Genealogies of Modernity Episode 2: What Is Modernity? with Michael Puett

We often think of modernity as a time period in history. But people have been claiming to be modern since at least c. 550 AD, when the Roman writer Cassiodorus used the term modernus to mark off everything that had happened since the fall of the Roman Empire. Harvard scholar Michael Puett takes us back much further, to the third century BC in ancient China, when a series of emperors claimed modernity to consolidate their rule. Puett argues that modernity is best understood as a claim to freedom from the past. By recognizing two forms of modernity claim—one that tries to erase the past and another that tries to master it—we can better understand what is at stake in our own invocations of “modernity."

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Genealogies of Modernity Episode 1: Mountain Modernity

For the past three years, Ryan has been working with an interdisciplinary group of scholars to produce a narrative podcast about Genealogies of Modernity. Today’s episode is a sneak preview of the first episode of that series, which will be released in its own feed starting the first week of November. In the thread of the Beatrice Institute podcast, Ryan has focused on interviewing scholars who are interested in the complex relationship between the past and the present. This narrative podcast doubles down on those interests with focused inquiries into the nature of modernity, the genealogical imagination, and the ways the past continues to be present and available to us today. Each episode tells a story, or set of stories, that echo but also challenge a particular standard narrative of what it means to be modern and how a particular modern phenomenon came about. 

We’ll be releasing the first three episodes in the Beatrice Institute stream so that you, our core audience, can have early access. And we’re also hoping that you will share the series with your friends. That would be a huge help. For now, enjoy episode one, “Mountain Modernity.”

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What's Wrong with the Modern World? with Ryan McDermott on SpirituallyIncorrect

This episode is brought to us by SpirituallyIncorrect:

We all love a good story. We watch movies, listen to friends talk about their last vacation, or listen to podcasts (this one included) just to hear an entertaining and provocative tale. But one story trumps them all: the story of how we have arrived at our modern world.

With technology evolving every year, drugs lessening the effects of illness, and possibilities undreamt of just a few decades ago, it's easy to imagine that the story of how we got here is one of triumph. We've conquered the stone age, overcome every obstacle, and now the march of progress of inevitable.

Yet with lessening resources, dying environments, and threats of war and crises flavoring every news broadcast, it's time to ask, is the story we tell ourselves real? Or have we been lying to ourselves the whole time? Are we really progressing?

Here to help us through this tricky issue is Dr. Ryan McDermott, who runs the Genealogies of Modernity project. If you've ever felt not at home in the modern world, this is the episode for you.

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Rerun: Race and American Christianity with Anthony Bradley

Anthony Bradley is a professor of religious studies and director of the Center for the Study of Human Flourishing at the King’s College in New York City. He gives a personalist analysis of the criminal justice system (touching on everything from architecture to food) and the Black Lives Matter movement. In this rerun episode, Anthony and Ryan discuss the relationship between Afro-pessimism, hope, and Eastern Christianity, and how Black experience informs trinitarian theology. They also touch on the dangers of missional narcissism and the invention of whiteness. 

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