In this episode, host Douglas Cowie and his guest, Classicist Hannah Bean, discuss Circe by Madeline Miller. The novel reimagines and retells the story of one of the characters Odysseus encounters in The Odyssey of Homer, and the discussion looks both at the roots of the story, other tellings of it, and some of the specifics of how Miller imagines these roots into a contemporary novel.
In this episode, host Andrew Sola and our resident EU expert Guenter Danner discuss challenges facing the EU's vaccination program. Also, they discuss the long-term economic consequences of the pandemic as well as challenges facing European social services post-pandemic. Lastly, they offer a preview of the upcoming federal elections in Germany in September.
In Episode 3, host Douglas Cowie and his guest, science fiction writer Adam Roberts, discuss The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, an ambitious novel set in the near future that tells the story of a global effort to slow impending environmental collapse. Please also see Adam Robert's post about the novel here https://sibilantfricative.blogspot.com/2020/10/kim-stanley-robinson-ministry-for.html
We celebrate Women's History Month with an episode about women and politics. In the second episode of LadyFiction Stefanie Schaefer discusses First Ladies and “First Lady Fiction” with her guest Dr. Katharina Gerund from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. In January 2021, the arrival of new First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, an educator who has said she will keep working during her time in the White House, garnered renewed debate about marriage, politics, and modern womanhood. In this episode of LadyFiction, we turn to Curtis Sittenfeld’s bestselling novel American Wife (2008), a fictional autobiography of Laura Bush, First Lady from 2001-2009.
March is Irish-American Heritage Month in the United States. In Episode #2 of NovelROMANtics, host Douglas Cowie and his guest Shane Carmichael discuss Apeirogon by Colum McCann, an Irish storyteller living in New York. They discuss the intersection of storytelling, conflict, and global politics with respect to McCann's multifaceted novel.
The Trans-Atlanticist launches its second new podcast series called LadyFiction. In the first episode, our host Dr. Stefanie Schaefer and her guest Prof. Alexandra Ganser-both from the University of Vienna-discuss Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. February is African-American History Month, and these books were chosen because Butler's Earthseed series provide profound insights into black history and culture.
February is African-American History month in the United States, and the Trans-Atlanticist is celebrating with a number of podcasts about African-American authors.
For this first episode of NovelROMANtics, host Dr. Douglas Cowie and his guest, Dr. Oli Belas of University of Bedfordshire, discuss a pair of crime novels by Attica Locke: Blue Bird, Blue Bird and Heaven, My Home, both of which follow black Texas Ranger Darren Matthews as he tries to unravel the truth of a complicated set of white-supremacist hate crimes in rural East Texas.
Dr. Stefanie Schäfer discusses the cultural history of the “first family,” the concept of civil religion in the US, the development of the academic specialty of First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS) studies, the significance of the Obama presidency for race relations and identity politics, as well as the cultural impact of Michele Obama’s new autobiography, Becoming.
Renowned economist and expert on international trade, Prof. Gabriel Felbermayr explains President Trump’s economic policies. Topics include the Trump tax cuts, US-EU trade imbalances, Nordstream2, energy security, and Iran sanctions, as well as forecasts about the future of the US and the global economy.
On November 6, 2018, Americans went to polling places across the US to cast their votes in the mid-term elections. Prof. Bierling, a leading expert in transatlantic relations, discusses the election results and the consequences for the United States, Germany, and transatlantic relations in general.