New Books in Critical Theory

Patrice D. Douglass, "Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence" (Stanford UP, 2025)

29 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence (Stanford UP, 2025) Patrice D. Douglass interrogates the relationship between...

Ian Scoones, "Navigating Uncertainty: Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World" (Polity, 2024)

27 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Uncertainties are everywhere. Whether it’s climate change, financial volatility, pandemic outbreaks or new technologies, we don’t know what the fu...

Aaron Hammes, "TransGenre" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

26 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

TransGenre (Cambridge UP, 2025) is a reconsideration of genre theory in long-form fiction through transgender minor literature in the US and Canada....

Michelle P. Brown, "Bede and the Theory of Everything" (Reaktion Books, 2023)

23 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Bede and the Theory of Everything (Reaktion Books, 2023) investigates the life and world of Bede (c. 673–735), foremost scholar of the early Middle...

Kathleen Wilson, "Strolling Players of Empire: Theater and Performances of Power in the British Imperial Provinces, 1656–1833" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

21 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why did Britons get up a play wherever they went? In Strolling Players of Empire: Theater and Performances of Power in the British Imperial Provinces...

Alyssa Battistoni, "Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature" (Princeton UP, 2025)

18 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman w...

Todd Mcgowan, "Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity" (Columbia UP, 2024)

18 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Todd McGowan forges a new theory of capitalism as a system based on the production of more than what we need: pure excess. He argues that the promise ...

Enrique Dussel, "The Theological Metaphors of Marx" (Duke UP, 2024)–A Conversation with Camilo Pérez-Bustillo and Eduardo Mendieta

15 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Theological Metaphors of Marx (Duke UP, 2024) by Enrique Dussel – A Conversation with Camilo Pérez-Bustillo and Eduardo Mendieta In The Th...

David Theo Goldberg, "The War on Critical Race Theory: Or, The Remaking of Racism" (Polity Press, 2023)

14 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The War on Critical Race Theory: Or, The Remaking of Racism (Polity Press, 2023) by David Theo Goldberg discusses how “Critical Race Theory” i...

Bryon L. Garner, "Black Veteranality: Military Service and the Illusion of Inclusive Patriotism" (Routledge, 2025)

13 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Military service in the United States has long been associated with patriotism. But for Black veterans, this association with patriotism, love for cou...

Jirí Anger, "Towards a Film Theory from Below: Archival Film and the Aesthetics of the Crack-Up" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

12 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Jiří Anger is a scholar, archivist, and videographic critic devoted, as he says in this interview, to "making weird shapes shine." In this episode...

Alan M. Wald, "Bohemian Bolsheviks: Dispatches from the Culture and History of the Left" (Brill, 2025)

11 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For several decades now, Alan Wald has been thoroughly documenting the history of the literature and cultural output of the American left. While his n...

Alexandra Freidus, "Unequal Lessons: School Diversity and Educational Inequality in New York City" (NYU Press, 2025)

10 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Unequal Lessons: School Diversity and Educational Inequality in New York City (NYU Press, 2025) argues that diversity and racial integration efforts ...

Irvin Weathersby Jr., "In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space" (Viking, 2025)

09 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Amid the ongoing reckoning over America’s history of anti-Black racism, scores of monuments to slaveowners and Confederate soldiers still proudly do...

Eli Zaretsky, “Political Freud: A History” (Columbia UP, 2015)

08 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Back in the early 70s, Eli Zaretsky wrote for a socialist newspaper and was engaged to review a recently released book, Psychoanalysis and Feminism by...

Daniel José Gaztambide, "Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique: Putting Freud on Fanon's Couch" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

04 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Both new and seasoned psychotherapists wrestle with the relationship between psychological distress and inequality across race, class, gender, and sex...

William Marx, "Libraries of the Mind" (Princeton UP, 2025)

03 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Erich Auerbach wrote his classic work Mimesis, a history of narrative from Homer to Proust, based largely on his memory of past reading. Having left ...

Sarah E. K. Smith, "Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America" (UBC Press, 2025)

02 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

hat is the relationship between culture and trade? In Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America Sarah E. K. Smith, an Asso...

Philip Cunliffe, "The National Interest: Politics After Globalization" (Polity Press, 2025)

02 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Globalization is over. With US president Donald Trump pursuing an 'America First' agenda in trade and foreign policy, everyone now recognises the urge...

