Beyond the Margins: The University of California Press Podcast

Megan Tobias Neely, "Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street" (U California Press, 2022)

16 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street (U California Press, 2022) Megan Tobias Neely, a former hedge fund worker takes an ethno...

Susan Ashbrook Harvey, "Ministries of Song: Women’s Voices in Ancient Syriac Christianity" (U California Press, 2025)

09 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ministries of Song: Women’s Voices in Ancient Syriac Christianity (U California Press, 2025) is an open access tour-de-force study of the power of...

Andrea Flores, "The Succeeders: How Immigrant Youth Are Transforming What It Means to Belong in America" (UC Press, 2021)

08 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Andrea Flores’ most recent book, The Succeeders: How Immigrant Youth Are Transforming What It Means to Belong in America (University of Califo...

Carlo Rotella, "What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics" (U California Press, 2025)

07 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

I’m excited to talk to Carlo Rotella today. Carlo is Professor of English at Boston College. His books include The World Is Always Coming to an End...

Anny Gaul, "Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato" (U California Press, 2025)

04 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

By the end of the twentieth century, the tomato—indigenous to the Americas—had become Egypt's top horticultural crop and a staple of Egyptian cuis...

Elisabetta Ferrari, "Appropriate, Negotiate, Challenge: Activist Imaginaries and the Politics of Digital Technologies" (U California Press, 2024)

29 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Activists utilize digital technologies to communicate, coordinate, and organize for social change. In Appropriate, Negotiate, Challenge: Activist ...

Jacob Bloomfield, "Drag: A British History" (U California Press, 2023)

29 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Drag: A British History (University of California Press, 2023) is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag ...

Deborah Carr, "Aging in America" (U California Press, 2023)

28 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The aging of America will reshape how we live and will transform nearly every aspect of contemporary society. Renowned life course sociologist Deborah...

Fahad Ahmad Bishara, "Monsoon Voyagers: An Indian Ocean History" (U California Press, 2025)

27 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1924, the Al-A‘waj, also known as the Crooked, set sail from Kuwait on a trading journey around the Persian Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz...

Carlo Rotella, "What Can I Get Out of This?: Teaching and Learning in a Classroom Full of Skeptics" (U California Press, 2025)

18 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At a time when college students and their parents often question the "return on investment" from humanities courses, accomplished feature writer and E...

Sophie Bishop, "Influencer Creep: How Optimization, Authenticity, and Self-Branding Transform Creative Culture" (U California Press, 2025)

12 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How are influencers changing the arts? In Influencer Creep: How Optimization, Authenticity, and Self-Branding Transform Creative Culture (U Californ...

Ellen Muehlberger, "Things Unseen: Essays on Evidence, Knowledge, and the Late Ancient World" (U California Press, 2025)

10 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do you know the nature of another person: who she is, or what she is capable of? In four exploratory essays, a seasoned historian examines the ...

Martha Biondi, "We Are Internationalists: Prexy Nesbitt and the Fight for African Liberation" (U California Press, 2025)

08 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Explores forgotten solidarity with African liberation struggles through the life of Black Chicagoan Prexy Nesbitt. For many civil rights activists, t...

Birgit Abels and Patrick Eisenlohr, "Atmospheric Knowledge: Environmentality, Latency, and Sonic Multimodality" (U California Press, 2025)

07 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do we know through atmospheres? How can being affected by an atmosphere give rise to knowledge? What role does somatic, nonverbal knowledge play i...

Fahad Ahmad Bishara, "Monsoon Voyagers: An Indian Ocean History" (U California Press, 2025)

06 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Monsoon Voyagers follows the voyage of a single dhow (sailing vessel), the Crooked, along with its captain and crew, from Kuwait to port cities around...

Jennifer Barry, "Gender Violence in Late Antiquity: Male Fantasies and the Christian Imagination" (U California Press, 2025)

27 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gender Violence in Late Antiquity: Male Fantasies and the Christian Imagination (University of California Press, 2025) by Dr. Jennifer Barry confront...

