What is ARHU Reading?

Faculty share their picks for summertime reads, podcasts, films and shows

Summer is prime time for catching up on the books, films, podcasts and shows that got pushed to the back burner all year. We asked select faculty members across the College of Arts and Humanities to share what they recommend checking out as the temps climb and vacations beckon.  From a fabulist short story collection to a documentary about Earth, Wind & Fire, from a Bollywood classic to a queer, feminist novel that just won two major book prizes, there’s sure to be something that catches your eye.

Emily Brandchaft Mitchell, Associate Professor, English

Book: "Salt Folk" by Ryan Habermeyer
This is a strange and wonderful second book from a writer based in Maryland who I have admired for some time. The stories in this collection are "fabulist ecologies" set in a surreal future damaged by climate change, where sentient glaciers have sprung up in the Utah desert, a Yeti finds a place for himself in a Mormon funeral home, and humans can volunteer to be turned into animals. Any fans of Carmen Maria Machado out there, this one might be for you.

Podcast: "This Jungian Life" 
The conversations among the three analysts who host this show range widely, and are smart and movingly honest. They draw on Carl Jung's writings and their own practice as analytic psychologists to explore the many facets of human experience. At a time when corporate AI is entering our lives as never before, it is refreshing to engage with a mode of thought that treats human interiority, depth and complexity as fascinating and essential.

Film: "My Father's Shadow," directed by Akinola Davis 
I was lucky to see this film at AFI as part of the New African Film Festival in March. Set in 1993, it follows two young brothers who go on an unexpected outing with their father from the countryside where they live to the Nigerian capital of Lagos. They spend the day exploring the city together, while at the same time the drama around the Nigerian presidential election and its annulment by the military unfolds in the background. Brilliantly acted and beautifully shot, the film is ultimately about the people, places and experiences that haunt you even after they are gone.

Jamila Moore-Pewu, Assistant Professor, American Studies

Documentary: "Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs. That's the Weight of the World)," directed and produced by Questlove 
Growing up, it was normal to feel songs like "September," "Shining Star" and "I'll Write a Song for You" reverberate through our house on a warm summer's day as my father would play their albums on his stereo at full volume, open all the windows and doors, and let the sound travel from room to room until it spilled out into the street. Yes, we were that house.

Stargazing 
Of a different celestial nature, I spent about two hours on the weekend of June 7 admiring the night sky and the "cosmic kiss" between Jupiter and Venus. This event, which will not happen again until 2028, was capped off by catching my first shooting star, or meteor fragment, solidifying long summer nights as the best time for casual stargazing.

TV: "For All Mankind," on Apple TV 
I am looking forward to catching up on the last couple seasons of this drama. I was a bit late to this series, which reimagines the global space race as an ongoing project that eventually lands humans on Mars. It is a little science fiction, a little soapy, with good special effects and characters you cannot help but root for.

Podcast: 99% Invisible's "A History of the United States in 100 Objects" 
My top pick for a podcast this summer is 99% Invisible's new series in honor of America's 250th anniversary. I started listening at episode 3, which told the story of how historian Edda Fields-Black used Civil War pension files to reveal previously unknown details about the lives and stories of Black liberators, including Harriet Tubman, who helped liberate over 700 enslaved people during the 1863 Combahee River Raid. The next episode in my queue is on the screwdriver, and I cannot wait.

Film: "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" 
Finally, as a mom of an aspiring comic writer and illustrator, I will be front and center catching the newest Marvel movie on the big screen. Hopefully in a theater with air conditioning, or on a starry night at the nearest drive in.

Briana Barner, Assistant Professor, Communication

Shows I have been watching lately: "Elsbeth", "Kaos" and "Inside Job" all feature extremely quirky characters and unusual settings. It has been the perfect way to transition into summer.

Neel Ahuja, Professor, The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Novel series: "Lilith's Brood" by Octavia Butler 
The late great Octavia Butler is a master of science fiction whose writings warn us of the threats of war and fascism while offering alternative visions of healing, intimacy and cooperation. "Lilith's Brood: The Xenogenesis Trilogy" was originally composed as three gripping novels that explored an apocalypse and alien colonization of Earth, leading to the transformation of humans as a species as they are incorporated into an alien life that reproduces through three genders. Predictably, Butler's works are being censored in the U.S. today, as her wildly creative and politically urgent story of colonization and the intimacies of body and environment does not conform to simple gender binaries.

Film: "Sholay," directed by Ramesh Sippy 
This campy classic melodrama of Bollywood cinema focuses on a small rural community's resistance to a violent gang that terrorizes its inhabitants. The film is important to revisit today, as the type of masculine rage against corrupt authority and economic inequality that it features represents a common sentiment behind the rise of populism on the political right, both in India and globally. At the same time, "Sholay's" memorable dance sequences and soundtrack, composed by R.D. Burman and featuring the iconic singer Lata Mangeshkar, as well as its buddy comedy hijinks and assertive women characters, made the film a hit from Russia to Iran to Nigeria and a persistent source of nostalgia for audiences among the South Asian diaspora. What "Sholay" misses in the representation of village caste conflict and feminist sexual politics can be supplemented if made into a double feature alongside another important film, "Bandit Queen," directed by Shekhar Kapur.

Nonfiction: "Refugee Lifeworlds: The Aftermath of the Cold War in Cambodia" by Y-Dang Troeung 
Y-Dang Troeung was a Cambodian refugee to Canada and professor at the University of British Columbia who recently lost her battle with cancer. "Refugee Lifeworlds" is a powerful book that considers the histories, memories, disability struggles and environmental contexts of people undergoing forced displacement, in the process developing an innovative framework for critical refugee studies that challenges historical orthodoxies about the Cold War and its aftermath.

Hester Baer, Professor, Film Studies and German

Novel: "Sea, Mother, Swallows, Tongues" 
This autofictional novel by nonbinary writer Kim de l'Horizon won both the German and Swiss Book Prizes in 2022. It intertwines a compulsively readable story about coming of age with a queer, feminist critique of how gender is constructed through linguistic and cultural practices. I am excited to see how translator Jamie Lee Searle captures the multivocality, unique style and joyful tone of the novel in her recently published English translation.

Film: "Miroirs No. 3" 
Nothing is quite as it seems in this atmospheric film, the latest from Christian Petzold, one of contemporary Germany's most significant and prolific filmmakers. The third installment in a series about the elements, "Miroirs No. 3" is rife with shots that capture the wind blowing through the countryside after spectral protagonist Laura emerges unscathed from a fatal car accident that kills her boyfriend. Part fairy tale, part reworking of classic films, including "Rebecca," "Contempt" and "Deer Hunter," "Miroirs No. 3" reflects on the relationship between trauma, grief and storytelling.

Documentary: "Favoriten" 
Named after the ethnically diverse, working class neighborhood of Vienna where it was shot from 2020 to 2023, this longitudinal documentary follows a class of primary school students from the second through the fourth grade. Both an inspiring portrait of their charismatic teacher Ilkay Idiskut and a subtle exploration of how migration shapes contemporary European society, "Favoriten" exemplifies the observational style of veteran filmmaker Ruth Beckermann, the child of Austrian Jewish parents who survived the Holocaust. "Favoriten" and many of Beckermann's other documentaries, which have turned a critical lens on Austria since 1977, can be rented directly from the filmmaker's website.