Chris Washington, "Nonbinary Jane Austen" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

02 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Nonbinary Jane Austen, Chris Washington theorizes how Jane Austen envisions a nonbinary future that traverses the two-sex model of gender that...

Martin Shuster, "Critical Theory: The Basics" (Routledge, 2024)

01 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why does critical theory matter today? In Critical Theory: The Basics (Routledge, 2024), Martin Shuster, a Professor of Philosophy and the Isaac...

Dan-el Padilla Peralta, "Classicism and Other Phobias" (Princeton UP, 2025)

31 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Classicism and Other Phobias (Princeton University Press, 2025) shows how the concept of “classicism” lacks the capacity to affirm the aesthetic ...

Thomas M. Kemple, "Marx's Wager: Das Kapital and Classical Sociology" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)

30 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Marx’s Capital looms large today, a century and a half after first publication, a massive tome that attempts to document and map out the dynamics ...

Michael Stauch, "Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

28 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The criminalization of Black youth was central to policing in urban America during the civil rights era and continued in Detroit even after the rise o...

Ela Przybylo, "Ungendering Menstruation" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ungendering Menstruation by Ela Przybyło discusses why and how menstrual pain needs to be incorporated into discussions of gender, embodiment, and ...

Sabrina L. Hom, "Critical Mixed Race Philosophy: Rethinking Kinship and Identity" (Lexington Books, 2025)

19 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What are dominant narratives of mixed race identity? What are those narratives doing, in everyday life and within philosophical discourse? How can att...

Dayna Bowen Matthew, "Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America" (NYU Press, 2022)

19 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the United States, systemic racism is embedded in policies and practices, thereby structuring American society to perpetuate inequality and all of ...

Triauna Carey, "The Revolution Will Be Spotified: Music As a Rhetorical Mode of Resistance" (Lexington Books, 2024)

18 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Revolution Will Be Spotified: Music As a Rhetorical Mode of Resistance (Lexington Books, 2024) investigates the rhetorical strategies present in...

Renay Richardson and Arisa Loomba, "Human Resources: Slavery and the Making of Modern Britain" (Profile Books, 2025)

15 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ordinary items take on new meanings when you cast them in different light. The origins of tea, coffee and sugar are well known, but when you discover ...

Elizabeth Popp Berman, "Thinking like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy" (Princeton UP, 2022)

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, Democratic politicians have frustrated progressives by tinkering around the margins of policy while shying away from truly ambitious chan...

On Bullshit in Politics

12 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today we’re continuing our series on philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s seminal work, On Bullshit. Our guest is Michael Patrick Lynch, Provost Professo...

Carl Rhodes, "Stinking Rich: The Four Myths of the Good Billionaire" (Policy Press, 2025)

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Billionaires are an ultra-elite social class whose numbers are growing alongside their obscene wealth while others struggle, suffer or even die. They...

Noëlle McAfee, "Fear of Breakdown: Psychoanalysis and Politics" (Columbia UP, 2019)

11 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In his classic essay on the fear of breakdown, Donald Winnicott famously conveys to a patient that the disaster powerfully feared has, in fact, alread...

Robert G. Morrison, "Merchants of Knowledge: Intellectual Exchange in the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Europe" (Stanford UP, 2025)

10 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Between 1450 and 1550, a remarkable century of intellectual exchange developed across the Eastern Mediterranean. As Renaissance Europe depended on kno...

Jyotsna G. Singh, "Shakespeare and Postcolonial Theory" (Bloomsbury, 2019)

09 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

My guest today is Jyotsna Singh, Professor Emerita of English at Michigan State University. She has written numerous books including Colonial Narrati...

Myles Lennon, "Subjects of the Sun: Solar Energy in the Shadows of Racial Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2025)

08 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the face of accelerating climate change, anticapitalist environmental justice activists and elite tech corporations increasingly see eye to eye. Bo...

John Eldevik, "Reading Prester John: Cultural Fantasy and Its Manuscript Contexts" (Arc Humanities Press, 2024)

06 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Reading Prester John: Cultural Fantasy and its Manuscript Contexts by John Eldevik During the Middle Ages, many Europeans imagined that there exist...

Kevin Guyan, "Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

05 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Kevin Guyan reveals how the fight for LGBTQ equalit...

Daanika Kamal, "Domestic Violence in Pakistan: The Legal Construction of 'Bad' and 'Mad' Women" (Oxford UP, 2025)

04 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Pakistani women are increasingly pursuing legal avenues against acts of domestic violence. Their claims, however, are often dismissed through characte...

Angela Katrina Lewis-Maddox ed., "Disrupting Political Science: Black Women Reimagining the Discipline" (SUNY Press, 2025)

03 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Political Scientist Angela K. Lewis-Maddox has pulled together an important and useful edited volume focusing on black women political scientists and ...

153: What Hannah Arendt Has to Teach Us about Anticipatory Despair (JP)

03 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

John recently published “Lying in Politics: Hannah Arendt’s Antidote to Anticipatory Despair" in Public Books. It makes the case against antic...

Michael Cook, "A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity" (Princeton UP, 2024)

02 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (Princeton UP, 2024) by Michael A. Cook This book describes and explains ...

Timothy Stacey, "Saving Liberalism from Itself: The Spirit of Political Participation" (Bristol UP, 2022)

02 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Saving Liberalism from Itself: The Spirit of Political Participation Bristol UP, 2022) By Timothy Stacey In the wake of populism, Timothy Sta...

Cheryl Thompson, "Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Performing Slavery, Conflict and Freedom, 1812-1895" (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2025)

01 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Performing Slavery, Conflict, and Freedom, 1812-1897 (Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2025) traces the origins o...

Sarah Bull, "Selling Sexual Knowledge: Medical Publishing and Obscenity in Victorian Britain" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

30 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What is the relationship between medicine and commerce? In Selling Sexual Knowledge: Medical Publishing and Obscenity in Victorian Britain (Cambrid...

Sarah Kenny, "Growing Up and Going Out: Youth Culture, Commerce, and Leisure Space in Post-War Britain" (Manchester UP, 2025)

29 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah Kenny Growing up and going out: Youth culture, commerce and leisure space in post-war Britain Manchester University Press 2025 How did young pe...

Nubar Hovsepian, "Edward Said: The Politics of an Oppositional Intellectual" (AUC Press, 2025)

26 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Edward Said was one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. A literary scholar with an aesthete’s temperament, he did not ex...

Judicial Territory: Law, Capital, and the Expansion of American Empire with Shaina Potts

21 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, we sit down with Shaina Potts, author of Judicial Territory: Law, Capital, and the Expansion of American Empire (Duke University Pr...

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, "Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays and Writings" (Harper, 2025)

20 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-nominated author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois and The Age of Phillis makes her nonfict...

Dominik Zechner, "The Violence of Reading: Literature and Philosophy at the Threshold of Pain" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

20 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Violence of Reading: Literature and Philosophy at the Threshold of Pain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) expounds the scene of reading as one that pro...

Andrew Hartman, "Karl Marx in America" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

15 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Karl Marx in America (University of Chicago Press, 2025), by Andrew Hartman To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. Peop...

J. McKenzie Alexander, "The Open Society as an Enemy: A Critique of how Free Societies Turned Against Themselves" (LSE Press, 2024)

14 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Open Society as an Enemy: A critique of how free societies turned against themselves by J. McKenzie Alexander Nearly 80 years ago, Karl Popper g...

Jennifer Crane, "'Gifted Children' in Britain and the World: Elitism and Equality Since 1945" (Oxford UP, 2025)

13 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Who are 'gifted' children? In ‘Gifted Children’ in Britain and the World: Elitism and Equality since 1945 Jennifer Crane, a senior lecturer in ...

Alison Griffiths, "Nomadic Cinema: A Cultural Geography of the Expedition Film" (Columbia UP, 2025)

11 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From In Borneo, the Land of the Head-Hunters to The Epic of Everest to Camping Among the Indians, the early twentieth century was the heyday of ex...

antonio c. cuyler, "Achieving Creative Justice in the U.S. Creative Sector" (Routledge, 2025)

10 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How can cultural organisations better support diversity? In Achieving Creative Justice in the U.S. Creative Sector antonio c. cuyler, Professor of M...

Kevin B. Anderson, "The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism" (Verso, 2025)

09 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Kevin Anderson’s The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism (Verso, 2025) encourages to look again at the ...

Sladja Blažan, "Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World in Early America" (University of Virginia Press, 2025)

08 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World in Early America (University of Virginia Press, 2025), Dr. Sladja Blažan explain...

Kevin Potter, "Poetics of the Migrant: Migrant Literature and the Politics of Motion" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

06 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Since the 1980s, readers and scholars alike have celebrated migrant literature for not only depicting migration, but for inspiring  reflections on cl...

Quinn Slobodian and Philip J. Stern on Political Economy

05 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

• Philip J. Stern, Empire, Incorporated. The Corporations That Built British Colonialism (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press in 2023), by. ...

Christoph Schuringa, "Karl Marx and the Actualization of Philosophy" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

04 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It is indisputable that Marx began his intellectual trajectory as a philosopher, but it is often thought that he subsequently turned away from philoso...

Anthony C. Infanti, "The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America" (NYU Press, 2025)

03 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America (NYU Press, 2025) by Anthony C. Infanti documents how the American colonies used tax law to ...

Katie Beswick, "Slags on Stage: Class, Sex, Art and Desire in British Culture" (Routledge, 2025)

31 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How are working class women represented in contemporary culture? In Slags on Stage: Class, Sex, Art and Desire in British Culture (Routledge, 2025),...

Nneka D. Dennie, "Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth Century Black Radical Feminist" (Oxford UP, 2023)

30 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In 1849, the Mary Ann Shadd Cary had not yet become one of the first Black woman newspaper editors in North America. She was decades away from being a...

Peter Allen, "How to Think about Politics: A Guide in Five Parts" (Oxford UP, 2025)

28 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What part should politics play in our everyday lives? In How to Think About Politics: A Guide in Five Parts (Oxford University Press, 2025) Peter A...

Jaleh Mansoor, "Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction: A Counterhistory" (Duke UP, 2025)

22 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Join me for conversation with Dr. Jaleh Mansoor (Associate Professor of Art History in the Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory, Univer...

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...

Rasheedah Phillips, "Dismantling the Master's Clock: On Race, Space, and Time" (AK Press, 2025)

18 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Why do some processes—like aging, birth, and car crashes—occur in only one direction in time, when by the fundamental symmetry of the universe, we...

Lucia Soriano, "Embodying Normalcy: Women's Work in Neoliberal Times" (Lexington Books, 2024)

17 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Embodying Normalcy: Women’s Work in Neoliberal Times (Lexington Books, 2024) calls attention to how women in the United States do a type of unpaid ...

Eric Heinze, "Coming Clean: The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left" (MIT Press, 2025)

16 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What has gone wrong with the left—and what leftists must do if they want to change politics, ethics, and minds. Leftists have long taught that peopl...

Myka Tucker-Abramson, "Cartographies of Empire: The Road Novel and American Hegemony" (Stanford UP, 2025)

15 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The road novel is often dismissed as a mundane, nostalgic genre: Jack, Sal, and other tedious white men on the road trying to recapture an authentic y...

Robert F. Darden and Stephen M. Newby, "Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch" (Oxford UP, 2025)

14 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gospel singer and seven-time Grammy winner Andraé Crouch (1942-2015) hardly needs introduction. His compositions--"The Blood Will Never Lose Its Powe...

Maron E. Greenleaf, "Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon" (Duke UP, 2024)

10 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon (2024) is an ethnography of forest carbon offsets and the wider effort to make the li...

Seulghee Lee, "Other Lovings: An Afroasian American Theory of Life" (Ohio State UP, 2025)

09 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Join me for a conversation with Dr. Seulghee Lee (Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English, University of South Carolina) about ...

Jake Monaghan, "Just Policing" (Oxford UP, 2023)

08 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Policing is a source of perennial conflict and philosophical disagreement. Current political developments in the United States have only increased the...

Maïa Pal, "Jurisdictional Accumulation: An Early Modern History of Law, Empires, and Capital" (Cambridge UP, 2020)

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With rigorous attention to history and empire, Maïa Pal's Jurisdictional Accumulation: An Early Modern History of Law, Empires, and Capital (Cambr...

Eunji Kim, "The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy" (Princeton UP, 2025)

06 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite al...

Ipek A. Celik Rappas, "Filming in European Cities: The Labor of Location" (Cornell UP, 2025)

04 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Filming in European Cities: The Labor of Location (Cornell University Press, 2025) explores the effort behind creating screen production locations. D...

Martin Thomas, "The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization" (Princeton UP, 2024)

03 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Empires, until recently, were everywhere. They shaped borders, stirred conflicts, and set the terms of international politics. With the collapse of em...