Alice Lovejoy, "Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War" (U California Press, 2025)

23 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The history of film calls to mind unforgettable photographs, famous directors, and the glitz and hustle of the media business. But there is another ta...

Teresa M. Mares and Laura-Anne Minkoff-Zern, "Will Work for Food: Labor Across the Food Chain" (U California Press, 2025)

22 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Food consumers are demanding a healthier and more sustainable food system. Yet labor is rarely part of the discussion. In Will Work for Food: Labor A...

Delia Casadei, "Risible: Laughter without Reason and the Reproduction of Sound" (U California Press, 2024)

21 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Risible: Laughter without Reason and the Reproduction of Sound (University of California Press, 2024) explores the forgotten history of laughter, fro...

John Mathias, "Uncommon Cause: Living for Environmental Justice in Kerala" (U California Press, 2024)

05 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How can activists strike a balance between fighting for a cause and sustaining relationships with family, friends, and neighbors? In this episode Joh...

Subah Dayal, "Between Household and State: The Mughal Frontier and the Politics of Circulation in Peninsular India" (U California Press, 2024)

30 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Subah Dayal recently joined the New Books Network to discuss her new work Between Household and State: The Mughal Frontier and the Politics of Ci...

Jennifer Barry, "Gender Violence in Late Antiquity: Male Fantasies and the Christian Imagination" (U California Press, 2025)

29 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gender Violence in Late Antiquity confronts the violent ideological frameworks underpinning the early Christian imagination, arguing that gender-based...

Aaron Cayer, "Incorporating Architects: How American Architecture Became a Practice of Empire" (U California Press, 2025)

26 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

By the end of the twentieth century, US architecture and engineering firms held more capital than entire countries, employed more people than were hou...

Bob Wyss, "Black Gold: The Rise, Reign, and Fall of American Coal" (University of California Press, 2025)

22 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For decades coal has been crucial to America's culture, society, and environment, an essential ingredient in driving out winter's cold, cooking meals,...

Joel Best, "Just the Facts: Untangling Contradictory Claims" (U California Press, 2025)

20 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why can’t we seem to agree on facts? In this succinct volume, sociologist Joel Best turns his inimitable eye toward the social construction of what ...

Christine Shepardson, "A Memory of Violence: Syriac Christianity and the Radicalization of Religious Difference in Late Antiquity" (U California Press, 2025)

15 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A Memory of Violence: Syriac Christianity and the Radicalization of Religious Difference in Late Antiquity (U California Press, 2025) traces the rh...

Nidhi Mahajan, "Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean" (U of California Press, 2025)

13 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Moorings: Voyages of Capital across the Indian Ocean (U of California Press, 2025) follows sailors from the Gulf of Kachchh in India as they voyage ...

David McNally, "Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History" (U California Press, 2025)

03 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

David McNally's Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History (U California Press, 2025)presents the first systematic Marxist account of the capital...

Alice Lovejoy, "Tales of Militant Chemistry" (U California Press, 2025)

02 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Tales of Militant Chemistry (U of California Press, 2025), Alice Lovejoy tells the untold story of film as a chemical cousin to poison gas and ...

Matthew D. C. Larsen and Mark Letteney, "Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration" (U California Press, 2025)

01 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ancient Mediterranean Incarceration (open access) examines spaces, practices, and ideologies of incarceration in the ancient Mediterranean basin from...

Patricia Aufderheide, "Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy" (U California Press, 2024)

30 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy (U California Press, 2024) traces how filmmaker-philosophers brought the dream of mak...

Lucia Sorbera, "Biography of a Revolution: The Feminist Roots of Human Rights in Egypt" (U of California Press, 2025)

23 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It is not Egypt's 2011 revolution that opened a space for women's and feminist activism, but—as Biography of a Revolution: The Feminist Roots of Hu...

Bettina Ng′weno, "No Place Like Home in a New City: Anti-Urbanism and Life in Nairobi" (U of California Press, 2025)

21 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bettina Ng’weno is Professor of African American and African Studies at the University of California, DavisNairobi, known as the Green City in the S...

