New Books in Critical Theory

Stuart Elden, “Foucault: The Birth of Power” (Polity Press, 2017)

26 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How did Foucault become a public, political intellectual? In Foucault: The Birth of Power (Polity Press, 2017), Stuart Elden, Professor of Political T...

Bryan McCann, "The Mark of Criminality: Rhetoric, Race, and Gangsta Rap in the War-on-Crime Era" (U Alabama Press, 2017)

26 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Communication at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Bryan McCann (he/his)--Associate Professor of Com...

Jafari S. Allen, "There's a Disco Ball Between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life" (Duke UP, 2022)

25 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In There's a Disco Ball Between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life (Duke UP, 2022), Jafari S. Allen offers a sweeping and lively ethnographic and intell...

Daniel Shank Cruz, "Ethics for Apocalyptic Times: Theapoetics, Autotheory, and Mennonite Literature" (Penn State UP, 2023)

24 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Ethics for Apocalyptic Times: Theapoetics, Autotheory, and Mennonite Literature (Penn State UP, 2023) is about the role literature can play in helpin...

James M. Lawson Jr. et al., "Revolutionary Nonviolence: Organizing for Freedom" (U California Press, 2022)

24 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A persuasive account of the philosophy and power of nonviolence organizing, and a resource for building and sustaining effective social movements. Des...

Bernard Forjwuor, "Critique of Political Decolonization" (Oxford UP, 2023)

17 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What is political independence? As a political act, what was it sanctioned to accomplish? Is formal colonialism over, or a condition in the present, a...

Violent Majorities: Indian and Israeli Ethnonationalism. Episode 2

14 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Natasha Roth-Rowland is a writer and researcher at Diaspora Alliance, a former editor at +972 Magazine, and an expert on the Jewish far right. She jo...

Russell T. McCutcheon, "Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion" (Routledge, 2023)

13 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Russell T. McCutcheon's essay collection Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion (Routledge, 2023) argues that the study o...

Julian Go, "Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US" (Oxford UP, 2023)

12 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The police response to protests erupting on America's streets in recent years has made the militarization of policing painfully transparent. Yet, prop...

Regina Lee Blaszczyk and David Suisman, "Capitalism and the Senses" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)

11 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Regina Lee Blaszczyk and David Suisman's Capitalism and the Senses (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023) is the first edited volume to explore how the forces...

Mark Munsterhjelm, "Forensic Colonialism: Genetics and the Capture of Indigenous Peoples" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)

10 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Forensic genetic technologies are popularly conceptualized and revered as important tools of justice. The research and development of these technologi...

Tom Özden-Schilling, "The Ends of Research: Indigenous and Settler Science After the War in the Woods" (Duke UP, 2023)

09 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Ends of Research: Indigenous and Settler Science after the War in the Woods (Duke University Press, 2023) by Dr. Tom Özden-Schilling explore...

Self Help

07 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Angela Hume tells us about Self Help, not the neoliberal strategy of self-actualization through consumer choices, but ...

Violent Majorities, Indian and Israeli Ethnonationalism. Episode 1

07 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

"The Slippery Slope to a Multiculturalism of Caste" Professor Balmurli Natrajan has long studied questions of caste, nationalism and fascism in the ...

Shelly Kagan, "How to Count Animals, More Or Less" (Oxford UP, 2019)

06 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Most people agree that animals count morally, but how exactly should we take animals into account? A prominent stance in contemporary ethical discussi...

James A. Chamberlain, "Undoing Work, Rethinking Community: A Critique of the Social Function of Work" (ILR Press, 2018)

06 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This revolutionary book presents a new conception of community and the struggle against capitalism. In Undoing Work, Rethinking Community: A Critique...

Simon Joyce, "LGBT Victorians: Sexuality and Gender in the Nineteenth-Century Archives" (Oxford UP, 2022)

05 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

It has been decades since Michel Foucault urged us to rethink "the repressive hypothesis" and see new forms of sexual discourse as coming into being i...

