Severance Radio: Episode 2
About the Event
Featuring Katherine Fusco and Stephen Pasqualina
Severance Radio is an on-air book club dissecting Ling Ma’s satirical, dystopian novel Severance. The novel is a moving family story that explores loneliness, corporate monotony, and survival in the midst of a global health crisis.
Severance Radio airs on KUNV 91.5FM Sundays at 7 pm PST. Stream it live anywhere in the world at kunv.org/listen/.
Ways to Listen
Las Vegas: 7 PM at KUNV 91.5 FM | Stream it live: kunv.org/listen/
Reno: Noon at KWNK 97.7FM | Stream it live: kwnkradio.org/listen
About The Episode
In this episode, two scholars of English literature, Katherine Fusco and Stephen Pasqualina, investigate one of the most unsettling signs of the apocalypse in popular culture: the rise of the undead. Join us for a conversation about the mythology of zombies and the zombie trope in Severance. As we listen to the audiobook, you can follow along on pages 23 – 42 of the Severance paperback.
DISCUSSED: Haitian zombie myth, French colonialism, slavery, The Serpent and the Rainbow (film) by Wade Davis, White Zombies (film) by Bela Lugosi, The Magic Island (book) by William Seabrook, 1915 – 1934 US occupation of Haiti, The Walking Dead, Tell My Horse (book) by Zora Neale Hurston, Night of the Living Dead & Dawn of the Dead (films) by George Romero, Get Out (film) by Jordan Peele, Dawn of the Dead (2004 film) by Zac Snyder
Katherine Fusco writes about the way different media forms shape identity and encourage us to be either cruel or kind to one another. After completing a Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University, she spent several years working as the assistant director of the Vanderbilt Writing Studio. Since arriving at the University of Nevada, Reno, she has been proud to have her teaching honored by the Crowley Distinguished Professorship in the Core Humanities. She teaches courses on film, theory, and 19th and 20th century American literature at the University of Nevada, Reno. Katherine also writes about pop-culture for a number of national outlets.
Stephen Pasqualina is a postdoctoral fellow in the Core Humanities Program at the University of Nevada, Reno. He completed his Ph.D. in the department of English at the University of Southern California. While working toward his Ph.D., he attended the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University and the Futures of American Studies Institute at Dartmouth College. His research focuses primarily on modernist literature and visual culture, transnational American studies, science and technology studies, critical race studies, and 20th century historiography and historical theory. His current research is focused on how Zora Neale Hurston’s writing, film, and photography mediates the long history of colonial slavery. This work is part of a larger book project that examines the relationship between second-stage industrialization and the U.S. historical imaginary from 1880 to 1945.
Severance Radio: A Nevada Reads Book Club is jointly produced by Nevada Humanities and the Black Mountain Institute, and is part of Nevada Reads, a statewide program of Nevada Humanities. This program is made possible with the support of: Nevada Humanities, Black Mountain Institute, Nevada State library, Archives and Public Records, The Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Nevada Center for the Book. The Nevada Center for the Book is a program of Nevada Humanities and is the state affiliate of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress.