New Books in Critical Theory
Episodes
Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, "The Unequal Effects of Globalization" (MIT, 2023)
22 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The recent retreat from globalization has been triggered by a perception that increased competition from global trade is not fair and leads to increas...
Matthew Chin, "Fractal Repair: Queer Histories of Modern Jamaica" (Duke UP, 2024)
22 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Fractal Repair: Queer Histories of Modern Jamaica (Duke UP, 2024), Matthew Chin investigates queerness in Jamaica from early colonial occupation ...
Lindsay Weinberg, "Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)
21 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), Lindsay Weinberg evaluates how this latest era ...
Ulises Ali Mejias and Nick Couldry, "Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
21 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the present day, Big Tech is extracting resources from us, transferring and centralizing resources from people to companies. These companies are gr...
Neil Atkinson, "Transformer: Klopp, the Revolution of a Club and Culture" (Canongate, 2024)
20 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How did Jurgen Klopp change Liverpool? In Transformer: Klopp, the Revolution of a Club and Culture (Canongate, 2024), Neil Atkinson, host of The A...
In Conversation: Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter
18 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Dr. Hizer Mir speaks with Momodou Taal on Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaph...
Jarrett Zigon, "How Is It Between Us?: Relational Ethics and Care for the World" (HAU Books, 2023)
17 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How Is It Between Us?: Relational Ethics and Care for the World (HAU Books, 2023) offers a new theory of relational ethics that tackles contemporary...
Sara Cantillon et al., "Feminist Political Economy: A Global Perspective" (Agenda, 2023)
16 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Challenging mainstream narratives in political economy, the new book Feminist Political Economy: A Global Perspective (Agenda Publishing, 2023) serv...
Barbara A. Biesecker, "Reinventing World War II: Popular Memory in the Rise of the Ethnonationalist State" (Penn State Press, 2024)
13 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
By the 1970s, World War II had all but disappeared from US popular culture. But beginning in the mid-eighties it reemerged with a vengeance, and for n...
Toby Manning, "Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music" (Repeater, 2024)
13 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From rock & roll to contemporary pop, Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music (Repeater, 2024) is a timely and original explorat...
In Conversation: Palestine and Decoloniality
11 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Dr. Ismail Patel talks with Prof. Hatem Bazian about structural Islamophobia, global politics and the demonisation of the Muslim. Lea...
Reem Hilu, "Digitizing Domesticity in the 1980s: The Intimate Life of Computers" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
10 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Digitizing Domesticity in the 1980s: The Intimate Life of Computers (U Minnesota Press, 2024) shows how the widespread introduction of home computer...
Benjamin J. Shestakofsky on How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality
09 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Benjamin Shestakofsky about his book, Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, an...
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, "Did It Happen Here?: Perspectives on Fascism and America" (W. W. Norton, 2024)
08 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I’m speaking with Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins about the new, edited volume, Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America (W.W. Norto...
Andy Hines, "Imagining After Capitalism" (Triarchy Press, 2025)
07 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Imagining After Capitalism (Triarchy Press, 2025) is the culmination of a decade-long exploration of what comes next after capitalism. It leverages p...
Larry Alan Busk, "The Right-Wing Mirror of Critical Theory: Studies of Schmitt, Oakeshott, Hayek, Strauss, and Rand" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)
06 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What really separates emancipatory thinking from its opposite? The prevailing Left defines itself against neoliberalism, conservative traditionalism, ...
Eric Drott, "Streaming Music, Streaming Capital" (Duke UP, 2024)
06 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Streaming Music, Streaming Capital (Duke University Press, 2024) provides a much-needed study of the political economy of music streaming, drawing...
J. Mijin Cha, "A Just Transition for All: Workers and Communities for a Carbon-Free Future" (MIT Press, 2024)
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
To meet the greenhouse gas emissions reductions needed to stave off the worst impacts of climate change, a transition away from fossil fuels must occu...
Toby Bennett, "Corporate Life in the Digital Music Industry: Remaking the Major Record Label from the Inside Out" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How does the music industry actually work? In Corporate Life in the Digital Music Industry: Remaking the Major Record Label from the Inside Out Toby...
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...
Simin Fadaee, "Global Marxism: Decolonisation and Revolutionary Politics" (Manchester UP, 2024)
05 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For much of the twentieth century, the ideas of Karl Marx provided the backbone for social justice around the world. But today the legacy of Marxism i...
