From Fredric Jameson on why “the most important goal is history itself” follows a series of conversations about dialectical criticism vs. new historicism [5:00], the wisdom of “always historicizing” [17:30], the anxiety of influence between new historicism and literary fiction [34:00] as well as between literary fiction and history [53:00], hinge points and shadow presentisms [59:00], and the layers of discourse about history in 2024 [88:30].
Cast (in order of appearance):
Eleanor Courtemanche is Associate Professor of English at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the author of “Beyond Urgency” (2019)
Jeffrey Insko is Professor of English & American Studies at Oakland University and the author of History, Abolition, & The Ever-Present Now in Antebellum American Writing (Oxford UP, 2019)
Anna Kornbluh is Professor of English at University of Illinois, Chicago and the author of Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism (Verso, 2024)
Robert T. Tally Jr. is Professor of English at Texas State University and the author of For A Ruthless Critique of All That Exists (Zer0, 2022) and “On Always Historicizing” (2022)
Alexander Manshel is Associate Professor of English at McGill University and the author of Writing Backwards (Columbia UP, 2023).
Walter Johnson is Winthrop Professor of History and Professor of African & African American Studies at Harvard University. He is the author of, among other things, The Broken Heart of America (Basic, 2020), River of Dark Dreams (Harvard UP, 2013) and “On Agency” (2003).
Matt Seybold is Associate Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, as well as resident scholar at the Center For Mark Twain Studies and executive producer of The American Vandal Podcast.
All music for this season of The American Vandal Podcast comes from the Tennessee-based roots ensemble DownRiver Collective. Most of the tracks come from their most recent EP, Off The Shelf. You can purchase it direct from the band here. It’s also available on Spotify and Apple Music.
Tracks featured in this episode include “Daylight Breaks,” “As It Was,” “Wasted Time,” and “Walls.”
Excerpts from Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s The Gilded Age come from the audiobook edition produced by SNR Audio and narrated by Nathan Osgood. Available at Audible, as well as other audiobook retailers. SNR has an extensive catalog of professionally-narrated adaptations of 19th-century Anglophone fiction, including The Complete Mark Twain Collection.
Nathan Osgood is an actor and voice artist who has being appearing in films, scripted television, video games, podcasts, and audiobooks since the mid-’90s. In 2018, he played Mark Twain in the Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly vehicle, Holmes and Watson.
Excerpts in this episode come from chapters eighteen and fifty-eight.
Episode Bibliography:
Jonathan Arac, Huckleberry Finn As Idol & Target: The Functions of Criticism In Our Time (U Wisconsin P, 1997)
Jonathan Arac, “Why Does No One Care About The Aesthetic Value of Huckleberry Finn?” New Literary History (Autumn 1999)
Erik Baker, “What Are You Going To Do With That?: The Future of College In The Asset Economy” Harper’s (September 2024)
Wendy Brown, In The Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in The West (Columbia UP, 2019)
Wendy Brown, Undoing The Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Zone, 2017)
Eleanor Courtemanche, “Beyond Urgency: Shadow Presentisms, Hinge Points, & Victorian Historicisms” Criticism (Fall 2019)
Eleanor Courtemanche, “Classical Economics” in The Routledge Companion To Literature & Economics (2018)
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (William Taylor, 1719)
Christopher Hager & Cody Marrs, “Against 1865: Reperiodizing The 19th-Century” J19 (Fall 2013)
F. A. Hayek, The Road To Serfdom (1944) [2007 U Chicago Edition]
F. A. Hayek, “Why I Am Not A Conservative” in The Constitution of Liberty (U Chicago P, 1960) [2011 Edition]
Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Empire, 1875-1914 (Pantheon, 1987)
Amy Hungerford, “On The Period Formerly Known As Contemporary” American Literary History (Summer 2008)
Jeffrey Insko, History, Abolition, & The Ever-Present Now in Antebellum American Writing (Oxford UP, 2019)
Jeffrey Insko, “Prospects For The Present” American Literary History (Winter 2014)
Jeffrey Insko, “Historicism” in Time & Literature (Cambridge UP, 2018)
Jeffrey Insko, “The Prehistory of Posthistoricism” in The Limits of Literary Historicism (U Tennessee P, 2012)
Fredric Jameson & Ramon del Castillo, “How To Adapt To Cultural Change” Fundacion Juan March (2015)
Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Cornell UP, 1982)
Fredric Jameson, Fables of Aggression: Wyndham Lewis, The Modernist As Fascist (U California P, 1979) [Verso Edition]
Walter Johnson, “On Agency” Journal of Social History (Autumn 2023)
Walter Johnson, “Agency: A Ghost Story” in Slavery’s Ghost (Johns Hopkins UP, 2011)
Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery & Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Harvard UP, 2013)
Walter Johnson, The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis & The Violent History of the United States (Basic Books, 2020)
John Maynard Keynes, “Am I a Liberal?” Nation & Athanaeum (August 8 & 15, 1925) [Reprinted in Essays in Persuasion (1931)]
Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism (Verso, 2024)
Anna Kornbluh, “Present Tense Futures of The Past” Victorian Studies (Autumn 2016)
Georg Lukacs, The Historical Novel (1937) [1983 University of Nebraska Edition]
Alexander Manshel, Writing Backwards: Historical Fiction & The Reshaping of The American Canon (Columbia UP, 2023)
A Martinez, “Why State Are Dropping The 4-Year College Requirement For Some Government Jobs” Morning Edition (NPR, August 26 2024)
Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (Dix Edwards & Co., 1857)
Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (Harper & Bros., 1851)
Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe, The Road From Mont Pelerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective (Harvard UP, 2009)
Joseph North, Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History (Harvard UP, 2017)
Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard UP, 2013)
Matt Seybold, “The Keynesian Theory of Jamesonian Utopia: Interdisciplinarity in Economics” in The Cambridge Companion To Literature & Economics (2022)
Matt Seybold, “Keynes & Keynesianism” in The Routledge Companion To Literature & Economics (2018)
Matt Seybold, “Neoliberal Rationality in The Old Gilded Age” (CMTS, 10.5.2018)
Matt Seybold, “The Twain Doctrine” Mark Twain Annual (2023)
Matt Seybold, “The End of Economics” Los Angeles Review of Books (July 3, 2017)
Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire & The Birth of Neoliberalism (Harvard UP, 2018)
Zadie Smith, “Two Paths For The Novel,” New York Review of Books (November 20, 2008)
Brook Thomas, The New Historicism & Other Old-Fashioned Topics (Princeton UP, 1993)
Robert T. Tally Jr., “On Always Historicizing: The Dialectic of Utopia & Ideology Today” PMLA (May 2022)
Robert T. Tally Jr., For A Ruthless Critique of All That Exists: Literature in an Age of Capitalist Realism (Zer0 Books, 2022)
Mark Twain & Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) [2006 Modern Library Edition]
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Webster & Co., 1885)
Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson (Webster & Co., 1893)
Mark Twain, Life On The Mississippi (Osgood & Co., 1883)
V21 Collective, “Manifesto of The V21 Collective” (2015)
V21 Collective, “Forum on Strategic Presentism” Victorian Studies (Autumn 2016)
Chris Van Dusen, Bridgerton (Netflix, 2020-2024)
Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in 19th-Century Europe (Johns Hopkins UP, 1973) [2014 Edition]
Raymond Williams, Marxism & Literature (Oxford UP, 1977)
Always Historicize? (A Tale of Today, Episode #4)