New Books Network

Gloria Sibson Ayob, "The Concept of Emotional Disorder" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Concept of Emotional Disorder (Oxford University Press, 2025) is a philosophical and academic exploration of how society determines whether emotions are considered normal human experiences or emotional disorders. The book examines the concern that some ordinary emotions may be “over pathologized,” meaning they are increasingly treated as medical or psychiatric problems rather than understandable human responses to life circumstances.

Drawing from philosophy, psychology, and mental health theory, Dr. Ayob explores how people evaluate emotions and how those evaluations shape our understanding of emotional disorder.

In the author’s framing, the concept of “emotional disorder” is not simple or straightforward. It is built upon many smaller judgments we make about emotions, including whether emotions are reasonable, excessive, disruptive, socially acceptable, or connected to a person’s lived experience.

Key Ideas:

The book examines how emotional disorders are conceptually defined.
Explores whether modern society sometimes medicalizes ordinary emotional experiences too quickly.
Lived experience, personal meaning, and context all influence how emotions are understood.
Encourages deeper reflection about the assumptions society makes when labeling emotions as healthy or pathological.
Emotional awareness and reasoning are connected.
Understanding our emotions can help us better understand ourselves and the world around us.

One of the strongest ideas from the discussion was that human beings process emotions through their own lived reality and personal experiences. What may feel distressing or emotionally overwhelming does not automatically mean it is a disorder. Sometimes emotional pain is part of being human, especially during difficult life experiences, loss, uncertainty, stress, or change.

The conversation also emphasized the importance of emotional self-awareness and reasoning. Being informed about our emotions may help us better understand our reactions rather than immediately viewing every difficult emotional experience through a strictly medical lens.

Angela Marie Hutchinson is the author of “Create Your Yes! When You Keep Hearing No,” named a Forbes No. 4 book to advance your career. She is a podcast host for New Books Network, where she leads conversations for the neuroscience and Christianity channels. Hutchinson is also a talent and intellectual property executive, former social media professor and BBC commentator. She resides in Los Angeles with her husband and three children.

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Alex Law, "The Roots of Sociology: Scottish Enlightenment and the Civilising Process" (Routledge, 2026)

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment have often been claimed for sociology. But, what does it mean to say these thinkers were sociologists, or at the very least precursors to the subject? Does it, for example, mean that intellectuals of 18th Century Scotland had the same concerns as we do today? Alternatively, does it mean we should think of sociology as an elite discipline, developed by men who were attached to power, albeit with some often critical insights? In turn, if we accept these thinkers as doing something distinct, how can this sociologically be explained? These are the questions which animate Alex Law’s The Roots of Sociology: Scottish Enlightenment and the Civilising Process (Routledge, 2026). Structured around two sections, Sociology and the Scottish Enlightenment, as well as Sociology of the Scottish Enlightenment, Law sees these thinkers as thinking through what Elias would later call the civilising process. He so doing he explores how questions of state formation, violence and emerging commercial society structured their interest and how the particular position of Scotland, a stateless nation experiencing rebellion, provided the space for what he calls their ‘pre-sociology’.

In our podcast we discuss how Law’s attempt to see the Scottish Enlightenment thinks as concerned with the civilising process differs from other attempts to claim them for sociology, the legacy of the Act of Union for these writers and how one became a thinker in these times. We also discuss why Adam Smith is, for Law, an ‘ambivalent’ figure for sociology and what we can learn from these writers about the scope and historical insight sociology should have.

Your host, Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow and the author of G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) and co-editor of The Anthem Companion to Henri Lefebvre (Anthem Press, 2026) along with other texts.

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On The State of Black Men's Studies and Black Masculinist Thought Scholarship

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Wide ranging interview with Dr. Ronald L. Jackson II, Professor and Department Chair of Communication Studies, the University of Miami. Interview explores Dr. Jackson's pioneering scholarship in Black Masculinist Thought, its contribution to Black Studies, its intercultural conversations with Black Feminist Thought, the State of Black Men's Studies and its relationship to Black Women's Studies, its interface with the public spheres of Manosphere and Womanosphere, as well as the future of Black Masculinist Thought Scholarship and Black Gender Studies.

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Rahul Mukherjee, "Unlimited: Aspirational Politics and Mobile Media Distribution" (MIT Press, 2026)

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Around 2016, buoyed by so-called data kranti  ("data revolution"), an aspirational neo-middle class of users in India accessed internet for the first time on their mobile phones. Unlimited: Aspirational Politics and Mobile Media Distribution (MIT Press, 2026) tells the story of digital infrastructures that are being created by state-corporations for content and money to move and reach such users. It interrogates how their design impact the forms of inclusions and exclusions enacted as well as the horizon of social behaviors and expectations in "Digital India." The book contends that to understand the possibilities and limits of India's aspirational politics, media studies scholars should attend to infrastructures of aspiration: the distributional logistics of streaming content and mobile money are the infrastructural backbone that recalibrate thresholds of aspirational goals. 

Digital content media distribution is also shaped by how user practices get entangled with particular affordances of platforms, and hence the need to study both participatory cultures of circulation and logistics of distribution together. Drawing on in-depth interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, critical discourse analysis and participant observation, the book traces the supply chains of content delivery networks enabling streaming video-on-demand services and informal ways of circulating "vernacular" music videos through memory cards. Unlimited does not restrict itself to formal media infrastructures, but also researches online phishing and lending scam assemblages to understand how such scams perform critical boundary work to reveal the cracks in and workings of financial distribution networks. This book offers a systematic examination of distribution considerations—including localization strategies—required for imagining mobile phone users across the varied regional geographies of "Digital India."

Rahul Mukherjee is Associate Professor of TV & New Media and graduate chair in the Department of Cinema & Media Studies at University of Pennsylvania. His teaching and research focus on the logistical and environmental dimensions of digital infrastructures and platforms. Rahul is the author of the monograph Radiant Infrastructures, and his work has been published in Critical Inquiry, SM+S, New Media & Society, and Science, Technology & Human Values. He has co-edited a special issue on "Media Power in Digital Asia" for Media, Culture & Society journal.  

Priyam Sinha is an Alexander Von Humboldt Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University in Berlin. Her research interests lie at the intersection of critical media industry studies, disability studies, gender studies, affect studies, production culture studies, and anthropology of the body, and her work has been published in the European Journal of Cultural Studies, Media, Culture and Society; Communication, Culture and Critique; South Asian Diaspora, among others. She is also a regular podcast host at the New Books Network and has been published in public writing forums like the Economic and Political Weekly, FemAsia, Asian Film Archive, among others. More information on her ongoing projects can be found on her website and you can follow her on X.

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Kati Curts, "Assembling Religion: The Ford Motor Company and the Transformation of Religion in America" (NYU Press, 2025)

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Henry Ford did not just mass produce cars. As a member of the Episcopal Church, reader of New Thought texts, believer in the “gospel of reincarnation,” mass marketer of antisemitic material, and employer who institutionalized a social gospel, Henry Ford’s contributions to American models of business were informed by and produced for an America he understood to be broadly Christian. Though Ford’s efforts at the head of the Ford Motor Company have commonly been understood as secular, Ford himself was explicit that his work in engineering and auto production was prophetic and meant to remake the world.

In Assembling Religion: The Ford Motor Company and the Transformation of Religion in America (NYU Press, 2025), Dr. Kati Curts presents a religious history of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company repositions them within critical studies of religion, examining how Ford transformed American religious practice in the twentieth century. Drawing directly on documents from Ford’s archive, it examines Ford’s mass production methods and bureaucratic reforms as examples of prosperity gospel traditions, illuminating the ways manufacturing and technology intersect with American religious practice. Bridging American religious and industrial history, Assembling Religion offers a new and surprising way to understand Ford’s impact on culture, commerce, and the technology of labor.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word and Me" (37 Ink, 2026)

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The N-word is one of the most perplexing, controversial and misunderstood words in the American lexicon. It’s a word that Elizabeth Pryor has not only contemplated, it’s one that she has taught and observed up close.
When a white student quoted her father and blurted out the N-word in the middle of a class she was teaching, Professor Pryor’s worlds collided. In that moment, she was forced to confront the history of the notorious slur in the United States, and her complicated relationship with her father Richard Pryor, who made the word a trademark of his comedy in the 1970s.
As she dives into her research, her own memories of the N-word come flooding back in unprocessed memories that she hadn’t thought about for decades. In reckoning with those memories, Elizabeth goes on a more public journey of discovery of the messy and sometimes surprising legacies of racism in the United States.
A braided narrative that seamlessly integrates the history of the N-word with Elizabeth’s own story of growing up the Black Jewish daughter of Richard Pryor, Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word and Me (37 Ink, 2026) follows Elizabeth as she becomes a leading scholar and teacher of the very word her father put on the pop culture map.

You can find Elizabeth on her website, Instagram, and TikTok. Her viral Ted talk, “Why it’s so hard to talk about the N-word,” is here. And Richard Pryor: Live in Concern (1979) can be streamed on YouTube.

Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Martha Conway, "We Meet Apart" (Regal House Publishing, 2026)

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0000

It’s 1940 and Gaby’s parents and sister succumb to Typhus after staying in France to care for Gaby and Sabine’s dying grandmother. The war is in full swing and Gaby can’t get home to Poughkeepsie, NY. Her aunt lives in Ireland, which stayed neutral during WWII, so she heads there. But the aunt has just died, and 18-year-old Gaby makes her way to the remote manor of her aunt’s husband’s relatives, where she’s hired as a servant. In a different reality, 17-year-old Sabine is the sister who survived. She also finds her way to Ireland, but Germany has invaded, so she’s in hiding. Then Sabine gets to the same remote manor where for one hour at dusk, a mystical time according to Irish legend, she and Gaby meet and talk. We Meet Apart (Regal House Publishing, 2026) is about family, resilience, and survival in the face of war, death, and the world of ghosts.

Martha Conway grew up in northern Ohio and earned her B.A. in English and History from Vassar College. She received a master’s in English: Creative Writing, from San Francisco State University. Her previous novels include The Underground River, which was a New York Times Book Editor’s Choice, and Thieving Forest, which won the North American Book Award for Historical Fiction. Her short fiction has been published in The Iowa Review, Carolina Quarterly, Missouri Review, Folio, and other journals. She is a recipient of a California Arts Council fellowship, and she teaches creative writing for Stanford University’s Writing Certificate program. When Martha is not writing or reading, she's playing at being a flaneuse—a city stroller—or traveling to Italy to see Roman ruins with her husband, a former archeologist.

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Steven Nadler, "Spinoza, Atheist" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In 1656, a young Amsterdam merchant was excommunicated by his Portuguese-Jewish community in the harshest terms it had ever used. Baruch Spinoza was accused of unspecified “horrifying heresies,” but the precise reasons for his expulsion remain a mystery. When he published his Theological-Political Treatise in 1670, which was condemned as “the most atheistic book ever written,” he began to reveal to the world what his heresies may have been. Yet ever since the eighteenth century, most readers and scholars have assumed that Spinoza was a pantheist—even a “God-intoxicated man,” as the poet Novalis put it. After all, how could a person whose books are suffused with talk of God be an atheist? In Spinoza, Atheist (Princeton University Press, 2026), Steven Nadler, one of the world’s leading authorities on the philosopher, aims to settle the question and show that that’s exactly what he was.

Nadler makes a powerful case that there is no real divinity for Spinoza. God is Nature, and isn’t an object of worshipful awe or religious reverence but can only be understood through philosophy and science. There is nothing supernatural—no mystery, ineffability, or sublimity. Spinoza does speak of “blessedness” and “salvation,” but these, too, are to be understood in natural and rational terms, as the peace of mind and happiness that come from understanding ourselves and the world.

Whether Spinoza believed in God is a fascinating and enduring controversy. Spinoza, Atheist promises to transform our understanding of his views and to make clear just how radical a thinker he was and remains.

Steven Nadler is Vilas Research Professor and the William H. Hay II Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His many books include Rembrandt’s Jews, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Spinoza: A Life, Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die, and A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza’s Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age.

Abe Silberstein is a Ph.D. student in the joint doctoral program in History and Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University.

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For All Mankind Concludes Its Search For New Life

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0000

It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and we conclude our analysis of season 5 of For All Mankind with a discussion of the finale, “This Land Is Our Land.”

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The Predictable Shock of Brexit: Cultural Dissonance and the Rise of Populism with Iain Quinn

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Was Brexit really a sudden, populist shock, or was the writing on the wall for decades? This week on International Horizons, Eli Karetny sits down with award-winning cultural historian Prof. Iain Quinn to discuss his forthcoming book, Cultural Dissonance: Brexit Reconsidered. Quinn dismantles the narrative that Leave voters were simply misled, arguing instead that the referendum was the inevitable boiling point of a deep, historical distrust in Westminster and the media. From the decline of serious policy debate to the modern reimagining of political parties like the GOP, this episode offers a profound new lens for understanding the ongoing democratic fragmentation in the West.

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Many Cultures, One Hope: Cultural Competence in the Uniting Church with guest Reverend Seforosa Carroll

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of The Cultural Competence Collective, we speak with academic theologian and Uniting Church ordained minister Rev Dr Seforosa Caroll about the role cultural competence plays in inter-faith dialogue. Through her experience growing up in multi-cultural and multi-religious communities, Seforosa carries principles of cultural competence–empathy, openness and a willingness listen–into her advocacy and ministry. Join us as we explore how cultural competence plays a key role in bridging inter-faith communication, and dive into Seforosa’s work in gender equality, climate justice, and advocacy for Indigenous knowledge.

Show notes

This episode is hosted by Dr. Matthew Tyne, an Academic Facilitator at the National Centre Centre for Cultural Competence. He comes to cultural competence following 20 years of working in international community development, especially in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, and sexual health promotion with diverse communities in Australia.

Produced by: Adubi Plange, Dr Amy McHugh, Sarah Mashman

Podcast Artwork: Zein Arif

Resources

You can access more of Rev Dr Seforosa Carroll’s work through her Research Output academic profile.

Below are some of Seforosa’s works related to this episode of the Cultural Competence Collective:

Mental Health Support Services:

For University of Sydney staff: CONVERGE

Converge offers multiple dedicated helplines for specialist services:

All staff: 1300 687 327
First Nations helpline: 1300 287 432
LGBTQIA+ Helpline: 1300 542 874
Domestic and Family Violence Helpline: 1300 338 465
Aged Care Helpline: 1300 035 337
Disability and Carers Helpline: 1300 243 543
Youth and Student Helpline: 1300 687 399
Spiritual and Pastoral Care Helpline: 1300 772 435
www.convergeinternational.com.au

Wellmob – social, emotional and cultural wellbeing resources for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

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13 Yarn
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LifeLine:
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Homes of the Past

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In 1940s New York, immigrant Jewish scholars sought to build a museum to commemorate their lost worlds and people. Among the Jews who arrived in the United States in the early 1940s were a small number of Polish scholars who had devoted their professional lives to the study of Europe's Yiddish-speaking Jews at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Faced with the devastating knowledge that returning to their former homes and resuming their scholarly work there was no longer viable, they sought to address their profound sense of loss by continuing their work, under radically different circumstances, to document the European Jewish lives, places, and ways of living that were being destroyed. In pursuing this daunting agenda, they decided to create a museum to memorialize East European Jewry and educate American Jews about this legacy. YIVO scholars determinedly pursued this undertaking for several years, publicizing the initiative and collecting materials to exhibit. However, the Museum of the Homes of the Past was abandoned shortly after the war ended.

Homes of the Past explores this largely unknown episode of modern Jewish history and museum history and demonstrates that the project, even though it was never realized, marked a critical inflection point in the dynamic interrelations between Jews in America and Eastern Europe.

Join YIVO for a discussion with author Jeffrey Shandler about this book, led by Deborah Dash Moore.

Buy the book: here

This book talk originally took place on June 24, 2024.

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Dougald O’Reilly, "Empires of the Southern Ocean: Early Civilizations of Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026)

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0000

From about the middle of the first millennium of the Common Era through to the fifteenth century, Southeast Asian societies underwent a political transformation that produced the first, early states that were the forerunners of the countries we know today as Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. Dougald O’Reilly’s Empires of the Southern Ocean: Early Civilizations of Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026), tells the complicated story of the development of these earlier polities from ‘chiefdoms’ to more complex states. The book highlights the role of local factors in the rise of these states, as well as the influence of early Southeast Asia’s participation in long-distance trade networks in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

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Kenna Neitch, "A Praxis of Persistence: Central American Feminist Testimony and Sustainable Activism" (SUNY Press, 2026)

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A Praxis of Persistence: Central American Feminist Testimony and Sustainable Activism (SUNY Press, 2026) by Dr. Kenna Neitch establishes persistence as a framework for understanding methods of feminist activism in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Blending literary and ethnographic approaches, Dr. Neitch analyzes texts produced by activist movements from the 1980s to 2020—from collective testimonio to institutional publications (encuentros) to social media—and connects them to the movements' cultural impact and organizing practices, such as generative conflict, horizontal cross-border networks, and what she terms strategic adaptability. What these texts and practices have in common, Dr. Neitch argues, is feminist persistence—a balance of action, preservation, and creation adaptable across contexts.

A Praxis of Persistence provides one of the first scholarly accounts of #MeToo in Central America while remaining grounded in the region's lineage of activism against sexual violence. Through the framework of persistence, this book highlights the vitality of Central American women's activism and offers a repertoire of methods for reckoning with the realities of uneven progress in feminist struggle.

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Helen Veit, "Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History" (St Martin's Press, 2026)

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Are children naturally picky? It sure seems that way. Yet, amazingly, pickiness used to be almost nonexistent. Well into the 20th century, Americans saw children as joyful omnivores who were naturally curious and eager to eat. Of course, this doesn't make sense today. Don't kids have special taste buds? Aren't they highly sensitive to food's texture and color? Aren’t children incapable of liking “adult foods,” and don’t parents risk harming kids psychologically by urging them to eat?
But Americans in the past didn’t think any of those things. They assumed that children could enjoy the same foods as adults, and children almost always did. They loved spicy relishes, vinegary pickles, and bitter greens. They spent their allowances on raw oysters and looked forward to their daily coffee. So how did modern kids become such incredibly narrow eaters?

The story is fascinating – and about much more than rising abundance. Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History (St Martin's Press, 2026) by Dr. Helen Veit shows how fussy eating came to define "children’s food" and reshape American diets at large. Maybe most importantly, it explains how we can still use the tools that parents used in the past to raise happy, healthy, wildly un-picky kids today.

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Mackenzi Lee, "Masters of the Universe: Teela: Daughter of Eternos" (Mattel, 2026)

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Mackenzi Lee's Masters of the Universe: Teela: Daughter of Eternos (Mattel, 2026) is a young adult tie-in for the Masters of the Universe (2026) film.

A FALLEN KINGDOM
Four years after Skeletor decimated the kingdom of Eternos, Teela and the scattered refugees of Eternia survive by never staying in one place for long. When a brutal storm of acidic rain deep within the Evergreen Forest leaves their camp ravaged and hope at its thinnest, some, like Teela’s friend Locke, begin to plan for a future beyond Eternia. But Teela knows her father Duncan, the once-mighty Man-At-Arms, won’t survive leaving the land he swore to protect.
A FORBIDDEN ALLIANCE
Desperate to save her people, Teela ventures to Darksmoke to bargain with the ancient dragon Granamyr. He bestows upon her a vial filled with a mysterious, powerful elixir—and no instructions on its use. Enter Evil-Lyn, Skeletor’s ruthless second-in-command, who intercepts Teela with a dangerous proposal: an alliance. In exchange for the vial’s secrets, Teela and the Heroic Warriors must someday help the sorceress overthrow Skeletor himself.
A MAGIC THAT COULD SAVE—OR DESTROY—THEM ALL
The vial heals the sick and brings food back to empty tables—until the forest around the camp begins to change. Rivers vanish. Trees peel to bone. Creatures flee. As the land around them withers at an ever-increasing pace, Teela must confront an impossible question: Has the very magic she used to save her people doomed Eternia instead?

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David Petruccelli, "A Scourge of Humanity: The Origins of Interpol and the End of Empire in Central and Eastern Europe" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Sun, 31 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

As the First World War came to a chaotic end, Europeans feared that a wave of crime and anarchy would sweep across their continent. The upheavals of the war and of the subsequent violent breakup of the Habsburg, German, and Ottoman empires magnified longstanding fears that an increasingly interconnected world offered the enterprising and unscrupulous new opportunities to break the law and evade capture. New kinds of international criminals and criminal enterprises demanded novel forms of international cooperation. Thus was born the International Criminal Police Commission, known today as Interpol. In the 1920s and 1930s, Interpol's police officials and the lawyers who collaborated with them created lasting programs to combat counterfeiting, sex and drug trafficking, terrorism, and human smuggling, and other forms of international crime, which they labelled "a scourge of humanity."

Drawing on press reports, police files, and criminal records in numerous languages and across multiple countries, in A Scourge of Humanity: The Origins of Interpol and the End of Empire in Central and Eastern Europe (Oxford University Press, 2025), Dr. David Petruccelli explores the origins of Interpol and the role Central and Eastern European actors played in developing criminal policing and law during the interwar period to bring stability to their region and reshape international institutions and norms. He shows how legal experts replaced a liberal focus on individual rights with an emphasis on a collective of international societies and of police officers who looked to the international sphere as a space for eluding the constraints of the rule of law at home. In doing so, their initiatives posed an alternative to the imperial and liberal internationalist programs pursued by many Western Europeans and Americans and laid the groundwork for more radical forms of persecution during the Second World War.

While bringing to life the stories of individuals involved in shady activities across borders, A Scourge of Humanity explores the vigorous policing and harsh criminal laws established by Interpol to combat their crimes and highlights illiberal forms of internationalism that have left a lasting mark on our world.

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Cultural Competence Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All: Talking culturally responsive teaching with Dr Remy Low

Sun, 31 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, we are delighted to be joined by educator and researcher Associate Professor Remy Low to explore what cultural competence and culturally responsive teaching looks like in the classroom. He is committed to furthering culturally responsive education across schools, higher education, arts and cultural institutions, as well as community organisations. As a previous high school teacher, now published academic and lecturer, Remy chats to us about what “good teaching” is, and that cultural competence in the classroom is grounded in self-awareness, care, and responsiveness.

This episode is hosted by Dr. Pooja Mittal Biswas. Pooja Mittal Biswas is an Academic Facilitator at the National Centre for Cultural Competence and an award-winning educator and author. She is the author of ten books of fiction, poetry and non-fiction. Her ninth book, Hunger and Predation (Cordite Books, 2023) was shortlisted for the 2024 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards, and her tenth book, The Maker of Garlands, was published by Vagabond Press in 2024.

Produced by: Adubi Plange, Dr Amy McHugh, Sarah Mashman

Podcast Artwork: Zein Arif

Resources

You can learn more about Associate Professor Remy Lowe through his University of Sydney Academic Research Profile.

Below are some of Remy’s works discussed in this episode of the Cultural Competence Collective:

Mental Health Support Services:

For University of Sydney staff: CONVERGE

Converge offers multiple dedicated helplines for specialist services:

All staff: 1300 687 327
First Nations helpline: 1300 287 432
LGBTQIA+ Helpline: 1300 542 874
Domestic and Family Violence Helpline: 1300 338 465
Aged Care Helpline: 1300 035 337
Disability and Carers Helpline: 1300 243 543
Youth and Student Helpline: 1300 687 399
Spiritual and Pastoral Care Helpline: 1300 772 435
www.convergeinternational.com.au

Wellmob – social, emotional and cultural wellbeing resources for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

https://wellmob.org.au/

24-hour crisis hotlines

13 Yarn
Beyond Blue
LifeLine:
NSW Mental Health Line

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Sierra Bainbridge and James Kitchin, "Seeking Abundance: Design, Ecology and a Flourishing Planet" (Axio, 2026)

Sun, 31 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Regenerative design is a way of building that heals our planet and our communities by halting biodiversity loss, reversing climate change, and improving social equity. Over the last decade, the nonprofit design practice MASS has proven that we can yield positive social, environmental, and economic results through a series of projects in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Seeking Abundance: Design, Ecology and a Flourishing Planet (Axio, 2026) argues for reducing the harm our building activities wage in our environments and that we can—and must—help people and the planet thrive together. The proof? MASS's projects represent a coherent and replicable philosophy that responds to local ecologies and transforms lives. This groundbreaking new book, co-edited by Sierra Bainbridge and Alan Ricks, examines how the power of multidisciplinary collaboration, regenerative practices, and community engagement can actively contribute to a healthier, more harmonious world.

The evidence of these works can be found in three case studies, focusing on The Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture, The Ellen DeGeneres Campus of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, and The Ilima Primary School.

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Joanna Dee Das, "Faith, Family, and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of America" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Sun, 31 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Faith, Family, and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of America (University of Chicago Press, 2025) examines the history of Branson, Missouri’s entertainment industry within the context of America’s culture wars. The book explores how Branson became a major center for live performance rooted in patriotism, Christianity, and family centered values, attracting millions of visitors each year. Professor Joanna Dee Das shows how Branson represents more than lighthearted entertainment. Through its music, shows, humor, and tourism industry, the city offers audiences a vision of the American Dream centered on the “three Fs” — faith, family, and flag. While supporters view these values as universal and deeply American, critics often associate them with modern political conservatism. The book explores how Branson became a powerful cultural and political symbol in debates about national identity, religion, class, entertainment, and American values.

Key Ideas:

The book explores how faith, patriotism, and family centered entertainment shaped Branson’s popularity of more than just an entertainment town.
Reflects how entertainment can reflect deeper cultural and political beliefs within society.
Examines tensions between urban and rural America and how different groups viewed Branson.
Critics sometimes viewed Branson as politically conservative, while supporters viewed it as authentic, nostalgic, patriotic, and values driven.
The book highlights how entertainment, comedy, and audience experiences create emotional connection and community, much like social media culture today.

One of the most interesting ideas from the discussion was that entertainment is never just entertainment. The music, performances, humor, patriotism, and storytelling found in places like Branson can reveal what people value, fear, believe, and hope for as a country. The conversation also highlighted how audiences often seek spaces where they feel emotionally connected, culturally understood, and spiritually grounded. Branson became one of those places for many Americans.

Joanna Dee Das is associate professor of performing arts at Washington University in St. Louis. She is the author of the award-winning book Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora.

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Craig Fehrman, "This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark" (Simon & Schuster, 2026)

Sun, 31 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In 1806, when Meriwether Lewis and William Clark return from their journey—having led the Corps of Discovery across eight thousand miles of rapids, mountains, forests, and ravines—they bring an incredible tale starring themselves as courageous explorers, skilled survivalists, underrated scientists, and peaceful ambassadors. While there is truth in those descriptions, there is also distortion.

From one of the most exciting new historians to emerge in the past decade, This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark (Simon & Schuster, 2026) offers a novel take on the expedition: a gripping narrative that draws on lost documents, stunning analysis, and Native perspectives. Craig Fehrman spent five years visiting more than thirty archives, interviewing more than a hundred sources, and collecting oral history passed down over centuries. He came to see that the success of Lewis and Clark depended on much more than just Lewis and Clark. We all know Sacajawea, and some of us know York, the Black man Clark enslaved. But here we meet John Ordway, a working-class soldier who fought grizzlies and towed the captains’ hulking barge. We hear from Wolf Calf, a Blackfoot teenager who watched his friend die in a battle with Lewis and his men.

Each chapter moves to a different person’s point of view, describing their desires and contradictions. We see Thomas Jefferson operating in an age of bitter partisan unrest—his secret political maneuvers to fund the expedition, revealed here for the first time, are a case study in presidential power. We witness the strategy and strength of Black Buffalo, completely upending our understanding of Lakota-American diplomacy. York, in his chapters, finds ways to wield power and make choices in an era that didn’t allow him much of either. Clark is not a folksy Kentuckian but a student of the Enlightenment. (Fehrman discovered his college notebook; no previous biographer even realized that he went to college.) Lewis is someone willing to sacrifice everything for his country and his mentor, Jefferson.

In the end, the captains are men who needed help—from Sacajawea, from the Corps, and from each other. Mile after mile, the expedition pushes on through hailstorms and flash floods, frostbite and infections, rattlesnakes and rabid wolves, with the Spanish cavalry in fierce pursuit. Fehrman balances the story’s adventure with the humanity of its protagonists. The result is a thrilling reminder that even the most familiar moments in history can still surprise us.

Craig Fehrman is a journalist and historian. He lives in Indiana with his wife and children.

Raymond Williams, PhD is a political scientist, blogger, and book club administrator with an interest in American History and Politics. You can find Raymond on Instagram, Threads, and Twitter at @rtwilliams16

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Jonatan Leer and Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager, "Food Porn: Food Aesthetics in a Digital Age" (Bristol UP, 2026)

Sun, 31 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Is food porn a vibrant and democratic new expression of modern food culture or a superficial addition to an image-saturated world? Tracing its origins from the 1970s to today, this timely book examines the evolution of food porn as a desire-inducing aesthetic practice and a visually extravagant food spectacle.

Through discussions on class, gender, sexuality and national identities, Food Porn: Food Aesthetics in a Digital Age (Bristol University Press, 2026) by Dr. Jonatan Leer & Dr. Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager questions whether food porn reinforces social hierarchies or empowers individuals. Also exploring anti-food porn aesthetics, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the deeper social implications of food’s digital allure.

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Chloe Chapin, "Suitable: The Sartorial Revolution and the Fashioning of Modern Men" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Sun, 31 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How did black suits become so ubiquitous? Why has men's business clothing been so plain for the last 250 years? How did a style adopted by the Founding Fathers to differentiate themselves from European contemporaries become the dominant style for men around the globe?

Suitable: The Sartorial Revolution and the Fashioning of Modern Men (Oxford University Press, 2026) traces the shift from the colorful, flamboyant attire of the eighteenth century to the plain dark suit of the nineteenth century, characterizing this style evolution as a "Sartorial Revolution." In this book, American historian and costume designer Chloe Chapin traces the evolution of masculine style from the American Revolution through the Civil War and shows how men's suits shaped relationships of gender and power. Drawing on a wealth of visual and written sources, she shows how the plainness of suits symbolized new ideals of rationality and democracy and played a crucial role in framing the lasting identity and authority of American men. This richly illustrated book analyzes fashion history's impact on gender dynamics and emphasizes the dynamic relationships between bodies, clothing, and personal identity.

Suitable demonstrates the significance of fashion beyond mere appearance, illustrating the key role modern men's suits have played in shaping the modern world.

Chloe Chapin holds a PhD in American Studies from Harvard University and master's degrees in fashion and textile studies from the Fashion Institute of Technology and costume design from the Yale School of Drama. She has taught fashion history, costume design, gender studies, and anthropology. As a costume designer for over twenty years, her credits include Broadway musicals, opera, and Shakespeare. She works at Harvard University and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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Julie J. Park, "Race, Class, and Affirmative Action: College Admissions in a New Era" (Harvard Education Press, 2026)

Sun, 31 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Race, Class, and Affirmative Action: College Admissions in a New Era (Harvard Education Press, 2026), Julie J. Park offers deft analysis of the changes to college admissions and campus life since the US Supreme Court ruled to restrict race-conscious policies in two 2023 cases: Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard and SFFA v. the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Park offers clear explanations of the rulings, their historical context, and their implications for higher education policy. She highlights how the Supreme Court still allows campuses to consider the role of race in students' experiences and that numerous tools to advance diversity in admissions remain. In this lively, timely work, Park points out the swift and stark post-ruling shifts in campus demographics and grapples with questions of how to push toward a more equitable admissions system. She investigates alternative initiatives, such as test-optional and test-free admissions, percent plans, and others, weighing their merits and drawbacks. She also examines inequality affecting college applications themselves and offers ideas for reform. Integrating up-to-the minute research on admissions, standardized testing, enrollment management, and the campus racial climate, Park recommends actions that can advance equity-oriented access to higher education despite the current restrictions on race-conscious admissions. Park ends with a call to campus leaders, policymakers, and practitioners to reimagine selective college admissions and attendance and offers a glimpse of what the future could hold.

Julie J. Park is a professor in the College of Education at the University of Maryland, College Park. An expert on race and diversity in higher education, she served as a consulting expert in the landmark case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard on the side of Harvard.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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Janani Balasubramanian and Natalie Gosnell, "Art-Science Undisciplined: A Playbook for Transformative Collaboration" (U California Press, 2026)

Sat, 30 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Art-Science Undisciplined invites us into a collaborative journey grounded in mutual exploration and transformation. Moving beyond transactional exchanges of expertise, artist Janani Balasubramanian and astrophysicist Natalie Gosnell draw on their own experiences, as well as stories from other art-science collaborators, to offer an imaginative guide for developing a values-based and joyful undisciplined practice.

This playbook offers practical and conceptual tools for co-creation that foster new, powerful alliances among artists, scientists, and their supporters. While attentive to the everyday reality of busy schedules and institutional demands, Balasubramanian and Gosnell illuminate strategies to change our current ways of working and dare us to imagine a more expansive future. The projects, potentials, and possibilities resulting from undisciplined creation will reshape not only the practitioners but their worlds altogether.

Janani Balasubramanian is an artist, director, and founder based at Stanford University.

Natalie Gosnell is an astrophysicist, artist, and Associate Professor of Physics at Colorado College.

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of New Books Network.

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“You Sound So Australian”: From Being Read to Rewriting the Room with guest Zindzi Okenyo

Sat, 30 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Welcome to the first episode of The Cultural Competence Collective podcast! For our first episode, we are joined by the multi-talented actress, musician and director, Zindzi Okenyo! You may recognise her from your TV screen on shows like Fisk, Wakefield and Play School, on stage from her multiple shows with Sydney Theatre Company or maybe you’ve heard her hits like ‘A Woman’s World’ as a solo artist Okenyo, or ‘Love + Kindness’ from her fun, family-friendly kids project Zindzi & the Zillionaires. Tune into our first episode as we chat with Zindzi about the importance of cultural competence, diversity and representation across the arts.

Show notes

Produced by: Adubi Plange, Dr Amy McHugh, Sarah Mashman

Podcast Artwork: Zein Arif

Featured Music:

- A Woman’s World by OKENYO
- Anthropology by OKENYO

You can find more of Zindzi’s music on her webpage OKENYO: http://www.okenyo.com/

You can find music by Zindzi & the Zillionaires on their webpage: https://www.zindziandthezillionaires.com/about.

Resources

You can read more about DESTINY, Zindzi’s most recent piece of directorial work through the Melbourne Theatre Company: https://www.mtc.com.au/discover-more/backstage/destiny-programme/.

The Sydney Morning Herald article mentioned can be found here: https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/theatre/actor-musician-and-presenter-zindzi-okenyo-on-taking-risks-and-self-care-20180216-h0w7zu.html

If you are interested in developing your knowledge about race and racism, and deepen your understanding of the diversity of the world's cultural histories and identities, you can enrol in the NCCC’s free online course Confident conversations about race and racism: https://www.coursera.org/learn/confident-conversations-about-race-and-racism

Participants will learn about the dynamics of cultural difference, and how to increase their knowledge and ability to address inequity, bias and privilege, and to create space for effective dialogue about racism.

Mental Health Support Services:

For University of Sydney staff: CONVERGE

Converge offers multiple dedicated helplines for specialist services:

All staff: 1300 687 327
First Nations helpline: 1300 287 432
LGBTQIA+ Helpline: 1300 542 874
Domestic and Family Violence Helpline: 1300 338 465
Aged Care Helpline: 1300 035 337
Disability and Carers Helpline: 1300 243 543
Youth and Student Helpline: 1300 687 399
Spiritual and Pastoral Care Helpline: 1300 772 435
www.convergeinternational.com.au

Wellmob – social, emotional and cultural wellbeing resources for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

https://wellmob.org.au/

24-hour crisis hotlines

13 Yarn
Beyond Blue
LifeLine:
NSW Mental Health Line

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Pedro Domingos, "The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World" (Basic Books, 2018)

Sat, 30 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the world's top research labs and universities, the race is on to
invent the ultimate learning algorithm: one capable of discovering any knowledge from data, and doing anything we want, before we even ask. In The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World (Basic Books, 2018), Pedro Domingos lifts the veil to give us a peek inside the learning machines that power Google, Amazon, and your smartphone. He assembles a blueprint for the future universal learner--the Master Algorithm--and discusses what it will mean for business, science, and society. If data-ism is today's philosophy, this book is its bible.

Pedro Domingos is a professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Washington. He is a winner of the SIGKDD Innovation Award, the highest honor in data science. A fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, he lives near Seattle.

Gregory McNiff is a Managing Director in the New York office of the Blueshirt Group, an IR firm focused on technology; he has a strong interest in literature, culture, religion, science and philosophy (translation: he's an eclectic reader who is constantly missing deadlines for book review).

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Kevin Warsh: "What did you have to say in order to get this job?"

Sat, 30 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

More than any single institution, the US Federal Reserve drives global financial markets with its decisions and communications. While its interest rates are set by the 12-member Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), for almost a century, the Fed’s underlying philosophy and operations approach have been moulded by one person: the Chair of the Board of Governors.

Over The Chair’s eight episodes, Tim Jones talked to authors of books about the Fed's most consequential chiefs – Marriner Eccles, Bill Martin, Arthur Burns, Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell.

The Powell podcast was meant to be the last. But, after Kevin Warsh took over from Powell on 22 May 2026 and started preparing for his first FOMC meeting as chairman in mid-June, a ninth episode became irresistible. Who is this Republican hawk-turned-dove? As one policymaker among 12, has he over-promised to a volatile president?

To discuss Warsh, Tim is joined by three "Fed watchers" – Claire Jones, Michael Redmond and Catarina Saraiva. Claire, who used to “watch” the European Central Bank for the Financial Times, is now the FT’s US economics editor and has transferred her monitoring skills to the Fed. Catarina is a 17-year veteran at Bloomberg News, reporting exclusively on the Fed and US economics since 2019. Michael has been Medley Advisors' Fed analyst since 2022, having worked as an economist at the US Treasury and the Kansas City Fed.