Nicholas P. Roberts, "A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace" (U California Press, 2025)

16 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A Sea of Wealth: The Omani Empire and the Making of an Oceanic Marketplace (U California Press, 2025) is a sweeping retelling of the Omani position ...

Ayo Wahlberg, "Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China" (U California Press, 2018)

08 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From its crude and uneasy beginnings thirty years ago, Chinese sperm banking has become a routine part of China’s pervasive and restrictive reproduc...

Kit W. Myers, "The Violence of Love: Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States"(U California Press, 2025)

07 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This episode features Dr. Kit W. Myers, associate professor of History and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Merced, d...

Nadya Bair, "The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market" (U California Press, 2020)

26 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The legendary Magnum photo agency has long been associated with heroic lone wolf male photographers such as Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, roa...

Brian Fauteux, "Music in Orbit: Satellite Radio in the Streaming Space Age" (Univ of California Press, 2025)

23 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Years before the advent of music streaming, Sirius and XM established satellite radio services that attracted paying subscribers through their ever-ex...

Robert N. Spengler, "Nature's Greatest Success: How Plants Evolved to Exploit Humanity" (Univ of California Press, 2025)

22 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The 15,000-year story of how grass seduced humanity into being its unwitting labor force--and the science behind it. Domesticated crops were not huma...

Karen Redrobe, "Undead: (Inter)(in)animation, Feminisms, and the Art of War" (Univ of California Press, 2025)

16 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Karen Redrobe's latest book Undead: (Inter)(in)animation, Feminisms, and the Art of War (Univ of California Press, 2025) is a fascinating account o...

Laurie Denyer Willis, "Go with God: Political Exhaustion and Evangelical Possibility in Suburban Brazil" (U California Press, 2023)

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Through deep attention to sense and feeling, Go with God grapples with the centrality of Evangelical faith in Rio de Janeiro's subúrbios, the city...

Eric Blanc, "We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big" (Univ of California Press, 2025)

29 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Eric Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University, researching new workplace organizing, strikes, digital labor activism, an...

Pooja Rangan, Akshya Saxena, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, Pavitra Sundar eds., "Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice" (UC Press, 2023)

02 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone speaks with an accent, but what is an accent? Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (UC Press, 2023) introduce...

Tamara Lea Spira, "Queering Families: Reproductive Justice in Precarious Times" (U California Press, 2025)

19 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Envisioning queer futures where we lovingly wager everything for the world's children, the planet, and all living beings against all odds, and in incr...

Dionne Koller, "More Than Play: How Law, Policy, and Politics Shape American Youth Sport" (U California Press, 2025)

18 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Tens of millions of children in the United States participate in youth sport, a pastime widely believed to be part of a good childhood. Yet most child...

Cynthia Enloe, "Twelve Feminist Lessons of War" (U California Press, 2023)

04 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Women's wars are not men's wars. This is the first lesson of Cynthias Enloe’s Twelve Feminist Lessons of War (U California Press, 2023): the lack ...

Melissa Villa-Nicholas, "Data Borders: How Silicon Valley Is Building an Industry Around Immigrants" (U California Press, 2023)

27 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Uncle Sam is watching, whether you like it or not. And the surveillance program the United States is building has as its foundation immigrants who hav...

Eleanor Paynter, "Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present" (U California Press, 2024)

26 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Eleanor Paynter responds to the cris...

Giorgio Bertellini, "The Divo and the Duce: Promoting Film Stardom and the Political Leadership in 1920s America" (U California Press, 2019)

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1927, the Hollywood stars (and spouses), Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr stood outside their California home, arms raised in fascist salute...

Anita Say Chan, "Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future" (U California Press, 2025)

15 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It’s a common refrain: AI is neither good nor bad because that depends on how its used. Professor Anita Say Chan begs to differ. Chan is the author ...

