New Books in Intellectual History
Episodes
Beri Marusic on Grief and other Expiring Emotions (Katie Elliott, JP)
05 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why is that when a loved one dies, grief seems inescapable--and then diminishes? The brilliant Edinburgh philosopher Berislav Marusic's "Do Reasons E...
E. J. Fagan, "The Thinkers: The Rise of Partisan Think Tanks and the Polarization of American Politics" (Oxford UP, 2024)
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Political Scientist E.J. Fagan, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, once worked at a think tank, and...
S4E4 In Defense of Bad Science and the Philosophy of Being
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What role does science play in shaping our laws? How do we distinguish between good science and bad science? Where does science hit its limits due to ...
Julia Kindt, "The Trojan Horse and Other Stories: Ten Ancient Creatures That Make Us Human" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
04 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What makes us human? What, if anything, sets us apart from all other creatures? Ever since Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, the answer to these q...
Jonathan Gienapp, "Against Constitutional Originalism: A Historical Critique" (Yale UP, 2024)
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The legal theory of constitutional originalism has attracted increasing attention in recent years as the US Supreme Court has tilted with the weigh...
David Lay Williams, "The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx" (Princeton UP, 2024)
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Political Theorist David Lay Williams has a new book that traces the problem of economic inequality through the thought of many of the canonical think...
Kostas Kampourakis, "Darwin Mythology: Debunking Myths, Correcting Falsehoods" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many historical figures have their lives and works shrouded in myth, both in life and long after their deaths. Charles Darwin (1809–82) is no excep...
Andrea Moudarres, "The Enemy in Italian Renaissance Epic: Images of Hostility from Dante to Tasso" (U Virginia Press, 2019)
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Enemy in Italian Renaissance Epic: Images of Hostility from Dante to Tasso (University of Delaware Press, 2019), Andrea Moudarres examines i...
Violet Moller, "The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found" (Doubleday, 2019)
02 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Violet Moller has written a narrative history of the transmission of books from the ancient world to the modern. In The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Y...
Elizabeth A. Williams, "Appetite and Its Discontents: Science, Medicine, and the Urge to Eat, 1750-1950" (U Chicago Press, 2020)
02 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we eat? Is it instinct? Despite the necessity of food, anxieties about what and how to eat are widespread and persistent. In Appetite and Its D...
Sanjay Lal, "Gandhi's Thought and Liberal Democracy" (Lexington Books, 2019)
02 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Is religion indispensable to public life? What can Gandhi’s thought contribute to the modern state? With an intense focus on both the depth and pra...
Lise Butler, "Michael Young, Social Science, and the British Left, 1945-1970" (Oxford UP, 2020)
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Lise Butler’s Michael Young, Social Science and the British Left, 1945-70 (Oxford UP, 2020) invites us to revisit a figure who, in Butler’s wor...
Ronnie Grinberg, "Write like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals" (Princeton UP, 2024)
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the years following World War II, the New York intellectuals became some of the most renowned critics and writers in the country. Although mostly m...
Laura Robson and Arie Dubnov, "Partitions: A Transnational History of Twentieth-Century Territorial Separatism" (Stanford UP, 2019)
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The practice of Partition understood as the physical division of territory along ethno-religious lines into separate nation-states is often regarded a...
Mark Valeri, "The Opening of the Protestant Mind: How Anglo-American Protestants Embraced Religious Liberty" (Oxford UP, 2023)
29 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During the mid-seventeenth century, Anglo-American Protestants described Native American ceremonies as savage devilry, Islamic teaching as violent chi...
Ludovico Silva, "Marx's Literary Style" (Verso, 2023)
28 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Marx’s Literary Style, the Venezuelan poet and philosopher Ludovico Silva argues that much of the confusion around Marx’s work results from ...
Nazmul Sultan, "Waiting for the People: The Idea of Democracy in Indian Anticolonial Thought" (Harvard UP, 2024)
24 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Indians, their former British rulers asserted, were unfit to rule themselves. Behind this assertion lay a foundational claim about the absence of peop...
