High Theory

Active
Has guests
High Theory
Categories
Philosophy Society & Culture Arts Books Education
Audience & Performance Metrics
480 - 800 listeners Neutral 5.0 rating 32 reviews 158 episodes USA
Monetization Metrics
30s Ad: $15 - $19 60s Ad: $18 - $22 CPM Category: Education
Socials metrics & links
Podcast Links
High Theory is a produced and edited by Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu, two tired academics trying to save critique from itself, along with two amazing collaborators, Júlia Irion Martins and Nathan Kim. In this podcast, we get high on the substance of theory, and we try to explain difficult ideas from the academy with irreverence. You can learn more about us on our website, or find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Producers, Hosts, and Production Team

No producer information available yet. Click "Find producers" to search for the production team.

Emails, Phones, and Addresses

Contact Page Emails

Emails
Phone Numbers

No phone numbers found.

Addresses

No addresses found.

Form

A contact form is available on this page. You can fill out the form at this link.

General Website Emails

No website emails found.

Externally Sourced Emails

No external emails found.

RSS Emails

Recent Hosts, Guests & Topics

Here's a quick summary of the last 5 episodes on High Theory.

Hosts

Kim Adams Saronik Bosu

Previous Guests

Nasser Mufti
Nasser Mufti is an associate professor of English at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where his research and teaching focuses on nineteenth century British and postcolonial literature and theory. He is especially interested in literary approaches to the study of nationalism. His first book, Civilizing War: Imperial Politics and the Poetics of National Rupture (Northwestern University Press, 2018) argues that narratives of civil war energized and animated nineteenth-century British imperialism and decolonization in the twentieth century. He is currently working on two new projects: the first, tentatively titled Britain's Nineteenth Century, 1963-4, examines how anticolonial and postcolonial thinkers from the Anglophone world turned to nineteenth century British literature and culture as a way to think decolonization. The second project, titled Colonia Moralia, explores the dialectics of postcolonial Enlightenment through comparative readings of T.W. Adorno and V.S. Naipaul.
Nathan K. Hensley
Nathan K. Hensley is the author of 'Forms of Empire: The Poetics of Victorian Sovereignty' (Oxford, 2016), and co-editor, with Philip Steer, of 'Ecological Form: System and Aesthetics in the Age of Empire' (Fordham, 2018). He is currently coediting a collection of essays with Devin Garofalo, titled 'The Barbara Johnson Collective', which is forthcoming from Northwestern UP. His new book, 'Action without Hope: Victorian Literature after Climate Collapse', is set to be published by Chicago UP in April 2025. Hensley was born in Fresno, California and currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Nina Studer

No additional bio available.

Ryan Ruby
Ryan Ruby is a writer known for his book-length poem 'Context Collapse: A Poem Containing the History of Poetry' (Seven Stories Press, 2024), which was reviewed in The New York Times. He has also authored a novel titled 'The Zero and the One' (Twelve Books, 2017) and has contributed book reviews and essays to prestigious publications such as The New Yorker, Harper's, The New York Review of Books, and Bookforum. Currently, he is working on a nonfiction narrative book about Berlin called 'Ringbahn' for Farrar Straus and Giroux.
Ian Fleishman
Ian Fleishman is the inaugural Chair of the Department of Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of 'Flamboyant Fictions: The Failed Art of Passing' (Northwestern 2024) and has previously published 'An Aesthetics of Injury: The Narrative Wound from Baudelaire to Tarantino' (Northwestern 2018) and 'Performative Opacity in the Work of Isabelle Hupert' (Edinburgh 2023), co-edited with Iggy Cortez. His work engages with queer theory and explores themes of identity and representation in various cultural texts.

Topics Discussed

Brutalism architecture concrete government buildings university libraries hospitals decolonizing nationalism postcolonial literature Nathan K. Hensley Action Without Hope societal systems compulsory happiness nineteenth century J.M.W. Turner Emily Bronte Christina Rossetti capital climate collapse alcohol French colonization North Africa gender class nation absinthe cultural history Poetry medium information entertainment authority speech act Havelock Detienne magico-religious speech failed passing queer theory identity free will Andr Gide Jean Genet Luchino Visconti Rainer Werner Fassbinder Werner Schroeter Todd Haynes Franois Ozon Xavier Dolan Shawn Mendes Troye Sivan

YouTube Channel

Podcast has no YouTube channel.

Instagram Profile

Instagram

Profile Info

@hightheorypod
High Theory Podcast

Account Stats

Followers: 232
Posts: 131

Account Status

Account Type: Personal
Privacy: Public

Biography

Taking on difficult ideas from the academy in tiny episodes. From Kim Adams and @saronikos.

Episodes

Here's the recent few episodes on High Theory.

