About
ABOUT THE PODCAST: THE BOOK LIGHT is a new podcast dedicated to reading, understanding, and relishing classic works of literature. Crafted to appeal both to hardcore bibliophiles and literary novices, The Book Light revels in the backstories and insider knowledge that make famous books not only accessible, but enjoyable. Host Dr. Jill Caddell is an educator, writer, and reader with a weakness for good metaphors and bad puns. With the help of a stable of scholar-friends, Jill breathes new life into the dusty tomes of the high school classroom and the college lecture hall. Each episode, we take a deep dive into a famous book (Moby-Dick, Frankenstein) or author (Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe) to reveal the essential contexts, themes, and questions that illuminate reading and inform our understanding of the world. From Emily Dickinson’s curious dashes to Shakespeare’s bawdy banter, we delight in the details that make great literature great—and we hope you will, too.
ABOUT THE HOST: Jill Caddell is an award-winning English teacher and writer whose research and classes have ranged from American girlhood to Civil War monuments and national memory to mystery stories. She has taught literature and composition at Cornell University, George Mason University, and American University, and has also served on the humanities faculty at Edmund Burke School and Glenelg Country School. Her writing for academic and general audiences has appeared in The New England Quarterly, J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Apollo: The International Art Magazine, and Literary Cultures of the Civil War; she has essays forthcoming in The Junket and an edited collection on Civil War visual culture. In 2015, Jill earned her Ph.D. in literature from Cornell University, where her dissertation on Civil War literature was awarded the Guilford Prize for Highest Achievement in English Prose. Currently on her nightstand you’ll find Independent People by Halldór Laxness, A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness, and whichever Frog and Toad collection her sons are requesting. Find out more at jspiveycaddell.com and @jillcaddell.