New Books in Critical Theory
Episodes
Sharrona Pearl, "Mask" (Bloombury, 2024)
14 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From the theatre mask and masquerade to the masked criminal and the rise of facial recognition software, masks have long performed as an instrument fo...
Tana Jean Welch, "Advancing Medical Posthumanism Through Twenty-First Century American Poetry" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024)
10 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Advancing Medical Posthumanism Through Twenty-First Century American Poetry (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024) places contemporary poetics in dialogue with p...
Charles William Johns, "Hegel and Speculative Realism" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)
10 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Hegel and Speculative Realism (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023) has two main objectives. Firstly, to assess the speculative realist formulations of the rea...
Bishnupriya Ghosh, "The Virus Touch: Theorizing Epidemic Media" (Duke UP, 2023)
10 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Virus Touch: Theorizing Epidemic Media (Duke UP. 2023), Bishnupriya Ghosh argues that media are central to understanding emergent relations ...
Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, "Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice" (FSG, 2021)
10 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Raj Patel, the renowned political economist and New York Times bestselling author of The Value of Nothing, teams up with the physician Rupa Marya t...
Shardé M. Davis, "Being Black in the Ivory: Truth-Telling about Racism in Higher Education" (UNC Press, 2024)
09 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When Sharde M. Davis turned to social media during the summer of racial reckoning in 2020, she meant only to share how racism against Black people aff...
Adele Oliver, "Deeping It: Colonialism, Culture & Criminalisation of UK Drill" (404 Ink, 2023)
07 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Deeping It: Colonialism, Culture & Criminalisation of UK Drill (404 Ink, 2023) by Adèle Oliver shines a critical light on UK drill and its fraught r...
Ellie Tomsett, "Stand-up Comedy and Contemporary Feminisms: Sexism, Stereotypes and Structural Inequalities" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
06 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How is comedy hostile to women? In Stand-up Comedy and Contemporary Feminisms: Sexism, Stereotypes and Structural Inequalities (Bloomsbury, 2023), ...
Tina Sikka, "Health Apps, Genetic Diets and Superfoods: When Biopolitics Meets Neoliberalism" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
05 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Health Apps, Genetic Diets and Superfoods: When Biopolitics Meets Neoliberalism (Bloomsbury, 2023) critically examines contemporary health and wellne...
Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, "The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market" (Bloomsbury. 2023)
05 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In their bestselling book Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway revealed the origins of climate change denial. Now, in The Big Myth: ...
Stefan Aune, "Indian Wars Everywhere: Colonial Violence and the Shadow Doctrines of Empire" (U California Press, 2023)
04 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From Black Hawk helicopters to the exclamation "Geronimo" used by paratroopers jumping from airplanes, words and images referring to Indians have been...
Naomi Cahn, et al., "Fair Shake: Women and the Fight to Build a Just Economy" (Simon & Schuster, 2023)
03 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A stirring, comprehensive look at the state of women in the workforce--why women's progress has stalled, how our economy fosters unproductive competit...
Dominic Boyer, "No More Fossils" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)
03 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Our hosts, Devin Griffiths and Deanna Kreisel, sat down with Dominic Boyer to talk about his new book, No More Fossils, which appeared just last yea...
Erin L. Durban, "The Sexual Politics of Empire: Postcolonial Homophobia in Haiti" (U Illinois Press, 2023)
02 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Evangelical Christians and members of the global LGBTQI human rights movement have vied for influence in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake. Each side ac...
Huaping Lu-Adler, "Kant, Race, and Racism: Views from Somewhere" (Oxford UP, 2023)
01 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kant scholars have paid relatively little attention to his raciology. They assume that his racism, as personal prejudice, can be disentangled from his...
Jeanelle K. Hope and Bill V. Mullen, "The Black Antifascist Tradition: Fighting Back from Anti-Lynching to Abolition" (Haymarket Books, 2024)
29 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The story of the fight against fascism across the African diaspora, revealing that Black antifascism has always been vital to global freedom struggles...