Sumana Roy, "Provincials: Postcards from the Peripheries" (Yale UP, 2024)
24 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Who is a provincial? In Provincials: Postcards from the Peripheries (Yale UP, 2024), Sumana Roy assembles a striking cast of writers, artists, filmm...
Joachim C. Häberlen, "Beauty Is in the Street: Protest and Counterculture in Post-War Europe" (Penguin, 2023)
21 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In post-war Europe, protest was everywhere. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, from Paris to Prague, Milan to Wroclaw, ordinary people took to the str...
Lost in Ideology: A Conversation with Jason Blakely
21 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If ideology has never before been so much in evidence as a fact and so little understood as it appears to be today then, Jason Blakely argues in his...
Rama Sundari Mantena, "Provincial Democracy: Political Imaginaries at the End of Empire in Twentieth-century South India" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
20 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Provincial Democracy: Political Imaginaries at the End of Empire in Twentieth-century South India (Cambridge UP, 2023) delves into the period between...
Devonya N. Havis, "Creating a Black Vernacular Philosophy" (Lexington Books, 2022)
20 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What can philosophy do? By taking up Black American cultural practices, Devonya N. Havis suggests that academic philosophy has been too narrow in its...
Maria Dimova-Cookson, "Rethinking Positive and Negative Liberty" (Routledge, 2019)
19 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Maria Dimova-Cookson's new book Rethinking Positive and Negative Liberty (Routledge, 2019) offers an analysis of the distinction between positive and ...
Ahreum Kim, "The Countercultural Victory of 1 John in Greco-Roman Context: Conquering the World" (T&T Clark, 2023)
18 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Countercultural Victory of 1 John in Greco-Roman Context: Conquering the World (T&T Clark, 2023), Ahreum Kim re-examines conquering language...
Stuart Elden, "The Birth of Territory" (U Chicago Press, 2013)
17 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Territory is one of the central political concepts of the modern world and, indeed, functions as the primary way the world is divided and controlled p...
Maria Taroutina and Allison Leigh, "Russian Orientalism in a Global Context: Hybridity, Encounter, and Representation, 1740-1940" (Manchester UP, 2023)
17 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Russian Orientalism in a Global Context: Hybridity, Encounter, and Representation, 1740-1940 (Manchester UP, 2023) features new research on Russia's ...
Sudhir Kakar, "The Indian Jungle: Psychoanalysis and Non-Western Civilizations" (Karnac, 2024)
17 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this podcast, Ashis Roy (Psychoanalyst (IPA) and author of the recently published book Intimacy in Alienation: A Psychoanalytic Study of Hindu-Mus...
Lesley Smith, "Fragments of a World: William of Auvergne and His Medieval Life" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
16 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Lesley Smith of Oxford University joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, Fragments of a World: William of Auvergne and His Medieval Life (Univ...
Lauren Benton, "They Called It Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence" (Princeton UP, 2024)
16 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A sweeping account of how small wars shaped global order in the age of empires. Imperial conquest and colonization depended on pervasive raiding, slav...
Decoloniality
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This episode is the third one this series where we look back over the first principles of the ReOrient project. In previous episodes we have discussed...
Shaul Magid, "Meir Kahane: The Public Life and Political Thought of an American Jewish Radical" (Princeton UP, 2021)
15 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Rabbi Meir Kahane came of age amid the radical politics of the counterculture, becoming a militant voice of protest against Jewish liberalism. Kahane ...
Noah Heringman, "Deep Time: A Literary History" (Princeton UP, 2023)
14 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Deep Time: A Literary History (Princeton UP, 2023), Noah Heringman, Curators’ Professor of English at the University of Missouri, presents a “...
James Madison and the Spirit of Self-Government: A Conversation with Colleen Sheehan
14 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Who was James Madison? Why were his Notes on Government so valuable to the American founding? Did James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Wash...
Heather Murray, "Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric Patients, American Thought and Culture" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022)
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Asylum Ways of Seeing: Psychiatric Patients, American Thought and Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) by Dr. Heather Murray is a cultura...
Peter Charles Hoffer, "The Supreme Court Footnote: A Surprising History" (NYU Press, 2024)
12 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When the draft majority decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health was leaked, the media, public officials, and scholars focused on the overturning...
