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About Morteza Hajizadeh

My name is Morteza Hajizadeh. I am a Ph.D. graduate in English Literature at the University of Auckland. My Ph.D. dissertation was on environmental history and the British gothic novels of the 18th and 19th centuries with a focus on gender and ecofeminism. My areas of research interest are Postcolonialism, Medieval Intellectual History, Critical Theory, Film Studies, Middle East Studies, and Gothic Studies.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

NBN Episodes hosted by Morteza:

General History November 28, 2023

What the Greeks Did for Us

Tony Spawforth

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Listen:
Our contemporary world is inescapably Greek. Whether in a word like “pandemic,” a Freudian state of mind like the “Oedipus complex,” or a replica of the Parthenon in a Chinese …
General History November 18, 2023

Fake History

101 Things That Never Happened

Jo Teeuwisse

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Fake news about the past is fake history. Did Hugo Boss design the Nazi uniforms? Did medieval people think the world was flat? Did Napoleon shoot the nose off the …
Literary Studies November 10, 2023

Dirty Books

Erotic Fiction and the Avant-garde in Mid-century Paris and New York

Barry Reay and Nina Attwood

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
From the 1930s to the 1970s, in New York and in Paris, daring publishers and writers were producing banned pornographic literature. The books were written by young, impecunious writers, poets …
American Studies November 7, 2023

Symbols of Freedom

Slavery and Resistance Before the Civil War

Matthew J. Clavin

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Listen:
In the early United States, anthems, flags, holidays, monuments, and memorials were powerful symbols of an American identity that helped unify a divided people. A language of freedom played a …
Religion November 5, 2023

Elysium

A Visual History of Angelology

Ed Simon

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Ineffable, invisible, inscrutable--angels are enduring creatures across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and human experiences of the divine as mediated by spiritual emissaries are an aspect of almost every religious tradition …
Politics & Polemics October 27, 2023

Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine

Universities, Intellectualism and Liberation

Nick Riemer

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
The academic boycott of Israel, a branch of the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, is one of the richest—and most divisive—topics in the politics of knowledge today. In …
Critical Theory October 22, 2023

Fascism

A Very Short Introduction

Kevin Passmore

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
What is fascism? Is it revolutionary? Or is it reactionary? Can it be both? Fascism is notoriously hard to define. How do we make sense of an ideology that appeals …
Neuroscience October 7, 2023

Neuroethics

Agency in the Age of Brain Science

Joshua May

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Is free will an illusion? Is addiction a brain disease? Should we enhance our brains beyond normal? Neuroethics: Agency in the Age of Brain Science (Oxford UP, 2023) blends philosophical …
Critical Theory October 6, 2023

Utopia in the Age of Survival

Between Myth and Politics

S. D. Chrostowska

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Listen:
A pathbreaking exploration of the fate of utopia in our troubled times, this book shows how the historically intertwined endeavors of utopia and critique might be leveraged in response to …
Critical Theory October 3, 2023

Why?

The Philosophy Behind the Question

Philippe Huneman

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Listen:
Why did triceratops have horns? Why did World War I occur? Why does Romeo love Juliet? And, most importantly, why ask why? In Why?: The Philosophy Behind the Question (Stanford …
Literary Studies October 1, 2023

Workshops of Empire

Stegner, Engle, and American Creative Writing During the Cold War

Eric Bennett

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
During and just after World War II, an influential group of American writers and intellectuals projected a vision for literature that would save the free world. Novels, stories, plays, and …
Medieval History September 30, 2023

Medieval Marvels and Fictions in the Latin West and Islamic World

Michelle Karnes

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Marvels like enchanted rings and sorcerers’ stones were topics of fascination in the Middle Ages, not only in romance and travel literature but also in the period’s philosophical writing. Rather …
British Studies September 27, 2023

The Year that Shaped the Victorian Age

Lives, Loves and Letters of 1845

Michael Wheeler

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Listen:
What was special about 1845 and why does it deserve particular scrutiny? In The Year that Shaped the Victorian Age: Lives, Loves and Letters of 1845 (Cambridge UP, 2022), one …
History of Science September 27, 2023

Pseudoscience

A Very Short Introduction

Michael D. Gordin

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Listen:
Everyone has heard of the term "pseudoscience," typically used to describe something that looks like science, but is somehow false, misleading, or unproven. Many would be able to agree on …
British Studies September 21, 2023

The Happiness of the British Working Class

Jamie Bronstein

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Listen:
For working-class life writers in nineteenth century Britain, happiness was a multifaceted emotion: a concept that could describe experiences of hedonic pleasure, foster and deepen social relationships, drive individuals to …
Literary Studies September 19, 2023

Engaging Violence

Civility and the Reach of Literature

David Simpson

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Recent thinking has resuscitated civility as an important paradigm for engaging with a violence that must be deemed endemic to our lives. But, while it is widely acknowledged that civility …
Literary Studies September 18, 2023

The Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation

Lenora Hanson

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Listen:
Lenora Hanson's The Romantic Rhetoric of Accumulation (Stanford UP, 2022) provides an account of the long arc of dispossession from the British Romantic period to today. Lenora Hanson glimpses histories …
Intellectual History September 17, 2023

Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna)

A Very Short Introduction

Peter Adamson

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Peter Adamson's book Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna): a Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2023) provides an introduction to the most important philosopher of the Islamic world, Ibn Sīnā, often known in English …
British Studies September 16, 2023

The East India Company and the Politics of Knowledge

Joshua Ehrlich

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
The East India Company is remembered as the world's most powerful, not to say notorious, corporation. But for many of its advocates from the 1770s to the 1850s it was …
Early Modern History September 13, 2023

Defining Nature's Limits

The Roman Inquisition and the Boundaries of Science

Neil Tarrant

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Listen:
Neil Tarrant challenges conventional thinking by looking at the longer history of censorship, considering a five-hundred-year continuity of goals and methods stretching from the late eleventh century to well into …
Critical Theory September 13, 2023

The Political Right and Equality

Turning Back the Tide of Egalitarian Modernity

Matthew McManus

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
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McManus presents an intellectual history of the conservative and reactionary tradition, stretching from Aristotle and Filmer to Alexander Dugin and Patrick Deneen. Providing a comprehensive critical genealogy of the intellectual …
Middle Eastern Studies September 12, 2023

Inventing the Middle East

Britain and the Persian Gulf in the Age of Global Imperialism

Guillemette Crouzet

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
Listen:
The “Middle East” has long been an indispensable and ubiquitous term in discussing world affairs, yet its history remains curiously underexplored. Few question the origin of the term or the …
Literary Studies September 10, 2023

The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures

Global Commodification, Translation, and the Culture Industry

Muḥsin Jāsim Mūsawī

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
The stories in the Thousand and One Nights, or the Arabian Nights, are familiar to many of us: from the tales of Aladdin, Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba and his …
Middle Eastern Studies September 10, 2023

The East India Company in Persia

Trade and Cultural Exchange in the Eighteenth Century

Peter Good

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
In 1747, the city of Kerman in Persia burned amidst chaos, destruction and death perpetrated by the city's own overlord, Nader Shah. After the violent overthrow of the Safavid dynasty …