My friend and colleague Matt Seybold invited me and Kyla Wazana Tompkins onto his truly excellent podcast from the Mark Twain Center, American Vandal, in an episode inspired by an essay of Kyla’s for PMLA. Her essay was called « The Shush », and we talk at length in the episode about different forms of « coerced non-disclosure » and then go about breaking a series of silences.
Here’s Kyla’s essay, links to Matt’s other excellent episodes about The Chair and race, and finally, a link to Koritha Mitchell’s excellent essay which I name checked in the episode.
The artist Luke Gumaelius was inspired by our conversation to create the poster above.
Kyla writes: The future of the English major can not look like its past. In this somewhat raw and honest conversation, we really tried to feel our ways towards a reinvented humanities.