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About Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz

John Plotz is Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanities at Brandeis University. His books include The Crowd: British Literature and Public Politics, Portable Property: Victorian Culture on the Move, and Semi-Detached: The Aesthetics of Virtual Experience since Dickens; he is at work on My Earthsea, a book about Ursula Le Guin. He is editor of the Public Books B-Sides and a collection from Columbia University Press, B-Sides Books: Essays on Forgotten Favorites. He co-founded the Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative and co-hosts the podcasts Novel Dialogue and Recall This Book.

Elizabeth Ferry is Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University. Email: ferry@brandeis.edu. John Plotz is Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanities at Brandeis University and co-founder of the Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative. Email: plotz@brandeis.edu.

Elizabeth Ferry's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Elizabeth Ferry:

Recall This Book May 19, 2022

The Underworld

A Conversation with David Ferry and Roger Reeves

David Ferry and Roger Reeves

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Since the original airing of this episode in June 2021, Roger Reeves' second book Best Barbarian was published by W. W. Norton, and the paperback edition of David Ferry's translation …
Recall This Book May 5, 2022

We are Not Digested

A Conversation with Rajiv Mohabir (Ulka Anjaria, JP)

Rajiv Mohabir

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Rajiv Mohabir is a dazzling poet of linguistics crossovers, who works in English, Bhojpuri, Hindi and more. He is as prolific as he is polyglot (three books in 2021!) and …
Recall This Book April 21, 2022

Madeline Miller on Circe (GT, JP)

Madeline Miller

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
In this rebroadcast, John and Brandeis neuroscientist Gina Turrigiano (an occasional host and perennial friend of Recall this Book) speak with Madeline Miller, author of the critically acclaimed bestseller Circe …
Recall This Book April 7, 2022

Fantasy Then, Now, and Forever with Anna Vaninskaya

A Conversation with Anna Vaninskaya

Anna Vaninskaya

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Elizabeth and John talk about fantasy's power of world-making with Edinburgh professor Anna Vaninskaya, author of William Morris and the Idea of Community: Romance, History and Propaganda, 1880-1914 (2010) and …
Recall This Book March 17, 2022

Polynesia, Sea of Islands

A Discussion with Christina Thompson

Christina Thompson

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
John and Elizabeth talk cultural renewal with Christina Thompson in this rebroadcast of a 2019 Recall this Book conversation. Her Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia both relates the history …
Recall This Book March 3, 2022

Land-Grab Universities

A Discussion with Robert Lee

Robert Lee

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
John and new Brandeis host Jerome Tharaud (author of Apocalyptic Geographies) learn exactly how the growth of America's public universities relied on shameful seizures of Native American land. Working with …
Recall This Book February 17, 2022

Sean Hill Talks about Bodies in Space and Time with Elizabeth Bradfield

Sean Hill and Elizabeth Bradfield

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
This conversation, first aired in July 2021, features Brandeis poet Elizabeth Bradfield, and the poet Sean Hill, author of Blood Ties and Brown Liquor (2008) and Dangerous Goods (2014). Sean …
Recall This Book February 3, 2022

George Kalogeris on Words and Places

George Kalogeris

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
John and Elizabeth had the marvelous fortune to talk with George Kalogeris about his new book Winthropos (LSU Press, 2021). The title comes from the "Greek-ified" name that George's father …
Recall This Book January 27, 2022

Teletherapy with Hannah Zeavin

"High Theory" Crossover

Hannah Zeavin

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Crossover Month at Recall this Book ends with a glance sideways at the doings of our pals Saronik and Kim, hosts of the delightfully lapidary podcast High Theory. Refresh your …
Recall This Book January 20, 2022

Caryl Phillips Speaks with Corina Stan

Caryl Phillips and Corina Stan

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Our second January Novel Dialogue conversation is with Caryl Phillips, professor of English at Yale and world-renowned for novels ranging from The Final Passage to 2018’s A View of the …
Recall This Book January 6, 2022

Jennifer Egan with Ivan Kreilkamp

Fiction as Streaming, Genre as Portal (Novel Dialogue crossover, JP)

Jennifer Egan and Ivan Kreilkamp

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
This week on Recall this Book, another delightful crossover episode from our sister podcast Novel Dialogue, which puts scholars and writers together to discuss the making of novels and what …
Recall This Book December 16, 2021