Michael Ortiz, "Anti-Colonialism and the Crises of Interwar Fascism" (Bloombury, 2023)
27 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is fascism? Is it an anomaly in the history of modern Europe? Or its culmination? In Anti-Colonialism and the Crises of Interwar Fascism (Bloom...
Jeffrey R. Di Leo, "Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: An Overview" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
27 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The most exhaustive mapping of contemporary literary theory to date, Jeffrey R. Di Leo's book Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: An Overview ...
Anita R. Gohdes, "Repression in the Digital Age: Surveillance, Censorship, and the Dynamics of State Violence" (Oxford UP, 2023)
26 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Global adoption of the Internet has exploded, yet we are only beginning to understand the Internet's profound political consequences. Authoritarian st...
Colette Cann and Eric Demeulenaere, "The Activist Academic: Engaged Scholarship for Resistance, Hope and Social Change" (Myers Education Press, 2020)
24 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How can traditional academic scholarship be disrupted by activist academics? How can we make space for those who are underrepresented and historically...
Marc-William Palen, "Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World" (Princeton UP, 2024)
23 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A new economic history which uncovers the forgotten left-wing, anti-imperial, pacifist origins of economic cosmopolitanism and free trade from the mid...
Isaac Deutscher, "Lenin's Childhood" (Verso, 2024)
20 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On January 21, 1924 and at the age of 53, Vladimir Lenin passed away. We’ve now had a century of a world without him, but also a century of a world ...
Dinesh Wadiwel, "Animals and Capital" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
19 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the 20th century, capitalist animal agriculture emerged with a twofold mission: to ruthlessly exploit animals for their labour time and enlarge hum...
Nancy Folbre, "The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems: An Intersectional Political Economy" (Verso, 2021)
18 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nancy Folbre’s The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems: An Intersectional Political Economy (Verso, 2021) asks the questions of why and unde...
Anna Kornbluh, "Immediacy: Or, The Style of Too Late Capitalism" (Verso, 2024)
17 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What is the status of art and culture in a world dominated by apps, algorithms, and influencers? Anna Kornbluh’s newest book Immediacy, Or the Styl...
Lisa Messeri, "In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles" (Duke UP, 2024)
16 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the mid-2010s, a passionate community of Los Angeles-based storytellers, media artists, and tech innovators formed around virtual reality (VR), bel...
Ellen E. Jones, "Screen Deep: How Film and TV Can Solve Racism and Save the World" (Faber and Faber, 2024)
16 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why does race matter in film and TV? In Screen Deep: How Film and TV Can Solve Racism and Save the World (Faber and Faber, 2024), Ellen E. Jones, a...
Ali Bhagat, "Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism" (Cornell UP, 2024)
14 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism (Cornell UP, 2024) answers a straightforward question: how are refugees governed ...
Gavin Butt, "No Machos Or Pop Stars: When the Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk" (Duke UP, 2022)
13 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How do art schools influence music? In No Machos or Pop Stars: When the Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk (Duke UP, 2022), Gavin Butt, a Professor of ...
Daniel Tutt, "How to Read Like a Parasite: Why the Left Got High on Nietzsche" (Repeater, 2024)
12 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A how-to guide for the left on how to overcome Nietzsche's divisive and damaging influence. How to Read Like a Parasite: Why the Left Got High on N...
Surya Parekh, "Black Enlightenment" (Duke UP, 2023)
12 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Black Enlightenment (Duke UP, 2023), Surya Parekh reimagines the Enlightenment from the position of the Black subject. Parekh examines the works...
Xin Gu, "Cultural Work and Creative Subjectivity: Recentralising the Artist Critique and Social Networks in the Cultural Industries" (Routledge, 2023)
11 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How can artists survive today? In Cultural Work and Creative Subjectivity: Recentralising the Artist Critique and Social Networks in the Cultural Ind...
Laura Huttunen and Gerhild Perl, "An Anthropology of Disappearance: Politics, Intimacies and Alternative Ways of Knowing" (Berghahn Books, 2023)
10 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
All over the world, people disappear from their families, communities and the state’s bureaucratic gaze, as victims of oppressive regimes or while m...