Sara J. Charles, "The Medieval Scriptorium: Making Books in the Middle Ages" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
12 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Medieval Scriptorium: Making Books in the Middle Ages (Reaktion, 2024) by Sara J. Charles takes the reader on an immersive journey through mediae...
Marissa Nicosia, "Imagining Time in the English Chronicle Play: Historical Futures, 1590-1660" (Oxford UP, 2023)
11 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Imagining Time in the English Chronicle Play: Historical Futures, 1590-1660 (Oxford University Press, 2023) argues that dramatic narratives about mon...
Marc Redfield, "Shibboleth: Judges, Derrida, Celan" (Fordham UP, 2020)
10 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I speak with Marc Redfield, professor of Comparative Literature, English, and German Studies at Brown University about his most recen...
Cordelia Heß, "The Medieval Archive of Antisemitism in Nineteenth-Century Sweden" (de Gruyter, 2021)
10 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The significance of religion for the development of modern racist antisemitism is a much debated topic in the study of Jewish-Christian relations. Cor...
Gavin Steingo, "Interspecies Communication: Sound and Music Beyond Humanity" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
10 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Interspecies Communication: Sound and Music Beyond Humanity (U Chicago Press, 2024), music scholar Gavin Steingo examines significant cases of at...
Daniel Kahneman’s Forgotten Legacy: Investigating Exxon-Funded Psychological Research
09 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After the unprecedented Exxon Valdez oil spill, a jury of ordinary Alaskans decided that Exxon had to be punished. However, Exxon fought back against ...
Dora Osborne, "What Remains: The Post-Holocaust Archive in German Memory Culture" (Camden House, 2020)
09 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With the passing of those who witnessed National Socialism and the Holocaust, the archive matters as never before. However, the material that remains ...
Jacob Soll, "Free Market: The History of an Idea" (Basic Books, 2022)
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
After two government bailouts of the American economy in less than twenty years, free market thought is due for serious reappraisal. Free Market: The...
Samuel Ely Bagg, "The Dispersion of Power: A Critical Realist Theory of Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2023)
07 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This year, many countries around the world, including most of the world's most populous democracies, have consequential nation-wide elections. In many...
Edward Shanks, "The People of the Ruins" (MIT Press, 2024)
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The People of the Ruins (originally published in 1920), Edward Shanks imagines England in the not-so-distant future as a neo mediaeval society wh...
Emily Cousens, "Trans Feminist Epistemologies in the US Second Wave" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why do "second wave" and "trans feminism" rarely get considered together? Challenging the idea that trans feminism is antagonistic to, or arrived afte...
Jason Blakely, "Lost in Ideology: Interpreting Modern Political Life" (Agenda Publishing, 2023)
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If ideology has never before been so much in evidence as a fact and so little understood as it appears to be today then, Jason Blakely argues in his...
Alexandra Popoff, "Ayn Rand: Writing a Gospel of Success" (Yale UP, 2024)
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ayn Rand is a provocative and polarizing figure. Strongly pro-capitalist and anti-communist, Rand was a dogmatic preacher of her moral philosophy. Bas...
Douglas Greene, "The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky: The Renegade's Revenge" (Routledge, 2024)
04 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Returning to the New Books Network is Doug Greene, here to discuss his book The New Reformism and the Revival of Karl Kautsky (Routledge, 2024). Sp...
Laura Beers. "Orwell’s Ghosts Wisdom and Warnings for the 21st Century" (Norton, 2024)
03 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Is Orwell still relevant today? In Orwell’s Ghosts Wisdom and Warnings for the 21st Century (Norton, 2024), Laura Beers, a Professor of Histor...
Edward Kaplan, "The End of Victory: Prevailing in the Thermonuclear Age" (Cornell UP, 2022)
02 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Waging and winning a nuclear war have been called “thinking about the unthinkable” but that’s exactly what Edward Kaplan and I discussed in our ...
