Tag: 20th century

Podcasts

Paper Knowledge: An Interview

Lisa Gitelman’s new book introduces readers to a way of thinking about documents as tools for creating bodily experience, and as material objects situated within hierarchies and relationships of labor. Working beautifully at the intersection of media studies and history, it curates a thoughtful and inspiring collection of moments from the expansion of a modern “scriptural economy.” You can listen to us talk about hit here. Continue reading Paper Knowledge: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

Heart of Buddha, Heart of China: An Interview

Jay Carter’s new book follows the life of one man as a way of opening a window into the lived history of twentieth-century China, yet it is less a traditional biography than a life of an emergent modern nation as told through the experiences of a single individual whose relationships embodied the history of that nation in flesh, bones, and blood. You can listen to our … Continue reading Heart of Buddha, Heart of China: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

The Nature of the Beasts: An Interview

A new understanding of animals was central to how Japanese people redefined their place in the natural world in the nineteenth century. In his recent book, Ian Miller explores this transformation and its reverberations in a fascinating study of the emergence of an “ecological modernity” at the Ueno Zoo in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We spoke about the book earlier this year, and you … Continue reading The Nature of the Beasts: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

Embryos Under the Microscope: An Interview

Jane Maienschein’s great new book traces the history of transformations in the observation and observability of the earliest stages of developing life. Embryos Under the Microscope is equally suited to both academic historians and a broader interested public, carefully curating the elements of the narrative such that they collectively inform broader debates over embryo-related policy in the contemporary United States. You can find our conversation about it here. Continue reading Embryos Under the Microscope: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

Meiji Restoration Losers: An Interview

There are so many reasons why I enjoyed talking with Michael Wert about his new book on the construction of memory around the “losers” of the Meiji Restoration, individuals and groups whose reputations suffered most in the late nineteenth-century transition from Tokugawa to imperial rule. Here are two of those reasons: (1) the book involves buried treasure, and (2) it consequently gave me an excuse to talk … Continue reading Meiji Restoration Losers: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi
Podcasts

How the Hippies Saved Physics: An Interview

David Kaiser’s new book takes readers into the “hazy, bong-filled excesses of the 1970s New Age movement” in order to explain and reveal the origins of some of the most transformative breakthroughs in twentieth-century quantum physics. It is an exceptionally well-written history of science that is also tremendous fun to read, and you can find our conversation about it here. Continue reading How the Hippies Saved Physics: An Interview

Unknown's avatarCarla Nappi