New Books in Critical Theory

Daniel M. Knight, "Vertiginous Life: An Anthropology of Time and the Unforeseen" (Berghahn Books, 2021)

24 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Vertiginous Life: An Anthropology of Time and the Unforeseen (Berghahn Books, 2021) provides a theory of the intense temporal disorientation brought ...

Gabriel Yoran, "The Interfact: On Structure and Compatibility in Object-Oriented Ontology" (Open Humanities Press, 2021)

24 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Objects in object-oriented ontology (OOO) are mysterious and inexhaustible entities. But since OOO grants ontological priority to objects, it should h...

Michel Foucault, "Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group (1970-1980)" (U of Minnesota Press, 2021)

20 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Intolerable: Writings from Michel Foucault and the Prisons Information Group (1970-1980) (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), edited by Kevin Thomp...

Shelley L. Koch, "Gender and Food: A Critical Look at the Food System" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019)

17 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Gender and Food: A Critical Look at the Food System (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019) synthesizes existing theoretical and empirical research on food, ...

Bogdan Popa, "De-Centering Queer Theory: Communist Sexuality in the Flow During and After the Cold War" (Manchester UP, 2021)

17 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Bogdan Popa’s De-Centering Queer Theory: Communist Sexuality in the Flow During and After the Cold War (Manchester University Press, 2021) seeks t...

2.7 The Novel of Revolutionary Ideas: Viet Thanh Nguyen and Colleen Lye

16 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning The Sympathizer and its sequel The Committed, joins esteemed scholar Colleen Lye of UC-B...

Matthew H. Brown, "Indirect Subjects: Nollywood's Local Address" (Duke UP, 2021)

15 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Indirect Subjects: Nollywood's Local Address (Duke UP, 2021), Matthew H. Brown analyzes the content of the prolific Nigerian film industry's most...

Erin Cech, "The Trouble with Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality" (U California Press, 2021)

15 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Should we love work? In The Trouble with Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality (U California Press, 2021), Erin Cech, a...

Kate Rigby, "Reclaiming Romanticism: Towards an Ecopoetics of Decolonisation" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

10 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The earliest environmental criticism took its inspiration from the Romantic poets and their immersion in the natural world. Today the “romanticising...

Noémi Tousignant, "Edges of Exposure: Toxicology and the Problem of Capacity in Postcolonial Senegal" (Duke UP, 2018)

09 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What is “capacity”? In science research and health interventions, it typically refers to the relative availability of equipment, infrastructure, p...

Nicole Nguyen, "Suspect Communities: Anti-Muslim Racism and the Domestic War on Terror" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)

03 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Suspect Communities: Anti-Muslim Racism and the Domestic War on Terror (University of Minnesota Press, 2019) is a powerful reassessment of the U.S. g...

Jeffrey S. Bachman, "Cultural Genocide: Law, Politics, and Global Manifestations" (Routledge, 2019)

03 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Jeffrey Bachman's edited volume Cultural Genocide: Law, Politics, and Global Manifestations (Routledge, 2019) asks where the boundaries between gen...

Till F. Paasche and James Derrick Sidaway, "Transecting Securityscapes: Dispatches from Cambodia, Iraq, and Mozambique" (U Georgia Press, 2021)

02 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this interview, I speak with Till F. Paasche and James D. Sidaway about their new book, Transecting Securityscapes: Dispatches from Cambodia, Iraq...

Nishant Shahani, "Pink Revolutions: Globalization, Hindutva, and Queer Triangles in Contemporary India" (Northwestern UP, 2021)

30 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Pink Revolutions: Globalization, Hindutva, and Queer Triangles in Contemporary India (Northwestern UP, 2021) describes how queer politics in India oc...

Kim Charnley, "Sociopolitical Aesthetics: Art, Crisis and Neoliberalism" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

30 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Since the turn of the millennium, protests, meetings, schoolrooms, reading groups and many other social forms have been proposed as artworks or, more ...

Kevin Bruyneel, "Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race in the United States" (UNC Press, 2021)

29 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Kevin Bruyneel confronts the chronic displacement of Indigeneity in the politics and discourse around race in American political theory and culture, a...