Monica Huerta, "The Unintended: Photography, Property, and the Aesthetics of Racial Capitalism" (NYU Press, 2023)

04 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The end of the nineteenth century saw massive developments and innovations in photography at a time when the forces of Western modernity—industriali...

Chhaya Kolavalli, "Well-Intentioned Whiteness: Green Urban Development and Black Resistance in Kansas City" (U Georgia Press, 2023)

02 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Chhaya Kolavalli's book Well-Intentioned Whiteness: Green Urban Development and Black Resistance in Kansas City (U Georgia Press, 2023) documents ho...

Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce, "Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World" (The New Press, 2023)

01 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the tradition of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce’s Practical Radicals:...

Russ Castronovo, "American Insecurity and the Origins of Vulnerability" (Princeton UP, 2023)

30 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

An incisive critique that examines the origins of contemporary American ideas about surveillance, terrorism, and white supremacy. For more than three ...

Jürgen Zimmerer, "Memory Wars: New German Historical Consciousness" (Reclam Verlag, 2023)

29 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Erinnerungskämpfe: Neues deutsches Geschichtsbewusstsein (Ditzingen: Reclam, 2023) is a new, provocative volume on German memory cultures and poli...

Vid Simoniti, "Artists Remake the World: A Contemporary Art Manifesto" (Yale UP, 2023)

29 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Artists Remake the World: A Contemporary Art Manifesto (Yale UP, 2023) puts forward an account of contemporary art’s political ambitions and potent...

Astra Taylor, "The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart" (House of Anansi Press, 2023)

28 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

These days, everyone feels insecure. We are financially stressed and emotionally overwhelmed. The status quo isn’t working for anyone, even those wh...

Samuel Clowes Huneke, "A Queer Theory of the State" (Floating Opera Press, 2023)

27 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Queer theory has often been hesitant to align itself with a politics of the state, approaching it with a negative or pragmatic framework. A Queer The...

Jennifer Maclure, "The Feeling of Letting Die: Necroeconomics and Victorian Fiction" (Ohio State UP, 2023)

25 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Feeling of Letting Die: Necroeconomics and Victorian Fiction (Ohio State UP, 2023), Jennifer MacLure explores how Victorian novels depict th...

Michael Rushton, "The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)

25 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Should governments fund the arts? In The Moral Foundations of Public Funding for the Arts (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), Michael Rushton, Co-Director...

Ian Smith, "Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

24 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Ian Smith urges readers of Othello, The Merchant of Venice, ...

Sarah E. Stoller, "Inventing the Working Parent: Work, Gender, and Feminism in Neoliberal Britain" (MIT Press, 2023)

24 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Sarah E. Stoller, Inventing the Working Parent: Work, Gender, and Feminism in Neoliberal Britain (MIT Press, 2023) is the first historical examinati...

Lydia Zvyagintseva and Mary Greenshields, "Land in Libraries: Toward a Materialist Conception of Education" (Library Juice Press, 2022)

23 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The question of land is largely absent in libraries. Deeply committed to the neoliberal project as a guiding ideology of the profession, libraries exi...

Paul Le Blanc, "Lenin: Responding to Catastrophe, Forging Revolution" (Pluto Press, 2023)

23 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Returning to the New Books Network today is Paul Le Blanc, here to discuss his new book Lenin: Responding to Catastrophe, Forging Revolution (Pluto ...

Jessi Streib, "The Accidental Equalizer: How Luck Determines Pay After College" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

23 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Are jobs fair? In The Accidental Equalizer: How Luck Determines Pay after College (U Chicago Press, 2023), Jessi Streib, an associate Professor of...

Economic Enchantments

22 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Anat Rosenberg, Kristof Smeyers, and Astrid Van den Bossche discuss the fresh historiographies of capitalism offered by studies of enchantment and mag...

Biko Mandela Gray and Ryan J. Johnson, "Phenomenology of Black Spirit" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

22 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Phenomenology of Black Spirit (Edinburgh UP, 2023), Ryan Johnson and Biko Mandela Gray study the relationship between Hegel's Phenomenology of ...

