Open Stacks
117 episodes - English - Latest episode: almost 2 years ago - ★★★★★ - 61 ratingsOpen Stacks brings you conversations with scholars, poets, novelists and activists on subjects as eclectic as the books on our shelves, from under-the-radar debates in the academy to pressing contemporary social issues, and from bestselling works of fiction to avant-garde poetics. Recorded live at Chicago's Seminary Co-op Bookstores, Open Stacks invites listeners to sit in on the kind of candid discussions and lively debates made possible by the participation of readers in a public space, with the aim of expanding and encouraging a broader community of ideas. Turn up the volume, pull up a chair, and let's start a conversation.
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Episodes
Havens for the Heterodox: Seminary Co-op Director Jeff Deutsch on Good Bookstores
June 30, 2022 16:06 - 11 minutes - 26.7 MBOn this special episode of Open Stacks, we hear from Jeff Deutsch, the Director of the Seminary Co-op Bookstores. Jeff's book, In Praise of Good Bookstores, came out from Princeton University Press this Spring, and Jeff has been traveling the country visiting other independent bookstores to talk about it, and about the value of bookselling and bookstores in the 21st century. Jeff spoke at the Seminary Co-op with Ydalmi Noriega, a member of the Co-op's board of directors, and director of prog...
Meeting Again: Mikki Kendall, Jack Cella, & Colin McDonald
December 02, 2021 16:50 - 22 minutes - 50.9 MBOn this episode of Open Stacks, the last of the fourth season, Mikki Kendall remembers a childhood at 57th Street Books and the reading that shapes her writing. We also hear from old friends Jack Cella and Colin McDonald, and from booksellers on the books they return to year after year. For a list of books discussed, music credits, and directions for submitting your favorite passages, head to our website.
Curiosity Is a Skill: On Reading Seriously
November 11, 2021 22:52 - 26 minutes - 59.5 MBThis time on Open Stacks, with Philip Leventhal, Elizabeth Branch Dyson, Paul Yamazaki, and Dan Wells, we ask what makes a book "serious." Booksellers Amélie, Annie, and Artemie share scholarly favorites. We're releasing this episode during University Press Week 2021, the 10th annual celebration of these important institutions and the knowledge and culture they help to cultivate. Philip Leventhal is Senior Editor at Columbia University Press, acquiring titles in journalism, film and med...
A Cave with Windows: Bookstore as Building
October 28, 2021 17:25 - 36 minutes - 83.8 MBThis time on Open Stacks: We explore the rabbit warren of the Co-op’s original location in the old Chicago Theological Seminary with manager emeritus Jack Cella and veteran bookseller Katy O’Brien Weintraub, then emerge from the underground with architect Margaret McCurry, who was integral in the creation of our new space in the sun. Paul Yamazaki, legendary book buyer at City Lights in San Francisco, gestures toward a spatial theory of bookstores—how the shape of the room and the number o...
At All Costs: Dave Eggers, Dan Wells, Ann Kjellberg, & Paul Yamazaki
October 15, 2021 12:00 - 15 minutes - 36.5 MBOn this episode, authors, publishers, editors and booksellers reflect on the value of their work, and what it takes to make a great bookstore thrive. Plus, an out-of-the-way reading list from our bookseller Mrittika: queer historical fiction... thrillers. For more from the voices you hear in this episode, a list of books mentioned, music credits, and instructions for sending us audio of yourself reading writing that you love, visit us here.
What's There and What's Not: A Visit to the Front Table
September 23, 2021 12:00 - 17 minutes - 40 MBOn this episode of open stacks: a ghostly tour of the Co-op's Front Table, from the hauntings of american history to life (and death) advice from Spinoza. For a list of books featured in this episode, music and production credits, and more, visit our website.