"Studying Up" with Daniel Souleles (EF, JP)

Recall this Buck 5

Daniel Souleles

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
John and Elizabeth continue their conversation with Daniel Souleles, anthropologist at the Copenhagen Business School and author of Songs of Profit, Songs of Loss: Private Equity, Wealth, and Inequality (Lincoln …
Recall This Book December 2, 2021

Daniel Souleles on Private Equity (JP, EF)

Recall this Buck 4

Daniel Souleles

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
In this installment of our Recall this Buck series (check out our earlier conversations with Thomas Piketty, Peter Brown and Christine Desan), John and Elizabeth talk with Daniel Souleles, anthropologist …
Recall This Book November 18, 2021

Writing and Reading from Gilgamesh to Amazon

A Conversation with Martin Puchner

Martin Puchner

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Book Industry Month continues with a memory-lane voyage back to a beloved early RtB episode. This conversation with Martin Puchner about the very origins of writing struck us as perfect …
Recall This Book November 4, 2021

Everything and Less

Mark McGurl on Books in the Age of Amazon

Mark McGurl

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
What do you make of Amazon: The new Sears Roebuck? A terrifying monopoly threat? Satisfaction (a paperback in your mailbox, a Kindle edition on your tablet) just a click away …
Recall This Book October 21, 2021

On Multi-Species Community

A Critical Conversation with Patricia Alvarez Astacio

Patricia Alvarez Astacio

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Octopus month has morphed seamlessly into Multispecies month here at RtB, bringing with it not only last week's piece on chimpanzees, but also this sparkling conversation about all sorts of …
Recall This Book October 7, 2021

Octopus World

Other Minds with Peter Godfrey-Smith (EF, JP)

Peter Godfrey-Smith

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Peter Godfrey-Smith knows his cephalopods. Once of CUNY and now a professor of history and philosophy of science at University of Sydney, his truly capacious career includes books such as …
Recall This Book September 16, 2021

Adaner and John wrap up with Elizabeth

Brahmin Left Series (4)

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Our Summer series on the Brahmin Left, winding down as Fall approaches, was inspired by our bracing but terrifying interview with Thomas Piketty. It starts from the assumption that a …
Recall This Book September 2, 2021

A Conversation with Arlie Hochschild

Brahmin Left Series (3)

Arlie Hochschild

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Our Brahmin Left investigation was inspired by Adaner and John’s eye-opening interview with Thomas Piketty. Piketty maintains that Left parties have abandoned the working-class for an increasingly highly educated voter-base …
Recall This Book August 19, 2021

A Conversation with Jan-Werner Müller

Brahmin Left Series (2)

Jan-Werner Müller

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
This new series on the Brahmin Left was inspired by Adaner and John’s bracing but terrifying interview with Thomas Piketty. Piketty maintains that Left parties have abandoned the working-class for …
Recall This Book August 6, 2021

Sanjay Krishnan on V. S. Naipaul

To make the Deformation the Formation

Sanjay Krishnan

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
“My subject was not my inward self, but…the worlds within me.” Sanjay Krishnan, Boston University English professor and Conrad scholar, has written a marvelous new book about that grumpiest of …
Recall This Book August 5, 2021

A Conversation with Matt Karp about Class Dealignments

Brahmin Left Series (1)

Matt Karp

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
This new series on the Brahmin Left was inspired by our bracing but terrifying interview with Thomas Piketty. So what even is the Brahmin Left? There seems to be little …
Recall This Book July 8, 2021

Sean Hill on Bodies in Space and Time

Sean Hill

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Elizabeth is joined by Elizabeth Bradfield, poet, naturalist and professor of poetry at Brandeis, in a conversation with the poet Sean Hill, author of Blood Ties and Brown Liquor (2008) …
Recall This Book June 24, 2021

Pardis Dabashi on “My Uncle Napoleon”

Recall This B-Side Series (4)

Pardis Dabashi

Hosted by Elizabeth Ferry and John Plotz
Iraj Pezeshkzad‘s My Uncle Napoleon is a slapstick and at times goofy love story, but it is also in the best tradition of sly anti-imperial satire. Scholar Pardis Dabashi came …