Episode 2 – The T in STEM

LitSciPod: The Literature and Science Podcast

Produced by: Catherine Charlwood (@DrCharlwood) and Laura Ludtke (@lady_electric)
Music composed and performed by: Gareth Jones

About this episode:

In this episode, Laura and Cathy dive into the STEM vs. the humanities debate, discussing how funding in post-secondary institutions widens the divide between the humanities and STEm subjects. This week's interview features Alex Goody, Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature in the Department of English Literature at Oxford Brookes University. After the interview, you can hear Alex read Mina Loy’s poem, ‘Human Cylinders.’

Bio for Alex Goody:

After completing her PhD on 'Mina Loy’s Modernist Aesthetic’ at the University of Leeds, Dr Goody taught at Falmouth University before joining Oxford Brookes. Her research interests and teaching spans the field of modernist studies, encompasses technology and literature, considers the work of the modernist poets and novelists Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes, and Gertrude Stein, as well as New York Dada, jewish writing, modernist drama, and radio. We highly recommend you read Technology, Literature and Culture, (Polity Press, 2011).

Episode resources:

If you want to become more familiar with the Humanities vs STEM debate, here are some of the articles and books Laura and Catherine mention in the episode:

• Schmidt, ‘The Humanities are in Crisis’.
• Rustin, ‘Why study English? We’re poorer in every sense without it’.
• ‘Patterns and trends in UK Higher Education’.
• Olejarz, ‘Liberal Arts in the Data Age'.
• Wadhwa, 'Why liberal arts and the humanities are as important as engineering’.
• Anders, ‘That 'Useless' Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech's Hottest Ticket’.
• Bate, The Public Value of the Humanities (Bloomsbury, 2011)
• Collini, What Are Universities For? (Penguin 2012)
• Small, The Value of the Humanities (Oxford University Press 2013)
• Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Random House Canada, 2007
• 'Universities likely to cut number of staff due to Brexit uncertainty'.

Resources mentioned in the interview with Alex Goody: Hales: Unthought: The Power Of The Cognitive Nonconscious; Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter; Elkin, Flâneuse: Women Walk the City; Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life

• Mina Loy: Navigating the Avant-Garde.
• Loy materials on the Beinecke Rare Books Library website.

You can read Mina Loy, ‘Human Cylinders’ here and Seamus Heaney’s ‘The Railway Children’’ here.