Andrea Jamison, "Decentering Whiteness in Libraries: A Framework for Inclusive Collection Management Practices" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)

21 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Decentering Whiteness in Libraries: A Framework for Inclusive Collection Management Practices (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) serves as a "how to" guide...

Leonard Grob and John K. Roth, "Warnings: The Holocaust, Ukraine, and Endangered American Democracy" (Cascade Books, 2023)

20 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Old friends--one a Jew, the other a Christian--Leonard (Lenny) Grob and John K. Roth are philosophers who have long studied the Holocaust. That experi...

Chris Cutrone, "The Death of the Millennial Left: Interventions: 2006-2022" (Sublation Media, 2023)

19 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Death of the Millennial Left: Interventions: 2006-2022 (Sublation Media, 2023), Chris Cutrone investigates how and why the Millennial Left d...

Harry Harootunian, "Archaism and Actuality: Japan and the Global Fascist Imaginary" (Duke UP, 2023)

19 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Archaism and Actuality: Japan and the Global Fascist Imaginary (Duke UP, 2023) eminent Marxist historian Harry Harootunian explores the formation...

Charisse Burden-Stelly, "Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

17 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In the early twentieth century, two panics emerged in the United States. The Black Scare was rooted in white Americans’ fear of Black Nationalism an...

Plantationocene

17 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Neil Safier talks with us about the Plantationocene, a geological epoch that traces the effects of climate change to t...

Martin Jay, "Immanent Critiques: The Frankfurt School under Pressure" (Verso, 2023)

15 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Frankfurt School’s own legacy is best preserved by exercising an immanent critique of its premises and the conclusions to which they often led. ...

Beatriz Nascimento, "The Dialectic Is in the Sea: The Black Radical Thought of Beatriz Nascimento" (Princeton UP, 2023)

15 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Beatriz Nascimento (1942-1995) was a poet, historian, artist, and political leader in Brazil's Black movement, an innovative and creative thinker whos...

Musab Younis, "On the Scale of the World: The Formation of Black Anticolonial Thought" (U California Press, 2022)

13 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

On the Scale of the World: The Formation of Black Anticolonial Thought (U California Press, 2022) examines the reverberations of anticolonial ideas t...

David Myer Temin, "Remapping Sovereignty: Decolonization and Self-Determination in North American Indigenous Political Thought" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

13 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Accounts of decolonization routinely neglect Indigenous societies in North America and Australasia, yet Native communities have made unique contributi...

Elizabeth Anderson, "Hijacked: How Neoliberalism Turned the Work Ethic against Workers and How Workers Can Take It Back" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

13 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What is the work ethic? Does it justify policies that promote the wealth and power of the One Percent at workers' expense? Or does it advance policies...

Cecilia Márquez, "Making the Latino South: A History of Racial Formation" (UNC Press, 2023)

12 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The presence of Latinx people in the American South has long confounded the region's persistent racial binaries. In Making the Latino South: A Histor...

Caroline Levine, "The Activist Humanist: Form and Method in the Climate Crisis" (Princeton UP, 2023)

09 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

W. H. Auden once said, “Poetry makes nothing happen.” Auden’s quote has been used for so many purposes, it might be worth remembering what he m...

Kathleen Mcphillips and Naomi Goldenberg, "The End of Religion: Feminist Reappraisals of the State" (Routledge, 2020)

08 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Feminist theory has enhanced and expanded the agency, influence, status and contributions of women throughout the globe. However, feminist critical an...

Nancy Lindisfarne and Jonathan Neale, "Why Men?: A Human History of Violence and Inequality" (Hurst, 2023)

03 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How did humans, a species that evolved to be cooperative and egalitarian, develop societies of enforced inequality? Why did our ancestors create patri...

Daniele Lorenzini, "The Force of Truth: Critique, Genealogy, and Truth-Telling in Michel Foucault" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

01 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A groundbreaking examination of Michel Foucault’s history of truth. Many blame Michel Foucault for our post-truth and conspiracy-laden society. In t...

