LCLC Oral History

LCLC Oral History

The LCLC Podcast features candid conversation about and among practitioners and enthusiasts of literature and culture. Since its inception in 1973, the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture draws many important thinkers and writers to its annual gathering (including Jennifer Egan, Ben Lerner, and Rachel Kushner). Director Matthew Biberman invites friends and LCLC participants to weigh in on particularly pressing concerns including the place and the role of the humanities today. Past guests include Tom Sleigh, Jane Gallop, and Stanley Fish.

Episodes

LCLC Season 4 Episode 2: Robert Tally and Matthew Biberman discuss Fredric Jameson's Years of Theory

August 28, 2025 • 58 mins
In this episode, conference director Matthew Biberman talks with Robert Tally about the seminar he organized for the 52nd LCLC on the legacy of Fredric Jameson and Jameson's study of post WW2 French Theory titled Years of Theory. Robert T. Tally Jr. is a Professor of English and an Honorary Professor of International Studies at Texas State University. He has written extensively on literature and theory and is the author of a 2014 s...
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Season 4, Episode 1: Tom Sleigh

May 16, 2025 • 55 mins
In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman talks with acclaimed war journalist and poet Tom Sleigh about Israel and making sense of the region while the 10/7 war rages on. Sleigh's most recent essay collection is The Land Between Two Rivers: Writing in an Age of Refugees. His mid-career turn to war journalism has garnered Sleigh a new audience while making him one America’s essential poets for understanding our world tod...
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Season 3, Episode 4: Sam Vaknin, Part II

December 12, 2024 • 68 mins
In this episode, conference director Matthew Biberman speaks with Sam Vaknin, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Management Studies at the Commonwealth Institute of Advanced Professional Studies (CIAPS) in Cambridge and Birmingham, UK; Ontario, Canada; and Lagos, Nigeria. A former Visiting Professor of Psychology at Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, Vaknin is a prolific writer on narcissism and psychopathy, ofte...
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Season 3, Episode 3: Sam Vaknin

November 4, 2024 • 45 mins
In this episode, conference director Matthew Biberman speaks with Sam Vaknin, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology and Management Studies at the Commonwealth Institute of Advanced Professional Studies (CIAPS) in Cambridge and Birmingham, UK; Ontario, Canada; and Lagos, Nigeria. A former Visiting Professor of Psychology at Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, Vaknin is a prolific writer on narcissism and psychopathy, ofte...
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Season 3, Episode 2: Adam Walker

October 1, 2024 • 34 mins
Join Matthew Biberman as he sits down with Adam Walker, a PhD candidate at Harvard and the creator of the popular YouTube channel, Close Reading Poetry. In this episode, Adam shares his journey from self-taught poetry reader to academic and public humanities educator. With a commitment to accessible and relatable education, he founded the Antrim Literature Project, an innovative platform where graduate students host free public le...
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Season 3, Episode 1: Robert Archambeau

September 6, 2024 • 52 mins
In this episode, conference director Matthew Biberman talks with Robert Archambeau about his novel, Alice B. Toklas is Missing, as well as the current state of humanities in academia. The Chair of English at Lake Forest College and an author, Archambeau discusses his view of the intersection of arts, culture, and higher education. This LCLC podcast episode is intended for graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and anyone inter...
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Season 2, Episode 5: Ryan Engley

September 12, 2023 • 26 mins
IIn this episode, conference director Matthew Biberman talks with Ryan Engley about current topics and trends in media studies. Currently an Assistant Professor of English at Pomona College, Engley researches the intersection of psychoanalytic theory and media studies. Engley co-hosts the popular podcast Why Theory, along with Todd McGowan, which brings Continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine contempora...
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Season 2, Episode 4: Olivia Sun

July 20, 2023 • 44 mins
In this episode, Matthew Biberman talks with YouTube video essay creator Olivia Sun. With a subscriber base nearing one million, Olivia Sun has emerged as one of the first truly influential practitioners of the new art form of the social media-made video essay. Matthew and Olivia discuss her creative process and the potential for this new mode for thought. Of interest to media theorists and individuals seeking to make socially re...
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Season 2, Episode 3: Aldon Nielsen

February 17, 2023 • 25 mins
In this episode, Conference Director Matthew Biberman talks with Aldon Lynn Nielsen, the George and Barbara Kelly Professor of American Literature at Penn State, about the African American Literature and Culture Society, its history and mission, as well as the two panels the group has organized for the 50th LCLC conference. In addition, Biberman and Nielsen discuss the Society of Umbra with a focus on its legacy, and in particular...
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Season 2, Episode 2: Mark Mattes