Joy White, "Like Lockdown Never Happened: Music and Culture During Covid" (Repeater, 2024)
04 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What happened to culture in 2020? In Like Lockdown Never Happened: Music and Culture During Covid (Repeater, 2024), Joy White, a Lecturer in Appli...
Geneviève Rousselière, "Sharing Freedom: Republicanism and Exclusion in Revolutionary France" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
04 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The French have long self-identified as champions of universal emancipation, yet the republicanism they adopted has often been faulted for being exclu...
Matthew Gardner Kelly, "Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequity" (Cornell UP, 2024)
04 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequity (Cornell UP, 2024), Matthew Gardner Kelly takes aim at the racial an...
Laura C. Chávez-Moreno, "How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America" (Harvard Education Press, 2024)
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America (Harvard Education Press, 2025), Dr. Laura C. Chávez-Moreno uncovers the process...
Sidney A. Shapiro and Joseph P. Tomain, "How Government Built America" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
01 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How Government Built America (Cambridge UP, 2024) challenges growing, anti-government rhetoric by highlighting the role government has played in par...
How Psychoanalytic Mechanisms of Defense Affected the 2024 Presidential Campaign and Election
01 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Even though this is not a political show, today we will be talking about the ways in which mechanisms of defense effected both parties in the 2024 c...
Too Black and Rasul A. Mowatt, "Laundering Black Rage: The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits" (Routledge, 2024)
29 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Laundering Black Rage: The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits (Routledge, 2024) examines the dilution and commodification of Blac...
In Conversation: Islamophobia, Race and Global Politics
27 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Dr. Ismail Patel sits down with Prof. Nazia Kazi to discuss her book “Islamophobia, Race and Global Politics” Learn more about yo...
Sabrina Strings, "The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance" (Beacon Press, 2024)
27 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
More men than ever are refusing loving partnerships and commitment, and instead seeking out “situationships.” When these men deign to articulate w...
Sandipto Dasgupta, "Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
26 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Anticolonial movements of the twentieth century generated audacious ideas of freedom. Following decolonization, the challenge was to give an instituti...
Megan Rae Blakely, "Technology, Intellectual Property Law, and Culture: The Tangification of Cultural Heritage" (Routledge, 2024)
25 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How can we protect diverse cultural expressions in an era of huge technological change? In Technology, Intellectual Property Law and Culture: The Tan...
Steve J. Shone, "Dangerous Anarchist Strikers" (Brill, 2023)
25 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dangerous Anarchist Strikers (Brill, 2023) explores the ideas of three largely forgotten radical women who participated in labor union strikes in Arg...
Kevin B. Smith, "The Jailer's Reckoning: How Mass Incarceration Is Damaging America" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)
24 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How does a Black man in Austin get sent to prison on a 70-year sentence for stealing a tuna sandwich, likely costing Texas taxpayers roughly a million...
Jennifer Denbow, "Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype" (Duke UP, 2024)
24 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype (Duke UP, 2024), Jennifer Denbow examines how the push toward technosci...
Infrastructure, Development, and Racialization
24 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
International development projects supported by governments of wealthy countries, international financial institutions, and influential NGOs like the ...
Steven Swarbrick and Jean-Thomas Tremblay, "Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction" (Northwestern UP, 2024)
23 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction (Northwestern UP, 2024), Steven Swarbrick and Jean-Thomas Tremblay enact a dialogue between cinema, philo...
Lauren D. Olsen, "Curricular Injustice: How U.S. Medical Schools Reproduce Inequalities" (Columbia UP, 2024)
23 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Medical schools have increasingly incorporated the humanities and social sciences into their teaching, seeking to make future physicians more empathet...
Jordan S. Carroll, "Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
22 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Fascists such as Richard Spencer interpret science fiction films and literature as saying only white men have the imagination required to invent a hig...
Serene Khader, "Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop" (Beacon Press, 2024)
21 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After over 175 years, the feminist movement, now in its fourth wave, is at risk of collapsing on its eroding foundation. In Faux Feminism: Why We Fa...