Margaret D. Jacobs, "After One Hundred Winters: In Search of Reconciliation on America's Stolen Lands" (Princeton UP, 2021)

29 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

After One Hundred Winters: In Search of Reconciliation on America's Stolen Lands (Princeton UP, 2021) confronts the harsh truth that the United State...

Eva von Redecker, "Praxis and Revolution: A Theory of Social Transformation" (Columbia UP, 2021)

29 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The concept of revolution marks the ultimate horizon of modern politics. It is instantiated by sites of both hope and horror. Within progressive thoug...

Rana M. Jaleel, "The Work of Rape" (Duke UP, 2021)

24 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In The Work of Rape (Duke UP, 2021), Rana M. Jaleel argues that the redefinition of sexual violence within international law as a war crime, crime a...

Joshua Sbicca, "Food Justice Now!: Deepening the Roots of Social Struggle" (U Minnesota Press, 2018)

23 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Food Justice Now: Deepening the Roots of Social Struggle (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) charts a path from food activism to social justice a...

Matt Christman and Daniel Bessner, "Hinge Points: A Podcast About Historical Contingency"

23 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How do we balance the importance of individual human agency with our understanding of larger socio-economic structures? How do we explore crucial “w...

Christos Tombras, "Discourse Ontology: Body and the Construction of a World, from Heidegger through Lacan" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)

23 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We interview Dr. Christos Tombras, a supervising psychoanalyst with a Lacanian orientation, practicing in London. Dr. Tombras is a member of the Centr...

Gila Ashtor, "Homo Psyche: On Queer Theory and Erotophobia" (Fordham UP, 2021)

22 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, I interview Gila Ashtor, a practicing psychoanalyst and critical theorist, about her new book, Homo Psyche: On Queer Theory and Erot...

James Garrison, "Reconsidering the Life of Power: Ritual, Body, and Art in Critical Theory and Chinese Philosophy" (SUNY Press, 2021)

19 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Reconsidering the Life of Power: Ritual, Body, and Art in Critical Theory and Chinese Philosophy by James Garrison (SUNY Press 2021), argues that the...

Joel Whitebook, "Freud: An Intellectual Biography" (Cambridge UP, 2017)

17 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We interview Dr. Joel Whitebook, philosopher and psychoanalyst about his book Freud: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge UP, 2017). Dr. Whitebook w...

J. Shapiro and J-A. McNeish, "Our Extractive Age: Expressions of Violence and Resistance" (Routledge, 2021)

16 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Judith Shapiro and John-Andrew McNeish's book Our Extractive Age: Expressions of Violence and Resistance (Routledge, 2021) emphasizes how the spect...

Yair Wallach, "A City in Fragments: Urban Texts in Modern Jerusalem" (Stanford UP, 2020)

15 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the mid-nineteenth century, Jerusalem was rich with urban texts inscribed in marble, gold, and cloth, investing holy sites with divine meaning. Ott...

Julia Bahner, "Sexual Citizenship and Disability: Understanding Sexual Support in Policy, Practice and Theory" (Routledge, 2021)

12 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What does ‘sexual citizenship’ mean in practice for people with mobility impairments who may need professional support to engage in sexual activit...

Katja Praznik, "Art Work: Invisible Labour and the Legacy of Yugoslav Socialism" (U Toronto Press, 2021)

11 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Art Work: Invisible Labour and the Legacy of Yugoslav Socialism (U Toronto Press, 2021), Katja Praznik counters the Western understanding of art ...

Sima Shakhsari, "Politics of Rightful Killing: Civil Society, Gender, and Sexuality in Weblogistan" (Duke UP, 2020)

10 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the early 2000s, mainstream international news outlets celebrated the growth of Weblogistan—the online and real-life transnational network of Ira...

Samuel Moyn, "Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War" (FSG, 2021)

10 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Geographic and temporal limits have typically contained modern wars—rulers can ask their populace to risk lives and treasure for so long before losi...

Michelle Téllez, "Border Women and the Community of Maclovio Rojas: Autonomy in the Spaces of Neoliberal Neglect" (U Arizona Press, 2021)

10 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Near Tijuana, Baja California, the autonomous community of Maclovio Rojas demonstrates what is possible for urban place-based political movements. Mor...

