In this episode, host Douglas Cowie and his guest, poet and teacher Alina Borger, discuss The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. They begin by exploring why the novel makes for useful study on a high school curriculum, and move to a wide-ranging discussion of its place as a novel of Chicago, its structure, and the many themes that emerge from its center as a novel about a Latina girl's tentative steps towards adolescence.

The Amerikazentrum Hamburg commemorates Kurt Vonnegut's 100th birthday with a special podcast about his seminal novel Slaughterhouse-Five. The Amerikazentrum will also be hosting a Virtual Vonnegut Birthday Celebration live on ZOOM on Saturday Nov. 19 from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. CET. The expert panel includes Dr. Wieland Schwanebeck, Vonnegut biographer Charles J. Shields, and Jan-Christian Petersen. Please visit our website to register for the event: amerikazentrum.de.

In this episode, our experts explore the effects of Russia's war in Ukraine on European energy policy and EU politics. A number of countries are analyzed, including Germany, France, Hungary, Poland, and the Baltics. The episode ends with a moral and legal assessment of EU policy regarding Russian draft dodgers.

In this episode, Sola and Danner examine the recent elections in Sweden and Italy. Both nations experienced an enormous surge in votes for far-right parties. Is the European electorate moving to the right? Are are far-right parties moving to the center? Join us as we explore the history of Swedish and Italian politics over the last 100 years.

In this episode, host Douglas Cowie and his guest, documentary filmmaker Mark Blottner, discuss The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren. Published in 1949, it tells the story of a war veteran's struggle with morphine addiction, and in so doing paints a portrait of a marginal neighborhood in Chicago and its people.

In this episode, host Douglas Cowie and his guest, writer Ryan Gattis, discuss Native Son by Richard Wright. Published in 1940, it tells the story of a young Black Chicagoan who murders a White heiress, and the personal, social and political consequences that ensue.

In this episode, host Douglas Cowie and his guest, Dr. Katie McGettigan, Senior Lecturer in American Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, discuss Sister Carrie, a novel by Theodore Dreiser. Published in 1900, it tells the story of a young woman seduced by the material trappings of Chicago and its men

There is no “I” that sees in every direction at once. In the sixth and final episode of Transatlantic Wisdom, Michael Coyle and Alan Swensen return to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality (1887) in order to explore its importance in the development of modern wisdom literature, particularly Wallace Stevens’ poetry. Key themes include an exploration of the ascetic ideal in the Western tradition; the importance of form or genre in the creation of meaning; the differences between treatise, polemic, and aphorism; the tensions between having a systemic worldview and having no systemic worldview; the impossibility of achieving pure knowledge; and lastly the joy that comes in understanding that the absence of meaning provides human beings with the unique existential opportunity to be creative.

Different forms shape knowledge in different ways. In the fifth episode, Michael Coyle and Alan Swensen introduce a German and an American scholar who study the aphoristic form, namely Gerhard Neumann (1934-2017) and Adam Gopnik (b. 1956). These introductions serve as a starting point for a discussion of the thinkers Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), Dorothy Parker (1893-1967), and Elias Canetti (1905-1994). Key themes include the tension between analytical and spiritual forms of wisdom literature, the conflict between thought and feeling, dogmatism, and epistemological humility.

The meaning of a poem is the least interesting thing about it. In the fourth episode, Michael Coyle and Alan Swensen share the satirical wisdom of two great transatlantic journalists and savage social critics, Karl Kraus (1874-1936) and H. L. Mencken (1880-1956). Key themes include linguistic precision, anti-foundationalism, politics, journalism, and—most importantly—wit, sarcasm, and humor.