Frederick V. Engram, "Black Liberation Through Action and Resistance: MOVE" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)

30 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Black Liberation through Action and Resistance: MOVE (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) serves as a call to action for Black millennials and co-conspirator...

Claire Jean Kim, "Asian Americans in an Anti-Black World" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

30 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Where do Asian Americans fit into the U.S. racial order? How do we understand anti-Asian racism in relation to structural anti-Blackness? Are Asian Am...

Henrik Fürst and Erik Nylander, "The Value of Art Education: Cultural Engagements at the Swedish Folk High Schools" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)

30 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Is art education worthwhile? In The Value of Art Education: Cultural Engagements at the Swedish Folk High Schools (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023), Henri...

Sarah Mayorga, "Urban Specters: The Everyday Harms of Racial Capitalism" (UNC Press, 2023)

29 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Racial capitalism, invisible but threaded throughout the world, shapes our lives. Focusing on the experiences of white, Black, and Latinx residents ...

Simone Varriale, "Coloniality and Meritocracy in Unequal EU Migrations: Intersecting Inequalities in Post-2008 Italian Migration" (Bristol UP, 2023)

29 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

How do migrants make sense of migration? In Coloniality and Meritocracy in unequal EU migrations: Intersecting Inequalities in Post-2008 Italian Migr...

Arjun Shankar, "Brown Saviors and Their Others: Race, Caste, Labor, and the Global Politics of Help in India" (Duke UP, 2023)

28 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Brown Saviors and Their Others: Race, Caste, Labor, and the Global Politics of Help in India (Duke UP, 2023), Arjun Shankar draws from his ethnog...

Norman Solomon, "War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine" (New Press, 2023)

28 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

More than twenty years ago, 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan set into motion a hugely consequential shift in America’s foreign policy: a perpetual st...

James V. Fenelon, "Indian, Black and Irish: Indigenous Nations, African Peoples, European Invasions, 1492-1790" (Routledge, 2023)

28 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this interview James Fenelon discusses his new book entitled Indian, Black and Irish: Indigenous Nations, African Peoples, European Invasions, 149...

Pat Thomson and Christine Hall, "Schools and Cultural Citizenship: Arts Education for Life" (Routledge, 2023)

28 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why study the arts in school? In Schools and Cultural Citizenship: Arts Education for Life (Routledge, 2023), Pat Thomson, Professor of Education ...

Nicole Nguyen, "Terrorism on Trial: Political Violence and Abolitionist Futures" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

27 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Rather than functioning as a final arbiter of justice, U.S. domestic courts are increasingly seen as counterterrorism tools that can incapacitate terr...

Nick Riemer, "Boycott Theory and the Struggle for Palestine: Universities, Intellectualism and Liberation" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)

27 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The academic boycott of Israel, a branch of the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, is one of the richest—and most div...

Denise D. Meringolo, "Radical Roots: Public History and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism" (Amherst College Press, 2021)

26 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Uncovering a radical tradition at the heart of public history within the United States, Radical Roots: Public History and a Tradition of Social Justi...

Decolonizing Praxis

23 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Erin Pineda talks about decolonizing praxis. Black American activists in the 1950s and 1960s used strategies of civil ...

Sonja K. Pieck, "Mnemonic Ecologies: Memory and Nature Conservation along the Former Iron Curtain" (MIT Press, 2023)

22 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The first book-length scholarly treatment of Germany's largest conservation project, the Green Belt, Mnemonic Ecologies: Memory and Nature Conservati...

Noa Shaindlinger, "Displacement and Erasure in Palestine: The Politics of Hope" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)

22 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Noa Shaindlinger's Displacement and Erasure in Palestine: The Politics of Hop (Edinburgh UP, 2023) explores the ways in which Palestinians negotiat...

Kevin Passmore, "Fascism: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2014)

22 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What is fascism? Is it revolutionary? Or is it reactionary? Can it be both? Fascism is notoriously hard to define. How do we make sense of an ideology...