Escape Tunnel: Philip Leventhal on The Front Table
September 09, 2021 12:00 - 18 minutes - 43.3 MBThis time on Open Stacks we hear from Philip Leventhal, editor at Columbia University Press and veteran Co-opian, about the history of the famous Front Table catalog, in its print and digital forms. Then we head to the Front Table (the actual table) for some recent titles on underground transformation. Philip Leventhal is Senior Editor at Columbia University Press, acquiring titles in Journalism, Film and Media Studies, and Literary Studies. He also worked at the Co-op for many years, and ...
Place to Place: Katarzyna Bartoszyńska & Reuben Jonathan Miller
August 26, 2021 15:59 - 48 minutes - 111 MBOn this episode of Open Stacks with Katarzyna Bartoszyńska and Reuben Jonathan Miller, we trace paths between: academia and bookselling; Poland and Ireland; animal navigation and interpersonal knowledge; the inside and the outside of the American prison. For a complete list of books mentioned in this episode, music credits, and supplementary materials, click here. Want to submit a passage you've dog-eared? Click here.
A Land Without Trees: A Visit to the Front Table
August 05, 2021 12:00 - 17 minutes - 40.5 MBOn this episode of Open Stacks, books from the land of the ice and snow, from the midnight sun, where the hot springs flow. In the middle of the Summer, a stack of Front Table books from the heart(s) of Winter. Thanks to bookseller Joey for sharing a favorite passage from Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives. If you want to share something you read with us (and other listeners' like you), send us a voice memo. We'd love to hear about what you're reading. Open Stacks is hosted by Alena...
Washing a Book: Elizabeth Branch Dyson, Eve Ewing, and Ann Kjellberg
July 22, 2021 12:00 - 38 minutes - 88.4 MBOn this episode of Open Stacks: a prismatic exploration of new releases at the Front Table, an editorial dialogue with Elizabeth Branch Dyson and Eve Ewing, and Ann Kjellberg on a life in publishing, Joseph Brodsky, and how serious books connect us to one another and the world. Elizabeth Branch Dyson is Assistant Editorial Director and Executive Editor at The University of Chicago Press. She also appears on the first episode of this season of Open Stacks. Eve Ewing is a sociologist, activ...
Common Languages: A Visit to the Front Table
July 08, 2021 12:00 - 18 minutes - 42.2 MBOn this episode of Open Stacks, a circle around the Co-op’s Front Table: from a post-war pioneer of Afrofuturism on Chicago’s South Side to the complex communal powers of games like spades, mahjong, and pickup soccer. Thanks to Bryce Lucas for taking us on a tour of the Front Table this time. In this episode, you hear fragments of archival recordings of Sun Ra, including brief excerpts from his film Space is the Place and the track "If You Are Not A Myth" from his album The Sub-Dwellers...
A Spirit in the Space: On Reopening Our Doors
June 25, 2021 17:46 - 34 minutes - 80 MBOn this episode of Open Stacks, we celebrate the Co-op reopening its doors for in-person browsing – the first time since we closed 15 months ago. Browsers, booksellers, authors, and our own Clancey D'Isa and Bryce Lucas discuss the transfiguration of space, absence and presence, the "invisible" work of bookselling, and how reading needn't be a solo activity. Have you read something recently (or over the last year) that moved you, that made you laugh, that you can't stop thinking about, or,...
Observer Observed: A Visit to the Front Table
June 09, 2021 18:37 - 22 minutes - 51.2 MBIn this episode, Alena takes a tour around the Front Table, guided by Bryce Lucas, manager of 57th Street Books. Circling the table, they move from bald philosophy to the physics of crumpled paper, from an Icelandic fisheries museum to the shifting nature of observation itself. Have a perspective to share? We'll be featuring listeners' voices throughout the season. This time: tell us about a book you loved on first reading, but hated the second time around – or vice versa. Share the story ...
Not New in a New Way: Elizabeth Branch Dyson & Haki Madhubuti
May 26, 2021 13:05 - 40 minutes - 92.5 MBIn this first episode of the fourth season, we sit down with Elizabeth Branch Dyson, assistant editorial director and executive editor at the University of Chicago Press, to hear how she approaches acquiring widely accessible books for an academic press. Bryce (manager of 57th Street Books) takes us on a tour around the Co-op's Front Table, checking out a few recent releases. We're then joined by poet, author, and publisher Haki Madhubuti, who talks to us about his journey through books, th...
