The Race and Regency Pod works as a dynamic sonic space to lend an ear to all things Race and Regency. Using the intimacy, accessibility, and fluidity of the medium, this podcast brings together the public, artists, curators, librarians, scholars, and cultural critics who share their passion for questions of race in this period. Unlike ideas and engagements that can often stay confined behind academic paywalls, this podcast facilitates space for community members, and connoisseurs of the Regency era to think together and build together.
Listening with and to a range of people who speak in varied accents and tones, The Race and Regency Pod works as a practice in embodied scholarship. We imagine what enthusiasm and engagement sound like when directed towards sharing, community building, resistance, and self-expression. This podcast will house diverse conversations that expand the conception of the Regency era thematically, geographically, and temporally, by considering how we inherit formulations of race from this period and engage with them now.
Episodes
1. The Lab and the Pod with Dr. Patricia Matthew
In this episode, we are joined by the director of the Race and Regency Lab Dr. Patricia Matthew, who is an Associate Professor of English, Montclair State University. We talk about the vision behind The Race and Regency Lab and what we hope to accomplish with The Race and Regency Pod. Join us to discuss all things regency and race!
2. Austen, Race and Regency with Dr. Devoney Looser
We are joined by Dr. Devoney Looser, a writer and professor at Arizona State University. Devoney talks about her new book, Wild for Austen (Macmillan), which honors and explores Austen's writings, life, and legacy, just in time for the celebration of her 250th birthday on December 16. 2025!
Dr. Devoney Looser has worked on nine books, written essays in The Atlantic, the New York Times, Salon, The TLS, and the Washington Post, and spoken about Austen on several platforms including CNN. She has received several recognitions including a Guggenheim Fellowship.
To learn more about Dr. Devoney Looser, visit her website.
3. Reflecting on the Romantic Archive with Mathelinda Nabugodi
We are joined by Dr. Mathelinda Nabugodi. She is a Lecturer in Comparative Literature at University College London. She has previously held post-doctoral fellowships at Cambridge and Newcastle, including in the literary archive at the Fitzwilliam Museum. She is the author of Shelley with Benjamin: A Critical Mosaic (2023) and one of the editors on the six-volume Longman edition of The Poems of Shelley (1989-2024). Her latest book, The Trembling Hand: Reflections of a Black Woman in the Romantic Archive, which came out only a few months ago, explores the connections between British Romanticism and the Black Atlantic.
In its deeply erudite yet personal engagement with the archive of romanticism, Mathelinda, in this book, offers us radically new reading methods that are rooted in a conscious engagement with the events in this period, while also redefining what it means to take pleasure in reading literature marred by violence.
To learn more about Mathelinda Nabugodi's book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/719891/the-trembling-hand-by-mathelinda-nabugodi/
Forthcoming episodes include exciting conversations with scholars including art historian and curator Adrienne L. Childs author of Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure in European Decorative Arts (Yale).
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This podcast is produced and hosted by Shruti Jain. She is a PhD candidate in the English Department at Binghamton University, SUNY. Her dissertation is interested in the entanglements of Race and Caste in Enlightenment culture. Her work has been published/is forthcoming in Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies, Public Humanities. In addition to her work in British studies, she works on community engaged public humanities projects. She hosts and produces podcasts like Immigrants Wake America, Confluence: Humanities in the Public Sphere, and contributes to the New Books Network. She is currently editing a section and co-writing a chapter for the Handbook of Humanities Podcasting (forthcoming).