The Radical Imagination in Reactionary Times

21 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Professors Alex Khasnabish and Max Haiven are authors of a book called The Radical Imagination: Social Movement Research in the Age of Austerity (Bl...

Grant H. Kester, "The Sovereign Self: Aesthetic Autonomy from the Enlightenment to the Avant-Garde" (Duke UP, 2023)

21 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In The Sovereign Self: Aesthetic Autonomy from the Enlightenment to the Avant-Garde (Duke UP, 2023), Grant Kester examines the evolving discourse of...

Alexandre Baril, "Undoing Suicidism: A Trans, Queer, Crip Approach to Rethinking (Assisted) Suicide" (Temple UP, 2023)

20 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Note: This episode contains a discussion of suicide. A list of resources is available below.  In Undoing Suicidism: A Trans, Queer, Crip Approach to...

The Future of Incarceration: A Discussion with Colleen P. Eren

18 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The United States has long been associated with a very harsh criminal justice system with, in some cases, people serving long sentence for minor crime...

Orisanmi Burton, "Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt" (U California Press, 2023)

17 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt (University of California Press, 2023) boldly and compellingly arg...

Mukti Lakhi Mangharam, "Freedom Inc.: Gendered Capitalism in New Indian Literature and Culture" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

17 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

While globalization is often credited with the eradication of 'traditional' constraints tied to gender and caste, in reality the opening up of the Ind...

Margaret Hillenbrand, "On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China" (Columbia UP, 2023)

14 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Margaret Hillenbrand’s On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China (Columbia UP, 2023) examines the negative cultural forms that have emerged in resp...

Txt

13 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Matthew Kirschenbaum talks about txt, or text. Not texting, or textbooks, but text as a form of data that is feeding l...

Mutual Aid and the Anarchist Radical Imagination

11 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This episode of Darts and Letters examines the theory and practice of anti-statist organizing. There’s a story you can tell about the post-Occupy le...

Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik, "Maghreb Noir: The Militant-Artists of North Africa and the Struggle for a Pan-African, Postcolonial Future" (Stanford UP, 2023)

11 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Upon their independence, Moroccan, Algerian, and Tunisian governments turned to the Global South and offered military and financial aid to Black liber...

Tariq D. Khan, "The Republic Shall be Kept Clean: How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Antileft Repression" (U Illinois Press, 2023)

09 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

The Republic Will Be Kept Clean: How Settler Colonial Violence Shaped Antileft Repression (University of Illinois Press, 2023) by Dr. Tariq D. Khan e...

Aurelian Craiutu, "Why Not Moderation?: Letters to Young Radicals" (Cambridge UP, 2023)

09 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Moderation is often presented as a simple virtue for lukewarm and indecisive minds, searching for a fuzzy center between the extremes. Not surprisingl...

John Arena, "Expelling Public Schools: How Antiracist Politics Enable School Privatization in Newark" (U Minnesota Press, 2023)

09 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Exploring the role of identitarian politics in the privatization of Newark’s public school system In Expelling Public Schools, John Arena explores t...

Rachel O'Dwyer, "Tokens: The Future of Money in the Age of the Platform" (Verso, 2023)

08 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Platform capitalism is coming for the money in your pocket. Wherever you look, money is being re-placed by tokens. Digital platforms are issuing new ...

Stephanie R. Larson, "What It Feels Like: Visceral Rhetoric and the Politics of Rape Culture" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2021)

08 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What it feels like: Visceral Rhetoric and the Politics of Rape Culture (Penn State Press, 2021) by Dr. Stephanie Larson interrogates an underexamined...

Sharon Patricia Holland, "an other: a black feminist consideration of animal life" (Duke UP, 2023)

07 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In an other: a black feminist examination of animal life (Duke UP, 2023), Sharon Patricia Holland offers a new theorization of the human animal/divi...

Joshua May, "Neuroethics: Agency in the Age of Brain Science" (Oxford UP, 2023)

07 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Is free will an illusion? Is addiction a brain disease? Should we enhance our brains beyond normal? Neuroethics: Agency in the Age of Brain Science ...

