Podcast Preview

We ask our podcast-guests their favorite excuse for having writer’s block. But this ‘excuse’ might actually rise to the level of a genuine reason.
Description: An orange cat lying across a keyboard, probably because Erika wants to use the keyboard to write something.

Friday is here once again. To our readers and listeners who celebrated Rosh Hashanah this week, we wish you L’Shanah Tovah–a sweet new year.

Tomorrow’s podcast is one that any teacher, writer or editor will want to listen to… whether you’re a “teacher” in the traditional sense or not. Andrew sits down with editors of the special pedagogy issue, “Teaching to Transgress,” of the open-access journal Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies. As a public humanities organization, we aim to bring you accessible literary and artistic content, and this week’s round table is an exciting discussion about the overlap between pedagogy and scholarship. It’s also about the influence COVID on how we teach and learn, and create communities. The panelists really turn a lens on the collaborative effort of journal editing, with a particular focus on nurturing scholarship and empowering writers. 

Speaking of empowering writers, Andrew’s article in this issue is his first peer-reviewed publication!

The discussion may leave you considering how to carry forward the lessons we’ve all learned during this pandemic–about teaching, about collaboration, and about what community means.

Leave yourself time this weekend too, to check out Andrew’s article, which you can read. If you prefer an audio version, Andrew is recording a version, which will be available as a bonus episode.

Our guests were so wonderful during the round table, and then, all three also took the time to answer our guest questionnaire. It’s always so much fun to share these with you–we never know what we’ll discover or what secrets might lurk in the list of books that are less than loved.

Three panelists makes this feel a little like the old Dating Game, so here are the answers from…


Panelist Number 1, Dr. Doreen Thierauf

1. What are you listening to, reading, watching?

I’ve been listening to some blues and indie lists on Spotify. The best books I read this summer were short story collections: Karen Russell’s Orange World, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Friday Black, and Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees. When I’m not re-watching Star Trek shows on an eternal loop (currently mid-Voyager again), I like sci-fi and genre-bending shows like Raised by Wolves, Kevin Can F**k Himself, or The Good Place.

2. Do you like to cook? What is your favorite thing to make?

I really dislike cooking, but I’m a reasonably decent baker. My favorite thing to make from scratch is pie, preferably blueberry or apple.

3. What is something you have read and loved, and wish more people would read?

Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. If as many people had read and taught it when it first came out in 1993 as they do today, we might have had a better chance of averting climate change and immiseration caused by austerity politics. It’s a prophetic book which, nevertheless, has come too late.

4. Did you grow up with video- or computer-games? What were/are some of your favorites?

Absolutely. I played The Sims like crazy when it first came out and got back into it with each new iteration. Right now, I’m playing Dyson Sphere Program which is seriously addictive. Another PC game, almost as good, is Stellaris. GTA V and Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey are my favorites on PlayStation.

5. You’re taking a sick day from work. What movie are you putting on?

The 2005 Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightley. I will die on this hill.

6. What’s your favorite excuse for why you have writer’s block?

“I’m a perfectionist!”

7. What’s a book everyone says you should read, but you either read it and hated it or haven’t read it.

There was some hype around Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun this year, but I didn’t think the novel was all that great. It has many of the same themes as his previous work, especially Never Let Me Go–and NLMG did it better.

Panelist Number Two, Dr. Shannon Draucker
(with one of the best reasons ever for having writer’s block)

1 .What are you listening to, reading, watching?

 This summer, I’ve loved Fiona Mozley’s Hot Stew, Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart, Ravel Leilani’s Luster, and Vivek Shraya’s I’m Afraid of Men. In terms of TV, I’ve recently binged Never Have I Ever (Part 2), Ted Lasso, Shrill, and All Creatures Great and Small (a cozy British show about a veterinary practice in Yorkshire). Next, I’m planning to watch It’s a Sin on HBO, about the early days of the AIDS epidemic in London.

2. Do you like to cook? What is your favorite thing to make?

I cannot cook at all (my family and friends joke that I can barely boil water!), but I am super passionate about food. Luckily, my partner is a wonderful baker and cook, and I am happy to be a sous-chef and taste-tester. I love to eat, explore new restaurants and bakeries, and learn about food through books and TV shows. (I often find myself listening to chefs’ memoirs, like Gabrielle Hamilton’s memoir Blood, Bones, and Butter and Padma Lakshmi’s Love, Loss, and What We Ate. I also loved Netflix’s recent docuseries High on the Hog, based on Jessica B. Harris’s book of the same name, about the history of African American cuisine and the African roots of American cooking.)

3. What is something you have read and loved, and wish more people would read?

I am so lucky that my job allows me to share some of my favorite novels—like Toni Morrison’s Sula—with my students and to encounter their favorite texts as well. I think bell hooks’s Teaching to Transgress should be required reading for all educators.

4 .Did you grow up with video- or computer-games? What were/are some of your favorites?

I did not, actually! I was more of a Barbie doll girl (who somehow grew up to be a gender studies professor!)

5. You’re taking a sick-day from work. What movie are you putting on?

The 1994 Little Women (the one with Winona Ryder as Jo).
 

6. What’s your favorite excuse for why you have writer’s block?

“My puppy needs a belly-rub/walk/snuggle!”

7 .What’s a book everyone says you should read, but you either read it and hated it, or haven’t read it.

Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend— I love the prose, and the characters are wonderful, but I just could not get that into the book for some reason! I was also lukewarm about Sally Rooney’s Normal People; I found the novel engaging, but didn’t share the same enthusiasm as many other readers. 