Samantha Majic, "Lights, Camera, Feminism?: Celebrities and Anti-Trafficking Politics" (U California Press, 2023)
10 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Recent years have brought an upsurge in celebrity activism. Not a day goes by without an actor or musician taking to a stage, a podium or the internet...
Jacqueline Kennelly, "Burnt by Democracy: Youth, Inequality, and the Erosion of Civic Life" (U Toronto Press, 2023)
09 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Burnt by Democracy: Youth, Inequality, and the Erosion of Civic Life (University of Toronto Press, 2023) by Dr. Jacqueline Kennelly traces the politi...
The Reeducation of Race with Sonali Thakkar (JP)
07 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
NYU professor Sonali Thakkar’s brilliant first book, The Reeducation of Race: Jewishness and the Politics of Antiracism in Postcolonial Thought (...
Priyanka Basu, "The Poet’s Song: ‘Folk’ and its Cultural Politics in South Asia" (Routledge, 2023)
06 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How can culture be authentic in the modern world? In The Poet's Song: Folk and its Cultural Politics in South Asia (Rouitledge, 2023), Dr Priyanka ...
Baidik Bhattacharya, "Colonialism, World Literature, and the Making of the Modern Culture of Letters" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
05 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In a radical and ambitious reconceptualization of the field, Colonialism, World Literature, and the Making of the Modern Culture of Letters (Cambrid...
Derron Wallace, "The Culture Trap: Ethnic Expectations and Unequal Schooling for Black Youth" (Oxford UP, 2023)
04 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How does race matter in schools? In The Culture Trap: Ethnic Expectations and Unequal Schooling for Black Youth (Oxford UP, 2023), Derron Wallace, ...
Francesca Sobande, "Big Brands Are Watching You: Marketing Social Justice and Digital Culture" (U California Press, 2024)
03 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Can brands really support positive social change? In Big Brands are Watching You: Marketing Social Justice and Digital Culture (U California Press, ...
Poppy Wilde, "Posthuman Gaming: Avatars, Gamers, and Entangled Subjectivities" (Routledge, 2023)
02 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Posthuman Gaming: Avatars, Gamers, and Entangled Subjectivities (Routledge, 2023) explores the relationship between avatar and gamer in the massivel...
Alissa Quart and David Wallis, "Going for Broke: Living on the Edge in the World's Richest Country" (Haymarket, 2023)
28 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Going for Broke, edited by Alissa Quart, Executive Director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, and David Wallis, former Managing Director of ...
Sara J. Grossman, "Immeasurable Weather: Meteorological Data and Settler Colonialism from 1820 to Hurricane Sandy" (Duke UP, 2023)
28 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Immeasurable Weather: Meteorological Data and Settler Colonialism from 1820 to Hurricane Sandy (Duke UP, 2023), Sara J. Grossman explores how env...
Gerald Epstein, "Busting the Bankers' Club: Finance for the Rest of Us" (U California Press, 2024)
28 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bankers brought the global economic system to its knees in 2007 and nearly did the same in 2020. Both times, the US government bailed out the banks an...
Alessandro Gerosa, "The Hipster Economy: Taste and Authenticity in Late Modern Capitalism (UCL Press, 2024)
27 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today, being authentic has become an aspiration and an imperative. The notion of authenticity shapes the consumption habits of individuals in the most...
Horace J. Maxile, Jr. and Kristen M. Turner, "Race and Gender in the Western Music History Survey: A Teacher's Guide" (Routledge, 2022)
27 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Race and Gender in the Western Music History Survey: A Teacher’s Guide provides concrete information and approaches that will help instructors incl...
Yanis Varoufakis, "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism" (Melville House, 2023)
26 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (Melville House, 2023), Yanis Varoufakis argues that capitalism is dead and a new economic era has begun....
Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu, "Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam" (Duke UP, 2021)
26 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Through a creative focus on skin, in Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam (Duke UP, 2021), Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu examines th...