"I think [Warsh] has upset a lot of people with the criticisms that he's had of the Fed," says Claire Jones. "I think there's just this sense where people are worried because they're thinking: 'What did you have to say in order to get this job? What have you promised to the administration in order to get this job?' So, there's those issues of trust ... However, he is very charming; he’s been at the Fed before; he knows how the game is played. So, I don't think that's necessarily entirely insurmountable".

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Andrew Demshuk, "The Filthiest Village in Europe: Grassroots Ecology and the Collapse of East Germany" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Sat, 30 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Filthiest Village in Europe: Grassroots Ecology and the Collapse of East Germany (Cornell University Press, 2026) traces how a community shrouded by "industrial fog," at the brink of gaping coal pits, became a symbol that galvanized grassroots ecology—campaigns by diverse local actors that exposed environmental and economic crises East Germany's political system could not resolve. Notoriously known by the late 1980s as "the filthiest village in Europe," Mölbis suffocated downwind from the massively polluting carbochemical Espenhain plant. Applying a myriad of private collections, interviews, and untapped archival sources, Andrew Demshuk reveals how pastors, parents, officials, inspectors, workers, and spies negotiated ossified party structures whose inability to reform was showcased by ever-worsening environmental conditions.

After peaceful protests a few kilometers north in Leipzig triggered a revolution, pre-1989 grassroots players launched innovative reconstruction programs with financial and organizational expertise from West Germans. Together, they transformed Europe's filthiest village into a healthy place to live and imbued it with new symbolism, turning it into a sign of hope. The political will and social engagement that saved Mölbis and rejuvenated the surrounding wasteland can inform how to revitalize other postindustrial "filthy places" in our world today.

Andrew Demshuk (he/him) is a Professor of History at the American University in Washington D.C. His research focuses on post-1945 German and Polish history with an emphasis on how grassroots human stories can help to explain big political developments.

Jenna Pittman (she/her), is a PhD student in the Department of History at Duke University. She studies modern European history, political economy, and Germany from 1945-1990.

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Charlie Qiuli Xue and Arwen Yingting Chen, "American-Designed Shopping Malls in China" (Hong Kong UP, 2026)

Sat, 30 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

China’s remarkable journey from poverty to becoming the world’s second-largest economic power is marked by extraordinary urban growth and consumption capacity of its urban population. Central to this development fervor are multifunctional commercial complexes and shopping malls, now key features of modern urban districts. The concept of shopping malls, originally introduced to China by American architects in the 1980s, has since flourished on an even larger scale than their American counterparts.

American-Designed Shopping Malls in China (Hong Kong University Press, 2026) by Dr. Charlie Qiuli Xue and Dr. Arwen Yingting Chen delves into the origins of shopping mall development in the United States after World War II, tracing how American architects exported this building type into China’s rapidly evolving urban landscapes, particularly in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Kunming, and Guangzhou. Using primary sources, statistical analyses, and illustrated case studies, the book explores the evolution of shopping malls as a consequence of China’s profound economic, social, and cultural change over the past four decades. The book also highlights the impact of American consumerism on the everyday lives of Chinese people, altering not only consumer patterns but also local architectural practices. This tale of transformation is essential reading for anyone interested in China’s rapid urban development.

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Gary Hoover, "Ladder or Lottery: Economic Promises and the Reality of Who Gets Ahead" (U California Press, 2026)

Sat, 30 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Ladder or Lottery: Economic Promises and the Reality of Who Gets Ahead (University of California Press, 2026), Gary Hoover asks the reader a simple question: Is our economy a ladder or a lottery? Are people able to control their position on the economic spectrum by their actions? Some argue that, in our market-based economy, if you play by certain rules and make certain choices, you'll achieve upward mobility no matter what economic position you were born into.

Drawing on his vast economic expertise, Hoover explores what this "social contract" requires of its citizens, and what it offers in return. Hoover shows how civil unrest is often directly related to broken society-level promises, exploring protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, the Arab Spring, and student debt forgiveness as case studies. He also predicts where future protests can be expected if results promised are not results delivered.

This insightful and data-driven book tackles challenging issues around income inequality, health care, and artificial intelligence, and ultimately equips readers to answer these pressing questions: Is our social contract a ladder to higher economic standing, accessible to all no matter where they start? Or rather a lottery in which many will buy a ticket but only a few will find success? And how can we best align social promises with our lived economic realities?

Gary Hoover is Executive Director of the Murphy Institute, Professor of Economics, and Affiliate Professor of Law at Tulane University.

Dr. Zachery Williams is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of African and African American Studies at LSU.

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Christos Lynteris, "How Plague Got Rats: Mastering a Zoonotic Pandemic" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)

Sat, 30 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Today, rats are nearly synonymous with plague, but this association is surprisingly recent. For centuries, plague devastated populations without being linked to animals. So how did the rat become the symbol of one of history's deadliest diseases? In How Plague Got Rats: Mastering a Zoonotic Pandemic (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026), Professor Christos Lynteris unravels this story by focusing on the Third Plague Pandemic, a global outbreak that began in China in the 1850s and claimed an estimated 15 million lives by the mid-twentieth century.

This was the first major pandemic recognized by scientists as zoonotic—spread from animals to humans—and it marked a turning point in both medical science and global health. Through a gripping historical investigation, Professor Lynteris explores how rats entered the medical imagination of the time. He reveals how scientific thinking about disease vectors evolved in tandem with colonial power structures as plague responses unfolded across Asia, Africa, and the Americas. From laboratory discoveries to imperial interventions, the rat became central not just to understanding plague, but to shaping new forms of epidemiological reasoning.

This provocative book shows how zoonosis emerged as a politically charged concept in the context of empire and pandemic crisis. It is a powerful history of how science, society, and colonialism converged around a creature now inseparable from the story of epidemic disease.

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Annette Gordon-Reed ed., "Jefferson on Race: A Reader" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Sat, 30 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

From The New York Times–bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello, a groundbreaking collection of Thomas Jefferson’s writings on race that every American should read Among America’s Founding Fathers, none was more deeply, personally, or controversially entangled with race and slavery than Thomas Jefferson. The man whose Declaration of Independence proclaimed that “all men are created equal” enslaved more than 600 people of African descent even as he acknowledged the injustice of slavery, saw himself as its opponent, and condemned it in his writings. How is this possible? In Jefferson on Race: A Reader (Princeton University Press, 2026), Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed gathers Jefferson’s most revealing writings about African Americans, slavery, and Native Americans, enabling readers as never before to directly explore his complex and contradictory thoughts, feelings, and decisions on these subjects—the most hotly debated aspect of his legacy. These selections come from Jefferson’s public and private writings, letters, and plantation records, as well as accounts by contemporaries, including his son Madison Hemings and three other people formerly enslaved at Monticello. The book documents Jefferson’s ideas about—and self-image in relation to—African Americans, slavery, and Native Americans, as well as his conduct, including interactions with individual Black and Native people. The writings show how Jefferson responded to living in a multiracial slave society while professing progressive ideals, and how his views on race and slavery were shaped by his experiences with enslaved Black people. Jefferson on Race is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Jefferson’s conflicted attitudes—and the impact of race and slavery on American history.

Annette Gordon-Reed is a New York Times-bestselling historian and the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. Her books include The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, which won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award,

Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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Sean Scalmer, "A Fair Day's Work: The Quest to Win Back Time" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)

Fri, 29 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Australia has a special place in the history of struggle for a Fair Day's Work.

In giving a history of Australian worker struggles over the length of the working day, Sean Scalmer historicises things that might otherwise seem universal and stable, including time, leisure and productivity. Decades before any attempt by Australian timekeepers to standardise time, Scalmer shows that some of the earliest working-class activism in Australia was focused on the nature of time and the meaning of leisure. For what was the movement for the eight hour day, inspired by British activist Robert Owen, except for a battle over the ownership of time and the virtue of recreation?

The length of the working day and the challenges of work–life balance are pressing issues for many people, as well as lively matters of public controversy. While the winning of the eight-hour day is celebrated as a past industrial achievement, contemporary discussions of working hours often overlook its rich history. Tracing 150 years of campaigns for rights and for the fair distribution of productivity gains, historian Sean Scalmer shows how these movements successfully reduced the length of the standard working week from 60 to 38 hours per week, and how economic, social and political shifts since the early 1980s have stalled this long-term progress. Today, industrial laws provide inadequate protection for excessive hours, and women increasingly shoulder long hours of paid work with the bulk of unpaid domestic labour. This has produced a social crisis for all Australians, but is yet to inspire adequate political action. As debate over our working lives intensifies amid ongoing political, economic and technological challenges, Scalmer’s labour of love on the history of work and play affords us a way to understand the past so we can win back our time—collectively.

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Yiddish Ethnography and An-ski

Fri, 29 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Sh. An-ski (Shloyme-Zanvl Rappoport, 1863-1920) was a writer in Russian and Yiddish, a revolutionary, a wartime relief worker, and an ethnographer who studied the Jews of the Russian Empire. During his 1911-1914 expeditions to shtetls in Ukraine—he would report—he and his co-workers took 1000 photographs, recorded 1000 Yiddish songs and 1500 stories, and purchased 400 objects for a Jewish museum. The expedition also inspired An-ski to write his signature play, The Dybbuk. Although East European Jews used ethnographic tools to study themselves both before and after An-ski’s expeditions, he retains an outsize status in the field of Yiddish ethnography, strongly tied to the success of his play. This talk explores the connections between An-ski’s ethnographic work, his play, and the Russian politics of his era.

This lecture originally took place on July 8, 2021.

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Lauren W. Westerfield, "Woman House: Essays and Assemblages" (U Massachusetts Press, 2026)

Fri, 29 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A compelling and inventive memoir exploring how pain and pleasure are passed down through generations of women

For years, Lauren W. Westerfield looked back at her childhood as an imaginative playscape lovingly crafted by her artist mother. But in truth, theirs was always a fraught relationship, close yet turbulent. It wouldn’t be until her mid-twenties that Westerfield would learn that her mother was assaulted while living as a single woman in 1970s Los Angeles, or until her mid-thirties when caretaking for her now chronically ill mother during pandemic lockdown would reveal how that earlier incident and its ripple effects had shaped both their lives.

The essays and assemblages in this book plumb the depths of two women’s experiences, exploring the pain and pleasure they find in their bodies, in culture, and in their own art. Violence, beauty, and love reverberate and dissipate and shape the forms and psyches of these two profoundly connected family members. At once raw and refined, narrative and lyrical, nostalgic and blunt, the stories and images presented here explore Westerfield’s life—from childhood to adulthood—passing through innocence, self-discovery and familial tethers. In unpacking her mother’s history and the complexities of their relationship, Westerfield finds herself confronted with her own story: one grounded in a yearning for agency and individuation, of a body and mind groomed to be at odds with one another, of a feminist politics examining deeply rooted patriarchal understandings of beauty, control, and power.

Part memoir, part critical sense-making, part reckoning with family, identity, illness, addiction, art, and inheritance, Woman House (U Massachusetts Press, 2026) draws on diverse inspirations in an attempt to recontextualize the female body—in danger, in pleasure, in portraiture, in proximity, in resistance—and challenge the structures that silence and restrict female expression.

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India’s 2026 State Elections and Indian Democracy?

Fri, 29 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This week on Democracy Dialogues, Maya Tudor speaks with two keen observers of Indian politics, Gilles Verniers and Yamini Aiyar, about what India’s 2026 state elections reveal about the future of the world’s largest democracy.

Why did the incumbent government BJP make major gains in some states while struggling in others? Do competitive elections still mean democracy is entirely healthy? And why have places like Tamil Nadu and Kerala remained resistant to Hindu nationalist politics? This episode analyses one of the most important democratic stories in the world right now — and asks what state elections might tell us about India’s democracy more broadly.

Gilles Verniers, Centre for South Asia at Stanford University. Gilles Verniers’ work on Indian politics and elections here
Yamini Aiyar, Visiting Professor of the Practice at the Watson School of International and Public Affairs, Brown University. Yamini Aiyar’s recent writing on democracy and electoral administration in India here

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Gregory Kenicer, "Scottish Plant Names: An A–Z" (Birlinn, 2026)

Fri, 29 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Names are incredibly powerful things and are a crucial part of the way we see and classify the world around us. Plant names are especially fascinating in this respect. Some are simply descriptive or speak of ancient uses and remedies, whilst others have religious origins or roots in wider folklore, and some are very recent inventions.

Scottish Plant Names: An A–Z (Birlinn, 2026) by Dr. Gregory Kenicer introduces almost 300 plant names to showcase the enormous variety of Scotland’s native species. It includes English, Gaelic and Scots (Including dialect) names, revealing the country’s diverse linguistic history. Short descriptions, together with historical and cultural information in each entry, make this book an ideal companion for all those with an interest in Scotland’s rich botanical tradition.

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Amy Thomas, "Copyright, Contract, and Video Games: Terms of Play" (Hart Publishing, 2026)

Fri, 29 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Copyright, Contract, and Video Games: Terms of Play (Hart Publishing, 2026) uncovers how video game contracts act as monologues of power, moulding players to align with proprietary ideologies.

In the era of interactive technologies, the player emerges as a vital yet curiously overlooked figure. While copyright law governs the creation and distribution of these technologies, it sidesteps the player, leaving private contracts to define their role and obligations. Using video games as a case study, this book fills the gap left by copyright law, offering an innovative socio-legal methodology to interrogate and challenge harmful contractual norms.

By analysing contracts as a form of critical discourse, the book exposes the contradictions and idealisations embedded in these agreements, which often serve to reinforce industry priorities. It is an essential resource for scholars in intellectual property law, video game studies, and socio-legal research, contributing to pressing debates on user rights and the shifting balance of power in interactive industries.

With its fresh perspective on the interplay of copyright, contract, and cultural participation, the book redefines the player's role in a rapidly evolving digital landscape, offering new tools to understand and critique the legal frameworks shaping this most interactive of industries.

Amy Thomas is Lecturer in Intellectual Property and Information Law at the University of Glasgow, UK.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, has submitted his third dissertation at the University of Vechta, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist.

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Radio ReOrient 14:9: Racializing the Ummah, with Rhea Rahman, hosted by Saeed Khan and Claudia Radiven

Fri, 29 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, Claudia Radiven and Saeed Khan were in conversation with Rhea Rahman to discuss her new book ‘Racializing the Ummah - Muslim Humanitarians: Beyond Black, Brown and White’. Through this, the discussion drew on issues of ‘doing good’, racial capitalism and the struggles faced by Islamic NGOs in a time when Islamophobia is on the rise. Rhea Rahman is an assistant professor of anthropology at Brooklyn College CUNY, working primarily on global racial formations in relation to histories of Islamic practice and Muslims identity.

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Media, Power, and the Gaza Narrative

Fri, 29 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How Western media shapes public understanding of Gaza, Palestine, and conflict through language, political narratives, and global power structures.

In this Nordic Asia Podcast episode, Khaled Ezzelarab, Director of the Middle East Institute Program at the American University in Cairo and a former journalist, discusses how Western media narratives shape public understanding of the Gaza war and the broader Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He argues that mainstream Western outlets such as the BBC, CNN, and The New York Times have gradually changed their coverage over time, although dominant narratives still frame the conflict primarily as a cycle of “mutual violence” rather than addressing the deeper realities of occupation and structural inequality faced by Palestinians.

Ezzelarab explains that media language plays a crucial role in shaping public perception. Terms such as “genocide,” despite being used by international experts and human rights organisations, are often avoided by major Western media outlets. At the same time, emotionally charged language is more frequently used when describing Israeli suffering than Palestinian suffering. According to Ezzelarab, these editorial choices significantly influence how audiences interpret violence and responsibility in the conflict.

The discussion also explores the relationship between journalism, audience expectations, and political power. Media organisations tend to follow dominant political narratives, especially in foreign affairs, while also responding to pressure from audiences and social movements. Ezzelarab notes that pro-Palestinian activism, especially among younger generations and on social media platforms such as TikTok, has increasingly challenged traditional media framing and forced mainstream outlets to adapt.

Finally, the episode highlights how global power structures shape media attention and representation, not only in Gaza but also in conflicts such as Sudan and Iraq. Ezzelarab concludes that younger generations of journalists and audiences may gradually reshape media narratives through more diverse perspectives and alternative digital platforms.

Elo Süld, Head of the University of Tartu Asia Centre and Associate Professor of Islamic Studies She is one of the leading scholars of Islam in Estonia, focusing on Islam and Islamic pluralism, and more broadly on the Middle East within the wider Asian context.

Khaled Ezzelarab, Director of the Middle East Studies Program at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and Associate Professor of Practice in Journalism and Mass Communication. He has spent seventeen years as a journalist with international and pan-Arab media, including the BBC World Service, covering major regional events such as the Gaza wars, the Egyptian uprising, and the Syrian conflict. Ezzelarab presented his research at the University of Tartu Asia Centre annual Asia Update conference in April 2026. His session was titled “Beyond Bias: Structural and Cultural Determinants of Western Media Coverage of Gaza”.

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Robin R. Means Coleman and Novotny Lawrence eds., "The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Fri, 29 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Since the release of Jordan Peele's Academy Award-winning horror hit Get Out (2017), interest in Black horror films has erupted. This renewed intrigue in stories about Black life, history, culture, or "Blackness" has taken two forms. First, the history and politics of race have been centered in the horror genre. Second, Black horror has become an increasingly visible topic in mainstream discourses with scholars, critics, and fans contending that Black horror is seeing its so-called renaissance. However, critical attention to Blackness in horror has primarily focused on the U.S. and western world, despite Black stories having featured prominently in the genre-as actors, screenwriters, directors, producers-globally and across cultures.
The essays in this handbook explore global Black horror cinema by interrogating Blackness and the ways in which it manifests in films across the diaspora and around the world. Chapters pose and answer questions including how taxonomies of race are presented; who is considered "Black?"; how is Blackness constructed in the culture in which it is produced and/or distributed?; How is horror defined and represented globally and/or culturally?; and what textual role does Blackness play in horror?
Sophisticated, innovative, argument-driven research that brings to bear the most enlightened reflections upon Black horror's place in the world drives this handbook. Significantly, The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film (Oxford UP, 2024) presents expansive scholarship about Blackness, expanding the ways in which researchers, critics, and fans see and make meaning of Black experiences. In this volume, leading scholars from around the world contribute provocative, worthy examinations of the popular genre of horror in all its rich and empowering possibility.

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Ashley Rose Young, "Nourishing Networks: The Public Culture of Food in New Orleans" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Fri, 29 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

For much of the Crescent City's history, days began with the cries of roaming street vendors and the percussive thwack of butchers' meat cleavers echoing out from the municipal markets. Generations of New Orleanians—Black and white, enslaved and free, men and women, wealthy and working class—gathered in public to feed the city.
In Nourishing Networks: The Public Culture of Food in New Orleans (Oxford UP, 2025), historian Dr. Ashley Rose Young illuminates the central role of food in shaping the vibrant culture of New Orleans. While the city's dynamic culinary scene fostered bonds between some communities, under the surface, groups viciously vied for control over who bought and sold food and where they could do it. Dr. Young traces the intricate systems of food vendors and their customers, and how those relationships were affected by race, gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. She shows how vendors and customers alike exercised considerable influence over the city's food economy and the laws that regulated it by negotiating prices, shaping taste preferences, liaising with government officials, and even openly defying ordinances they felt were unfair. The power each group gained and lost determined the success of their businesses, the well-being of their families, and their ability to shape food retail and local laws to meet their needs.
Nourishing Networks vividly depicts a city that throughout its history has struggled to feed its population safely and affordably, and in documenting those challenges, it offers lessons for building a better food future.

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Chunmei Du, "Everyday Occupation: American Soldiers and Chinese Civilians in the Aftermath of World War II" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Thu, 28 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Chunmei Du is an Associate Professor of History at Lingnan University. Her work focuses on the social and cultural history of modern China, specifically looking at cross-cultural encounters and the lived experiences of ordinary individuals during periods of profound political transition.

In this New Books Network episode, we chat with Du about her latest book, Everyday Occupation: American Soldiers and Chinese Civilians in the Aftermath of World War II (Cambridge University Press, 2025).

While many Anglophone histories about the “loss of China” focus on high-level diplomacy and grand strategy, Everyday Occupation zooms in the street-level micropolitics of a brief period between 1945–1949 when American troops were stationed in post-WWII China.

The book explores the daily friction between American soldiers and Chinese civilians—from traffic accidents involving jeeps to the sensory shocks from urban odors—and their impact on Chinese sentiments towards the US. Du reveals how these everyday encounters helped pave the way for the communist takeover of China, and continue to cast a shadow over modern US-China relations.

Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater.

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Paige Towers, "What They Stole: A Familicide Rooted in Intercountry Adoption" (U Iowa Press, 2026)

Thu, 28 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In 1955, following the devastation of the Korean War, Bertha and Harry Holt made headlines for adopting eight Korean children. Driven by evangelical convictions and emboldened by a special act of Congress, the couple founded the Holt Adoption Program, which would facilitate the migration of tens of thousands of Korean children to the United States over the following decades.

The Sueppels were among the families profoundly shaped by the legacy of the Holt Adoption Program. To their suburban Iowa City community, Steven and Sheryl Sueppel were kind and charitable, humble yet magnetic—seemingly ideal candidates to adopt. But in 2008, when Steven found himself facing federal embezzlement and money laundering charges, he murdered Sheryl and their adopted children before ending his own life.

In What They Stole: A Familicide Rooted in Intercountry Adoption (University of Iowa Press, 2026), Paige Towers traces the interwoven histories of the Holts and the Sueppels, exploring the deeper, often hidden complexities of intercountry adoption: the ethical gray zones, the influences of religion and race, and the global inequalities that made such large-scale child migration possible. Meticulously researched and sensitive with its storytelling, What They Stole examines how good intentions can coexist with systemic harm—and how the consequences of systems like the Holts’ can reverberate across generations.

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Frances Kneupper, "Prophecy and the Battle for Spiritual Authority, 1360–1400" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Thu, 28 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The end of the fourteenth century was a time of upheaval and contested authority among the traditional institutions of medieval Europe. In response to these conditions, a number of people began to claim their own authority, as prophets speaking the word of God. They came from outside of the clerical elite and were mostly women and reformers.

Prophecy and the Battle for Spiritual Authority, 1360–1400: Outsiders, Women, and Reformers (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Dr. Frances Kneupper examines the battle over authority which ensued. Prophetic women and other non-elites successfully used prophecy to exert influence and to enter the corridors of power, while educated male clerics insinuated that prophecy was the product of demonic influence and therefore a hazard to the public. Surprisingly, a third faction also emerged—an international network of clerical men who wrote in support of female prophecy. This volume traces the arguments made by these three groups, the clashes that erupted, and the long-term impacts of this battle on ideas of spiritual authority.

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H. A. Drake, "The Wisdom of the Ancients: Four Ideas That Changed the World" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Thu, 28 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Wisdom of the Ancients: Four Ideas That Changed the World (Oxford UP, 2025) is about four cornerstones of modern thought that were put in place by people living in the ancient Mediterranean world. It covers approximately 2,000 years in time (from ca. 1000 BCE to 1000 CE) and spatially moves from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Mesopotamia (roughly, modern Iraq), through Greece and Rome, to the new Germanic states growing in what is now western Europe.

The four ideas, as author H. A. Drake proposes, are monotheism, the idea that there is only one god, not many; individual rights, the idea that there is a limit to what the state can order us to do; naturalized citizenship, the idea that the full rights and privileges of citizenship can be extended to people who have no birthright to them; and creation of a standard by which to judge the performance of states. It is easy, now, to take these ideas for granted. For believers, it seems obvious that only a singular, omnipotent deity can account for the splendour of the universe. Similarly, the common notion that individuals can stand up for their rights, that citizenship can be freely given, or that governments ought to be held to a standard of justice for all, is often accompanied by the assumption that, at the time they were introduced, such ideas must have been immediately recognized as superior and gratefully accepted. The record is far more complicated, and that makes the story of their success far more interesting. By discussing these ideas in their historical context with clarity and wit, The Wisdom of the Ancients reminds readers how preposterous they were originally and how different our world would be if they had not taken hold.

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Shefalee Vasudev, "Stories We Wear: Status, Spectacle and the Politics of Appearance" (Westland Non-Fiction, 2025)

Thu, 28 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, is known for his outfits. Since rising to become India’s head of government in 2014, photographers and journalists have long followed his clothing styles, each saying something about India. It’s part of a long tradition of using clothing to make a statement about India—and about defining a political brand. Nor is it unique to India–remember Obama’s tan suit, or now the MAGA red cap?

That observation is part of Shefalee Vasudev’s recent book Stories We Wear: Status, Spectacle and The Politics of Appearance (Westland Non-Fiction, 2025), where she dives into how clothing, appearance, politics and social change are intertwined, covering topics like streaming dramas, influencers, and “the airport look.”

Shefalee Vasudev is a journalist, cultural commentator, and narrative psychotherapist. The editor-in-chief of The Voice of Fashion for the last nine years and the founding editor of Marie Claire India, she has spent three decades working across news and lifestyle media. Her first non-fiction work, Powder Room: The Untold Story of Indian Fashion, was published in 2012.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Stories We Wear. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Patrick S. D. McCartney, "Sanskrit-Speaking' Villages, Linguistic Utopias and the Metaphysics of Development" (Routledge, 2026)

Thu, 28 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Sanskrit-Speaking' Villages, Linguistic Utopias and the Metaphysics of Development (Routledge, 2026) is a recollection of the McCartney's journey across 'Sanskritland, ' which is the term coined to refer to the utopian landscape within which the 'Language of the Gods' is thought to be spoken. There are three destinations on the author's journey. This study sheds light on how, why, and where Sanskrit is spoken in the twenty-first century, the complex and dynamic historical and contemporary that have allowed this, and how both yoga and Sanskrit are instruments for development and soft-power projects. This book is an essential read for scholars and students of linguistic anthropology, Indology, and sustainable development.

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The Instigators

Thu, 28 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Black women have always been the most relentless instigators for change—building a democracy for all. In The Instigators: How Black Women Have Been Essential to American Democracy (And What We Can Learn from Them (Harper, 2026), Atima Omara draws on her political knowledge and expertise, as well as history, to examine how they have responded to failed strategic decisions by movement leaders and the modern Democratic Party in previous elections as a context for the present. She also provides actionable recommendations to organizers, donors, candidates, strategists, political party leaders, that everyday people can use in their communities to build an inclusive democracy that endures beyond one election cycle.

The Instigators is at once an urgent political guide, historical exploration, and a poignant memoir that pulls from Omara’s two decades of work in Democratic politics and the progressive movement as an elected Democratic Party leader, movement organizer, former candidate, gubernatorial aide, campaign staff to candidates at the national, state, and local level; and now political strategist. Powerful, insightful, and practical, it is imperative reading for everyone eager to protect and rebuild our democracy and create a better tomorrow for all.

Our guest is: Atima Omara, who works and leads at the intersection of electoral politics and issue advocacy in the progressive movement. She is a political strategist, advocate, trainer, leader, and speaker with significant political, government, and non-profit experience, and she is a sought-after commentator and strategist. She is the author of The Instigators.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a writing coach and developmental editor for academics. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Michael E. Sawyer, "The Door of No Return: Being-As-Black" (Temple UP, 2026)

Thu, 28 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In The Door of No Return: Being-As-Black (Temple University Press, 2026), Michael E. Sawyer presents a bold work of speculative theory and philosophy that explores how Black people bring the future into being—and what existence in that future looks like. He considers what people of African descent face and the proper response to the situation. He introduces the idea of Being-As-Black as a response and questions the overarching ethos that will be the guide to a beneficial resolution.

Using critical theory and philosophy, Sawyer decouples Black identity and Black philosophy from White and Western frames by building on Toni Morrison’s ideas of Black Thought and encouraging an understanding of Black Self-Consciousness and Black Self-Identity on Black terms. The Door of No Return uses music, literature, visual art, and a variety of physical disciplines to imagine a world that differs from one that confounds the positive formation of Black Self-Consciousness under the coercive regime of white supremacy and Anti-Black racism.

Michael E. Sawyer is Professor with Tenure of African American Literature & Culture, and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh.

Brigid Wallace is a graduate student at Lehigh University whose research focuses on the French Atlantic and Latin American world during the 18th and 19th centuries.

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Timothy Mason Roberts, "After Barbary: Algeria's Roles in the French and American Empires" (Cornell UP, 2025)

Thu, 28 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

After Barbary: Algeria's Roles in the French and American Empires (Cornell University Press, 2025) by Dr. Timothy Mason Roberts explores the connection between the United States and North Africa between the Barbary Wars of the early nineteenth century and the era of European decolonization after World War II. Dr. Roberts offers a new approach to the study of empires, highlighting the significance of Algeria in French-American relations from France's first occupation of the country through the first years of independence of the Republic of Algeria.

As Dr. Roberts demonstrates, imperial authorities in Washington, DC; Paris; and Algiers rarely collaborated intentionally in institutional partnerships or alliances. Rather, American, French, and Algerian politicians, soldiers, writers, and revolutionaries—often acting at cross purposes and across political and cultural boundaries—sought power by imagining and constructing Algeria as a fissured, dynamic, transimperial space. Focusing on issues of settler colonialism, irregular warfare, racialized citizenship, territorial incorporation, and pan-African identity, After Barbary shows how French Algeria helped make the American and French empires.

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Barnaby B. Barratt, "Free Association: A Contemporary Introduction" (Routledge, 2026)

Thu, 28 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Free Association: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 2026), Barnaby Barratt presents a compelling and much-needed exploration of the method of free association within psychoanalytic treatment.

This concise yet comprehensive book examines the historical roots, philosophical implications and transformative impact on the human psyche of free association, making it an essential resource for understanding the deep unconscious forces that shape our lives. Barratt demonstrates how free association uniquely reveals dimensions of the human condition that remain hidden in ordinary therapeutic approaches. Readers will gain insight into the distinctions between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, the significance of repression and psychic energy, and the profound shifts in being that free association facilitates. Barratt's critical analysis of prevailing theories and alternative methods, such as somatic and shamanic practices, highlights the unparalleled ability of free association to reinvigorate psychic energies and existential freedom.

This book is a vital resource for psychoanalysts in training and practice, and anyone deeply curious about the human psyche. It is also a valuable tool for instructors and researchers in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and related fields.

Barnaby B. Barratt is a research and training psychoanalyst in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa.

Philip Lance, PhD, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Los Angeles. He can be reached at PhilipJLance@gmail.com.

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Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Book Marketing Machine with Louise Brogan

Wed, 27 May 2026 10:00:00 -0000

What if in the age of AI generated content, the most important part of being visible online is just being a human? In this episode of The Publishing Playbook, host Sarah Russo sits down with Louise Brogan to talk about how the most powerful book marketing tool accessible to authors isn't Instagram or TikTok — it's LinkedIn. Louise is a LinkedIn expert, digital marketing strategist, author of "Raise Your Visibility Online," and host of a YouTube channel with the same name. Sarah and Louise discuss how authors can stop overlooking LinkedIn and start using it strategically. And they cover it all, from optimizing your profile and beating the algorithm to repurposing book content and building a newsletter audience. Louise also explains that as AI content grows on social media, authentic human voices matter more than ever.

If you work in publishing marketing or PR — or you're an author trying to build your platform — this episode is essential listening. For more information on Louise’s work, visit her website: Louise's Website

Books mentioned in this episode:

“Raise Your Visibility Online” by Louise Brogan

“The Barbecue at No. 9” by Jennie Godfrey

Key Moments

01:11 — How Louise Brogan Built a LinkedIn Empire 🚀

Louise shares how she accidentally became a LinkedIn expert in 2017, when she decided to niche down to the one platform nobody else wanted.

03:16 — Why Most People Are Afraid to Post on LinkedIn 😰

Louise reveals that only 3% of LinkedIn users are creators — and explains why fear of judgment is keeping the other 97% silent.

04:30 — LinkedIn Is Like Your Favorite Industry Conference 🎤

Louise breaks down her signature analogy for understanding LinkedIn: showing up, making conversation, and not leaving without talking to anyone.

07:28 — The Profile Mistakes You're Probably Making ⚠️

Louise walks through the most common LinkedIn profile errors she sees, including why burying your key information and skills is killing your visibility.

13:20 — Why a LinkedIn Newsletter Is More Powerful Than a Substack 📬

Louise explains how publishing a LinkedIn newsletter automatically notifies your entire network — and lands directly in subscribers' email inboxes.

21:16 — Your Book's Chapters Are Your Content Strategy 📖

Louise outlines her "Create Once, Publish Everywhere" methodology and explains why authors who already have a book have everything they need to show up consistently on LinkedIn.

Find Louise Online:

Louise Brogan's Website

Louise's YouTube

Find Louise on LinkedIn

Louise’s book: Link

Follow Sarah on LinkedIn:

Sarah Russo

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Laura Tisdall, "We Have Come to Be Destroyed: Growing Up in Cold War Britain" (Yale UP, 2026)

Wed, 27 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What was life like for young people in twentieth century Britain? In We Have Come to Be Destroyed: Growing Up in Cold War Britain (Yale University Press, 2026), Dr Laura Tisdall, a Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at Newcastle University tells the story of this era through the eyes of children and young people, offering a radical reinterpretation of Britain’s Cold War age. The book offers a wide range of perspectives, from young people’s hopes and anxieties for the future, through popular culture during the Cold War, to changes in schools and the education system. The analysis also draws on detailed engagements with feminist and gay rights campaigns, and highlights the experiences of young people of colour, blending microhistories of individual experience with a broader narrative that transforms our existing knowledge of the Cold War. The book will be essential reading across the arts and humanities, as well as for social science scholars and anyone interested in knowing more about recent British history.

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Christopher S. Celenza, "The Evolution of Western Thought: Volume 1, From the Ancient World to Late Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Wed, 27 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A rich and immersive reinterpretation of the history of Western thought, The Evolution of Western Thought: Volume 1, From the Ancient World to Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2025) – the first in a major trilogy – explores the transmission and development of philosophical ideas from Plato and Aristotle to Jesus, Paul, Augustine and Gregory the Great. Christopher Celenza recalibrates philosophy's story not as abstract argumentation but rather as lived practice: one aimed at excavating wisdom and shaping life. Emphasizing the importance of textual tradition and elucidation across diverse contexts, the author shows how philosophical and religious ideas were transformed and readjusted over time. By focusing on the centrality of Christianity to Western thought, he reveals how ancient ideas were alchemized within religious frameworks, and how – across the centuries – ethical and intellectual traditions intersected to shape culture, memory, and the pursuit of sagacity. Ever attentive to ongoing conversations between past and present, this expansive intellectual history brings perspectives to the subject that are both nuanced and fresh.

Christopher S. Celenza is an American scholar of Renaissance history and the current James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, where he is also a professor of history and classics

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.

YouTube Channel: here

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Judith Hill, "Gothic: Building Castles in Post-Union Ireland" (Four Courts Press, 2026)

Wed, 27 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Castles speak. Especially in an age when they are no longer necessary. The Act of Union of 1800, which brought Ireland into closer association with Britain, challenged the status of Irish landed proprietors, and not a few responded by building castles. In Gothic: Building Castles in Post-Union Ireland (Four Courts Press, 2026) Dr. Judith Hill explores the projects of two Irish proprietors: the Burys, later Lord and Lady Charleville, who commissioned Francis Johnston, then Ireland’s most important architect, to design Charleville Castle; and Lawrence Parsons, later 2nd Earl of Rosse, who reimagined seventeenth-century Parsonstown House as early nineteenth-century Birr Castle. 

Architecturally the castles belong to Georgian Gothic, a style that in Britain is overshadowed by later nineteenth-century Gothic and is largely overlooked in Ireland. In this fascinating new book, Dr. Hill investigates Georgian Gothic in its own terms as both a British and Irish phenomenon, demonstrating how antiquarian understanding, associative thinking, awareness of family pedigree and historicised design ideas resulted in a uniquely Irish response to the Gothic revival.

Using the ample surviving archives related to both families, she argues that these architecturally original and significant castles eloquently expressed their builders’ political and social concerns, making them artefacts of cultural unionism.

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Franziska Sittig and Noam Petri, "Intellectual Self-Destruction: How the West Gambles Away Its Future" (Ibidem Press, 2025)

Wed, 27 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In my recent conversation with Sittig, we explored her co-authored book Intellectual Self-Destruction: How the West Gambles Away Its Future (Ibidem Press, 2025), written with Noam Pitri and distributed by Columbia University Press. Drawing from her experiences as a German journalist and former student at Columbia University, Sittig offers a deeply personal and rigorously documented account of what she describes as a growing “anti-Western coalition” within academic spaces across the United States and Europe.

At the heart of the book is a provocative thesis: that the West’s greatest threat may not come from external adversaries, but from an internal intellectual shift—one that prioritizes ideological certainty over open inquiry, and moral posturing over evidence-based reasoning. Sittig and Pitri trace this pattern across campuses, where unlikely alliances have formed between strands of “woke” theory and political Islam. While these movements differ philosophically, Sittig argues that they converge tactically in their shared suspicion of Western liberal values and their embrace of absolutist moral frameworks.

Our discussion brought these ideas into sharp focus through Sittig’s own experiences. As a student, she encountered resistance—and at times hostility—when attempting to research topics such as Islamism and terrorism in Europe. What should have been a space for intellectual exploration instead became, in her telling, a site of constraint. This tension between inquiry and ideology echoes one of the book’s central historical parallels: the case of Trofim Lysenko in the Soviet Union, where political dogma overrode scientific truth with devastating consequences.

Sittig also details the evolving dynamics of campus activism, particularly in the aftermath of October 7th. She points to organized student groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and examines their funding structures and messaging strategies. Of particular concern, she notes, are instances of social media activity and organizing efforts that appeared to anticipate or justify acts of violence, raising urgent questions about the boundaries between activism and endorsement.

Yet the book is not only a critique—it is also a warning grounded in historical consciousness. Referencing moments such as the intellectual climate surrounding Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, Sittig suggests that the current moment reflects a longer trajectory in which academic culture has increasingly struggled to balance respect for cultural difference with a commitment to universal principles like free speech.