And of course
Panelist Number 3, Dr. Kimberly Cox

1. What are you listening to, reading, watching?

Right now, I’m reading Maria Dahvana Headley’s new translation of Beowulf (so fun!), P. Djéli Clark’s The Haunting of Tramcar 015, Warriors of Legend by Jay Novak and Sushil K. Rudranath, and a bunch of sci-fi novels for an independent study. Right now, the big series I’m watching are Ted Lasso, Kevin Can F**k Himself, and Lucifer.

2. Do you like to cook? What is your favorite thing to make?

Love to cook! Salad and salmon are my favs. Homemade vinaigrette, herbs from the garden, and the broiler make it super quick and crazy delicious. 

3. What is something you have read and loved, and wish more people would read?

Honestly, I’m not sure. My literary love is fleeting. I invest heavily in books when I read them, but then it dissipates as my interests shift. I also tend to be more of a “follow-your-own-reading-passion” type of person. I do feel fairly confident that anyone (particularly those unfamiliar with the Minato ward of Tokyo in the 90s) who loved Sailor Moon, whether the manga or one fo the anime series, would probably find some interesting tidbits in Warriors of Legend. 

4 .Did you grow up with video- or computer-games? What were/are some of your favorites?

Yes, both! I loved Chip’s Challenge in middle school. Then, the Sonic the Hedgehog, Donkey Kong, and Mario game series were pretty foundational. My sister and I did have lots of fun playing Resident Evil 4 when we got older, haha!


5. You’re taking a sick-day from work. What movie are you putting on?

Movies…hmm…probably John Wick (the first one…the latter two have been…disappointing) or Spy, which fills a very specific comedy void for me.


6. What’s your favorite excuse for why you have writer’s block?

“My brain hurts.” 

7. What’s a book everyone says you should read, but you either read it and hated it, or haven’t read it

Wuthering Heights, and, to be fair, as a Victorianist, it’s a staple. I’ve tried. Really I have. I started reading it twice. Once I set the book down and lost it. Then, I got so irritated I couldn’t make myself read further. So, I thought, audiobook! Which worked, for a bit, but the version that I legit checked out through my library app was missing the last third of the book. Wtf, right?!?! When I finally forced myself to finish it, I hated it just as much as I had at the beginning. I appreciate it for what it does and understand that the characters aren’t intended to be traditionally likeable—critical articles were hugely helpful in processing my range of responses, haha!—but I’m just not a fan. (I also have lots of negative feels from the last time I read the Harry Potter series, but I talked at length about that in another podcast, lol! It’s different reading them as an educator rather than student.)

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While you’re waiting for the new episode and for the audio recording of Andrew’s article, here’s what the team has been paying attention to this week…

Mary is still working her way through Becky Cooper’s We Keep the Dead Close, both as an audio book and a physical book. Her review is sure to be thorough and detailed. We will definitely include it on a Friday for you. And as so many other millennials are, she’s still bawling after watching the video posted by Steve Burns of Blue’s Clues. For those who may not be familiar, or who may not realize the impact that Blue’s Clues had, there’s some good commentary available here, too.

This week, Andrew has been reading Lavelle Porter’s The Blackademic Life to prepare for Lavelle’s interview, happening today (Adam joined as Andrew’s co-host). Andrew has also really enjoyed digging into some of his course readings like Lavelle Porter’s “Should Walt Whitman be #Cancelled” and Whitman’s “Calamus” cluster, and is about to begin Mark Doty’s “What is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life.”

Andrew’s been really loving listening to Diana Ross’ “If the World Just Danced” on repeat (it’s so empowering and energizing!)

In the audiobook universe, Andrew finished Dorinda Medley’s “Make It Nice” and a BBC performance of Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca (he can feel Halloween right around the corner).

Although he hasn’t been able to start a new tv show, because of his schedule, Andrew did enjoy watching the 2019 film “Bad Education” (featuring Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney).

Adam’s reading this week has, not surprisingly, been similar to Andrew’s. Lavelle Porter’s The Blackademic Life figured prominently, as did some of the works Lavelle referenced, such as the novel The Quest of the Silver Fleece by W. E. B. DuBois. But Adam has also been sneaking glances at Robert Caro’s The Power Broker. Who would have thought that a thousand-page book about municipal budget committees would be a page-turner? It’s almost not fair. As far as TV, Adam has finally gotten to the part of Buffy Season 6 where things get properly dark, so if anyone has some words of sympathy or wisdom…

Adam’s accustomed writing music, Bach’s B-Minor Mass, faced usurpation this week from Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George, 18th Century Europe’s only Black composer (also a famous fencer, horseback-rider, and virtuoso violinist. Yes, really). Saint-George has regularly entered the listening-rotation of late, but writing is hard and Bach’s Mass is seriously habit-forming. C’est la Vie.

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Erika continued watching cartoons this week and checked out Ridley Jones on Netflix. It’s a children’s cartoon, about a six year old girl who lives in a treehouse inside a museum and whose mother and grandmother are responsible for taking care of the museum. Fabulous characters like a dodo bird, a space monkey, a coiffure-obsessed, non-binary bison, (“They’re just…Fred,:) and mummy family consisting of two dads (voiced by Andrew Rannells and Chris Colfer,) and a princess named Ismat (O.M. Ra) who sometimes just wants to be a regular kid make for a lot of fun, and nods to dad jokes (“mummy dad jokes”) and a nod to Indiana Jones are just some of the things that made the show fun to watch. Continuing the cartoon theme, Erika also started watching Steven Universe this week, which she somehow never saw when it first aired. She’s also watched the new Matrix trailer…a few times. A few.

