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About Uli Baer

Uli Baer teaches literature and photography as University Professor at New York University. A recipient of Guggenheim, Getty and Humboldt awards, in addition to hosting "Think About It” he hosts (with Caroline Weber) the podcast "The Proust Questionnaire” and is Editorial Director at Warbler Press. Email ucb1@nyu.edu; Twitter @UliBaer.

NBN Episodes hosted by Uli:

Think About It March 17, 2023

Vivian Gornick on Emma Goldman

Book Talk 58

Vivian Gornick

Hosted by Uli Baer
What Is to Be Done? In her luminous biography Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life (Yale UP, 2011), Vivian Gornick brings us back to this question, originally made …
Think About It January 30, 2023

Anne Fernald and Rajgopal Saikumar on Virginia Woolf's "Three Guineas" (1938)

Book Talk 57

Anne Fernald and Rajgopal Saikumar

Hosted by Uli Baer
Virginia Woolf’s 1938 provocative and polemical essay Three Guineas presents the iconic writer’s views on war, women, and the way the patriarchy at home oppresses women in ways that resemble …
Think About It January 6, 2023

What is a "Great Book?": A Discussion with Roosevelt Montás

Book Talk 56

Roosevelt Montás

Hosted by Uli Baer
Roosevelt Montás is Senior Lecturer in American Studies and English at Columbia University. A specialist in Antebellum American literature and culture and in American citizenship, he focuses mainly on the …
Think About It September 12, 2022

Courtney B. Hodrick and Amir Eshel on Hannah Arendt's "Rachel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewish Woman"

Book Talk 55

Courtney Blair Hodrick and Amir Eshel

Hosted by Uli Baer
Hannah Arendt said that she had one life-long “best friend.” That was Rachel Varnhagen, a Jewish woman who lived in Enlightenment-era Berlin around 1800 and died 73 years before Arendt …
Think About It August 2, 2022

Anne Fernald on Virginia Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway"

Book Talk 54

Anne Fernald

Hosted by Uli Baer
Halfway through Mrs Dalloway, Septimus Smith mutters to himself: "Communication is health; communication is happiness, communication.” It’s easy to write off his message that communication is vital for human existence …
Think About It June 30, 2022

Paul Edwards on Toni Morrison's "Playing in the Dark"

Book Talk 53

Paul Edwards

Hosted by Uli Baer
Toni Morrison’s Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination is a must-read for anyone interested in American literature and in the formation of American identity in general. In …
Think About It May 16, 2022

Linda Patterson Miller on Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises"

Book Talk 52

Linda Patterson Miller

Hosted by Uli Baer
When first published in 1926, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises changed American literature forever. Hemingway follows a disillusioned group of expats in post-World War I Europe whose relationships unravel …
Think About It April 18, 2022

Ardythe Ashley on Oscar Wilde

Book Talk 51

Ardythe Ashley

Hosted by Uli Baer
Secretly his unconscious body, still flickering with life, is spirited away by to an island monastery in the Venetian lagoon where he recovers his health and joie de vivre. From …
Think About It January 11, 2022

John Waters on James Joyce's "Dubliners"

John Waters

Hosted by Uli Baer
James Joyce’s 1914 collection of fifteen short stories, Dubliners, is righty considered one of the greatest literary achievements of Western modernity. But what is so original about these stories that …
Think About It December 6, 2021

“The Good Life” with Dora Zhang

Book Talk 49

Dora Zhang

Hosted by Uli Baer
“The good life” and “the American Dream “remain powerful animating principles in popular culture, politics, and also our individual psyches. I spoke with Professor Dora Zhang at the University of …
Think About It November 19, 2021

Charlie Louth on Rainer Maria Rilke

Charlie Louth

Hosted by Uli Baer
Charlie Louth’s illuminating recent book, Rilke: The Life of the Work (Oxford University Press, 2021) examines why Rilke’s poems have exercised such preternatural attraction for now several generations of readers …
Think About It September 1, 2021

Wendy Lee on Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice"

