Here is a fantastic episode by one of the world's leading Camus scholars, Dr. Simon Lea.
The entire paper will be available in The Journal of Camus Studies.
Below is the abstract of the paper:
Albert Camus planned his works in cycles. Each were to contain an essay, a novel and plays. The first cycle wasconcerned with the absurd and the second with rebellion. Camus' life was tragically cut short in a motor accident before he could complete the third cycle. Between the second and third cycles, after the furore resulting from his publication of The Rebel, Camus wrote several texts that are not includedin his cyclical works. This paper is concerned with Camus' first cycle on the absurd and the following texts: The Myth of Sisyphus, The Stranger, Caligula and The Misunderstanding. In particular, I am interested in the role played by revelation in the communication of the absurd in these works. In this paper, I use the term 'revelation' in reference tomaking known something relating to the human condition via a process that is difficult or even impossible to understand. My argument is that Camus, drawing upon Nietzschean influences, is seeking in his first cycle to induce revelatoryexperiences in his readers in order to communicate ideas concerning the absurd.
Please check out The Albert Camus Society.
In this episode you will hear Professor Heffernan of Merrimack College discuss reader response to Meursault inThe Stranger. Dr. Heffernan will take you on a tour of his previous work on The Stranger and then engage in a discussion of the reading of Meursault as a character in Camus' work.
This episode is the last in the series bringing you the addresses give to The Albert Camus Society in 2023 held in Krakow, Poland.
In this episode Dr. Simon Lea gives us a fascinating look into not only the idea of myth philosophically and in Camus' works specifically, he makes several groundbreaking connections to Nietzsche. Enjoy!
In this address Dr. Eric Berg presents a challenging reading of the often-venerated Dr. Rieux of The Plague. Dr. Berg makes the case that we should morally and professionally re-evaluate Dr. Rieux in light of his findings. This address and following publication in The Journal of Camus Studies should stimulate our conventional view of Dr. RIeux.
Enjoy!
Here we have the first in a series of episodes from the annual meeting of the Albert Camus Society. These addresses took place in November of 2023 in Krakow Poland.
In this episode you will hear a world class expert on Camus make some interesting and innovative connections between Albert Camus and James Baldwin.
Enjoy.
Here I chat briefly about the upcoming fourth season of Albert Camus Radio, review the 2023 meeting of the Albert Camus Society, and preview the 2024 meeting taking place in London in mid-November.
Peter Francev: ‘Gushing Over Nature, or Janine’s Sexual Exhibitionism’
Abstract: For the past few years, I have been interested in the topic of Albert Camus and empathyand, rightfully so, as I am currently writing a monograph on the subject, it makes sense that I wouldbe interested in such a subject. However, for as long as I have been formally and informally studyingCamus (which is surpassing 25 years), I have always been plagued (no pun intended) by the seeminglyhard-lined interpretation that the protagonist of one of Camus’s most recognizable short stories ‘TheAdulterous Woman’, Janine has been largely contextualized as an unhappily married woman to herhusband Marcel and has an ‘affair’ of sorts that is anything but sexual. In this paper, I plan to quicklyexamine what previous scholars have said about Janine, her mental state of mind and her supposedlyadulterous actions, before I offer what seems to me a rather conventional and entirely plausible readingand interpretation of the short story, including Janine’s indeed adulterous actions. And this is not tosay that Janine cannot be linked to previous Camusian characters who are both female and aware oftheir sexuality, namely Marie from The Stranger.
In this episode I review the December 2022 publication of States of Plague: Reading Camus in a Pandemic by Alice Kaplan and Laura Marris, published by The University of Chicago Press.
Enjoy!
A review of a book that is very hard to find: Albert Camus and the Men of Stone from 1971. It is a series of illuminating interviews of men who worked with Camus as coy editors, editors, printers, and typesetters.
Enjoy!
A review by Dr. Berg of a new (2022) important book for the English reading audience. 34 lectures and speeches written by Camus on many important topics.
Enjoy!
A fascinating look into how academic scholarship is advanced. This session is a recording of the question and answer session where the scholars that just presented their work to some of the top Camus scholars in the world defend their views. Enjoy!