Carrie J. Preston, "Complicit Participation: The Liberal Audience for Theater of Racial Justice" (Oxford UP, 2024)
19 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this incisive critique of the ways performances of allyship can further entrench white privilege, author Carrie J. Preston analyses her own complic...
Nick Bernards, "Fictions of Financialization: Rethinking Speculation, Exploitation and Twenty-First Century Capitalism" (Pluto Press, 2024)
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since the global financial crisis that began in 2008, the role of the financial sector in contemporary capitalism has come under increasing scrutiny. ...
Andrew Stone Higgins, "Higher Education for All: Racial Inequality, Cold War Liberalism, and the California Master Plan" (UNC Press, 2023)
18 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education remains to this day the largest and most ambitious attempt to provide free, universal college edu...
Whitney Kemble, "Contested Spaces: A Critical History of Canadian Public Libraries As Neutral Places, 1960-2020" (Library Juice Press, 2024)
15 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Contested Spaces: A Critical History of Canadian Public Libraries As Neutral Places, 1960-2020 (Library Juice Press, 2024) is the first comprehensive...
Laure Astourian, "The Ethnographic Optic: Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and the Turn Inward in 1960s French Cinema" (Indiana UP, 2024)
14 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Ethnographic Optic: Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and the Turn Inward in 1960s French Cinema (Indiana UP, 2024) traces the surprising ...
Anthony Grasso, "Dual Justice: America's Divergent Approaches to Street and Corporate Crime" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
11 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The United States incarcerates its citizens for property crime, drug use, and violent crime at a rate that exceeds any other developed nation – and ...
Non-literary Fiction
09 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of High Theory, Esther Gabara talks with us about Non-Literary Fiction, that is, works of fiction that belong to the world of contempo...
Daniela Berghahn, "Exotic Cinema: Encounters with Cultural Difference in Contemporary Transnational Film" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
09 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Daniela Berghahn's award-winning monograph Exotic Cinema: Encounters with Cultural Difference in Contemporary Transnational Film (Edinburgh UP, 2023...
Amín Pérez, "Bourdieu and Sayad Against Empire: Forging Sociology in Anticolonial Struggle" (Polity Press, 2023)
09 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How did the Algerian war of independence shape contemporary sociology? In Bourdieu and Sayad Against Empire: Forging Sociology in Anticolonial Strugg...
Doyle D. Calhoun, "The Suicide Archive: Reading Resistance in the Wake of French Empire" (Duke UP, 2024)
06 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A note about content: This episode involves discussion of suicide, specifically in the contexts of slavery, colonization and empire. Please use your d...
Anne M. Whitesell, "Living Off the Government?: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Welfare" (NYU Press, 2024)
03 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Who deserves public assistance from the government? This age-old question has been revived by policymakers, pundits, and activists following the massi...
Adam Hanieh, "Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market" (Verso, 2024)
02 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Oil is everywhere. It’s in our cars, it’s in the fertilizer used to grow our food, and it’s in the plastics used to produce and transport our co...
Robert A. Schneider, "The Return of Resentment: The Rise and Decline and Rise Again of a Political Emotion" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
02 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The term “resentment,” often casually paired with words like “hatred,” “rage,” and “fear,” has dominated US news analysis since Novemb...
Kristina Kolbe, "The Sound of Difference: Race, Class and the Politics of 'Diversity' in Classical Music" (Manchester UP, 2024)
02 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What happens when the elitist space of 'Western' classical music seeks to diversify itself? And what are the social effects worked through diversity d...
Ghosts In Our Fields
01 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
High Theory returns with a series of haunting concepts, places, and figures from our former guests. We asked folks to call in with something spookwort...
Angel Daniel Matos, "The Reparative Impulse of Queer Young Adult Literature" (Routledge, 2024)
01 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Reparative Impulse of Queer Young Adult Literature (Routledge, 2024) is a provocative meditation on emotion, mood, history, and futurism in the ...
Lennard J. Davis, "Poor Things: How Those with Money Depict Those Without It" (Duke UP, 2024)
30 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For generations most of the canonical works that detail the lives of poor people have been created by rich or middle-class writers like Charles Dicken...
Anuradha Sajjanhar, "The New Experts: Populist Elites and Technocratic Promises in Modi's India" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
30 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How are technocratic experts supporting populist politics? In The New Experts Populist Elites and Technocratic Promises in Modi’s India (Cambridge...