Shaul Magid on the Jewish Radicalism of Meir Kahane (JP, Eugene Sheppard)
01 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For Kahane, the greatest enemy of the Jews was not the black nationalist, the greatest enemy of the Jews was not the Arabs. The greatest enemy of the ...
Pawel Armada, "Humanism As Realism: Three Essays Concerning the Thought of Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt" (St. Augustine's Press, 2023)
31 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Originally published in Polish in 2019 by The Lethe Foundation, Humanism As Realism: Three Essays Concerning the Thought of Paul Elmer More and Irvin...
Steven E. Lindquist, "The Literary Life of Yājñavalkya" (SUNY Press, 2024)
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In The Literary Life of Yājñavalkya (SUNY Press, 2024), Steven E. Lindquist investigates the intersections between historical context and literary...
Tim Cooper, "When Christians Disagree: Lessons from the Fractured Relationship of John Owen and Richard Baxter" (Crossway, 2024)
30 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Our current culture seems to be increasingly divided on countless issues, including those affecting the church. But for centuries, theological disagre...
Robin Darling Young et al, "Evagrius of Pontus: The Gnostic Trilogy" (Oxford UP, 2024)
28 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Gnostic Trilogy is the best-known and most important work by the ascetic philosopher and teacher Evagrius of Pontus. Among the writers of his age,...
Gilad Sharvit, "Dynamic Repetition: History and Messianism in Modern Jewish Thought" (Brandeis UP, 2022)
27 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dynamic Repetition: History and Messianism in Modern Jewish Thought (Brandeis UP, 2022) proposes a new understanding of modern Jewish theories of mes...
Hannah Freed-Thall, "Modernism at the Beach: Queer Ecologies and the Coastal Commons" (Columbia UP, 2023)
25 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Departing from the conventional association of modernism with the city, Hannah Freed-Thall's Modernism at the Beach: Queer Ecologies and the Coastal...
Ebony Nilsson, "Displaced Comrades: Politics and Surveillance in the Lives of Soviet Refugees in the West" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
24 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Displaced Comrades: Politics and Surveillance in the Lives of Soviet Refugees in the West (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Dr. Ebony Nilsson explores the lives ...
Quantifying the American Mind: George Gallup, and the Promise of Political Polling
24 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Early pollsters thought they had the psychological tools to quantify American mind, thereby enabling a truly democratic polity that would be governed ...
Nancy M. Bradbury, "Rival Wisdoms: Reading Proverbs in the Canterbury Tales" (Penn State UP, 2024)
23 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this elegantly written study Rival Wisdoms: Reading Proverbs in the Canterbury Tales (Penn State University Press, 2024), Dr. Nancy Mason Bradbur...
Mark Letteney, "The Christianization of Knowledge in Late Antiquity: Intellectual and Material Transformations" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
22 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Christianization of Knowledge in Late Antiquity: Intellectual and Material Transformations (Cambridge UP, 2023) traces the beginning of Late Ant...
Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Janet Ward, "Fascism in America: Past and Present" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
22 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Has fascism arrived in America? In Fascism in America: Past and Present (Cambridge UP, 2023), Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Janet Ward have gathered ex...
Francine Banner, "Beyond Complicity: Why We Blame Each Other Instead of Systems" (U California Press, 2024)
21 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Beyond Complicity: Why We Blame Each Other Instead of Systems (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Francine Banner is a fascinating cultural...
Breanne Fahs, "Burn It Down: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution" (Verso, 2020)
21 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Burn It Down: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution (Verso, 2020), Breanne Fahs has curated a comprehensive collection of feminist manifestos from t...
Stephen Harris, "Buddhist Ethics and the Bodhisattva Path: Santideva on Virtue and Well-Being" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
20 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
An influential eighth-century Buddhist text, Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryāvatāra, or Guide to the Practices of Awakening, how to become a supremely...
Jeremiah Coogan, "Eusebius the Evangelist: Rewriting the Fourfold Gospel in Late Antiquity" (Oxford UP, 2023)
18 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The development of Christian scriptures did not terminate once, for example, following Irenaeus and other influential patristic figures, the four gosp...