Luke Clements, "Clustered Injustice and The Level Green" (Legal Action Group, 2020)

08 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Clustered Injustice and The Level Green (Legal Action Group, 2020), Professor Luke Clements tackles the problem of the way in which "our legal...

Jovan Scott Lewis, "Scammer's Yard: The Crime of Black Repair in Jamaica" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)

05 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

There is romance in stealing from the rich to give to the poor, but how does that change when those perceived rich are elderly white North Americans a...

Ruby Hamad, "White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color" (Catapult, 2020)

03 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Called “powerful and provocative" by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, author of the New York Times bestselling How to be an Antiracist, Ruby Hamad's White Tear...

Habiba Ibrahim, "Black Age: Oceanic Lifespans and the Time of Black Life" (NYU Press, 2021)

03 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Although more than fifty years apart, the murders of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin share a commonality: Black children are not seen as children. Time...

Hsuan L. Hsu, "The Smell of Risk: Environmental Disparities and Olfactory Aesthetics" (NYU Press, 2020)

02 Nov 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Our sense of smell is a uniquely visceral—and personal—form of experience. As Hsuan L. Hsu points out, smell has long been spurned by Western aest...

Barbara Grabher, "Doing Gender in Events: Feminist Perspectives in Critical Event Studies" (Routledge, 2021)

27 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Exploring the relationship between gender and events, Doing Gender in Events: Feminist Perspectives in Critical Event Studies (Routledge, 2021) deli...

Daniel Andrés López, "Lukács: Praxis and the Absolute" (Haymarket Books, 2020)

23 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Hungarian Marxist philosopher George Lukács has long occupied a complicated place in the Marxist canon of thinkers, both his lived and theoretica...

Adesola Akinleye, "(Re:) Claiming Ballet" (Intellect Books, 2021)

21 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

(Re:) Claiming Ballet (Intellect Books, 2021) by Dr. Adesola Akinleye explores the history of movement through ballet, representation, and the futur...

Emma Dowling, "The Care Crisis: What Caused It and How Can We End It?" (Verso, 2021)

21 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What is the future of care? In The Care Crisis: What Caused It and How Can We End It? (Verso, 2021),  Emma Dowling, an assistant professor at the ...

Rebecca L. Stein, "Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine" (Stanford UP, 2021)

20 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the last two decades, amid the global spread of smartphones, state killings of civilians have increasingly been captured on the cameras of both bys...

Matthew Fuller, "Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth" (Verso, 2021)

19 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today, journalists, legal professionals, activists, and artists challenge the state's monopoly on investigation and the production of narratives of tr...

Catherine Knight Steele, "Digital Black Feminism" (NYU Press, 2021)

18 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How have Black women lead a digital revolution? In Digital Black Feminism (NYU Press, 2021), Catherine Knight Steele, an assistant professor of co...

Graham Harman, "Skirmishes: With Friends, Enemies, and Neutrals" (Punctum Books, 2020)

18 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

One of the fifty most influential living philosophers, a “self-promoting charlatan” (Brian Leiter), and the orchestrator of an “online orgy of s...

Erica R. Edwards, "The Other Side of Terror: Black Women and the Culture of US Empire" (NYU Press, 2021)

14 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Erica R. Edwards's The Other Side of Terror: Black Women and the Culture of US Empire (New York University, 2021) reveals the troubling intimac...

Peter Mitchell, "Imperial Nostalgia: How the British Conquered Themselves" (Manchester UP, 2020)

14 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

With Imperial Nostalgia: How the British Conquered Themselves (Manchester UP, 2020) Peter Mitchell offers a “history of the present”. That is t...

Terence Renaud, "New Lefts: The Making of a Radical Tradition" (Princeton UP, 2021)

13 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the 1960s, the radical youth of Western Europe’s New Left rebelled against the democratic welfare state and their parents’ antiquated politics ...

Alana Jelinek, "Between Discipline and a Hard Place: The Value of Contemporary Art" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

13 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Some fields have an easier time describing themselves than others. "History is the study of past events." "Biology is the study of living organisms." ...