Open Stacks Returns
May 14, 2021 15:00 - 1 minute - 2.29 MBA new season of Open Stacks, coming soon from the Seminary Co-op Bookstores in Chicago, the first not-for-profit bookstores whose mission is bookselling. This teaser features music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Narrative Threads: Jordan Alexander Stein & Jasmon Drain
March 15, 2020 23:00 - 49 minutes - 113 MBThink you know how fiction works? Think again on this episode of Open Stacks with literary theorist Jordan Alexander Stein, who joins us in the stacks for a look at When Novels Were Books. Plus, Jasmon Drain and Ben Austen discuss Drain’s novelistic collection of stories about the interconnected lives of residents of “the biggest concrete building on Chicago’s South Side,” Stateway’s Garden. And the Co-op’s Colin and Alena find humor in paying attention. You’ll never judge a book by its g...
Books on Books: Craig Fehrman, Anna Kornbluh & Booksellers Off the Clock
March 02, 2020 00:00 - 1 hour - 178 MBFrom our nation’s highest office to the uncharted territories of political formalism, we trust in books to take us in and out of the bookstore on this episode of Open Stacks, with journalist and historian Craig Fehrman on presidential authorship and literary theorist Anna Kornbluh on the future of social space and the novels on which it stands. Plus, booksellers off the clock, and what’s not to like about Wuthering Heights. Find books that break ground and more reasons to dig into what mig...
Visual Memories: Berthold Hoeckner, Leila Taylor & Adam Sonderberg
February 17, 2020 05:38 - 58 minutes - 80.7 MBOn this episode of Open Stacks, Professor of Music Berthold Hoeckner spins a record of cultural memory made audible in films focused on the past, from Casablanca to Sleepless in Seattle in his book, Film, Music, Memory, as Leila Taylor turns over our shared, if buried, history of racism in Darkly: Black History and America’s Gothic Soul. Plus, looking back with Adam Sonderberg on his tenure at the Co-op and the books that struck a chord. This episode was produced by Elliot Ducree, Veronica...
The Front Table: 2/13/20
February 13, 2020 22:30 - 19 minutes - 26.8 MBIn his final hours as Manager of the Seminary Co-op, Adam Sonderberg sat down to let his favorite books speak (mostly) for themselves. Join us as we reminisce on Adam’s tenure at the Co-op, killing time with Kierkegaard, and coming to inhabit a world that books create on this week’s Front Table podcast.
Picture Book
February 03, 2020 00:00 - 1 hour - 96.1 MBAhead of the Oscars, Open Stacks returns with a long red carpet full of books on Hollywood, Hitchcock, Hegel and more with scholars Sharon Marcus on The Drama of Celebrity and Robert B. Pippin’s Filmed Thought. Plus, re-viewing The Arcades Project and seeing Self-Help through the lens of Samuel Beckett. Fail better, read better on this episode of Open Stacks: The Seminary Co-op Bookstore Podcast. This episode was produced by Elliot Ducree, Veronica Karlin, and Jackson Roach. It features mu...
The Front Table: 1/29/20
January 29, 2020 20:00 - 20 minutes - 27.6 MBNew year. New books. New you? The Seminary Co-op’s Colin and Alena search for Self-Help in the guise (and stacks) of literature, capitalist spirituality, ancient philosophy and more on this week’s Front Table. Featured Books: The Self Help Compulsion: Searching for Advice in Modern Literature by Beth Blum (from Columbia University Press) Aristotle's Way: How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Life by Edith Hall (from Penguin) McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spiri...