Imani D. Owens, "Turn the World Upside Down: Empire and Unruly Forms of Black Folk Culture in the U.S. and Caribbean" (Columbia UP, 2023)
23 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the first half of the twentieth century, Black hemispheric culture grappled with the legacies of colonialism, U.S. empire, and Jim Crow. As writers...
Katharina Pistor, "The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality" (Princeton UP, 2019)
22 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
"Most lawyers, most actors, most soldiers and sailors, most athletes, most doctors, and most diplomats feel a certain solidarity in the face of outsid...
Neil Lee, "Innovation for the Masses: How to Share the Benefits of the High-Tech Economy" (U California Press, 2024)
21 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How can we build a more equal economy? In Innovation for the Masses: How to Share the Benefits of the High-Tech Economy (U California Press, 2024), ...
Todd McGowan, "Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution" (Columbia UP, 2019)
19 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An Interview with Todd McGowan about his recent Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution (Columbia University Press, 2019). The ...
Hamza Hamouchene and Katie Sandwell, "Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region" (Pluto Press, 2023)
16 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Just in Time - the urgent need for a just transition in the Arab region. The newly published book Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate ...
Criticism
15 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode of High Theory, Matt Seybold tells us about Criticism, the glue that holds the bricks of culture together. Cultural critics are a nece...
Kareem Khubchandani, "Decolonize Drag" (OR Books, 2023)
14 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kareem Khubchandani’s book Decolonize Drag (OR Books, 2024) explores the intricate interplay among gender, colonialism, and drag performance. It i...
Josh Fernandez, "The Hands That Crafted the Bomb: The Making of a Lifelong Antifascist" (PM Press, 2024)
13 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today I talked to Josh Fernandez about his new memoir The Hands That Crafted the Bomb: The Making of a Lifelong Antifascist (PM Press, 2024). Josh F...
James L. Gibson and Michael J. Nelson, "Judging Inequality: State Supreme Courts and the Inequality Crisis" (Russell Sage, 2021)
12 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Soaring levels of political, legal, economic, and social inequality have been documented by social scientists – but the public conversation and scho...
Lehasa Moloi, "Developing Africa?: New Horizons with Afrocentricity" (Anthem Press, 2024)
12 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Developing Africa? New Horizons with Afrocentricity (Anthem Press, 2024) is written for those who are interested in theoretical debates as they rel...
Devin Griffiths and Deanna Kreisel, "After Darwin: Literature, Theory, and Criticism in the Twenty-First Century" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
10 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Creative storytelling is the beating heart of Darwin's science. All of Darwin's writings drew on information gleaned from a worldwide network of scien...
Nick Romeo, "The Alternative: How to Build a Just Economy" (PublicAffairs, 2024)
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Winners Take All meets Nickel and Dimed: a provocative debunking of accepted wisdom, providing the pathway to a sustainable, survivable economy. Con...
Calvin John Smiley, "Purgatory Citizenship: Reentry, Race, and Abolition" (U California Press, 2023)
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Purgatory Citizenship: Reentry, Race, and Abolition (University of California Press, 2023), Calvin John Smiley explores the lives of people who w...
Steven High, "Deindustrializing Montreal: Entangled Histories of Race, Residence, and Class" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2022)
07 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Point Saint-Charles, a historically white working-class neighborhood with a strong Irish and French presence, and Little Burgundy, a multiracial neigh...
Courtney Brannon Donoghue, "The Value Gap: Female-Driven Films from Pitch to Premiere" (U Texas Press, 2023)
04 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Conversations about gender equity in the workplace accelerated in the 2010s, with debates inside Hollywood specifically pointing to broader systemic p...
Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, "The Will to Predict: Orchestrating the Future Through Science" (Cornell UP, 2023)
04 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Can we predict the future? In The Will to Predict: Orchestrating the Future Through Science (Cornell UP, 2023), Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, an Associ...
George Fisher, "Beware Euphoria: The Moral Roots and Racial Myths of America's War on Drugs" (Oxford UP, 2024)
03 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
George Fisher, the Judge John Crown Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, just released his new book Beware Euphoria: The Moral Roots and Racial M...
