Open Stacks

Tricky narrators and learning spaces: Pulitzer Prize winning author Andrew Sean Greer takes listeners through a break up with an excerpt from Less, University of Chicago professor Malynne Sterstein parses Nabokov's Pnin, and Co-op booksellers recount some of their favorite campus novels (with expanded takes on the genre).

Open Stacks returns from summer break with fresh ears and shelf-browsings: Peter Coviello takes a walk through the stacks, Stephen T Asma speaks on Why We Need Religion, and the Co-op's eminent booksellers talk about Middlemarch.

This week on Open Stacks, the second episode of our occasional Biblio-files series, featuring Co-op friends and legends, with professor emerita and former University of Chicago president Hanna Holborn Gray.

This week on Open Stacks, we're celebrating Chicago's own legendary Gwendolyn Brooks on her 101st birthday.  Reginald Gibbons, Angela Jackson, Quraysh Ali Lansana, Georgia Popoff, Troy Harden, and Cheryl Clarke join us for conversations and readings about her life and legacy.

This week on the program, cities shifting and shifted, and the people, institutions, and social structures that make it so. Ben Austen recounts the dissolution of Cabrini Green, America’s most iconic public housing project, on Chicago’s west side and tells a story of America’s public housing experiments and failures; LaDale C. Winling examines the role of universities on the shape of their neighborhoods and towns; and Gordon Douglas considers how DIY planning takes place, and who participates, within urban contexts.

This week on Open Stacks, French lit part deux. Join us for tete-à-tetes with translators Jonathan Larson on Francis Ponge's Nioques of the Early-Spring and Jordan Stump on Marie NDiaye's My Heart Hemmed In, as well as University of Chicago fellow Katie Kadue on Rabelais and domestic georgics.

This week, a further look at the mechanisms of incarceration. 2018 Pulitzer Prize winning professor, legal scholar, and author James Forman, Jr. discusses Locking Up Our Own and prisoners rights advocate Sarah Shourd recalls and contextualizes her own and others' experiences in solitary confinement.

This week on Open Stacks, the inaugural episode of our occasional Biblio-files series, featuring Co-op friends and legends, beginning with prolific author, esteemed anthropologist and professor, and publishing partner of the Co-op, Marshall Sahlins. 

This week on Open Stacks, lit for the little ones: it's Children's Book Week! Writers Javaka Steptoe and Elizabeth Acevedo join us, Colin interviews Franny, special selections from storytime, and more.

This week on the podcast, we traverse the poetics of place and shared space with Andy Fitch, Miquel Àngel Llauger, Joshua Beckman, & Patrick Morrissey.

This week on Open Stacks, a look at poemthings that point to the truths beyond the given names of the things contained within them, with Cecilia Vicuña and Jen Bervin.

This week on Open Stacks, poetry and personhood. We hear a reading and conversation with Anthony Madrid and an interview with Duriel E. Harris.

On this week's episode, National Book Award Winner Daniel Borzutsky, discusses his new book, Lake Michigan, with Chicago poet Nate Marshall. They also talk politics, education, violence, and the state. Then we talk with historian Robert Darnton about the revolutionary potential of poetry in 18th Century France.

This week on the show, we're taking a multifocal look at translation processes. Come along as we consider its tectonic, idiosyncratic, and uncharted terrains in conversations with Haun Saussy, Yoon Sun Yang, and the Co-op’s own Jeff Deutsch and Adam Sonderberg. With Rosanna Warren, Saussy discusses translation theory and translations of Baudelaire into Chinese; Yang talks about the formation of the concept of the individual in early colonial Korean literature; and Jeff and Adam take a lap around another vista difficult to put in words: the Co-op’s Front Table.

This week on Open Stacks, discussions about two of the most fervently debated and scrutinized institutions: prisons and public schools. First, Touissant Losier sits down with Michael C. Dawson to discuss the book Losier and Dan Berger co-authored, Rethinking the American Prison Movement. Then, Bill Ayers and Crystal Laura talk about Laura’s book, "You Can't Fire the Bad Ones!": And 18 Other Myths about Teachers, Teachers Unions, and Public Education, co-authored with Rick Ayers.    

This week on Open Stacks, the many relationships of art to time, as elucidated in photography, theater, and the lives of artists. Pamela Bannos discusses her book Vivian Maier: A Photographer’s Life and Afterlife, which details the life and work of the posthumously celebrated photographer; and Laura Letinsky and John Muse talk about their respective books Time’s Assignation and Microdramas.

This week's episode of Open Stacks features William Pelz discussing history from below; Lisa Lee, David Stovall, and Bill Ayers in conversation from the Singing In Dark Times series; and a discussion with Nate Marshall and Jeremy McCarter, about activists and art.           Open Stacks is the official podcast of the Seminary Co-operative Bookstores.

This week Marc Lamont Hill and John Joe Schlichtman discuss their book Gentrifier, and local activist Sharon Nelson-Payne, a co-founder of STOP (Southside Together Organizing for Power), talks about gentrification in Woodlawn and nearby neighborhoods of Chicago.         Open Stacks is the official podcast of the Seminary Co-operative Bookstores.

This week's episode explores the world of French-language literature. Alison James talks about literary movements, such as Oulipo. Kit Schluter discusses of the joys and sorrows of the translator. Adam Hocker sends word of new books, including finalists for the Albertine Prize.         Open Stacks is the official podcast of the Seminary Co-operative Bookstores.

This week's episode explores the history and present of Black Musics. Melanie Zeck discusses the influence of Black Musics and how they traveled around the world. Adam Gussow talks about symbolism and resistance. Chief Wicked (Ben Glover) discusses lyricism and rap.   Open Stacks is the official podcast of the Seminary Co-operative Bookstores.