Children Aren’t Boats: Kim Brooks, Julissa Arce & Franny Billingsley
December 09, 2019 00:00 - 1 hour - 83.8 MBThe pleasures of reading are often introduced at a young age, and on this episode of Open Stacks, we revisit young adulthood and the child in the 21st century, in Kim Brooks’ Small Animals: Parenthood in the Age of Fear and Julissa Arce’s Someone Like Me: How One Undocumented Girl Fought for Her American Dream. Plus Children’s Book Specialist Franny Billingsley and Colin sit down with 2019’s best picture books. This episode was produced by Veronica Karlin and Jackson Roach, and features mu...
The Front Table: 12/3/19
December 03, 2019 16:07 - 10 minutes - 15.1 MBNot all cities are created equal, and on this week’s Front Table we go behind the scenes and un-seens of cities near and far, from the depths of London to the extravagant annals of Pyongyang’s “model” utopias.
Out of Season: Kathryn Scanlan & Devin Johnston
November 25, 2019 00:00 - 49 minutes - 68.6 MBAt 82, May Sarton “made a dialogue out of what had been a soliloquy,” in her journal. On this entry of Open Stacks, we take the measure of our days in diaries and diaristic units of shared sense in conversations with Kathryn Scanlan and Devin Johnston. This episode was produced by Veronica Karlin and Jackson Roach, and features music by Kevin MacLeod, Daniel Birch, Gallery Six, and Andrei Pohorelsky. Special thanks to Co-op booksellers Adam Stern and Fred Tadrowski.
The Front Table: 11/19/19
November 19, 2019 16:00 - 12 minutes - 16.6 MBA planet, a republic, a meal, and a question: what is the future of food? Specifically that which comes from animals. This week’s Front Table is serving up thick cuts of scholarship on “The Meat Question” and history of our relationship to meat past, present, and beyond. This episode features voices of the Co-op's Colin McDonald and Alena Jones, as well as music by Kevin MacLeod. It was produced by Jackson Roach.
How to Explode Slowly: Etgar Keret, Jessica Laser & Daniel Poppick
November 14, 2019 23:10 - 54 minutes - 74.8 MBFrom the depths of Moby Dick to the light of something like poetry in author Etgar Keret’s new collection, Fly Already, we follow a line (or is it a fuse?) running between the past and present of contemporary literature on this episode of Open Stacks, featuring Etgar Keret, Jessica Laser, and Daniel Poppick. This episode was produced by Veronica Karlin and Jackson Roach, and featured music by Kevin MacLeod, Gallery Six, Cursor Miner, Daniel Birch, and Andrei Pohorelsky.
The Front Table: 11/5/19
November 05, 2019 22:30 - 8 minutes - 12.3 MBIt’s a long and winding road on this week’s Front Table from idea to book, career, and other forms of written livelihood. This episode of the Front Table features the voices of the Co-op's Colin McDonald and Alena Jones. It was produced by Jackson Roach, and includes music by Kevin MacLeod, and very brief excerpts of "The Long and Winding Road" as performed by Aretha Franklin and the Langley Schools Music Project.
World Makers: Ocean Vuong & Rebecca Clarren
October 27, 2019 23:00 - 49 minutes - 68.3 MBAward winning poet Ocean Vuong and journalist Rebecca Clarren turn a romantic and empiric lens on the art of fiction in their acclaimed debut novels, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Kickdown, both of which plunge new emotional depths of American experience on this episode of Open Stacks.
The Front Table: 10/21/19
October 22, 2019 15:00 - 13 minutes - 18.1 MBSpace is the place on this week’s Front Table with the Seminary Co-op's Colin and Alena looking up and down at a veritable galaxy of new books about our universe and multiverse.
Placemaking: Timothy Cresswell & Dani Shapiro
October 06, 2019 15:00 - 59 minutes - 82.3 MBA place like the Seminary Co-op is in some sense made of writing, but what can writing make? That question is at the center of conversations with Timothy Cresswell, Dani Shapiro and others on the first episode of the third season of Open Stacks.
The Front Table: 9/26/19
September 27, 2019 01:00 - 11 minutes - 16.4 MBAs students return to campus in pursuit of degrees, the Co-op’s Colin and Alena come back to the Front Table in pursuit of knowledge in and beyond education, with a look at the higher costs and undervalues making college work... for some.
