Tuesday 19 December 2023: In the year commemorating the 400th anniversary of the legendary William Shakespeare’s First Folio, the Ramsay Centre is proud to pay its own tribute to the great bard – with the release of a new podcast series dedicated to exploring four iconic Shakespeare plays.
The 2023 Ramsay-Campion Great Books Podcast series – Shakespeare – comprises eight podcasts, focusing on the plays King Lear, Othello, Julius Caesar, and Twelfth Night (or What You Will).
These four works are some of Shakespeare’s most performed and admired plays and will expose listeners to some of the remarkable range of genres Shakespeare mastered, through two tragedies, a comedy, and a Roman play.
The Ramsay-Campion Podcast is a collaboration between the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation and Campion College which brings together academics from those institutions and further afield. The podcasts explore some of the great works of Western civilisation; works that have contributed to the foundation and development of the West and which invite us to enter the Great Conversation.
Through lively and leisurely conversations, the podcast presenters guide listeners through some of the most challenging passages within the texts to help them appreciate and enjoy them.
Last year the series focused on four legendary ancient and classical Greek authors – Homer, Sophocles, Thucydides, and Plato, and discussed themes and passages from some of their most celebrated works, The Odyssey, Antigone, The History of the Peloponnesian War and The Symposium. The 2022 series is still available to explore along with this newly released Shakespeare series.
Podcast host, Dr Stephen McInerney, who is Director of Campion’s Centre for the Study of the Western Tradition said it was a joy to revisit some of Shakespeare’s great works in the podcast format where the panel constantly challenged each other’s perspectives and assumptions.
For this series he was joined by Campion College literature lecturer Dr Colin Dray, Professor Renée Köhler-Ryan who is head of the University of Notre Dame’s School of Philosophy and Theology and Dr P. Kishore Saval, who is a Senior Lecturer for the Bachelor of Arts (Western Civilisation) at Australian Catholic University.
Dr McInerney said the discussions are accessible for people with all different levels of exposure to Shakespeare.
“It is our hope that these talks will inspire you to read these books for the first time or to return to them again. You don’t need to do any assigned reading ahead of listening to the podcast. You can read the works and listen to these conversations at your own pace for your own enjoyment alone, or perhaps as part of a Great Books reading group,” Dr McInerney said.
All eight episodes are available now via the Ramsay Centre website and the Campion College website, or via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Buzzsprout.
To subscribe to the podcast, copy and paste the URL below into the podcast app of your choice: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/2049400.rss
Media contact: Sarah Switzer 0407 816 098/ sarah.switzer@ramsaycentre.org