Michelle Caswell, "Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work" (Routledge, 2021)

13 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today I talked to Michelle Caswell about her new book Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work (Routledge, 2021). What is the place of arch...

Christopher Phelps and Robin Vandome, "Marxism and America: New Appraisals" (Manchester UP, 2021)

12 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

If the United States has been so hostile to Marxism, what accounts for Marxism's recurrent attractiveness to certain Americans? Marxism and America: ...

Teun Voeten, "Mexican Drug Violence: Hybrid Warfare, Predatory Capitalism and the Logic of Cruelty" (2020)

08 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

With an estimated 250,000 people killed in 15 years, the Mexican drug war is the most violent conflict in the Western world. It shows no sign of abati...

Sheldon George and Derek Hook, "Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity, and Psychoanalytic Theory" (Routledge, 2021)

08 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Derek Hook and Sheldon George's Lacan and Race: Racism, Identity and Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2021) is a path-breaking edited volume that draws ...

Working Class History Collective, "Working Class History: Everyday Acts of Resistance & Rebellion" (PM Press, 2020)

08 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Personally, I hate the This-Day-in-History genre. Far too often it is some Great-Man-History trope, representing a rather archaic way of thinking abou...

Ted Stolze, "Becoming Marxist: Studies in Philosophy, Struggle, and Endurance" (Haymarket, 2020)

07 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Marxism is having a moment; higher workloads, stagnating wages, rising costs of living, a new economic crisis every few years, a warming climate and n...

Henning Trüper, "Orientalism, Philology, and the Illegibility of the Modern World" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

06 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

At the turn of the nineteenth century, European philologists were engaged in the study of Semitic languages and Indology, breaking with the past in ma...

Milton Santos, "The Nature of Space" (Duke UP, 2021)

06 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Nature of Space (Duke UP, 2021) is a translation (by Brenda Baletti) of pioneering geographer Milton Santos' A Natureza do Espaço, ori...

Lorenzo Veracini, "The World Turned Inside Out: Settler Colonialism As a Political Idea" (Verso, 2021)

05 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Many would rather change worlds than change the world. The settlement of communities in 'empty lands' somewhere else has often been proposed as a solu...

Hannah Turner, "Cataloguing Culture: Legacies of Colonialism in Museum Documentation" (UBC Press, 2020)

05 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How does colonialism still shape museums today? In Cataloguing Culture: Legacies of Colonialism in Museum Documentation (UBC Press, 2020), Hannah ...

Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm, "Metamodernism: The Future of Theory" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

04 Oct 2021

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, scholars have been calling into question the universality of disciplinary objects and categories. The coherence of defined autonomous cat...

Joshua Preiss, "Just Work for All: The American Dream in the 21st Century" (Taylor & Francis, 2020)

29 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

This is a book about the American Dream: how to understand this central principle of American public philosophy, the ways in which it is threatened by...

Linda Steele, "Disability, Criminal Justice and Law: Reconsidering Court Diversion" (Routledge, 2020)

28 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

With a focus on the court diversion of disabled people, Disability, Criminal Justice and Law: Reconsidering Court Diversion (Routledge 2020) undert...

Erin Y. Huang, "Urban Horror: Neoliberal Post-Socialism and the Limits of Visibility" (Duke UP, 2020)

26 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Erin Y. Huang’s Urban Horror: Neoliberal Post-Socialism and the Limits of Visibility (Duke UP, 2020) is an expansive and ambitious book that expl...

Muhammad Umar Faruque, "Sculpting the Self: Islam, Selfhood, and Human Flourishing" (U Michigan Press, 2021)

24 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In his painstakingly researched and splendid new book Sculpting the Self: Islam, Selfhood, and Human Flourishing (U Michigan Press, 2021), Muhammad ...

Gonzalo Lizarralde, "Unnatural Disasters: Why Most Responses to Risk and Climate Change Fail But Some Succeed" (Columbia UP, 2021)

22 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Unnatural Disasters: Why Most Responses to Risk and Climate Change Fail But Some Succeed (Columbia UP, 2021) offers a new perspective on our most pre...