Despite the book’s ambition to reach a wide and ideologically diverse audience, Sittig shared that its reception has largely mirrored existing divides. Readers already aligned with its arguments have embraced it, while critics have remained unconvinced. The elusive “middle ground,” it seems, remains difficult to access—perhaps itself a reflection of the polarization the book seeks to diagnose.

And yet, there is a note of cautious optimism. The very fact that Intellectual Self-Destruction was published and distributed through major academic channels suggests that spaces for dissenting perspectives still exist, even if they are contested.

As educators, scholars, and engaged citizens, we are left with a pressing challenge: how do we cultivate environments that encourage rigorous debate without collapsing into ideological conformity? Sittig’s work does not offer easy answers, but it insists that the question cannot be ignored.

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Hannah Shepherd, "The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region" (U California Press, 2025)

Wed, 27 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region (U California Press, 2025), Hannah Shepherd examines the shared histories of Pusan and Fukuoka over the eight decades from Japan's forced opening of Korea's ports in 1876 to the end of the Korean War in 1953. One city was Korean, the other Japanese; one was a burgeoning colonial port, the other a provincial city buoyed by imperial expansion. Wars, colonization, and capitalist industrialization forged intimate connections between the two, knitting together an imperial region that transcended its maritime boundaries. Drawing on both Japanese and Korean archives, and emphasizing the concept of imperial urbanization, Shepherd challenges traditional views of empire and urban growth and shows how local networks, migration, and capital flows shaped the region's exploitative and uneven geographies. The waters between Fukuoka and Pusan narrowed through intensified interactions that continued even after the end of empire, creating enduring legacies for the postwar and postcolonial eras.

Dr. Hannah Shepherd is Assistant Professor of History at Yale University.

Dr. Samee Siddiqui is Assistant Professor of World History at Drury University.

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Janet Hinson Shope and Richard Pringle, "Campus Whisper Networks: Knowing with Sexual Assault Survivors" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

Wed, 27 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Campus Whisper Networks: Knowing with Sexual Assault Survivors (Rutgers University Press, 2026) examines how personal knowledge about student sexual assault circulates within college campus communities. Based upon both qualitative and quantitative survey data, Dr. Janet Hinson Shope and Dr. Richard Pringle's research demonstrates that students who have been sexually assaulted tell someone—almost always a friend. Most college students know someone who has been assaulted. Simply knowing, by means of relationships, that one or more peers have been assaulted affects the knowers, and the effects reverberate unevenly across campuses. 

Dr. Shope and Dr. Pringle highlight the structural properties that prohibit relational knowledge from becoming official institutional knowledge, confining it to whispers and secrecy within informal spheres of knowledge. The rules governing the circulation of such knowledge create an uneven epistemic field of sexual assault. This uneven field is consequential for the communities, affecting survivors and their confidants and shaping student views of the college community. Campus Whisper Networks demonstrates how personal and institutional avoidance, both the “need to not know” and “no need to know,” creates knowledge gaps that hide the community’s wounds and prevent personal knowledge from becoming social knowledge. 

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David Faflik, "Segregation Games: Boston, Busing, and the Making of Red Sox Nation" (U Massachusetts Press, 2026)

Wed, 27 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A cultural history of race, resistance, and representation in a city divided by politics and play
When outfielder Bernie Carbo joined the Red Sox in 1974, he brought with him a toy gorilla named Mighty Joe Young that became the team’s unofficial mascot for several players and many in the local press. This seemingly innocent stuffed animal was introduced within a baseball team notorious for its stubborn discrimination, and during a particularly fraught era of racial discord in Boston. That June, after years of activism from the city’s Black community, Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. ruled that Boston must address the segregation of its schools through redistricting and busing. The ensuing racial animus to these policies led some of the city’s white residents to throw bananas and chant monkey sounds at African American students as they integrated the predominantly white South Boston High School. In this agitated atmosphere, cultural symbols like the Red Sox’s Mighty Joe Young mirrored and amplified the heightened racial tensions of Boston’s busing crisis.
Situated at the intersection of US cultural and social history, Segregation Games: Boston, Busing, and the Making of Red Sox Nation (U Massachusetts Press, 2026) examines the surprising ties in 1970s Boston between the racial segregation of the city’s schools and the racial controversies expressed on and off the field of “Red Sox Nation.” “I found out in the black community why they don’t come out [to Fenway Park],” explained Black player Reggie Smith of his experiences with the Red Sox and the city during this period. “The team was the last to get Black players, and some of the things I hear out in the stands make me sick.” To understand these connections, Faflik erases the lines between politics and sport, which routinely blurred in a city suffused with an anti-Black racism that was both deceptively subtle and fiercely overt.
Drawing upon deep archival research from sources that have largely been ignored, such as the Black press of the time, Faflik offers a carefully nuanced portrait of Boston’s cultural life at a pivotal moment in the city’s history.

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Damien Van Puyvelde, "The DGSE: A Concise History of France's Foreign Intelligence Service" (Georgetown UP, 2026)

Wed, 27 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

France is a leading intelligence power, but we know very little about its premier intelligence agency: the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE). Damien Van Puyvelde's latest book, The DGSE: A Concise History of France's Foreign Intelligence Service (Georgetown University Press, 2026), examines France's foreign intelligence service from its rebranding as the DGSE in 1982 to the present.

It covers the legacies of the Second World War, how decolonization and the Cold War shaped the organization, the organization's workforce and leadership, as well as public and (pop) cultural perceptions and representations of intelligence in France. The emergence of the DGSE, following the election of socialist President Mitterrand, opened an era of change, marked by a series of reorganizations and new threats over the horizon. Some readers will recall the Rainbow Warrior fiasco, when DGSE operators sank Greenpeace's flagship, causing the death of a photographer in 1985. Others will be more familiar with the popular TV show The Bureau, which portrays the lives of non-official cover DGSE officers operating in contemporary hotspots. These vignettes, just like much of the media coverage, paint a misleading portrait of the DGSE as a group of dedicated but reckless officers. Van Puyvelde shows how France's leading intelligence agency has successfully adapted to political and security requirements from the late Cold War to today's international security threats.

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Kanika Singh, "The Story of a Sikh Museum: Heritage, Politics, Popular Culture" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Wed, 27 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Story of a Sikh Museum: Heritage, Politics, Popular Culture, published by Cambridge University Press in July 2025, is a pioneering study on Sikh museums, a unique phenomenon of contemporary India—for their sheer numbers, distinctive display, malleability and presence in multiple cultural spheres and their political significance. This case study of Bhai Mati Das Museum at Gurdwara Sisganj, Delhi, examines the process of creation of Sikh heritage through history, paintings, and museums, unearths networks of patronage, and analyses the ways in which specific versions of the Sikh past are used to make present-day claims. It is based on interviews with artists and patrons, material from personal and institutional archives, a visual analysis of Sikh popular art and a critical examination of the museum's narrative. This book brings together Sikh history, popular art, politics and museums to discuss some of the most important current debates (of nation, identity and heritage) and reveals new ways in which we may understand museums, especially in a non-Western context.

Kanika Singh is a historian, founder of Delhi Heritage Walks and Director at Centre for Writing & Communication at Ashoka University.

Harleen Kaur is a historian and urban studies scholar who recently completed her Joint PhD from National University of Singapore and King’s College London.

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Billionaire Backlash: Can It Help Save Democracy?

Tue, 26 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This week on Democracy Dialogues, host Maya Tudor speaks with her colleague and fellow political scientist Pepper Culpepper about his new book Billionaire Backlash: The Age of Corporate Scandal and How It Could Save Democracy, co-authored with Taeku Lee. They explore how corporate scandals—from industry exposes to data privacy breaches—can become moments of democratic reckoning, mobilizing public outrage against concentrated corporate power. The conversation examines why scandals matter politically, the circumstances under which public backlash can still generate meaningful accountability, and what good populism is in an era of growing economic inequality and democratic strain.

Links:

Bloomsbury here

Journal of Democracy here

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Why Elected Leaders Subvert Democracy

Tue, 26 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

When we think about threats to democracy, we often imagine dramatic breakdowns—military coups, constitutional crises, or sudden collapses. But today, a common danger is slower and less visible: democratic erosion driven by elected leaders themselves. Across different regions, presidents and prime ministers are weakening institutions, undermining accountability, and reshaping the rules of the game from within. Why is this happening now, and why do voters sometimes tolerate it?

In this episode, CEDAR host Temitayo Odeyemi speaks with Susan Stokes about her article in the Journal of Democracy, “Why Elected Leaders Subvert Democracy,” and what it reveals about the changing nature of democratic backsliding in the twenty-first century. Drawing on this work, as well as her recent book The Backsliders: Why Leaders Undermine Their Own Democracies (Princeton University Press, 2025), the conversation explores how rising inequality, shifting party systems, and deepening polarisation create openings for backsliding leaders, and how strategies such as “democratic trash talk” can erode public trust in institutions.

Susan Stokes is the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor and Director of the Chicago Center on Democracy at the University of Chicago. Her research focuses on democratic theory, distributive politics, and comparative political behaviour.

Temitayo Odeyemi is a Research Fellow in Democratic Resilience at the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR).

The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and reshaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Join us to better understand the forces that promote and undermine democratic government around the world.

Transcript here

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Learning Languages on Social Media

Tue, 26 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Brynn Quick speaks with Dr. Yeong Ju Lee about her new book Social Media and Language Learning: Using TikTok and Instagram (Routledge, 2025).

Lee, Y. J. (2025). Social Media and Language Learning: Using TikTok and Instagram. Taylor & Francis.

This book explores creative uses of social media for informal language learning. It focuses on the underexplored area of how informal language learning adapts to technological innovations in two multimodal media-sharing platforms: TikTok and Instagram.

Drawing on ecological perspectives of language learning and spatial understandings of digital technology and learning, the research reported in this book unpacks how social media technologies are used for language learning. It presents insights from a dual-level qualitative methodological design: a comparative study of public online data of social media posts collected from TikTok and Instagram, and a multiple case study based on ethnographic narrative data gathered from participants’ journal entries, stimulated recall interviews, and social media posts. This book reveals the dynamic landscape of digital language learning that is being integrated into learners’ everyday lives through multimodal content creation and networking.

This book enriches readers’ understanding of social media’s role in language learning, and offers pedagogical strategies for teachers to integrate newer technologies and multimodal materials into language classrooms to enhance students’ learning experiences.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here

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Mapping a New Politics in For All Mankind

Tue, 26 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and we continue our analysis of season 5 of For All Mankind. In this show, we discuss episode 6 “No Sudden Moves”; Episode 7 “The Sirens of Titan”; Episode 8 “Brave New World” and Episode 9 “Sons and Daughters”.

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chaun webster, "Without Terminus: untraining an archive" (Greywolf, 2026)

Tue, 26 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In his first work of nonfiction, poet chaun webster blends memoir, archival research, visual poetics, and cultural criticism to trace the ways structural anti-Black violence has shaped his inheritance, and grapples with the question of how to know—and mourn—the kin he was never able to meet.
webster is particularly drawn to his grandfather Reginald, who worked for years as a Pullman porter, who was denied rest while his labor enabled rest for others, and who died without receiving a pension before webster was born. Returning to the figures of Reginald and the train, webster explores the relationship between comportment and confinement, speaking in tongues in the Pentecostal church, the ancestral meeting place of dreams, his fraught relationship with his mother, and moments with his own child. Throughout, webster also reflects on nonbiological kinship, tethering his and his predecessors’ lives to those of several historical Black figures—Harriet Jacobs, John Henry, Henry “Box” Brown, and Henry Dumas, a writer who was killed by New York City police while riding the subway.
Attempting to exhaust the possibilities of the sentence and the grammar of anti-Blackness, webster riffs and rails on the debris within reach. Part elegy, part archival detective story, and part visual poem, Without Terminus: untraining an archive (Greywolf, 2026) is a philosophically rigorous and deeply moving text that takes us beyond the archive of loss.

You can find the works chaun references during our conversation, as well as a further discussion about literary form, at the Additions to the Archive Substack.

Follow chaun webster on Instagram.

Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.

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What AI Means for Fiction: A Discussion with Literary Critic Mark McGurl

Tue, 26 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How is the tool of Artificial Intelligence shaping the writing of fiction? Is AI emerging as more than just a potentially handy aid to an author—and, ominously, more like an actual author? I discuss these ripe questions and others with the literary critic Mark McGurl, professor of English at Stanford. He is the author of The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Harvard University Press, 2009) and Everything and Less: The Novel in the Age of Amazon (Verso, 2021). As our conversation shows, McGurl is a nuanced, reasoned voice on an emotive subject that all too readily lends itself to apocalyptic or pollyannaish pronouncements.

Mark McGurl is a Professor of English at Stanford University.

Veteran journalist Paul Starobin is a former Moscow bureau chief for Business Week and a former contributing editor of The Atlantic. His companion Substack newsletter, America and Beyond,” offers commentary and insights on the podcast. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and many other publications. His most recent book is Putin’s Exiles: Their Fight for a Better Russia (Columbia Global Reports, 2024).

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Angela Byrne, "Finding Mary: The untold story of an Inishowen murder, 1844" (Four Courts Press, 2025)

Tue, 26 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

During a robbery on 10 March 1844, 14-year-old servant Mary Doherty was murdered in a farmhouse near Culdaff, Co. Donegal. There was no doubt locally about the perpetrator’s identity, but there was insufficient evidence against Daniel McKeeny, and he was eventually transported for a separate offence of sheep-stealing. Based on original research, Finding Mary: The untold story of an Inishowen murder, 1844 (Four Courts Press, 2025) by Dr. Angela Byrne reconstructs the world of a north Donegal village on the eve of the Great Famine to explore the approaches to justice taken by the local community and agents of the state, and examines the survival of the murder in local folklore to reflect on memory, remembrance and whose stories get to be told.

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Petal Kimberly Samuel, "The Quiet Zone: Caribbean Expressive Cultures and the Feminist Aesthetics of Disturbance" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

Tue, 26 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A serene beach. The classroom of an elite private school. The still nights in an upscale residential neighborhood. An acclaimed poet with a quiet, dignified mode of address. The sonic etiquette and experience of quiet is integral to each of these scenes. The Quiet Zone: Caribbean Expressive Cultures and the Feminist Aesthetics of Disturbance (Rutgers UP, 2026) examines what the emergence of quiet as an elite aesthetic, privilege, and entitlement means for minoritized people who are often narrated as loud, disruptive, and disturbing, sonically, visually, and otherwise. Taking the Caribbean and its diasporas as its key sites of study, the book explores what we can learn from efforts to transform the region into the quintessential site of quiet leisure, in part, through the enactment of regimes of sonic discipline and surveillance directed against its majority Black population. Analyzing the work of Afro-Caribbean artists that catalog and critique sonic surveillance, the book questions the ways that quiet gets produced both as a regulatory ideal of racial, gender, sexual, national, and civilizational belonging and as a universal object of desire.

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Andrea Zarafshon Moore, "Audible Loss: New Music and the Crisis of Memory" (Fordham UP, 2025)

Tue, 26 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

It is a compulsion of the human race to find a way to memorialize those we have lost and why we have lost them, from a gravestone of a loved one to war monuments that honor thousands who died in battle. In Audible Loss: New Music and the Crisis of Memory (Fordham UP, 2025), Andrea Zarafshon Moore examines how contemporary music has been used to memorialize three recent crises in the United States: the AIDS crisis, 9-11, and ongoing anti-Black violence. Moore reads these crises and the music that memorializes them to reveal the ways the are methodologically and ideologically similar to and different from each other. She explores the broader debates and discourses through which commemoration is always filtered and the ways interpretive consensus has been constructed and articulated in both musical and other memorial forms. Moore weaves close musical analysis with a wide-ranging discussion of how Americans memorialize, who Americans memorialize, and what memorials are meant to accomplish.

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Why Elected Leaders Subvert Democracy

Tue, 26 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Temitayo Odeyemi is a Research Fellow in Democratic Resilience at the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR).

Transcript here

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Patrick Wyman, "Lost Worlds: How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World" (HarperCollins, 2026)

Tue, 26 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

There’s a familiar story about us humans: we went from hunting and gathering to farming, wandering bands to villages and cities, clans and chieftains to states and kings. But Lost Worlds offers a new narrative of humanity’s deep history. In Lost Worlds: How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World (HarperCollins, 2026) beloved podcast host Dr. Patrick Wyman focuses on the 10,000-year span between the end of the Ice Age and the decline of the Bronze Age—the period when civilization as we understand it emerged, introducing social hierarchies, urbanism, complex political organizations, and the written word.

In this nuanced retelling, human progress is no longer a straight march from caves to cities: Farming didn’t always replace foraging, villages didn’t automatically spark agriculture, and cities didn’t necessitate rigid hierarchies. For thousands of years, humans merely improvised. By the end of the Bronze Age, the world had become unrecognizable: mammoths and giant sloths replaced by cattle and sheep, scattered nomadic bands replaced by millions living in cities, and farming on nearly every continent. Dr. Wyman argues that the rise of states and steady food production wasn’t inevitable, but rather, the outcome of countless choices that reshaped the planet and made us who we are today.

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Timothy K. August, "The Refugee Aesthetic: Reimagining Southeast Asian America" (Temple UP, 2020)

Mon, 25 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In The Refugee Aesthetic: Reimagining Southeast Asian America (Temple University Press, 2021), Timothy K. August centers Southeast Asian American writers and artists to develop a theory of refugee aesthetics as a way of considering how aesthetic forms are created and contested by refugees, nonrefugees, and institutions alike.

On this episode of New Books in Asian American Studies, Timothy K. August discusses the contradictions in how refugee stories are read as arising from exceptional circumstances even as the ever-increasing number of refugees renders refugeeness a remarkably everyday experience; the importance of aesthetics as a means by which refugees are able to contest—and reimagine—the refugee narratives that have been created through institutional and bureaucratic definitions of refugees; how refugee writers reconcile demands that they explain their experiences or perform their humanity within their own art and writing; and more.

The Refugee Aesthetic examines a range of literary and artistic works by refugees, including poems, novels, graphic novels, and visual art, by writers and artists including Bao Phi, Monique Truong, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Mohsin Hamid, Gia-Bao Tran, and more, to argue for the agency of refugees as cultural producers who are redefining a politically, bureaucratically produced refugee image and instead imagining a plural form of refugee aesthetics.

Please note that this episode was recorded prior to the events of October 7, 2023.

Timothy August is an Associate Professor of English at Stony Brook University.

Jennifer Gayoung Lee is a writer and researcher based in New York City.

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Timothy McCall, "Making the Renaissance Man: Masculinity in the Courts of Renaissance Italy" (Reaktion Books, 2023)

Mon, 25 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Looking beyond the marble elegance of Michelangelo's David, the pugnacious, passionate, and--crucially--important story of Renaissance manhood.

Timothy McCall's book Making the Renaissance Man: Masculinity in the Courts of Renaissance Italy (Reaktion, 2023) explores the images, objects, and experiences that fashioned men and masculinity in the courts of fifteenth-century Italy. Across the peninsula, Italian princes fought each other in fierce battles and spectacular jousts, seduced mistresses, flaunted splendor in lavish rituals of knighting, and demonstrated prowess through the hunt--all ostentatious performances of masculinity and the drive to rule. Hardly frivolous pastimes, these activities were essential displays of privilege and virility; indeed, violence underlay the cultural veneer of the Italian Renaissance. Timothy McCall investigates representations and ideals of manhood in this time and provides a historically grounded and gorgeously illustrated account of how male identity and sexuality proclaimed power during a century crucial to the formation of Early Modern Europe.

Jana Byars is an independent scholar located in Amsterdam.

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Matthieu Felt, "Meanings of Antiquity: Myth Interpretation in Premodern Japan" (Harvard UP, 2023)

Mon, 25 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Meanings of Antiquity: Myth Interpretation in Premodern Japan (Harvard UP, 2023) is the first dedicated study of how the oldest Japanese myths, recorded in the eighth-century texts Kojiki and Nihon shoki, changed in meaning and significance between 800 and 1800 CE. Generations of Japanese scholars and students have turned to these two texts and their creation myths to understand what it means to be Japanese and where Japan fits into the world order.

As the shape and scale of the world explained by these myths changed, these myths evolved in turn. Over the course of the millennium covered in this study, Japan transforms from the center of a proud empire to a millet seed at the edge of the Buddhist world, from the last vestige of China’s glorious Zhou Dynasty to an archipelago on a spherical globe. Analyzing historical records, poetry, fiction, religious writings, military epics, political treatises, and textual commentary, Matthieu Felt identifies the geographical, cosmological, epistemological, and semiotic changes that led to new adaptations of Japanese myths. Felt demonstrates that the meanings of Japanese antiquity and of Japan’s most ancient texts were—and are—a work in progress, a collective effort of writers and thinkers over the past 1,300 years.

Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing.

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Julia F. Irwin, "Catastrophic Diplomacy: US Foreign Disaster Assistance in the American Century" (UNC Press, 2023)

Mon, 25 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Catastrophic Diplomacy: US Foreign Disaster Assistance in the American Century (UNC Press, 2023) offers a sweeping history of US foreign disaster assistance, highlighting its centrality to twentieth-century US foreign relations. Spanning over seventy years, from the dawn of the twentieth century to the mid-1970s, it examines how the US government, US military, and their partners in the American voluntary sector responded to major catastrophes around the world. Focusing on US responses to sudden disasters caused by earthquakes, tropical storms, and floods—crises commonly known as "natural disasters"—historian Julia F. Irwin highlights the complex and messy politics of emergency humanitarian relief.

Deftly weaving together diplomatic, environmental, military, and humanitarian histories, Irwin tracks the rise of US disaster aid as a tool of foreign policy, showing how and why the US foreign policy establishment first began contributing aid to survivors of international catastrophes. While the book focuses mainly on bilateral assistance efforts, it also assesses the broader international context in which the US government and its auxiliaries operated, situating their humanitarian responses against the aid efforts of other nations, empires, and international organizations. At its most fundamental level, Catastrophic Diplomacy demonstrates the importance of international disaster assistance—and humanitarian aid more broadly—to US foreign affairs.

Julia F. Irwin, PhD, Yale University, 2009, is professor of history at Louisiana State University. Her research focuses on the place of humanitarian aid in twentieth-century U.S. foreign relations. Her first book, Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening (2013), is a history of U.S. international relief efforts during the World War I era; the dissertation on which it is based won the Betty M. Unterberger Dissertation Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.

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Dalit Feminism with Thenmozhi Soundararajan

Mon, 25 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This episode features a conversation with Thenmozhi Soundararajan, founder Equality Labs and author of The Trauma of Caste. We discussed her own coming to consciousness of caste as the child of Dalit parents who were “passing” and how her work as an organizer has involved sustained engagement with anticaste thought, Black feminism, and Indigenous epistemologies. The conversation then turned to the practice of solidarity as the building of meaningful and not just transactional relationships and the importance of recognizing the potential of political alignments that may be foreclosed at one moment, only to be given new life in another. Finally, we addressed the need, in our current moment of dying empires and failing democracies, to both work with and beyond the law in order to open new horizons of political imagination and practice.

Guest bio

Thenmozhi Soundararajan is founder of the Dalit feminist organization, Equality Labs, and author of The Trauma of Caste.

References

Thenmozhi Soundararajan, The Trauma of Caste

Shramanic faiths: ancient Indian traditions focusing on asceticism, self-reliance, and liberation from the cycle of rebirth that rejected the authority of the Vedas and Brahmanical authority.

Ravidassia: religion based on the teachings of Guru Ravidas, a 14th century Indian saint. It was considered a sect within Sikhism until 2009 when it was proclaimed a distinct religion.

Bhopal gas tragedy: On 3 December 1984, a leak at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, resulted in what is considered the world’s worst industrial disaster.

Reservation: India’s system of caste-based affirmative action.

Linda Burnham: activist and writer who co-founded the Women of Color Resource Center and was a leader in the Third World Women’s Alliance.

Combahee River Collective: pioneering Black lesbian feminist organization formed in Boston in 1974.

Gloria Anzaldúa: American philosopher and scholar of Chicana feminism, cultural theory, and queer theory

Iyothee Thass: Tamil anti-caste thinker and writer who converted to Buddhism and called upon members of his own Paraiyar caste to do the same.

Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule: anti-caste social reformers and pioneers of women’s education from Maharashtra.

Ruth King: Founder of the Mindful of Race Institute

Rhonda Magee: Professor Emerita at University of San Francisco and teacher of mindfulness

Resmaa Menakem: psychotherapist and creator of Somatic Abolitionism.

Eduardo Duran: Native American clinical psychologist, scholar, teacher and healer

Collective Future Fund: a philanthropic intermediary fund that works with movements mobilizing toward a collective future free from violence.

Kolar Gold Fields: former gold mining region in Karnataka, India

Equality Labs: a South Asian Dalit civil rights organization.

BAPS: The Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Akshardham in Robbinsville, New Jersey is the largest modern Hindu temple outside India. It is the subject of a lawsuit filed by Dalit workers from India accusing the temple of human trafficking and labor exploitation.

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Jeremy Yellen, "The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War" (Cornell UP, 2019)

Mon, 25 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Jeremy Yellen’s The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War (Cornell University Press, 2019) is a challenging transnational exploration of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Japan’s ambitious, confused, and much maligned attempt to create a new bloc order in East and Southeast Asia during World War II. Yellen’s book is welcome both as the first book-length treatment of the Sphere in English and for also being innovative in both approach and analysis. The book is divided into two parts, each addressing one of the “two Pacific Wars,” as Yellen puts it: a “war of empires” and “an anticolonial war… for independence.” The first half of the book treats the Japanese “high policy” of the Sphere. Here, Yellen not only provides—through the Coprosperity Sphere—a provocative new reading of the Tripartite Pact and the imbrication of Japan’s regional and global geopolitical strategies, but also outlines an important timeline of how Japanese conceptualizations of the Sphere evolved with the changing economic, political, and military expediencies of the Pacific War. Though ideas about the Sphere as a regional order of hierarchical solidarity with Japan at its apex, a “grand strategy of opportunism” rooted in the “sphere-of-influence diplomacy” and “cooperative imperialism” of Japan’s bombastic and enigmatic foreign minister, Matsuoka Yōsuke, Yellen shows that plans for the Sphere only became specific and concrete when Japan’s war situation descended into increasing desperation from 1942 on. The second half of the book shifts gears to examine responses to the Sphere in the Philippines and Burma. Yellen shows that for local nationalist elites like Burma’s first prime minister Ba Maw, whether Japanese rhetoric about the creation of more-or-less liberal international order within the Sphere for the top-echelon nations like Burma and the Philippines was genuine or self-serving, “even sham independence brought opportunity.” By focusing on these pragmatic nationalists (“patriotic collaborators”) Yellen contributes to a growing body of literature on empire that refuses to be pigeonholed by binaries of virtuous resistance and traitorous collaboration.

This podcast was recorded as a lecture/dialogue for a live audience at Nagoya University.

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Jeffrey Whyte, "The Birth of Psychological War: Propaganda, Espionage, and Military Violence from WWII to the Vietnam War" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Mon, 25 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Jeffrey Whyte's book The Birth of Psychological War: Propaganda, Espionage, and Military Violence from WWII to the Vietnam War (Oxford UP, 2023) explores the history, politics, and geography of United States psychological warfare in the 20th century against the backdrop of the contemporary 'post-truth era'. From its origins in the Second World War, to the United States' counterinsurgency campaigns in Vietnam, Whyte traces how the theory and practice of psychological warfare transformed the relationship between the home front and theatres of war. Whyte interrogates the broader political mythologies that animate popular conceptions of psychological war, such as its claim to make war more humane and less violent.

On the contrary, The Birth of Psychological War demonstrates the role of psychological warfare in expanding the scope and scale of military violence amidst ostensible efforts to 'win hearts and minds'. While casting a critical eye on psychological warfare, Whyte establishes its continued significance for the contemporary student of international relations.

Dr. Whyte earned his Ph.D. with the Department of Geography, University of British Columbia and before that a MA with School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, also in beautiful British Columbia. He is currently Lecturer in International Relations at the Department of Politics, Philosophy, and Religion, Lancaster University.

Michael G. Vann is a professor of world history at California State University, Sacramento. A specialist in imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, he is the author of The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt: Empires, Disease, and Modernity in French Colonial Vietnam (Oxford University Press, 2018). When he’s not reading or talking about new books with smart people, Mike can be found surfing in Santa Cruz, California.

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Matthew R. Crawford and Aaron P. Johnson, "Cyril of Alexandria: Against Julian: Introduction and Translation" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Mon, 25 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In 362/363 the Roman emperor Julian composed a treatise titled Against the Galileans in which he set forth his reasons for abandoning Christianity and returning to devotion to the traditional Greco-Roman deities. Sixty years later Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, composed a response. His resulting treatise Against Julian would dwarf the size of Julian's original work and in fact serves as our primary source for the fragments of it that have survived. Julian's treatise was the most sophisticated critique of Christianity to have been composed in antiquity and Cyril's rebuttal was equally learned. The Christian bishop not only responded directly to Julian's own words but drew upon a wide range of ancient literature, including poetry, history, philosophy, and religious works to undermine the emperor's critiques of the Christian Bible and bolster the intellectual legitimacy of Christian belief and practice. Cyril of Alexandria: Against Julian, Introduction and Translation (Cambridge UP, 2025) is the first full translation of the work into English.

New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review.

Matthew Crawford Program Director, Biblical and Early Christian Studies. Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at Australian Catholic University

Aaron Johnson, for the past 15 years, has been teaching at Lee University in Tennessee

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

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Claudia Smith Brinson, "Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina" (U South Carolina Press, 2020)

Mon, 25 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina (U South Carolina Press, 2020), longtime journalist Claudia Smith Brinson details the lynchings, beatings, bombings, cross burnings, death threats, arson, and venomous hatred that black South Carolinians endured―as well as the astonishing courage, devotion, dignity, and compassion of those who risked their lives for equality.

Through extensive research and interviews with more than one hundred fifty civil rights activists, many of whom had never shared their stories with anyone, Brinson chronicles twenty pivotal years of petitioning, preaching, picketing, boycotting, marching, and holding sit-ins. Participants' use of nonviolent direct action altered the landscape of civil rights in South Carolina and reverberated throughout the South.

These firsthand accounts include those of the unsung petitioners who risked their lives by supporting Summerton's Briggs v. Elliot, a lawsuit that led to the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision; the thousands of students who were arrested and jailed in 1960 for protests in Rock Hill, Orangeburg, Denmark, Columbia, and Sumter; and the black female employees and leaders who defied a governor and his armed troops during the 1969 hospital strike in Charleston.

Brinson also highlights contributions made by remarkable but lesser-known activists, including James M. Hinton Sr., president of the South Carolina Conference of Branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; Thomas W. Gaither, Congress of Racial Equality field secretary and scout for the Freedom Rides; Charles F. McDew, a South Carolina State College student and co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; and Mary Moultrie, grassroots leader of the 1969 hospital workers' strike.

These intimate stories of courage and conviction, both heartbreaking and inspiring, shine a light on the progress achieved by nonviolent civil rights activists while also revealing white South Carolinians' often violent resistance to change. Although significant racial disparities remain, the sacrifices of these brave men and women produced real progress―and hope for the future. For more information on this book, see storiesofstruggle.com

Matt Simmons is an Assistant Professor of History at Emmanuel University where he teaches course in U.S. and public history. His research interests focus on the intersection of labor and race in the twentieth-century American South. You can follow him on X @matthewfsimmons.

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Oscar Winberg, "Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics" (UNC Press, 2025)

Mon, 25 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Political historian Oscar Winberg has a fascinating new book titled Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics. This book weaves together quite a few different threads in examining the historical context in which the television show, All In The Family, landed on American television screens. Archie Bunker for President examines why this particular sitcom was a kind of inflection point within U.S. politics, within the media landscape at the time and moving forward, and how television production shifted and changed around this one particular television series. Winberg also lays out the path from the early 1970s, when All in the Family first aired, to our contemporary political moment, when celebrity and politics seem to be inescapably intertwined.

As Winberg notes in our conversation, television as an entity is inherently conservative, since the functional model was about appealing to the lowest common denominator so that advertisers would be willing to pay for time during shows. In order to reach the most viewers, at least in the age of network television, the television series needed to appeal to the largest market possible, and not “turn off” viewers. What happens in the late 1960s and early 1970s with the television show All in the Family is that this dynamic shifts, and the case is made that it isn’t about reaching the most people, but about reaching the people who have the means and inclination to purchase what the advertisers are selling. This is part of the pitch that Norman Lear makes, that CBS executive Bob Wood finally decides to gamble on by greenlighting All in the Family. The dynamic inside the show itself is to focus on politics: to have the characters within the series discuss different political issues, and engage with the impacts of these issues, from women’s rights and reproductive health to homosexuality to racism and the anti-war movement. In designing All in the Family with Archie Bunker (played by Carroll O’Conner) clearly defined as a conservative and as a bigot, and with Archie’s daughter, Gloria Stivic (played by Sally Struthers) and son in law, Mike Stivic (played by Rob Reiner), as liberals and politically active, the show embedded politics within the narrative. Edith Bunker, played by Jean Stapleton, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment, which was making its way through the ratification process while the series was airing, providing yet another avenue for political discussion within the show’s structure.

There were quite a few other shows that were developed at the same time as All in the Family that took up similarly political themes in iconic ways, from the Mary Tyler Moore Show to M*A*S*H to Maude. Political conversations were the fabric of these shows in much the same way as in All in the Family, where characters find themselves experiencing dimensions of politics in their lives and they discuss this with friends and family within the narrative construction. This also translated to Americans discussing these shows with each other at dinner, or at the “water cooler”, or at the beauty parlor or barbershop. Given the structure of television in the 1970s and 1980s, before cable and streaming services, options were more limited options, and many of these shows had great writers, actors, and showrunners. This was “appointment television” because there was no way to record or otherwise go back and watch the episode. Episodes were only available at their regularly scheduled time and day—which also meant that lots and lots of Americans were watching the same show at the same time.

In some sense, Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics is not only about how one television show remade American politics, but also about how All in the Family remade American television, opening up the networks to developing and airing television shows that integrate politics (of all kinds) into the narratives. There is still quite a lot of television, particularly network television, that is pitched to the broadest possible audience, but the narratives in police procedurals or hospital-centered series or sitcoms integrate different dimensions of politics into their storylines in ways that had not been done before All in the Family.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI.

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Shane Breaux, "Reverberations of Culture: Racialized Performance in Early Twentieth-Century Musical Variety by Just a Buncha Clowns" (Routledge, 2026)

Sun, 24 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Reverberations of Culture: Racialized Performance in Early Twentieth-Century Musical Variety by Just a Buncha Clowns (Routledge, 2026) by Dr. Shane Breaux examines musical variety clowns and the broad array of racial and ethnic impersonations they performed on four distinct touring circuits and apparatuses: the African American Theatre Owners Booking Association (TOBA), the Chinese American so-called Chop Suey Circuit, the Mexican and Mexican American carpas tours, and Country American barn dances.

This book explores the overlooked history of touring clown performers in early twentieth-century musical variety shows, addressing both their historical marginalization and their significant impact on popular entertainment. By examining these performers' widespread presences both on and off stage, the work challenges traditional historical narratives that have excluded diverse voices, particularly women and non-white performers. The research corrects a common misconception that racial impersonation in musical variety was exclusively the domain of white male performers. Instead, it reveals how performers and managers from various backgrounds actively challenged prevailing ideas about American identity, whiteness, and cultural inclusion. Through this lens, the book demonstrates that musical comedy performance and management were not exclusively white privileges, but rather spaces where diverse artists contributed significantly to early twentieth-century entertainment culture and beyond.

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Samuel Markind, "Music Between Your Ears: How Musical Engagement Powers the Human Brain" (JHU Press, 2025)

Sun, 24 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Explores the profound power of music to influence brain function and well-being.

IPA 2026 Distinguished Favorite in the Music Category

Why does music influence how we feel so deeply--and what are the scientific mechanisms behind this phenomenon? In Music Between Your Ears: How Musical Engagement Powers the Human Brain (JHU Press, 2025) Dr. Samuel Markind explores the intriguing relationship between music and brain function. Using evolutionary theory, he illuminates the pivotal role that music plays in human survival and procreation. From communication and caregiving to social bonding and partner selection, music has molded the human species and continues to shape our lives in remarkable ways.

This book combines insights from neuroscience and psychology with helpful drawings and vivid examples to present compelling evidence for music's life-enhancing potential. Dr. Markind highlights the brain's instinctive capacity for music: from newborns' natural affinity for rhythm and melody to the effect that music has on brain development throughout the lifespan. Music also helps people learn at any age and in any condition, so it can improve speech, movement, and memory in both healthy individuals and those suffering from illness or injury. Dr. Markind encourages readers to engage actively with music. Whether through singing, dancing, or instrument playing, the benefits of active participation are profound and accessible to everyone, regardless of musical background. This book, filled with straightforward and practical suggestions, is an inspiring guide for anyone seeking to enrich their life through music.

Music Between Your Ears shows how the act of engaging with music can profoundly impact your mental, physical, and emotional well-being. And the benefits of music go far beyond entertainment--they're essential to the very fabric of what makes us human.

Samuel Markind's website here.

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Yosef Grodzinsky, "How Deeply Human Is Language?: Chomsky, the Brain, and the AI Fantasy" (MIT Press, 2026)

Sun, 24 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How Deeply Human Is Language? Chomsky, the Brain, and the AI Fantasy (MIT Press, 2026) is Yosef Grodzinsky’s exploration of the criticality of the linguistic theories to the design of LLMs. The book dwells on the significance of the marriage between computational and theoretical fields, specifically “engineering and science” on the development of unique Language Learning Models. Yosef maintains that leveraging linguistic theories for the development of Gen AI chatbots and training of Language Learning Models will help the growing Gen-AI revolution. In the book, LLMs are evaluated from the neurolinguistic perspective, comparing how the human brain works with different LLMs’ reactions to prompts, highlighting how a collaboration between the core linguists and the experts in the technology-related fields could make a change.

