Podcast Summary:

New Books Network: Suzanne Bost, "Quiet Methodologies: Humility in the Humanities" (U Minnesota Press) Host: Alex Beeston
Guest: Professor Suzanne Bost
Date: March 15, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode features an in-depth conversation with Professor Suzanne Bost, a literary scholar from Loyola University Chicago, about her book Quiet Methodologies: Humility in the Humanities (University of Minnesota Press). Unlike traditional scholarly works, Bost's book challenges business-as-usual approaches in the humanities, urging a turn toward alternative, “quiet” methodologies centered on humility, care, multiplicity, and an embrace of uncertainty. The discussion covers the book’s origins, critiques of scholarly argumentation, the practice of collage, archival research, the pressures of academic labor, and the role of love and care in scholarly and pedagogical practices.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Origins and Aims of Quiet Methodologies

[03:01–07:06]

• Multiple Origin Stories: Bost’s roles in both graduate English and feminist methodologies led her to question entrenched academic practices. She observed how knowledge is shaped by inherited ideas from colonialism and enlightenment humanism, resulting in repetitive and lifeless academic discourse.
• Status Quo Stories: Citing a critique by Ana Louise Keating, Bost describes academic scholarship as “riffing off other books I’ve read” and “everybody is saying the same words, but just in slightly different orders.” – [03:30]
• Seeking Alternatives: She becomes interested in nontraditional educational models, e.g., popular universities and local, non-institutional initiatives like the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, which foster non-hierarchical, cross-disciplinary learning.
• Provocative Question: “How would our minds and cultures fall apart if we didn’t have the same amount of conventional disciplines like history, writing and math? Do we need to have those things? Particularly now that we have AI doing everything for us?” – Bost [05:35]

2. What’s Wrong with Argument?

[07:06–11:54]

• Oppositional Argument: Bost critiques the ingrained academic impulse toward combative, binary argumentation: “What we’re trained to do is say, ‘I’m right, you’re wrong.’ And that seems like such a dying binary.” – Bost [08:35]
• Limits of Critical Discourse: She questions the real-world relevance of scholarly arguments amidst wider crises: “Why am I making arguments about someone else’s words? Why does this really matter when the world is falling down around us?” – Bost [08:35]
• Multiplicity over Mastery: Bost advocates for an embrace of simultaneous truths and diverse methods, inspired by collage—“It’s not about determining what’s right or what’s better. It’s about multiplicity and simultaneity.” – Bost [11:04]

3. The Model and Ethos of Collage

[11:54–13:53]

• Collage as Methodology: Bost’s attraction to collage stems from a desire to move beyond linear narratives. “I really wanted to be a visual artist. ... So I started just gluing things together and really got interested in noticing ironies.” – Bost [12:29]
• Aesthetic and Political Dimensions: She describes collage as a practice of rearrangement and multiple perspectives, channeling the chaos and beauty of complex realities (e.g., inspired by the Nick Cave exhibition).
• Collage in Writing: The book’s conclusion is deliberately inconclusive, rendered as a literary collage to reflect openness and the creative interplay of ideas.

4. Quotation and Scholarly Listening

[13:53–24:57]

• Relational Ethics: Bost revisits earlier work to apologize for forcing Ana Castillo’s fiction into a political paradigm—“I really had to give Ana Castillo a hug because I felt horrible that I had twisted ... her work of fiction into a particular political paradigm.” – Bost [16:33]
• Direct Quotation vs. Paraphrase: She insists on honoring the specificity and beauty of others’ words in her scholarship—“I want the author’s words to be in there so that people can ... see it in a different way as well.” – Bost [21:45]
• Method of Listening: Collaging quotes and conversation becomes itself a method of scholarly and ethical engagement, resisting the drive to extract and summarize ideas in favor of preserving their richness.

5. Vulnerability, Uncertainty, and the Archive

[26:27–41:46]

• Rejecting Certitude: Bost describes embracing vulnerability as both a personal and scholarly disposition—“I didn’t have to cultivate vulnerability, that I felt like I was always out of place.” – Bost [29:42]
• Archival Practice: She details her overwhelming but enriching experiences in the Gloria Anzaldúa archive, encountering deeply personal and non-linear materials that resist standard academic treatment. “It’s not possible to actually look at everything ... my sense of the archive is that it is not a discrete or bounded thing.” – Bost [34:34]
• Ethics of Editing: Working on Anzaldúa’s posthumous novel, Bost felt “like I was an invasive species in this text,” underscoring the impossibility and undesirability of mastery over such archives—“I still feel a little guilty somehow about having been involved in that project. ... You can’t claim mastery of this archive.” – Bost [39:24]