Michael Hardt, "The Subversive Seventies" (Oxford UP, 2023)
29 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A thought-provoking reconsideration of how the revolutionary movements of the 1970s set the mold for today's activism. The 1970s was a decade of "subv...
Kostas Kampourakis, "Ancestry Reimagined: Dismantling the Myth of Genetic Ethnicities" (Oxford UP, 2023)
27 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Recent social and political psychological research indicates that increased access to ancestry testing has strengthened the notion of genetic essentia...
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...
Matilde Masso, "Contested Money: Towards a New Social Contract" (Routledge, 2023)
25 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Discussing money is always accompanied by controversy as well as enchantment. Debating what money is and how it performs its main functions in the con...
Omer Aijazi, "Atmospheric Violence: Disaster and Repair in Kashmir" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
25 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Atmospheric Violence: Disaster and Repair in Kashmir (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) grapples with the afterlife of environmental disasters and armed co...
Deborah Valenze, "The Invention of Scarcity: Malthus and the Margins of History" (Yale UP, 2023)
24 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A radical new reading of eighteenth-century British theorist Thomas Robert Malthus, which recovers diverse ideas about subsistence production and envi...
The End of White Politics: How to Heal Our Liberal Divide
24 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In early June 2020, Christina Gessler and Zerlina Maxwell met remotely to discuss Maxwell’s soon-to-be-released book. This episode is an encore pres...
Steven Levitsky, "Tyranny of the Minority: How to Reverse an Authoritarian Turn, and Forge a Democracy for All" (Crown, 2024)
22 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and starts, toward a multiracial democracy, something few societies have ever done. ...
Adam Greenfield, "Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire" (Verso, 2024)
22 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire (Verso, 2024), Adam Greenfield presents a compelling vision for collective resilience in ...
Vanessa Christina Wills, "Marx's Ethical Vision" (Oxford UP, 2024)
21 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Does Marx have a coherent ethical vision? How does that square with his sometimes-scathing dismissal of morality? What does his critique of capital ha...
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...
Psychoanalytic Defense Mechanisms in James Baldwin’s "Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone"
16 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This podcast describes a short history of a man who did something we’ve lost in America. That man was James Baldwin who insisted on telling the trut...
Jamie Furlong and Will Jennings, "The Changing Electoral Map of England and Wales" (Oxford UP, 2024)
15 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is the connection between where people live and how they vote? In The Changing Electoral Map of England and Wales (Oxford UP, 2024), Jamie Fur...
Sharad Chari, "Apartheid Remains" (Duke UP, 2024)
13 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over the course of the 20th century, the South African state attempted to construct a “White Man’s Country” on the African continent using the b...
Theo Williams, "Making the Revolution Global: Black Radicalism and the British Socialist Movement before Decolonisation" (Verso, 2022)
13 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Theo Williams’ Making the Revolution Global: Black Radicalism and the British Socialist Movement before Decolonisation (Verso, 2022) shows how bla...
Eunsong Kim, "The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property" (Duke UP, 2024)
12 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property (Duke University Press, 2024), Eunsong Kim traces how racial capitalism and...
Chris Cutrone, "Marxism and Politics: Essays on Critical Theory 2006-2024" (Sublation Media, 2024)
12 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Capitalism is a revolutionary situation of the last stage of pre-history, and the potential and possibility for freedom, or else it is just what Hegel...
Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor, "Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future" (The New Press, 2024)
09 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A clarion call for justice in the quest for clean energy California’s Salton Sea region is home to some of the worst environmental health conditions...
Ryan Emanuel, "On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice" (UNC Press, 2024)
09 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Despite centuries of colonialism, Indigenous peoples still occupy parts of their ancestral homelands in what is now Eastern North Carolina--a patchwor...
Frank R. Baumgartner, “Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us about Policing and Race” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
08 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We recently marked the 50th Anniversary of Terry vs. Ohio, the US Supreme Court case that dramatically expanded the scope under which agents of the st...
A Deep Dive on Karl Marx's "Capital"
07 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Over 150 years ago, Marx published the first volume of Capital, a systematic and voluminous account of capitalism, from the economic bedrock all the ...