Yosef Grodzinzky’s positions in the book is grounded in contemporary linguistics, founded and inspired by Noam Chomsky, the father of the “mentalist” linguistic perspective to language acquisition. In the book, the author employs the historical approach to tell different significant stories to communicate multiple messages of success of interdisciplinary practices. While the main idea is to explore the centrality of linguistic science to other fields with specific emphasis on Engineering and sister’s technological fields, the book dwelled on specific pitfalls of the linguistics and way forward to promote novel interdisciplinary productions.

Mariam Olugbodi is a university teacher and a writer, she is the author of the monograph titled: “Stylistic Features in the 2011 and 2012 Final Matches Commentaries in the UEFA Champions League”, published by Grin Verlag. Mariam’s greatest dream is seeing a world where knowledge is accessible to all. She does this through her volunteering roles on open knowledge platforms as a host and an editor. As part of her effort to maintain inclusion and diversity in knowledge transmission, she volunteers as a teacher in crises contexts. Learn more and connect with Mariam through her social links here. | LinkedIn| here. |ORCID| and here. |Meta|

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PJ DiPietro, "Sideways Selves Travesti and Jotería, "Struggles Across the Américas" (U Texas Press, 2025)

Sun, 24 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How does coloniality shape the sociosomatic possibilities of our bodies? More importantly, how do gender-nonconforming people not only resist the limitations of that coloniality but also make, connect to, and revitalize other possibilities? How do displaced people use old and radical practices of embodiment to enact decolonial life now? In Sideways Selves: Travesti and Joetría Struggles Across the Américas (U Texas Press, 2025), PJ DiPietro listens carefully across many registers to the creative work of making and living sideways selves. Their work offers paths to decolonial worlds we may need to develop new eyes to see.

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Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America

Sun, 24 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the decades directly following the Holocaust, American Jewish leaders debated how to preserve and produce Jewish culture, fearful that growing affluence and suburbanization threatened the future of Jewish life. Many communal educators and rabbis pinned their hopes on residential summer camps for Jewish youth: institutions that sprang up across the U.S. as places for children and teenagers to socialize, recreate, and experience Jewish culture. Camp life was shaped both by adults’ fears, hopes, and dreams about the Jewish future as well as children and teenagers’ own desires and interests.

Focusing on the lived experience of campers and camp counselors, Sandra Fox’s new book, The Jews of Summer: Summer Camp and Jewish Culture in Postwar America, explores how a cultural crisis birthed a rite of passage that remains a significant influence in American Jewish life. Join YIVO for a discussion with Fox about this new book led by Philissa Cramer (Jewish Telegraphic Agency).

This book talk originally took place on February 27, 2023.

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Elina Penner, 'Nightberries" (CMU Press, 2026)

Sun, 24 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Elina Penner about her translated novel, Nightberries (CMU Press, 2026, translated by Bradley Schmidt).

Where is your husband?
Nelli doesn’t seem to be in crisis—or does she? The quiet youngest daughter in a noisy, tangled German Mennonite family who fled from Russia in the 1990s, does she even know where she belongs? Marriage, loyalty, faith, family: memory can be deceiving. Or are memories like nightberries? Nightberries taste good, with sugar, when ripe. But sometimes nightberries are dangerous, and you need to understand when that transformation happens. A tense situation boils over in this darkly entertaining psychological novel of contemporary German life.

Elina Penner was born in 1987 as a Mennonite German in the former Soviet Union and moved to Germany in 1991. Plautdietsch is her mother tongue. After years in Berlin and the US, she lives with her family in East Westphalia and is a successful personal essayist and blogger. Nachtbeeren was her debut novel, in 2022. In 2025, her second novel, Die Unbußfertigen, will be published in Germany.

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Daniela Soto-Hernández, "Lithium Extraction in Chile: Ontological, Ecological and Economic Dimensions" (Routledge, 2025)

Sun, 24 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Lithium Extraction in Chile: Ontological, Ecological and Economic Dimensions (Routledge, 2025) is a new book from Dr Daniela Soto-Hernández, a Social Anthropologist currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Sussex. In this book, published with Routledge, Dr Soto-Hernández uses ethnographic methods during her intensive fieldwork in Chile, specifically in and around the Atacama Desert, to take a relational view on lithium mining in the region.

Chile is the largest and oldest producer of lithium in South America and the second largest in the world, accounting for nearly 32% of the global supply in 2022. Dr Soto-Hernández’s book, Lithium Extraction in Chile, is a crucial and new way of seeking to understand not only lithium, but the worlds that are created around the resource; inclusive of sacred, indigenous relations, the ubiquitous role of water, the discursive and practical dimensions of lithium production, and the social tensions manifest throughout these processes. Dr Soto-Hernández first explores the ways in which the Chilean Atacama Desert has been constructed as a ‘desolate-scape’ through mechanisms and relations of coloniality and capitalism, to render the territory as lifeless and only appropriate for extraction. Then, and by using the rich fieldwork central to the book, Dr Soto-Hernández puts forward the notion of ‘desertscape’ to express the ways of living for indigenous peoples in the territories of the Atacama Desert, such as for the Lickanantay peoples. This paints a direct contrast to the colonised view of the desert as a ‘desolate-scape’, which serves capital, and instead expresses the abundance, world-making, and life-giving properties of the landscape as ‘desertscape’. This relational view of the Atacama Desert, inclusive of non-people, people, and the sacred, is then used to understand the role of lithium, brine, and water extraction in this crucial territory, with implications for a truly transformative energy transition.

Elliot Dolan-Evans is a sessional lecturer and tutor in law at Monash University and RMIT. His research investigates the political economy of global capitalism, forms of international governance, and questions of war and peace. His first book, Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF and the Conflict in Ukraine, is now out with Bristol University Press.

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Jason S. Spicer, "Co-Operative Enterprise in Comparative Perspective: Exceptionally Un-American?" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Sun, 24 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Co-operative enterprises, which are democratically owned and governed by their workers, customers, or suppliers, have long captured the imagination of activists and social scientists alike. In centering economic democracy and a collectivist-democratic logic, and in embodying a "third way" alternative to profit-maximizing corporations and state-owned enterprises, co-operatives offer the promise of a more sustainable and equitable economy.

Despite extensive study of co-operatives' real and imagined benefits, we know little about the conditions under which they achieve the lasting scale needed to be a viable alternative and transform the economy. Under what conditions can co-operatives achieve such scale? And are such conditions present in the United States, where, despite repeated organizing efforts, co-operatives remain exceptionally rare at scale?

Through a rigorous comparative-historical analysis of co-operative enterprises in different national contexts, Co-operative Enterprise in Comparative Perspective: Exceptionally Un-American? (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Jason Spicer seeks to answer these questions. Deploying two different variants of the new institutionalism, Dr. Spicer treats the United States as a central case of comparative failure, as contrasted to three rich democracies where the co-operative business model has been more successful: Finland, France, and New Zealand.

The cause of co-operatives' comparative weakness in the United States is identified as reflecting the joint effect of economic liberalism and structural racism. Only in the United States did the co-operative face, in its initial development, two well-entrenched incumbents operating with competing ownership models: the investor-owned firm and the race-based chattel slavery system of ownership of people. Proponents of these two models acted to deprive the co-operative movement of resources, and undermined the solidarity at the co-operative business model's heart, splintering the American co-operative movement in the process. In subsequent waves of co-operative organizing, advocates have never fully succeeded in overcoming these initial obstacles, resulting in a different outcome in the United States, consistent with broader conceptions of the United States as a perennial outlier (i.e., ""American exceptionalism""). In contrast, in the successful cases, advocates were better able to leverage resources to animate a national solidarity and procure the necessary political and economic resources to achieve scale.

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John Waddell, "The Celtic World: A History" (Four Courts Press, 2026)

Sat, 23 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

At the dawn of history the Celts occupied a vast swathe of Europe from Ireland in the west to lands south of the Black Sea in Asia Minor. The study of this Celtic past has often been a disputed and debated territory and for centuries the true story of these Celtic-speakers of old was obscured by fanciful origin myths. Their origins and subsequent history were slowly revealed when linguistic studies and archaeological discoveries in the nineteenth century began to expose a rich and complex narrative that is still being clarified today. 

A series of dramatic finds in France and Germany in particular have brought these ancient peoples to scholarly and popular attention. This was a prehistoric world that offered an intricate picture of connectivity and diversity across much of Europe. These were people who have bequeathed us a remarkable archaeological heritage, an astonishing art style, several living languages, and, in Irish and Welsh, the most substantial body of early written texts in a non-Latin tongue in western Europe.

The Celtic World: A History (Four Courts Press, 2026) by Professor John Waddell is a historical exploration of how our understanding of the ancient Celts and the concept of a European-wide world inhabited by Celtic-speaking peoples developed over time.

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Thomas Xavier Sarmiento, "The Heartland of US Empire: Race, Region, and the Queer Filipinx Midwest" (Temple UP, 2026)

Sat, 23 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Published by Temple University Press in 2026, The Heartland of US Empire: Race, Region, and the Queer Filipinx Midwest examines Filipinx cultural representations in the Midwest since the early twentieth century. In it, Dr. Thomas Xavier Sarmiento shrewdly considers the impact of American exceptionalism and U.S. imperialism in a region where white, middle-class, heterosexual, and Christian is the norm. He employs a queer, decolonial Filipinx methodology that traces how narratives of America’s heartland position Filipinxs in the region as non-normative due to their racial, gender, sexual, and national statuses. As a result, The Heartland of US Empire locates queer Filipinxs in the geographic center of the nation and at the center of cultural narratives, thereby mapping alternative images of diasporic Filipinx identity and experience alongside U.S. regional and national identities, histories, and realities.

Tom Sarmiento is an associate professor of English and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at Kansas State University. He specializes in Filipinx American and queer literature and culture and teaches courses in Asian American literature, Cultural Studies, film adaptation, and Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies. His works have appeared in MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States, The SAGE Encyclopedia on Filipina/o/x America Studies, Asian American Literature Discourse and Pedagogies, and in a special issue he guest edited for American Studies. In addition to his work in Literature & Cultural Studies, he is invested in helping students see writing as a nonlinear process and as a tool for social change.

Donna Doan Anderson is an assistant professor in History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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Stuart Schrader, "Blue Power: How Police Organized to Serve and Protect Themselves" (Basic Books, 2026)

Sat, 23 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In America today, police enjoy unmatched power. On the streets, officers employ violence at their own discretion. Behind closed doors, they are even more powerful. In city halls, police strong-arm local leaders and nullify attempts at public oversight. And in state legislatures and Washington, DC, police lobbyists and union leaders zealously uphold a bipartisan consensus against even mild reform. Yet as recently as fifty years ago, police still served at the pleasure of democratically elected politicians, not the other way around. In Blue Power: How Police Organized to Serve and Protect Themselves (Basic Books, 2026), Stuart Schrader narrates the rise of a bottom-up movement of rank-and-file officers who lifted policing above the law.

Organizers launched their campaign in the 1960s, courting a public backlash to urban uprisings and civil rights. City by city, county by county, they formed unions and other organizations and won control over working conditions, impunity from oversight, and insulation from lean budgets. By the 2000s, this movement had triumphed nationally, shoring up the power of the police to overrule the public interest in the name of law and order.

Through deep archival detective work, Blue Power reveals how police forced American democracy to back the blue.

Stuart Schrader is an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, where he is the director of the Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism.

Michael Stauch is an associate professor of modern US history at the University of Toledo, specializing in policing and incarceration, urban studies, and social movements.

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Barry Devine and Ellen Scheible eds., "Teaching James Joyce in the Twenty-First Century" (UP of Florida, 2025)

Sat, 23 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A guide for today’s classrooms, this collection from leading Joyce scholars explores innovative pedagogical approaches to the works of this often-challenging writer

Teaching James Joyce in the Twenty-First Century (UP of Florida, 2025) presents examples of bold, innovative pedagogical techniques instructors have used to adapt the study of Joyce’s work for the contemporary classroom. Leading Joyce scholars share approaches that go beyond the traditional university lecture hall to include experiences teaching high school students, senior citizens, art students, book club members, and people in prisons.

The strategies in this inspirational volume range from class discussions to creating art and music to walking city streets. Works examined include the complex Finnegans Wake and the influential modernist milestones Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. While Joyce is often viewed as an essential and foundational author of Irish literature, contributors to this volume argue that the spirit of Joyce’s writing is global, and they offer suggestions for teaching these works in an international context.

Students are often daunted by the perceived difficulty and inaccessibility of Joyce, but this volume helps both new and experienced teachers of Joyce make the writer’s texts understandable, relatable, and even fun. These authors argue that reading Joyce helps develop skills in holding and interrogating opposing ideas, skills that are essential in navigating the modern academic and political landscape. In grappling with Joyce, students will recognize his writing as relevant and urgent.

Barry Devine is associate professor of English at Heidelberg University. Ellen Scheible is professor of English at Bridgewater State University. Scheible is the author or editor of many books, including Body Politics in Contemporary Irish Women’s Fiction: The Literary Legacy of Mother Ireland.

Daniel Moran’s writing about literature and film can be found on Pages and Frames. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing and co-hosts the long-running podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network.

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Alicia Volk, "In the Shadow of Empire: Art in Occupied Japan" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Sat, 23 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Alicia Volk’s In the Shadow of Empire: Art in Occupied Japan (University of Chicago Press, 2025) uncovers the largely overlooked history of Japanese art during the years of occupation (1945-1952). Volk’s diverse case studies trace the intersections of politics and art in this charged period. As it had accommodated, shaped, and resisted empire, Japanese art now accommodated, shaped, and resisted the push and pull of defeat, occupation, and the dawning Cold War. In the Shadow of Empire’s chapters present a range of practitioners and practices and their struggles in the new geopolitical order taking shape around them, taking into account not just the domestic context of Japan’s relationship with the American-led occupation, but with Japan’s erstwhile Asian empire, the socialist bloc, and audiences in “the West.”

Spoiler alert! At the conclusion of the podcast, we talk about this image.

Alicia Volk is professor of Japanese art at the University of Maryland; she is the author of Made in Japan: The Postwar Creative Print Movement and In Pursuit of Universalism: Yorozu Tetsugorō and Japanese Modern Art, recipient of the Phillips Book Prize.

Nathan Hopson is an associate professor of Japanese language and history in the Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen.

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An Interview with Senior Literary Agent Stephen Fraser

Sat, 23 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Stephen Fraser is senior literary agent with The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency, after having worked as an editor for over 25 years before becoming an agent. He represents children’s books in a wide range of genres. We talked about his experiences in the worlds of editing and agenting, his do's and don'ts for submissions, his thoughts on the current state of children's literature, and the importance of the story.

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An Interview with Senior Literary Agent Stephen Fraser

Sat, 23 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

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Mary T. Freeman, "Abolitionists and the Politics of Correspondence" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)

Sat, 23 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Mary Freeman, associate professor of history at the University of Maine, joins Michael Stauch to discuss her new book Abolitionists and the Politics of Correspondence (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026), about how abolitionists harnessed the power of letter-writing to further their political aims. It highlights everyday Americans’ involvement in abolition, and shows in particular how women and Black Americans used letters to intervene in politics when other avenues were closed to them. Freeman focuses not only on what people wrote but also how they wrote about it: how they manipulated, exploited, and subverted cultural conventions to make political statements and claims.

Highlights include:

The inspiration behind the book’s striking title;
The influence of the “archival turn” on Freeman’s analysis of the materiality of letters;
A bold new reading of the lives of Angelina and Sarah Grimke, suggesting how their letter writing influenced their activism;
How the abolitionist movement grew alongside the rise of the post office;
The role of new forms of technology in shaping social movements, yesterday and today.

Guest: Mary Freeman is an associate professor of history at the University of Maine, with a focus on the political, social, and cultural history of slavery and abolition. Her writing has appeared in the Journal of the Early Republic and she is currently developing research projects on nineteenth-century Black activism in Maine and on the history of abolitionist archives.

Host: Michael Stauch is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025.

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James O'Neil Spady, "Take Freedom: Recovering the Fugitive History of the Denmark Vesey Affair" (UNC Press, 2026)

Sat, 23 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In 1822, Black Charlestonians attempted to overthrow slavery. They were exposed before they could strike, and many were tried and executed in what has come to be known as the Denmark Vesey Affair. Take Freedom: Recovering the Fugitive History of the Denmark Vesey Affair (University of North Carolina Press, 2026) reinterprets these events on the basis of new evidence and methods. Dr. James O’Neil Spady narrates the roles of a variety of Black men and women, arguing that the uprising was a broadly based, African-influenced social movement that marshaled radical love and fugitive practices of freedom to ignite a revolution that sought to liberate beloved friends, families, and communities from increasingly aggressive and racializing slaveowners.

Uncovering never-before-consulted, unpublished documents, Dr. Spady names the clerk who made the trial records and settles old arguments about their reliability. Take Freedom demonstrates the realism of the uprising movement’s strategy and uses social network mapping to illustrate the social dynamics within the Black community, emphasizing the roles of women and relationships among enslaved people. Ultimately, this book offers a more inclusive and expanded portrayal of this pivotal revolutionary movement.

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Anna O. Law, "Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship: African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Fri, 22 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Since the late nineteenth century, the US federal government has enjoyed exclusive authority to decide whether someone has the ability to enter and stay in US territory. But freedom of movement was not guaranteed in the British colonies or early US. By contrast, voluntary migrants were met with strict laws and policies created by colonies and states, which denied free mobility and settlement in their territories to unwanted populations.

Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship: African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants (Oxford University Press, 2026) by Dr. Anna O. Law presents a story of constitutional development that traces the confluence of the logics of slavery and settler colonialism in early legal rulings and public policy about migration and citizenship. The book examines the division of labor between the national and state governments that endured for over a century, reasons why that arrangement changed in the late nineteenth century, and what the transformation meant for people subject to those regimes of control. Drawing into one study the migration policy histories of groups of people that are usually studied separately, and combining the methodologies of political science, history, and law, Dr. Law reveals the unmistakable effects of slavery and Native American dispossession in modern US immigration policy.

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Alex Averbuch, "Furious Harvests" (Harvard UP, 2026)

Fri, 22 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Furious Harvests (Harvard University Press, 2026) transports readers to Alex Averbuch’s homeland of eastern Ukraine. Amid the bloody destruction brought by Russia’s war of aggression, the poet toils in fields of memory, reaping lyrics from family archives and mementos to amass testaments to the complex and painful histories of this place and its peoples. A family tree, letters to home, and the faint scent of a grandmother’s dress kept in the back of a closet speak to histories of inter-ethnic violence, WWII forced laborers, and the Holocaust. Mixing dialects, styles, registers, and voices, Furious Harvests—presented in a bilingual edition—defiantly cries out in its rage and longing toward reconciliation of the self and other.

Alex Averbuch is assistant professor of Ukrainian literature and culture in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan.

Megan Buskey is an independent writer and scholar focused on Ukrainian history, culture, and politics.

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Radio ReOrient 14:8: Dutch Islamophobia and Muslim Exceptionalism, with Martijn de Koning, hosted by Marchella Ward and Amina Easat-Daas

Fri, 22 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode Chella Ward and Amina Easat-Daas spoke with Dr Martijn de Koning about the nature of Islamophobia in the Netherlands and how this sits in relation to common perceptions about Dutch society as a liberal and tolerant society and the Islamophobic realities of the Netherlands. De Koning also spoke at length of the recent NTA affair in the Netherlands, the exceptionalising of surveilling Muslim communities and how Muslims in the Dutch context have begun to challenge this. Dr de Koning is an Associate Professor in Islam, Politics and Society at Radboud University and has published extensively on Islamophobia in the Netherlands.

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Richard Elwes, "Huge Numbers: A Story of Counting Ambitiously, from 4 1/2 to Fish 7" (Basic Books, 2026)

Fri, 22 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What if, every time you wanted to write down 1,000,000, you had to draw a picture of a god? And what if that number were the biggest you had a symbol for? If you were doing math in ancient Egypt, those were the rules: anything bigger broke math.
As mathematician Richard Elwes shows in Huge Numbers: A Story of Counting Ambitiously, from 4 1/2 to Fish 7 (Basic Books, 2026)this is the strange story of math. Even today, writing down some numbers is beyond us: try it with all the zeroes in a googolplex, or an outrageous alien number like TREE(3). Safer not to try: even harnessing every particle in the universe, you wouldn’t come close. But this book is no mere bestiary of numerical monsters. It shows how, by hunting down and studying ever-bigger numbers, arithmetic has reshaped human thought and made our modern era of science and computation possible.
Where many math books celebrate abstract algebra or ineffable infinities, Huge Numbers is both more practical and far weirder. It reveals a world where most numbers remain out of reach until we discover how to chase them down and tame them, and so remake our world again.

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Ellen Levitt, "Former Synagogues of the United States: Looking at Buildings That Once Housed Synagogues, Schools, and Other Jewish Institutions" (Resource Publications, 2026)

Fri, 22 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Throughout the United States there are buildings that had been home to Jewish houses of worship, schools, and other institutions. What has happened to these buildings? What can we learn from their history? In her book, Former Synagogues of the United States: Looking at Buildings That Once Housed Synagogues, Schools, and Other Jewish Institutions (Resource Publications, 2026), Ellen Levitt uncovers the 'hidden history' of America's Jewish built environment.

Interviewee: Ellen Levitt is a teacher, writer, photographer, and tour guide. Her previous books include The Lost Synagogues of Brooklyn, The Lost Synagogues of the Bronx and Queens, The Lost Synagogues of Manhattan, and Walking Manhattan.

Host: Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey out of Hasidism and Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com.

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Ruth Balint, "Destination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and Their Quest to Leave Postwar Europe" (Cornell UP, 2021)

Fri, 22 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this unique “history from below," Destination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and Their Quest to Leave Postwar Europe (Cornell University Press, 2021) chronicles encounters between displaced persons in Europe and the Allied agencies who were tasked with caring for them after the Second World War. The struggle to define who was a displaced person and who was not was a subject of intense debate and deliberation among humanitarians, international law experts, immigration planners, and governments. What has not adequately been recognized is that displaced persons also actively participated in this emerging refugee conversation. Displaced persons endured war, displacement, and resettlement, but these experiences were not defined by passivity and speechlessness. Instead, they spoke back, creating a dialogue that in turn helped shape the modern idea of the refugee.

As Ruth Balint shows, what made a good or convincing story at the time tells us much about the circulation of ideas about the war, the Holocaust, and the Jews. Those stories depict the emerging moral and legal distinction between economic migrants and political refugees. They tell us about the experiences of women and children in the face of new psychological and political interventions into the family. Stories from displaced persons also tell us something about the enduring myth of the new world for people who longed to leave the old.

Balint focuses on those persons whose storytelling skills became a major strategy for survival and escape out of the displaced persons’ camps and out of the Europe. Their stories are brought to life in Destination Elsewhere, alongside a new history of immigration, statelessness, and the institution of the postwar family.

Ruth Balint is Associate Professor of History at University of New South Wales. She is the author of Troubled Waters and coauthor of Smuggled.

Geraldine Gudefin is a modern Jewish historian researching Jewish migrations, family life, and legal pluralism. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939.

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Tony Lee Moral, "A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, the Myths, the Legacy" (UP of Kentucky, 2026)

Fri, 22 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

For over a century, Alfred Hitchcock has remained one of cinema's most influential directors. Known as the Master of Suspense, this visionary filmmaker directed more than fifty films over six decades. His thriller The Lodger (1927) marked the start of his signature style, which was later exemplified in classic films like Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963).

Hitchcock's work received tremendous success and critical acclaim. While he never won the competitive Academy Award for Best Director, he received five Oscar nominations, two Golden Globes, the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, a BAFTA Fellowship, multiple lifetime achievement awards, and two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Nine of his films are preserved in the United States National Film Registry. His mastery of tension, innovative camera techniques, and psychological depth continue to inspire and influence modern filmmakers such as Christopher Nolan, Jordan Peele, and Bong Joon Ho.

Drawing on new archival research, previously unpublished interviews, and a rigorous examination of key biographies, A Century of Hitchcock: The Man, the Myths, the Legacy (University Press of Kentucky, 2026) challenges the long-standing narratives that have shaped Hitchcock's legacy. Author Tony Lee Moral revisits controversial claims regarding Hitchcock's alleged abuses, scrutinizing biographer Donald Spoto's interpretations—particularly Spoto's portrayal of the director's relationship with actress Tippi Hedren. With his analysis of Spoto's 1980 interview of Hedren, Moral reveals for the first time how one key document contradicts decades of exaggeration.

In this comprehensive reappraisal of Hitchcock's career, Moral encourages readers to explore the complexities of creative collaboration and the risks of relying on a single biographical narrative. Marking one hundred years since Hitchcock's first film, The Pleasure Garden, and fifty years since his last film, Family Plot, Moral reexamines the director's cinematic brilliance, storytelling mastery, creative partnerships, and controversies, offering a fresh perspective on Hitchcock's legacy in the post-#MeToo era.

Tony Lee Moral is a British filmmaker and author who specializes in film history, especially the work of Alfred Hitchcock. He is the author of Hitchcock and the Making of Marnie, The Making of Hitchcock's The Birds, The Young Alfred Hitchcock's Moviemaking Master Class, and Alfred Hitchcock Storyboards.

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Fiona Rogers, "Cut Out: A Feminist History of Photo Collage, Montage and Assemblage" (Thames & Hudson, 2026)

Fri, 22 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Female artists have long employed collage to reflect the ways in which identity is often constructed from conflicting, contrasting and contradictory parts. Cut Out: A Feminist History of Photo Collage, Montage and Assemblage (Thames & Hudson and V&A Publishing, 2026) by Fiona Rogers explores the relationship between photography and feminist collage, foregrounding the use of femmage—a radical reclaiming of craft traditionally associated with women—as a resilient method within feminist and political art.

Cut Out presents an expanded definition of collage and cutting techniques to encompass photomontage, assemblage and the photogram. Tracing a lineage from nineteenth-century makers to contemporary practitioners, we encounter Victorian album makers; Modernist, Surrealist and Dadaist innovators; and radical, second-wave feminist artists. Thematic sections include profiles written by expert contributors on key individuals, including Hannah Höch, Dora Maar and Lorna Simpson. Looking to the future as much as the past, Cut Out also reveals how the pioneering work of contemporary and digital artists continues to subvert dominant narratives and foster ever-expanding forms of photographic collage.

At a moment when photography and its history are being actively contested and reappraised, Cut Out is a reminder of its political power.

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Matthew L. Reznicek, "Tales of Health: Illness, Disability, and Citizenship in the Romantic National Tale" (Liverpool UP, 2026)

Thu, 21 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Tales of Health: Illness, Disability, and Citizenship in the Romantic National Tale (Liverpool UP, 2026) is about the way the Romantic National Tale exercises power and defines the boundaries of citizenship through the categories of health, illness, and disability. When we see these categories at work in these novels, we understand how socio-political belonging is premised on the conception of the healthy body, to the exclusion of bodies deemed otherwise. Employing the medical humanities and, especially, the social determinants of health, this book shows that the National Tale achieves its consolidation of the nation through its enforcement of a rigorous politics of health that polices its characters' and citizens' bodies. Focusing on novels from Sydney Owenson, Maria Edgeworth, Germaine de Staël, Walter Scott, and Jane Austen allows this argument to show that the imbricated concerns of health and citizenship extend well beyond the immediate anxiety roused by the implementation of the 1800 Act of Union. This book argues that, by prioritizing the categories of health, illness, and disability, we better understand how power and citizenship function in this widely influential early nineteenth-century genre of Romantic fiction and, thus, how we continue to envision citizenship as an extension of bodily characteristics.

Matthew L. Reznicek is Associate Professor of Medical Humanities at the University of Minnesota Medical School, where he uses eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British and Irish literature to explore the impact of social, historical, and cultural factors in the experience of medicine
and health.

Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th- and 21st-century Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies.

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Shyam Ranganathan, "Moral Philosophy and De-Colonialism: The Irrationality of Oppression" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026)

Thu, 21 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Why have moral philosophers largely ignored colonialism? In Moral Philosophy and De-Colonialism: The Irrationality of Oppression (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026), Shyam Ranganathan tells the story of moral philosophy and colonialism and reveals the benefits of drawing from a colonized tradition to a create a rigorous logic-based ethics. This is a timely exploration of the the ways in which Western colonialism has structured moral theorizing to insulate itself from criticism. In his account of the domination of the European tradition and the suppression of questions of its colonialism, Ranganathan covers the evolution of metaethics, normative ethics, and applied ethics in ancient European, Chinese, and Indian traditions of philosophy. We see the presence of white supremacy in the writings of J.S. Mill, Marx and Engels, and the importance placed on autonomy and sovereignty in Hobbes and Kant. The European influence of interpretation on our peer review of historical philosophy is evident throughout. Using South Asia as an example Ranganathan examines how colonizers are able to erase moral philosophical history and redefine cultures as religions, judged in terms of their conformity to, or deviation from, the Western tradition, which is treated as secular. His acknowledgment of Yoga as a basic ethical theory introduces us to thinking that recognizes persons as a diverse group, traversing sex, gender, race, sexual orientation, and species. Through this analysis of colonized traditions and ethics, Ranganathan is able to de-colonize moral philosophy by looking outside the colonizing tradition. If we want sophisticated and inclusive ways of thinking about how to live we must turn towards indigenous thought.

Shyam Ranganathan is a member of the Department of Philosophy and York Center for Asian Research at York University, Toronto, Canada, and founder of the Yoga Philosophy Institute.

Dr. Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Indian mythology and seasoned online educator. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom where he delivers original courses applying Indian wisdom teachings to modern life.

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Nathan K. Finney, "Orchestrating Power: The American Associational State in the First World War" (Cornell UP, 2025)

Thu, 21 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Orchestrating Power: The American Associational State in the First World War⁠ (Cornell University Press, 2025) explores how the expansion of the American state for the First World War reshaped the nature of governance. This wartime state expansion is examined through the creation, structure, activities, and impact of the Council of Defense system on the ability of the United States to mobilize for a significant conflict in a foreign land.

Dr. Nathan K. Finney focuses on North Carolina's Council of Defense to describe how the council was mediated by specific people at various levels of society and the results of their decisions. The result is a compelling story about how individuals drove dynamic and compelling regional and national events that propelled a massive national wartime mobilization.

Positioned between the national government and the people of North Carolina, the Council of Defense mediated the activities of public, private, and individual efforts in support of mobilization activities. Because of this intermediary positioning, the council was instrumental in expanding state capacity and capability for military and resource mobilization and supporting an increase in the nation's ability to mobilize for the war.

The council's intermediary role, however, also allowed those managing the state mobilization to prevent any significant challenge to the state's social and political structures, despite the dynamic changes wrought by the need to mobilize the nation for war. As a result, Orchestrating Power helps us understand the crucial decisions and developments of early twentieth-century America, showing why the country mobilized for war in the specific ways that it did.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher, whose⁠ book⁠ focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on ⁠New Books with Miranda Melcher⁠, wherever you get your podcasts.

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End of An Academic Dream

Thu, 21 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Why do we build our sense of self around our academic work? What does it mean to pivot away from campus jobs to the alt-ac world? How does increasing academic fragility affect our opportunities both on campus and after graduation? In this episode we explore how the precarity of the academic job market changes our career trajectories, and the new paths we forge.

Guest: Dr. Fidan Cheikosman is the author of The End of an Academic Dream. She has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Edinburgh. She is a neuroscience editor with Springer Nature.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is a writing coach and developmental editor for academics. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

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Kori Schake, "The State and the Soldier: A History of Civil-Military Relations in the United States" (Wiley, 2025)

Thu, 21 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

One of the biggest worries of the US Constitution's Framers was the danger of a standing army to a democracy, so they designed a system to ensure civilian control over the state's armed forces. In The State and the Soldier: A History of Civil-Military Relations in the United States (Wiley, 2025), Kori Schake looks at how well this principle of civilian control has worked across US history. Writing for popular and academic audiences, Schake highlights instances when the principle of civilian control over the military risked failing as well as when it worked. The State and the Soldier presents a highly readable history of the tenuous relationship between a republican form of government and the armed forces it needs to maintain.

Kori Schake, Ph.D. is a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

You can find a transcript of our conversation here.

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An-Ting Yi, "From Erasmus to Maius: The History of Codex Vaticanus in New Testament Textual Scholarship" (de Gruyter, 2024)

Thu, 21 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Codex Vaticanus is often regarded as a pillar of New Testament scholarship, ancient, authoritative, and decisive. In From Erasmus to Maius: The History of Codex Vaticanus in New Testament Textual Scholarship (de Gruyter, 2024) published by De Gruyter in 2024, Dr An-Ting Yi shows that this status was anything but inevitable.
Rather than focusing on the manuscript’s text, Dr Yi traces how Vaticanus gradually became authoritative. For centuries, it was known but rarely usable, constrained by restricted access, archival control, and scholarly methods that could not yet make sense of it. Only with nineteenth-century methodological shifts and, crucially, with its first printed edition did Vaticanus acquire the authority it now seems always to have had.

The book’s core insight is simple and powerful. Manuscripts do not possess fixed authority. They gain it through methods, institutions, and infrastructures. Well argued and meticulously researched, Dr Yi’s study is less about a single manuscript than about how scholarly canons are formed, stabilised, and remembered. From Erasmus to Maius invites readers to rethink not only textual criticism but also the construction of academic authority.

Amisah Bakuri (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her work explores the intersections of religion, sexuality, gender, and migration, especially within African diasporic communities in the Netherlands.

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Debating the Constitution: On Originalism's Most Pressing Quarrels with Sherif Girgis

Thu, 21 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Here in Episode 8 of Season 5, I interview Professor Sherif Girgis. A graduate of Princeton University, the University of Oxford, and Yale Law School, Girgis is a tenured professor of law at the Notre Dame Law School and a Spring 2026 visiting professor at Harvard Law School. A former law clerk to Justice Samuel Alito and member of the American Academy of the Arts and Letters, he is co-author of two books: What is Marriage? Man, Woman, A Defense (2012), and Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination (2017).

Using some of his recent articles and speeches—such as “The Future of Originalism” (2026)—we discuss the current state of constitutional jurisprudence. As an originalist and textualist reading of the Constitution has, thanks to advocacy groups like the Federalist Society, gone from a dissenting movement to the current governing theory of the Supreme Court, new problems have arisen that go beyond what early forerunners like Robert Bork and Antonin Scalia foresaw. We also discuss other (often competing) theories like living constitutionalism and living traditionalism, whether success has undone originalism, and what the future holds for this legal movement.

Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on our new Substack page, “Madison’s Footnotes.”

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Evelyn Iritani, "Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II" (FSG, 2026)

Thu, 21 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In October 1943, the Gripsholm—a Swedish ocean liner—and the Teia Maru—a Japanese troop ship—sat in Mormugao, a port in Portuguese India. There, the two ships exchanged their passengers: Allied civilians stuck in Japanese territory after Pearl Harbor , and an assortment of Japanese, Japanese-American, and other Japanese-ethnic people from the Americas.
The trade capped a long and fraught diplomatic exchange between the U.S. and Japan, two countries at war. Evelyn Iritani’s book Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026) tells the story of how this exchange came about: How U.S. civilians tried to survive in Japan or occupied Hong Kong, or how the U.S. government pressured Japanese Americans, housed in internment camps, to accept repatriation to Japan, a country many had never known.

Evelyn is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Her previous book, An Ocean Between Us: The Changing Relationship of Japan and the United States Told in Four Stories From the Life of An American Town (William Morrow and Company: 1994), won a Washington Governor’s Writers Day Award. Evelyn began her career at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and moved to the Los Angeles Times in 1995 to cover international economics. Her reporting garnered numerous awards, including the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting and the George Polk Award for Economics Reporting for a series she co-authored on Wal-Mart.
She can be found on her website, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Safe Passage. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Erica Bornstein, "A Revolution of Rules: The Regulatory Reform of India's Nonprofit Sector" (Stanford UP, 2025)

Thu, 21 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Erica Bornstein, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Oregon (and Divisional Associate Dean), has a new book that delves into the regulatory reforms within the nonprofit sector in India. These reforms transpired over more than a decade, and Bornstein spent extended time developing this ethnographic study of not only the changes, but the institutional structures that manage nonprofit organizations and how the various regulatory decisions are made. The research explores the ways in which these changes happened, exploring the various actors within the discussions, and evaluating the process of change within the nonprofit sector in India. A Revolution of Rules: The Regulatory Reform of India’s Nonprofit Sector (Stanford UP, 2025) is a deeply researched undertaking, paying attention not only to the shifts and changes that were happening in New Delhi, at the seat of the national government, but also in towns and communities in other parts of India, where similar dialogue and processes were also happening, and where the results of so many of these changes could be seen as they moved into implementation. In order to think through the analysis in A Revolution of Rules we must also think about the nonprofit sector as a significant part of political structure in India (and elsewhere). As we discuss in our conversation, there are essentially three sectors, the government or the public sector, the private sector, and the nonprofit sector. Each sector is managed differently and operates towards different ends. But part of the role of the nonprofit sector is to provide capacity where the public sector may not be able to or is not able to fulfill demands.

This space, where the rules and regulations are being revised, reformed, and rewritten is where, in a very interesting way, democracy is happening. These are civil society organizations, embedded within the structure of political and economic outcomes, but distinct from both sectors. Since these groups are not aiming at making a profit, the regulatory regime is in a kind of counterpoint to capitalism, and thus in need of different kinds of rules regimes. This is where various stakeholders are coming together to negotiate with each as to how best to manage nonprofits, which are not all the same by any measure, and have different goals, different funding streams, different processes, and different policy formats. This makes the process of regulation complex, since there are constellations of parts that fall under differing kinds of management.

This undertaking, designing modes of regulation and policy processes, is not an exercise in creating red tape as much as it is designing processes to achieve important goals and capacities. Bornstein explains that writing policy of this kind, that writing laws is actually writing the future, or as she notes in the book, “writing the horizon”—writing what will happen. With this in mind, A Revolution of Rules: The Regulatory Reform of India’s Nonprofit Sector provides the reader with a fascinating exploration of how these organizations operate and how they can best be managed, especially with the aim of achieving benefits for individuals and society as a whole.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga (University Press of Kansas, 2022), and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse (University Press of Kansas, 2025) as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social

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Elizabeth Bradfield's Books in Dark Times (JP)

Thu, 21 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

For the RtB Books in Dark Times series back in 2021, John spoke with Elizabeth Bradfield, editor of Broadsided Press, poet, professor of creative writing at Brandeis, naturalist, photographer.