Chrystin Ondersma, "Dignity Not Debt: An Abolitionist Approach to Economic Justice" (U California Press, 2024)
03 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
American households have a debt problem. The problem is not, as often claimed, that Americans recklessly take on too much debt. The problem is that US...
Black Women, Ivory Tower: Revealing the Lies of White Supremacy in American Education
01 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s book is: Black Women, Ivory Tower: Revealing the Lies of White Supremacy in American Education (Broadleaf Books, 2024), by Dr. Jasmine L. ...
Alberto Toscano, "Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis" (Verso, 2023)
31 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In a world shaken by ecological, economic and political crises, the forces of authoritarianism and reaction seem to have the upper hand. How should we...
David M. Henkin, "The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms that Made Us who We are" (Yale UP, 2021)
29 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Week: A History of the Unnatural Rhythms that Made Us who We are (Yale UP, 2021) is an investigation into the evolution of the seven-day week and...
Damien Sojoyner, "Against the Carceral Archive: The Art of Black Liberatory Practice" (Fordham UP, 2023)
28 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Against the Carceral Archive: The Art of Black Liberatory Practice (Fordham UP, 2023) is a meditation upon what author Damien M. Sojoyner calls the “...
Ankhi Mukherjee and Ato Quayson, "Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
28 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
George Floyd's death on May 25th 2020 marked a watershed in reactions to anti-Black racism in the United States and elsewhere. Intense demonstrations ...
Gregor Gall, "Mick Lynch: The Making of a Working-Class Hero " (Manchester UP, 2024)
27 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the summer of 2022, the little-known leader of a small union became a ‘working-class hero’. Facing down media pundits who thought they could wa...
Caleb Wellum, "Energizing Neoliberalism: The 1970s Energy Crisis and the Making of Modern America" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
26 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How the 1970s energy crisis facilitated a neoliberal shift in US political culture. In Energizing Neoliberalism: The 1970s Energy Crisis and the Maki...
Beth Driscoll and Claire Squires, "The Frankfurt Kabuff Critical Edition" (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2023)
24 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How do fiction and research intersect? In The Frankfurt Kabuff Critical Edition (Wilfrid Laurier University Press 2023), Beth Driscoll, an Associa...
Guido Parietti, "On the Concept of Power: Possibility, Necessity, Politics" (Oxford UP, 2022)
22 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In On the Concept of Power: Possibility, Necessity, Politics (Oxford UP, 2022), Guido Parietti proposes a more proper definition of power--as the ...
On Zionism and the Left: A Discussion with Author and Cultural Critic Susie Linfield
22 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“How has it come to this? How has ‘Zionist’…become the dirtiest word to the international Left?” Susie Linfield poses that ripe question at ...
Kareem R. Muhammad, "The Fight for Black Empowerment in the USA: America’s Last Hope" (Routledge, 2023)
22 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Kareem Muhammad has a new book that focuses on the role of Black voters in the United States – specifically in their power as participants in de...
Black and Queer on Campus
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Today’s book is: Black and Queer on Campus (NYU Press, 2023) by Michael P. Jeffries, which offers an inside look at what life is like for LGBTQ c...
Scott Gac, "Born in Blood: Violence and the Making of America" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Scott Gac's Born in Blood: Violence and the Making of America (Cambridge UP, 2023) investigates one of history's most violent undertakings: The Unit...
Aimee Loiselle, "Beyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class" (UNC Press, 2023)
17 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the late 1970s, Hollywood producers took the published biography of Crystal Lee Sutton, a white southern textile worker, and transformed it into a ...
Paul Gowder, "The Networked Leviathan: For Democratic Platforms" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
17 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Governments and consumers expect internet platform companies to regulate their users to prevent fraud, stop misinformation, and avoid violence. Yet, s...
Alexandra Filindra, "Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
15 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The United States has more guns than people and more gun violence than any Western democracy. Scholars in diverse fields interrogate why 21st centur...
