grad school achebe

A show where two literary critics go through all of Kurt Vonnegut, and then Chinua Achebe, novel by novel, periodically interrupted by talking about The Sopranos.

8. "The Voter" 11/12/2021

8. "The Voter" A nice, quick-and-dirty bonus episode on "The Voter," Achebe's early stab at A Man of the People! For the rest of our conversation, see the bonus episode from a few weeks ago on The Many Saints of Newark... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/21059510

7. A Man of the People 11/05/2021

7. A Man of the People Gerry and Aaron talk about what may be their favorite Achebe novel yet, A Man of the People, originally published in 1966. Also they try to figure out whether or not America had a coup. /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/21059216

6. Arrow of God 10/22/2021

6. Arrow of God We are all but faulty microphones in the podcast of an angry God! Thanks to Aaron for his absolutely heroic efforts to recover the audio from this nearly lost episode and thanks to all of you for your grace and forgiveness on the sound quality. In this one we close out the so-called African Trilogy with Arrow of God -- lots of religion talk for all you religion-heads, and a lot more to talk about besides... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/20906846

0. The Many Saints of Newark 10/03/2021

0. The Many Saints of Newark We've had some audio problems with the Arrow of God episode, which Aaron is working hard on and which should be out soon very soon. In the meantime, please enjoy this emergency b-b-b-b-b-b-bonus episode of our brand-new season that is absolutely *not* a one-off joke, all about The Many Saints of Newark... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/20688728

5. "Chike's School Days," "The Sacrificial Egg," and "Akueke" 08/23/2021

5. "Chike's School Days," "The Sacrificial Egg," and "Akueke" Another week on the short stories from the 50s and 60s! This week it's "Chike's School Days," "The Sacrificial Egg," and "Akueke." If you like stories in which nothing really happens, then this is the podcast for you! Sincere apologies for the slightly tinny sound in spots -- somebody stepped on an egg, and there was a problem with Gerry's mic that only showed up on the recording... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/20221388

4. "Dead Man's Path" and "Marriage Is A Private Affair" 08/16/2021

4. "Dead Man's Path" and "Marriage Is A Private Affair" On this week's not-exactly-a-mini-episode, Gerry and Aaron talk about two of Achebe's early short stories, "Dead Man's Path" and "Marriage Is A Private Affair," while also looking forward and backward to Things Fall Apart and No Longer at Ease and forward to Arrow of God. Along the way they somehow find time to talk about Kurt Vonnegut, Octavia Butler, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Wole Soyinka, Amos Tutuola, Cyprian Ekwensi, Flora Nwapa, Raymond Williams, Tolkien, Chekhov, Nabokov, and the Bible, too... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/20151890

3. No Longer at Ease 08/09/2021

3. No Longer at Ease Sixty years later, Gerry and Aaron are joined by Keguro Macharia to talk about No Longer at Ease! Should it be illegal to teach Things Fall Apart without also teaching its sequel? Find out within... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/20074019

2. Things Fall Apart (whole book!) 07/01/2021

2. Things Fall Apart (whole book!) Gerry and Aaron are back for more Things Fall Apart, talking about parts two and three of the novel. We also talk The Sopranos, Watchmen, Breaking Bad, bad fans, The Things Fall Apart film, just a little Vonnegut, and Achebe's 1973 essay "Named for Victoria, Queen of England"... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/19672019

1. Things Fall Apart chapters 1-13 06/17/2021

1. Things Fall Apart chapters 1-13 Gerry and Aaron dive into Things Fall Apart, chapters 1-13! /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/19503893

0. Grad School Achebe 06/01/2021

0. Grad School Achebe The first episode of season two! Gerry and Aaron discuss the gameplan for Grad School Achebe, the history and reception of African literature inside and outside academia, Achebe's place in the canon, his uncanny recurrent deaths on social media, the finer points of pronunciation, and more. Next week: the podcast falls apart. /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/19295111

25. Death March, Power Rankings, and Celebratory Clambake 03/08/2021

25. Death March, Power Rankings, and Celebratory Clambake In which Gerry and Aaron reflect on what they have done, admit their wrongdoing, and commit to never doing it again. /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/18233042

24. "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" 02/19/2021

24. "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" The last bonusisode of season one is one last quick spin through immortality, 1954's "The Big Trip Up Yonder" / "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow"... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/18012830

23. Galápagos 02/09/2021

23. Galápagos This is the one the podcast has always been building towards: Gerry, Aaron, and special guest Brian Thill take on Galápagos. Does it hold up? Is it secretly the best Vonnegut novel? Can Kurt wriggle out of being canceled one last time? Only our big brains know for sure... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/17887322

22. "EPICAC" 01/15/2021

22. "EPICAC" Gerry and Aaron return for a discussion of "EPICAC" (1950)! Join us for a meandering tour of automation, machine learning, feminism, suicide, the war machine, masculinity, STEM, and so much more... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/17566721

21. Player Piano (with Matt Hauske & Hilary Strang) 12/29/2020

21. Player Piano (with Matt Hauske & Hilary Strang) What's that? There, in the back, behind the Christmas tree? Why, it's a very special, two-hour episode of Grad School Vonnegut, guest-starring Matt Hauske & Hilary Strang from the the Marooned! on Mars podcast! We talk Player Piano, automation, capitalism, revolution, utopia, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ministry for the Future, failsons, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, the Ghost Dance, and so much more... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/17359418

