Infinity Goes Up On Trial (+)
A focus on ideas central to the depth of Bob Dylan’s music, art, and writing in a broader social, cultural, and political context. Discussing these concepts with scholars, artists, educators, activists, and myriad experts, we explore how Dylan’s ideas reflect and encompass all aspects of human existence.
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Erin Callahan
Erin Callahan teaches English at San Jacinto College in Houston, Texas, where she has been a faculty member since 2007. She completed her Ph.D. in Modern History and Literature at Drew University in 2014, writing her dissertation on Bob Dylan’s identity construction and the American voice.
Erin is a regular contributor to The Dylantantes Substack and is co-editor of “The Politics and Power of Bob Dylan’s Live Performances: Play a Song for Me” with Court Carney, a collection of essays about Dylan’s live performances that was published by Routledge in 2023.
She has presented on Bob Dylan at many conferences, including ACA/PCA, “Bob Dylan in the 21st Century” in Arras, France, and The World of Bob Dylan, in Tulsa, Oklahoma 2019 and 2023.
Whether he’s lifting lines from old films for lyrics, crooning “The Night We Called it a Day” over the Nash Edgerton-directed video, or taking us to the Bon Bon club in Shadow Kingdom, Bob Dylan’s interest in and admiration of film noir has long been apparent. He seems drawn to the hard-scrabble, world-weary protagonists who travel through the seedy underworlds of big cities and end their stories unredeemed. In this episode, author, scholar, and educator, John Radosta and I talk about his scholarly work, his extraordinary short stories and novels, film noir, and, of course, how all of this relates to Bob Dylan and his work.
A novelist and author of many short stories, John Radosta teaches high school English near Boston, Massachusetts. Under both a pseudonym and his real name, his fiction has appeared in many magazines, including Yellow Mama, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine,Wildside Black Cat, and Tough Crime. A veteran of more than 50 Bob Dylan concerts, he is the co-author with Keith Nainby of Bob Dylan in Performance: Song, Stage and Screen, as well as other Dylan and Woody Guthrie articles.
A Video Version of this Episode is Available at TheFM.Club
Links:
- "The Simple Art of Music" in the Dylan Review
- "The Loveliest and the Best: Dylan and Omar Khayyam" in the Dylan Review
- jmtaylorcrimewriter.com
- "Rideshare" In Tough
- "Fanning the Flames" in Yellow Mama
MORE LINKS
- Infinity Goes Up On Trial - Episode Directory
- Search all of our podcasts by album, song, or topic.
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