In 1487, when the witch trials were just starting to take root in Europe, a Dominican priest published the Malleus Maleficarum, or The Witches' Hammer, a treatise on the prosecution of witches in a court of law. This text would be used over the next three centuries as the authority on prosecuting witches, laying out the rules for the trial, torture, and why women in particular were so susceptible to witchcraft. By the end of the witch craze in the 1720s, an estimated 80,000 had been tried and ex...
Oct 29, 2014•30 min
Going back to colonial times, liberal and conservative Protestants in the US have had conflicting views over both theology and politics. Yet according to intellectual historian David Hollinger, the role of liberalized, ecumenical Protestantism in American history has too often been overshadowed by more conservative versions of the faith. How did evangelicals come to dominate the cultural capital of Christianity? Hollinger, whose most recent book is After Cloven Tongues of Fire: Protestant Libera...
Oct 23, 2014•12 min
Throughout much of the 19th century, Mormons were in direct conflict with the US government. Less than a century later, Mormons were often viewed as ideal citizens. Laurie Maffly-Kipp, who is currently writing a book about the history and current status of Mormonism, gives us a glimpse into this unique example of the how religion and politics have intertwined throughout American history.
Oct 16, 2014•11 min
In the mid-1960s, construction began on the Great Canadian Oil Sands project in Fort McMurray, Alberta. In part, this massive undertaking was the result of a friendship – that of J. Howard Pew, president of what is now Sunoco, and Ernest Manning, a Canadian politician. Pew and Manning’s relationship grew out of their shared evangelical faith, and as Darren Dochuk reveals, this type of religious ‘soft diplomacy’ is a fascinating, and often overlooked, facet of both politics and economics. Dochuk’...
Oct 09, 2014•13 min
Long before Hobby Lobby's stance on birth control filled the news earlier this year, beliefs about sex and religion have intertwined with American politics. R. Marie Griffith, a feminist historian of American religion and director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, takes us back to the 1920s, when a dramatic episode involving Margaret Sanger and the Catholic Church brought the morality of birth control into the public eye. As Griffith reveals, these historical debates are s...
Oct 02, 2014•12 min
The recent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, has brought the nation's attention to racial and social inequality in the St. Louis region. As principal investigator of For the Sake of All, a multi-disciplinary project in collaboration with St. Louis University on the health and well-being of African Americans in St. Louis, Jason Purnell has researched how factors like education and access to healthy foods affect St. Louisans. Purnell describes the project, explains why differences between zip codes ca...
Sep 18, 2014•11 min
As the St. Louis community continues to grapple with the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, Rebecca Wanzo pauses to reflect on Michael Brown and the role of victimization in American culture and politics. Wanzo serves as associate professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and as associate director of the Center for the Humanities. Her book The Suffering Will Not be Televised: African American Women and Sentimental Political Storytelling addresses questions about how and why stories of ...
Sep 11, 2014•11 min
"Some commentators about Ferguson have tried to draw a sharp distinction between the rational, law-abiding community of Ferguson and the lawbreaking violent, criminal element. But it has never been so simple, either historically or today." - Professor Iver Bernstein reflects on the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri In July of 1863, James Pennington, a prominent African-American minister and former slave, saw his neighborhood destroyed in a violent episode now known as the New York draft riots....
Sep 05, 2014•16 min
The death of Michael Brown and recent unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, have brought national attention to issues of racism and inequality. Many WUSTL professors have weighed in, including Clarissa Rile Hayward in a recent blog post for the Washington Post. The following podcast from November 2013 features Hayward discussing her book How Americans Make Race: Stories, Institutions, Spaces. In Argentine tango, the steps that dancers perform - and even the shoes that they wear - tell a certain story ab...
Aug 27, 2014•17 min
Here in St. Louis and across the country, it has been difficult over the last two weeks to pay attention to anything other than the ongoing events in Ferguson, Missouri. The death of teenager Michael Brown and subsequent turmoil in Ferguson have sparked a nationwide conversation on race relations and inequality - a topic that Hold That Thought confronted throughout our series American Identities last fall. Over the next few weeks, we will be re-posting some of these episodes, as well as talking ...