Maliha Safri et al., "Solidarity Cities: Confronting Racial Capitalism, Mapping Transformation" (U of Minnesota Press, 2025)

02 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Maliha Safri, Marianna Pavlovskaya, Stephen Healy, and Craig Borowiak talk about their new co-authored book Solidarity Cities: Conf...

Laleh Khalili, "Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy" (Profile Books, 2025)

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Whether it's pumping oil, mining resources or shipping commodities across oceans, the global economy runs on extraction. Promises of frictionless trad...

No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice

30 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground. Polarizing debates over their meaning have intensified into legislative maneuvering...

Franck Billé, "Somatic States: On Cartography, Geobodies, Bodily Integrity" (Duke UP, 2025)

29 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Somatic States: On Cartography, Geobodies, Bodily Integrity (Duke UP, 2025), Franck Billé examines the conceptual link between the nation-state ...

Nat Dyer, "Ricardo’s Dream: How Economists Forgot the Real World and Led Us Astray" (Bristol UP, 2024)

28 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

From the workings of financial markets to our response to the ecological crisis, economic theory shapes the world. But where do these ideas come from?...

Philip V. McHarris, "Beyond Policing" (Legacy Lit, 2024)

27 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What would happen if policing disappeared? Would we be safe? This book imagines a world without police. It's evident that policing is a problem. But w...

Emma Casey, "The Return of the Housewife: Why Women Are Still Cleaning Up" (Manchester UP, 2025)

26 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How has the rise of digital platforms changed domestic labour? In The Return of the Housewife: Why Women Are Still Cleaning Up (Manchester UP, 2025)...

Russell Blackford, "How We Became Post-Liberal: The Rise and Fall of Toleration" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

25 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Liberalism is in trouble. As a set of ideas, it has lost much of its historical authority in guiding public policy and personal behaviour. In this pos...

Steven Hahn, "Illiberal America: A History" (Norton, 2024)

24 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

If your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That’s not us,' think again. In Illiberal America: A History (...

Sophie Lewis, "Enemy Feminisms: Terfs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation" (Haymarket Books, 2025)

23 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Enemy Feminisms: Terfs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation (Haymarket Books, 2025) is a provocative compendium of the feminisms we love ...

Pil Ho Kim, "Polarizing Dreams: Gangnam and Popular Culture in Globalizing Korea" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)

22 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Gangnam is an exclusive zone of privilege and wealth that has lured South Korean pop culture industries since the 1980s and fueled the aspirations of ...

Michael Rosino, "Democracy Is Awkward: Grappling with Racism Inside American Grassroots Political Organizing" (UNC Press, 2025)

21 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In uncertain times, confronting pressing problems such as racial oppression and the environmental crisis requires everyday people to come together and...

Talia Mae Bettcher, "Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

20 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What does transphobic oppression have to do with sexism, heterosexism, and racism? How does a decolonial analysis help us understand trans oppression?...

Mary Bosworth, "Supply Chain Justice: The Logistics of British Border Control" (Princeton UP, 2024)

19 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the UK’s fully outsourced “immigration detainee escorting system,” private sector security employees detain, circulate and deport foreign nat...

Jina B. Kim, "Care at the End of the World: Dreaming of Infrastructure in Crip-Of-Color Writing" (Duke UP, 2025)

18 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Care at the End of the World: Dreaming of Infrastructure in Crip-Of-Color Writing (Duke UP, 2025), Jina B. Kim develops what she calls crip-of-co...

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

17 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 ...

Neil Kraus, "The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement" (Temple UP, 2023)

16 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Wage stagnation, growing inequality, and even poverty itself have resulted from decades of neoliberal decision making, not the education system, write...

Mingwei Huang, "Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century" (Duke UP, 2024)

15 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century (Duke UP, 2024), Mingwei Huang traces the development of new forms of racial...

What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions

14 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Leaders who introduce anti-racist approaches to their organizations often face backlash. In What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Instit...

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, ...

Mimi Thi Nguyen, "The Promise of Beauty" (Duke UP, 2024)

12 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Promise of Beauty (Duke UP, 2024), Mimi Thi Nguyen explores the relationship between the concept of beauty and narratives of crisis and catas...

Rebecca Zorach, "Temporary Monuments: Art, Land, and America's Racial Enterprise" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

11 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Art has long played a key role in constructing how people understand and imagine America. Starting with contemporary controversies over public monumen...