New Books in Critical Theory

Philip Rathgeb, "How the Radical Right Has Changed Capitalism and Welfare in Europe and the USA" (Oxford UP, 2024)

28 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Radical right parties are no longer political challengers on the fringes of party systems; they have become part of the political mainstream across th...

Michael Sonenscher, "After Kant: The Romans, the Germans, and the Moderns in the History of Political Thought" (Princeton UP, 2023)

26 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this wide-ranging work, Michael Sonenscher traces the origins of modern political thought and ideologies to a question, raised by Immanuel Kant, ab...

Richard Bourke, "Hegel’s World Revolutions" (Princeton UP, 2023)

25 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

G.W.F. Hegel was widely seen as the greatest philosopher of his age. Ever since, his work has shaped debates about issues as varied as religion, aesth...

Andrew Smith, "Class and the Uses of Poetry: Symbolic Enclosures" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)

24 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Sociologists have had surprisingly little to say about poetry as a topic while sometimes also making grandiose claims that sociology is/should be like...

Michael Tondre, "Oil" (Bloomsbury, 2024)

23 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Black gold. Liquid sunlight. Texas tea. Oil remains the ur-commodity of our global era, having been distilled from ancient algae and marine life to tu...

Ryan Tan Wander, "Settler Tenses: Queer Time and Literatures of the American West" (Texas Tech UP, 2024)

23 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In today’s cultural and political climate of relative LGBTQ+ inclusion, Settler Tenses: Queer Time and Literatures of the American West (Texas Tec...

August H. Nimtz and Kyle A. Edwards, "The Communist and the Revolutionary Liberal in the Second American Revolution" (Brill, 2024)

17 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The last decade has seen a resurgence of interest and urgency to questions of racial oppression and emancipation. We’ve now had about a decade of ac...

Alva Gotby, "Feeling at Home: Transforming the Politics of Housing" (Verso, 2025)

16 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Housing is more than bricks and mortar. The home is where our hopes and dreams play out, and it lies at the heart of our lives. This is where we rest,...

Arthur Bradley, "Staging Sovereignty: Theory, Theater, Thaumaturgy" (Columbia UP, 2024)

15 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Staging Sovereignty: Theory, Theater, Thaumaturgy (Columbia University Press, 2024) explores the relationship between theater and sovereignty in mode...

James Malazita, "Enacting Platforms: Feminist Technoscience and the Unreal Engine" (MIT Press, 2024)

12 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

An analysis of the game engine Unreal through feminist, race, and queer theories of technology and media, as well as a critique of the platform studie...

Cordelia Fine, "Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society" (Norton, 2018)

11 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Many people believe that, at its core, biological sex is a fundamental, diverging force in human development. According to this overly familiar story,...

Matthew McManus, "The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism" (Routledge, 2024)

11 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism (Routledge, 2024), McManus presents a comprehensive guide to the liberal socialist tradition, stretchi...

Jennifer Greenburg, "At War with Women: Military Humanitarianism and Imperial Feminism in an Era of Permanent War" (Cornell UP, 2023)

11 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

At War with Women: Military Humanitarianism and Imperial Feminism in an Era of Permanent War (Cornell University Press, 2023) by Jennifer Greenburg r...

Gabriele Badano and Alasia Nuti, "Politicizing Political Liberalism: On the Containment of Illiberal and Antidemocratic Views" (Oxford UP, 2024)

09 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How should broadly liberal democratic societies stop illiberal and antidemocratic views from gaining influence while honouring liberal democratic valu...

In Conversation: Epistemology, Critical Race Theory and Critical Muslim Studies

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Uzma Jamil is speaking to Stephen Sheehi on epistemology, critical race theory and critical Muslim studies. Learn more about your ad ...

Negative Life

08 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Steven Swarbrick and Jean-Thomas Tremblay talk about negative life, which names the misalignment of individual and species survival, as a condition of...

Adam Elliott-Cooper, "Black Resistance to British Policing" (Manchester UP, 2021)

07 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As police racism unsettles Britain's tolerant self-image, Black Resistance to British Policing (Manchester UP, 2021) details the activism that made ...

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

07 Jan 2025

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: ...

