Walter Brueggemann did not only teach me to read the Bible: he taught me to read. In the twenty-two years since I first read A Theology of the Old Testament I’ve been bringing the questions that book poses to Biblical texts over to every literary text I’ve come across: in what ways am I reading primary testimony or counter-testimony as I take on Toni Morrison or John Milton or Sophocles? How are these texts relating to and creating audiences when I teach Shakespeare or Plato or James Baldwin? And where do my own readings fit into stories of interpretive and disciplinary conversations whenever I engage with any text? Those questions keep on doing their work in Brueggemann’s recent collection of essays Resisting Denial, Refusing Despair, and Christian Humanist Profiles is thrilled to welcome him back to the show.
Nathan Gilmour interviews Christopher Celenza about "Machiavelli: A Portrait," Celenza's recent biography of the revolutionary Florentine political thinker.
Katie Grubbs interviews Amy Appleford about her new book "Learning to Die in London".
Michial Farmer talks with Burke Ingraffia about his recent album "Waves."