0:00 18:32

Brutalism

Hosts
Kim Adams Saronik Bosu
Guests
Nasser Mufti
Keywords
Brutalism architecture concrete government buildings university libraries hospitals decolonizing nationalism postcolonial literature
In this episode of High Theory Nasser Mufti talks with us about Brutalism. A twentieth century architectural style featuring imposing structures made of a lot of concrete, brutalist structures tend to provoke strong reactions. People either love it or they hate it – you never get a middling conversation about brutalism. Often used for government buildings, university libraries, and hospitals, Nasser suggests it represents the architecture of the state itself, massive bureaucratic structures in which we get lost, but also perhaps, nostalgia for a state that actually takes care of its citizens. Before we recorded the episode, Nasser sent me this article about the Brutalist campus at the University of Illinois where he works, which is full of beautiful black and white images. In the episode he refers to a line in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House (1853), which describes Chesney Wold as “seamed by time.” And he reminds us that verb form “decolonizing” is quite new, even Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (1986) only uses the gerund in the title. The neologism “decolonizing” is distinct from the world historical project of decolonization and the historiographic method of decolonial analysis that comes from Latin American studies. Nasser Mufti is an associate professor of English at the University of Illinois, Chicago, where his research and teaching focuses on nineteenth century British and postcolonial literature and theory. He is especially interested in literary approaches to the study of nationalism. His first book, Civilizing War: Imperial Politics and the Poetics of National Rupture (Northwestern University Press, 2018) argues that narratives of civil war energized and animated nineteenth-century British imperialism and decolonization in the twentieth century. You can read it online, open access, which is pretty damn cool! He is working on two new projects, the first, tentatively titled Britain’s Nineteenth Century, 1963-4, looks at how anticolonial and postcolonial thinkers from the Anglophone world turned to nineteenth century British literature and culture as a way to think decolonization. The second, titled “Colonia Moralia,” examines the dialectics of postcolonial Enlightenment through comparative readings of T.W. Adorno and V.S. Naipaul. The image for this episode is a photograph of Boston City Hall, a Brutalist building mentioned in the episode. The black and white photograph shows an interior courtyard of the building, a large concrete structure with many windows, located at One City Hall Square, Boston, Suffolk County, MA. It comes from the US Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Collections. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
0:00 21:05

Action Without Hope

Hosts
Kim Adams Saronik Bosu
Guests
Nathan K. Hensley
Keywords
Nathan K. Hensley Action Without Hope societal systems compulsory happiness nineteenth century J.M.W. Turner Emily Bronte Christina Rossetti capital climate collapse
In his new book, Nathan K. Hensley describes a mood or a vibe or an intuitive response to the contemporary moment when one feels powerless in the face of collapsing societal systems. Given the entrenched nature of the present crisis, with compulsory happiness being marketed by the culture industry, how does one work within systems from which no true escape is possible? In order to uncover a prehistory of this feeling, he goes back to the nineteenth century - to artists like J.M.W. Turner and writers like Emily Bronte and Christina Rossetti who were thinking about what it means to inhabit a world omnivorously captured by capital. Nathan K. Hensley is the author of Forms of Empire: The Poetics of Victorian Sovereignty (Oxford, 2016), and co-editor, with Philip Steer, of Ecological Form: System and Aesthetics in the Age of Empire (Fordham, 2018). With Devin Garofalo, he is currently coediting a collection of essays that's forthcoming from Northwestern UP, The Barbara Johnson Collective. His new book is Action without Hope: Victorian Literature after Climate Collapse, forthcoming from Chicago UP in April 2025. He was born in Fresno, California and lives in Silver Spring, Maryland. Image: J.M.W. Turner, The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 1834-35. Public Domain. Original at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
0:00 20:00

Alcohol

Hosts
Kim Adams Saronik Bosu
Guests
Nina Studer
Keywords
alcohol French colonization North Africa gender class nation absinthe cultural history
In this episode of High Theory, Nina Studer tells us about alcohol. The restrictions and prohibitions, medical and moral discourses surrounding alcohol reveal a great deal about a given society in a particular historical moment. Nina uses alcohol as a lens to analyze the history of French colonization in North Africa. Who consumed alcohol, in what places, how much, and what kinds, what was viewed as healthy and what was viewed as dangerous, even criminal, can help us approach larger questions of gender, class, and nation. If you want to learn more, check out her new book, Hour of Absinthe: A Cultural History of France's Most Notorious Drink (McGill-Queens University Press, 2024). The book explores how the mythologizing of one distilled alcohol led to the creation and fabrication of a vast modern folklore. Mystique and moralizing both arose from the spirit’s relationship with empire. Some claim that French soldiers were given daily absinthe rations during France’s military conquest of Algeria to protect them against heat, diseases, and contaminated water. In fact, the overenthusiastic adoption of the drink by these soldiers, and subsequently by French settlers, was perceived as a threat to France’s colonial ambitions - an anxiety that migrated into French medicine. At the height of its popularity in the late nineteenth century, absinthe reigned in the bars, cafés, and restaurants of France and its colonial empire. Yet by the time it was banned in 1915, the famous green fairy had become the green peril, feared for its connection with declining birth rates and its apparent capacity to induce degeneration, madness, and murderous rage in its consumers. Dr. Nina Studer is a historian working on the 19th and 20th century history of French colonies in North Africa and the Middle East. Her work focuses on the history of drinks, in particular tea, coffee, Fanta/Coca-Cola, Orangina, wine and absinthe. Her doctorate, published as 