It was back to Bach this week, too, for Erika. This time the English Suites got her through the writing she was stuck on, and when those were over, it was the always-enjoyable Goldberg Variations. It was also a week to take a shorter trip back in time and pull out Midnight Oil. She says, “A little activist music always seems to go along with days like Labor Day.” 

Just for fun, there’s also this clip of Madeline Kahn and Grover… because she’s awesome and who doesn’t love Grover? Adam shared it this week while doing some editing for the team and it’s been stuck in Erika’s head, along with the Buffy Sainte-Marie music she was listening to after Adam mentioned her last weekend. (Coincidentally, Erika was first introduced to Buffy Sainte Marie on Sesame Street, where she appeared for several seasons.)

When not bemoaning her missing copy of Strunk and White this week, (which has now been acquired as a digital copy, although a new paper copy will appear on the bookshelf at some point) Erika went through her book collection to search out things to recommend in a discussion about literature of HIV. She ended up revisiting a copy of Andrew Holleran’s Chronicle of a Plague Revisited:AIDS and its aftermath. She’d wanted to start Sheeryl Lim’s Brown Boy Nowhere, but that was set aside–when your hands hurt too much to hold a book, you find other things to do. Sometimes that means resorting to cartoons as a distraction.

Introducing Featured Author Wendy Zuccarello

You’re going to like this week’s offering. Wendy Zuccarello lives and writes in New Jersey. “Joey,” which is an excerpt from her novel Chasing Freedom, has characters who pop; the kind of characters who stay with you. No surprise if you find yourself following the link in the author-bio to read the rest of the novel.

To read Wendy’s work, click here. You’ll also find links to her site, where you can read more of her work.

And if you would like to submit your own work for consideration, please contact us at our email address, ivorytowerboilerroom@gmail.com.

If you enjoyed this piece, please consider making a donation to help us grow our literary and artistic community.

Midweek Teaser: “Teaching and Writing to Transgress: Behind the Scenes of Academic Editing” 

Photo by mali maeder on Pexels.com

How fitting that today is International Literacy Day, as we tease this Saturday’s podcast episode, “Teaching and Writing to Transgress: Behind the Scenes of Academic Editing.” This episode speaks to Ivory Tower Boiler Room’s own Public Humanities mission which is to provide accessible literary and artistic content to the public. There is also plenty to catch and hold your attention if you are any kind of teacher (or learner).

Andrew goes solo for this week’s interview with the editors of a special issue of the open access journal Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies.  Earlier this year they published a special pedagogy issue entitled “Teaching to Transgress,” which included Andrew’s article “Talking Back to Walt Whitman.” This was a bit of a milestone for Andrew–his first peer-reviewed publication. If you want a summary of the articles (and ideas) in the special issue, you can find the introduction here.

Here are a few moments that will definitely grab your attention:

  • With COVID 19 having changed everything we know about classrooms, about teaching, and about life, the journal issue really is a product of being present in this moment, and is a monument to the time in which it was published. Our guests talk about the idea of education as the practice of freedom and the classroom as a place of radical possibility–which may seem strange in these straitened times, so prepare to be surprised.
  • Academic journal editing can be somewhat like herding cats, but you’ll hear how collaborative it was to edit “Teaching to Transgress.”  
  • Have your notebook ready to add bell hooks to your “must read” list; it was hooks’ idea of transgressive pedagogy that inspired the editors’ approach.  

While the journal featured here is focused on 19th-century literature, the lessons are truly universal, and the conversation fascinating, easy to listen to and totally driven by people who are passionate about teaching, learning, and collaborating. Until Saturday…

If you enjoyed this piece, please consider making a donation to help us grow our literary and artistic community.

Back to the Big Think

This week’s Big Think is a bit of a special edition. This month’s theme is Back to the Books, and we wanted to celebrate (in slightly punny fashion) by going back to our favorite passages from our previous Big Thinks about reading and about books in general. Of course, if you find one of the excerpts intriguing, you can follow the link to read the full piece! It’s also the Jewish New Year, which is a time when a lot of us take out our memories from the past year and think about them, discuss them, share them.

Adam:

“Adam’s Big Think #4”

I like this piece because it shows how my reading style has changed. Editing my peers’ work has made me realize more than ever that writers are just people; editors are just people. We all make decisions and a reader can agree or disagree with those decisions. So my reading has become more interactive. Previously I would say: “I love East of Eden.” Now I can say “I love East of Eden, but…”

I don’t see why some people make the distinction between professional writing—that is, writing that has been vetted by an agent, a series of editors and publishers, and finally a newspaper columnist or two—and the sort of writing I deal with, which, for our purposes we can say ranges from amateur to semi-professional. (Semi-professional writing is actually two categories folded into one. It’s hobby-ish writing by people who have been published in a professional venue or it’s writing by people who have a professional attitude and work ethic but have yet to be, or choose not to be, published in a professional venue. Needless to say, I like both.) Sure there is something amazing about buying (or borrowing) a novel you know you’re going to love, taking it home, and devouring it like a cookie, but more often than not you find things a good editor should have caught, like a bit of unintentionally awkward dialogue in an action-adventure novel or a mishandled relationship in a fantasy, or the character of Cathy Ames in East of Eden.

Just.

All of it. Everything about her.

I’d like to institute a new rule that male authors’ ex-wives have veto-power over their female characters, which, in Steinbeck’s case, would mean a panel of at least 2 or 3 judges. But I digress.