Aug 21, 2014•13 min
This episode features two experts: Derek Hirst, professor of history, and Steven Zwicker, professor of English, from Washington University in St. Louis. For decades now, the scholars have been researching Andrew Marvell, a 17th century English politician and poet. Marvell presents a challenge because the details of his life are relatively unknown, but what survives are his political texts, his poems, and the works his contemporaries wrote about him. Professors Hirst and Zwicker explain how they ...
Jul 23, 2014•16 min
Oskar Kokoschka, an Austrian expressionist painter and playwright in early 20th century Vienna, had a torrid affair with a woman--his muse--named Alma Mahler. When it ended, Oskar was devastated, feeling that he couldn't live or work without her. So, he did what any man would do: he had a life-size doll likeness of Alma made, which he continued to live with to inspire his work. Henry Schvey, a director, playwright, and professor of drama and comparative literature at Washington University in St....
Jul 16, 2014•12 min
Today, we consider the memoir. How do authors write about their own histories as well as family and loved ones who might very well read their book? Does time change the way we right about these stories and personal tragedies? Kathleen Finneran, a writer in residence at Washington University in St. Louis, talks about her memoir, The Tender Land: A Family Love Story, which focuses on her family and how their lives are altered by the suicide of her younger brother, Sean. She considers how writing t...
Jul 09, 2014•14 min
So far, we've considered how authors and historians portray lived-lives in their creative or academic works, but what about creative works from the past? Can they too be "reinterpreted" in the present? Poet Paul Legault, co-founder of the small press Telephone Books and a writer in residence at Washington University in St. Louis, tackled questions such as these with his 2012 book, The Emily Dickinson Reader: An English-to-English Translation of Emily Dickinson's Complete Poems. He'll discuss how...
Jul 02, 2014•14 min
Historical fiction is an ongoing balance between fact and fiction, but what if the story takes place outside of reality? What if much of the story takes place in a dream? How do you keep readers rooted in time and history? Author Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, a Visiting Hurst Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, addresses questions such as these in her award-winning novel Madeleine is Sleeping. She explains how her favorite historical novels never feel "historical," and together we examine ...
Jun 25, 2014•15 min
History and fiction are sort of antonyms, so how do historical fiction writers bring fact and fiction together? How closely must historical fiction mirror recorded history? Author Marshall Klimasewiski, Senior Writer-in-Residence at Washington University in St. Louis, discusses the precarious balance writers of historical fiction must strike even when creating alternate histories. He also talks about two stories from his collection Tyrants and a novel-in-progress following Salomon August Andrée,...
Jun 18, 2014•14 min
In the spring of 1940, then-unknown writer Albert Camus and budding biologist Jaques Monod quietly joined the French Resistance as they watched their beloved Paris fall to the Nazis. Decades later, after stumbling across a few lines in a biography, Sean B. Carroll, an evolutionary biologist, author, and alumnus of Washington University in St. Louis, set out to prove that these two great minds were also friends. Rooting through French archives and talking to people at the heart of the French Resi...
Jun 11, 2014•13 min
In 1957, Ghana declared its independence from colonial rule, and a new leader named Kwame Nkrumah rose to take the helm. Jean Allman, professor of history and director of the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, has been studying the surprising networks that formed around Nkrumah, and in her research, she's discovered documents never meant for her eyes. She raises questions about the morality of the archival process and reveals how the NSA may change the future of his...
Jun 04, 2014•13 min
In the early years of the United States, how did the federal government operate on a day-to-day basis? What responsibilities did the government take on, how many people did it employ, and what crises did it face? Peter Kastor, professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis, sheds light on how debates over government have evolved over time, from the country's earliest days to the 2012 presidential election. For more information, visit Washington University's Humanities Digital Worksho...
May 28, 2014•12 min
Philosophy professor Carl Craver from Washington University in St. Louis tackles some fundamental questions about the importance of memory. Is it our personal memories that make us distinctly human? Does our capacity for memory make us morally accountable for our actions? How does our ability to remember the past relate to how we think about the future? And where do all these questions leave people with amnesia? "Amnesia and Identity" first aired in fall 2012 as part of Hold That Thought's 6-par...