Her books include Interpretive Work, Approaching Ice, Once Removed, and Toward Antarctica. She lives on Cape Cod, travels north every summer to guide people into Arctic climes, birdwatches.

Liz is in and of and for our whole natural world. Did poetry sustaining her through the darkest hours of the pandemic? What about other sources of inspiration?

Mentioned in the episode:

Eavand Boland, “Quarantine” (from Against Love Poetry; read her NY Times obituary here)

Maeve Binchy, “Circle of Friends“

Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

Edgar Lee Masters, Spoon River Anthology

Louise Gluck Averno and Wild Iris

Brian Teare, Doomstead Days

Derek Walcott, “Omeros“

W. S. Merwin, “The Folding Cliffs”

Natasha Trethewey, “Belloqc’s Ophelia“

Yeats, “We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.”

Nest, Eggs and Nestlings of North American Birds (Princeton Field Guides)

Trixie Belden

Shel Silverstein

Lois Lowry, “The Giver“

Liz equates poetry and Tetris

Leanne Simpson, “This Accident of Being Lost“

Elizabeth Bradfield, “We all want to see a mammal“

Listen and Read Here:

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The Novel as Instrument: Sinan Antoon and Michael Allan (MAT)

Thu, 21 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

“I am haunted by history: the history of dictatorship, the history of empire, history as a whole,” declares the Iraqi novelist, poet, scholar, and literary translator Sinan Antoon near the start of this conversation about his most recent novel, Of Loss and Lavender. Sinan, speaking with Magalí and critic Michael Allan, goes on to say that “the novel allows for a more wholesome, in-depth confrontation with history.” That confrontation, in turn, requires narrative forms that are complex, sometimes fractured, and often non-linear in order to braid together a range of different perspectives on a particular moment or event.

As Sinan observes in a discussion of the Arabic term nisyān—“forgetting” or “forgetfulness,” although its nuances in Arabic are not easily rendered in English—even memory itself is not static. And yet, shared histories of empire and imperialism make it possible to draw connections between far-flung locations, as Sinan does in Of Loss and Lavender by drawing together Iraq and Puerto Rico. From here, the conversation turns to the pleasures and challenges of translation, including some of Sinan’s choices when translating his own work into English. This includes the effort to make legible the nuances of race, class, and other forms of difference across contexts; although, as Sinan notes, much of his younger readership in the Arab world today is often well-versed in US culture. The conversation concludes with a discussion of Sinan’s frequent use of poems and songs in the novel, a device that points back to the multi-genre experiments of the premodern Arabic tradition, and a moving portrait of a teacher who transmitted to his students ideas about justice and equality despite the dictatorship under which he worked.

Mentioned in this episode:

About Baghdad
The Baghdad Eucharist
Mahmoud Darwish, In the Presence of Absence
Darwish’s “Memory for Forgetfulness” (on nisyān)
The Book of Collateral Damage
Elias Khoury and the use of dialect in contemporary Arabic fiction
Quebecois literature
Breaking Bad
Um Kulthoum

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Hugo Drochon, "Elites and Democracy" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Wed, 20 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A central paradox of democracies is that they are always ruled by elites. What can democracy mean in this context? Today, it is often said that a populist revolt against elites is driving democratic politics throughout the West. But in Elites and Democracy (Princeton University Press, 2026), Hugo Drochon argues that democracy is more accurately and usefully understood as a perpetual struggle among competing elites—between rising elites and ruling elites. Real political change comes from the interaction between social movements and elite political institutions such as parties. But, although true democracy—the rule of the people—may never be achieved, striving towards it can bring about worthwhile democratic results.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, and Robert Michels put forward “elite” theories of democracy and gave us terms such as the “ruling class” and “elites” itself. Drawing on their work and tracing the history of democratic thought through figures such as Joseph Schumpeter, Robert Dahl, C. Wright Mills, and Raymond Aron, Elites and Democracy reveals that this fundamentally elitist basis of democracy—democracy understood as competition between elites—was there all along. The challenge is to think it anew.

Moving away from procedural or principled conceptions of democracy, Elites and Democracy develops a dynamic theory of democracy, one grounded in movement. With current politics defined by a populist backlash against elites, dynamic democracy offers the tools we urgently need to understand our contemporary predicament and to act upon it.

Hugo Drochon is an Associate Professor in Political Theory at the University of Nottingham. He is a historian of modern political thought, with interests in Nietzsche's politics.

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Rachel Deblinger, "Saving Our Survivors: How American Jews Learned about the Holocaust" (Indiana UP, 2025)

Wed, 20 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How did American Jews come to learn about the Holocaust in the immediate aftermath of the war? What kinds of images and representations of Holocaust survivors first circulated in America, when most Jewish survivors were still stuck in European displaced persons camps? Drawing on communal records and previously unexamined cultural materials, Saving Our Survivors: How American Jews Learned about the Holocaust (Indiana UP, 2025) details the kinds of narratives that inspired American Jewish action in the wake of the Holocaust and argues that American Jewish communal life became a significant site of knowledge formation and dissemination about the Holocaust. Through organizational campaign materials, public speeches, appeal letters, brochures, posters, radio broadcasts, and short films, American Jews were compelled to act as heroes, saving Jewish lives and a Jewish future.
Bringing postwar communal narratives into the longer history of Holocaust memory in America challenges our understanding of what Holocaust narratives look and sound like and invites us to consider the relationship between humanitarian aid and the narratives they employ to inspire action. By expanding our understanding of how stories about the Holocaust became part of an American discourse and considering multiple forms of Holocaust survivor accounts, Saving Our Survivors highlights the messy, diffuse, and contested nature of memory construction in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, as well as each new tragedy we confront.

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George Baylon Radics, "Emotional Filipinos: The American Myth of the 'Lazy Native' and Islamic Separatism in the Philippines" (U Georgia Press, 2026)

Wed, 20 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the first half of the twentieth century, the United States attempted to build a colony in the Philippines in its own image—one fraught with racist notions of what it means to be civilized, developed, and worthy of self-rule. These imported notions of race and modernity left a profound imprint on the nation. More recently, we have seen a menacing rise of Islamic "terrorism," political polarization, populism, xenophobia, and isolationism. Conventional wisdom has attributed this rise to a "failed state" or economic insecurity and cultural backlash.

In ⁠Emotional Filipinos: The American Myth of the "Lazy Native" and Islamic Separatism in the Philippines⁠ (University of Georgia Press, 2026), however, Dr. George Baylon Radics explains this forgotten part of U.S. history with emotions as a driving force behind social action. The Philippines is currently experiencing the longest-running Muslim-Christian conflict in the modern world and an increasingly anti-Western populist government. By unpacking the role of emotions from the American colonial period to the present, Emotional Filipinos blurs the line between American colonizer and Muslim-Filipino "terrorist," highlighting the lasting effects of America's footprint in Southeast Asia. Radics humanizes this fraught history and reveals unexplored connections between past and present.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose ⁠book⁠ focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on ⁠New Books with Miranda Melcher⁠, wherever you get your podcasts.

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Utku Balaban, "Industrial Islamism: How Authoritarian Movements Mobilize Workers" (U California Press, 2025)

Wed, 20 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What explains the rise of religious populism in contemporary Turkish politics and society? How does industrialization help to explain change and continuity in social and religious life in Muslim majority countries? In his new book Industrial Islamism: How Authoritarian Movements Mobilize Workers (University of California Press, 2025), Utku Balaban examines Turkey’s rapid post-Cold War industrialization and argues that the answers to these questions lie in a class analysis centered on the relationships between employers and employees situated within larger contexts of globalization and historical Islamization. Political and religious transformations occurring in the 1980s and 1990s are not the result of a cultural backlash to or rejection of “Westernization,” or a nostalgia for an idealistic past. Rather, Balaban argues they are related to the rise of a socio-economic-political class he calls the “faubourgeosie” that strategically employ Islamic populism as a method of protecting their interests against other primary class actors. These changes are internal to the mechanics and logics of capitalism as shifts in the traditional relations of production produced new alliances and networks based on small-scale capital accumulation. Balaban’s Turkish case study can be applied to other Muslim-majority countries in which small-scale industrialists similarly dealt with economic anxiety and aspirations through recourse to popular Islamist rhetoric not as a specifically moral strategy, but as a political one.

Industrial Islamism recently received the best new book in the category of international political economy from the International Studies Association.

Dr. Utku Balaban is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Xavier University. He is the author of A Conveyor Belt of Flesh: Urban Space and the Proliferation of Industrial Labor Practices in Istanbul’s Garment Industry (2011) and Social Inclusion Practices in Turkey (2015).

Dr. Jaclyn Michael is an Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (USA). She is the author of several articles on Muslim cultural representation, performance, and religious belonging in India and in the United States.

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Thomas Doherty, "How Film Became History: The Rise of the Archival Documentary in 1930s America" (Columbia UP, 2026)

Wed, 20 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

By the 1930s, filmmakers had access to a backlog of footage from nearly forty years of motion pictures, allowing them to create a new kind of film stitched together from the raw material of older films. At around the same time, the transition to synchronous sound added a transformative new element to the grammar of cinema: the voiceover narration. Together, the film inventory and offscreen commentary gave rise to the archival documentary, the motion picture genre that preserves and rewinds history.

In How Film Became History: The Rise of the Archival Documentary in 1930s America (Columbia University Press, 2026), Dr. Thomas Doherty tells the story of the archival documentary, spotlighting the first films that set out deliberately to preserve history on screen. He shows how newsreels and documentaries challenged the era’s restrictive censorship and how film began to engage with the great political issues of the day. Doherty considers a range of films—some well-known, others obscure—including J. Stuart Blackton’s The Film Parade (1933), Laurence Stallings and Truman Talley’s The First World War (1934), Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.’s Hitler’s Reign of Terror (1934), Max Eastman and Herbert Axelbank’s Tsar to Lenin (1937), and the March of Time screen magazine. Tracing the creation of the archival documentary, How Film Became History illuminates how motion pictures have come to shape our vision of the past.

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Kristin LaFollette, "Rehumanizing People of the Past: Bioarchaeology, Medical Museums and Archives, and the Human Remains Trade" (SUNY Press, 2026)

Wed, 20 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Rehumanizing People of the Past: Bioarchaeology, Medical Museums and Archives, and the Human Remains Trade (SUNY Press, 2026) argues that much of the technical communication used to reference human remains--including reports in bioarchaeology, labels and descriptions in medical museums and archives, and web content in the human remains trade--does not adequately recognize the humanity of the individuals represented by those remains. The book presents "rehumanizing language" as a solution to this dehumanization problem, framing it as advocacy and social justice work in technical communication. Building from concepts and ethical standards in bioarchaeology, medical museums and archives, and the human remains trade along with technical communication and rhetoric of health and medicine (RHM), each chapter presents a framework for developing rehumanizing language in various contexts to better honor, dignify, and respect the people represented by human remains. These frameworks are also applied to several original studies, which explore existing technical communication and the ways it uses rehumanizing language or could be adapted to be more rehumanizing. Overall, this book is a tool for both technical communicators and practitioners in numerous fields, offering practical guidance for emphasizing the humanity of the dead.

Kristin LaFollette is Associate Professor of English at the University of Southern Indiana. She is the author of Hematology, a full-length collection of poetry, and coeditor of Queer Approaches: Emotion, Expression, and Communication in the Classroom.

Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies.

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Brett Neilson, "The Rest and the West: Capital and Power in a Multipolar World" (Verso, 2024)

Wed, 20 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

At the heart of the fiercest international conflicts is the struggle for the future of globalization.

In the wake of a pandemic that tested economies and societies, geopolitical conflict has taken on a new intensity. The Rest and the West: Capital and Power in a Multipolar World (Verso, 2024) locates the origins of this development in the turbulent dynamics of the capitalist world market. Rather than reducing global conflict to a matter of great power rivalries or the process of economic decoupling, Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson investigate the increasing centrality of war to capital operations and to the transformation of capitalism. The goal is to forge a theory of imperialism adequate to a world in which the ‘rest’ no longer provides a putative unity that defines and opposes the ‘West’.

Brett Neilson is professor and deputy director at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. In the last decade, his work has centered on issues of migration, borders, and globalization, logistics and digitalization, contemporary capitalism, geopolitics, and automation. Apart from writings with Sandro Mezzadra, he has published many articles and books, including Free Trade in the Bermuda Triangle … and Other Tales of Counterglobalization (Minnesota, 2004).

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Angharad N. Valdivia and Isabel Molina-Guzmán, "Rebooting Inequality: Critical Takes on Film and Television Remakes" (NYU Press, 2026)

Wed, 20 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

From Ghostbusters to Will & Grace, One Day at a Time to Jurassic Park, the past decade has seen Hollywood reach a new peak in its obsession with reboots, remakes, and revivals. Spearheaded by media giants like Disney and Netflix, these projects promise progress—more diverse casts, “timely” social commentary, and redemptive nostalgia—yet they often reproduce the very inequalities they claim to address.
Rebooting Inequality: Critical Takes on Film and Television Remakes (NYU Press, 2026) brings together twelve concise, theoretically rich essays that interrogate how Hollywood’s recycling of intellectual property sustains entrenched systems of racial, gender, and sexual inequality. Across genres and platforms, contributors explore how the industry’s nostalgic return to familiar stories masks an ongoing reliance on white, patriarchal, and heteronormative frameworks of storytelling and production.
Blending critical race, feminist, and media studies, the collection analyzes dozens of recent film and television revivals, remakes, and reboots from Roseanne to Charlie’s Angels to ask what it means when entertainment markets strive for diversity while leaving the structures of inequality intact.
Accessible yet deeply analytical, Rebooting Inequality exposes how nostalgia has become both a marketing strategy and a political tool, revealing how the “new” Hollywood continues to reanimate the past—profitably, repeatedly, and unequally.

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Steven W. Thrasher, "The Overseer Class: A Manifesto" (Amistad, 2026)

Tue, 19 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

“The poor, of whatever color, do not trust the law and certainly have no reason to, and God knows we didn't. ‘If you must call a cop,’ we said in those days, ‘for God’s sake, make sure it's a white one.’ We did not feel that the cops were protecting us, for we knew too much about the reasons for the kinds of crimes committed in the ghetto; but we feared black cops even more than white cops, because the black cop had to work so much harder—on your head—to prove to himself and his colleagues that he was not like all the other n******.” James Baldwin (1967)

Professor and journalist Steven Thrasher, author of the critically acclaimed The Viral Underclass (one of Kirkus Reviews best books of 2022), explores in The Overseer Class: A Manifesto (Amistad, 2026) what happens when members of historically minoritized groups are selected for high-visibility positions of power within existing institutions—law enforcement, academia, the military, for profit and not-for-profit corporations, and government—under the conditions of a kind of Faustian bargain.

This is a conversation, and a book, not to be missed.

You can find author Steven Thrasher on Bluesky and Instagram.

Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Marissa Nicosia, "Shakespeare in the Kitchen" (Routledge, 2026)

Tue, 19 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Audiences and scholars alike have long remarked that Shakespeare’s poems and plays record the pleasures and perils of the table. Shakespeare in the Kitchen (Routledge, 2026) by Dr. Marissa Nicosia asks what Shakespeare’s works can tell us about Renaissance culinary recipes, and what these recipes can tell us about Shakespeare’s works.

Dr. Nicosia explores how Shakespeare’s works reveal tensions not only within early modern food culture about who should eat, what to eat or serve guests, and when to preserve foods, but also how to undertake the embodied processes of cooking, baking, and serving. The chapters include both analysis of plays and poems, as well as updated historical recipes ready for cooking. Nicosia prepares the recipes that permeate the canon—from Falstaff’s beloved capons to the cakes that invite festivity in Twelfth Night—demonstrating how the physical act of cooking can transform our understanding of once familiar texts, and asking what we can learn about food history by recreating historical recipes with twenty-first-century ingredients and tools.

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Tom Meschery, "The Mad Manchurian: From the Internment Camps of Tokyo to the Hardwood Courts of the NBA" (Coffeetown Press, 2025)

Tue, 19 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

I was born in Harbin, Manchuria, (later China), in 1938. At the outbreak of the Second World War my mother, sister and I, along with other non-combatants of the Allied countries, were taken by the Japanese to an internment camp in Tokyo where we would remain four year--to the end of the war. My mother's recollection is that I was a sickly child. By the time I arrived in Japan, according to her, I had survived diphtheria, whooping cough, yellow fever, smallpox and tuberculosis. Such afflictions, to my mother's astonishment, did not keep me from growing to my adult height of 6'6" and muscular weight of 220 pounds. Nor did they keep me from being strong enough and skillful enough to become a professional basketball player and play 10 years for the National Basketball Association, as the first ethnic Russian and immigrant to do so, and the first to be named to an All-Star team.

Listen to this interview about The Mad Manchurian: From the Internment Camps of Tokyo to the Hardwood Courts of the NBA (Coffeetown Press, 2025).

Paul Knepper covered the New York Knicks for Bleacher Report. His first book was The Knicks of the Nineties: Ewing, Oakley, Starks and the Brawlers That Almost Won It All. His next book, Moses Malone: The Life of a Basketball Prophet, is now available. You can reach Paul at paulknepper@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @paulieknep.

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Paige Lewis, "Canon" (Viking, 2026)

Tue, 19 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Canon (Viking, 2026), two unlikely heroes embark on quests to win God’s favor in this outrageously entertaining, profoundly heartfelt novel that announces an ingenious new voice in the tradition of Chain-Gang All-Stars, No One Is Talking About This, and Martyr!
Yara can’t comprehend why God has chosen them to slay Dominic, the ruthless leader of the army of Bad Guys. Cast out by their family and reeling from a destructive relationship, Yara has never felt weaker—but with nothing left to lose, they strike a deal. Abandoning their solitary days of embroidery and obsessive cleaning, Yara reluctantly embarks on a perilous odyssey designed to prepare them for the daunting mission ahead.
Meanwhile, Adrena, a disillusioned prophet with a terrifying secret power, is determined to become the hero of this story. Desperately seeking the glory of God’s approval and the promise of heaven, where she hopes to reunite with her beloved mother, Adrena must first persuade Harpo, the leader of the Good Guys, that her plan is God’s will.
As their journeys unfold in a series of unforgettable adventures, Yara and Adrena are propelled toward each other and transformative revelations about life, death, and destiny in this intensely captivating, irreverent epic from a singularly brilliant new voice in fiction.

Paige Lewis is the author of the poetry collection Space Struck (Sarabande Books, 2019) and the novel Canon (Viking Press, 2026). They co-edited Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction and Deliverance (Sarabande Books, 2023) with Kaveh Akbar. Paige teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa.
Recommended Books:

Tom Lin, Babylon, South Dakota
Layli Long Soldier, We

Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers.

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Mengqi Wang, "Anxious Homes: Inflexible Demand and China's Housing Market" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Tue, 19 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Anxious Homes: Inflexible Demand and China's Housing Market (Cornell UP, 2026) is a study of the power that shapes the forms of the homes Chinese citizens strive for and the possible paths they may take to realize their home ownership dreams. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Mengqi Wang discusses how the Chinese real estate industry functions in the everyday, welding aspirational middle-class families, especially migrant families, to the property-owning class and the urban growth machine. Urban housing was a socialist benefit in China until the market reforms and privatization in the 1990s. Today, most Chinese citizens consider homeownership a necessity rather than an economic privilege. Wang analyzes the making of homeownership ideologies through "inflexible demand" (gangxu)—a concept that real estate brokers, developers, homebuyers, and the government in China use to craft homeownership as indispensable for fulfilling dreams of urban citizenship. The ethnography shows that gangxu helps to articulate diverse attempts to accumulate value through housing at China's urbanizing city periphery, while giving shape to a housing-based, postsocialist right to the city. Anxious Homes argues that homeownership does not necessarily engender independence but suggests further inclusion of citizens within the dominant regime of accumulation.

Mengqi Wang is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Duke Kunshan University. Her research interests include economic anthropology, urban anthropology, political economy, gender studies, and science and technology studies.

Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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"My Heart is in the East": How Yiddish Speakers Moved to the East

Tue, 19 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The question of origins is often difficult to study because originators do not always leave a paper trail. Therefore, uncovering origins can be challenging – and the story of the background of Yiddish-speaking Jews in Eastern Europe is no exception. It is complicated by the fact that in the recent past the Jewish population of the area was in the millions and it is not obvious where they came from. It is tempting for some to see them as having come from the Rhineland in search of safety and security but there are many reasons to be dubious about this. What is much more likely, as we shall see, is that the basis for the Yiddish-speaking Jewish population of Eastern Europe was the Jewish population of what is now the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria. They came in dribs and drabs because of economic pressures. We will examine various pieces of evidence that support this picture. While not dramatic, it was pragmatic and successful. Economic changes in the Polish-Lithuanian lands offered new opportunities to Jews and this in turn, led to conditions of rapid population growth – rapid enough to create a massive population within several centuries.

This lecture was originally held on July 22, 2021.

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Denise Z. Davidson, "Surviving Revolution: Bourgeois Lives and Letters" (Cornell UP, 2025)

Tue, 19 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Denise Z. Davidson joins Jana Byars to talk about Surviving Revolution: Bourgeois Lives and Letters (Cornell UP, 2025). The book explores how two wealthy and well-connected families with roots in Lyon responded to the French Revolution and the resulting transformations. In building a new political system based on liberty, equality, and fraternity, the French Revolution encouraged both individuals and families to recognize their power to shape the world through political action, rethink their strategies in negotiating intimate relations and family life, and assess both terrifying new risks and enticing opportunities for advancement.

Denise Z. Davidson traces two families' trajectories and weaves together the strategies they employed to survive and hopefully thrive in the decades that followed the Revolution. Their private correspondence shows that affect and interest, intimacy and property, are mutually constitutive, and cannot be "thought" separately. Her analysis reveals what it meant to be bourgeois, how gender played a role in the formation of class identities, and how family and emotional life overlapped with other arenas. These social and cultural themes are woven into the narrative through the stories told in the families' letters.

By viewing dramatic historical events through the eyes of people who lived through them, Surviving Revolution illuminates how the practices of everyday life shaped emerging notions of bourgeois identity.

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Kate Brown, "Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present and Future of the Self-Provisioning City" (W. W. Norton, 2026)

Tue, 19 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Kate Brown, Distinguished Professor in the History of Science at MIT joins Michael Stauch to discuss her new book Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present and Future of the Self-Provisioning City (W. W. Norton, 2026) on the 300-year history of urban gardening, from feudal England to the Paris Commune, to Berlin’s green shantytowns, to contemporary Amsterdam, Chicago, and beyond. Equal parts history, memoir, and manifesto, Brown’s book weaves in her own gardening experience while exploring the political and practical, painting a picture of the necessity of self-provisioning in an increasingly chaotic world.

Highlights include:

How “tiny gardens” grew as a social practice among English peasants following the enclosure of the commons;
The politics of “tiny gardens,” including the difference between a “gardening” state and a gardeners state;
How Black “tiny gardeners” in DC’s East of the River neighborhood transformed structural racism into vegetable-powered wealth;
A short-but-scathing review of Yuvel Harari’s Sapiens;
How small changes to local ordinances in cities might allow us to reimagine a world of abundance amid contemporary fears of scarcity and instability.

Guest: Kate Brown is Distinguished Professor in the History of Science at MIT and author of four previous prize-winning books, including A Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. She currently plants her gardens in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Vermont.

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Sumana Roy, "Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Tue, 19 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal (Oxford UP, 2024) by Sumana Roy takes an unexpected cast of writers and artists and, in studying their work as ‘plant thinkers’, looks at how their stories and songs, art and films, and, of course, the idiomatic affected Bengali life and thought. Forest and garden, grass and root, weeds and magical plants—supported by a foliage of thought that allowed them to see beyond the botanical, Rabindranath Tagore, Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, Jibanananda Das, Shakti Chattopadhyay, Satyajit Ray, and others derived their worldview, their poetics and politics, from the plant world. Jagadish Chandra Bose’s scientific experiments, his research and the philosophy that propelled it, religions and rituals that involved an affective relationship with the natural world, a subterranean invocation of plant philosophy in actions and words, in living and in creative practice, and the political possibilities beyond the nation state that such thinking generated give this book its sap and flow. What might we take from these plant thinkers to rehabilitate our consciousness today?

Arnab Dutta Roy is Assistant Professor of World Literature and Postcolonial Theory at Florida Gulf Coast University

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Georgia C. Ennis, "Rainforest Radio: Language Reclamation and Community Media in the Ecuadorian Amazon" (U Arizona Press, 2025)

Tue, 19 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Rainforest Radio: Language Reclamation and Community Media in the Ecuadorian Amazon (U Arizona Press, 2025), Dr. Georgia C. Ennis provides a comprehensive ethnographic exploration of Amazonian Kichwa community media, offering a unique look at how Indigenous broadcast and performance media facilitate linguistic and cultural reclamation in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

This work offers a critical analysis of how standardized language revitalization efforts, like the imposition of Unified Kichwa, can inadvertently perpetuate linguistic oppression. Dr. Ennis follows producers, performers, and consumers to understand the role of media in language reclamation. Through extensive fieldwork, she provides vivid portrayals of community efforts to sustain the language and cultural practices of their elders amid environmental and social upheaval.

Meticulously researched and beautifully written, Rainforest Radio is an essential work for anthropologists, linguists, and social scientists interested in language revitalization, Indigenous media, and environmental justice. This book showcases the transformative potential of community-driven media initiatives, highlighting the innovative responses of Napo Kichwa activists to the unique challenges they face. It serves as a powerful model for those working on similar issues worldwide, demonstrating the critical role of community media in language reclamation and cultural sustainability.

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Inken Von Borzyskowski and Felicity Vabulas, "Exit from International Organizations: Costly Negotiation for Institutional Change” (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Mon, 18 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Why do states exit international organizations (IOs)? How often does exit from IOs – including voluntary withdrawal and forced suspension – occur? What are the effects of leaving IOs for the exiting state?

Despite the importance of membership in IOs, a broader understanding of exit across states, organizations, and time has been limited. Exit from International Organizations: Costly Negotiation for Institutional Change (Cambridge UP, 2025) addresses these lacunae through a theoretically grounded and empirically systematic study of IO exit. Von Borzyskowski and Vabulas argue that there is a common logic to IO exit, which helps explain both its causes and consequences. By examining IO exit across 198 states, 534 IOs, and over a hundred years of history, they show that exit is driven by states' dissatisfaction, preference divergence, and is a strategy to negotiate institutional change.

The book also demonstrates that exit is costly because it has reputational consequences for leaving states and significantly affects other forms of international cooperation.

NOTE: This book was just awarded the 2026 Chadwick Alger prize for best book in international organizations from the International Studies Association.

Our guests are Felicity Vabulas who is the Blanche E. Seaver Associate Professor of International Studies at Pepperdine University and Professor Inken von Borzyskowski, who is Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

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Evan N. Dawley, "Taiwan: A People′s History" (Reaktion Books, 2026)

Mon, 18 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

While most English-language histories of Taiwan focus on its geopolitical role, Taiwan: A People’s History (Reaktion, 2026) by Dr. Evan N. Dawley centres on the people of Taiwan themselves and explores how they have formed a unique polity, telling the story of the Indigenous Taiwanese, the Hoklo and Hakka who came from China before the twentieth century, Japanese colonialism and the Chinese who arrived after 1945.

Dr. Dawley describes how successive waves of immigration changed Taiwan and how these diverse groups of Indigenous tribes and settlers interacted economically and culturally, creating new Taiwanese identities in the process. Over the last century Taiwan has developed from an authoritarian state to one of the world’s most vibrant democracies and advanced economies. It is a successful independent society, albeit one whose existence remains under a shadow.

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Carlos Martins, "Fascism: Beyond Hitler and Mussolini" (Desassossego, 2022)

Mon, 18 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Carlos Martins joins the New Books Network to discuss his book Fascism: Beyond Hitler and Mussolini (Desassossego, 2022) (in Portuguese Fascismos: Para Além de Hitler e Mussolini), a comparative study of fascist movements across Europe and beyond. Working from a rigorous definition of fascism based on its ideological content, Martins examines eight case studies, analysing these specific manifestations of fascism to identify what they had in common and what separated them.

In this conversation, we discuss the problem of defining fascism, the distinctions between fascism and populism and why Martins argues that not every dictatorship or radical right movement should automatically be classified as fascist. The discussion also turns to the Portuguese case, including the Estado Novo, National Syndicalism and the debate surrounding Salazarism’s relationship to European fascism.

At a moment when the word “fascism” is increasingly invoked in public debate, Martins makes the case for conceptual precision without losing sight of fascism’s historical adaptability and political force. The result is a wide-ranging conversation about ideology, political modernity and the uses, and misuses, of language.

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Heather Ann Thompson, "Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage" (Pantheon, 2026)

Mon, 18 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Historian Heather Ann Thompson’s Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage (Pantheon, 2026) recounts the 1984 New York City subway shooting in which Bernhard Goetz shot four Black teenagers—Darrell Cabey, Barry Allen, Troy Canty, and James Ramseur—and became both a fugitive and, later, a celebrated vigilante figure for many Americans frustrated by the social and economic tensions of the Reagan era. The book examines how media outlets like Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post and later Fox News fueled public fear and anger, transforming Goetz into a hero while casting his victims as villains. Using archival materials and legal records, Thompson revisits the shooting’s lasting impact and argues that it marked a pivotal moment in modern American politics, media, and racial attitudes.

Dr. N'Kosi Oates is a curator. He earned his Ph.D. in Africana Studies from Brown University.

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The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

Mon, 18 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In 1828, a seventeen-year-old boy was found wandering the streets of Nuremberg, holding two letters and unable to say more than a few words. The locals adopted him as a kind of municipal mascot; eventually, they learned that he had been bound in darkness until his release and struggled to learn more about his past. Werner Herzog took the story as a basis for his 1974 film–not one of his trademark documentaries–and used it as a meditation on the human condition. It’s an unforgettable experience, like seeing 2001 for the first time. Join us as we discuss the film’s ideas, humor, and audacity.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

The German title of the film is Every Man for Himself and God Against All, which is also the title of Werner Herzog’s 2024 memoir.

Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on Letterboxd and email us any time at fifteenminutefilm@gmail.com with requests and recommendations. Check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Read Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day.

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Benjamin Dalton, "Catherine Malabou and Contemporary French Literature and Film: Witnessing Plasticity" (Edinburgh UP, 2026)

Mon, 18 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Our bodies and brains are radically transformable, mutable and plastic. From the neuroplasticity of the brain to the epigenetic malleability of our bodies and of all organic life, the work of the contemporary French philosopher Catherine Malabou invites us to consider our plasticity as both a creative resource and an ethical challenge.

Catherine Malabou and Contemporary French Literature and Film: Witnessing Plasticity (Edinburgh UP, 2026) brings Malabou's philosophy into dialogue with contemporary literature and film. It reads conceptions of plasticity and neuroplasticity in Malabou through the mutant bodies of Leos Carax's films; the shape-shifting bodies of Marie Darrieussecq's novels and theatre; the terrifying, traumatic metamorphoses depicted in the fiction of Marie NDiaye; and the anarchic sexualities and identities celebrated in the cinema and writing of Alain Guiraudie. It argues that, in different ways, Malabou's philosophy and literary and filmic texts develop modes of bearing witness to plasticity which can supplement, challenge and extend scientific understandings of biological plasticity, constituting ethical and creative sites of exploration.

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Carlos Martins, "Fascism: Beyond Hitler and Mussolini" (Desassossego, 2022)

Mon, 18 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

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Robert Rouphail, "Cyclonic Lives in an Indian Ocean World: Environment, Disaster, and Identity in Modern Mauritius" (Ohio UP, 2026)

Mon, 18 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In a world marked by increasingly destructive ecological and meteorological upheavals, Cyclonic Lives in an Indian Ocean World: Environment, Disaster, and Identity in Modern Mauritius (Ohio UP, 2026) by Dr. Robert Rouphail offers a historical analysis of how these catastrophes shape people’s understanding of themselves, their collective history, and their relationship to the institutions that govern them. An examination of cyclonic disasters in the multiethnic Indian Ocean island of Mauritius throws into stark relief how deep histories of diasporic identity formation, of imperial governance, and of the informal practices of racial difference making graft onto how everyday people interpret these moments of loss and the futures that emerge in their wake.
Cyclonic Lives shows that disasters are not only events; they are also processes through which people evaluate and rethink the most elemental social and cultural categories that give meaning to their lives. Beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing until the early postcolonial era, this book tracks, for example, how Mauritians of African descent integrated these disasters into broader collective histories and memories of the Indian Ocean slave trade, how Hindu Indo-Mauritians understood cyclones’ ecological effects as material elements to be accounted for in a broader Hindu diasporic space, and how the late colonial and early postcolonial state built infrastructures—material, conceptual, and financial—to mitigate the threats posed by these storms and ensure their own long-term durability.
The increasing political, social, and economic instability that climate change has already triggered demands that humanists develop analytical geographies and methodologies that shed light on how power can modulate in asymmetrical ways at moments of crisis. If there is one central takeaway from this historical study of this small island in a big ocean, it is that catastrophic events are not things that merely happen to people; they are processes that remake them.

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In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust

Mon, 18 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Between 1918 and 1921, over a hundred thousand Jews were murdered in Ukraine by peasants, townsmen, and soldiers who blamed the Jews for the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. In hundreds of separate incidents, ordinary people robbed their Jewish neighbors with impunity, burned down their houses, ripped apart their Torah scrolls, sexually assaulted them, and killed them. Largely forgotten today, these pogroms—ethnic riots—dominated headlines and international affairs in their time. Aid workers warned that six million Jews were in danger of complete extermination. Twenty years later, these dire predictions would come true.

Jeffrey Veidlinger’s new book In the Midst of Civilized Europe: The Pogroms of 1918-1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust draws upon long-neglected archival materials, including thousands of newly discovered witness testimonies, trial records, and official orders, showing for the first time how this wave of genocidal violence created the conditions for the Holocaust. Join us for a discussion on this important new book featuring Jeffrey Veidlinger in conversation with Steven Zipperstein.

This book talk originally took place on November 30, 2021.

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Mike Papantonio, "A Death in Arcadia" (Arcade Publishing, 2026)

Mon, 18 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Mike Papantonio's A Death in Arcadia (Arcade Publishing, 2026) Nicholas “Deke”Deketomis Returns to Face His Darkest Case Yet—And His Own Haunted Past When fifteen-year-old Trayvon Clapper is murdered by a guard at Camp B in Florida, his fringe-living mother and boyfriend come to Bergman-Deketomis to file a lawsuit against the facility. Details of the case trigger in Deke memories of his own troubled childhood. As a boy, Deke had no stable parents around him, so he lived with several different families over the years as he grew up, avoiding the foster care system. However, his best friend, Bucky, was not so fortunate. He, too, was killed in a similar facility… and Deke has carried within him a powerful guilt that he has never talked about to anyone, including his wife and children. Cara Deketomis, Deke’s daughter, is a young lawyer at the firm also working on the case. She comes to recognize the pain her father is feeling but she does not have the ability to break through to the truth. An opportunity in Cara’s personal life also hammers a wedge between father and daughter, adding more stress to the situation. Meanwhile, investigation into the case uncovers a hidden threat that could endanger everyone at the law firm. A corrupt Congressman, Bob Minds, and his shady colleague, Skyler Bannock, are “fixers” for Phoenix Industries, the parent company of Camp B and other child “protective” services facilities that do anything but that. Minds and Bannock resort to nefarious crimes to make Phoenix’s problems go away,i ncluding bribery, intimidation, and even murder. And then there’s Skyler’s brother, Midas, a killer straight out of a nightmare, who does the team’s dirtiest work. Will the ugly forces behind the scenes wreak lethal havoc on Deke and his team? Will the echo of Deke’s guilt get in the way of a successful legal action against Phoenix? In the tradition of The Middleman, Suspicious Activity, and Inhuman Trafficking, Papantonio takes Deke and his cohorts on a new and different kind of legal gamble, but full of the action and thrills for which he is known.

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Mischa Oak, "Rainbow Wisdom: 18 LGBTQ+ Life Lessons for Everyone" (Page Two Book Inc. 2026)

Sun, 17 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Mischa Oak about his book, Rainbow Wisdom: 18 LGBTQ Life Lessons for Everyone (Page Two Book Inc. 2026)

Joyful life lessons from the LGBTQ+ community to help you move through the world with more harmony, authenticity, and possibility.

Rainbow Wisdom is a companion for anyone who wants to live more fully. The LGBTQ+ experience can inspire us all. Regardless of sexuality or gender, every person is unique and unusual in some way. Drawing on firsthand research, global thought leaders, and personal reflections, renowned educator Mischa Oak presents 18 uplifting lessons from the LGBTQ+ community that will make anyone feel good. You will learn how to:

- Live authentically by asking Why Fit in a Box When You Can Break It Down?
- Raise the Bar by leaving behind exhausting debates and embracing conversations rooted in values and hope.
- Challenge Queer Fear by confronting misinformation and dismantling “flawgic” (aka flawed logic) with clarity.
- Celebrate your own difference with Congratulations! You’re You!, a lesson that helps you embrace and affirm your identity—whatever it may be—and walk proudly in your truth.

These and other lessons show you how to approach the world with more passion, flair, innovation, and liberty to be yourself, while you shift humanity forward. Whether you’re seeking deeper understanding, stronger allyship, or ways to live more freely, Oak invites you into a space of connection, where everyone can draw on LGBTQ+ experiences to live with more joy and make the world a better place.

With a rich glossary of LGBTQ+ terms and practical tools for building more welcoming conversations, spaces, and communities, this book will lift you up, push you forward, and remind you that different is powerful. Rainbow Wisdom is also your allyship guide—helping you grow into a more confident and informed ally, and supporting Queer people and their loved ones to feel valued.