The point is that works published by one of the Big 5 (or is it Big 4 now? Big 3? Please support independent publishing houses. At least 1 book a year. Please.) anyway, the point is that works published by a brick-and-mortar publisher often have mistakes, problems, infelicities, at a rate only slightly lower than a prospective blog post some friend on  the internet might send me. And what the latter has that the former doesn’t is the thrill of discovery. When I am reading an essay by Andrew or Erika or Mary, I do so with a certain amount of reverence–painfully, gleefully aware that I am likely the first person to do so. I can share the joy of this experience with you by description, but I can’t make you feel it, and for that I apologize. It feels greedy, keeping it for myself like this, but the only way I can think of to share it with you is by asking you to join me; to submit your writing (ivorytowerboilerroom@gmail.com; no I’m not joking).

Intrigued? Find the full article here.

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Erika:



“We Dance to the Rhythm of 49 Heartbeats”

Like many parents, I enjoy talking about my children. My children have reached ages where I want them to have even more control over their internet footprint, and where they also want more privacy-so I don’t post many photos of them or tell many stories about them. It’s a fine line to walk though, when we all appear in the stories, between the stories that are theirs and the stories that are mine–there are some stories I really want to share about my experiences, but at their core, they really aren’t my stories to tell. Sometimes a story is too important or too compelling to not talk about and so when that happens, I do my best to limit any personal details while still telling a great story or an important story. This is one of those stories.

So when the kids came in, they asked what I was watching, and I set about explaining it to them. I happened to have a very lovely book about drag queens, and although the text (much like the dialogue in RuPaul’s show) isn’t really something I wanted to expose my young children to, the photographs of various people as they transformed are wonderful to look at. And this began an obsession with drag performers (something I endorsed wholeheartedly). There were drawings, “Mom, this is a drag queen, this is a regular girl, and they are friends.” There were multiple requests to go see drag shows. And excited, but slightly confused things like “Mom! Did you know in Japan, in the theater all the parts were played by men? That means they were drag queens!” That idea was quickly corrected, although there is some Shakespeare I look forward to reading with them when they’re a little older.

Intrigued? Find the full article here.

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Andrew:

“Andrew’s Big Think #2”

    Next week, I’ll be releasing my Big Think that introduces Ivory Tower Boiler Room’s September “Back to the Books” theme, and I’m quite eager to share what it’s been like being back in the university classroom. For a brief teaser, I’ll be discussing my approach to the texts that I’ve assigned in both my “Queer Poetry” and “Whitman’s Multitudes” courses, and there will be a lot of LGBTQ+ and BIPOC writers mentioned! Saturday’s podcast will feature the editors of “Teaching to Transgress” (a pedagogical idea that bell hooks theorized) which was the theme of a Spring 2021 special journal issue for 19th-Century Gender Studies. This was where I featured my “Talking Back to Walt Whitman Using a Queer of Color Framework…” article, and for my Big Think I’ll ask the question: How am I having my students apply this framework in the classroom right now? 

    But, before I give too much away (I did say a “brief teaser,” right?) I want to reveal my Big Think excerpt. I really loved writing my Pride Month piece “I Don’t Have to Wait For You to Give Me the Key,” and I’d love to share what it meant to find my gay  identity in the Heggan Library (in my South Jersey hometown). I hope you all enjoy it!

I would find the key to my coming out moment in the place where I always searched for my authentic voice…the public library. While I was recognizing my budding attraction to men in the sex ed classroom, I sought out narratives that explored this desire in the library. So, I set foot in the Margaret Heggan Library (in my hometown in South Jersey), and began to walk around the young adult section, where I analyzed the spines of book covers to figure out what series to start next. By 8th grade, I had gotten to know the young adult section quite well, and going to the public library was and is still a nostalgic memory. Ever since I can remember, but I know it began when I was in preschool, my mother would take me every weekend to the library to pick out “whatever I wanted,” and oh how I loved devouring everything from Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theater videos to The Magic Tree House series. But, by this time, I was still in the midst (and always will be) of my horror obsession, and so had found Christopher Pike’s young adult novels, but thought, in 7th grade, why not explore that unknown section of the library…adult fiction. It was here where I discovered the fanatical horror aura of Stephen King. Carrie’s cover spoke to me right away, and I was mesmerized by the image of a female face whose hair covered her eye (symbolism of her outsider status). Once I saw this image, I knew that I had begun to find my way out of the oppressive closet that was restraining me.

The Margaret Heggan Library’s edition of Carrie

    This was the first key to unlocking the taunts from fellow classmates, mostly boys, who tried to make me feel unmanly and emasculated for being a ballet dancer, actor, singer, and writer. So not only did King’s prose help me connect to Carrie White, who was also figuring out how to process her trauma from being bullied (which deeply resonated with my own), but I began to sense a queerness was inside of me that had to be released. That’s where Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name makes an appearance…

The Margaret Heggan’s edition of Call Me By Your Name

    Intrigued? Find the full article here.

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Mary:

In my fictional works, I create characters. These characters are usually a mix-and-match of different traits and encounters with other humans combined into one to make up “person.” Because I’m the all-knowing god of these worlds, I get to decide what situations and problems each character will experience. But these situations and problems are mainly derived from situations and problems going on in my life, the lives of others I know or have encountered, and the world. 

Sometimes, I will use basic character archetypes–the girl next door, the mysterious guy, the hardened criminal with a tough past. These archetypes help me to lay the groundwork for my characters, but it is up to me to incorporate my experiences and my worldview into these characters and create their personalities. I will sometimes base characters or scenarios off of ones I see on TV or in books or movies. For example, the main character of a project I am working on is based off of a real hit man who worked for the Italian mob in the eighties. However, I’ve emphasized other, kinder, traits in my hitman, because the goal of his character is to demonstrate the complexity of how nature versus nurture influence his personality. 

