The American Vandal

A chance to reflect, with journalism professor Jeff Sharlet, on his book, "The Undertow: Scenes From A Slow Civil War," the looming threat of acceleration, the methods and media of lingering, documentary modernism, and monsters within. For a bibliography of this episode, please visit TheAmericanVandal.Substack.com/Lingering

The finale of "A Tale of Today," the eleventh season of "The American Vandal." Matt Seybold offers his journey of curiosity from the end of "Criticism LTD" to "The Technofeudal Text." Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Nathan Wolff Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit TheAmericanVandal.Substack.com/CruelFuturism

Remastered audio of Fredric Jamesons opening lecture at the 1977 Institute On Culture & Society sponsored by the Marxist Literary Group and hosted by St. Cloud State University. For further context, consider listening to "The Jameson Tapes, Side A" which precedes this episode in The American Vandal Podcast feed. For a bibliography, please visit or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.Substack.com

The first of two installments contextualizing Fredric Jameson's lectures at the 1977 Institute On Culture & Society begins with a discussion of "Marxism & Historicism," followed by conversations about historicizing the lectures [8:00], the process of recovering them [33:30], a key passage about commodity as its own ideology [55:00}, and the long arc of Jameson's thought and influence [71:30]. Cast (in order of appearance): Robert Tally, Matt Seybold, Anna Kornbluh, Caleb Smith, Fredric Jameson, Isabel Bartholomew Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

Analysis of the Gilded Age tropology of alienation precedes discussions of Hubert Humphrey & Tim Walz [9:00], the reception of "Hillbilly Elegy" and its aftermath [38:00], and "The Mismeasurement of Orcs" [78:00]. Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Andie Tucher, Samuel Freedman, Douglas Dowland, Dan Sinykin, J.D. Connor, Robert Tally Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/TheAmericanVandal/Spitesgiving, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

A so-called Spreadsheet Man responds. Does the institutional turn have a distinctly feminine ethos? [27:30] How is it rooted in the Post45 Collective? [49:00] What are its debts to New Historicism and Marxist Literary Criticism? [69:00] And to Fredric Jameson? [84:30] And what has become of Economic Criticism? [94:00] Cast (in order of appearance): Dan Sinykin, Matt Seybold, Brandon Taylor, Rachel Sagner Buurma, Laura Heffernan, J. D. Connor, Alexander Manshel, Fredric Jameson, Leigh Claire La Berge Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/TheAmericanVandal/SpreadsheetMen, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

Our ideology critique of contemporary tech fascist SciFi begins with the first selections from Fredric Jameson's 1977 seminar at the Institute On Culture & Society, followed by a journalists narration of the tech fascist turn in Silicon Valley [10:00], ideological analysis of Alt-Right speculative fiction [37:00], and technofeudal yearning to convert probability to prophecy [70:00]. Cast (in order of appearance): Fredric Jameson, Matt Seybold, Jacob Silverman, Jordan S. Carroll Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Mutants, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

Our inaugural installment of "live" podcasting was recorded with a small audience in the library at Quarry Farm. It features Caroline Levine and Jed Esty discussing their recent books, "The Activist Humanist" and "The Future of Decline," as well as responding to the themes of "A Tale of Today" and "Criticism LTD," and discussing the roles of humanities educators in addressing climate crisis, declinism, superpower nostalgia, and shock doctrine. Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Caroline Levine, Jed Esty Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Affordances, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

The finale of our trilogy centered on Technofeudalism begins with the intersection of political economy with aesthetics and literary forms, followed by a synthesis of financial and fictive definitions of speculation [18:00], what can be done with the technofeudal thesis [27:30], the role of solidarity in the age of insecurity [33:00], the Panic of 1873 as a model [41:30], panics to come [53:00], and some final words from Yanis Varoufakis [72:00] Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Yanis Varoufakis, Jordan S. Carroll, James Livingston, Astra Taylor, Leigh Claire La Berge Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Speculators, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

An exploration of the political economy of technofeudalism begins by defining the technostructure and introducing its personification, followed by testimony from a skeptic [26:00], competing periodizations of the present [48:00], and media praxis under the rein of the cloudalists [73:00]. Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Yanis Varoufakis, James Livingston, Astra Taylor Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Technofeudalism, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

Episode opens with journalism's "race to the bottom," described by a journalist who lived it, followed by what "The Facebook Files" revealed about social media's relationship to news [8:00], the tactics of parallel journalism [27:00}, the difference between fake news and fake journalism [38:00], the fate worse than death for periodicals, but not books [48:00], what the acquisition of Twitter taught us about technofeudalism [65:00], and a call to return to conventional media [82:00]. Cast (in order of appearance): Samuel Freedman, Matt Seybold, Jeff Horwitz, Gil Duran, Andie Tucher, Jeff Jarvis, Yanis Varoufakis, Tressie McMillan Cottom Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Newspapers, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