Great Books Series

Wendy Lee

Hosted by Uli Baer
Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice delights, charms and entrances reader since its anonymous publication in 1813. The Bennett sisters need to marry rich, for otherwise they'll fall into poverty …
Think About It May 27, 2021

Marlene Daut on the Haitian Revolution in Literature

Great Books Series

Marlene Daut

Hosted by Uli Baer
To learn more about the Haitian Revolution in fiction, I spoke with Professor Marlene Daut specialized in pre-20th-century Caribbean, African American, and French colonial literary and historical studies. Her first …
Think About It May 3, 2021

Paul Mendes-Flohr on Martin Buber's "I and Thou"

Great Books Series

Paul Mendes-Flohr

Hosted by Uli Baer
Today we talk a lot about a need for genuine dialogue, and for conversations across partisan divides and differences. What is a true, authentic, and meaningful conversation? Martin Buber's landmark …
Think About It March 18, 2021

Samantha Hill on Hannah Arendt

Great Books Series

Samantha Hill

Hosted by Uli Baer
Hannah Arendt's 1967 essay on "Truth and Politics" centers on the uneasy relation between truth-telling and politics. Lying has always been part of politics, Arendt says, but something shifts with …
Think About It February 19, 2021

Mark Wunderlich on Rainer Maria Rilke

Great Books Series

Mark Wunderlich

Hosted by Uli Baer
"Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the order of angels?" This angsty cry opens poet Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies -- one of the greatest poetic masterpieces …
Think About It January 29, 2021

Rafael Walker on Kate Chopin's "The Awakening"

Great Books Series

Rafael Walker

Hosted by Uli Baer
Kate Chopin's absorbing 1899 novel The Awakening tells the story of Edna Pontellier, a married woman in New Orleans who questions her life choices, and seeks something else. What does …
Think About It January 25, 2021

John Collins on F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby"

Great Books Series

John Collins

Hosted by Uli Baer
The Great Gatsby is one of the greatest novels ever written and a masterpiece of American fiction. Midwesterner Nick Carraway spends a summer on Long Island where he is lured …
Think About It December 28, 2020

Mary Chapman on Sui Sin Far's "Mrs. Spring Fragrance"

Great Books Series

Mary Chapman

Hosted by Uli Baer
The first Asian American writer to publish stories in the US, Sui Sin Far could have “passed” for a white woman but during a time of intense Sinophobia, aligned herself …
Think About It November 25, 2020

Robert Dale Parker on Jane Johnston Schoolcraft

Great Books Series

Robert Dale Parker

Hosted by Uli Baer
Jane Johnston Schoolcraft is the first known American Indian literary writer, the first known Indian woman writer, the first known Indian poet, and the first known poet to write poems …
Think About It November 20, 2020

Melissa Daniels-Rauterkus on James Weldon Johnson's "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man"

Great Books Series

Melissa Daniels-Rauterkus

Hosted by Uli Baer
Recalling the great confessional narratives from St. Augustine to Jean Jacques Rousseau, from Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass to Henry Adams, James Weldon Johnson's 1912 novel, The Autobiography of an …
Think About It October 1, 2020

J. Gerald Kennedy on Edgar Allan Poe

Great Books Series

J. Gerald Kennedy

Hosted by Uli Baer
To understand Poe, inventor of the detective story, tales of terror, and progenitor to Hitchcock, Stephen King and much of Netflix's programing, I spoke with J. Gerald Kennedy who's written …
Think About It September 24, 2020

Doon Arbus's "The Caretaker"

Great Books Series

Doon Arbus

Hosted by Uli Baer
Something different today: I was lucky to speak with writer Doon Arbus about her debut novel, The Caretaker, published September 2020 by New Directions books. It's a spell-binding, intricate and …
Think About It August 27, 2020

Susan Weisser on Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre"

Great Books Series

Susan Weisser

Hosted by Uli Baer
Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel Jane Eyre is one of the great love stories of all time, but it's also the story of a woman who speaks her truth even when …