Chiasmos – Woot! Liberal Academia!

I stumbled across Chiasmos, which is a series of podcasted lectures published by the University of Chicago, a while ago while searching for Russian language podcasts. It’s not a Russian language podcast, but it’s certainly the most worthwhile podcast I’ve come across. It’s quite nice, since my college doesn’t draw this type of lecture, and it’s a great way to rather effortlessly expand the range of subjects I’ve at least been exposed to. And, better yet, it’s – FREE EDUCATION! Something rare.

Generally the lectures are roughly an hour to an hour and a half. Part of that is question and answer – believe it or not the Q&A is generally almost as worthwhile as the actual subject. I’d get fidgety if I had to sit that long, but since I’m listening at my leisure I can do other tasks, pause the lecture, etc.

There’s a lot of variety in the subject matter of lectures. International studies. History. Literature. (I’m downloading a poetry reading by Yevgeny Yevtushenko next time I haul my computer to an wireless access point.) The ill effects of the corporatization of universities and colleges. (Speaking of my college...) Film studies. Queer theory. Human Rights. Etc., etc., and so on and so forth. I don’t listen to every lecture, because I’m only passingly interested in some topics, but there’s plenty of material to choose from.

So, highly recommended for listening material.

www.chiasmos.uchicago.edu

P.S. The spellcheck in my poor, decrepit version of WordPerfect doesn’t recognize podcast. How quickly these language changes!