A two-part meditation on the history of journalism and the fate of investigative journalism under tech fascism begins with the model of Ida Tarbell, the epochal Wall Street Journal reporting on Facebook in 2021 [6:00], the professionalization of journalism during the Gilded Age and interbellum periods [38:00], the relationship between Silicon Valley and news organizations in the 21st century [54:00], the legacy of newspapers [63:00], and a periodization of print media [71:00]. Cast (in order of appearance): Gil Duran, Matt Seybold, Jeff Horwitz, Andie Tucher, Jacob Silverman, Jeff Jarvis Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Gutenberg, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

Our 150th anniversary celebration of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner's "The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today" turns to political economies of mass media, then and now, beginning with a close reading of the novel's title. We are then introduced to the tech fascist fantasy of the Network State [21:00], theories of post-capitalism [47:00], ways of reading from the right [58:00], and a more optimistic technofuturism [77:00} Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Jeffrey Insko, Anna Kornbluh, Gil Duran, Eleanor Courtemanche, Jordan Carroll, Douglas Dowland, Jeff Jarvis Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/GildedNetwork, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

The second act of "A Tale of Today," focused on HBCUs and the political economy of education in Gilded Ages old and new, concludes with a journey of curiosity through the unschooling movement, a historicist close reading of Ruth Bolton's time at Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania [24:40], analysis of the transition from secondary schools to higher education [35:00], a summary of this part of the series [82:00], and hope from the forgotten migration [87:30]. Cast (in order of appearance): Astra Taylor, Matt Seybold, Laura Heffernan, Rachel Sagnar Buurma, Alexander Manshel, Annie Abrams, Crystal Sanders Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/JourneyOfCuriosity, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

Following Jelani Favors's description of how the second curriculum of HBCUs has been compromised since the 1980s, we look back at the origins of Howard University in the Freedman's Bureau [10:00], discuss the labor history of literature instruction [28:00], and mark the college football playoffs by discussing the dehumanization of athletic workers with the authors of "The End of College Football" [44:30]. Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Jelani Favors, Laura Heffernan, Rachel Sagnar Buurma, Nathan Kalman-Lamb, Derek Silva Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/StudentWorkers, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

Archives, physical and digital, are suffering from austerity, enshittification, and censorship. In this episode scholars discuss the ambivalent impacts of digitization, what information matters in the data economy [8:30], an analogy involving European colonialism [23:00], the competition to document between corporations and universities [46:00], the duty to tell the truth freely [73:30], preserving the counternarratives to empire [81:00], and managing an archive through Orbanization [95:30]. Cast (in order of appearance): Laura Heffernan, Rachel Sagnar Buurma, Matt Seybold, Kelly Grotke, Asheesh Kapur Siddique, Leigh Claire La Berge, Crystal Sanders, Jared Loggins, Andrew Douglas, Timothy Barber Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/ArchiveOfEmpire, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

An episode built around an interview with Tressie McMillan Cottom covers what lessons the rest of Higher Ed can learn from HBCUs [3:00], the vectors of financialization in the New Gilded Age [19:00], the migration of the for-profit model into not-for-profit institutions [60:00], and how Modern Monetary Theory might invigorate the Black University Concept [84:00]. Cast (in order of appearance): Jared Loggins, Matt Seybold, Tressie McMillan Cottom, Kelly Grotke, Andrew Douglas Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/LoweEd, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

A Morehouse college commencement speaker makes an extraordinary financial commitment, but there's a "profound story" to tell about the durable funding of HBCUs in the US since the Gilded Age [12:00]. How does philanthrocapitalism work? [42:00] What is the Double Tax? [48:00] How might EdTech extract "intellectual capital" from HBCUs? [54:00] Can the second curriculum be sustained inside a philanthrocapitalist university? [64:00] Are HBCUs the vanguard of a new era of disruption to education? [74:00] Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Andrew Douglas, Jared Loggins, Kelly Grotke, Crystal Sanders, Jelani Favors, Dominique Baker Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/Morehouse, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

A brief history of HBCUs through conversations with five scholars about the second curriculum which informs movements for Civil Rights in the midcentury US, segregation scholars and the long withholding of postbaccalaureate education from HBCUs [40:00], the aspirational Black University Concept in W.E.B. DuBois and Vincent Harding [75:00], and the challenges facing HBCU students today [84:00]. Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Jelani Favors, Crystal Sanders, Andrew Douglas, Jared Loggins, Dominique Baker Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/HBCU, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com

As Nathan Wolff himself puts it, his recent keynote address at the 2024 Quarry Farm Fall Symposium is "very much in dialogue with The American Vandal." In this talk, Wolff not only summarizes Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner's "The Gilded Age" (1873), but further interpolates it with concepts like Lauren Berlant's cruel optimism, György Lukács's historical novel, and Raymond Williams's structures of feeling, all of which have been cited frequently in our "A Tale of Today" series. While this episode departs from the usual format of this podcast, listeners to the current season will undoubtedly see the synergy between recent episodes and Wolff's excellent keynote. Cast (in order of appearance): Matt Seybold, Nathan Wolff Soundtrack: DownRiver Collective Narration: Nathan Osgood & SNR Audio For more about this episode, including a complete bibliography, please visit MarkTwainStudies.com/FirstAsFarce, or subscribe to Matt Seybold's newsletter at TheAmericanVandal.substack.com If you would prefer to watch Nathan Wolff speak, the keynote is also available via our YouTube Channel.