6. Institutional Pressures and Academic Labor

[45:45–52:36]

• Graduate Education Critique: Bost and Beeston reflect on institutional texts normalizing extreme overwork—“Being a scholar ... is the only end from a love of literature at an advanced level”—and the stifling effects of prioritizing stamina over creativity. – Bost [47:41]
• Graduate Student Voices: Bost’s last chapter foregrounds actual student experiences with precarity and frustration; “It was not optimistic or happy ... and a couple people were like, are you really going to send it out just like this? … That’s the point.” – Bost [49:09–49:37]
• Constraints of Administration: As department chair, Bost struggles to enact transformative leadership amid bureaucratic and financial structures—“Just the coldness of the structures ... We were just given so many spreadsheets, and it’s just not the way I think.” – Bost [50:50]

7. Love and Care as Scholarly and Pedagogical Ethics

[53:09–56:05]

• Ambivalent Love: Bost is drawn to “love” as an ethos but treats it carefully, aware of the risks of possessive or projectional love in teaching. She uses the metaphor of phosphorescent species (from Alexis Pauline Gumbs) as an inspiration for classroom encounters: “What would happen if my students lit up? ... I want to be there to be someone who can allow for light bulbs at least, if not some, you know, implicit care.” – Bost [55:26]
• Realistic Hope: The episode concludes on a note of “not false hope, but a sense of what’s possible even within ... cold [institutional] structures.” – Beeston [56:05]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On academic repetition & inertia:
  “Sometimes it feels like everybody is saying the same words, but just in slightly different orders. We are rewarded for showing how well we have learned the lessons of our predecessors.” — Bost [03:30]

• On critical argumentation:
  “And that seems like such a dying binary that has to be one or the other.” — Bost [08:35]
  “Why am I making arguments about someone else’s words? Why does this really matter when the world is falling down around us?” — Bost [08:35]

• On collage as method and metaphor:
  “I started just gluing things together and really got interested in noticing ironies.” — Bost [12:29]
  “There doesn’t need to be a linear narrative ... just notice a variety of things and a variety of different kinds of methods.” — Bost [11:04]

• On scholarly humility and revision:
  “Why am I this middle aged white lady critiquing identity politics? Like, why is that useful?” — Bost [16:33]
  “I guess feel like trying to infuse some care into my work ... particularly now, like, I don’t have to play by the rules at all.” — Bost [19:31]

• On the archive and authorship:
  “It’s not possible to actually look at everything. … my sense of the archive is that it is not a discrete or bounded thing.” — Bost [34:34]
  “You can’t claim mastery of this archive. But ... I had the care and the time with the archive that helped me feel more like I was a legitimate person involved in that editing process.” — Bost [39:24]

• On academic labor and creativity:
  “It rewards stamina more than creativity.” — Beeston referencing Bost’s book [45:59]
  “What if they never get to the stage where they’re actually doing something that they really love?” — Bost [48:34]

• On love and light in academia:
  “There’s a section in GUMS where she talks about how there’s certain species that light up in phosphorescence. And I was like, what would happen if my students lit up?” — Bost [55:26]

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Book Origins & Status Quo Critique: [03:01–07:06]
• What's Wrong with Argument?: [07:06–11:54]
• Collage as Practice & Model: [11:54–13:53]
• Quotation & Listening in Scholarship: [13:53–24:57]
• Vulnerability & Academic Archives: [26:27–41:46]
• Institutional Labor & Graduate Study Critique: [45:45–52:36]
• The Ethic of Love & Care: [53:09–56:05]

Structure & Flow

The episode follows a natural, conversational flow, moving from the origins of Bost’s interest in alternative methodologies, through key conceptual arguments and practical examples (collage, archival editing), to concrete institutional issues (graduate education, administrative labor), and ending with reflections on love and care in scholarly and pedagogical practices. Both host and guest foreground multiplicity, vulnerability, and humility rather than mastery or linear argumentation.

Conclusion

Quiet Methodologies stands as both a challenge and a practical pathway to different forms of scholarship—forms guided by humility, creativity, and deep respect for the multiplicity of voices and experiences within and beyond the humanities. This episode threads the personal and the political, the theoretical and the practical, modeling an academic conversation that is itself an exemplar of the book's "quiet" ethos.