The Front Table: 9/12/19
September 12, 2019 15:00 - 10 minutes - 24.8 MBFeeling blue? You’re not alone. Join the Seminary Co-op’s Colin and Alena and for a spin around the Co-op’s colorful Front Table with recent and reissued works that help mythologize, reflect, and interact with the secret lives of color on this week’s Front Table podcast.
The Front Table: 8/27/19
August 27, 2019 19:00 - 8 minutes - 19.3 MBWe may not be able to slow down our climate crisis, but we can take time to understand what’s happening and why with the help of new books about environmental peril in relation to philosophical anthropology, institutional racism, and a categorical lack of imagination; something you’ll never find on this week’s Front Table podcast.
The Front Table: 8/13/19
August 13, 2019 20:00 - 10 minutes - 24.7 MBWhat’s wrong with rudeness? The Seminary Co-op’s Colin and Alena turn to ancient ideas about etiquette and more for our ill-mannered age on this week’s Front Table. Tune in for “civilized” reading wherever you listen to podcasts.
The Front Table: 7/30/19
July 30, 2019 15:00 - 7 minutes - 10.2 MBFresh off inventory, the Seminary Co-op’s Colin and Alena investigate the “impulse to accumulate” as qualitatively quantified in yet more new books on this week’s Front Table.
The Front Table: 7/16/19
July 16, 2019 20:00 - 7 minutes - 16.7 MBSince medieval times, if not before, writers like Francois Villon and St. Teresa of Avila have been showing us how writing about oneself is done. Or is it? The Co-op's Colin and Alena have a look at how far we’ve come on this week's Front Table, with a short stack of new memoirs long in the making.
The Front Table: 6/20/19
June 20, 2019 19:54 - 9 minutes - 8.53 MBSummer is here, which begs the question: What is a summer read, anyway? The Co-op's Alena and Colin find shade at the Front Table for a brief look and long view at what makes a quintessential (or potential) summer read.
“The one things happen to”: Robert Launay & Noura Erakat
June 09, 2019 17:00 - 58 minutes - 53.9 MBTaking a line from Jorge Luis Borges’ Labyrinths, we set out to read and re-imagine the Other on this week's episode of Open Stacks (our last before summer break), with Professor of Anthropology Robert Launay, who joins us in the stacks to help us think of others through the eyes of Savages, Romans, and Despots, and Palestinian American legal scholar and human rights attorney Noura Erakat on Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. Plus, our booksellers share serendipitous disco...
The Front Table: 6/5/19
June 05, 2019 20:09 - 13 minutes - 11 MBWe know that the most important things in the world are beyond measure,” writes Co-op Director Jeff Deutsch in his most recent annual letter to the Co-op community, “On Measure.” But in our over-quantified age, the urge to justify with numbers is all around us, literally. This week, we measure up to the Co-op’s Front Table for a look at new releases to help put us on the map.
Are We There Yet? Amit Chaudhuri & Evelyn Hampton
May 26, 2019 23:30 - 56 minutes - 130 MBHow do you get to the end when there’s no where to get? Authors Evelyn Hampton and Amit Chaudhuri read and discuss fictions of anxiety, memory, autobiography, and impersonation, taking us there one sentence at a time. Booksellers Freddie and Joe chime in on Co-op staff favorites W.G. Sebald, Annie Dilliard, and more.
The Front Table: 5/21/19
May 21, 2019 15:00 - 10 minutes - 7.62 MBAt times of uncertainty, books of anxiety abound, but the question of how to write the unknown is always in flux. Enter a state of incomprehension on this week’s Front Table, with books that can help us keep sight of our fears, from life after climate change to the Isle of Sky in Virgina Woolf’s To the Lighthouse.
