Soundings Project

Dixie Rising

admin — Sun, 06 Apr 1997 05:00:00 +0000

New York Times Atlanta correspondent Peter Applebome reads from and discusses his book Dixie Rising: How the South Is Shaping American Values, Politics and Culture. He addresses the many attempts at defining the South and Southerners and discusses race and labor … Continue reading →

Farewell, I’m Bound to Leave You

admin — Sun, 30 Mar 1997 05:00:00 +0000

Fred Chappell reads from and discusses Farewell, I’m Bound to Leave You, third in a proposed quartet of books set in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. The stories here depict strong-spirited, courageous women passing their legacy of history and family to the next generation of young men. At the time of this interview, Chappell taught at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

The Heroic Couplet; Children’s Literature (originally aired as Kids and Couplets)

admin — Sun, 23 Mar 1997 05:00:00 +0000

Paul Hunter [NHC Fellow 1985-86, 1995-96] describes the heroic couplet–”its rhyme, its reason, its artistic and ideological functions in English literature.” [Wayne Pond] Ulrich Knoepflmacher [NHC Fellow 1995-96] “talks about children’s literature and ‘cross-writing’ — a device by which authors … Continue reading →

Catherwood and Quee

admin — Sun, 16 Mar 1997 05:00:00 +0000

Jill McCorkle reads from and discusses her novel Carolina Moon, which “recounts the adventures of Queen Mary Stutts Purdy–Quee, to her friends–and her god-daughter Denise. It combines love story, murder mystery, and self-help satire.” [Wayne Pond]

In the second interview [15:00], novelist Marly Youmans reads from and discusses Catherwood, “a compelling story of a mother and daughter lost in the beautiful but dangerous American wilderness in the year 1676. Publishers Weekly calls Catherwood ‘subtle but magnetic…a historical romance (with time and place authentically and indelibly rendered) and a study of motherhood’s most primitive impulses.’” [Wayne Pond]

Green Imperialism

admin — Sun, 09 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Environmental historian Richard Grove discusses his book, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860, an account of environmentalism with special reference to islands as metaphors of Western thought.

At the time of this interview, Grove was a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (1995-96) and research associate at the Australian National University and coordinator of the Global Environmental History Unit at the University of Cambridge.

This episode of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.

Slang to Sibelius

admin — Sun, 02 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Connie Eble discusses her book, Slang and Sociability: In-Group Language College Students, an account of how college students talk and how their language reflects identity and social authority.

In the episode’s second interview [15:10], Robert Fradkin talks about his book, The Well-Tempered Announcer: A Pronunciation Guide to Classical Music, which according to Fradkin might be subtitled, How to Take the Foreignness out of Foreign Languages.

Storytellers

admin — Sun, 23 Feb 1997 00:00:00 +0000

John Ehle reads from and talks about his book, The Journey of August King, the story of an early 19th-century white farmer and a runaway slave girl whose paths and lives cross against the backdrops of social racism and individual conscience. This book is also the basis for a recently-released theatrical film.

George Garrett reads from and talks about his novel The King of Babylon Shall not Come Against You, which is about American society since the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968. Kirkus Reviews calls the book an entertaining colloquium on the state of the nation.

Computers and Culture

admin — Sun, 16 Feb 1997 00:00:00 +0000

As part of a continuing series of discussions on the history of information technology produced in collaboration with the Computerworld Smithsonian Awards Program, Soundings features innovator Brewster Kahle. His latest brainchild is the Internet Archive, a large-scale digital information repository. Among the Archive’s goals is keeping track of the technical innovations that are changing our understanding and use of digital information.

Culture and Work

admin — Sun, 09 Feb 1997 00:00:00 +0000

A talk about the Encyclopedia of African Culture and History. David Smith is a principal editor of the recently published five-volume set.

Julius Wilson talks about his most recent book, When Work Disappears.

Sojourner and Frederick Part 1

admin — Sun, 02 Feb 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Nell Irvin Painter discusses her new book, Sojourner Truth — a Life, a Symbol.

John Sekora discusses his new book, Frederick Douglass. [unpublished?]

Classrooms and Correctness

admin — Sun, 26 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

David Denby discusses his book Great Books: My Adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World.

Stanley Fish discusses his new book, Professional Correctness, which is an account of literary studies and political change.