Titas Chakraborty, "Empire of Labor: How the East India Company Colonized Hired Work" (U California Press, 2025)

15 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ysabel Gerrard, "The Kids Are Online: Confronting the Myths and Realities of Young Digital Life" (U California Press, 2025)

13 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do young people use digital platforms? In The Kids are Online: Confronting the Myths and Realities of Young Digital Life (U California Press, ...

Anna Maria Busse Berger and Henry Spiller, "Missionaries, Anthropologists, and Music in the Indonesian Archipelago" (U California Press, 2025)

07 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Although the history of Indonesian music has received much attention from ethnomusicologists and Western composers alike, almost nothing has been writ...

"Imprisoning a Revolution: Writings from Egypt's Incarcerated" (U California Press, 2025)

26 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Imprisoning a Revolution: Writings from Egypt’s Incarcerated (U California Press, 2025), edited by Collective Antigone, is a groundbreaking collec...

Anita Say Chan, "Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future" (U California Press, 2025)

25 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future (University of California Press, 2025) illuminates the throughline betwe...

Tracie Canada, "Tackling the Everyday: Race and Nation in Big-Time College Football" (U California Press, 2025)

25 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Big-time college football promises prestige, drama, media attention, and money. Yet most athletes in this unpaid, amateur system encounter a different...

Matt Mahmoudi, "Migrants in the Digital Periphery: New Urban Frontiers of Control" (U California Press, 2025)

24 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As the fortification of Europe's borders and its hostile immigration terrain has taken shape, so too have the biometric and digital surveillance indus...

Sureshkumar Muthukumaran, "The Tropical Turn: Agricultural Innovation in the Ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean" (U California Press, 2023)

23 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Tropical Turn: Agricultural Innovation in the Ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean (University of California Press, 2023) chronicles the ea...

Maggie M. Cao, "Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

22 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Maggie Cao is the first book to offer a synthe...

On Barak, "Heat, a History: Lessons from the Middle East for a Warming Planet" (U California Press, 2024)

10 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Despite the flames of record-breaking temperatures licking at our feet, most people fail to fully grasp the gravity of environmental overheating. What...

Margaret Peacock, "Frequencies of Deceit: How Global Propaganda Wars Shaped the Middle East" (U California Press, 2025)

08 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On June 8, 1967, Egypt's most famous radio broadcaster, Ahmed Said, reported that Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian forces had defeated the Israeli army...

Gary Griggs, "California Catastrophes: The Natural Disaster History of the Golden State" (U California Press, 2024)

07 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

California has more natural hazards per square mile than any other state, but this hasn’t deterred people from moving here. Entire California towns ...

Eric Dienstfrey, "Making Stereo Fit: The History of a Disquieting Film Technology" (U California Press, 2024)

07 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Surround sound is often mistaken as a relatively new phenomenon in cinemas, one that emerged in the 1970s with the arrival of Dolby. Making Stereo Fi...

Shoumita Dasgupta, "Where Biology Ends and Bias Begins: Lessons on Belonging from Our DNA" (U California Press, 2025)

10 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Dasgupta is a geneticist and internationally recognized anti-racism educator. In this book, she provides a powerful, science-based rebuttal to com...

Zai Liang. "From Chinatown to Every Town: How Chinese Immigrants Have Expanded the Restaurant Business in the United States" (U California Press, 2023)

07 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From Chinatown to Every Town: How Chinese Immigrants Have Expanded the Restaurant Business in the United States (University of California Press, 2024...

Andrew Campana, "Expanding Verse: Japanese Poetry at the Edge of Media" (U California Press, 2024)

06 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Cinepoems, tape recorder poems, protest performance poems, music video poems, internet sign language poems, and augmented reality poems: these poems m...

Lisa Sheryl Jacobson. "Intoxicating Pleasures: The Reinvention of Wine, Beer, and Whiskey After Prohibition" (U California Press, 2024)

25 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In popular memory the repeal of US Prohibition in 1933 signaled alcohol’s decisive triumph in a decades-long culture war. But as Dr. Lisa Jacobson r...