Exoteric Advice: Edith Hall & Helen Rosner
May 12, 2019 23:30 - 52 minutes - 121 MBWhat might 4th century BC philosopher Aristotle and 20th century celebrity chef Julia Child have to say to each other and to us? We’re in dialogue with renowned classicist Edith Hall, author of Aristotle's Way, and The New Yorker’s James Beard Award-winning roving food correspondent Helen Rosner on how ancient wisdom, practical advice, and a decided lack of elitism are key ingredients for eating and living well. Plus, a dash of good taste (and advice) in books our staff live by.
The Front Table: 5/7/19
May 07, 2019 15:00 - 12 minutes - 27.4 MBSpring is in the air and selections from the Co-op’s Moms, Dads, Grads & Kids 2019 Gift Guide (https://www.semcoop.com/category/moms-dads-grads) are on the Front Table for all of your spring season’s holidays and special occasions. Co-op Assistant Manager Alena Jones takes us in and beyond the guide for a reader’s look at MOTHERHOOD and other books expanding on our notions and misconceptions of mothering just in time for Mother’s Day.
"Throw Out the Radio": Florence Dore, Luke Fischer + Making Sense of "Blurbs"
April 28, 2019 23:30 - 42 minutes - 97.1 MBRock musician and professor Florence Dore attunes to static in her research on "resonant silences" surrounding censorship and race in modernist literature of the early 20th century and its recapitulation of institutional norms in her new book, Novel Sounds; Australian poet and philosopher Luke Fischer joins us just in time for Poetry Month to read and discuss A Personal History of Vision; and Co-op staff Mark Loeffler and Alena Jones help us see through the haze of jacket copy, otherwise kno...
The Front Table: 4/23/19
April 23, 2019 15:00 - 10 minutes - 24.3 MBThanks for reading and listening with us on this week’s Front Table from the Seminary Co-op Bookstores in Chicago. Browse each week’s Front Table and subscribe to our free weekly email newsletter at semcoop.com for more serious books for curious readers. "I greet you at the beginning of a great career." This, legend has it, was the first blurb, or brief book description, to appear in 1856 courtesy of Ralph Waldo Emerson in praise of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. This week, we cover the lon...
Women Warriors: Pamela Toler & Carol J. Adams
April 14, 2019 23:30 - 49 minutes - 114 MBOpen Stacks returns with historian Pamela Toler on women for whom battle was not a metaphor, while positing the use of story in shaping shared history. Meanwhile, feminist-vegan advocate Carol J. Adams deconstructs the narrative surrounding hamburgers and other animal sourced foods and how eating, like reading, is always political. Plus, Co-op booksellers weigh in on the glut, guilt, and glory of biting off more than most readers can chew when it comes to ARCs (aka, advance reader copies).
The Front Table: 3/26/19
March 26, 2019 20:39 - 9 minutes - 4.17 MBForgotten, no good, or simply on sale? Seminary Co-op Assistant Manager Alena Jones looks past the Front Table for books of great value: what remains (and why) when books of value get marked down. Browse each week's Front Table at semcoop.com.
Autobiography of Song: Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib & Timuel Black
March 17, 2019 23:30 - 43 minutes - 98.7 MBFrom autobiography to music criticism, poet, essayist, and cultural critic Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib walks the floor of the Seminary Co-op in conversation with the books that served as muses of his love letter to A Tribe Called Quest, Go Ahead in the Rain. Oral historian and civil rights activist Timuel D. Black, Jr. shares his long-awaited memoir, Sacred Ground.
The Front Table: 3/12/19
March 12, 2019 18:23 - 6 minutes - 4.48 MBThis week, Seminary Co-op Assistant manager Alena Jones picks up the radical feminism of Andrea Dworkin and three new translations by women of classical works by men. Browse each week’s Front Table at semcoop.com.
"The opposite of an out-of-body experience": In the Stacks with Eileen Myles + The "Gentle Madness" of Collecting Books
March 04, 2019 00:30 - 45 minutes - 33.8 MBPoet Eileen Myles joins us in the stacks to discuss writing EVOLUTION: their new collection of essays and poems, reading in good company, and "trying so hard to be in this world." Co-op Booksellers weigh in on the art and "gentle madness" of collecting books.