Archives, physical and digital, are suffering from austerity, enshittification, and censorship. In this episode scholars discuss the ambivalent impacts of digitization, what information matters in the data economy [8:30], an analogy involving European colonialism [23:00], the competition to document between corporations and universities [46:00], the duty to tell the truth freely [73:30], preserving the counternarratives to empire [81:00], and managing an archive through Orbanization [95:30].
Cast (in order of appearance):
Laura Heffernan is Professor of English at University of North Florida and co-author of The Teaching Archive (U. Chicago, 2021)
Rachel Sagnar Buurma is Associate Professor of English at University of North Florida and co-author of The Teaching Archive (U. Chicago, 2021)
Kelly Grotke is a founding co-partner in the Pattern Recognition Research Collective. She has written about education finance for American Prospect, Inside Higher Ed, and The Oberlin Review.
Asheesh Kapur Siddique is Assistant Professor of History at University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the author of The Archive of Empire (Yale UP, 2024)
Leigh Claire La Berge is Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, and author of Marx For Cats (Duke UP, 2023) and Wages Against Artwork (Duke UP, 2019). Her forthcoming book is Fake Work: How I Began To Suspect Capitalism Is A Joke (Haymarket, 2025)
Crystal Sanders is Associate Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and the author of A Forgotten Migration (UNC Press, 2024)
Jared Loggins is Assistant Professor of Black Studies & Political Science at Amherst College and the co-author of Prophet of Discontent (U. Georgia, 2021).
Andrew Douglas is Professor and Chair of Political Science at Morehouse College and the co-author of Prophet of Discontent (U. Georgia, 2021). He is also author of “Modern Money & The Black University Concept” for Money On The Left.
Timothy Barber is the Director of the Meek-Eaton Black Archives at Florida A&M University.
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 "Steam Whistle," "Walls," "As It Was," "Days Don't Stop," "Kettleridge," & "Dead To Me."
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 chapter 29.
Episode Bibliography:
Zack Beauchamp, "Ron DeSantis is Following a Trail Blazed By A Hungarian Authoritarian" Vox (April 28, 2022)
St. Clair Bourne, John Henrik Clarke: A Great & Mighty Walk (1996)
Brown University, "Slavery & Justice Report" (2006)
Rachel Sagner Buurma & Laura Heffernan, The Teaching Archive: A New History For Literary Study (U. Chicago, 2021)
Rob Copeland, The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, & The Unraveling of A Wall Street Legend (Macmillan, 2023)
Cory Doctorow, “‘Enshittification’ is Coming For Absolutely Everything” Financial Times (February 8, 2024)
Andrew Douglas, “Modern Money & The Black University Concept” Money On The Left (April 19, 2024)
Andrew Douglas & Jared Loggins, Prophet of Discontent: Martin Luther King Jr. & The Critique of Racial Capitalism (U Georgia P, 2021)
Andrew Douglas & Jared Loggins, “The Lost Promise of Black Study” Boston Review (September 28, 2021)
Andrew Douglas, Scott Ferguson, & Billy Saas, “The Black University Concept” Money On The Left Podcast (June 2, 2024)
W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Field & Function of the American Negro College" (1933)
W.E.B. Du Bois, The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques, 1906-1960 (1973) [2001 Monthly Review Edition]
Jelani Favors, Shelter In A Time Of Storm: How Black Colleges Fostered Generations of Leadership & Activism (UNC Press, 2020)
Jelani Favors, "The Second Curriculum" The Point (August 15, 2021)
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Bryant Morey French, Mark Twain & The Gilded Age: The Book That Named An Era (Southern Methodist UP, 1965)
Sigmund Freud, "Analysis Terminable & Interminable" (1937)
Kelly Grotke, “Why The Student Push To Get Schools to Disclose, Divest Faces Uphill Battle.” TRT World (May 20, 2024)
Kelly Grotke, “Are Endowments Damaging Colleges & Universities?” The American Prospect (February 12, 2021)
Kelly Grotke & Stephen Hastings-King, “Broadening The Divestment Debate Beyond DOI” Inside Higher Ed (October 11, 2024)
Kelly Grotke & Stephen Hastings-King, “The Yale Model (Reading David Swensen), Part I & Part II” Pattern Recognition (February, 2023)
Kelly Grotke, et al. “College Finances Lack Adequate Transparency” The Oberlin Review (December 3, 2021)
Kelly Grotke, Ashley Monk, & Sloane Ortel, “Divestment Without Dissonance” Free Money (August 2, 2024)
Vincent Harding, “Toward The Black University” Ebony (August, 1970)
John Guillory, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (U. Chicago, 1993) [Enlarged Edition, 2023]
Leigh Claire La Berge, Fake Work: How I Began To Suspect Capitalism Is A Joke (Haymarket, 2025)
Leigh Claire La Berge, Marx for Cats: A Radical Beastiary (Duke UP, 2023)
Leigh Claire La Berge, Wages Against Artwork: Decommodified Labor & the Claims of Socially Engaged Art (Duke UP, 2019)
Leigh Claire La Berge & Quinn Slobodian, “Reading For Neoliberalism, Reading Like Neoliberals” (American Literary History, Fall 2017)
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Crystal R. Sanders, A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, & The Debt Owed to Public HBCUs (UNC Press, 2024)
Matt Seybold, “The Twain Doctrine” Mark Twain Annual (2023)
Matt Seybold, "Mark Twain, Abolitionist" Quarry Farm Symposium (October, 2022)
Matt Seybold, "Darnella Frazier's Smartphone & Twain's Notepad: The Vigilante Origins of American Police" 9th International Conference on The State of Mark Twain Studies (August, 2022)
Matt Seybold, "Mark Twain, James Redpath, & the Vigilante Origins of American Police" Trouble Begins (November, 2020)
Matt Seybold, "Destroyer of Confidence: James Gordon Bennett, Jacksonian Paranoia, & The Original Confidence Man" American Studies (Fall 2018)
Matt Seybold, "Confidence Tricks" Aeon (February 18, 2018)
Matt Seybold, "Astride The Dark Horse: T. S. Eliot & The Lloyds Bank Intelligence Department" T. S. Eliot Studies Annual (2017)
Matt Seybold et al, "Half Castle 'Gainst The Scott Walkers" The American Vandal Podcast (December 17, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, "The Education Gospel, Enshittify.edu, & The Expansion of Lower Ed" The American Vandal Podcast (November 25, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, "Philanthrocapitalism U" The American Vandal Podcast (November 12, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, "The Black University Concept & The Second Curriculum" The American Vandal Podcast (October 31, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, "The Historical Novel" The American Vandal Podcast (October 15, 2024)
Matt Seybold et al, “Ponzi Austerity in The Age of Cultural Abundance” The American Vandal Podcast (August 21, 2023)
Matt Seybold et al, “Ed Tech, AI, & The Unbundling of Research & Teaching” The American Vandal Podcast (November 2, 2023)
Asheesh Kapur Siddique, The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, & The Making of The Early Modern British World (Yale UP, 2024)
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Raymond Williams, Marxism & Literature (Oxford UP, 1977)
Nathan Woolf, "First As Farce: Structures of Feeling in The Gilded Age" Quarry Farm Symposium Keynote (2024)
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