Stacy Torres, "At Home in the City: Growing Old in Urban America" (U California Press, 2025)

08 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

To understand elders' experiences of aging in place, sociologist Stacy Torres spent five years with longtime New York City residents as they coped wit...

Helena Hansen et al., "Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America" (U California Press, 2023)

05 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The phrase "racial capitalism" was used by Cedric Robinson to describe an economy of wealth accumulation extracted from cheap labor, organized by ra...

Disabled Ecologies: Lessons From a Wounded Desert

27 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Deep below the ground in Tucson, Arizona, lies an aquifer forever altered by the detritus of a postwar Superfund site. Disabled Ecologies: Lessons Fr...

Allen James Fromherz, "The Center of the World: A Global History of the Persian Gulf from the Stone Age to the Present" (U California Press, 2024)

21 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Whether it’s in commerce or conflict, today’s world pays rapt attention to the Persian Gulf. But the centrality of the Gulf to world history stret...

Without Parents or Papers: A Discussion with Stephanie L. Canizales

21 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s book is: Sin Padres, Ni Papeles: Unaccompanied Migrant Youth Coming of Age in the United States (U California Press, 2024), a which explo...

Park Jeong-Mi, "The State's Sexuality: Prostitution and Postcolonial Nation Building in South Korea" (U California Press, 2024)

19 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The State's Sexuality: Prostitution and Postcolonial Nation Building in South Korea (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Park Jeong-Mi uncov...

Saadia Yacoob, "Beyond the Binary: Gender and Legal Personhood in Islamic Law" (U California Press, 2024)

16 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Saadia Yacoob’s excellent new book, Beyond the Binary: Gender and Legal Personhood in Islamic Law (U of California Press 2024), makes a compellin...

Nicholas Baer, "Historical Turns: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism" (U California Press, 2024)

16 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Historical Turns: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Nicholas Baer reassesses Weimar cinema in...

Townsend Middleton, "Quinine's Remains: Empire’s Medicine and the Life Thereafter" (U California Press, 2024)

28 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What happens after colonial industries have run their course—after the factory closes and the fields go fallow? Set in the cinchona plantations of I...

Andrew deWaard, "Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture" (U California Press, 2024)

27 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Sequels, reboots, franchises, and songs that remake old songs—does it feel like everything new in popular culture is just derivative of something ol...

Emrah Yildiz, "Zainab's Traffic: Moving Saints, Selves, and Others Across Borders" (U California Press, 2024)

22 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Emrah Yildiz's new book Zainab’s Traffic: Moving Saints, Selves, and Others Across Borders (University of California Press, 2024) is a masterful ...

Kevin Sanson, "Mobile Hollywood: Labor and the Geography of Production" (U California Press, 2024)

20 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What is the future of the film industry? In Mobile Hollywood Labor and the Geography of Production (U California Press, 2024), Kevin Sanson, Prof...

William T. Taylor, "Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History" (U California Press, 2024)

17 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Which society was the first to domesticate the horse? It’s a difficult question. The archaeological record is spotty, with only very recent advancem...

Shared Paths: Exploring Jewish and Muslim Experiences in America

17 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This week on International Horizons, John Torpey, Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute, speaks with sociologists Mucahit Bilici and Samuel Heilman ...

Oumelbanine Nina Zhiri, "Beyond Orientalism: Ahmad Ibn Qasim Al-Hajari Between Europe and North Africa" (U California Press, 2023)

16 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The first in-depth study of the collaborative intellectual exchange between the European and the Arabic Republics of Letters.  Beyond Orientalism: Ah...

Jacques Bertrand, "Winning by Process: The State and Neutralization of Ethnic Minorities in Myanmar" (Cornell UP, 2022)

15 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Winning by Process: The State and Neutralization of Ethnic Minorities in Myanmar (Southeast Asia Program Publications/Cornell UP, 2022) asks why the ...

