their solutions; and why our modern, pluralistic landscape makes their work more valuable than ever. Researcher, writer, and episode producer: Kirsten Hall Herlin (https://genealogiesofmodernity.org/people) Featured Scholars: Walter Jackson Bate (1918-1999), Professor of English, Harvard University Matt Bucher (https://www.mattbucher.com/), Managing Editor, The Journal of David Foster Wallace Studies Jack Lynch (https://jacklynch.net/About/), Professor of English, Rutgers University D. T. Max (https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/d-t-max/page/4), Staff Writer, The New Yorker Special thanks: Dutton Kearney

2. 

   13 Dec 2023

   A Genealogy of Gun Violence

   The problem of gun violence is as old as guns themselves. According to historian Priya Satia, America’s present epidemic of gun violence has its roots in the industrial revolution. Satia tells the story of British gun-maker Samuel Galton, Jr., who was called to task by his Quaker community for manufacturing rifles. As a professed pacifist, Galton had to wrestle with the large-scale uses to which his weapons were put. So where do we look for answers about how to regulate guns? Some claim the answer has to lie in the past, in the nation’s founding documents. Others argue that novel technologies demand novel solutions. Solving the problem of gun violence may be a case where we need to make a strong modernity claim. Researcher, writer, and episode producer: Christopher Nygren, Associate Professor, History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh Featured Scholars: Catherine Fletcher (https://catherinefletcher.info/), Professor of History, Manchester Metropolitan University Priya Satia, Professor of History, Stanford University Special thanks: James DeMasi, Chloé Hogg, Jonathan Lyonhart, Pernille Røge, Jennifer Waldron, Catherine Yanko

3. 

   6 Dec 2023

   A Medieval Anti-Racist

   What if racism shared an origin with opposition to racism? What if the condemnation of injustice gave rise both to an early form of anti-racism and to the racial hierarchies that haunt the modern era? Rolena Adorno, David Orique, María Cristina Ríos Espinosa tell the story of how Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican missionary to New Spain, came to racial consciousness in the presence of slavery. His intellectual rebellion spurred slavery’s apologists to more strident and sinister modes of defense – but also laid a lasting Christian groundwork for the fight against racial injustice. Researcher, writer, and episode producer: Terence Sweeney, Assistant Teaching Professor, Honors College, Villanova University Featured Scholars: Rolena Adorno, Sterling Professor Emerita of Spanish, Yale University María Cristina Ríos Espinosa, Professor of Arts, Humanities, and Culture, University of Sor Juana’s Cloister, Mexico City David Orique, Professor of History, Providence College Special thanks: Chiyuma Elliott, Michael Sawyer

4. 

   29 Nov 2023

   Picturing Race in Colonial Mexico

   Race is sometimes treated as a biological fact. It is actually a modern invention. But for this concept to gain power, its logic had to be spread – and made visible. Art historian Ilona Katzew tells the story of how Spanish colonists of modern-day Mexico developed theories of blood purity and used the casta paintings – featuring family groups with differing skin pigmentations set in domestic scenes – to represent these theories as reality. She also shares the strange challenges of curating these paintings in the present, when the paintings’ insidious ideologies have been debunked, but when mixed-race viewers also appreciate images that testify to their presence in the past. Researcher, writer, and episode producer: Christopher Nygren, Associate Professor, History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh Featured Scholar: Ilona Katzew, Curator and Head of Latin American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art Special thanks: Elise Lonich Ryan, Nayeli Riano, Jennifer Josten

5. 

   22 Nov 2023

   Jamestown and the Myth of the Sovereign Family

   What is the “traditional American family?” Popular images from the colonial and pioneer past suggest an isolated and self-sufficient nuclear family as the center of American identity and the source of American strength. But the idea of early American self-sufficiency is a myth. Caro Pirri tells the story of the precarious Jamestown settlement and how its residents depended on each other and on Indigenous Americans for survival. Early American history can help us imagine new kinds of interdependent and multi-generational family structures as an antidote to the modern crisis of loneliness and alienation. Researcher, writer, and episode producer: Caro Pirri, Assistant Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh Featured Scholars: Jean Feerick, Professor of English, John Carroll University Steven Mentz, Professor of English, St. John’s University Special thanks: Molly Warsh For bibliography, teaching aids, and other supporting media, please visit: https://genealogiesofmodernity.org/podcast-season-ii-ep-iv

6. 

   18 Nov 2023

   What Is Genealogy?

   Genealogy, in Charles Darwin’s terms, is the study of “descent with modification.” Taken as an analogy for the study of history, genealogy can guard against the potential dangers of claiming modernity. Against the effort to erase the past, genealogy asserts that our ancestry will always be with us. Against the effort to master the past, genealogy reminds us that our descendants have the freedom to create new futures. Sociologist Alondra Nelson tells the story of how African Americans have used DNA-informed genealogy to recover African identity despite slavery’s erasure of family history. Genealogical thinking can help us shape a disposition to the past that recognizes the legacy of injustice while also fostering human flourishing in the future. Researcher, writer, and episode producer: Ryan McDermott, Associate Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh; Senior Research Fellow, Beatrice Institute Featured Scholars: Alondra Nelson (http://www.alondranelson.com/), Harold F. Linder Professor of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study Caro Pirri, Assistant Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh Michael Puett (https://scholar.harvard.edu/puett), Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology, Harvard University Special thanks to: Eduard Fiedler, Christopher Firestone, Thomas A. Lewis, Thomalind Martin Polite, Sara Trevisan

7. 

