Episode Notes

This week we're speaking with Praxis Enemy No. 1, Dr Marianna Dudley, senior lecturer in Environmental Humanities at the University of Bristol and ‘certified wet weirdo’. We first spoke with Marianna back in 2022 before the untimely, unplanned hiatus of the pod. The episode never aired. COINCIDENCE?? We think not. We invited her back to talk about her book, Electric Wind: An Energy History of Modern Britain, which she has now published all thanks to us! In this episode we ask: can we think of Mary Poppins and her magical umbrella as an early renewable energy icon? Why is solar energy sexier than wind power? What exactly makes a river alive and why don't we care what Robert Macfarlane thinks? We also discuss how the industrial imaginary of BIG WIND™ is muscling in on Britain's favourite past time - complaining proudly about our shit weather.

You can buy Marianna's fabulous book here: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526182968/

You can apply to study all about torpedos, rivers and BIG WIND here: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/taught/ma-environmental-humanities/

Episode Notes

We're SO back. Did you miss us?

In our first episode of this brand new season we chat with Dr Colin Sterling, Assistant Professor of Heritage, Museums and the Environment at the University of Amsterdam, about the difference between culture and strategy, debate whether heritage can ever be anything other than fascist, and consider what makes dusty museum storerooms so sinfully seductive. We also discuss precisely what "belongs in a museum", and what exactly SpaceX Starships have in common with Noah's Ark. Tune in for an EXCLUSIVE sneak peek at Colin's BIllion-dollar book project, Museum Planet™.

You can keep up to date with all of Colin's strategic projects and infinite book proposals here: https://colinsterling.com. To play with states of matter and decolonising museum studies go to: https://ghostsofsolidair.com.

Episode Notes

With more fans than Grumpy Cat (RIP), we're joined by the chronically online Dr Idil Galip, queen of memes and founder of the Meme Studies Research Network. Here to sort the evergreen content from the cancelled - repilcate to disseminate xoxo

Episode Notes

THIS IS NOT A DRILL. WE ARE BACK. WE HAVEN'T FOSSILISED. YET. But our guest, Professor David Farrier, is about to tell us about our bleak, trashy, fossilised futures via the temporalities of Cher, chicken-sized horses and horse-sized chickens and doing deep time in different voices. David is the author of 'Footprints' (2020) and 'Anthropocene Poetics' (2019), a publication timeline that makes us feel deeply inadequate. Shantih shantih shantih.

Episode Notes

Did you miss us? We were observing the UCU industrial action. This is the only reason for our lateness. Promise. This week we're joined by New Generation Flake, Dr Joan Passey (or is it Passé?) and her creepy haunted cavern...Joan is a Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Bristol, the editor of the British Library short story collection 'Cornish Horrors' and is a 2022 New Generation Thinker. She is salty AF.

Episode Notes

We’re back and this week we're getting spooky and ECTOGASMIC with Dr Emma Merkling. Emma is an Art Historian at the Courtauld specialising in in late C19th history of art, science and occultism. Emma is “Just a creepy weirdo who lik es creepy weird stuff”. In this episode we chat about racist ghosts, squirting spiritualists, and what it’s like to be a Spooky Terrifying Ect oplasm Mama (aka a woman in STEM). We consider the production of ectoplasm and/as the female orgasm, discuss the pros and cons of automatic writing for REF submissions, and question whether or not x-rays can be used for upskirting? Also as women in SHAPE we consider why orbs are so important for mediums.

You can check out the podcast Emma co-hosts with LOL My Praxis superfan, Dr Christine Slobogin, here https://drawingbloodpod.wordpress.com/ or follow her @EmmaMerkling.

If you fancy playing with stereographs you can come along to Emma’s event at the Courtauld on November 14th https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/science-in-the-seance-room-stereographs-medical-men-and-the-testing-of-margery-crandons-extraordinary-body-c-1925/

This episode we're talking about shiny dead things. Not Edward Cullen the Sparkle Vamp, but the intersections of jewellery and death with the world's first forensic jeweller Dr Maria Maclennan. Maria is the most tattooed academic we know and can often be found on BBC Crimewatch. We'll leave that one there. You can follow her @ForensicJewelery.

Episode Notes

WERE BACK, BABY! Did you miss us? We’re celebrating our emergence from hot burn-out summer by speaking with Dr Arin Keeble about the literature of Terror and collective trauma. Arin is Lecturer in Contemporary Literature and Culture at Edinburgh Napier University, he has written on everything from hurricanes and punk rock to Stranger Things and contemporary literary TV studies. In this episode we talk about counternarratives to the War on Terror, what objects we would throw at War Criminal George W. Bush Jr., and conditions of radicalisation in relation to White Nationalism. We ask whether or not jet fuel can melt steel beams, if a Hurricane can be a terrorist, and whether or not narratives of Terror can, or should, be funny? You can follow Arin @KeebleArin and check out his work on New Literary Television here https://post45.org/sections/contemporaries-essays/new-literary-tv/

Episode Notes

WE'RE BACK!!! DID YOU MISS US?! This episode we're joined by Dr Anna Arabindan-Kesson to discuss visual art, visual culture, lenses, ways of seeing, the gaze, the critical eye, and Specsavers...in an entirely oral medium. Oooh, I get the shivers.

Anna is an Assistant Professor of African American and Black Diasporic Art at Princeton University; she is the author of Black Bodies, White Gold Art, Cotton, and Commerce in the Atlantic World (2021) and the director of Art Hx, a digital humanities project and object database that addresses the intersections of art, race and medicine in the British empire.

Episode Notes

We're back and we're getting institutionally promiscuous with SUPER KEENO Rachel (Bynoth) Smith. Rachel is a PhD student based between all of the Universities in the South West and specialises in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century social, gender, and emotions history, particularly in relation to letter writing with a special focus on the Canning Family Network. Rachel BEGGED to come on the podcast and we finally gave in. In this episode we discuss overlaps between C18th anxieties and the life of contemporary academia, that the Canning family Letters were as spicy as Bridgerton Season 1, and whether or not writing over 1000 letters to your mother is normal. We play a quick round of Georgian Familial Anxiety Bingo and somehow end up speaking about spunk. A lot. Also, Louise and Alex record in the same place for the first time ever. Set phasers to CRUDE.

You can follow Rachel @RachelBynoth and get involved in the IHR History Lab seminars here https://www.history.ac.uk/seminars/history-lab

Episode Notes

HI THEORY!! Are you psyched for some high theory? We're joined by Dr Anna Kornbluh of many many books, Victorians, and critical theory to establish why good Marxists don't skip leg day and what WAP has to say about social reproduction. We also reveal what happens when you read 'Of Grammatology' backwards. Truly radical discourse.

You can follow Anna @V21collective xoxo