Old Books with Grace

Austen's Persuasion: Ch. 1-3 Vol. II with Dr. Jessica Hines

Grace welcomes Dr. Jessica Hines to the fifth week of the Summer Old Book Club discussing Jane Austen's Persuasion. Grace and Jessica talk about the mysterious Mr. Elliot, the perplexities of Lady Russell (do we like her or not??), Anne's move to Bath, and bring in some of their great loves: medieval things like Thomas Aquinas and virtue ethics!

Austen's Persuasion: Ch. 10-12, Vol I with Chelsea Swanson

Dr. Grace Hamman and her special guest and best friend since kindergarten, Chelsea Swanson, lose track of time as they endlessly dissect three chapters of Persuasion that perhaps have the most incredible emotional and interpersonal subtext of all chapters but the end. Plus, discussion of the most stupid Jane Austen injury: Louisa Musgrove jumps off the Cobb!

Austen's Persuasion: Ch. 7-9 Vol. I with Marisa Tualla

Welcome to week three of reading Jane Austen's Persuasion with the Summer Old Book Club! Today, Grace chats with her old friend Marisa Tualla, a math curriculum specialist, about ch. 7-9 of vol. I. They talk Jane Austen on gender, loneliness, the fascinating and unusual presence of children in this section, among many other things...

Austen's Persuasion: Ch. 4-6 Vol. 1 with John Irwin

It's week two of the Summer Old Book Club! Read alongside Grace and her brother, John Irwin, as they discuss chapters 4-6 of volume I of Jane Austen's Persuasion. Grace and John talk about meeting Captain Wentworth (in memory) for the first time, Jane Austen's meanest and most phallic joke, Regency-era ideas about class, the wretched Mary Musgrove, and so much more...

Austen's Persuasion: Chapters 1-3 Vol. 1 with Dr. Jessica Ward

Welcome to the Summer Old Book Club with Jane Austen's Persuasion! Grace and Dr. Jessica Ward, an English professor at Mercy College in NYC and one of Grace's grad school buddies, talk about our introduction to the characters, Austen's cutting humor, personality types, and more. 

A Brief Introduction to Jane Austen

We all know who Jane Austen is. But a little more context and background can help us to better understand her writing and her world, before we enter into her final novel, Persuasion. Join the Summer Old Book Club!

Meditations on Henry Vaughan's "The Night"

"There is in God, some say, / A deep but dazzling darkness..." What does Vaughan's famous line mean? Let's think about this beautiful poem and its Welsh 17th-century author together.

Dabbling in Old Words: Whole

Feeling broken, distended, fragmented? Me too. This episode meditates upon spiritual and bodily wholeness, via the ancient origins of the word "whole" and supplemented by Augustine of Hippo.