Bah humbug! This week, Jimmy and Stephanie revisit Charles Dickens's classic A Christmas Carol, on the 175th anniversary of its publication. Join them as they discuss Scrooge, ghosts, Mickey Mouse, and Stephanie’s favourite Christmas song. ​

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein we will be releasing recordings from the FrankenReads event at Macquarie University in September.

​This week's recording features the following presentations:

“’Yes Master, No Master’: The Cinematic Development of Igor in the Frankenstein Narrative” by Guy Webster

​“Monstrous Scions: Frankenstein and Posthumanist Mythology” by Paul Sheehan

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein we will be releasing recordings from the FrankenReads event at Macquarie University in September.

​This week's recording features the following presentations:
​​
“The Tangled World of Frankenstein and Conflict of Laws” by Harry Melkonian ​ 

“Frankenstein in Hyperspace: The Return of Twenty-first-century Digital Technologies to the Origins of Virtual Space in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” by Kirstin Mills

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein we will be releasing recordings from the FrankenReads event at Macquarie University in September.

This week's recording features the following presentations:

“’My Beloved Sister’: The Other Family in Frankenstein” by Lee O’Brien

'Using “the living animal” to re-animate “lifeless clay”: The role of vivisection in the creation of Frankenstein's monster' by Libby King

“’The reflections of my hours of despondency and solitude’: Narrating Solitude in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein” by Geoffrey Payne

Bonus material:
We were having such a great time at the conference that we ran over time and, unfortunately, John Mathews' wonderful introduction to the screening of the 1931 film adaptation of Frankenstein was only partially recorded. Rather than cut this part of the conference out completely, we thought we'd offer the snippet as a bonus clip. Enjoy!

Sensation! Scandal! Murder! Bigamy! A femme fatale! This book has it all! This week, Stephanie and Lee are reading one of the nineteenth-century's favourite sensation fictions: Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret.

The Big Sleep is a classic of crime noir: the kind of fiction that transports you to a seedy LA gin joint in the 1940s. This week, Lee and Stephanie discuss femme fatales, Marlowe, gangsters, and slightly nonsensical plots.

Truman Capote brought true crime to literature with his "nonfiction novel" In Cold Blood. In this podcast, Lee and Stephanie discuss a lesser-known piece of Capote non-fiction, the short story "The Handcarved Coffins". They discuss murderers, the line between truth and fiction, and a car full of snakes. ​

Meredith Lake, award-winning historian, traces the impact of the Bible on Australian culture, from Tony Abbott's misuse of the Bible to discredit the science of climate change to the distinctively Australian irreverence for authority that saw the coining of the expressions 'bible-basher' and 'wowser'. Join Michelle Hamadache as she interviews Meredith Lake about the complex ways the Bible and its reception has shaped Australian literature, language and politics.

Part colonial history, part biography of James Porter, a convict transported to Van Diemen's Land under the rule of the tyrannical Governor Arthur, The Ship that Never War is a story of human tenacity and ingenuity in the face of unimaginably harsh conditions. Join Michelle Hamadache as she talks with Adam Courtenay about the incredible but true story of a group of convicts who stole a brand new ship from Macquarie Harbour and sailed it all the way to Chile.

Show notes:

Alison Lyssa, playwright, writer and poet, discusses her groundbreaking feminist play Pinball. Pinball, a play about a young lesbian couple fighting the patriarchy for custody of one of the women's son, was labelled 'feminist chauvinist piggery' in the Australian Press in the 80s when it was first performed. Now a set-text in universities in the UK and re-staged by Duck Duck Goose in 2014, Pinball and its playwright, Alison Lyssa, remain cutting edge in contemporary Australia. 
 
Show links: 
https://lisathatcher.com/2014/02/14/pinball-alison-lyssa-brought-to-new-life-by-duck-duck-goose-theatre-review/
https://australianplays.org/playwright/ASC-220