This is what LGBTQ+ life lessons are all about: seeing yourself and the world in new ways, to be the best version of yourself possible.

About the author:

Mischa Oak founded LGBTQ Inclusion Training to improve the lives of 2SLGBTQ+ people and support meaningful diversity and inclusion within organizations. With over twenty years of experience as an educator and 2SLGBTQ+ advocate, Oak holds a Master of Education in Social Justice Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning. He gained international recognition as part of the first wave of legal same-sex marriages in the world, featured on the reality TV series My Fabulous Gay Wedding. His involvement in the Queer Liberation movement propelled his lifelong advocacy, including expanding transgender and Queer inclusion in Canadian schools during his seventeen-year teaching career. Today, Oak delivers transformative talks worldwide, guiding teams, communities, educators, care and service providers, and governments toward meaningful 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion. Oak is a Loran Scholar and an alumnus of Queen’s University, the University of Toronto, and Memorial University. He lives in Vancouver Island, Canada.

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Alice von Bieberstein, "Temptations in Ruin: Sovereign Accumulation and the Making of Post-Genocide Turkey" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

Sun, 17 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Temptations in Ruin: Sovereign Accumulation and the Making of Post-Genocide Turkey (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) examines the political-economic afterlife of the Armenian genocide in present-day Turkey, focusing on the region of Muş (Moush). Anthropologist Alice von Bieberstein explores how the 1915 genocide and dispossession of Armenians shaped property regimes, citizenship, and economic logics that continue to reverberate today.
By combining ethnography with historical context and diverse perspectives, Temptations in Ruin generates new insights into how past violence shapes contemporary economic practices and social relations. To tell this history, von Bieberstein introduces the concept of “sovereign accumulation” to describe the ways in which the state and other actors mobilize histories of sovereign violence for present-day economic benefit. This framework illuminates the legacy of violence and resource extraction present in such practices as urban renewal projects, treasure hunting for “Armenian gold,” and heritage tourism and identifies these practices’ very existence as manifestations of the economic aftermath of the genocide.
Temptations in Ruin uncovers the ways in which the genocide gave rise to a racialized property regime and a recursive movement of sovereign accumulation that builds on and re-animates the Armenian genocide as generative of wealth in the present. And it demonstrates the complex interplay between genocide denial, destruction, and valorization in post-genocide contexts. Highlighting the enduring resonance of genocide, von Bieberstein enhances our understanding of political violence’s long-term impacts on society and on the economy.

Alice von Bieberstein is Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at Humboldt University, Berlin.

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Drew M. Dalton, "The Matter of Evil: From Speculative Realism to Ethical Pessimism" (Northwestern UP, 2024)

Sun, 17 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Most of us today would assume that morality and ethics, being value propositions, are questions for inspired leaders, religious creeds, poets—in other words, for the humanities. But what if I told you that we can construct a system of ethics and morality by studying math—more specifically: the laws of thermodynamics? That’s what Professor Drew M Dalton argues in his latest book. Dalton traces a line of metaphysical inquiry from Kant through Spinoza, Nietzsche, and others up to today to show how we get from E=mc2 to a full-throated call to resist evil and alleviate suffering to our very last breath.

By overturning our assumptions about the nature and value of reality, The Matter of Evil: From Speculative Realism to Ethical Pessimism (Northwestern UP, 2024) presents a provocative new model of ethical responsibility that is both logically justifiable and scientifically sound. Dalton argues for “ethical pessimism,” a position previously marginalized in the West, as a means to cultivate an account of ethical responsibility and political activism that takes seriously the unbecoming of being and the moral horror of existence.

Drew M. Dalton is a professor of English at Indiana University, having received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Leuven in Belgium. His research focuses on the normative implications of different metaphysical systems and, specifically, he’s interested in how questions of right and wrong, good and evil, beauty and pleasure are framed within aesthetics, literary theory, ethics, and political philosophy. He is the author of Longing for the Other: Levinas and Metaphysical Desire (Duquesne University Press, 2009), The Ethics of Resistance: Tyranny of the Absolute (Bloomsbury, 2018), and The Matter of Evil: From Speculative Realism to Ethical Pessimism (Northwestern University Press, 2023).

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Justin Randolph, "Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America’s Jim Crow Countryside (UNC Press, 2026)

Sun, 17 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Justin Randolph, assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University, joins Michael Stauch to discuss Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America’s Jim Crow Countryside (UNC Press, 2026), his new book on policing in Jim Crow Mississippi, told through the lens of that state’s highway patrol. Using oral history and a wide range of archival sources, Randolph narrates efforts by elites in Mississippi to modernize the police while maintaining social hierarchies, as well as efforts on the part of Black Mississippians to envision a world without police.

Highlights include:

What a focus on state-level policing adds to our understanding of policing;
How the founding of the Mississippi highway patrol brought together various forms of policing in the Southwest, including the Texas rangers;
A surprisingly robust discussion of cows, including Mississippi’s economic transformation to a center of cattle raising and the rise of cattlemen’s “Massive Resistance” in the 1950s;
What Nina Simone revealed about policing in Mississippi, and the myth of Southern exceptionalism, in her song “Mississippi Goddam.”

Guest: Justin Randolph is an assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University, and his other research projects include histories of police desegregation, rural debt peonage, the Taser, and 9-1-1. His writing has appeared in scholarly outlets like the Journal of Southern History and Southern Cultures. He has also written for popular outlets such as The Washington Post, The Mississippi Encyclopedia, and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting. He has received an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship and prizes from both the Southern Historical Association and Agricultural History Society.

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David Eisler, "Writing Wars: Authorship and American War Fiction, WWI to Present" (U Iowa Press, 2022)

Sun, 17 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Writing Wars: Authorship and American War Fiction, WWI to Present (U Iowa Press, 2022) David Eisler looks at how American literary fiction about war has changed as the nature of civil-military relations has changed. For much of the 20th century the people who wrote novels about war were men who went to war. And for some authors and critics, being a war veteran was a requirement for being authorized to write about war. But Eisler shows that after the end of conscription there was a "dispersal of authority" to write about wars which made room for more authors to write about war as well as more stories to be told about war. By examining the development of the war novel over the past century (1918-2018) Eisler shows how war writing, in particular notions of "authority" and "authenticity," reflect the social/political environments and changes in civil-military relations.

You can find a transcript of our interview here.

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Nayantara Srinivasan, "The Brick-and-Mortar Bookstore in Contemporary India" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Sun, 17 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Brick-and-Mortar Bookstore in Contemporary India (Cambridge UP, 2025) explores the landscape of anglophone trade bookselling in India, aiming to identify some key factors that have influenced the changing place of the brick-and-mortar bookstore over the last decade. The discussion focuses on a specific time period identified as a significant turning point, the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic led to a series of developments in the field of Indian publishing: a newly emerging body of public discourse within the industry, highlighting the persistent marginalisation faced by brick-and-mortar bookstores; the temporary weakening of Amazon's near-monopoly; and bookstores' growing use of online platforms for sales, publicity, and activism. Drawing upon a range of primary sources and case studies, this Element explores how these developments altered what John B. Thompson calls 'the logic of the field' of contemporary Indian bookselling, transforming the brick-and-mortar bookstore into a newly revitalised space with possibilities for further expansion, growth, and diversity.

Nayantara Srinivasan is a PhD researcher at the University of Münster. Her research examines debut literary fiction in contemporary American publishing. She has previously worked in publishing.

Karishma Koshal is a PhD researcher at the University of Exeter.

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Aycee Brown, "Embody Your Magic: Create the Life of Your Dreams Through Astrology, Numerology, Mediumship, Metaphysics, and Human Design" (HarperOne, 2026)

Sun, 17 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Embody Your Magic: Create the Life of Your Dreams Through Astrology, Numerology, Mediumship, Metaphysics, and Human Design (HarperOne, 2026) from psychic channel and human design expert Aycee Brown is a warm and inviting guide to discovering wholeness by embodying your truth. As a child, Aycee Brown's connection to spirit made her feel like an outcast, until her grandmother helped her see this burden as a gift. Now, Aycee helps readers--as well as clients and "Is My Aura on Straight?" podcast listeners--map their journey from trauma to wholeness. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, Aycee teaches us which healing modality to use, when. Embarking on a soul journey, readers will explore different parts of themselves and step into their own story. By exploring the canyon, or shadow self, through the following modalities: Knowing Your Story--The Embodiment of Validation Psychic Channeling--The Embodiment of Anger Astrology--The Embodiment of Self Numerology--The Embodiment of Alignment Mediumship--The Embodiment of Truth Metaphysics--The Embodiment of Choice Human Design for Liberation--The Embodiment of Change I Am--The Embodiment of Destiny (Internal Family Systems therapy) As readers engage with these practices, their intuition grows stronger and paths are revealed. With Aycee holding our hand, we can connect to our truth and realize our wildest dreams. We become more capable of leading healthy relationships, finding joy in our lives, and maintaining loving connections with those we have lost. Embody Your Magic invites the conversations you've been waiting to have and reveals the psychic magic within you.

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Eloise Moss, "The Secret Life of the Hotel: Sex, Crime and Protest in British Guesthouses Since 1918" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Sun, 17 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Hotels represent nations, hosting visiting monarchs, politicians, and diplomats. Hotels underpin global networks of travel and communication, on which national and international prosperity have increasingly depended since the end of the First World War. Yet hotels are also places where people can be anonymous; where murderers and thieves mix with adulterers and con artists; and where prejudice finds expression in who is refused access, and in the forms of 'service' provided by staff in the lowest-paid roles. The Secret Life of the Hotel: Sex, Crime and Protest in British Guesthouses Since 1918 (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Professor Eloise Moss is the first book to uncover how hotels entrenched inequality, prejudice, and exploitation in Britain's tourist sector, and in wider society and culture, during the 20th century.
Professor Moss delves into hotel murders, swindles, and scandals, including the history of Agatha Christie's disappearance in 1926, the 'Margate Hotel Murder', and the divorce of Wallis Simpson in 1936 so she could marry King Edward VIII. Professor Moss's exploration of the hotel also shines a light on the fight against the colour bar, the formation of the British civil rights movement, and the visit to London of Martin Luther King Jr.
The Secret Life of the Hotel uniquely tells the story of Britain's relationship with the world during the 20th century through the prism of its hotels, showing how their infrastructure and 'welcome' had profound consequences for women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ citizens, and people with disabilities.

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Gregg A. Brazinsky, "Cold War Comrades: An Emotional History of the Sino-North Korean Alliance" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Sat, 16 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this major new interpretation of Sino-North Korean relations, Dr. Gregg A. Brazinsky argues that neither the PRC nor the DPRK would have survived as socialist states without the ideal of Sino-North Korean friendship. Chinese and North Korean leaders encouraged mutual empathy and sentimental attachments between their citizens and then used these emotions to strengthen popular commitment to socialist state building. Drawing on an array of previously unexamined Chinese and North Korean sources, in Cold War Comrades: An Emotional History of the Sino-North Korean Alliance (Cambridge UP, 2026), Dr. Brazinsky shows how mutual empathy helped to shape political, military, and cultural interactions between the two socialist allies. He explains why the unique relationship that Beijing and Pyongyang forged during the Korean War remained important throughout the Cold War and how it continues to influence the international relations of East Asia today.

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Ayşehan Jülide Etem, "Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations" (Columbia UP, 2026)

Sat, 16 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Film Diplomacy: A Media History of Turkey-US Relations (Columbia UP, 2026) offers a powerful new account of how film shaped international relations and national identity. Drawing on previously unexamined and recently declassified archives in Turkey and the United States, Ayşehan Jülide Etem demonstrates how both countries used educational films to align institutional agendas and geopolitical interests. By tracing the transnational network of educational cinema, Etem uncovers how film functioned as infrastructure, circulating ideologies, organizing institutions, and training citizens. Moving beyond conventional accounts of propaganda and soft power, this book exposes how film was central to the making of modern Turkey and sheds new light on the media’s role in global politics.

Author Ayşehan Jülide Etem is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, where she also directs the Film Studies Concentration. A media studies scholar, Dr. Etem’s research examines how film operates within infrastructures, how it is strategically sponsored, produced, exhibited, and circulated to shape public behavior, manage populations, and mediate power.

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Lara Sheehi, "From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures" (Pluto Press, 2026)

Sat, 16 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Psychoanalysis is rising in popularity, but it’s not helping patients navigate the pressures and harms of modern capitalism. Instead, it continues to enforce oppressive structures, state power, and reactionary politics. In From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures (Pluto Press, 2026) Dr. Lara Sheehi reimagines what psychoanalysis could be. She shows how it can help us understand the ways our emotions, relationships, and sense of self are shaped by capitalism, state power, and ongoing injustice, even genocide. Arguing for a new, liberatory psychoanalysis, she calls for us to harness its revolutionary power, from the clinic to the streets.

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Jesper Rangvid, "How Low Interest Rates Change the World: Global Trends Caused by Low Rates and Emerging Factors Shaping the Future of Rates" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Sat, 16 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

⁠How Low Interest Rates Change the World: Global Trends Caused by Low Rates and Emerging Factors Shaping the Future of Rates⁠ (Oxford UP, 2025) explores the societal impact of changing interest rates. Taking its starting point in the remarkable four-decade decline in global interest rates from 1980 to 2020, the book examines five global trends it caused, the underlying factors that drove interest rates lower, and emerging trends likely to shape the future path of interest rates.

The book contends that the steady decline in interest rates around the world from 1980 to 2020 played a pivotal role in shaping five significant global trends during the same period: soaring debt levels, escalating housing prices, surging stock markets, widening economic inequality, and increased financial risk-taking.

The book also explores emerging factors likely to shape the future trajectory of interest rates. While demographic trends may keep rates low, other forces, such as rising public debt, can push them higher. The book offers its perspective on the interaction of these opposing trends, and presents its view on the future evolution of interest rates.

How Low Interest Rates Change the World is a no-nonsense fact-based book written in plain language. A key feature of the book is its empirical approach and reliance on data. Figures and tables richly illustrate and support the arguments presented, thereby inviting a broad audience to follow its fascinating journey into the evolution of interest rates and their impact.

Transcript ⁠here⁠

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Stuart Katz, "Still Here: A Story of Living with Suicidal Ideation" (Independent, 2026)

Sat, 16 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Still Here is a powerful and unflinching novel about chronic suicidal ideation—not as a moment of crisis, but as a daily presence.

Daniel is a husband, a father, and a respected professional. He shows up. He functions. He is, by every external measure, fine.

But every morning begins the same way.

A thought.
A negotiation.
A choice.

Told with striking emotional precision, Still Here takes readers inside an experience that is often hidden, misunderstood, or reduced to moments of emergency. This is not that story.

This is the story of what it means to live with it over years, across a lifetime, while continuing to build a life, a family, and a sense of purpose.

Interwoven throughout the novel are clinical sidebars that offer insight into the psychology of suicidal thinking, making this book not only deeply human but also deeply informative for:

those who struggle silently
those who love someone who does
clinicians, educators, and helpers

This is not a rescue manual.
It is something rarer.

A book that stays.

If you are in immediate distress, please seek support. Crisis resources are included at the end of the book.

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Gerald F. Davis, "Taming Corporate Power in the 21st Century" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

Sat, 16 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Information and communication technologies have fundamentally altered the markets for capital, labor, supplies, and distribution in ways that undermine the basic categories we use to understand the economy. Nationality, industry, firm, size, employee, and other fundamental terms are increasingly detached from the operations of the economy. If we want to understand and tame the new sources of economic power, we need a new diagnosis and a new set of tools. The broad consensus across the political spectrum in the US that monopolistic corporations – particularly Big Tech companies -- have grown too powerful, and that we need to revive antitrust to take on the 'curse of bigness' is mistaken. But both the diagnosis and the cure are rooted in an outdated understanding of how the American economy is organized. Listen to this interview about Taming Corporate Power in the 21st Century (Cambridge UP, 2022)

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Under the Tenement Rooftops: Immigrant and Migrant Families in New York

Sat, 16 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Tenement Museum preserves and interprets the personal stories of residents of two buildings on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Ninety-seven Orchard Street opened in 1863 and housed a succession of European immigrants until the double blow of the Great Depression and the impact of the 1924 Johnson Reed Act forced the landlord to evict the tenants. Down the block, 103 Orchard, built in 1888, kept its doors open throughout the twentieth century, hosting Jewish and Italian immigrants in its early years, and Holocaust refugees, Puerto Rican migrants and Chinese immigrants in its later years. This program traces how immigration law impacted the residents of these buildings, and how they carved out new lives once they arrived. Census records, newspaper articles and oral histories—with a focus on YIVO primary sources—will be used to bring the families’ situations to life and situate them in their contexts.

This lecture originally took place on June 24, 2021.

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Tara Mulder, "A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome" (U California Press, 2026)

Sat, 16 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the well-trod history of the Roman Empire, a pivotal moment has long gone unnoticed: It was in ancient Rome that medical men first set their sights on childbirth, the traditional domain of female midwives.
Taking us to the dawn of Western obstetrics, A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome (U California Press, 2026) by Dr. Tara Mulder offers a feminist account of how, against a long tradition of midwifery, male doctors began claiming authority in reproductive matters, with an emphasis on theoretical rather than practical knowledge. Their intrusion paved the way for the later criminalization of midwives and the cloaking of childbirth in secrecy and shame.
Yet communities of Roman women continued to help each other through the journey from preconception to postpartum, guided by their own experience and the expertise of midwives. Tara Mulder recovers stories of ancient women living and resisting as they sought autonomy over their bodies and their health. Recounting their experiences in vivid, intimate detail, she reveals how old our modern conflicts about birth truly are.

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Beyond Minorities: Power, Identity, and Conflict in the Middle East

Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Helen Haas speaks with political scientist Sean Lee about the changing relationship between majorities and minorities in the Middle East, the collapse of the post-October 2023 regional order, and why questions of citizenship, identity, and political power remain at the centre of conflicts from Syria and Lebanon to Israel–Palestine.

In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Dr. Sean Lee, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo, discusses the evolving relationship between majority and minority groups in the Middle East. He argues that the minority question is not simply about ethnic or religious groups themselves, but about how political power, history, and institutions shape the categories of majority and minority. These identities are not fixed; they change depending on political and historical circumstances.

Using examples from Syria, Lebanon, Israel–Palestine, and other regional conflicts, Lee explains how civil wars and political violence reshape social boundaries and reinforce divisions between communities. In Syria, for example, the post-war political transition has intensified tensions between Sunni Arab majorities and minority groups such as the Druze, Kurds, and Alawites. Lee also highlights how outside powers increasingly use minority groups as instruments in regional politics.

A major theme of the discussion is the breakdown of the liberal international order after October 2023. According to Lee, this has weakened international law and increased instability in the region. He suggests that unresolved questions about citizenship and equal rights, especially in Israel and Palestine, continue to fuel conflict and resistance.

Drawing comparisons beyond the Middle East, Lee argues that similar dynamics can be observed globally, particularly with the rise of ethnonationalism and populism. He concludes that long-term stability depends on moving away from systems based on ethnic or religious identity and toward citizenship-based political systems in which all individuals enjoy equal rights regardless of background.

Helen Haas is a Middle East researcher at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies and the Middle East Coordinator at the Asia Centre, University of Tartu. Her research focuses on the diversity of Islam. She teaches Turkish and courses on Islamic history and culture, and works as an interpreter and translator of Turkish literature. She is the managing editor of the Usuteaduslik Ajakiri (Journal of Religion).

Sean Lee is an assistant professor of political science at The American University in Cairo. His research focuses on political violence and social movements in the Levant. He is currently completing a book manuscript on minoritized communities during the civil wars in Lebanon and Syria.

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K'wan, "House of the Rising Sun" (Akashic Books, 2026)

Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

When Artie Howell moves with his wife back to her sleepy hometown, he must protect their son Nicky from the skeletons coming out of the closets from both of their pasts in House of the Rising Sun (Akashic Books, 2026)

When the Howell family moves into a house on Heckler Lane, it causes quite a stir around the small town of Sunny Cove, Pennsylvania. Elise Howell, a well-known cardio surgeon, has returned home after fifteen years to fill her recently deceased mother’s position at Sunny Cove General Hospital. In a town this size, it’s big news. But it’s Elise’s new husband, Artie, who has the whole town talking.

Artie Howell is a man who always seems to be wearing a smile. He’s an accomplished crime fiction writer, a soccer dad to their young son Nicky, and he volunteers his weekends teaching creative writing to youths in the local detention center. When they first arrived at Heckler Lane, the Howells had seemed like a wholesome American family. Then came the murders.

A nun turning up missing from the Convent of St. Mary becomes the first in a string of unexplained tragedies that have befallen the town. Tragedies that all seem to be tied to scenes from Artie’s novels. The writer now finds himself as the prime suspect in an investigation that threatens to not only tear apart his family, but the entire town of Sunny Cove.

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Angela I. Fritz, "AI and Digital Leadership: Transforming Libraries, Archives, and Museums for the Future" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

AI and Digital Leadership: Transforming Libraries, Archives, and Museums for the Future (Bloomsbury, 2026) explores how galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) are navigating new leadership styles and organizational frameworks to help meet the challenges posed by a digital society. During this time of digital transformation, galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) are facing a generational challenge that calls on them to rethink their roles and responsibilities, re-evaluate policies and practices, and re-envision creative management and use of their collections. While AI is not new for GLAMs, the rapid development of generative AI has accelerated the pace of change along with a host of risks and benefits. For cultural heritage institutions, the stakes for implementing emerging AI technologies are high as GLAMs navigate questions relating to cultural relevance, limited resources and expanding backlogs of digital collections. GLAMs must also contend with the major intellectual and social implications for supporting entirely new approaches to learning, scholarship and public engagement. As GLAMs strive to keep pace, this book turns to explore how cultural heritage institutions can draw on a model of digital leadership to help them meet the challenges posed by the ethical implementation and use of generative AI in the stewardship of distinctive collections. Although digital leadership has been widely written about in the fields of business management, communication and marketing and information technology, it has not yet been addressed in a book format for the GLAM sector. In addition to discussing the basic definition and concepts of digital leadership, this book explores digital leadership as a critical framework for GLAMs to advance digital stewardship programs, professional development and staff training initiatives, and institutional advocacy in the age of AI.

Guest: Angela I. Fritz is Assistant Professor at the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa. Previously, she has held leadership positions at the Wisconsin Historical Society, the University of Notre Dame, and the Office of Presidential Libraries and Museums at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Dr. Fritz has a PhD in American history and public history from Loyola University-Chicago, a master’s degree in history from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a master’s degree in library science with a concentration in archival administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Mentioned during the episode, is an upcoming special issue of Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Practitioners guest edited by Dr. Fritz. You can learn more about this special issue on the journal’s homepage.

Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

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Wake Up Dead Man (Fr Scott Bailey): The Priest who Helped Hollywood Make a Murder Mystery Movie about the Church

Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

When Hollywood director Rian Johnson started making Wake Up Dead Man, the new Knives Out mystery (a movie you can watch on Netflix), he needed some help. His uncle and aunt in Denver connected him with their pastor in Denver, Father Scott Bailey, who became an advisor to the project. He talks about the process and the big questions of this movie with me. (And I admit: I hated the beginning and stopped watching a few minutes in. After reading about Fr Scott online and finding several Catholic sources who praised the movie, I gave it another look. I’m glad I did, because I think it’s not only entertaining but also important … and beautiful.)

Article in First Things by Father Scott about the movie and his role in it, “Wake Up Dead Man Captures the Beauty of Priestly Ministry,” January 5, 2026.
Article in Denver Catholic about Fr Scott and the movie, “A Denver Priest, a Hollywood Director and a Bowl of Fettuccine: Father Scott Bailey Advises on Catholic Life for New ‘Knives Out’ Film” by Jay Sorgi, November 22, 2025.
Screenplay of Wake Up Dead Man by Rian Johnson, the director and writer, available on his website.
Fr Scott Bailey at the Archdiocese of Denver.

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Sharon Israel, "Voice Lesson" (Post Traumatic Press, 2017)

Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with poet Sharon Israel about her poetry collection, Voice Lesson (Post Traumatic Press).

Sharon Israel’s poems are full of song and detail, movement and color; the pleasures she brings to the page are many and varied. We are as likely to find Israel’s speaker sighting owls in the Catskills, or helping in her dad’s butcher shop, as in the world of music implied by the title. In Voice Lesson, Israel’s urge is alchemical, so that when she’s behind the counter, “scoop[ing] shiny brains into plastic bags” she is also arranging them “carefully like pale jewels.” She’s after a kind of transformation, and urges us, “Always make room/for that singing thing/inside you.”

—Daisy Fried, author of Women's Poetry: Poems and Advice

Sharon Israel, Sephardic American poet and soprano, was an early recipient of Brooklyn College's Leonard Hecht Poetry Explication Award, was nominated for “Best of the Net” 2016 and won Four Lines’ 2020 winter poetry challenge. Her chapbook Voice Lesson was published by Post Traumatic Press. Her work has most recently appeared in Loud Coffee Press among other journals (print and on-line) and anthologies. . Sharon hosts the radio show and podcast, Planet Poet-Words in Space, on WIOX 91.3 FM in the Catskills. All podcast episodes are available on YouTube Music, Spotify and Apple. Sharon is a member of the sound/poetry duo OrphicMix with composer Robert Cucinotta. Sharon has also collaborated with Cucinotta on works for voice, live instruments, and electronics and has premiered several of his works in New York.
Sharon has a B.A. from Brooklyn College and an M.S. from the New School of Social Research. She was a local news reporter, feature writer and music critic for Courier-Life publications, Women’s ENews and for the late, lamented Brooklyn Phoenix; she worked as a shoe saleswoman, microbiology lab technician, secretary, had a short stint as a municipal bond salesperson, and worked over two decades as a grant writer and development director.

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Paul Stob, "Empire of Skulls: Phrenology, the Fowler Family, and a New Nation's Quest to Unlock the Secrets of the Mind" (Counterpoint Publishing, 2026)

Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Empire of Skulls: Phrenology, the Fowler Family, and a New Nation's Quest to Unlock the Secrets of the Mind (Counterpoint Publishing, 2026), Dr. Paul Stob presents a tale of science and showmanship, ideology and enterprise, that provides not just a fascinating history of our country, but also crucial insight into the deep currents that continue to propel modern life.

During the contentious and progressive antebellum era, the Fowler family preached a gospel of self-improvement to a nation eager to embrace its foundational beliefs. For the first time, this new “science” of phrenology offered all Americans the ability to improve their station by unlocking their innate mental and emotional truths. Revered politicians, quirky celebrities, infamous criminals, and social outcasts all found their way to the Fowlers for skull readings.

Brimming with the energy to change the world, the Fowlers connected phrenology to practically every aspect of life in the young nation—from abolition to women’s rights, temperance to prison reform, spiritualism and mesmerism to vegetarianism and sexual education. But there was a dark side to this fad and to the Fowlers, and soon nefarious forces co-opted this once-hopeful sensation to justify racism and xenophobia.

Phrenology’s complex history stands as a commentary on the dreams and follies of the American republic. Though phrenology (and the Fowlers) ran afoul of the tide of history, its aspirational insistence on an individual’s ability to improve oneself became embedded in the fabric of the nation.

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Radio ReOrient S14:7: Surveilling Muslimness in Denmark, with Amani Hassani, hosted by Claudia Radiven and Amina Easat-Daas

Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode hosts Claudia Radiven and Amina Easat-Daas were joined by Amani Hassani, to discuss her most recent work around Islamophobia and Muslimness in Denmark. Hassani discussed Danish colonial histories and the surveilling nature of the Danish welfare state, and how these are employed to construct a narrative of Danish benevolence while simultaneously marking Muslims in Denmark as ‘other’ and deserving of intolerance in an otherwise tolerant nation. Amani Hassani is a lecturer at Brunel University and her work spans urban ethnography, sociology, anthropology and human geography.

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Aymar Jèan Escoffery, "Reparative Media: Cultivating Stories and Platforms to Heal Our Culture" (MIT Press, 2025)

Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Can producing stories and developing platforms to support people who have been harmed by multiple, intersecting systems heal those systems? In Reparative Media: Cultivating Stories and Platforms to Heal Our Culture (MIT Press, 2025), Aymar Jèan Escoffery argues that this is exactly how we repair our culture and heal harms from racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and religious discrimination: by reconsidering how we make media, how we connect through technology, and how we generate knowledge.
Based on five years of deep, complex work cocreating an independent alternative to platforms like Netflix and YouTube, the author reveals the process behind developing OTV | Open Television to stream stories by diverse creators. The book shows that planting seeds for a more community-based media and tech ecosystem can also reform corporate systems better than so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, as the platform helped elevate creators on social media and in Hollywood at companies like HBO, Netflix, and more. Combining theory and practice, local production and global distribution, Chicago and Hollywood, the book paints a portrait of what a healing media ecosystem looks like—and shows how communal ways of knowing can cultivate reparative media, technology, and research that benefit everyone no matter how they identify.

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Silvia Danielak, "Peace Infrastructures: How UN Peace Operations Build Roads, Bridges, and Solar Farms in the Pursuit of Sustainability" (MIT Press, 2026)

Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Roads, bridges, a renewable power plant, and an electricity grid: UN peacekeepers might be unusual infrastructure builders, but they’re certainly not unambitious. Since the beginning of the UN’s peacekeeping activities after the end of World War II, the Blue Helmets have cemented streets, constructed bridges, and dug wells in conflict zones. But how did the military arm of the world’s primary diplomatic forum become involved in such activities in its quest for peace, and with what consequences? Peace Infrastructures: How UN Peace Operations Build Roads, Bridges, and Solar Farms in the Pursuit of Sustainability (MIT Press, 2026) by Dr. Silvia Danielak analyzes the turn to ever-more-complex infrastructure projects, from early road building via urban community projects to the commissioning of entire renewable power plants, in the context of an evolving understanding of peace “problems” and solutions. Tracing the global travel of policies, technologies, and expertise, Dr. Danielak investigates how the shift toward risk management, legacy, and climate security was driven by, and materialized in, conflict zones, shaping the very idea of peace.
The book critically engages with the UN’s ambition to insert itself in the sustainable development of the countries it seeks to assist, arguing that we need to consider peace operations’ spatial, urban, and material ways of engagement—especially in the face of mounting climate risks. Infrastructure is poised to take a more prominent position within peace operations, but a more nuanced understanding that recognizes its opportunities, as well as its potential for violence, is required.

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Gordon Simmons, "Mutiny in the Mountains: West Virginia Public Workers, 1969-2019" (PM Press, 2026)

Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Former chief steward and union organizer Gordon Simmons joins Michael Stauch to discuss his new book on the history of labor struggles by public sector workers in West Virginia since 1969. With an emphasis on rank-and-file rebellion expressed through wildcat strikes and other job actions, Simmons provides a sweeping account of the past that has rich lessons for the present.

Highlights include:

● A discussion of wildcat strikes and why West Virginia’s public sector workers waged them, again and again, in this period;

● How a teacher wearing blue jeans sparked a battle over expressions of the counterculture in workplaces across West Virginia;

● Why New Democrats like Joe Manchin sided against rank-and-file rebellion among public sector workers in Virginia;

● How West Virginia public school teachers in 2018 used Facebook to organize a walkout that defied the union and won significant concessions from the state;

● The joy of participating in “collective hell-raising” with co-workers and friends.

Guest: Gordon Simmons is a retired union organizer and president of the West Virginia Labor History Association. He is now employed as an investigator for the Human Rights Commission for the state of West Virginia and as an adjunct professor in philosophy at Marshall University.

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Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie, "A Founding Mother: A Novel of Abigail Adams" (William Morrow, 2026)

Fri, 15 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

So close to the semiquincentennial, it’s great to see a novel focused on the life of Abigail Adams, a woman appreciated even in her own time—especially by her husband of more than half a century, John Adams, the second president of the United States—but not, at the time, for her determination that her new country should also extend liberty to its female citizens.

Of course, Abigail Adams has received considerable attention since for her views on the need for adult women to control their own futures, but in the process much of the complexity of her life, her character, her surroundings, and her family has dropped out of the discussion. In A Founding Mother: A Novel of Abigail Adams (William Morrow, 2026), Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie dive into the story of Abigail’s and John’s long and loving marriage, their political service and economic problems, their time at home and abroad, and their six children—four of whom survived to adulthood but not all of whom thrived once they got there.

It’s all wonderfully rich and complex, both emotionally and in terms of the history revealed here—enhanced by the feminine perspective. The American Revolution as it happened was not the neat story told in school but messy, sprawling, contentious, risky, and eventful, and the formation of the resulting republic reflected all those competing trends. Unless you’re a historian specializing in this place and time, I can guarantee you will find out things you never knew, and in entertaining ways.

Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie have published numerous novels, together and separately. Find out more about their joint projects here.

C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels. Her next book, Song of the Silk Weaver, will appear later in 2026.

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T. V. Paul, "The Unfinished Quest: India's Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Thu, 14 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

From a Distinguished International Relations Scholar comes The Unfinished Quest: India's Search for Major Power Status from Nehru to Modi (Oxford UP, 2024), an important book that looks at India's search for major power status. It is an unfinished quest with a long and winding road ahead. This is not to say that India's ambitions in world politics for greater peer recognition and institutional position is unattainable; but its current political class, bureaucratic elites, and intelligentsia must reorient India's statecraft. In this accessible and incisive book Unfinished Quest: India's Search for Major Power Status, T.V. Paul charts India's cumbersome path toward higher regional and global status, covering both the successes and failures it has experienced since the modern nation's founding in 1947. Paul focuses on the key motivations driving Indian leaders to enhance India's global status and power, but also on the many constraints that have hindered its progress. Paul's analysis of India's quest for status also sheds important light on the current geostrategic situation and serves as a new framework for understanding the China-India rivalry, as well as India's relative position in the broader Indo-Pacific theater.

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Reflection-In-Motion

Thu, 14 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Reflection-in-Motion: Reimagining Reflection in the Writing Classroom (Utah State UP, 2025) considers how reflective practice is embedded in daily course happenings, centering the experiences of students and teachers in Minority Serving Institutions to amplify underrepresented viewpoints about how reflection works in the writing classroom. Professor Jaclyn Fiscus-Cannaday examines how its availability is subject to teacher/student power dynamics, the literacies welcomed (or not) in the class, the past and present pedagogies that students are engaging with and attending to, and the interactions among humans, materials, and emotions within the rhetorical context. She adopts an intersectional feminist perspective for an inclusive view of how practitioners name, identify, and practice reflection in the everyday moments of writing classrooms.

Reflection is used for different rhetorical effects, but because classrooms so often focus on the Westernized view and its emphasis on growth, reflection has the underused and undertheorized potential rhetorical effect of helping students investigate their identities and positionalities, acknowledge deep-rooted ideologies, and consider new perspectives so they can better work across difference. Reflection-in-Motion will inspire teachers and writing program administrators to listen to how students define and practice reflection and why—thus making room for more capacious definitions of reflection and student-centered practices of what reflection can do and be.

Guest: Professor Jaclyn Fiscus-Cannaday is assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. She explores how we can learn from communities that support and welcome all writers.

Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is a writing coach and developmental editor for academics. She is the creator and producer of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading or sharing episodes. Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Caroline Bicks, "Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King" (Hogarth, 2026)

Thu, 14 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

My guest is Caroline Bicks, whose new book Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King (Hogarth, 2026) became a bestseller shortly after release. After she was named the University of Maine's inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, Caroline Bicks became the first scholar to be granted extended access by King to his private archives, a treasure trove of manuscripts that document the legendary writer's creative process—most of them never before studied or published. The year she spent exploring King’s early drafts and hand-written revisions was guided by one question: What makes Stephen King’s writing stick in our heads and haunt us long after we’ve closed the book?
Bicks focuses on five early works—The Shining, Carrie, Pet Sematary, 'Salem's Lot, and Night Shift—to reveal how he crafted his language, storylines, and characters. While tracking King’s margin notes and editorial changes, she discovered scenes and alternative endings that never made it to print, but that King is allowing her to publish now. The book also includes interviews Bicks had with King along the way that reveal new insights into his writing process and personal history.
Monsters in the Archives—authorized by Stephen King himself—is unlike anything ever published about the master of horror. It chronicles what Bicks found when she set out to unearth how King crafted some of his scariest, most iconic moments. But it’s also a story about a grown-up English professor facing her childhood fears and getting to know the man whose monsters helped unleash them.

---------

Caroline Bicks is the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine, where she teaches courses in Shakespeare, early modern culture, and horror fiction. She is the author of Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s World and Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare’s England; co- author of Shakespeare, Not Stirred: Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas; and co- host of the Everyday Shakespeare podcast. Her essays and humor pieces have appeared in the Modern Love column of the New York Times, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and the show Afterbirth. She lives in Blue Hill, Maine, with her family.

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Stephen F. Knott, "Conspirator in Chief: The Long Tradition of Conspiracy Theories in the American Presidency" (UP Kansas, 2025)

Thu, 14 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Political Scientist Steve Knott has a new book that focuses on conspiracy theories within the American presidency and often promulgated by the president himself. This is not, per se, a book about conspiracy theories in general, but about the narratives that presidents have used—that constitutes a kind of conspiracy thinking—to engage voters and push for particular policy ideas and outcomes. Conspirator in Chief: The Long Tradition of Conspiracy Theories in the American Presidency (UP Kansas, 2025) spans the entire history of the United States, paying close attention to presidents Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and finally Donald Trump. These particular presidents, both during their administrations and after, made use of conspiracies and/or demagogic rhetoric to encourage their supporters and to appeal to public fears. As Knott notes, Alexander Hamilton warns against this in both Federalist #1 and Federalist #85, wrapping the discussion of the new Constitution in concerns with regard to demagoguery. So many of the conspiracies that are pushed by presidents have at their base racism and an effort to fan the flames of racial fear and resentment. Jefferson, Jackson, Johnson, and Wilson all made use of racism as a part of their conspiracies.