Iris Jamahl Dunkle, "Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb" (U California Press, 2024)

06 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In 1939, when John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was published, it became an instant bestseller and a prevailing narrative in the nation's collect...

William T. Taylor, "Hoof Beats: How Horses Shaped Human History" (U California Press, 2024)

29 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From the Rockies to the Himalayas, the bond between horses and humans has spanned across time and civilizations. In this archaeological journey, Willi...

Eli Revelle Yano Wilson, "Handcrafted Careers: Working the Artisan Economy of Craft Beer" (U California Press, 2024)

17 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Handcrafted Careers: Working the Artisan Economy of Craft Beer (U California Press, 2024) unpacks the problems and privileges of pursuing a career of...

Anthony Michael Kreis, "Rot and Revival: The History of Constitutional Law in American Political Development" (U California Press, 2024)

09 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

One of the great divides in American judicial scholarship is between legal scholars who take the justices at their word and assume that those words de...

Naomi Leite, "Unorthodox Kin: Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging" (U California Press, 2017)

06 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Unorthodox Kin: Portuguese Marranos and the Global Search for Belonging (U California Press, 2017) is a lively, readable exploration of "chosen" iden...

Eric Hoyt, "Ink-Stained Hollywood: The Triumph of American Cinema’s Trade Press" (U California Press, 2022)

11 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

For the first half of the twentieth century, no American industry boasted a more motley and prolific trade press than the movie business—a cutthroat...

Yiman Wang, "To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World" (U California Press, 2024)

04 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Between 1919 and 1961, pioneering Chinese American actress Anna May Wong established an enduring legacy that encompassed cinema, theatre, radio, and A...

Jessica S. Henry, "Smoke But No Fire: Convicting the Innocent of Crimes that Never Happened" (U California Press, 2021)

31 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Jessica Henry's Smoke But No Fire: Convicting the Innocent of Crimes that Never Happened (U California Press, 2021) explores a shocking but all-too...

Kate McDonald on Asian Mobility History as Labor History

29 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Kate McDonald, Associate Professor of History at University of California, Santa Barbara, about her fascin...

Kathleen Loock, "Hollywood Remaking: How Film Remakes, Sequels, and Franchises Shape Industry and Culture" (U California Press, 2024)

27 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From the inception of cinema to today’s franchise era, remaking has always been a motor of ongoing film production. Hollywood Remaking: How Film Re...

Francine Banner, "Beyond Complicity: Why We Blame Each Other Instead of Systems" (U California Press, 2024)

21 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Beyond Complicity: Why We Blame Each Other Instead of Systems (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Francine Banner is a fascinating cultural...

Stephanie Balkwill, "The Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century" (U California Press, 2024)

20 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In the late fifth century, a girl whose name has been forgotten by history was born at the edge of the Chinese empire. By the time of her death, she h...

Tara Ward, "Appreciation Post: Towards an Art History of Instagram" (U California Press, 2024)

05 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

What does an art history of Instagram look like? Appreciation Post: Towards an Art History of Instagram (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr...

Marsha Gordon, "Becoming the Ex-Wife: The Unconventional Life and Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott" (U California Press, 2024)

05 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Credited with popularizing the label "ex-wife" in 1929, Ursula Parrott wrote provocatively about divorcées, career women, single mothers, work-life b...

Bayley J. Marquez, "Plantation Pedagogy: The Violence of Schooling Across Black and Indigenous Space" (U California Press, 2024)

30 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, teachers, administrators, and policymakers fashioned a system of industrial education that attempte...

Barbara Klinger, "Immortal Films: 'Casablanca' and the Afterlife of a Hollywood Classic" (U California Press, 2022)

27 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Casablanca is one of the most celebrated Hollywood films of all time, its iconic romance enshrined in collective memory across generations. Drawing f...

Jennifer S. Clark, "Producing Feminism: Television Work in the Age of Women's Liberation" (U California Press, 2024)

21 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How have women resisted sexism in TV? In Producing Feminism: Television Work in the Age of Women’s Liberation (U California Press, 2024), Jennife...