Mahjabeen Dhala, "Feminist Theology and Social Justice in Islam: A Study on the Sermon of Fatima" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
17 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Fatima, the daughter of Prophet Muhammad, has an interesting legacy, one that is often shaped by sectarian differences and tensions. The sermon of Fa...
Michael Willrich, "American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century" (Basic Books, 2023)
16 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the early twentieth century, anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman championed a radical vision of a world without states, laws, or pri...
Yosefa Raz, "The Poetics of Prophecy: Modern Afterlives of a Biblical Tradition" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
16 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since the mid-1700s, poets and scholars have been deeply entangled in the project of reinventing prophecy. Moving between literary and biblical studie...
Jonathan Marc Gribetz, "Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO Effort to Know the Enemy" (Princeton UP, 2024)
15 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
How the Palestine Liberation Organization Research Center informed the PLO's relationship to Zionism and Israel In September 1982, the Israeli militar...
Viren Murthy, "Pan-Asianism and the Legacy of the Chinese Revolution" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
13 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Recent proposals to revive the ancient Silk Road for the contemporary era and ongoing Western interest in China’s growth and development have led to...
Huan Jin, "The Collapse of Heaven: The Taiping Civil War and Chinese Literature and Culture, 1850-1880" (Harvard UP, 2024)
13 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The Collapse of Heaven: The Taiping Civil War and Chinese Literature and Culture, 1850-1880 (Harvard UP, 2024) investigates a long-neglected century ...
Walaa Quisay, "Neo-Traditionalism in Islam in the West" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
12 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this very exciting book that I couldn’t put down - Neo-Traditionalism in Islam in the West: Orthodoxy, Spirituality, and Politics (Edinburgh U...
Anri Yasuda, "Beauty Matters: Modern Japanese Literature and the Question of Aesthetics, 1890-1930" (Columbia UP, 2024)
12 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The notion of beauty is inherently elusive: aesthetic judgments are at once subjective and felt to be universally valid. In Beauty Matters: Modern Ja...
Wendy Matsumura, "Waiting for the Cool Moon: Anti-Imperialist Struggles in the Heart of Japan's Empire" (Duke UP, 2024)
11 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Waiting for the Cool Moon: Anti-Imperialist Struggles in the Heart of Japan's Empire (Duke UP, 2024) Wendy Matsumura interrogates the erasure of...
Monika Krause, "Model Cases: On Canonical Research Objects and Sites" (U Chicago Press, 2021)
10 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Model Cases: On Canonical Research Objects and Sites (University of Chicago Press, 2021), Dr. Monika Krause asks about the concrete material rese...
Sasha Warren, "Storming Bedlam: Madness, Mental Health, and Revolt" (Common Notions, 2024)
10 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Mental health care and its radical possibilities reimagined in the context of its global development under capitalism. The contemporary world is overs...
Rachel Z. Feldman, "Messianic Zionism in the Digital Age: Jews, Noahides, and the Third Temple Imaginary" (Rutgers UP, 2024)
09 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Judaism in the twenty-first century has seen the rise of the messianic Third Temple movement, as religious activists based in Israel have worked to re...
Benjamin J. B. Lipscomb, "The Women Are Up to Something: How Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch Revolutionized Ethics" (Oxford UP, 2021)
09 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The story of four remarkable women who shaped the intellectual history of the 20th century: Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris ...
Ed Simon, "Devil's Contract: A History of the Faustian Bargain" (Melville House, 2024)
09 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From ancient times to the modern world, the idea of the Faustian bargain—the exchange of one’s soul in return for untold riches and power—has ex...
Andrew S. Jacobs, "Gospel Thrillers: Conspiracy, Fiction, and the Vulnerable Bible" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
08 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What if the original teachings of Jesus were different from the Bible's sanitized 'orthodox' version? What covert motivations might inspire those who ...
Russell Sandberg and Daniel Newman, "Law and Humanities" (Anthem Press, 2024)
07 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Law and Humanities (Anthem Press, 2024), Professor Russell Sandberg and Dr Daniel Newman provide an accessible introduction to the law and humani...
Jonathan Judaken, "Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism" (Columbia UP, 2024)
07 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Despite its persistence and viciousness, anti-Semitism remains undertheorized in comparison with other forms of racism and discrimination. How should ...