The Hidden Patients: North African Women in French Colonial Psychiatry (Böhlau, 2015) is available via Open Access. Currently she works as an associate researcher at the Institut Éthique Histoire Humanités at the University of Geneva, part of Dr. Francesca Arena’s team looking into the medical history of wet dreams between the 18th and the 20th century. The SNSF-project has the title: “Nuits polluantes: masculinité et médecine en Suisse et en France (XVIII – XX siècles)”. The image for this episode is an advertisement for the Algerian wine "Sénéclauze" from 1933, from the personal collection of Nina S. Studer. Many thanks to Nina for sharing it with us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
0:00 22:49

Poetry

Hosts
Kim Adams Saronik Bosu
Guests
Ryan Ruby
Keywords
Poetry medium information entertainment authority speech act Havelock Detienne magico-religious speech
In this episode of High Theory, Ryan Ruby talks to us about Poetry. Our standard definition of poetry today is an institutional one, much like contemporary art: if art is what artists and museums and collectors call art, poetry is what poets and professors and publishers say is poetry. Ruby argues that this indefinable thing humans have been doing well nigh forever is better understood as a medium than a form. Poetry is a way of storing and transmitting information, a mechanism of entertainment and authority, and a speech act that attends to changes of state. In the episode, Ryan references Eric Havelock, author of The Muse Learns to Write (Yale UP, 1986), who described the Homeric poems as the encyclopedia of Bronze age Greece. He also cites Marcel Detienne’s book The Masters of Truth in Archaic Greece (trans. Janet Lloyd, Zone Books, 1996) who describes poetry as a form of “magico-religious speech.” Ryan Ruby is a writer, most recently of the book length poem Context Collapse: A Poem Containing the History of Poetry (Seven Stories Press, 2024). It got reviewed in The New York Times. He has also written a novel, titled The Zero and the One (Twelve Books, 2017), and book reviews and essays for all the fancy places: The New Yorker, Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Bookforum, New Left Review, etc. He is currently at work on a nonfiction narrative book about Berlin called Ringbahn for Farrar Straus, and Giroux. The image for this episode is a still from an animation of a supercomputer simulation of a pair of neutron stars colliding, merging and forming a black hole, created at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Image courtesy of the NASA Goddard Photo and Video Flickr account. This image is in the public domain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
0:00 19:53

Failed Passing

Hosts
Kim Adams Saronik Bosu
Guests
Ian Fleishman
Keywords
failed passing queer theory identity free will Andr Gide Jean Genet Luchino Visconti Rainer Werner Fassbinder Werner Schroeter Todd Haynes Franois Ozon Xavier Dolan Shawn Mendes Troye Sivan
Ian Fleishman develops the concept of failed passing in his new book Flamboyant Fictions, which reimagines free will in queer lives as an accidental affirmation of identity despite efforts towards adherence to standards and norms. In this, he works with his predecessors in queer theory like Judith Butler, José Muñoz, Leo Barsani, Lee Edelman and others. In our conversation, Ian also gives us a glimpse of his readings of failed passing in widely varying texts such as the works of André Gide and Jean Genet and the films of Luchino Visconti, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Schroeter, Todd Haynes, François Ozon, and Xavier Dolan, to the music and public persona of Shawn Mendes and Troye Sivan. Ian Fleishman is the inaugural Chair of the Department of Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Flamboyant Fictions: The Failed Art of Passing (Northwestern 2024). His previous books are An Aesthetics of Injury: The Narrative Wound from Baudelaire to Tarantino (Northwestern 2018) and Performative Opacity in the Work of Isabelle Hupert (Edinburgh 2023), co-edited with Iggy Cortez. Image: From the cover of Flamboyant Fictions, by Monograph / Matt Avery Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ratings

Global:
5.0 rating 32 reviews

USA

5.0 ratings 26 reviews

Canada

5.0 ratings 3 reviews

Australia

5.0 ratings 2 reviews

UK

5.0 ratings 1 reviews

Ireland

0.0 ratings 0 reviews

New Zealand

0.0 ratings 0 reviews

Singapore

0.0 ratings 0 reviews

South Africa

0.0 ratings 0 reviews