The HBS hosts discuss academic specializations and how to make the humanities more inclusive. Over the last several decades, there has been a long-overdue push for professors in the humanities to diversify their curricula to include more women, BIPOC, queer, disabled, and other under-represented thinkers and texts. Yet, theh “add diversity and stir” model…
Read MoreThe HBS hosts discuss the role of superheroes in culture and popular media. In American graphic fiction and contemporary film, the superhero stands at the center of many popular narratives. Superhero stories published by DC Comics and Marvel are a multi-million dollar per year industry and, in 2019 alone, superhero movies grossed 3.19 billion dollars…
Read MoreThe HBS hosts take a critical look at the white working class and their grievances. Leading up to the 2016 election of President Donald Trump, and even more so afterwards, the U.S. found itself inundated with analyses of the allegedly “overlooked” grievances of the white working class. Were those legitimate grievances that should have been…
Read MoreThe HBS hosts discuss conspiracy theories and what motivates people to believe in them. The word “conspiracy” derives from the Latin con- (“with” or “together”) and spirare (“to breathe”), and it seems like more and more people are breathing in the thin air of dubious explanations and bonding together over them. From Q-Anon to flat earthers to anti-vaxxers to…
Read MoreThe HBS hosts lower themselves into the muck in this NSFW episode! Dr. Charles F. Peterson is in the hot seat for this discussion of vulgarity. What is the difference between obscenity, profanity, and vulgarity? Who determines what is “appropriate” or “inappropriate” in public (or in private)? Is the very concept of vulgarity elitist? When…
Read MoreFor Season 2 of Hotel Bar Sessions, we’re recording one “Afterthoughts” episode for every three podcast episodes, which we post to our HBS YouTube channel. The “Afterthoughts” series gives us a chance to say what we wish we would’ve said during one of the podcasts, or to add something new to the conversation that only occurred…
Read MoreIn advance of Rick Lee’s forthcoming book, co-hosts Charles and Leigh ask him why he thinks all “theories” of comedy are inadequate. What exactly is the “joke” part of a joke? Why are philosophers not only hostile to comedy, but also categorically unfunny? Is comedy formulaic or does it resist systematic analysis? What is…
Read MoreCo-host Leigh M. Johnson is in the hot seat for this episode’s discussion of “digital afterlives.” If we consider the digital, i.e., information-based, self to be distinguishable from the living and breathing meatspace self, we should ask” how long can the Digital Me live on after the Meatspace Me dies? Technology already enables us to…
Read MoreThis episode explores the political and ethical dimensions of the category of the “citizen.” In anticipation of his soon-to-be-released book Beyond Civil Disobedience: Social Nullification and Black Citizenship (August 2021!), Charles Peterson takes the “captain’s seat” for this episode’s discussion of the limits of citizenship, the failure of the state, and the construction of new…
Read MoreThe HBS hosts discuss how cities, once considered hubs of public life and interaction, have become increasingly segregated, partitioned, disconnected, and privatized. Drawing on his experience using the city of Chigoe as a classroom, Rick Lee asks: can we identify the material markers of “privatization” in contemporary cities? How do we know which parts…
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