This is how humanities recycles itself: artists are able to create characters or scenarios that can be used over and over again. “History repeats itself,” and as long as people face the same types of situations from birth to death, they are bound to repeat one of the long strands of the web of history. This goes the same for characters that are created, or themes, events, or even settings. As artists, as teachers of the humanities, our goal must remain to be commentators, not just spectators of the world turning around us.

Intrigued? Find the full article here.

August Wrap-Up / September Preview

August in the Ivory Tower Boiler Room was all about celebrations. We began the month by letting our Big Think take a week’s hiatus,and instead we celebrated you, our listeners and readers, some of whom joined us the next day for our first birthday celebration, both online and in person at the ‘home’ of our sponsor, Words Matter Bookstore, in Pitman, NJ.

We continued our conversations with Lev Raphael this month. Lev helped Erika learn to write a sex scene (she’s still working on it, but at least the research is kind of interesting,) and talked with us about intersectional identities. Lev has become a sort of mentor to some of us here, and early in August, in conjunction with one of his Boiler Room visits, graciously allowed us to republish a blog post about his own mentor on our blog. Later in the month, he returned for a third visit to the Boiler Room, and we chatted about identities; he shared another post from his own blog about how he came to write queer crime fiction.

We introduced you to contributor Tyler Albertario this month who brought a beautiful, tragic, funny queer history piece to us by highlighting the story of Craig Schoonmaker, the man who put the “Pride” in Pride Month. Tyler’s piece served as a herald’s trumpet to signify that the creative writers are joining us in September and there are a bunch of them. We already followed him up with Judy Russ, and more are coming every Thursday. 

As usual, we got some great True Crime in Academia pieces from Mary. First we brought you the story of Andrew Bagby and his son Zachary, and then Mary continued her world tour taking us to Africa where we learned about predatory professors at the University of Ghana and University of Lagos in Nigeria. Those two universities are by no means the only ones that put their young women at risk, but their story is particularly illustrative of the broader problem. We wrapped up the True Crime tour in England, at the University of Buckinghamshire, for our final piece of True Crime this month, where we learned about Libby Squire. Mary also shared a personal essay with us about the heartbreaking ways addiction touches lives beyond the addict and their immediate family.

We each used our Big Think space this month to reflect on our work within the Ivory Tower Boiler Room. The genesis for this whole project–the podcast–certainly came from Andrew, but we’ve all contributed our ideas and energies, and we’ve all been changed by the time we’ve spent working here. Adam has discovered a passion for editing and for mentoring new writers and we all benefit from the work he puts in. Erika wrote about emerging from trauma, dismantling decades of writer’s block, and beginning to take on her identity as a writer. She even shared a few lines from one of her own poems, and might share more in the future. Mary found confidence and joy in writing again and Andrew wrote about how, just like in Plato’s Symposium, our work here is inquiry fueled by love and passion.

In the spirit of reflection, we went and revisited episode one, and talked about what that episode meant to us and how things have changed since Adam and Andrew recorded it in August of 2020. And our Friday preview treated you to our answers to some of the questions on our famous interviewee questionnaire. (Fans of ITBR will know that we have a questionnaire that we distribute to all of our interview-guests, and this time around we put the questions to ourselves.) So you got to hear those answers as the introduction to a podcast episode featuring footage from our amazing open-mic poetry night. The reading took place in person at Words Matter Bookstore, hosted by Andrew, Mary and Adam. A second celebration took place simultaneously on Zoom, hosted by Erika and two Ivory Tower Boiler Room contributors, Tiffany Sowa and Cameron Martin. 

With so much to celebrate in August, we enter September filled with joy, and settle down with our apples and honey (l’shanah tovah umetukah to all who are celebrating,) and ready to go back to what all of us here love–our books. 
So join us in September as we head head “Back to the Books.” We’ll bring you a new featured writer each week and we’ll also be bringing you our first book club event, featuring A.S. Byatt’s Possession. Visit Words Matter Bookstore to purchase your copy and mention Ivory Tower Boiler Room for a special discount. We have a slate of incredible interviews planned, as well. Banned Books Week, at the end of September, is on our minds, too. We hope you’ll discover something new to read with us this September and that, as you settle, in you’ll share some of your favorite books with us, too. Our new head of marketing, Ceren Usta (who you’ll learn more about this month, too) has been working hard on our new Instagram to give you another way to connect with us!

Welcome to the Ivory Tower Boiler Room, Ceren Usta!

(A Special Rebroadcast) The Performing Arts During a Pandemic with Renee Chambers Liciaga

Welcome to our new Fall season and to our September theme, “Back to the Books.” But before we bring you new content, we want to celebrate Broadway’s reopening with Renee Chambers Liciaga‘s October 2020 Ivory Tower Boiler Room interview “The Performing Arts During a Pandemic.”

(Renee Chambers Liciaga)

Listen to Renee’s Episode

“We need to have human contact and especially for those of us who are creators. We have to be there in real time with each other.” Such a heartwarming moment that occurs when Renee discusses the powerful feeling that her and all of the Tarzan creative team (including the performers) felt in the summer of 2020. In this episode, Renee talks about the seemingly impossible task of mounting a live theater production, and, as you listen, you will hear about the innovative ways in which her team solved the obstacles, like masks and social distancing. Renee’s energy as a storyteller is infectious, and you can’t help but experience her joy when she talks about previous performances, both domestic and international. Listening to her, it’s easy to see how her lessons on leadership influence everyone in her orbit (including a certain Andrew Rimby, who was only 17 years old when he entered that orbit). As Renee told that 17 year old Andrew, “If you want to make it to Broadway or let alone Broad Street in Philly, you have to take the notes.”

