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The first of three episodes based on the “Close Reading For The 21st Century Symposium” hosted by Emory University. The symposium’s opening address is followed by short provocations on “Freedom,” “The Best,” “Language,” and “Difficulty,” after which a there is a lengthy Q&A.
Date Recorded: November 7, 2025
Music: Danny Weiss Quartet, Moby
Cast (in order of appearance): Dan Sinykin, Matt Seybold, Johanna Winant, Beci Carver, Joshua Kotin, Julie Orlemanski, Omari Weekes, Anthony Cuda, John Lysaker, Dez Miller, Jeff Dolven, Oren Izenberg, Benjamin Reiss, Miranda Hickman, Emma Davenport, Farah Bakaari
Featured Speakers
Beci Carver is a Senior Lecturer in 20th-Century Literature at University of Exeter and the author of Modernism’s Whims, forthcoming from Oxford UP.
Joshua Kotin is Associate Professor of English at Princeton University and Director of the Shakespeare & Company Project.
Julie Orlemanski is Associate Professor of English at University of Chicago and currently the Walter Jackson Bate Fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute.
Dan Sinykin is Winship Distinguished Research Professor at Emory University and the co-editor of Close Reading for the 21st Century (Princeton UP, 2025).
Omari Weekes is Assistant Professor of English at CUNY-Queens, a poet, and Black Studies scholar.
Johanna Winant is Associate Professor of English & Humanities at Reed College, co-editor of Close Reading for the 21st Century (Princeton UP, 2025), and the author of Lyric Logic, forthcoming from Columbia UP.
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.
Episode Bibliography
Hannah Arendt, “What is Freedom?” in Between Past & Future (Penguin, 1961)
W. H. Auden, “The Dream” (1936)
Erich Auerbach, Mimesis (1946)
James Baldwin, The Cross of Redemption (2011)
Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (U Texas, 1981)
Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (Harvard UP, 1999)
S. T. Coleridge, Specimens of The Table Talk (1835)
Edward Denby, Dance Writings (Knopf, 1986)
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth & Method (1960)
Eric Griffiths, If Not Critical (Oxford UP, 2018)
John Guillory, On Close Reading (University of Chicago, 2025)
Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Empire (Harvard UP, 2001)
Martin Heidegger, Being & Time (1927)
John Locke, Second Treatise on Government (1689)
Paule Marshall, The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1969)
Anna Mendelssohn, Implacable Art (Salt, 2001)
Toni Morrison, Beloved (Knopf, 1987)
Cary Nelson, Modern American Poetry Site [MAPS] (1999-Present)
Peter F. Neumeyer (Ed.) Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Castle (Prentice-Hall, 1969)
I. A. Richards, Practical Criticism (1929)
Christopher Ricks, Dylan’s Visions of Sin (Ecco, 2004)
Richard Rorty (Ed.) The Linguistic Turn (1967)
Michael Roth, “Ebb Tide” History & Theory (February 2007)
Walter Pater, Appreciations (1889)
Namwali Serpell, On Morrison (PenguinRandomHouse, 2026)
Dan Sinykin & Johanna Winant (Ed.) Close Reading for the 21st Century (Princeton UP, 2025)
Hortense Spillers, Black, White, & in Color (U Chicago, 2003)
Verity Spott, “Went to Get the Sink Unblocker” (Eternal Sections, 2025)
Keston Sutherland, Meditations (Last Books, 2024)
Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” (1939)
Helen Vendler, The Odes of John Keats (Harvard UP, 1983)
Omari Weekes, “Reliquary For The Digital in Nine Key Words” ASAP Review (April 26, 2021)
Omari Weekes, “A Heartbreaking Work of Swaggering Genius” BookForum (Winter 2026)
Oliver Wilde, “Mr. Pater’s Appreciations” (1890) in A Critic In Pall Mall (1919)
William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow” (1938) [PennSound]
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