The Age of Insecurity (A Tale of Today, Episode #1)
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A new season of The American Vandal Podcast inspired by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s 150-year-old novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, launches with an introduction to Colonel Sellers; a discussion of Astra Taylor’s The Age of Insecurity (2023) [10:00]; questions about the discipline of history in the contemporary moment [28:00]; and Walter Johnson reflecting on resistance and his 20-year-old essay “On Agency” (2003) [41:00]
The Marguerite Casey Foundation and the Center For Mark Twain Studies are giving away fifteen copies of The Age of Insecurity. If you would like to be entered in the drawing, please fill out and submit the following form.
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Cast (in order of appearance):
Astra Taylor is a writer, filmmaker, and activist, co-founder of the Debt Collective, and author, most recently, of The Age of Insecurity (AK Press, 2023), a collection of her 2023 Massey Lectures.
Asheesh Kapur Siddique is Assistant Professor of History at University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the author of The Archive of Empire (Yale UP, 2024)
Walter Johnson is Winthrop Professor of History and Professor of African & African American Studies at Harvard University. He is the author of, among other things, River of Dark Dreams (Harvard UP, 2013) and “On Agency” (2003).
Matt Seybold is Associate Professor of American Literature & Mark Twain Studies at Elmira College, as well as resident scholar at the Center For Mark Twain Studies and executive producer of The American Vandal Podcast.
Soundtrack:
All music for this season of The American Vandal Podcast comes from the Tennessee-based roots ensemble DownRiver Collective. Most of the tracks come from their most recent EP, Off The Shelf. You can purchase it direct from the band here. It’s also available on Spotify and Apple Music.
Tracks featured in this episode include “Steam Whistle,” “Wasted Time,” and “Days Don’t Stop.”
Narration:
Excerpts from Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s The Gilded Age come from the audiobook edition produced by SNR Audio and narrated by Nathan Osgood. Available at Audible, as well as other audiobook retailers. SNR has an extensive catalog of professionally-narrated adaptations of 19th-century Anglophone fiction, including The Complete Mark Twain Collection.
Nathan Osgood is an actor and voice artist who has being appearing in films, scripted television, video games, podcasts, and audiobooks since the mid-’90s. In 2018, he played Mark Twain in the Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly vehicle, Holmes and Watson.
Excerpts in this episode come from chapters fifty and thirteen.
Episode Bibliography:
Combahee River Collective Statement (1977)
Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of The Old Regime (Cambridge UP, 1982)
Natalis Zemon Davis, “The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in 16th-Century France” Past & Present (May 1973)
Natalie Zemon Davis, Society & Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford UP, 1975)
Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese & The Worm: The Cosmos of a 16th-Century Miller (Johns Hopkins UP, 1980)
Herbert Gutman, “Labor History & The ‘Sartre Question”
Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery & Freedom, 1750-1925 (1977)
William Dean Howells, My Mark Twain (Harper & Bros, 1910)
Jeffrey Insko, History, Abolition, & The Ever-Present Now in Antebellum American Writing (Oxford UP, 2019)
Walter Johnson, “On Agency” Journal of Social History (Autumn 2023)
Walter Johnson, “Agency: A Ghost Story” in Slavery’s Ghost (Johns Hopkins UP, 2011)
Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery & Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Harvard UP, 2013)
Walter Johnson, The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis & The Violent History of the United States (Basic Books, 2020)
Walter Johnson, “Possible Pasts: Some Speculations on Time, Temporality, & The History of Atlantic Slavery” Amerikastudien (Winter, 2000)
Walter Johnson, Soul By Soul: Life Inside The Antebellum Slave Market (Harvard UP, 1999)
Anna Kornbluh, “Present Tense Futures of The Past” Victorian Studies (Autumn 2016)
Georg Lukacs, The Historical Novel (1937) [1983 University of Nebraska Edition]
Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction (Norton, 1976)
Marcus Rediker, Between The Devil & The Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates & The Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750 (Cambridge UP, 1987)
Asheesh Kapur Siddique, The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, & The Making of The Early Modern British World (Yale UP, 2024)
Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex & Class in New York, 1789-1860 (U Illinois P, 1986)
Astra Taylor, The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart (AK Press, 2023)
Astra Taylor, “The Age of Insecurity: 2023 CBC Massey Lectures” (CBC, 2023)
Keith Thomas, Religion & The Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in 16th- & 17th-Century England (1971)
E.P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of The English Crowd in The 18th Century” Past & Present (February 1971)
E. P. Thompson, The Making of The English Working Class (1963)
Mark Twain & Charles Dudley Warner, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) [2006 Modern Library Edition]
Mark Twain & William Dean Howells, “Colonel Sellers As A Scientist” (1883) in The Complete Plays of W. D. Howells (NYU Press, 1960)
Mark Twain, The American Claimant (Webster & Co., 1892)
Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City & The Rise of The American Working Class, 1788-1850 (Oxford UP, 1984) [20th Anniversary Edition]
Nathan Wolff, Not Quite Hope & Other Political Emotions In The Gilded Age (Oxford UP, 2019)