Whilst there is no mention of the empathy or ethics of Edith Stein in the fiction and non-fiction of Albert Camus, one can easily surmise that Camus, being a part of the Parisian café scene during the years leading up to, including and beyond the second world war, would have encountered some discussions of Stein’s thought through Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir or Maurice Merleau-Ponty, prior to his falling out with both men. It is then the purpose of this paper to set out and accomplish several things: firstly, I would like to provide a very brief introduction to the empathy of Stein; secondly, I should like to offer readers a concise summary of Stein’s principle text on empathy (On the Problem of Empathy)1; finally, I would like to offer an exposition and an analysis of Stein’s concept of empathy, from a phenomenological perspective, whilst keeping in mind Camus’s philosophy of the absurd as posited in The Myth of Sisyphus.
Gina Breen: ‘French-Algerian Exile’
Albert Camus’s L’Exil et le Royaume was Camus’s last official literary publication before his death in 1960. It is a collection of six short stories, published in 1957, seven months before he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. In his acceptance speech, which was misreported, Camus specifically addressed justice and the Algerian situation, by discussing the role of the writer and the importance of truth, communicating his belief that the writer has a social duty as they bear witness to history.
In this paper, I will discuss three of the six short stories, namely “La Femme Adultère,” “Les Muets” and “L’Hôte” which are all set in Algeria. Written at the beginning of the armed struggle, the stories were published three years into the Algerian War. I argue that these stories demonstrate the moral dilemmas of the colonial situation, and they are vital to our understanding of Camus’s mythopoetics and the evolution of the pied-noir myth Camus first presents in L’étranger fifteen years earlier. Like Meursault, the characters in these stories suffer from estrangement. As the title suggests, Camus’s identity crisis still exists as he depicts the poverty, self-exile, exclusion, and solitude inherent in these dystopic Algerian spaces. None of the stories end with resolutions and the characters’ neutrality makes them victims of French colonialism. The stories and protagonists also mirror many of Camus’s personal confrontations because they hesitate about the future. They imply a certain degree of hopefulness, but their true feelings remain hidden
In this episode you will here the finest Camus scholars engaging each other on their current research on Camus. It is here that our understanding of Camus and his work is really pushed in new directions. This is a very exciting episode indeed!
In this episode Tom Hammer gives his paper to the Albert Camus Society's annual conference. The paper is titled "The Formal Structure of Existential Absurdity". It is a very engaging paper and a slight, but rewarding divergence from the typical paper we hear as it has an analytic approach.
Enjoy!
In this podcast you will hear from one of the leading Camus scholars in the world. Professor Heffernan of Merrimack College has been widely published and quoted on Camus across the years. Enjoy this engaging talk on Camus and the question of Meursault's guilt in The Stranger.
First in a series of podcasts taken directly from the action at the annual meeting of The Albert Camus Society held on-line in November, 2021. This series of podcasts will give listeners first access to the newest (yet to be published) research on Albert Camus from the top Camus scholars in the world. The papers you hear on these podcasts will eventually appear in The Journal of Camus Studies, click HERE to go to the journal's webpage.
First up - Siimon Lea of the U.K. His paper on Camus and Nietzsche and Myth is a deeply engaging tour of this under-researched area in both Camus and Nietzsche studies. You will fine Simon Lea a very engaging speaker mixing just a bit of humor with loads of top-flight scholarship. Enjoy.
A book review of the controversial book Albert Camus and the Minister. The question: Did Camus ask to be baptized and covert to Christianity just before his fateful car accident?
All Albert Camus Radio podcasts are made possible by the generous support of Vectis Consulting. Vectis Consulting is in the business of fighting for the long-term health of the humanities.
www.vectisconsulting,org
In this episode I review Catelli's 2020 (English translation) of The Death of Camus. In this text he makes the case that Camus was killed by the KGB.
Enjoy.
Thank you to Vectis Consulting for sponsoring this podcast!
www.vectisconsulting.org
Professor Dan Hieber is a dear friend from The University of Kansas and a very engaging thinker and writer. His book Five Cigarettes is a marvelous read and I encourage you to check it out on Amazon.com. In this podcast we take a tour of Camus through the eyes of an accomplished philosopher that has not spent all of his time in Camus studies. It is a remarkable conversation with fresh insights. Enjoy.
