This week Purnima Bose discusses how Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale demonstrates how easily modern America might become a truly repressive theocracy. The extended cut includes a review of the plot of the novel as well as a discussion of the cultural milieu in which Atwood composed the narrative. There is also a brief discussion of how the …

America is a land founded on commercial ventures intended to gather in the riches of a virgin land but also upon the Puritan plan to set up a theocratic state. In this episode of The Custom House Purnima Bose, a professor in the International Studies Department of Indiana University, discusses how Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale demonstrates how easily modern …

This week, Doug speaks with biographer Christoph Irmscher about the legacy of Louis Agassiz, one of the most influential men in the development of the practice of science in America. This extended cut includes more biographical details as well as a deeper look at Agassiz’s involvement in the so-called Emancipation Commission as epistolary adviser to one its appointed leaders, Samuel …

This week, Doug speaks with biographer Christoph Irmscher about the legacy of Louis Agassiz, one of the most influential men in the development of the practice of science in America. Louis Agassiz, a co-discoverer of the Ice Age, is often portrayed as a racist proponent of miscegenation and a failure as a theorist of human development–as the scientist who refused …

This week: Jonathan Elmer, director of Indiana University’s College Arts and Humanities Institute discusses Herman Melville’s novella, Benito Cereno, a masterful exposure of 19th century cultural presumptions in the American slave nation. This week on The Custom House, Doug looks at how we use our reading experiences as tools for thinking in a conversation with Jonathan Elmer, the Director of …