Conspirator in Chief: The Long Tradition of Conspiracy Theories in the American Presidency also mines the deep vein of conspiracy theories around moneyed and elite interests, since many presidents cast these interests as predatory and “out to get” the average citizen. This is another constant approach among the presidents from the early days of the republic through to our contemporary “conspirator in chief” Donald Trump. Part of the way that presidents use these kinds of conspiracies is to set up a dichotomy of those who are with the president and those who are against the president, and this latter group is, inevitably, also opposed to the country as a whole and the way of life in the United States. Knott explains that this was the kind of rhetoric that both FDR and Truman used in their implementation of this kind of conspiratorial rhetoric. This also leans on national security as a point of contention, and that those in opposition to the president or the president’s policies are also potential threats to the republic. This is another dimension that Trump builds on in his use of this kind of rhetoric and division.

In the final part of Conspirator in Chief, Knott sketches out those presidents who go far in standing against this kind of language and these kinds of attacks. Included in this grouping are John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, William Howard Taft, and John F. Kennedy, among others. These individuals leaned into reason more than rumormongering, examining their own biases, and also pointing to the conspiracies that others were advocating. While we learn a great deal about demagogic presidents who stirred up conspiracies based in racism, fear, antisemitism, and classism, we also learn about those who operated differently, who tried to protect the country from such divisive rhetoric.

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Jue Liang, "Conceiving the Mother of Tibet: The Early Literary Lives of the Buddhist Saint Yeshe Tsogyel" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Thu, 14 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Conceiving the Mother of Tibet: The Early Literary Lives of the Buddhist Saint Yeshe Tsogyel (Oxford UP, 2026) is the first comprehensive study dedicated to the literary tradition surrounding Yeshe Tsogyel, revered as the foremost matron saint of Tibetan Buddhism. It traces the emergence and development of a rich body of narratives about Yeshe Tsogyel during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, focusing on the Tibetan Nyingma Buddhist tradition. Through careful textual analysis, the book constructs an emic (insider) Tibetan Buddhist theory of gender and female religious eminence, examining how Yeshe Tsogyel's multifaceted identities--as a devoted disciple, tantric consort, sky-goer (dakini), and spiritual mother--embody a dialectic that shifts back and forth between Tibetan women's social and cultural marginalization and a Buddhist discourse of soteriological inclusivity.

Jue Liang queries these texts for their social and religious functions, especially where ambivalence and contradictions abound. However, these ambivalences do not necessarily disadvantage women in Tibetan Buddhism. Operating with ambivalent, sometimes competing, discourses on womanhood, Nyingma Buddhist theorists in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries created a space for a flexible treatment of gender, where they traverse between theological terms and embodied reality.

Ultimately, Conceiving the Mother of Tibet not only illuminates the unique position of Yeshe Tsogyel within Tibetan Buddhist literature but also offers a methodological framework for understanding localized theories of gender. This approach highlights alternative ways of being and acting in the world as embodied agents, providing valuable insights for the broader field of Buddhist studies.

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Martin Munro and Eliana Vagalau eds., "Jean-Claude Charles: A Reader's Guide" (Liverpool UP, 2022)

Thu, 14 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Despite being a major figure of Haitian literature, Jean-Claude Charles (1949-2008) has received relatively little scholarly attention to date. Jean-Claude Charles: A Reader's Guide (Liverpool UP, 2022) seeks to serve as an introduction to the work and universe of this unique and capital writer to an English-language readership. The essays in the collection are organized along three major axes: contextual articles, placing Charles' work within the larger Haitian literary landscape, punctual articles, addressing specific themes in a selection of Charles' books, and author testimonials, attesting to Charles' work's importance both to his contemporaries and to a new generation of writers. With the ongoing republication of Charles' work by Mémoire d'encrier in Montreal, and the increasing interest in the author, the proposed volume is timely and necessary, and is in large part a critical accompaniment to the republishing programme. Described by Dany Laferrière as "most brilliant Haitian author of his generation," Charles has until recently remained largely unread and little understood. As the various chapters in the volume show, Charles is an author for now, and the collection will accompany readers seeking strikingly original insights on issues such as race, migration, and exile, and the role of the author and literature in times of crisis.

Guest Eliana Văgălău is Associate Professor and director of the French program at Loyola University Chicago. Her research on francophone Caribbean literature and contemporary philosophy focuses on the relationship between aesthetics and politics, as well as on questions of transnationalism, diaspora, and sexuality. In addition to co-editing this volume, she has published articles on the work of authors such as Maryse Condé, James Noël, and Jean-Claude Charles. As a founding member of the Collectif Jean-Claude Charles, she dedicates much of her work to making visible the work of this fundamental Haitian author. She has published translations of literary and philosophical texts and is currently completing an essay on contemporary French Caribbean fiction. By teaching a course on Black Paris, her extensive collaborations with contemporary Black artists and writers living in France today, as well as serving as co-organizer of the Black Europe Symposium in 2023 at Loyola University Chicago, she has developed a secondary research interest in the city of Paris as a
chief site of Black transnational encounters.

Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean, with a book manuscript in progresson posthumanist ecological engagement in the surrealist movement.

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Kenneth G. Zysk, "South Asian Animal Divination: A Critical Anthology" (Brill, 2025)

Thu, 14 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

South Asian Animal Divination: A Critical Anthology (Brill, 2025) examines the history and practice of animal omen divination in South Asia, comparing it to similar traditions in Mesopotamia and classical antiquity. It provides critical editions and translations of relevant texts, focusing on the interpretation of bird calls and behaviour. The study incorporates ornithological and natural historical information to enhance the understanding of the omens and their regional origins. Furthermore, it explores the evolution of omen literature and the transmission of knowledge across cultures and time periods, highlighting the enduring significance of sound and direction in divination practices.

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Fyodor Tertititsky, "Pyongyang on the Brink: Sixteen Crises That Shaped North Korea" (Hurst, 2026)

Thu, 14 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

North Korea has survived wars, sanctions, and isolation—to the point where it now seems that the continuation of the Kim dynasty, and a starkly divided Korea, is assured. But history is filled with events where some change might have drastically altered how a country’s development might have gone.

North Korea is no different, at least according to Fyodor Tertititsky, author of Pyongyang on the Brink: Sixteen Crises That Shaped North Korea (Hurst, 2026). In his book, he posits sixteen different points where things might have gone differently. Maybe Japan falls too quickly in the Second World War, denying the Soviet Union the opportunity to occupy the north. Maybe Kim Il-Sung gets outcompeted, and someone else becomes head of North Korea. Maybe China never intervenes in the Korean War, or maybe one of several coups against Kim Il-Sung succeeds.

Fyodor joins us today to talk about some of these scenarios, as well as the unlikely inspiration for the book: Alternate history mods for Paradox Studio games.

Fyodor researches North Korean political, social and military history from South Korea, where he has been living for more than a decade. He has authored several books in English and Korean, including Accidental Tyrant: The Life of Kim Il-sung (Oxford University Press: 2025), and The North Korean Army (Routledge: 2022)

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Pyongyang on the Brink. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Sally Maslansky, "A Brilliant Adaptation: How Dissociative Identity Disorder and the Power of the Therapeutic Bond Saved Me" (New Harbinger Publications, 2026)

Wed, 13 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A Brilliant Adaptation: How Dissociative Identity Disorder and the Power of the Therapeutic Bond Saved Me (New Harbinger Publications, 2026) is a searing and profound memoir of one woman's journey through dissociative identity disorder and childhood sexual abuse--and how she found hope, healing, and recovery.

Sally Maslansky is living the perfect life: a beautiful home in Malibu, California, a successful Hollywood producer husband who adores her, and a recently adopted son she treasures. But when Sally begins to remember the trauma she endured as a child, her world begins to unravel. In this gripping and provocative memoir, psychotherapist Maslansky shares how childhood sexual abuse led her to develop dissociative identity disorder (DID), and how, with the help of renowned therapist Daniel J. Siegel, she ultimately recovers. The book reveals the power of therapeutic bond to heal deep attachment wounds, the science of neuroplasticity in healing the traumatized mind, and our capacity as human beings to reconcile unspeakable experiences in order to grow, change, and live vibrant, loving, and joyful lives against all odds. Together with Siegel, Maslansky slowly recovers her childhood memories and reconnects with the forgotten parts of herself--parts that she grows to admire, respect, honor, and love, because they literally saved her young mind from unimaginable horrors. In the book, Siegel describes Maslansky's DID as a brilliant adaptation of the mind--a protective force that kept her mentally safe when the people she should have trusted most were the ones responsible for her abuse. Whether you have struggled with DID yourself, love someone who has DID, or are simply looking to be inspired by the tenacity of the human spirit, this memoir offers a provocative glimpse into an often pathologized and misunderstood condition, and shows the profound and healing possibilities of therapy, human understanding, and the will to survive.

Sally Maslansky, LMFT has been in private practice for twenty years in Chapel Hill, NC. She treats families, adoption, trauma, parenting, and adult individuals. Her training is in interpersonal neurobiology (IPNB), mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), adult attachment interview (AAI), attachment theory, polyvagal theory practices, mindfulness, and the wheel of awareness practice.

For more information on Sally and her work, please visit her website sallymaslansky.com

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Photis Lysandrou, "Dollar Dominance: Why It Rules the Global Economy and How to Challenge It" (Policy Press, 2025)

Wed, 13 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In a world shaken by crises, why does the dollar continue to dominate? In Dollar Dominance: Why It Rules the Global Economy and How to Challenge It (Policy Press, 2025) Photis Lysandrou explores the interaction between global instability and the enduring strength of the dollar. Drawing on examples from the 2008 Great Financial Crisis to the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the author reveals how uncertainty and instability in global trade, production and politics drives investors towards the safety of the dollar, reinforcing its dominance over other currencies. With clear and insightful analysis, Lysandrou reveals the true global financial foundations of dollar dominance, and lays out what it would take for other currencies such as the Euro to challenge its position

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Rina Bliss, "What's Real About Race: Untangling Science, Genetics, and Society" (W.W. Norton, 2025)

Wed, 13 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Professor Rina Bliss teaches in the sociology department at Rutgers University, and has written on the social significance of genetic studies on intelligence, race, and social factors.

In What's Real About Race: Untangling Science, Genetics, and Society (W.W. Norton, 2025) Bliss explores the history of race as a genetic category, its haphazardness across research, medical, and social contexts, and its implications for knowledge production. In this work, Bliss sheds light on the real impacts of racism on bodies and lives, and on how these myths structure modern science and industries.

This interview is a conversation between Rina Bliss and a group of Princeton graduate students/visiting faculty involved in an interdisciplinary (IHUM) STS Reading group.

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Kira Ganga Kieffer, "Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Wed, 13 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Kira Ganga Kieffer (Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Wesleyan University; PhD, Boston University, 2023) studies contemporary American spiritualities, health, gender, and marketing. Her first book, a history of religion and vaccine skepticism, Unvaccinated Under God: Religion and Vaccine Hesitancy in Modern America (Princeton UP, 2026), is forthcoming from Princeton University Press. She is the author of “Smelling Things: Essential Oils and Essentialism in Contemporary American Spirituality,” in Religion & American Culture (2021) and “Manifesting Millions: How Women’s Spiritual Entrepreneurship Genders Capitalism,” in Nova Religio (2020), which received the Thomas Robbins Award for Article of the Year. She has written for Religion & Politics, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and Religion for Breakfast.

Kieffer uses textual analysis of spiritual marketing materials to discover how consumer culture creates religious concepts within a secular context. Focused on spiritual items and practices that are marketed to women, Kieffer compares the usage of essential oils by three very different groups of spiritual practitioners: contemporary yogis, evangelical Christians, and witches. Although the usage of essential oils is consumerized, Kieffer argues, the beliefs and practices created by “oilers” are nonetheless meaningful responses to the spiritual yearning. Essential oil practices blur the lines between religious traditions, sharpen individual spirituality, and work to create new collective identities.

Order "Unvaccinated Under God" here: here

Visit Sacred Writes here: here

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Fabio Rojas, "From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline" (JHU Press, 2010)

Wed, 13 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The black power movement helped redefine African Americans' identity and establish a new racial consciousness in the 1960s. As an influential political force, this movement in turn spawned the academic discipline known as Black Studies. Today there are more than a hundred Black Studies degree programs in the United States, many of them located in America’s elite research institutions. In From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline (JHU Press, 2010), Fabio Rojas explores how this radical social movement evolved into a recognized academic discipline.

Rojas traces the evolution of Black Studies over more than three decades, beginning with its origins in black nationalist politics. His account includes the 1968 Third World Strike at San Francisco State College, the Ford Foundation’s attempts to shape the field, and a description of Black Studies programs at various American universities. His statistical analyses of protest data illuminate how violent and nonviolent protests influenced the establishment of Black Studies programs. Integrating personal interviews and newly discovered archival material, Rojas documents how social activism can bring about organizational change.

Shedding light on the black power movement, Black Studies programs, and American higher education, this historical analysis reveals how radical politics are assimilated into the university system.

Interview covers the evolution of Black Studies as a subject area and discipline, the historical role of philanthropy in funding and supporting Black Studies, the comparative existence and need of knowledge production coming from Black Studies think tanks and research centers and institutes, and the State of Black Studies in the 21st Century.

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Amy D. McDowell, "Whispers in the Pews: Evangelical Uniformity in a Divided America" (NYU Press, 2026)

Wed, 13 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Whispers in the Pews: Evangelical Uniformity in a Divided America (NYU Press, 2026) reveals how mundane social interactions in an evangelical church silence difference and reinforce right-wing conformity Small talk, whether enjoyed or despised, is often thought of as trivial and largely useless. In certain situations, however, it can be surprisingly powerful. Whispers in the Pews offers a bottom-up explanation of Christian nationalism, revealing how cultural homogeneity within evangelical church communities is upheld by an active, manufactured effort to dodge reflective engagement with topics that could stir up diverging points of view. Whispers in the Pews exposes how small talk is utilized to construct an appearance of social and political sameness in evangelical church communities. Based on an ethnography of a church that appeals to students, working class residents, and racial minorities alike in a politically divided Southern college town, McDowell showcases how churchgoers avoid consequential issues that could expose disagreements on border control, electoral politics, race and gender. By confining themselves to blander topics, the church, which prides itself on inclusivity, positions itself as welcoming to all. But by creating an environment in which certain topics are discouraged from discussion, a façade is developed in which everyone is assumed to believe the same things, and any sort of debate is silenced. Whispers in the Pews shows that the presumption that everyone is of the same mind makes it difficult for churchgoers to articulate or contemplate progressive views, and by extension, advances the idea that differences of opinion are un-Christian, and therefore un-American.

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Maria Ingrande Mora, "A Wild Radiance" (Peachtree Teen, 2026)

Wed, 13 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Maria Ingrande Mora's latest fantasy romance A Wild Radiance (Peachtree Teen, 2026) brings readers to the magical industrial revolution. Josephine Haven is about to find out exactly where she fits into the march of Progress. Her outbursts are infamous at the House of Industry, the school for children who can wield radiance, an electricity-like magic. She's tried to follow the rules, but her fiery nature is at odds with the core tenet of the House: Never form attachments. If she is meant to feel nothing, why are her emotions so volatile? No one is surprised when, upon graduation, Josephine is banished from the city to a remote Mission. In Frostbrook, she must work under standoffish Julian, the former golden boy of the House of Industry who seems determined to watch her fail. And then there's Ezra, the flirtatious stranger who's a little too curious about how the Mission operates. But there are bigger problems than Julian and Ezra's secrets. A deadly disease is spreading across the countryside, and in Frostbrook, not everyone is eager to embrace Progress. As Josephine questions the system that raised her--and gives in to desire she's been taught to suppress--she must decide what she's willing to sacrifice to expose not just corruption within the House but the devastating truth about the radiance in her core.

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J.J. Dupuis, "Roanoke Ridge: A Creature X Mystery" (Dundurn Press, 2020)

Wed, 13 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with J.J. Dupuis about Roanoke Ridge—the first book in his Creature X series published with Dundurn Press, 2020.

There’s been a string of Bigfoot sightings in Roanoke Ridge. Do they have something to do with the body in the woods?
When Bigfoot researcher Professor Berton Sorel goes missing in the temperate rainforest of Roanoke Ridge, Oregon, help is summoned in the form of his former star pupil, Laura Reagan, online science populist and avowed skeptic. But what begins as a simple search and rescue operation takes a drastic turn when a body is discovered — and it isn’t the professor’s.
Caught in the fallout of the suspicious death, perplexed by a sudden wave of Bigfoot sightings, and still desperately searching for Professor Sorel, Reagan reluctantly admits two things: her old mentor was right about there being secrets hidden in Roanoke Ridge, and it’s up to her to uncover them.

J.J. Dupuis is the author of the Creature X Mystery series. When not in front of a computer, he can be found haunting the river valleys of Toronto, where he lives and works.

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The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos

Wed, 13 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Witnesses to the brutal murder of their families and neighbors and the violent destruction of their communities, a cadre of Jewish women in Poland—some still in their teens—helped transform the Jewish youth groups into resistance cells to fight the Nazis. These “ghetto girls” paid off Gestapo guards, hid revolvers in loaves of bread and jars of marmalade, and helped build systems of underground bunkers. They bombed German train lines and blew up a town’s water supply. They also nursed the sick and taught children.

Judy Batalion's new book, The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos (William Morrow, 2021) —already optioned by Steven Spielberg for a major motion picture—brings these largely unknown stories to light. Join us for a conversation with Batalion about this new book led by Andrew Silow-Carroll (New York Jewish Week).

This book talk originally took place on April 20, 2021.

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Charles L. Glaser, "Retrench, Defend, Compete: Securing America's Future Against a Rising China" (Cornell UP, 2025)

Wed, 13 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Retrench, Defend, Compete: Securing America's Future Against a Rising China (Cornell UP, 2025), Charles L. Glaser advances a thought-provoking strategy for securing vital US interests in the face of China's rise.

Many believe China's ascent will drive it to war with the United States. Yet this is far from inevitable; geography and nuclear weapons should ensure US security. The real danger, Glaser contends, lies in East Asia's territorial disputes, especially over Taiwan. To reduce the risk of war, Glaser makes a bold case for ending US security commitments to Taiwan and carefully calibrating its policies on protecting South China Sea maritime features. The United States should also strengthen its alliances with Japan and South Korea and eliminate unnecessarily provocative nuclear and conventional weapons policies. These measures, Glaser argues, would defuse China's biggest security concerns while preserving America's core strategic interests.

Fusing theoretical insights with policy analysis, Retrench, Defend, Compete lays out a distinctive and compelling approach for managing the world's most consequential geopolitical rivalry—before it's too late.

Our guest is Professor Charles Glaser, who is a Senior Fellow in the MIT Security Studies Program. His research focuses on international relations theory and international security policy, including U.S. policy toward China, nuclear weapons policy, and U.S. energy security.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

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Es-pranza Humphrey, "Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen" (Poster House Museum, 2026)

Tue, 12 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Starting in the 1880s, Black performers, and those invested in telling stories centering Black people, attempted to counter the dehumanizing and harmful stereotypes used to portray Black characters. Shows began touting “All Colored Revues” to indicate that a cast was made up of actual Black performers rather than white people in blackface, and that these spectacles aimed to build stories around the perception of Black experiences. Although these performances were sometimes flawed, and even overly prejudiced, they represented a significant form of Black American cultural development and expression.

Since theatrical performances were rarely recorded, and many of the movies that featured all Black casts are now considered “lost films,” films for which no copy is known to survive, advertising posters often provide the only remaining evidence of the most important productions featuring Black performers between the 1870s and 1940s. These posters, and the historic innovations of playwrights, composers, directors, producers, and the Black performers behind them, are the subjects of the exhibition, Act Black: Posters From Black American Stage and Screen, curated by our guest for this episode, Assistant Curator of Collections at New York City’s Poster House museum, Es-pranza Humphrey.

Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen is on view at Poster House through September 6, 2026. Exhibition resources are also available via the Bloomberg Connects app until September 6, and at the Poster House online exhibition archive thereafter.

Es-pranza’s recommended reading list is available at the Additions to the Archive Substack.

Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Andrea Gutiérrez-Glik, "Healing the Oppressed Body: A Therapeutic Guide for Radical Self-Liberation" (Penguin, 2026)

Tue, 12 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

An essential guide to healing from oppression-based trauma, for everyone left outside of mainstream conversations There are many books on trauma healing that can change people’s lives. Yet when queer and trans people, people of color, and all of us living at the margins look for books that reflect our own experiences and that specifically name the oppression we experience as trauma, we’re left empty-handed. There’s little that speaks to the specific traumas we experience: homophobia, transphobia, institutional injustices, isolation, medical trauma, and discrimination at every turn. We deserve to have ourselves reflected and considered in the world of trauma recovery. In Healing the Oppressed Body: A Therapeutic Guide for Radical Self-Liberation (Penguin, 2026), somatic therapist Andrea Gutiérrez-Glik provides the best tools and approaches to healing trauma and filters them through an anti-oppression lens, making sure they’re uniquely impactful for all of us at the margins. In these pages, you’ll learn how trauma is stored and processed by our minds and bodies and how we can work with our amazingly flexible brains and nervous systems to create pathways to healing. You’ll understand just how and why trauma that occurs in our earliest days can affect us throughout our lives. You’ll learn to embrace your Internal Family, making yourself whole. In Healing the Oppressed Body, Andrea Gutiérrez-Glik lovingly offers us the best, most radical solutions to tap into our sources of healing. Along the way, you’ll discover tools and techniques for emotional regulation and therapeutic modalities to heal from oppression-based trauma. Whether inside the therapy room or on your own, in the pages of Healing the Oppressed Body, you’ll learn how to heal through growing compassion for all parts of yourself and others, finding community support and love, and celebrating the freedom to be your true self.

Andrea Gutiérrez-Glik, LCSW, is a psychotherapist specializing in treating OCD, cPTSD, and PTSD, prioritizing women, survivors, and queer and trans folks. She utilizes EMDR, IFS, I-CBT, and ERP to help clients feel safe in the present and come home to themselves. Gutiérrez-Glik is also an EMDRIA-approved consultant for therapists getting certified in EMDR and a regular teacher at Alma, the Trauma of Money(tm), and other mental health organizations. She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, on occupied Osage and Kaskaskia land, with her wife and their child.

Helena Vissing, PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California and Associate Professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. She can be reached at contact@helenavissing.com. She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period (Routledge, 2023).

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Wil Haygood, "The War within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home" (Knopf, 2026)

Tue, 12 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Award-winning author Wil Haygood joins Michael Stauch to discuss The War within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home (Knopf, 2026) his new book on the experiences of Black soldiers during the first war fought with an integrated military, the Vietnam War. Through the lives of seven soldiers, a pianist, and a wartime journalist, Haygood details how Black soldiers’ attempts to rise through their merits in the military came up against white racism within that same military, even as the Civil Rights movement scored significant gains domestically, through the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.

Highlights include:

How VA employee Maude DeVictor helped expose the effects of Agent Orange on returning veterans;
Pilot Fred Cherry’s flight “from segregation to integration” before spending five years as the first African American prisoner of war in Vietnam;
Art Gregg’s distinguished career in military logistics, culminating in renaming Fort Robert E. Lee in his honor (before that fort was again renamed under the Trump administration);
The power of monuments and memorials to shape public memory and inspire future generations, as in the memorial to Henry O. Flipper, the first Black graduate of West Point, in former secretary of defense Lloyd Austin’s hometown;
Wil’s soon-to-be legendary rendition of Marvin Gaye’s antiwar masterpiece, “What’s Going On.”

Guest: Wil Haygood is the author of ten nonfiction books, many of which have won literary awards. His book, The Butler, was made into a film directed by Lee Daniels. Haygood has been a correspondent for the Washington Post and The Boston Globe, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. In 2022, he received the Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award from the Dayton Peace Prize Foundation. A Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, Haygood is currently Boadway Visiting Distinguished Scholar at Miami University in Ohio and has recently been elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

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Benjamin Robert Siegel, "Markets of Pain: Opium, Capitalism, and the Global History of Painkillers" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Tue, 12 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Markets of Pain offers a sweeping history of the business of licit opium--following cultivators, merchants, scientists, and policymakers--and shows how this potent crop reshaped global trade, medicine, and geopolitics.

For centuries, opium has been a source of both profit and peril, its legacy entangled with addiction, imperialism, and the complex interplay of global trade and national development. While the illicit opium trade is infamous, the history of licit opium--how it was farmed, refined, and used to build modern medicine and shape state power--has remained largely untold.
Drawing on archival sources from Asia, Europe, and the United States, Markets of Pain: Opium, Capitalism, and the Global History of Painkillers (Oxford UP, 2026) traces the global arc of licit opium from poppy fields and processing plants in India, Turkey, and Australia to the clinics and laboratories of modern medicine. It shows how both the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic treated the opium poppy as a national resource and a means of securing global stature. In postcolonial India, by contrast, nationalist leaders initially rejected opium's imperial legacy before embracing its strategic value amid the shifting currents of the Cold War. At the heart of this story are the cultivators, scientists, bureaucrats, and policymakers who shaped the licit opium trade and grappled with its far-reaching consequences. Their work and visions demonstrate how colonial empires and postcolonial states helped forge the global pharmaceutical industry as it struggled to govern a drug it could not abandon.
Markets of Pain reveals how a seemingly marginal crop became an unlikely engine of modernization, a tool of Cold War geopolitics, and a harbinger of today's global opioid crisis. Blending vivid scenes from opium's fields and factories with incisive analysis of scientific and diplomatic archives, Benjamin Robert Siegel recovers a buried history with urgent relevance for global supply chains, international power, and public health.

Markets of Pain offers an account of the global drug trade in the twentieth century, focusing on the transformation of opium from a colonial commodity into a modern resource for the American and European pharmaceutical industries. Challenging simplistic ideas of licit and illicit drugs in the twentieth century, it reveals how the modern global drug regime was formed by India and Turkey's navigation of the international anti-opium movement, the rise of the pharmaceutical industry, and the complex relationship between agriculture, medicine, and global capitalism.

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Thomas A. Robinson, "Revisiting the God-fearer Thesis in the Development of Early Christianity" (T&T Clark, 2025)

Tue, 12 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Revisiting the God-fearer Thesis in the Development of Early Christianity (T&T Clark, 2025) examines in depth the theory, evidence, and trail of scholarly work on god-fearers. Thomas A. Robinson argues for substantial revisions in the depiction of the god-fearer phenomenon, the story of early Christianity and its engagement with both Jews and with the larger Greco-Roman population. Robinson provides a thorough analysis of the god-fearer theory, examining scholarly debate and primary literary and inscriptional materials put forward as evidence for the god-fearer theory.

Robinson begins with an exploration of the god-fearing community, its definition, or lack thereof, and its role as a bridge to Christianity in the Greco-Roman world. He then examines the key features of god-fearers, and the scholarly appeal to circumcision as the primary barrier preventing god-fearer conversion to Judaism. The volume concludes with an exploration of Luke's Acts and its readers and a thorough investigation of inscriptional and literary evidence supporting god-fearer theory.

Thomas A. Robinson holds a PhD in Religious Studies from McMaster University, having majored in Judaism and Christianity in the Greco-Roman Era and minored in Indian Philosophy. He has taught world religions courses for over thirty years and has published several books on early and modern Christianity, co-authored a world religions text, and developed books and software for New Testament Greek. Among his other publications on early Christianity, he has authored Ignatius of Antioch and the Parting of the Ways: Early-Jewish Christian Relations (Hendrickson, 2009) and Who Were the First Christians? Dismanting the Urban Thesis (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Jonathon Lookadoo is Associate Professor at the Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary in Seoul, South Korea. While his interests range widely over the world of early Christianity, he is the author of books on the Epistle of Barnabas, Ignatius of Antioch, and the Shepherd of Hermas, including The Christology of Ignatius of Antioch (Cascade, 2023).

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Shannon Chakraborty, "The Tapestry of Fate" (Harper Voyager, 2026)

Tue, 12 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Shannon Chakraborty’s novel The Tapestry of Fate, the second installment in the The Adventures of Amina-al Sarafi, encounters the titular Amina at a time of transition. trying to balance her work on her ship chasing arcane artifacts and time on land spent raising her daughter Marjana. After interference from her estranged husband, Amina finds herself and her crew on a possibly futile quest to steal a spindle from a mysterious sorceress on an island that no one can escape. Despite the presence of magic that complicates the perception of reality itself, Amina remains determined to find a way home for herself and her crew.

In this interview, Chakraborty describes her longstanding affection for the history of the Indian Ocean in the 12th century, the wealth of primary sources we have from that time period, and the process of sharing her love of history with readers. She discusses the role of magic and gender in the medieval Islamicate world, research rabbit holes, and the importance of middle aged protagonists in fantasy. We also chat about crafting a fun adventure story and the role of textiles and religion across time.

The Tapestry of Fate is a joyful and empathetic novel full of adventure and a deep appreciation for the past. It was an absolute joy discussing it with the author.

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Chiara Libiseller, "Reconceptualizing War: The Rise and Fall of Fashionable Concepts in Strategic Studies" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Tue, 12 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The field of Strategic Studies, which studies the use and threat of force for political purposes, has seen the repeated rise of concepts to dominate discourses and research agendas, only to eventually fall to the margins again. What explains this cyclical pattern? What are the consequences for our understanding of war?
Reconceptualizing War: The Rise and Fall of Fashionable Concepts in Strategic Studies (Oxford UP, 2026) by Dr. Chiara Libiseller examines these questions by likening the coming and going of theories to fashions. While in vogue, fashionable concepts are used widely, becoming broader and vaguer until essentially stripped of meaning. At the same time, they are bestowed with authority and power that allows them to withstand criticism and marginalizes alternative perspectives. These characteristics severely affect the quality, depth, and diversity of research by narrowing and siloing the field of inquiry.
Tracing three concepts—revolution in military affairs, counterinsurgency, and hybrid warfare—through their fashion lifecycle, Dr. Libiseller demonstrates how fashionability affects the concepts themselves, related research, and the field more generally. Embedded within a discussion of the history and dynamics of Strategic Studies, the book calls for more reflexivity in the study of war and strategy.

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Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, "The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us" (Liveright Publishing, 2026)

Tue, 12 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

MacArthur Fellow and National Humanities Medalist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex and The Mind-Body Problem, returns with a revelatory book about the primal drive that in our species alone has been transformed into one of our most persistent and universal motivations: the longing to matter.

Drawing on biology, psychology, and philosophy, in The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us (Liveright Publishing, 2026) Goldstein argues that this need to matter―and the various “mattering projects” it inspires―is the source of our greatest progress and our deepest conflicts: the very crux of the human experience.
Goldstein brings this profound idea to life through unforgettable stories of famous and not-so-famous people pursuing their unique mattering projects: the ragtime genius Scott Joplin, whose dedication to his ignored masterpiece, Treemonisha, ended in tragedy; the pioneering psychologist William James, who rose above the depression of his young adulthood to become perhaps the first great theorist of mattering; an impoverished Chinese woman who rescued abandoned newborns from the trash; and a neo-Nazi skinhead who as a young man dealt racial violence to feel he mattered but ultimately renounced that hateful past after realizing that mattering isn’t a zero-sum game. These portraits illuminate how our instinct for significance shapes identity, relationships, culture, and conflict―and they point the way to a future where we all might see that there is, fundamentally, enough mattering to go around.
Deeply revealing and insightful, and decades in the making, The Mattering Instinct is a must read for those curious about why we seek to matter to ourselves and others―and how this insatiable longing that drives us apart may be the key to finally understanding each other.

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Lim Tse Wei, "Little Perfections: Eating in Singapore" (Kitchen Arts and Letters, 2026)

Tue, 12 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Despite the implications of its subtitle, this is not a travel guide to Singapore, although readers run the risk of becoming tempted to venture there. Author Lim Tse Wei begins this collection of essays with the candid admission, “I am a somewhat unusual cook. My main qualification for the profession is that I was born and raised in Singapore, where food is both secular obsession and national religion. I didn’t learn to cook at my mother’s side, or my grandmother’s, and although my grandfather had been a cook for some years, we didn’t speak of it in the family. In Singapore, good sons do not learn to cook.”

Lim’s dry commentary and insight introduces us to a world of striking juxtapositions, from expatriate French chefs preparing food for diners in Chippendale chairs to street hawkers who struggle to make a living wage, let alone one that would allow them to feel like full-fledged members of Singaporean society. He makes his grandmother’s recipe for lou arh, braised duck, in suburban Massachussets and questions why anyone would export Tabasco sauce to Southeast Asia, “home of the most nuanced and varied chilli-eating culture on the planet.” There are a few recipes, some traditional, some not at all, included to illustrate ideas rather than to command us to act. And although Lim makes no attempt to be systematic in his coverage, he still paints a vivid picture of the city-state’s culinary culture.

Little Perfections: Eating in Singapore (Kitchen Arts and Letters, 2026) is available to purchase exclusively at Kitchen Arts & Letters.

This interview was conducted by Ernest Lee, PhD student at the University of Chicago. He researches the history of postcolonial energy through the lens of development, infrastructure and environment, with a focus on West Africa and Southeast Asia.

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Sarah Stone, "Marriage to the Sea: Linked Novellas" (Four Way Books, 2026)

Tue, 12 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Six years ago, Katya Zamarin’s mother was murdered by a stranger who also maimed her Aunt Julia. More recently, her father died of a heart attack. He visits Katya in a dream, and she believes he wants her to head to Paris for a conference organized by his environmentalist hero. Katya’s youngest sister, Arielle, a recovering addict and aspiring actress, tags along. And Aunt Julia, once an infamous soap opera star, flies to Paris when Arielle suffers an unexplained sleeping sickness. Everyone is grappling with survival, grief, and worry about the climate in these two entwined novellas about sisters, family, identity, and finding one’s purpose. Listen to this interview about Marriage to the Sea: Linked Novellas (Four Way Books, 2026)

Sarah Stone was born in San Francisco; her father was a professor of psychology and an environmental activist and her mother a collagist, assemblagist, and ceramic sculptor. Sarah studied art and creative writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and later got her MFA in Fiction from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has taught ESL in Bujumbura, Burundi, and in person and on TV in Seoul, South Korea. She was a volunteer at the Jane Goodall chimpanzee orphanage in Bujumbura, a psychiatric aide in a locked facility by the Pacific Ocean, and office help at an apparently haunted massage school and retreat center in the Santa Cruz mountains. She has taught at UC Berkeley and the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, among other places. She now lives in the SF East Bay and teaches creative writing online through Stanford Continuing Studies. She’s also a facilitator of the Jewish Studio Process. Her books include Hungry Ghost Theater, a finalist for the 38th annual Northern California Book Awards; The True Sources of the Nile; and now Marriage to the Sea. She is also the co-author, with her spouse, Ron Nyren, of Deepening Fiction: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers. When she’s not writing or reading (though mostly she is writing or reading), she loves drawing, inventing recipes, exploring art museums, or picnicking on the beach with her extended family (bundled up, winter or summer, because the Northern California beaches tend to be bracing). You can find Sarah online at here.

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Angus Burgin on the Rise of the Internet

Mon, 11 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

We were joined by Angus Burgin, Associate Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, and talked about how the arrival of the Internet remade life and politics in the 90s. Angus shared his thoughts on the motivations behind his upcoming book, which offers an intellectual history of the Internet.

Lee Vinsel is a professor in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech.

Benjamin Waterhouse is a professor of History at UNC Chapel Hill.

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Young People and Democracy in Africa: Between Engagement and Disillusionment

Mon, 11 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What explains the growing tension between young people and democracy in Africa? Why are some increasingly frustrated, disengaged, or even open to authoritarian alternatives?

In this episode, Temitayo Odeyemi speaks with Cynthia Mbamalu about how young people experience democracy in practice. Reflecting on her journey from student activism to leading youth engagement at YIAGA Africa, Cynthia discusses political education, generational differences, and why many Gen Z citizens feel disconnected from democratic institutions. The conversation examines how digital platforms are reshaping political attitudes and why democratic actors must rethink how they engage young people. It also highlights the role of student activism, youth civic spaces, and more open institutional communication in rebuilding trust.

Transcript here

Cynthia Mbamalu is a lawyer, civic leader, and Director of Programmes at Yiaga Africa. She has led major initiatives on youth political participation, election integrity, and civic engagement across Nigeria and beyond.

Temitayo Odeyemi is a Research Fellow in Democratic Resilience at the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR).

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Wesley Brown, "Looking for Frank Wills" (McSweenys, 2026)

Mon, 11 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Wesley Brown about how novella, Looking for Frank Wills (McSweenys, 2026).
It's 1972. Tricky Dick is in office, James Brown is on the radio, and Wayne Beasley reluctantly presides over the comings and goings of his barbers and patrons at Wayne's Clip and Trim in Augusta, South Carolina. When one of Wayne's former customers, an unassuming small-town son, is designated 4-F, unfit to serve in Vietnam, he seeks refuge in becoming the next best thing—a security guard for a downtown DC hotel. It is there on a hot summer's night, that Wayne's wayward patron interrupts a break-in that will disrupt the course of a nation's history and his own. Wesley Brown, author of Tragic Magic, Darktown Strutters, and Blue in Green: A Novella, once again remaps the tributaries that run into the stream of our American subconscious, by dipping into the headwaters of pivotal memories and histories to tell the tale from the perspective of the real folks whose stories were too long submerged. Without Frank Wills there is no Watergate. And without Watergate the veil of secrecy and corruption that came to define the Nixon years, warping the very fabric of political discourse from that moment on, would have remained firmly in place. Wesley Brown's re-imagining of the life of Frank Wills reconciles the greatest heist of all—our place in the American story. What was stolen from Wills as he was briefly thrust into the spotlight, while excluded from the annals of history, is reclaimed, as Brown gives voice and breath to the people who loved him and the barber who did his best to guide him.

Wesley Brown is an acclaimed novelist, playwright, and teacher. He worked with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1965 and became a member of the Black Panther Party in 1968. In 1972, he was sentenced to three years in prison for refusing induction into the armed services and spent eighteen months in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary. For twenty-six years, Brown was a much-revered professor at Rutgers University, where he inspired hundreds of students. He currently teaches literature at Bard College at Simon's Rock and lives in Chatham, New York.