S. D. Chrostowska, "Utopia in the Age of Survival: Between Myth and Politics" (Stanford UP, 2021)

06 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

A pathbreaking exploration of the fate of utopia in our troubled times, this book shows how the historically intertwined endeavors of utopia and criti...

Visibility

06 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Margaret Galvan talks about the queer politics of Visibility. In her work the activist practices of representation tak...

John Guillory Professes Criticism (JP, Nick Dames)

05 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

John Guillory (NYU English author of the pathbreaking Cultural Capital) is here to discuss his amazing new Professing Criticism: Essays on the Orga...

Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson, "Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution" (Polity, 2023)

04 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In their remarkable new book Slavery, Capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution (Polity, 2023), Professor Maxine Berg and Professor Pat Hudson “fo...

Philippe Huneman, "Why?: The Philosophy Behind the Question" (Stanford UP, 2023)

03 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Why did triceratops have horns? Why did World War I occur? Why does Romeo love Juliet? And, most importantly, why ask why? In Why?: The Philosophy Be...

Naisargi N. Davé, "Indifference: On the Praxis of Interspecies Being" (Duke UP, 2023)

03 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In Indifference: On the Praxis of Interspecies Being (Duke UP, 2023), Naisargi N. Davé examines the complex worlds of animalists and animalism in ...

Kevin F. Adler and Donald W. Burnes, "When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America" (North Atlantic Books, 2023)

01 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Think about the last time that you saw or interacted with an unhoused person. What did you do? What did you say? Did you offer money or a smile, or di...

Melanie Williams, "A Taste of Honey" (Bloomsbury, 2023)

01 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What makes a film a classic? In A Taste of Honey (Bloomsbury, 2023), published as part of the BFI Film Classics series, Melanie Williams, a Profes...

Joo Ok Kim, "Warring Genealogies: Race, Kinship, and the Korean War" (Temple UP, 2022)

30 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

“[W]hat is our relationship to the Korean War and to the affinities” of different institutions that produce knowledge about the Korean War? (130) ...

Michael D. Smith, "The Abundant University: Remaking Higher Education for a Digital World" (MIT Press, 2023)

29 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

For too long, our system of higher education has been defined by scarcity: scarcity in enrollment, scarcity in instruction, and scarcity in credential...

Michael D. Gordin, "Pseudoscience: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2023)

27 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Everyone has heard of the term "pseudoscience," typically used to describe something that looks like science, but is somehow false, misleading, or unp...

Alda Balthrop-Lewis, "Thoreau's Religion: Walden Woods, Social Justice, and the Politics of Asceticism" (Cambridge UP, 2021)

25 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Balthrop-Lewis's Thoreau's Religion: Walden Woods, Social Justice, and the Politics of Asceticism (Cambridge UP, 2021) presents a ground-breaking in...

Kathrin Eitel, "Recycling Infrastructures in Cambodia: Circularity, Waste, and Urban Life in Phnom Penh" (Routledge, 2022)

21 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Kathrin Eitel's book Recycling Infrastructures in Cambodia: Circularity, Waste, and Urban Life in Phnom Penh (Routledge, 2022) examines the recyclin...

C. J. Pascoe, "Nice Is Not Enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness at American High" (U California Press, 2023)

21 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Nice is not enough: Inequality and the Limits of Kindness at American High (University of California Press, 2023) by Dr. C. J. Pascoe is a provocativ...

Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, "Before Gentrification: The Creation of DC's Racial Wealth Gap" (U California Press, 2023)

19 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

This book shows how a century of redlining, disinvestment, and the War on Drugs wreaked devastation on Black people and paved the way for gentrificati...

Takeo Rivera, "Model Minority Masochism: Performing the Cultural Politics of Asian American Masculinity" (Oxford UP, 2022)

19 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There are few grand narratives that loom over Asian Americans more than the “model minority.” While many Asian Americanist scholars and activists ...

Global Inequality: Are We Really Measuring What We Should Be Measuring?

18 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey interviewed Jayati Ghosh, professor of economics at the University of Massachuset...