Produced by Chloe Wheeler and Ward Awad
Inventory Podcast
Our conversations are situated at the intersection of literature, translation, art, and culture.
What does it mean to engage in cultural studies at the site of comparison—across platforms, media, languages, methodologies, histories, geographies?
By translating comparative study into an audio format, we aim to expand how scholarly work circulates, rendering it accessible beyond the university while preserving its conceptual rigor and examining the radio/podcast format itself as we do so. At a time when knowing how to write in sound is important for scholarly and public-facing work, this podcast aims to engage in the scholarly interventions we can make with the audio format.
Just released: Episode 1
Robyn Creswell on Arabic Poetry, Translation, and Comparative Literature
In the inaugural episode of Inventory, Professor Robyn Creswell (Yale, Comparative Literature) joins graduate student hosts Ward Awad and Chloe Wheeler to talk about translation, Arabic poetry, his book City of Beginnings: Poetic Modernism in Beirut (Princeton University Press, 2019), and the value of teaching. The conversation concludes with a discussion of comparative literature as a field today.
As Professor Creswell puts it, “Comparative Literature is a kind of intellectual conscience of the literary humanities.”
Inventory: Rooted in Print
Established in 2009 as a literary translation project run by Princeton graduate students, Inventory began as a project that examined the art and practice of literary translation through the publication of an annual journal. We build on this initial project by translating comparative practice into the audio format.
Inventory Podcast is sponsored by