20. "All the King's Horses" 12/21/2020

20. "All the King's Horses" This week Gerry and Aaron's guest is Cameron Kunzelman of the "Just King Things" and "Game Studies Study Buddies" podcasts! We talk Vonnegut's 1951 short story "All the King's Horses," adaptation, chess, Go, games, game theory, the Cold War, the 90s, Stephen King, The Queen's Gambit, esports, Pikmin 3, and finally taking down the Vonnegut Library! #FreetheGame #FreetheVonnegutBoardGame /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/17270501

19. God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian 12/12/2020

19. God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian Gerry and Aaron's whirlwind tour of the late Vonnegut reaches a resounding anti-climax in 1999's God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, based on Vonnegut's recurring WNYC segment Reports on the Afterlife! Our next novel is the very first one, Player Piano (1952)... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/17166644

18. Hocus Pocus (with Evan Kindley) 12/05/2020

18. Hocus Pocus (with Evan Kindley) Grad School Vonnegut returns for its final run of episodes with Hocus Pocus (1990)! This week our guest is the brilliant Evan Kindley, senior humanities editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books! /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/17068949

17. Timequake 11/21/2020

17. Timequake Gerry and Aaron emerge from the foggy timequake of election season to discuss 1997's Timequake! They called this shot from episode zero -- does it live up to the hype? Is Timequake majority garbage by weight? Not even our beloved randomizer could survive its encounter with this book; we hope you have better luck... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/16900151

16. Slaughterhouse-Five: The Graphic Novel (with ML Kejera) 10/31/2020

16. Slaughterhouse-Five: The Graphic Novel (with ML Kejera) In a very special two-hour mega-episode extravaganza, Gerry and Aaron talk with ML Kejera (@KejeraL) about the new comic adaptation of Slaughterhouse-Five by Ryan North and Albert Monteys! We sneak in some nice Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Art Spiegelman, and Chris Ware talk too, and even talk a bit about the film. All this AND viewer mail! /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/16629527

15. Mother Night (with Matthew Cheney) 10/16/2020

15. Mother Night (with Matthew Cheney) After a brief hiatus, Gerry and Aaron are back with a careful study of Mother Night with Matthew Cheney, Assistant Professor and Director of Interdisciplinary Studies at Plymouth State University and author of Modernist Crisis and the Pedagogy of Form and Blood: Stories! We are what we pretend to podcast, so we must be careful what we pretend to podcast... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/16423547

14. Happy Birthday, Wanda June 09/18/2020

14. Happy Birthday, Wanda June Gerry and Aaron tackle Vonnegut's 1971 play, Happy Birthday, Wanda June in their most dramatic episode ever! Come for the Theatre of the Absurd, stay for snippets from Aaron's dissertation on American fantasies of Africa... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/16059140

13. Deadeye Dick (with Bee Gabriel) 09/08/2020

13. Deadeye Dick (with Bee Gabriel) This week, on Grad School Vonnegut: After Dark, Aaron and Gerry talk Deadeye Dick with Bee Gabriel! Check out Bee's Twitter! Check out their Patreon! Sorry about the audio in just a few places; we were working with a truly messed-up record on one of the tracks and did our best... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/15914759

12. Jailbird 09/01/2020

12. Jailbird Gerry and Aaron discuss 1979's Jailbird! Labor, prison, massacres, communism, Reagan, Watergate, finance, Einstein, Jimmy Carter, Judas Iscariot, and Kilgore Trout, too... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/15831440

11. Cat's Cradle (with Patrick Iber) 08/22/2020

11. Cat's Cradle (with Patrick Iber) This week Aaron and Gerry talk about 1963's Cat's Cradle with Patrick Iber, historian of 20th century Latin America and U.S. foreign relation and author of Neither Peace nor Freedom: The Cultural Cold War in Latin America! Let this be your vin-dit! Busy, busy, busy... /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/15715271

10. "Report on the Barnhouse Effect" (with Adam Kotsko) 08/04/2020

10. "Report on the Barnhouse Effect" (with Adam Kotsko) This week Gerry and Aaron talk to Adam Kotsko (author of the Awardness trilogy, The Prince of This World, and Neoliberalism's Demons) about Vonnegut's first published story, "Report on the Barnhouse Effect" (1950). We also talk quite a bit about Watchmen, including spoilers for the 2019-2020 HBO sequel series. /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/15469274

9. Breakfast of Champions (with Robert T. Tally, Jr.) 07/21/2020

9. Breakfast of Champions (with Robert T. Tally, Jr.) This week Aaron and Gerry talk Breakfast of Champions with Robert T. Tally, Jr., author of Kurt Vonnegut and the American Novel: A Postmodern Iconography, which you should read! /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/15286334

8. "The Big Space ****" 07/14/2020

8. "The Big Space ****" Too hot for Apple Podcasts, it's "The Big Space ****"! This week Gerry and Aaron are talking about Vonnegut's nihilistically obscene, obscenely nihilistic contribution to Harlan Ellison's New Wave SF anthology AGAIN, DANGEROUS VISIONS (1972). /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/15199550

7. The Sirens of Titan (with Rebekah Sheldon) 07/07/2020

7. The Sirens of Titan (with Rebekah Sheldon) This week Aaron and Gerry talk to Rebekah Sheldon of Indiana University and the author of The Child to Come: Life after the Human Catastrophe about The Sirens of Titan (1959)! /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/15117833

6. Bluebeard (with Susan Farrell) 06/30/2020

6. Bluebeard (with Susan Farrell) This week Gerry and Aaron discuss Bluebeard (1987) with Susan Farrell, a professor in the English department at the College of Charleston and one of the founders of the international Kurt Vonnegut Society. /episode/index/show/gradschoolvonnegut/id/15030686

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