   18 Nov 2023

   What Is Modernity?

   We often think of modernity as a distinct time period in history – one that is said to start at different places, but which always includes us. Yet people have been claiming to be modern since at least the third century BC. Harvard scholar Michael Puett takes us back to ancient China, when a series of emperors laid claim to  modernity in order to consolidate their rule. Puett argues that modernity is best understood not as a period on a timeline but as a claim to freedom from the past. By recognizing how “modernity claims” try either to erase the past or to master it for our own uses, we can appreciate what is at stake in our own invocations of “modernity." Researcher, writer, and episode producer: Ryan McDermott, Associate Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh; Senior Research Fellow, Beatrice Institute Featured Scholar: Michael Puett, Professor of Chinese History and Anthropology, Harvard University Special thanks: Travis DeCook, Rokhaya Dieng, Gina Elia, Thomas A. Lewis For bibliography, teaching aids, and other supporting media, please visit: https://genealogiesofmodernity.org/podcast-season-ii-ep-ii

8. 

   18 Nov 2023

   Climbing the Mountains of Modernity

   We all know many stories about how modernity came about. But what does it mean to be “modern?” This episode comes at the question through the test case of mountain climbing and rock climbing. Claims to becoming modern through climbing often point back to Italian humanist Francesco Petrarch’s ascent of Mt. Ventoux in 1336, a climb that made him, according to many historians, “the first modern man.” But Petrarch was by no means the first person to climb Mt. Ventoux, and his own account is, if anything, counter-modern. By surveying evidence of much earlier climbing in Europe and pre-contact North America, the episode argues that humans have always been climbing mountains and scaling cliffs for a wide variety of reasons. Only recently did they start to think of these achievements as making themselves “modern.” It turns out that to claim to be modern is one of the most modern things you can do. Researcher, writer, and episode producer: Ryan McDermott, Associate Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh; Senior Research Fellow, Beatrice Institute Featured Scholars: Shannon Arnold Boomgarden, Director of Range Creek Field Station, University of Utah Larry Coats, Career-line Associate Professor of Geography, University of Utah Peter Hansen, Professor of History, Worcester Polytechnic Institute Dawn Hollis, Independent Historian Special thanks to: Jake Grefenstette, John-Paul Heil, Jason König, Michael Krom, Michael Puett For bibliography, teaching aids, and other supporting media, please visit: https://genealogiesofmodernity.org/podcast-season-ii-ep-i Genealogies of Modernity is a limited series from the Genealogies of Modernity Project (http://www.genealogiesofmodernity.org/) and Ministry of Ideas. Each episode takes up a well-worn story about what it means to be modern and how we got here, and then challenges that narrative with recent humanities scholarship. Genealogies of Modernity illuminates lesser-known pathways to the present and unearths overlooked resources from the past for flourishing in the future. Genealogies of Modernity is a project of Beatrice Institute and Collegium Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture, with major support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. For responses to the series, teaching aids, as well as artwork and videos, visit genealogiesofmodernity.org. Ryan McDermott, Producer and Genealogies of Modernity Project Director . Maria Devlin McNair, Senior Producer and Script Editor Jack Pombriant, Sound Designer Zachary Davis, Executive Producer (Ministry of Ideas) Special thanks: Dan Cheely, James DeMasi, Peter Fristedt, Max Glider, Jake Grefenstette, Darrah McDermott, Jess Sweeney, University of Pittsburgh Department of English and Humanities Center, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture

9. 

   21 Oct 2019

   Chris Nygren – Giorgio Vasari and Genealogies in Art History

   This week’s episode is based on Chris Nygren’s session at the summer school in 2018, and a follow-up interview we conducted with him afterwards. Chris is an assistant professor of Art History at the University of Pittsburgh. He discusses the genealogy of art written by Giorgio Vasari in 16th century Florence, and the ways that it is taken to be normative in what constitutes ‘modernity’ in art even into the 21st century.

10. 

    21 Oct 2019

    Eileen Reeves - Galileo and Early Modern Science

    This week’s episode is based on Eileen Reeves’ session at the summer school in 2018, and a follow-up interview we conducted with her afterwards. Eileen is a professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. She speaks to us about the new ground that natural philosophy was broaching in the 17th century, with an emphasis on Galileo, and questions the usefulness of the monolithic concept of ‘The Scientific Revolution’ in telling that story.

11. 

    21 Oct 2019

    Karen Detlefsen - Women in Early Modern Philosophy

    This week’s episode is based on an interview we conducted with Karen Detlefsen, professor of Early Modern Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. Karen takes us through the so-called ‘standard narrative’ of early modern philosophy and illustrates how it serves to exclude very many important thinkers from the 17th and 18th centuries.

12. 

    21 Oct 2019

    Ryan McDermott - On Genealogy

    The first episode of the podcast is based on Ryan McDermott’s session at the summer school in 2018, and a follow-up interview we conducted with him afterwards. Ryan is a professor of medieval and reformation English literature at the University of Pittsburgh, and one of the originators of the Genealogies of Modernity project as a whole. We discuss with Ryan the many and varied senses that genealogy has as a term and methodology in the humanities, before looking at some particular examples of genealogical thinking which he has found important in his own work.

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Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.5 / 5

11 ratings

Spotify

4.8 / 5

8 ratings

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Books guests

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