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

07 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

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

Peter Mandler, "The Crisis of the Meritocracy: Britain's Transition to Mass Education Since the Second World War" (Oxford UP, 2020)

06 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How did public demand shape education in the 20th century? In The Crisis of the Meritocracy: Britain’s Transition to Mass Education since the Secon...

Todd McGowan, "Universality and Identity Politics" (Columbia UP, 2020)

04 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The great political ideas and movements of the modern world were founded on a promise of universal emancipation. But in recent decades, much of the Le...

Stuart Elden, "The Early Foucault" (Polity Press, 2021)

03 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

What were the key ideas and influences on Michel Foucault’s early career? In The Early Foucault (Polity Press, 2021), Stuart Elden, Professor of...

Camille Robcis, "Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France" (U Chicago Press, 2021)

02 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode, J.J. Mull interviews scholar and historian Camille Robcis. In her most recent book, Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical...

I. Augustus Durham, "Stay Black and Die: On Melancholy and Genius" (Duke UP, 2023)

02 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In Stay Black and Die: On Melancholy and Genius (Duke UP, 2023), I. Augustus Durham examines melancholy and genius in black culture, letters, and me...

In Conversation: The Antinomies of Afropessimism

01 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, S. Sayyid talks with Barnor Hesse (Northwestern University) on the Antimonies of Afropessimism. Professor Barnor Hesse teaches in the...

Frederick Crews, "Freud: The Making of an Illusion" (Picador, 2018)

31 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The figure of Sigmund Freud has captivated the Western imagination like few others. One hundred and twenty-five years after the publication of Studies...

Loneliness

30 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Loneliness is what results when a person is cut off from the living world. Ecological loneliness, in particular, is reciprocal - what we mete out alwa...

Harvey J. Kaye, "The British Marxist Historians" (Zero Book, 2022)

29 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The British Marxist Historians, originally published in 1995, remains the first and most complete study of the founders of one of the most influentia...

Emily Herring, "Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People" (Basic Books, 2024)

29 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Herald of a Restless World: How Henri Bergson Brought Philosophy to the People (Basic Books, 2024) is the first English-language biography of Henri B...

Peter Salmon, "An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida" (Verso, 2020)

28 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Who is Jacques Derrida? For some, he is the originator of a relativist philosophy responsible for the contemporary crisis of truth. For the far right,...

Ben Highmore, "Playgrounds: The Experimental Years" (Reaktion, 2024)

27 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

After World War II, a new kind of playground emerged in Northern Europe and North America. Rather than slides, swings, and roundabouts, these new play...

Rebecca Ball, "A Hundred English Working-Class Lives, 1900-1945" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024)

26 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How do ordinary people write the stories of their lives? In A Hundred English Working-Class Lives, 1900-1945 (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024), Rebecca Ba...

Peter Singer, "Consider the Turkey" (Princeton UP, 2024)

26 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A turkey is the centerpiece of countless Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. Yet most of us know almost nothing about today’s specially bred, commer...

Jennifer C. Nash, "How We Write Now: Living with Black Feminist Theory" (Duke UP, 2024)

25 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In How We Write Now: Living with Black Feminist Theory (Duke UP, 2024), Jennifer C. Nash examines how Black feminists use beautiful writing to allow...

Larry S. Temkin, "Being Good in a World of Need" (Oxford UP, 2022)

25 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In a world filled with both enormous wealth and pockets of great devastation, how should the well-off respond to the world's needy? This is the urgent...

Jess A. Goldberg, "Abolition Time: Grammars of Law, Poetics of Justice" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)

24 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

How can Black Atlantic literature challenge conventions and redefine literary scholarship? Abolition Time: Grammars of Law, Poetics of Justice (U Min...

Whiteness, Accents, and Children's Media

24 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of the Language on the Move podcast, Brynn Quick speaks with Dr. Laura Smith-Khan about language and accents in children’s med...

Nick Couldry, "The Space of the World: Can Human Solidarity Survive Social Media and What If It Can't?" (Polity, 2024)

23 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Is human solidarity achievable in a world dominated by continuous digital connectivity and commercially managed platforms? And what if it’s not? Pro...

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...