Yahoo!

admin — Sun, 19 Jan 1997 00:00:00 +0000

To some of us, the World Wide Web offers a daily adventure of finding new sites and information. To others, the Web is a welter of words and images. To help make sense of it all, Jerry Yang, one of the inventors of Yahoo! — the Internet search engine — describes his pioneering work in organizing information on the Web.

Ancient Mosaics

admin — Sun, 12 Jan 1997 05:00:00 +0000

A conversation about Sepphoris in Galilee, an exhibition that recently opened at the N.C. Museum of Art. The exhibition focuses on the archaeological site of Sepphoris, an ancient city in Roman Palestine described by the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius as the ornament of all Galilee. Today, Sepphoris represents cultural crosscurrents between the modern and the ancient world. A conversation about the law in ancient Rome.

The Country I Remember

admin — Sun, 05 Jan 1997 05:00:00 +0000

David Mason reads from his latest collection of poems, a 12-part verse narrative. The Country I Remember recalls the life of one of Mason’s ancestors, Lt. John Mitchell, who was captured in the Civil War battle of Chickamauga in 1863. The poem also looks back to Mitchell’s daughter, Maggie, who recollects her own life in the shadow of her adventurous father. Joyce Carol Oates has praised the poem for its evocation of powerful and intimate voices.

The Cyber Agenda: Politics and the Power of the Internet

admin — Sun, 29 Dec 1996 05:00:00 +0000

Lawrence K. Grossman and James Kinsella discuss and describe how new technologies such as the Internet, online magazines, and interactive cable systems are replacing our shared experience of the front page, nightly news on TV, and conventional magazines. Grossman and Kinsella were participants in a 1996 conference at the National Humanities Center, “Deliberative Democracy in the Information Age,” part of the American Issues Forum.

Grossman is former president of PBS and author of The Electronic Republic: Reshaping American Democracy for the Information Age. At the time of this interview, Kinsella was general manager of MSNBC; he was founder of TIME magazine’s online newsfeed and Time Warner group’s Pathfinder online guide to its publications.

This episode of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.

Season’s Greetings

admin — Sun, 22 Dec 1996 00:00:00 +0000

Jerry Bledsoe reads from and talks about The Angel Doll, a poignant Christmas story based on his memories of childhood.

Lee Smith talks about her new novella, The Christmas Letters. In this story she uses all the Christmas letters she has ever received as inspiration for this vivid and funny, familiar and gossipy, sometimes heartbreaking, but unfiltered seasonal view of American marriage over the last 50 years.

After Thought

admin — Sun, 15 Dec 1996 00:00:00 +0000

Can computers think? According to cyberspace expert James Bailey, the power of intellectual development is in transition and computers will soon no longer be merely our tools but our intellectual companions. Bailey, was invited to talk about his new book, After Thought: The Computer Challenge to Human Intelligence, as a part of the series of discussions on the history, culture, and ethics of information technology with the cooperation of the Computerworld Smithsonian Awards Program.

The South Explained

admin — Sun, 08 Dec 1996 00:00:00 +0000

John Shelton and Dale Volberg Reed talk about their new book, 1001 Things Everyone Should Know about the South. In this book they combine precision, humor, and Confederate pride to explain America’s most intriguing but misunderstood region to the rest of the country. In a collection of verbal snapshots — a rich, irreverent, and idiosyncratic catalog of all things Southern — one reviewer says that they have produced 300 pages of prose as smooth and mellow as if it had been filtered through charcoal. No sunbelt sojourner should leave home without it.

The Enemies of Leisure

admin — Sun, 01 Dec 1996 00:00:00 +0000

John Gery discusses his latest books, a collection of poems, The Enemies of Leisure, and a monograph, Nuclear Annihilation and Contemporary American Poetry. Publishers Weekly says that John Gery’s examination of the struggle between leisure and work ? through layers of old-fashioned lyricism, political metaphor and real-life contexts, rendered with an edgy, hard-won elegance, is cause for wry rejoicing.

Writing Spaces

admin — Sun, 24 Nov 1996 00:00:00 +0000

In a continuing series of programs produced in collaboration with the Computerworld Smithsonian Awards Program and devoted to the history, culture, and ethics of information technology, Jay David Bolter, a classics scholar and cyberspace expert, is featured. His most recent book is Writing Space, an account of how computers are reshaping conventional notions about books, the nature of writing, and textual and visual literacy.