Click this link to see the photos from Tarzan and check out the Google document which includes so many exciting videos of Renee performing! Make sure to follow Renee on Instagram and Twitter, @naebway and her business page on Facebook, under Renee Chambers Liciaga.

Thanks to Renee for posting an excerpt of this interview to her YouTube channel (Renee Liciaga, follow it!). Now you can actually see Renee and Andrew’s energy and excitement.

(and this comes from Andrew’s heart: I want to personally thank Renee Chambers Liciaga for recognizing the inner passion in me and helping me cultivate it. Renee, you have helped me find my purpose, from my high school years up until now, and it means so much to have you as a creative mentor in my life. From Diana Ross’ own voice…I want to “Thank You.”)

Follow Ivory Tower Boiler Room on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook (just type Ivory Tower Boiler Room). We can’t wait to see you all there!

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Friday Preview: The Secret to Success

Spoiler alert: it’s taking notes.

At least according to this week’s guest, who tells us: “If you want to make it to Broadway or let alone Broad Street in Philly, you have to take the notes.”

courtesy of http://www.reneeliciaga.com

Another Friday is here, and we’re getting ready for a long weekend (and some of us for Rosh Hashanah, too). We’re taking the week off from new podcasting, and our excitement over the theaters reopening has led us to revisit Andrew’s interview last year with performer, director, producer (and more!) Renee Chambers Liciaga. Renee’s influence on Andrew is clear to anyone who works with him or who participates in his walking tours. During the summer of 2020, Renee took on the seemingly impossible task of mounting a live theater production, and as you listen, you will hear about the innovative ways in which her team solved the obstacles, like masks and social distancing. Renee’s energy as a storyteller is infectious, and you can’t help but experience her joy when she talks about previous performances, both domestic and international. Listening to her, it’s easy to see how her lessons on leadership influence everyone in her orbit (including a certain Andrew Rimby, who was only 17 years old when he entered that orbit).

In the midst of this visit to the ancient history that 2020, we are also greatly excited about the new things we have coming down the ‘pike. So help us welcome our new Boiler Room denizen, Ceren Usta, who is helping us with marketing. And don’t forget to check out the debut author in our series of featured writers, Judy Russ!

So what are Andrew, Mary, Erika, and Adam doing when they have a bit of down-time?

We’re glad you asked…

As Andrew is prepping for teaching this week, he read, for the first time, “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes. A line that the speaker keeps repeating (in parentheses, which is often an important poetic device revealing an inner monologue moment) is “America Never Was America to Me.” Andrew tells us: “I’m already learning so much from my students. They’re pointing out Hughes talking back to Whitman’s vision of democracy, which fails to create an equitable system for Black Americans.” If you haven’t, you need to read Hughes’ poem and then read Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing”). Then, you’ll see how Hughes not only urges for an America that includes Black Americans in it, but most importantly, is that equitable for all marginalized identities (remember Hughes was a queer Black poet).

Courtesy of Biography.com

Once Andrew knew that Ivory Tower Boiler Room would rebroadcast Renee Chambers Liciaga’s episode, he went in search of a podcast episode that would discuss cultivating your passion. Well, he was in luck, and found an episode of the NPR podcast Hidden Brain about “Cultivating Your Purpose,” which he recommends you listen to.

Andrew hasn’t started a new television series yet, because once he begins, he knows he will start binge-watching it (and then won’t be able to grade his students’ work). But, he did recently watch the revitalized “$100,000 Pyramid,” hosted by Michael Strahan, and featuring… wait for it… Dorinda Medley and Sonja Morgan from the Real Housewives of New York. He was in Housewife and Game Show paradise.

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Mary is continuing with her reading of We Keep the Dead Close. We’re anticipating her complete review when she’s done. 

She has finally seen Quentin Terantino’s Reservoir Dogs in its entirety! She loved this film and was thrilled to hear “Stuck In the Middle With You” by Stealers Wheels playing in the background. It truly made her smile. 

Mary is also recommending a podcast–Burnt. This is a podcast about the scandalous and crime-filled story about the musical that never made it, Rebecca. The podcast is hosted by Blake Ross, the former Editor-In-Chief of Playbill. 

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Erika was excited to hear Andrew mention Langston Huges this week; she also loves the poem “Let America be America.” One of the ways Erika has shared her love of poetry is by posting favorite poems on Facebook on holidays, and she posted this one on July 4 a few years ago. Langston Huges however, has not been on her reading list this week; instead she’s been getting ready for Rosh Hashanah with the story of Hannah, who is part of the holiday liturgy. She’s also researching things to add to her repertoire of apple recipes for the holiday–one of Erika’s favorite things about Rosh Hashanah is the way apples are featured.  The new novel on the table this week is Brandy Colbert’s Little & Lion, alongside Stephen Rowley’s The Guncle. (We’re excited to interview Stephen Rowley soon, and to feature this book as an upcoming book club selection. )

Erika’s been listening to Mozart this week–the Duo for Violin and Viola, and the Viola Quintets–especially the underappreciated Quintet in C major. She has not yet tried to subject Adam to further education on the magnificence of the viola, but, if he can convince her to voluntarily listen to Romantic composers, she will use the same determination that let her overcome her writer’s block in the last year to convince Adam that viola music is rich, beautiful and under-appreciated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3Qr9xk-k5E&ab_channel=MatthewLipman

https://youtu.be/WdgJbFbgBmk

She’s also listened to the first three (only three, so far) episodes of the new podcast 2 Queers, 4 Questions. Each episode focuses on a different holiday and four questions associated with it. After the introductory episode, they focus on Rosh Hashanah (which is the Jewish New Year). The discussions about being transgressive, and about teshuvah (Hebrew for “repentance”) are fascinating, as is the exploration into why Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year celebration, takes place, not in the first month of the year, but in the seventh.