Natalie Wall, "Black Expression and White Generosity: A Theoretical Framework of Race" (Emerald Publishing, 2024)
07 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Black Expression and White Generosity: A Theoretical Framework of Race (Emerald Publishing, 2024), Dr. Natalie Wall takes readers on a journey th...
Alan F. Blackwell, "Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI" (MIT Press, 2024)
06 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why the world needs less AI and better programming languages. Decades ago, we believed that robots and computers would take over all the boring jobs a...
Kristina Kolbe, "The Sound of Difference: Race, Class and the Politics of 'Diversity' in Classical Music" (Manchester UP, 2024)
05 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is the future of classical music? In The Sound of Difference: Race, Class and the Politics of 'Diversity' in Classical Music (Manchester UP, 20...
Michael J. Thompson, "Descent of the Dialectic: Phronetic Criticism in an Age of Nihilism" (Routledge, 2024)
05 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Descent of the Dialectic: Phronetic Criticism in an Age of Nihilism (Routledge, 2024), Michael J. Thompson reconstructs the concept and practic...
Jon Michaels and David Noll, "Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy" (Atria/One Signal, 2024)
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Law professors Jon Michaels and David Noll use their expertise to expose how state-supported forms of vigilantism are being deployed by MAGA Republica...
Camille Owens, "Like Children: Black Prodigy and the Measure of the Human in America" (NYU Press, 2024)
03 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Like Children: Black Prodigy and the Measure of the Human in America (NYU Press, 2024) argues that the child has been the key figure giving measure...
Brianna Nofil, "The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration" (Princeton UP, 2024)
02 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today, U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains an average of 37,000 migrants each night. To do so, they rely on, and pay for, the use of ...
Julia Caterina Hartley, "Iran and French Orientalism: Persia in the Literary Culture of Nineteenth-Century France" (Bloomsbury. 2023)
02 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Julia Caterina Hartley about Iran and French Orientalism: Persia in the Literary Culture of Nineteenth-Century France (Bloomsbur...
Mary Bridges, "Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a Superpower" (Princeton UP, 2024)
01 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
There was nothing inevitable or natural about the rise of US finance capitalism in the early twentieth century. In Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers...
Inés Valdez, "Democracy and Empire: Labor, Nature, and the Reproduction of Capitalism" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
29 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In scholarly and popular discourse, popular sovereignty and self-determination are typically conceived of as the antitheses of imperialism, while hist...
Jack A. Goldstone, "Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2023)
27 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In their pursuit of social justice, revolutionaries have taken on the assembled might of monarchies, empires, and dictatorships. They have often, thou...
Jeff Schuhrke, "Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of U.S. Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade" (Verso, 2024)
27 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How the CIA used American unions to undermine workers at home and subvert democracy abroad. Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of U.S. Labor’s Glo...
Caterina Fugazzola, "Words Like Water: Queer Mobilization and Social Change in China" (Temple UP, 2023)
26 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After China officially “decriminalized” same-sex behavior in 1997, both the visibility and public acceptance of tongzhi, an inclusive identity te...
Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman, "Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite" (Harvard UP, 2024)
25 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Who runs Britain? In Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite (Harvard UP, 2024), Aaron Reeves, and Sam Friedman, both Professo...
Andrew W. Kahrl, "The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
25 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America (U Chicago Press, 2024), Andrew W. Kahrl uncovers the history of in...
Ilias Alami and Adam D. Dixon, "The Spectre of State Capitalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)
22 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After close to three decades of the hegemony of free market ideas, the state has made a big comeback as an economic actor since the 2008 financial cri...
Sarah Lewis, "The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America" (Harvard UP, 2024)
21 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In a masterpiece of historical detective work, Sarah Lewis exposes one of the most damaging lies in American history. There was a time when Americans ...
Shane Burley and Ben Lorber, "Safety through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism" (Melville House, 2024)
21 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Antisemitism is on the rise today. From synagogue shootings by white nationalists, to right-wing politicians and media figures pushing George Soros co...
Lucy Weir, "Performance, Masculinity, and Self-Injury" (Routledge, 2024)
21 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Can self-harm be art? In Performance, Masculinity, and Self-Injury (Routledge, 2024), Lucy Weir, a Reader in History of Art at the University of E...
Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s book is: Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions (Columbia UP, 2024), by Ernesto Castaneda and Carina Cione, which is a p...
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, "Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde" (FSG, 2024)
19 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-ce...