The (ir)Rational Rainbow (the DSM & the Fight to Depathologize Homosexuality)
06 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The psychological establishment has long pathologized diverse forms of sexual identity and gender expression. In the mid-century, a brave movement of ...
Timothy Grieve-Carlson, "American Aurora: Environment and Apocalypse in the Life of Johannes Kelpius" (Oxford UP, 2024)
06 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
American Aurora: Environment and Apocalypse in the Life of Johannes Kelpius (Oxford UP, 2024) explores the impact of climate change on early modern ...
Pierre Sokolsky, "Clock in the Sun: How We Came to Understand Our Nearest Star" (Columbia UP, 2024)
05 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On the surface of the Sun, spots appear and fade in a predictable cycle, like a great clock in the sky. In medieval Russia, China, and Korea, monks an...
Ben Wright, "Bonds of Salvation: How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism" (LSU Press, 2020)
02 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ben Wright's Bonds of Salvation: How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism (LSU Press, 2020) demonstrates how religion structured ...
Alexandre Lefebvre, "Liberalism as a Way of Life" (Princeton UP, 2024)
01 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In political philosophy, “liberalism” is not the name of a particular social platform. Rather, it refers to a framework for thinking about polit...
Kehbuma Langmia, "Black 'Race' and the White Supremacy Saga" (Anthem Press, 2024)
01 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Langmia's book Black 'Race' and the White Supremacy Saga (Anthem Press, 2024) examines the conundrum that has haunted the Black and White ances...
Michael Sonenscher, "Capitalism: The Story Behind the Word" (Princeton UP, 2022)
30 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
What exactly is capitalism? How has the meaning of capitalism changed over time? And what’s at stake in our understanding or misunderstanding of it?...
David Zeitlyn, "An Anthropological Toolkit: Sixty Useful Concepts" (Berghahn Books, 2022)
30 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Professor Zietlyn's words, anthropology “has had enough of the big ideas already” -especially theories with a big ‘T’. In a discipline that...
Pandemic Perspectives 14: A Classical Approach to Improving Communication
30 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this Pandemic Perspectives Podcast, Ideas Roadshow founder and host Howard Burton talks to Christopher Celenza, James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger ...
The (ir)Rational Mob: On the Life and Legacy of Gustave Le Bon
29 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Every protest movement has been dismissed as a mere ‘mindless mob,’ caught in a psychological frenzy. Where did this idea come from, and why does ...
Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, "An Impossible Friendship: Group Portrait, Jerusalem Before and After 1948" (Columbia UP, 2024)
29 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Jerusalem, as World War II was coming to an end, an extraordinary circle of friends began to meet at the bar of the King David Hotel. This group of...
Joshua Schuster, "What Is Extinction?: A Natural and Cultural History of Last Animals" (Fordham UP, 2023)
28 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Life on Earth is facing a mass extinction event of our own making. Human activity is changing the biology and the meaning of extinction. What Is Exti...
Post-Orientalism Revisited: A Conversation with Salman Sayyid
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The third episode of this season of Radio ReOrient continues our project this season of returning to the first principles of Critical Muslim Studies. ...
Shyam Ranganathan, "Yoga - Anticolonial Philosophy: An Action-Focused Guide to Practice" (Singing Dragon, 2024)
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Providing a decolonial, action-focused account of Yoga philosophy, Yoga - Anticolonial Philosophy: An Action-Focused Guide to Practice (Singing Drag...
Jeremy Schipper, "Denmark Vesey's Bible: The Thwarted Revolt That Put Slavery and Scripture on Trial" (Princeton UP, 2022)
27 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Denmark Vesey's Bible: The Thwarted Revolt that Put Slavery and Scripture on Trial (Princeton UP, 2022), Dr. Jeremy Schipper tells the story of...
Faith, Business, and the Nature of Desire: Luke Burgis on René Girard and Mimetic Desire
26 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Why do we want what we want? Philosopher, theologian, and literary critic René Girard posits that we draw our desires largely from the people around ...