Friday means the new Cinderella has been released on Amazon Prime, although Erika certainly hasn’t gotten to that yet. She did however settle in with Netflix and watch The Chair–if someone had taught Melville to her the way they teach Moby Dick in the show, she might actually have liked it a lot more. She also watched the animated series Q Force, which brought back fond memories of old episodes of Super Friends as a kid, and of The Ambiguously Gay Duo, later on. 

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Adam has been reading around in The Power Broker by Robert Caro. It’s a surprisingly exciting, fun read (so far… a scant 250 pages in), as well as being soul-crushingly bleak. But you know. In an exciting way.

Adam is still watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer . There’s a lot of episodes. They’re good, but Season 6 is… a lot, even upon rewatch.

And from Buffy to Buffy, Adam has been listening to the love songs and protest songs (which are really just a different type of love song) of Buffy Sainte-Marie. She is best known for “Up where we Belong” and “Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee.” But Adam has also had Chopin’s “Aeolian Harp” Etude stuck in his head, along with an accompanying stanza from “The Eolian Harp” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic Harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of all?

Reading that poem, you shiver every damn time, don’t you? Every. Damn. Time.

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Introducing our Weekly Featured Author

All of us in the Ivory Tower Boiler Room are very proud and excited to share with you a new page on our website: each week we will be featuring the work of a new writer, starting with Judy Russ.

You can find her work here

And if you would like to submit your work for consideration, please contact us at our email address, ivorytowerboilerroom@gmail.com.

Text by Adam Katz, Cinematography by Erika Grumet. Starring Frob as Big Cat and Widget as Little Cat.

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Description: Two cats, a large orange on the left and a small grey on the right. The Large orange seems to wear a magnanimous smile as he asks: “Little cat, are you excited about the new featured writers?” To which the small grey responds with a mischievous leer, “No, but our human is, and I am excited about stepping all over her and meowing in her face while she’s trying to enjoy them.”

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Midweek Teaser: Renee Liciaga Redux

The Ivory Tower Boiler Room team has been working hard–celebrating our birthday, getting ready to begin our second year of podcasting, and welcoming a fifth member, Ceren Usta, to our team. We’ll give you an opportunity to get to know Ceren very soon.

We all deserve a little break this weekend, and we don’t mind telling you that last week’s gem of an episode required not a little editing work from Andrew. So this weekend, we’re dusting off an earlier interview that has just been brought into new relevance.

As more and more of the world reopens, and we look towards reopening more and more performance venues, we invite you to join Andrew on a trip back into our archives for a visit with his former theatre director, Renee Chambers Liciaga. When you listen to the interview, you’ll really get a peek at things that have influenced Andrew’s skills as a public speaker and performer, and how they help him with his public humanities work. Andrew’s Big Think for August has links to the exciting walking tours he leads, so you can hear those skills in action.

The conversation between Andrew and Renee is a trip in and of itself–her energy is contagious and she’s a wonderful storyteller, sharing with us tales about her experiences performing in Germany as well as about some experiences closer to home. Renee did the next-to-impossible: mounting a work of theater in the year 2020, and the description of how she and her team pulled it off is a dramatic narrative all on its own. Renee takes us through how innovative her team was in addressing the pandemic challenges–the need for things like masks and social distancing, and how they integrated those solutions in really innovative ways, even while working with a reduced cast and crew. 

At the heart of this interview is the idea of how the arts bring us together, both as performers and as audience-members, and how we need those connections more than ever as we rise to the challenges, adjust to the changes, and recover from the scourge, of COVID-19. Best of all, though, are the stories about Andrew, his sense of responsibility, and most of all, his early role as a real go-getter… attributes that brought all of us who work with him in the Ivory Tower Boiler Room together and that we all see and can be inspired by.

There’s also a bit of a surprise ending to the interview. You’ll have to listen on Saturday to find out more. 

How do you put on a work of theater during the pandemic? Start by choosing a play where everyone is wearing masks!

Andrew’s Big Think #4

What is the Passion that Fuels the Ivory Tower Boiler Room? Enter Plato!

By Andrew Rimby

“I propose that each of us should make the finest speech he can in praise of Love, and then pass the topic on to the one on his right.” from Plato’s Symposium (translated by Christopher Gill)

“I propose that each of us should make the finest speech they can in praise of Passion.” (edits made by Andrew Rimby) 

Andrew in front of Herman Melville’s desk, at Arrowhead

As I’m writing this (on Sunday, August 29th… yes I procrastinate), I have just finished my first week back, teaching at Stony Brook University. While you’re reading this, I’m probably in the glamorous Student Union building teaching my Queer Poetry course (oh, and glamorous is not an overstatement… I mean who wouldn’t want to teach in a classroom with an automatic screen that lowers down and dims the lights… I feel like I’m in a cinema). This week, my students are being introduced to Plato’s Symposium and questioning why these ancient Greek philosophers are gathered together to debate the power of Love (or Eros, the Greek term). I’ve taught this text before, in a World Literature course, but this is the first time I’m teaching it expressly from the homoerotic angle (and are there homoerotic moments in this text or what?). This focus on why Love (we’ll keep it personified for now) is such a powerful force reminds me of the Raymond Carver story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” and the Broadway showtune “Falling In Love With Love” (written by Rodgers and Hart for The Boys from Syracuse). Both pieces speak to why Plato’s text still casts a spell over the reader who encounters it. I notice that any philosophical text, but especially ancient Greek philosophy, can seem like a daunting close reading exercise for my students. But, I’m determined to help them through The Symposium by bringing more of a Public Humanities approach… let me explain. 

