Could a gaggle of monkeys randomly typing produce a literary classic? Could they by chance produce the complete works of Shakespeare, as many have speculated in an ongoing thought experiment for over a century now.

These questions are the starting point for a post-script conversation to our 2023-2024 Value/Values programming. On this episode, Michael Borshuk chats with TTU faculty members Dr. Heather Warren-Crow, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts, and Dr. TJ Geiger II, Associate Professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric, to talk about their recent research projects. In a wide-ranging conversation that begins with Dr. Warren-Crow’s newest book and its attention the idea that monkeys might randomly write the works of Shakespeare, we discuss animals, culture, the divine, how to define humanity, and whether the act of producing that definition continues to matter at all?

Click here for more on Dr. Warren-Crow's latest book Shakespeare and Nonhuman Intelligence.

In this episode, Michael Borshuk looks back on our February art exhibition, Jerry Hunt: Transmissions from the Pleroma, which the Humanities Center hosted in collaboration with Brooklyn's Blank Forms and the TTU School of Art. In thinking about Jerry Hunt's career and activities by those artists who influenced him, we contemplate the value of the avant-garde as another component of our year-long Value/Values conversation.

Some of the material Borshuk mentions in this episode:
Blank Forms Editions 08: Transmissions from the Pleroma
Stephen Housewright, Partners
Michael Schell's The Jerry Hunt Home Page

On this episode, we continue our Value/Values theme by thinking about the value of confronting works of art that challenge our values. Michael Borshuk speaks with Rob Weiner from Texas Tech libraries about transgressive cinema and the "video nasties" scandal of the 1980s in the United Kingdom, and then talks to Dr. Belinda Kleinhans, Associate Professor of German Studies, about censorship activities in Nazi Germany and an ironic tie to the practice of banning books in our contemporary moment.

Some of the contexts Michael Borshuk references in this episode:
Kat Eschner, "The Bowdlers Wanted to Clean Up Shakespeare, Not Become a Byword for Censorship"
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/bowdlers-wanted-clean-shakespeare-not-become-byword-censorship-180963945/

American Library Association, "2023 Preliminary Data Shows Record Surge of Challenges in Public Libraries"
https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/book-ban-data