Forces of Production, Climate Change, and Canadian Fossil Capitalism

22 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

As we see in the news every day, climate change is already upon us. The climate crisis is no longer a bridge to be crossed in the future. It must be d...

Firmin DeBrabander, "Life after Privacy: Reclaiming Democracy in a Surveillance Society" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

20 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

As governments and corporations mine our “entrenched culture of sharing” to invade privacy (down to Target creating an algorithm to figure out whi...

Minna Salami, "Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone" (Amistad, 2021)

17 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Minna Salami's book Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone (Amistad/HarperCollins, 2021) is a collection of thought provoking e...

Alan Shandro, "Lenin and the Logic of Hegemony: Political Practice and Theory in the Class Struggle" (Haymarket Books, 2015)

17 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Few figures stand as prominently in Marxist theory and history as V.I. Lenin. The revolutionary who played a pivotal role in one of the most important...

Ginetta Candelario on Feminism, Race, and Transnationalism

16 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island and neither are we. So we are reaching across our mentor network t...

Emily Erikson, "Trade and Nation: How Companies and Politics Reshaped Economic Thought" (Columbia UP, 2021)

15 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How can ideas from sociology help us understand history and economics? In Trade and Nation: How Companies and Politics Reshaped Economic Thought (Co...

Rachel Zolf, "No One's Witness: A Monstrous Poetics" (Duke UP, 2021)

07 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, I interview Rachel Zolf—a poet whose “interdisciplinary practice explores questions about history, knowledge, subjectivity, respo...

Alex Hochuli et al., "The End of the End of History: Politics in the Twenty-First Century" (Zero Books, 2021)

03 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

We live in strange times. Politics around the world seem to be transforming into something new and often frightening. But this process has a history. ...

Christopher R. Martin, "No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class" (Cornell UP, 2019)

03 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Until the recent political shift pushed workers back into the media spotlight, the mainstream media had largely ignored this significant part of Ameri...

Amelia Jones, "In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance" (Routledge, 2020)

03 Sep 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Between Subjects: A Critical Genealogy of Queer Performance (Routledge, 2021) is a study of the connected ideas of "queer" and "gender performanc...

Barrett Holmes Pitner, "The Crime Without a Name: Combatting Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America" (Counterpoint, 2021)

26 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Can new language reshape our understanding of the past and expand the possibilities of the future? The Crime Without a Name: Combatting Ethnocide and...

Hannah McCann, "Queering Femininity: Sexuality, Feminism and the Politics of Presentation" (Routledge, 2019)

26 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Queering Femininity: Sexuality, Feminism and the Politics of Presentation (Routledge, 2019), Hannah McCann asks, “how can we consider feminini...

Matthew Flisfeder, "Algorithmic Desire: Toward a New Structuralist Theory of Social Media" (Northwestern UP, 2021)

26 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

One of the most fundamental aspects of modern life is that much of it is lived on and through social media. We create profiles, post pictures, update ...

Stanley Mirvis, "The Jews of Eighteenth-Century Jamaica" (Yale UP, 2020)

23 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Stanley Mirvis' The Jews of Eighteenth-Century Jamaica: A Testamentary History of a Diaspora in Transition (Yale University Press, 2020) offers an ...

Lynne Huffer, "Foucault`s Strange Eros" (Columbia UP, 2020)

23 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Lynne Huffer, the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Womens and Gender Studies at Emory University to speaks widely about the body of her work, includi...

Carol Anderson, "The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America" (Bloomsbury, 2021)

20 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout American history to the twenty-first century, regardless of the laws, court decisions, and changing political environment, the Second Amend...

Andrea J. Pitts, "Nos/Otras: Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Multiplicitous Agency, and Resistance" (SUNY Press, 2021)

20 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How can we think together multiplicity and agency? How can we resist oppression and build transformative political coalitions while attending to the a...

Tom Mould, "Overthrowing the Queen: Telling Stories of Welfare in America" (Indiana UP, 2020)

20 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

It is a familiar story: A recipient of public assistance funds is caught buying expensive steaks, seafood, or other luxury foods with food stamps at t...