Because of my obsession with the podcast universe (I do oversee The Ivory Tower Boiler Room’s podcast for a reason), I of course looked up Plato’s Symposium to see if any intriguing discussions exist. Well, I was in luck because the BBC Radio had a panel of classicists (those who study all things ancient literature, but most definitely Greek literature) gathered together to explain the theory behind Plato’s Symposium. Not only is the discussion accessible for undergraduate students, but each scholar nicely breaks down why Eros’ power is such a central concern to each man. The assembled scholars come to a consensus that each man (I know…I know…the patriarchy of it all!) is desperate to find the origin of Love so they can…once and for all…be in the company of other philosophers who desire to grow intellectually with one another (yup, you guessed it…Platonic Love). Well, that got me thinking about the reason why I started The Ivory Tower Boiler Room with Adam, about a year ago. Why don’t I practice the creative discussion exercise that I have my students engage in? What if I tried to closely read the Passion at the root of my creative vision for The Ivory Tower Boiler Room (yes I’m personifying it because of the agency it holds in my life)? Okay, here it goes.

Andrew outside of Edith Wharton’s Mount

    When the creative team (me, Adam, Erika, and Mary) were coming up with our new tagline, I was insistent that we are a “liberal arts collective.” But, how glad I am that the team convinced me that I was stuck in an academic frame of mind so our tagline became “A Literary and Artistic Community.” If you look hard enough at this tagline, in between “Literary” and “Artistic,” you will find my Passion in all its personified beauty. You don’t see it, okay I’ll give you a hint… a two word phrase… Public Humanities. I had just finished my work as a Public Humanities Fellow with Humanities NY, where I collaborated with the Walt Whitman Birthplace on curriculum for high school students. I had a lot of help from the English Education faculty at Stony Brook, and while doing this, I came to the realization that I loved doing Whitman walking tours throughout Long Island. I am currently up to three walking tours that are up on YouTube for all to see (links below, and you better believe I’ll be using them in my “Whitman’s Multitudes” undergraduate course… the one in Roslyn includes a lot of queer poetic discussion). My time spent as a Public Humanities fellow really showed me what happens when an academic specialist, in my case a 19th-century American and British Lit. scholar, engages with the public. 

What I love about the walking tours is how excited they make me! I always get asked questions that help me better articulate, in my teaching and writing, why it’s so important to learn about the centrality of place in an author’s writing process. For example, I’m currently staring at a Virginia Woolf candle (gifted by my friend from undergrad), a copy of Rossetti’s Lady Lilith, and probably my favorite desk adornments… three paper dolls, one of Walt Whitman, one of Oscar Wilde, and one of Edith Wharton (I call them the wild Ws). Does it help when you know that I can see a cloud behind a bountiful tree on the edge of my balcony? It might explain the rabbit holes I’m going down, or maybe a better metaphor is the tree limbs I’m climbing across? But, if you know me, you know I mix a lot of metaphors or make up ones that just seem enticing to me. I’m going to climb from that tree on the edge of my balcony to one that is hovering outside my office window (quite a jump, but I can make it).

    I went to the Berkshires two weeks ago, and it was just the creative rejuvenation I needed for my teaching, writing, researching, and podcasting. When I got to stand in front of Edith Wharton’s bed (at the luxurious and majestic Mount), it was so intriguing to learn that she only wrote by hand, in her bed (oh and only in the early morning). Yes, this is where she wrote her first hit (and my favorite of hers), The House of Mirth. Or, when I stood at the reproduction of Herman Melville’s desk (at his Arrowhead home), and looked out at the window, directly above his desk, and saw the outline of Mount Greylock. And what did it look like, you may be thinking? Well, a whale’s hump… this is where he thought up the narrative of Moby-Dick. It’s moments like these, when being led by amazing docents, that I realize that I’m returning to my Passion. It’s in these spaces where I can articulate what keeps me returning again and again to the classroom. This is the best way I can explain this Passion: A community of creative artists who come together to explain why they need art to sustain them. Yes, I think that’s the commonality that we all share in these literary spaces, from the Mount, to Arrowhead, to the classroom, to that Zoom writing group space, to (of course) The Ivory Tower Boiler Room. Perhaps, recognizing this will lead to a more humanistic approach to engaging in literature. And what if The Ivory Tower Boiler Room serves as a space where “humanistic” can reverberate with its etymological power? Yes, I do believe that we are a literary collective where each creative person is recognized for their individuality, and isn’t that what the Humanities are all about? But, it’s more than just individuality, it’s a recognition of how a community of artists that care about one another will be a community that grows and evolves together. Happy 1st birthday Ivory Tower Boiler Room and here’s to so many more birthdays where we will continue to return to our own version of Plato’s Symposium. 

  • Andrew’s favorite version of “Falling In Love With Love” (The Supremes… and they have so many songs with the word “Love” in the title): 

Plato’s Symposium Podcast Resources: 

  • Plato’s Symposium (BBC Radio)
  • Ancient Greece Declassified

Andrew’s Whitman Walking Tours:

  • Roslyn Village Tour (Whitman and William Cullen Bryant in Roslyn):