February 6, 2023 • 24 mins
In this episode, Conference Director Matthew Biberman talks with Mark Alan Mattes about American Afterlives, a sequence of three panels he organized for the upcoming 50th LCLC conference to be held this February 2023. This episode is for scholars of American culture as well as enthusiasts of American multi-ethnic literature, including beloved writers such as Phillis Wheatley Peters, Leslie Marmon Silko, Tiana Clark, as well as Hawt...
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Season 2, Episode 1: Joshua Hoeynck

January 13, 2023 • 32 mins
In this episode Conference Director Matthew Biberman talks with noted Charles Olson scholar, Josh Hoeynck about the Olson Society and their slate of panels at the upcoming 50th LCLC conference to be held in February 2023. This episode is for fans of Olson as well as aficionados of contemporary American poetry and the black mountain school of poetry.
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Episode 14: Michael Anania

October 7, 2022 • 50 mins
In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman talks with Michael Anania who headlined the LCLC After Dark Reading this past February 2022 during the LCLC's 49th conference. Michael Anania is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. His published work includes twelve collections of poetry, among them Selected Poems (1994), In Natural Light (1999) and his most recent, Night Songs and Clamors (2018). His work is widely anthologiz...
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Episode 13: Brenda Hillman

August 19, 2022 • 49 mins
In this episode, conference director Matthew Biberman talks with the celebrated feminist poet Brenda Hillman, who read at the LCLC in February 2022 as the creative keynote for its 49th annual conference. Brenda Hillman teaches at Saint Mary College of California. She is the Poetry Director of Community of Writers as well as Chancellor emerita of The Academy of American Poets and has authored 11 books of poetry (all from Wesleyan Un...
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Episode 12: Ryan Engley

July 22, 2022 • 64 mins
In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman talks with Ryan Engley. Currently an Assistant Professor of English at Pamona College, Engley researches the intersection of psychoanalytic theory and media studies. Along with Todd McGowan, Engley co-hosts the popular podcast Why Theory, which brings Continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory together to examine contemporary phenomena. This LCLC podcast episode is intend...
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Episode 11: Alan Nadel

May 2, 2022 • 33 mins
In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman talks with Alan Nadel. Currently the William T Bryan Chair of American Literature and Culture at the University of Kentucky, Nadel has published numerous books on post-WW2 American film, drama, fiction, and popular culture generally. In addition to being a well-noted poet, Alan is also a leading expert on August Wilson and Cold War Studies. Our conversation explored and evaluat...
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Episode 10: Tom Sleigh, Part 2

April 12, 2022 • 30 mins
In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman concludes his conversation with acclaimed war journalist and poet Tom Sleigh. Sleigh reads two poems ("Clearance" and the title piece) from his latest collection The King's Touch (Graywolf 2022). Other topics include surfing and dog sledding, as well as the tradition of the American long poem. While illuminating his own poems "Ending" and "Homage to Basho," Sleigh reminisces abou...
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Episode 9: Tom Sleigh, Part 1

February 18, 2022 • 29 mins
In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman talks with acclaimed war journalist and poet Tom Sleigh. The author of 11 books of poetry including The Kings Touch, Tom has enjoyed sustained critical praise since the appearance of first collection After One. He has also published translations, plays and two collections of his nonfiction prose, the most recent being The Land Between Two Rivers: Writing in an Age of Refugees....
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Episode 8: Judith Roof

February 7, 2022 • 36 mins
In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman talks with noted feminist scholar Judith Roof. Now retired, Judith taught at 5 institutions, the last being Rice University where she was William Shakespeare Chair in English. She is the author of The Comic Event: Comedic Performance from the 1950s to the Present (Bloomsbury, 2018), What Gender Is, What Gender Does (2016), The Poetic of DNA (2007), as well as four other monograp...
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Episode 7: Norman Finkelstein

December 20, 2021 • 42 mins
In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman talked with the noted poet and critic Norman Finkelstein who has been regularly attending LCLC conferences since 1982. The author of thirteen books of poetry including his New and Selected collection entitled the Ratio of Reason to Magic as well as the forthcoming Thirty-Six/Two Lives coauthored with the poet Tirzah Goldenberg. His critical work includes On Mount Vision: Forms o...
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Episode 6: Jane Gallop

November 29, 2021 • 43 mins
In this episode conference director Matthew Biberman talks with noted feminist scholar Jane Gallop. Currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Gallop burst onto the literary scene with the publication of her 1982 book, The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis. Biberman and Gallop discuss her 1990 LCLC Keynote which was later incorporated into her...
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