Nicola J. Smith, "Capitalism's Sexual History" (Oxford UP, 2020)

17 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

As ongoing controversies over commercial sex attest, the relationship between capitalism and sexuality is deeply contentious. Economic and sexual prac...

Hannah Wohl, "Bound by Creativity: How Contemporary Art Is Created and Judged" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

13 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

What is creativity? While our traditional view of creative work might lead us to think of artists as solitary visionaries, the creative process is pro...

Patricia Bickers, "The Ends of Art Criticism" (Lund Humphries Publishers, 2021)

06 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Crisis? What Crisis? At a time where there are repeated claims of the impending demise of art criticism, The Ends of Art Criticism (Lund Humphries P...

Kanika Batra, "Worlding Postcolonial Sexualities: Publics, Counterpublics, Human Rights" (Routledge, 2021)

05 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Worlding Postcolonial Sexualities: Publics, Counterpublics, Human Rights (Routledge, 2021) demonstrates how late twentieth century postcolonial print...

Malcolm James, "Sonic Intimacy: Reggae Sound Systems, Jungle Pirate Radio and Grime YouTube Music Videos" (Bloomsbury, 2020)

04 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

How can music change the world? In Sonic Intimacy: Reggae Sound Systems, Jungle Pirate Radio and Grime YouTube Music Videos (Bloomsbury, 2020), Mal...

Frans-Willem Korsten, "Art as an Interface of Law and Justice: Affirmation, Disturbance, Disruption" (Hart Publishing, 2021)

04 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Art as an Interface of Law and Justice: Affirmation, Disturbance, Disruption (Hart Publishing, 2021) looks at the way in which the 'call for justice'...

Annemarie Mol, "Eating in Theory" (Duke UP, 2021)

29 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

As we taste, chew, swallow, digest, and excrete, our foods transform us, while our eating, in its turn, affects the wider earthly environment. In Eat...

Marcello Tarì, "There Is No Unhappy Revolution: The Communism of Destitution" (Common Notions, 2021)

28 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The Marxist philosopher Theodor Adorno once quipped that much of his work was written without practical applications in mind, and that the constant de...

Rafia Zakaria, "Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption" (W. W. Norton, 2021)

27 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Elite white women have branded feminism, promising an apolitical individual empowerment along with sexual liberation and satisfaction, LGBTQ inclusion...

Lorenzo Fusaro, "Crises and Hegemonic Transitions: From Gramsci's Quaderni to the Contemporary World Economy" (Haymarket Books, 2020)

26 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is often invoked, but usually as a means of cultural critique and analysis. However, my guest Lorenzo Fusaro argues in...

Gayle Rogers, "Speculation: A Cultural History from Aristotle to AI" (Columbia UP, 2021)

26 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In a world that purports to know more about the future than any before it, why do we still need speculation? Insubstantial speculations – from utopi...

Meryl Altman, "Beauvoir in Time" (Brill, 2020)

23 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Meryl Altman's new book Beauvoir in Time, published by Brill Rodopi Press (2020), situates Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex (1949) in its histo...

Scott Krzych, "Beyond Bias: Conservative Media, Documentary Form, and the Politics of Hysteria" (Oxford UP, 2021)

23 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Scott Krzych's book Beyond Bias: Conservative Media, Documentary Form, and the Politics of Hysteria (Oxford University Press, 2021) offers the firs...

Eugene T. Richardson, "Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health" (MIT Press, 2020)

22 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health (MIT Press, 2020), physician-anthropologist Eugene T. Richardson explores how pub...

Patricia Gherovici and Christopher Christian, "Psychoanalysis in the Barrios: Race, Class, and the Unconscious" (Routledge, 2018)

21 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Psychoanalysis began as a politicized form of treatment for people from all walks of life. Yet in the United States, it has become divorced from these...

Anna Stenning et al., "Neurodiversity Studies: A New Critical Paradigm" (Routledge, 2020)

21 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Building on work in feminist studies, queer studies and critical race theory, this volume challenges the universality of propositions about human natu...

Philip Butler, "Critical Black Futures: Speculative Theories and Explorations" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)

21 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Critical Black Futures: Speculative Theories and Explorations (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021),  edited by Dr. Philip Butler, imagines worlds, afrofuture...