May 21, 2014•14 min
Professor Glenn Stone provides a brief history of industrial agriculture in the U.S., from the first era of hyper-industrialization shortly after World War II to the use of antibiotics in today's factory farms. Listen in to find out how the ongoing debates over food production got started and consider why these debates continue to be so important. Stone writes about food, farming, and biotechnology on his blog, fieldquestions. "Agriculture as Industry" first aired in fall 2012 as part of Hold Th...
May 14, 2014•11 min
For the month of May, Hold That Thought is diving into the archives to bring you some favorite past episodes. "Last House Standing" was first aired in April 2013 as part of our Cities series. Between 1950 and 2000, some 60% of the built environment in St. Louis's Old North neighborhood was demolished, and the majority of its residents left the area. Abandoned buildings have fallen into disrepair, but should they remain standing? If the last houses on a block are torn down, leaving empty, litter-...
May 07, 2014•14 min
Nearly 500 years ago, the Chinese novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" was first published. Readers across the country and continent began experiencing this epic, historic tale, which is still one of the most popular novels in China today. But in many cases, these readers would not have been able to have a conversation. They could read the same book, but they could not speak the same language. Robert Hegel, professor of East Asian language and cultures, describes how the existence of a common w...
Apr 30, 2014•11 min
The gesture of pointing is something we all do without much thought. We point at ourselves, at other people, at objects, or in the general direction of where we want to go - it's a seemingly straightforward communication tool that even small children use on a regular basis. Yet sometimes the act of pointing is not so simple. As Richard Meier, chair of the linguistics department at the University of Texas - Austin, explains, this is especially true for some children with an autism spectrum disord...
Apr 23, 2014•11 min
For people who have grown up being able to hear, it's easy to equate language with speech - the audible conversations that make up so much of human day-to-day communication. However, for some 70 million people around the world, these types of conversations happen in silence. Stephanie Berk, a postdoctoral research associate in linguistics and neurology, studies the linguistics of sign language and has worked with children who - because parents were at first unaware of their child's deafness - be...
Apr 16, 2014•11 min
Last week, we defined the superhero. However, superheroes have evolved greatly over the last seventy years. The Adam West Batman of the 1960s now only vaguely resembles Christian Bale's Batman of The Dark Knight, to say nothing of the rise of the anti-hero in Alan Moore's classic, Watchmen. How do we reconcile these heroes and their many iterations? Dr. Peter Coogan, the founder of the Institute for Comics Studies and lecturer within American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis...
Apr 09, 2014•17 min
It's hard to recall a movie season in recent memory that hasn't been marked with at least one superhero blockbuster, so we're taking a closer look at these stories and heroes. In the first episode of this two part series, we consider what makes someone a superhero. Is it simply a question of superpowers? According to Dr. Peter Coogan, the founder of the Institute for Comics Studies and lecturer within American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, that's certainly part of the eq...
Apr 02, 2014•15 min
What do the history of physics, the international women's movement, microfinance, the modern philosophical novel, and the fight against the spread of AIDS in Africa all have in common? According to Joe Loewenstein, professor of English and director of the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities, in order to study any of these topics and countless others, students are well-advised to begin the slow and rewarding process of mastering a foreign language. The important question becomes, which la...
Mar 26, 2014•9 min
Whether or not you can play the drums or keep your body in rhythm out on the dance floor, if you're reading this sentence, you're participating in the unheard music of language. In his research at Washington University in St. Louis, linguist Brett Hyde, assistant professor of philosophy, delves into the rhythms behind every conversation. By studying the accent patterns of languages around the world, Hyde's goal is to discover the underlying principles that organize these patterns. Feel free to c...
Mar 19, 2014•13 min
When you think of the novel Jane Eyre, you might think of its author, Charlotte Brontë, or perhaps certain elements of the plot, like Jane's time at Lowood School or her tumultuous relationship with Mr. Rochester. However, in a recent project, Lynne Tatlock is exploring how the original novel is only the beginning of the Jane Eyre story. Like many other 19th century texts, this novel was repeatedly translated into other languages and adapted into new works. Tatlock, a professor of Germanic Langu...
Mar 12, 2014•12 min
