The Virtual Jewel Box

Authenticity work, with Kate Bowler and Gretchen Case

Kate Bowler joins Gretchen Case to discuss authenticity in academic, spiritual, and medical life; the limits of toxic positivity; and how joy can be both a surprise and a discipline. Reflecting on her own experience, Bowler examines what it means to seek truth and integrity within imperfect systems and bodies. Kate Bowler is Associate Professor of American Religious History at Duke Divinity School. Her books include:
Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day!: Daily Meditations for the Ups, Downs & In-Betweens
Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved 
No Cure for Being Human: (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) 
Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel 
The Preacher's Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities 
Gretchen Case is Director of the Center for Health Ethics, Arts, and Humanities and Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre at the University of Utah.
Episode artwork: Detail from Edward Hopper, Soir Bleu, 1914, Whitney Museum of American Art. 
Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Race, Religion, and Slavery in Antebellum Utah - Paul Reeve and Jordan Watkins

Historians Paul Reeve and Jordan Watkins discuss This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah (by Reeve, Christopher B. Rich, Jr., and LaJean Purcell Carruth), published by Oxford University Press in 2024.
Their discussion explores the origins and transcription of primary sources integral to the book, the legislative stance on slavery in 1850s Utah, the nuanced differences between various forms of unfree labor, and the perspectives of both white lawmakers and the enslaved people in the region. They also touch on the broader political and religious implications of these debates, offering listeners a comprehensive understanding of a complex and contentious period in Utah’s history.
W. Paul Reeve — Simmons Professor of Mormon Studies and History at the University of Utah  
Jordan T. Watkins — Associate Professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University 
The documents analyzed in This Abominable Slavery are available at thisabominableslavery.org, hosted by the University of Utah. 
Episode album art, left to right: Green Flake, Brigham Young, Pidash or Kah-peputz, and Orson Pratt. 
Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Aesthetic experience, with Bryan Counter and Nathan Wainstein

This episode features Bryan Counter (Framingham State University) discussing his new book Four Moments of Aesthetic Experience: Reading Huysmans, Proust, McCarthy, and Cusk (published by Anthem Press) with Nathan Wainstein (Department of English, University of Utah). Counter theorizes aesthetic experience as something that mediates between subjective judgment and objective art, emphasizing the role of chance, atmosphere, and embodied encounters with literature. Rather than focusing on formal analysis, he examines moments within texts where characters grapple with aesthetic experience, arguing that our experience of reading often transcends the content itself. 
Episode artwork: detail from Clara Peeters, Still Life with Cheeses, Almonds and Pretzels, c. 1615, Mauritshaus, The Hague.  
Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Abolitionist, Saint, Queen: Balthild of Francia - Isabel Moreira and Scott Black

 A slave becomes Queen and later is sainted for her work as an abolitionist.
A new book by Isabel Moreira (Distinguished Professor of History, University of Utah) explores not only the life of Balthild of Francia (c. 633-80), but also the methods of late-medieval historical research. Professor Moreira discusses Balthild of Francia: Anglo-Saxon Slave, Merovingian Queen, and Abolitionist Saint (Oxford University Press, Women in Antiquity series) with Tanner Humanities Center Director, Scott Black. 
See also: Isabel Moreira’s Tanner Conversation with Chris Jones 
 
Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Freedom, kindness, and beauty: The legacy of Obert C. Tanner - Mark Matheson and Scott Black

This episode explores Obert C. Tanner’s life and legacy, which includes the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center and the Tanner Lectures on Human Values.
Mark Matheson, Lecturer in English at the University of Utah and Director of the Tanner Lectures on Human Values, discusses Obert’s remarkable journey from poverty to philanthropy, including his upbringing by his extraordinary mother, Annie Clark Tanner, who used J.S. Mill’s On Liberty as a parenting guide.
 
Links: 
Obert C. Tanner, One Man’s Journey: In Search of Freedom
Annie Clark Tanner, A Mormon Mother: An Autobiography 
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty 
The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 
 
Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Mistrusting the news, with Jake Nelson and Robert Carson

Under what conditions do people trust the news, if at all? How did Covid lockdown change news consumption? What are we to think of journalists who leave establishment news organizations and build their own following on platforms like Substack?  And does our mistrust of news organizations mirror mistrust of other professional sectors, like health care and higher education? 
Jake Nelson, Associate Professor of Communication at the U and former journalist, discusses these issues and more, based on his extensive interviews with news audiences. With Seth Lewis (University of Oregon), he is working on a book project, Why We Distrust: American Skepticism toward Media, Medicine, and Higher Education. 
Sources mentioned in this episode: 
Jeff Bezos on X, about the editorial mission of The Washington Post 
Glenn Greenwald, on Locals 
Bari Weiss, The Free Press 
Ken Klippenstein, Substack 
Taylor Lorenz, User Mag 
Jake’s recommended media:  
City Cast Salt Lake 
Axios 
The Hollywood Reporter
Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Dr. Strangelove, the Cold War, and American culture - Matt Basso and Megan Weiss

Matt Basso and Megan Weiss discuss the iconic film, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. They explore the film’s historical context, its satirical take on Cold War politics, and its depiction of gender. The Red and Lavender Scares, consumerism, and militarization all helped set the stage for the Cold War culture lampooned in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film. 
Matt Basso is Associate Professor of History and Gender Studies, and Megan Weiss is a doctoral candidate in History, at the University of Utah. 
This episode was recorded in anticipation of the Tanner Humanities Center’s screening of the London National Theatre’s production of Dr Strangelove, starring Steve Coogan. You can find out more about the Center’s NTL screenings, and other public programming, at tanner.utah.edu. 
Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University. 

Cultures of the Black diaspora, with Louis Chude-Sokei and Scott Black

Louis Chude-Sokei, author of Floating in a Most Peculiar Way, discusses the Black diaspora, sound, accent, masculinity, Afrofuturism, dub music, and AI with Scott Black. Links: 
Louis Chude-Sokei, Floating in a Most Peculiar Way
Louis Chude-Sokei, The Last “Darky”: Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora 
Louis Chude-Sokei, The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics
Carnegie Hall’s Afrofuturism festival 
Anarchic Artificial Intelligence 
Louis Chude-Sokei is George and Joyce Wein Chair in African-American and Black Diaspora Studies, and Director of the African-American and Black Diaspora Studies Program, at Boston University. Scott Black is Director of the Tanner Humanities Center. 
Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.

Writing in the age of AI, with Lizzie Callaway and Scott Black

Why learn to write in the age of artificial intelligence? Elizabeth Callaway, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Utah, talks with Scott Black about writing pedagogy with and about AI. Links: 
Josh Dzieza, “Inside the AI Factory” 
Ethan Mollick, “I, Cyborg: Using Co-Intelligence” 
NYT review of Chris Hayes, The Siren’s Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource, and Nicholas Carr, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart
Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.

Oscar Wilde in Utah, with Randell Hoffman and Robert Carson

In 1882, Oscar Wilde visited Utah during his famous lecture tour of the United States. Local historian Randell Hoffman discusses the scandals of Wilde's visit, and the Victorian-era conventions that Wilde challenged. Robert Carson examines Wilde's lectures on the importance of beauty and his provocations about taste and artificiality.  
Links:
Michèle Mendelssohn, Making Oscar Wilde (Oxford University Press) 
The Mildred Berryman Institute
Utah Digital Newspapers, by the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah 
 
Episode edited by Ethan Rauschkolb. Named after our seminar room, The Virtual Jewel Box hosts conversations at the Obert C. and Grace A. Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Views expressed on The Virtual Jewel Box do not represent the official views of the Center or University.