Justine Nolan and Martijn Boersma, "Addressing Modern Slavery" (UNSW Press, 2019)
14 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Before you left your house this morning, chances are that you used products and consumed goods that were produced by modern slavery. From the coffee ...
Kathryn Mathers, "White Saviorism and Popular Culture: Imagined Africa as a Space for American Salvation" (Routledge, 2022)
14 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In White Saviorism and Popular Culture: Imagined Africa as a Space for American Salvation (Routledge, 2022), Kathryn Mathers interrogates the white...
Hajar Yazdiha, "The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement" (Princeton UP, 2023)
12 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the post-civil rights era, wide-ranging groups have made civil rights claims that echo those made by Black civil rights activists of the 1960s, fro...
Sandro R. Barros et al., "The Dissidence of Reinaldo Arenas: Queering Literature, Politics, and the Activist Curriculum" (U Florida Press, 2022)
09 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Focusing on the didactic nature of the work of Reinaldo Arenas, The Dissidence of Reinaldo Arenas: Queering Literature, Politics, and the Activist Cu...
Melanie Joy, "How to End Injustice Everywhere" (Lantern, 2023)
08 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this eye-opening and compelling work, psychologist Melanie Joy reveals the common denominator driving all forms of injustice. The mentality that dr...
Christopher R. Martin, "No Longer Newsworthy: How the Mainstream Media Abandoned the Working Class" (Cornell UP, 2019)
07 Jan 2024
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...
Leigh Claire La Berge, "Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary" (Duke UP, 2023)
05 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At the outset of Marx for Cats: A Radical Bestiary (Duke UP, 2023), Leigh Claire La Berge declares that “all history is the history of cat struggl...
120 A Roundup Conversation About Indian and Israeli Ethnonationalism
04 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ajantha Subramanian and Lori Allen turn from hosts to interlocutors in an episode that ties a bow on our Violent Majorities conversations about In...
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim, "Decolonizing Human Rights" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
03 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In his extensive body of work, Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim challenges both historical interpretations of Islamic Sharia and neo-colonial underst...
Robert R. Janes, "Museums and Societal Collapse: The Museum as Lifeboat" (Routledge, 2023)
02 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Who do you turn to at the brink of the apocalypse? What might help us to mitigate the financial, commercial, political, social, and cultural collapse ...
Patrick Ffrench, "Roland Barthes and Film: Myth, Eroticism and Poetics" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
01 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Suspicious of what he called the spectator's "sticky" adherence to the screen, Roland Barthes had a cautious attitude towards cinema. Falling into a h...
Hongwei Bao, “Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China” (NIAS Press, 2018)
31 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Hongwei Bao’s book is a thoughtful exploration of gay identity and queer activism in China. This work stems from the term and identity tongzhi, whi...
Jason Read, "The Politics of Transindividuality" (Haymarket Books, 2017)
31 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Many major political questions today revolve around questions of human nature; what sort of people we are and what sort of people we're capable of bei...
Laura Briggs, "Taking Children: A History of American Terror" (U California Press, 2020)
31 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Laura Briggs’s Taking Children: A History of American Terror (University of California Press 2020) is a forceful and captivating book that readers w...
Annie McClanahan, "Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and Twenty-First Century Culture" (Stanford UP, 2016)
28 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When teaching a public course called “The Age of Debt” this winter break, I had the strange realization that one of the the most successful readin...
D. B. Maroon, "Black Lives, American Love: Essays on Race and Resilience" (Lawrence Hill Books, 2023)
28 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this hard-hitting collection of essays, D.B. Maroon presents a personal biography of America, Blackness, and racial politics with unflinching style...
Nicole Seymour, "Glitter" (Bloombury, 2022)
28 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Glitter (Bloomsbury, 2022) by Dr. Nicole Seymour reveals the complexity of an object often dismissed as frivolous. Dr. Seymour describes how glitter'...
David Courtwright, "The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business" (Harvard UP, 2019)
26 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We are living in an age of addiction, from compulsive gaming and binge eating to pornography and opioid abuse. Today I talked with historian David Cou...