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Holly EJ Black, "The Story of Printmaking: A Global History of Art" (Yale UPs, 2026)

Mon, 11 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The significance of printmaking within the history of art is often underplayed, obscured or misunderstood. The Story of Printmaking: A Global History of Art (Yale UP, 2026) by Holly EJ Black tells the story of artist prints from across the globe in a manner that is accessible and engaging. It demystifies how prints are made – from woodblock to etching – and explores how, throughout history, printmaking has defied easy categorisation, straddling ‘fine’ art practices and commercially minded production. In fact, it has been employed as much for creative experimentation as it has for disseminating information.

Beginning in ancient East Asia and travelling through Renaissance Europe, revolutionary Mexico, and post-Apartheid South Africa, these ten chapters celebrate the interconnected nature of the printed image and its multiple histories, while illuminating the lesser-known players who have been deliberately or erroneously overlooked. Whether formed by slicing linoleum or plunging plates into acid, then distributed via bound books or pasted posters, the print has not just replicated the world, it has shaped it.

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The YIVO Sound Archive at 40: A Celebration

Mon, 11 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The YIVO Sound Archive houses over 20,000 recordings (including 78, 45, and 33rpm discs, open-reel and cassette tapes, piano rolls, and compact discs and other digital formats) as well as various artifacts related to sound recordings. It is is one of the most extensive and frequently consulted Jewish music collections in the world, embracing Yiddish and Hebrew folk, pop and theater music, Holocaust songs, liturgical, choral and instrumental compositions and, of course, klezmer music, as well as spoken word, oral histories, interviews, and radio programs. In addition to serving researchers, the Sound Archive maintains a special link to the Yiddish cultural world, and has close relationships with many musicians who utilize its resources in creating their art. It serves anyone seeking to include Yiddish music in their life or work, including teachers, journalists, camp counselors, and radio producers, among others.

Join us for a fascinating insider discussion of the history of the YIVO Sound Archive, important areas of its collections, projects it has facilitated, and other stories of the past 40 years. Moderated by Hankus Netsky, this event will, for the very first time, bring together the founder of YIVO's Sound Archive, Henry Sapoznik, current YIVO Sound Archivists Lorin Sklamberg and Eléonore Biezunski, and former YIVO Sound Archivist Jenny Romaine.

Learn more about the YIVO Sound Archive: https://www.yivo.org/Sound

This panel discussion originally took place on September 13, 2022.

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Samiha Rahman, "Black Muslim Freedom Dreams: Islamic Education, Pan-Africanism, and Collective Care" (NYU Press, 2026)

Mon, 11 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Samiha Rahman’s Black Muslim Freedom Dreams: Islamic Education, Pan-Africanism, and Collective Care (New York University Press, 2026) follows three generations of Black American Muslims as they pursue education through the Tijani Sufi order in Medina Baye, Senegal, outside the anti-Black and anti-Muslim racism of the United States. This deeply rich ethnographic book captures the transatlantic flows of Black American religious life through the prism of Black mothers and othermothers (as conceptualized by Patricia Hill Collins “motherwork”) and the young people whose lives are transformed through the process. By focusing on the Islamic education offered by the Tijani Order, such as Qur’an education, we learn about the intricate networks of kin that step in to support the young Black Muslims who have migrated for schooling, highlighting the tangible realities of collective care and service that circulates within the Tijani Order. These registers of care and service are informed by Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse, the Senegalese Islamic scholar, Sufi Shaykh, and pan-Africanist, whose teachings define these networks of education, organizing, and care work. The book then offers critical insights into the flow of one particular Sufi community between the United States and Senegal, and how dreams of better futures for Black Muslim youth and the liberatory goals of Pan-Africanism intersect to co-constitute a significant economy of collective care, Sufi service, and Islamic piety. This book will be of interest to anyone who works on education, Sufism, Black and African Islam and much more.

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Caste and Urbanization with Malini Ranganathan and Juned Shaikh

Mon, 11 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This episode features a conversation with urban geographer, Malini Ranganathan, and historian, Juned Shaikh, on the centrality of caste to urbanization in India. Through a focus on 20th century Bombay (now Mumbai) and 21st century Bangalore (now Bengaluru), we explored the symbiotic relationship between caste and capitalism manifest in the political economy of urbanization from the heyday of industrial capitalism to contemporary neoliberalism. We also delved into the continuities between rural and urban caste relations as seen, for instance, in caste networks that remain key to the movement of capital from rural land to real estate. In addition to the centrality of caste in shaping urbanization, we also considered changes to caste wrought by its role within urban processes. The final part of the episode shifted to a discussion of oppositional mobilization among the urban poor, from the upsurge of literary and political activity among Dalits in Bombay and Bangalore in the 1950s-70s to the ongoing pushback against the threat of dispossession and displacement by real estate and finance capital.

Guest bios

Malini Ranganathan, Associate Professor, School of International Service, American University

Juned Shaikh, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Santa Cruz

References

Khumbarwada: a historic potters’ colony now located within Dharavi, Mumbai (Bombay).

OBC: shorthand for Other Backward Classes, a Government of India classification for socially and educationally disadvantaged castes who are beneficiaries of affirmative action. OBCs are distinct from and considered to be relatively more advantaged than the Scheduled Castes, or Dalits, and Scheduled Tribes, or Adivasis, who also benefit from affirmative action.

SC/ST: shorthand for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (see above).

Malini Ranganathan, David Pike, and Sapna Doshi, Corruption Plots: Stories, Ethics, and Publics of the Late Capitalist City (2024)

Malini Ranganathan, “Towards a Political Ecology of Caste and the City” (2022)

Malini Ranganathan, “Caste, racialization and the making of environmental unfreedoms in urban India” (2022)

Juned Shaikh, Outcaste Bombay: City Making and the Politics of the Poor (2021)

Juned Shaikh, “Imaging Caste: Photography, the Housing Question, and the Making of Sociology in Colonial Bombay, 1900-1939 (2014)

Frank Conlon, A Caste in a Changing World: The Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmans, 1700-1935 (1977)

Nikhil Rao, House, but No Garden: Apartment Living in Bombay’s Suburbs, 1898-1964 (2012)

C. J. Fuller and Haripriya Narasimhan, Tamil Brahmans: The Making of a Middle-Class Caste (2014)

Ajantha Subramanian, The Caste of Merit: Engineering Education in India (2019)

K. Balagopal, Probings in the Political Economy of Agrarian Classes and Conflicts (2020)

Sushmita Pati, Properties of Rent: Community, Capital, and Politics in Globalizing Delhi, Cambridge University Press (2022).

Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India: Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900-1940 (1994)

Priyanka Srivastava, The Well-Being of the Labor Force in Colonial Bombay: Discourses and Practices (2018)

Dana Kornberg, “From Balmikis to Bengalis: The 'Casteification' of Muslims in Delhi's Informal Garbage Economy,” Economic and Political Weekly (2019)

Amita Baviskar, Uncivil City: Ecology,. Equity, and the Commons in Delhi (2020)

Mukul Sharma, Dalit Ecologies: Caste and Environmental Justice (2024)

Liza Weinstein, The Durable Slum: Dharavi and the Right to Stay Put in Globalizing Mumbai (2014)

Siddalingaiah, A Word With You, World: The Autobiography of a Poet (2013)

Dharavi: a residential area in Mumbai (Bombay) considered one of the world’s largest slums.

Chico Mendes: a Brazilian rubber tapper, trade union leader, and environmentalist who fought to preserve the Amazon rainforest and advocated for the human rights of Brazilian peasants and Indigenous people.

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Counter-Revolutionary Puzzles with Guillermo Badia

Mon, 11 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Guillermo Badia.

Dr Guillermo Badia is a philosopher working in logic. His research interests are logic in computer science, semiring-based logics and models of computation, and modal, intuitionistic and other non-classical logics.

They discuss logic, murder mysteries, and the counter revolutionary search for truth.

A transcript of this episode will be available on the Concept : Art website here.

Concept : Art is produced on muwinina Country, lutruwita Tasmania. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.

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Sumita Mukherjee, "Imperial Footprints: A History of South Asian Child Migrants in Britain" (Hurst, 2026)

Mon, 11 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Between 1857 and 1947, over 28 million Indians left the subcontinent to live, work and study elsewhere. Today, India has the largest diaspora in the world, with approximately 18 million Indians living overseas. Though often absent from historical narratives, migrant children were instrumental during the time of the British Empire in the development not only of Indian national and diasporic identities, but of British identity too. These children were marginalised by their political status, their race and their age; yet they were fundamental to historical change, from the 1830s through to independence in 1947.

Imperial Footprints: A History of South Asian Child Migrants in Britain (Hurst, 2026) by Dr. Sumita Mukherjee vividly charts this history of emigration from British India to the imperial heartland, through the eyes of its youngest participants. From pupils sent to English boarding schools and runaway servants, to sailor children and refugees of war or Partition, Sumita Mukherjee reveals that these child migrants were crucial players in founding Indian communities abroad. Drawing on archival records and firsthand accounts, she offers a portrait of migration to Britain that pre-dated the larger waves of arrivals post-war.

Imperial Footprints challenges the assumptions of the historical voices we often foreground; reflects on post-colonial legacies; and offers a fascinating new perspective on migration and empire.

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Ishay Rosen-Zvi, "How to Read Mishnah and Midrash: An Introduction to Early Rabbinic Literature" (U California Press, 2026)

Mon, 11 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The early rabbinic period produced two major literary formations—the Mishnah and Midrash—which have since remained central pillars of Jewish textual tradition. How to Read the Mishnah and Midrash: An Introduction to Early Rabbinic Literature (U California Press, 2026) is the first comprehensive introduction to these two foundational works of Jewish thought in English.

In many ways, all subsequent rabbinic literature emerged from the framework established by these two genres. The Mishnah presented a comprehensive legal system independent of the Bible, encompassing a remarkably broad spectrum of legal topics—from ritual law to civil disputes, capital legislation, marital status, and beyond—woven into a coherent and autonomous legal corpus. The Midrash is the first comprehensive running commentary of the Pentateuch, marked by its interpretive freedom and creative playfulness.

This hands-on companion provides an intimate understanding of how the two texts function and essential tools for engaging with them in depth. With translations, close readings, and analyses of hundreds of primary source materials, this book offers readers a deeper appreciation of the structure, methodology, and enduring impact of the Mishnah and Midrash.

New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review

Ishay Rosen-Zvi teaches rabbinic literature at the Department of Jewish philosophy and Talmud at Tal-Aviv University. His previous books include: Goy: Israel’s Multiple Others and the Birth of the Gentile, written with Adi Ophir; The Mishnaic Sotah Ritual; and Demonic Desires: “Yetzer Hara and the Problem of Evil in Late Antiquity.”

Michael Motia teaches Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

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Shannon McKenna Schmidt, "You Can't Catch Us: Lady Bird Johnson’s Trailblazing 1964 Campaign Train and the Women Who Rode With Her" (Sourcebooks, 2026)

Sun, 10 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

From the author of The First Lady of WWII comes Y ou Can't Catch Us: Lady Bird Johnson’s Trailblazing 1964 Campaign Train and the Women Who Rode With Her (Sourcebooks, 2026), the story of Lady Bird Johnson's groundbreaking trip during the 1964 election, and the women who rode with her.

"It takes women to have guts."

Deemed “the most important campaign effort ever undertaken by the wife of an American president,” the Lady Bird Special was a whistle-stop tour of the South undertaken by Lady Bird Johnson, in a bid for her husband’s reelection in 1964. Never before had a president’s spouse taken to the campaign trail so ambitiously.

The 1,682-mile trek through the southern United States, from Washington DC to New Orleans, was a deliberate choice by Lady Bird—many in the southern states resented her husband’s championing of civil rights. But the first lady, proud of her southern heritage, wanted to appeal to her fellow southerners and bridge the divide. Despite the potential danger, she pressed forward, making speeches, shaking hands, and showing herself to be confident, capable, and impressive.

Y ou Can't Catch Us is a story of an election campaign, but it is also a story of a women-led operation and an appeal for understanding and civility. Lady Bird Johnson's exciting journey was monumental in expanding the role of women in politics and progressing the fight for women’s rights—a fight we still continue to this day.

Hosted by Jane Scimeca, Professor of History at Brookdale Community College: website here @janescimeca.bsky.social

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Mariam Goshadze, "The Noise Silence Makes: Secularity and Ghana's Drum Wars" (Duke UP, 2025)

Sun, 10 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In The Noise Silence Makes: Secularity and Ghana's Drum Wars (Duke UP, 2025) Mariam Goshadze traces the history of noise regulation in Accra, Ghana, showing how the 1990s and 2000s conflicts between the Ga people and Pentecostal/Charismatic churches during the annual city-wide ban on drumming illuminates the inner workings of Ghanaian secularity and the importance of "traditional religions" to African urbanity. Goshadze shows how the drumming ban represents a reversal of the top-down model of noise regulation and illuminates the reality of Ghanaian secularity, in which the state unofficially collaborates with indigenous religious authorities to control sound. In so doing, Goshadze counters the tendency to push African “traditional religions” to the margins.

The author, Mariam Goshadze, is an Assistant Professor in the Study of Religion at Leipzig University.

The host, Elisa Prosperetti, is an Assistant Professor of African and global history at NIE/NTU in Singapore.

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Italo Calvino on the Written and the Unwritten Word

Sun, 10 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of the Vault, we revisit the Italian writer Italo Calvino’s James Lecture, presented at the New York Institute for the Humanities on March 30, 1983.

Italo Calvino was one of the most inventive and widely read Italian authors of the twentieth century. Born in Cuba in 1923 and raised in San Remo, Italy, he began his literary career as a journalist and fiction writer after World War II, publishing his debut novel, The Path to the Nest of Spiders, in 1947. He went on to write some of the most formally original works in postwar literature, including Our Ancestors, Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities, and If on a winter's night a traveler. His work moved fluidly between realism, fantasy, and structural experimentation, earning him a reputation as one of the foremost practitioners of what would come to be called postmodern fiction. He died in 1985, in Siena, Italy.

In this lecture, later published as “The Written and the Unwritten Word” in the New York Review of Books, Calvino reflects on writing, reading and what it means to live between the written world and the material world. He is introduced by NYIH fellow Susan Sontag.

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Justin Michael Reed, "The Injustice of Noah's Curse" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Sun, 10 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Genesis 9, Noah plants a vineyard, and eventually becomes drunk and uncovered in his tent. Then we are told that Ham sees the nakedness of his father, but when Noah wakes up he curses Canaan, Ham’s son. For more than two thousand years, interpreters have struggled to make sense of this story, trying to fill its gaps and explain its ambiguities.

Tune in as we speak with Justin Michael Reed, who offers a novel explanation in his recent book, The Injustice of Noah's Curse (Oxford UP, 2025)

Justin Michael Reed is Associate Professor of Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

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Nazi-Looted Art and Archives: Recovering and Preserving Jewish Culture

Sun, 10 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The ravages of the Holocaust and post-World War II led to the theft and disappearance of art, archives, and personal assets. Join Jonathan Brent and Howard Spiegler for a discussion on the quest to recover and preserve these cultural treasures.

This discussion originally took place on March 23, 2021.

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Alexander Klein, "Consciousness is Motor: William James on Mind and Action" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Sun, 10 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

When it comes to consciousness, William James is well-known for his descriptions of it rather than his theory of it and its relation to the body. In Consciousness is Motor: William James on Mind and Action (Oxford UP, 2025), Alexander Klein elaborates James’ theory of the evolutionary function of consciousness and how conscious states are always linked to the body and always trigger bodily motion (from physiological changes to purposive behavior). Klein, who is Canada Research Chair and Professor of Philosophy at McMaster University, describes the vivisection experiments with headless frogs that led theorists to deny that consciousness was necessary for purposive action or to affirm that consciousness depended on the whole nervous system, not just the brain. James instead proposed an essential link between consciousness and purposive action in which the latter required an ability to entertain “absent” (future) sensations. Klein’s book situates James in relation to contemporary debates regarding the functional role of consciousness, the search for neural correlates of and behavioral markers of consciousness, and the embodiment of mind.

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Brenda Boyle, "American War Stories" (Rutgers UP, 2021)

Sun, 10 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In American War Stories (Rutgers UP, 2021) Brenda Boyle examines how the story of war is told in the Unites States and how these stories of war work to teach American values. Looking at texts ranging from war memoirs and memorials to diplomatic cables and military presence at sporting events, Boyle shows how these "benignly encouraging" stories of war create compliance for going to war. Through these texts, Boyle identifies five key values that American war stories attempt to promote: Exceptionalism, Collectivism, Individualism, Egalitarianism, and Patriotism. Importantly, for Boyle, these war stories attempt to compartmentalize war from civilian life. This allows many in the US to pretend that their lives are untouched by war and unshaped by militarism.

You can find more of Brenda's writings on her Substack "Soldier Girl"

And you can find a transcript of our conversation here.

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Patrick Noonan, "Age of Disaffection: The Aesthetic Critique of Politics in 1960s Japan" (Columbia UP, 2025)

Sun, 10 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The 1960s in Japan have long been understood as a period of radical political engagement. But as political movements from Old Left Communism to New Left revolts appeared to fail in their efforts to revolutionize Japanese society, artists and intellectuals came to reject the ideals of postwar politics. Instead, they advocated withdrawing from political participation and making self-transformation the grounds for social change.
This provocative book uncovers a paradox at the heart of the 1960s: how political disillusionment became the basis for a new form of politics—a politics of the self. Examining aesthetic criticism, popular literature, avant-garde art, cinema, and political theory, Patrick Noonan argues that cultural producers in 1960s Japan cultivated what he calls an “ethos of disaffection” toward revolutionary politics and postwar society. Departing from approaches that define politics as contestation, Age of Disaffection: The Aesthetic Critique of Politics in 1960s Japan (Columbia UP, 2025) foregrounds cultivation, or the production of ways of feeling and relating to the world in efforts to redefine the political. It presents an unorthodox account of the 1960s: withdrawal from political activity developed not as the decade ended but as it was unfolding. Noonan reveals how Japanese artists and intellectuals in this period confronted a crucial question that continues to vex efforts at radical change today: transform institutions or alter how people relate to themselves and others?

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Peter S. Soppelsa, "Paris After Haussmann: Living with Infrastructure in the City of Light, 1870–1914" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2026)

Sun, 10 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Modern Paris is often hailed as a capital of urban infrastructure. Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s rebuilding of Paris in 1853–1870, branded “Haussmannization,” helped define urban modernity for cities worldwide. But even as infrastructures expanded and modernized, some Parisians were left behind: as late as 1928, 18 percent of houses still lacked direct sewerage. Haussmannization often hid infrastructures behind walls and floors, under streets, or in peripheral districts. In the forty years after 1870, a period that Dr. Peter Soppelsa calls “secondary Haussmannization,” Parisians inverted them—revealed their hidden components to scrutinize their workings and costs for society, environment, and health—and in turn politicized them.

Drawing on French government archives, engineers’ maps, the illustrated press, and a collection of over 100 photographic postcards, in Paris After Haussmann: Living with Infrastructure in the City of Light, 1870–1914 (U Pittsburgh Press, 2026) Dr. Soppelsa charts the diverse embodied, emotional, and everyday experiences of living with expanding urban infrastructures—streets, housing, tramways, subways, the water supply, sewers, and rivers—in Paris from 1870 to 1914. Parisians learned that infrastructures were not simply technical solutions for the social and environmental problems of city life but could also bring about new dangers and dependencies.

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Rachel Grace Newman, "The Future in Their Hands: Making Mexico's Foreign-Educated Elite" (U California Press, 2026)

Sun, 10 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Future in Their Hands: Making Mexico's Foreign-Educated Elite (U California Press, 2026), by Dr. Rachel Grace Newman is a deep history of the politics of foreign education in Mexico, where many influential figures have degrees from European or US institutions. Reconstructing the history of student mobility from the late nineteenth to the late twentieth century, Dr. Newman unveils the social hierarchies, political languages, and institutional mechanisms that created Mexico’s foreign-educated elite.

Study abroad began as a private phenomenon for young elites to acquire specific forms of knowledge and to preserve their status. But after the 1910 revolution, elites gradually convinced the Mexican state, under the guise of modernizing the nation, to underwrite their ambitions with merit-based scholarships. Student mobility naturalized the expectation that Mexico’s sovereignty and development required knowledge from elsewhere. For historians of Mexico and other countries with foreign-educated elites, this open-access book reveals the subtle, insidious processes by which states reinforce privilege through education policy.

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Stephan Meier, "The Employee Advantage: How Putting Workers First Helps Business Thrive" (PublicAffairs, 2024)

Sat, 09 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In an ever-shifting work landscape, leaders can no longer ignore their most overlooked stakeholders—their employees. In The Employee Advantage: How Putting Workers First Helps Business Thrive (PublicAffairs, 2024), behavioral economist Stephan Meier explains why organizations must value their employees as much as—if not more than—their customers: those that pivot toward an employee-centric model will be more profitable, innovative, and appealing to top talent. Through case studies of Fortune 500 companies like Costco, DHL, and Best Buy as well as smaller organizations, Meir shows why employees care about more than just money when it comes to their jobs—the same way customers care about more than just price, what mindset shifts are essential to becoming an employee-centric workplace, and how improving the employee experience benefits the business and bottom line.

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Mark Peterson, "The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Sat, 09 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A provocative new history of America's constitution and an urgent call to action for a nation confronted by challenges its founders could never have imagined

The American Revolution occurred at a time when Britain's constitutional order failed to adapt to the extraordinary growth of its colonies. The framers designed an American constitution to succeed where Britain's had faltered, planning for continuous population and territorial expansion that would eventually cross the continent. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, it was already ill-suited for an increasingly urban, industrialized society, and the transformations of the twentieth century have pushed it to a breaking point. The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution: A Thousand-Year History (Princeton UP, 2026) charts the history and aims of the American constitution from its origins in an agrarian past to the grave crisis we face today.

Mark Peterson traces the American constitutional tradition to the control of land in medieval England, showing how the founders incorporated the aspirations of Magna Carta with the administrative principles of the Domesday Book, a meticulous survey and valuation of landed property commissioned by William the Conqueror. This framework encouraged the growth of democratic self-government in a young nation. It also institutionalized the colonization of territory and the expulsion of Indigenous peoples, establishing a legal blueprint for transforming tribal lands into revenue-yielding real estate for settlers. Peterson's riveting narrative paints an arresting picture of a dynamic republic whose frame of government has changed enormously to meet the challenges of the modern age but whose written constitution has changed very little.

Marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, The Making and Breaking of the American Constitution reveals how this widening disconnect threatens the very existence of our democracy. It calls for a constitution that sustains the ideals developed over the past thousand years while meeting the challenges of the future.

Mark Peterson is the Edmund S. Morgan Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630–1865 (Princeton) and The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy of Puritan New England.

Mark Peterson traces the American constitutional tradition to the control of land in medieval England, showing how the founders incorporated the aspirations of Magna Carta with the administrative principles of the Domesday Book, a meticulous survey and valuation of landed property commissioned by William the Conqueror. This framework encouraged the growth of democratic self-government in a young nation. It also institutionalized the colonization of territory and the expulsion of Indigenous peoples, establishing a legal blueprint for transforming tribal lands into revenue-yielding real estate for settlers. Peterson’s riveting narrative paints an arresting picture of a dynamic republic whose frame of government has changed enormously to meet the challenges of the modern age but whose written constitution has changed very little.

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Elana K. Arnold, "Holloway" (Clarion Books, 2026)

Sat, 09 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In her latest young adult novel, Holloway (Clarion Books, 2026), award-winning author Elana K. Arnold returns with a boldly visionary, deeply felt story that crosses space and time to examine loss and love in a world on the brink. It is the late summer of 2021, and a girl named Nora is on the Paris Metro. Nora, whose mother loved her, even though Nora was broken. Nora, who couldn't help her mother when her mother needed her most. Nora, from whom the pandemic has taken nearly everything, save the object she clings to: a cylinder containing her mother's ashes. With no family left, no friends to speak of, and no way to turn back time, Nora has come to France to keep a promise she never got to make: to spread the ashes in a place her mother never got to see. But instead, Nora finds herself on the run through a forest in the night, taking refuge in a dark holloway. And when she wakes, and tries to make her way back to something she recognizes, she realizes that is impossible. Because it is no longer 2021. Questioning everything--including her own sanity--Nora sets out on a journey through a time and place completely foreign to her, and yet one that, much like the time and place she came from, is defined by death, loss, fear, and uncertainty. A journey in which she must find a way to honor her mother--and heal herself--in a world that feels irrevocably broken.

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Olivier Sylvain, "Recovering the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control-And How We Can Take It Back" (Columbia Global Reports, 2026)

Sat, 09 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Recovering the Internet: How Big Tech Took Control-And How We Can Take It Back (Columbia Global Reports, 2026)is an indictment of how Big Tech cloaks ruthless commercial exploitation in the language of free speech. Olivier Sylvain, a leading legal scholar and former senior advisor at the Federal Trade Commission, exposes the incentives behind social media design, revealing how they trap users in cycles of addiction, misinformation, and harm—from fatal TikTok challenges to AI chatbot codependency.

With clarity and urgency, Sylvain dismantles the libertarian mythology that shaped internet law and calls for a new legal regime that protects users over platforms. Recovering the Internet is a powerful, original intervention into the most urgent policy debate of our time—what it will take to reclaim the digital public sphere.

Find out more here

Jake Chanenson is a computer science Ph.D. student and law student at the University of Chicago. Broadly, Jake is interested in topics relating to HCI, privacy, and tech policy. Jake’s work has been published in top venues such as ACM’s CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

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Dennis Sherwood, Missing the Mark: Why So Many School Exam Grades are Wrong – and How to Get Results We Can Trust" (Canbury Press, 2022)

Sat, 09 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

"One in four grades may be wrong."

"25% of exam grades are incorrect."
"Grades are misleading and often wrong."

In Missing the Mark: Why So Many School Exam Grades are Wrong – and How to Get Results We Can Trust (Canbury Press, 2022) Dennis Sherwood discusses the flaws in the UK exam system, highlighting how one in four grades may be wrong and the systemic issues that prevent accurate assessment. He explores the history, current challenges, and potential solutions to ensure trustworthy exam results.

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Gideon Reuveni, "The Great Repair: Emotions, Memory, and the German–Jewish Settlement after the Holocaust" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Sat, 09 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Great Repair: Emotions, Memory, and the German–Jewish Settlement after the Holocaust (Cornell UP, 2026) explores how Jews and Germans began reparations discussions fewer than seven years after the Holocaust—a momentous achievement relegated to the margins of Holocaust scholarship and memory—and the complexities that emerged from the resulting settlement.

Professor Gideon Reuveni illuminates the swift transition and extraordinary chapter in postwar history from the horrors of the Holocaust to a negotiating table where Germans and Jews discussed reparations. Both sides faced the monumental challenge of addressing the injustices of National Socialism through complex deliberations on compensation for collective and individual losses, restitution of property, support for survivors, and formal acknowledgment of Nazi crimes. These negotiations marked a crucial step toward acknowledging historical responsibility and pursuing meaningful redress.

The Great Repair reveals the events, actors, and decisions that led to the signing of the agreement on September 10, 1952, by West Germany, Israel, and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. Ultimately, the enactment of this settlement set a global precedent that genocide cannot go unpunished and moral debts must be paid. It was a historic undertaking of immense scope—unmatched in the history of international relations, just as the extermination of the Jewish people was unprecedented in human history.

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Robin Andersen, "The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel's Genocide in Gaza" (OR Books, 2026)

Sat, 09 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Robin Andersen's latest book, The Complicit Lens: US Media Coverage of Israel's Genocide in Gaza (OR Books, 2026), is a forensic and unflinching examination of how establishment media abandoned journalistic integrity to manufacture consent for the genocide in Gaza, creating an environment in which unprecedented escalations and war crimes have become a terrifying new normal.

Since October 7th 2023, the story of what was to become the genocide in Gaza was immediately shaped by the mobilisation of a very particular narrative: one of unprovoked terror, of Israel's right to defend itself, of a war between equals. What was not made clear, and what Andersen's book documents in meticulous detail, was the extent to which those attacks would be used by Western elites, the global military industrial complex, and US legacy media to condone a full-scale genocide, including horrors that continue as this book goes to print, despite a ceasefire.

The Complicit Lens is published by OR Books in collaboration with the Institute for Palestine Studies, and features an introduction by the Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi, who writes: "This book does not make for easy reading. Andersen walks us through the mainstream media's misleading coverage, its bland and unquestioning repetition of lies and distortions by spokespersons for the Israeli and US governments, and its racist defamation of the Palestinians, when it is not ignoring their voices entirely. In analyzing this dereliction of the most basic duties of journalists, she offers detailed alternative and independent media accounts of Israel's massacres, its intentional destruction of the infrastructure necessary for normal life, and its starvation of over two million people, obscured by this almost universal mainstream media malpractice."

About the Author

Robin Andersen is professor emerita of media studies at Fordham University and an award-winning author of a dozen single- and co-authored books. Her work examines film, television, and media coverage of war, the environment, politics, and elections. She edits the Routledge Focus Book Series on Media and Humanitarian Action, serves as a Project Censored Judge, and contributes to the annual State of the Free Press. Andersen is on the Board of Directors of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, where she also writes regularly, and is an Izzy Award Judge for the Park Center for Independent Media.

About the Host

Stuti Roy is currently an editor at Oxford University Press. She has recently graduated with an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Oxford and holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Toronto.

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Zeina Al-Azmeh, "Syrian Intellectuals in Exile: The Dilemmas of Revolution and the Cost of Leaving" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Sat, 09 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Zeina Al-Azmeh’s Syrian Intellectuals in Exile: The Dilemmas of Revolution and the Cost of Leaving (Cambridge UP, 2026) captures a group of intellectuals forced to leave Syria, primarily after the events of 2011. Having wound up in either Paris or Berlin these intellectuals are forced to reconsider their relation to their homeland, including the ongoing revolution, while navigating their new Western homes. As Al-Azmeh shows, this creates a diverse intellectual field which, while shaped by different intellectual and personal positions shares the need to navigate how they think of the revolution and the expectation of their hosts. In the course of the book, Al-Azmeh shows us a group of intellectuals who, while adopting a ‘double gaze’ of critiquing and at points valuing the West increasingly (though not wholly) adopt a position of ‘radical embeddedness’ towards the revolution, giving their role as leaders and instead seeing themselves as followers of the people.

In the podcast we discuss the process that led these intellectuals to this position and the problems it posed for their relevance. We also discuss the contributions Al-Azmeh makes across the sociology of intellectuals, postcolonial theory and the idea of ‘trauma work’. There are also reflections on how one navigates one’s participants also being source of literature and what has changed following the fall of the Assad regime.

Your host, Matt Dawson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Glasgow and the author of G.D.H. Cole and British Sociology: A Study in Semi-Alienation (2024, Palgrave Macmillan) and co-editor of The Anthem Companion to Henri Lefebvre (2026, Anthem Press) along with other texts.

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Carol Rittner and John K Roth, "This Time: Teaching the Holocaust Today" (‎iPub Cloud, 2026)

Sat, 09 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Written for educators, scholars, graduate students, and readers engaged in Holocaust education, genocide studies, history, ethics, religious studies, and political theory, This Time: Teaching the Holocaust Today (‎iPub Cloud, 2026) treats teaching as a consequential act—one inseparable from the political realities in which it occurs. The volume challenges readers to reconsider what responsible Holocaust education demands now, and what it means to teach when historical memory itself is under strain.

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Terror, Hope, & Exodus: The Testimony of Henry Adams, Freedman

Sat, 09 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

May 5, 2026—In March 1880, an extraordinary American traveled to Washington, DC, to testify before a Senate committee investigating the exodus of formerly enslaved people from the Southern states. Vividly describing the nightmarish violence and exploitation inflicted by “the very men who held us slaves,” the Louisiana freedman Henry Adams spoke of Black resistance to terrorism and disenfranchisement, articulating hope for a future where Black people might “make themselves a name and a nation.”

Join Pulitzer Prize winner Steven Hahn and acclaimed historian Kidada E. Williams for a conversation about a revelatory text, recently published in full for the first time by Library of America, that speaks to the fragility of democracy and the bravery of those who fought for freedom in the aftermath of the Civil War.

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Extraordinary, Mysterious, and Impossible Experiences, with Jeffrey Kriple

Fri, 08 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Today Pierce Salguero sit down with Prof. Jeff Kripal, noted scholar of religion at Rice University, to talk about extraordinary, mysterious, and “impossible” experiences. This is a conversation I’ve been waiting a few years to have. Together we explore what you can or can’t talk about in the humanities — and what we risk when we break the rules. Along the way, we touch on paranormal phenomena, epistemological pluralism, conspiracy theories, Plato’s cave, and why no one dresses up as a humanities professor for Halloween.

If you want to hear scholars and practitioners engaging in deep conversations about the dark side of Asian religions and medicines, then subscribe to Black Beryl wherever you get your podcasts. Enjoy the show!

Resources related to this conversation:

Jeff Kripal's website

Archives of the Impossible & Conferences

Pierce Salguero, "Secret Lives of Buddhist Studies Scholars" (2024)

Pierce Salguero, "The Fractal of Humanities" (2021)

Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes, "On the need for metaphysics in psychedelic therapy and research" (2023)

Jeff Kripal, The Flip (2020)

Jeff Kripal, Secret Body (2019)

Commonweal Podcast

Subscribe here to unlock our members-only benefits, including:

PDF of the introduction of Jeff's book, How to Think Impossibly: About Souls, UFOs, Time, Belief, and Everything Else (2024)

Pierce Salguero is a transdisciplinary scholar of health humanities who is fascinated by historical and contemporary intersections between Buddhism, medicine, and crosscultural exchange. He has a Ph.D. in History of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and teaches Asian history, medicine, and religion at Penn State University’s Abington College, located near Philadelphia. See here.

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A. J. Bermudez, “The Sixteenth Brother” The Common Magazine (Fall, 2025)

Fri, 08 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A. J. Bermudez speaks to Emily Everett about her story “The Sixteenth Brother,” which appears in The Common’s fall issue. With a fable-like feel, the story explores the dynamics of family and gender roles in Morocco, as fifteen brothers scheme to convince their youngest sibling to allow the sale of the family’s ancient and opulent riyad. A. J. discusses the story’s framing device—a storyteller relaying it, almost like gossip—and how it creates both intimacy and distance. She also talks about her work in film, and the interplay between writing for the page and for the screen.

A. J. Bermudez is an award-winning writer and director who divides her time between Los Angeles and New York. She is the author of Stories No One Hopes Are About Them, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award and a Lambda Literary Award finalist. She is a recipient of the PAGE Award, the Diverse Voices Award, the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, the Pushcart Prize, and the Steinbeck Fellowship. In addition to writing and filmmaking, she is also a former boxer and EMT, and her work gravitates toward contemporary intersections of power, privilege, and place.

Read the story in The Common here.

Learn more about A. J. and her work here.

The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine here, and follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and Facebook.

Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. In 2025 her debut novel All That Life Can Afford was a Reese’s Book Club pick, and her work appeared in The New York Times Modern Love column. Previous publications include the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction.

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JoAnn McCaig, "Beneficiary" (U Calgary Press, 2026)

Fri, 08 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with JoAnn McCaig about her new novel, Beneficiary (U Calgary Press, 2026).

A novel about what it means to face the world as a woman on her own terms from the award-winning author of The Textbook of the Rose and An Honest Woman.

Seren was doomed to a country club cage and a leash of pearls until out of the blue on a Tuesday night in 1969, she found herself suddenly saying “no.” More than fifty years later, she looks back on her life and each choice that followed, beautiful, tragic and completely her own.

Leaving her family for the freedom of the 1970s, Seren began a quest to discover how to live in this world as her true self—a quest that would take her from the heady countercultural milieu of communal houses on Vancouver Island through marriage and motherhood, divorce, and an unexpected inheritance that changed everything. Suddenly wealthy, Seren must wrestle with money, with class, and what it means to have more than most.

What does it mean to live truly, through tragedy and heartbreak? How do we create ourselves in a world that keeps changing? What does it mean to have money when so many people don’t? A richly written, fiercely feminist novel imbued with real bravery, Beneficiary weaves the past and the present in a rich tapestry of life.

JoAnn McCaig is the author of The Textbook of The Rose and An Honest Woman. She is the proud owner of Shelf Life Books, an independent bookstore in her hometown of Calgary, AB.

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Julia Bowes, "Every Man's Home a Castle: Parental Rights and the Makings of Modern Conservatism" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Fri, 08 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

“Parental rights” is a rallying cry for today’s American conservatives, signaling opposition to mandatory vaccination and “woke” public school curricula. In Every Man's Home a Castle: Parental Rights and the Makings of Modern Conservatism (Princeton UP, 2026), Dr. Julia Bowes traces the origins of the modern parental rights movement to the nineteenth century, when the introduction of compulsory schooling laws, child labor regulations, and vaccine requirements provoked a resistance rooted in the presumed right of white men to govern their homes. A wide-ranging coalition—including Irish Catholic immigrants in Illinois, Mormon enclaves in Utah, and Protestant clergy in Virginia—believed that the state had usurped the “natural rights” of parents and “invaded the home.”
Dr. Bowes shows how, by the turn of the century, those disparate voices had coalesced into national conservative movements. Anti-vaccinationists, alternative medical practitioners, and parents who opposed compulsory school medical exams joined forces to form the National League for Medical Freedom. Deciding a case brought by conservative Catholic lawyers, the Supreme Court declared parental rights a “fundamental liberty” protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. And the Sentinels of the Republic, a conservative citizen’s lobby, mobilized a campaign to defeat the proposed federal Child Labor Amendment, bringing together pro-family and free-market politics with far-reaching consequences.
Exploring the emergence of parental rights as an antistatist ideology through legal cases, legislative debates, and political movements, Dr. Bowes argues that the expansion of state power over children provoked such fierce opposition because the paternal rights of white men—considered the “rights-bearing” individuals of American democracy—were widely viewed as the mark and measure of their independence.

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Sharon Zukin, "Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change" (Rutgers UP, 2014)

Fri, 08 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Since its initial publication, Loft Living: Culture and Capital in Urban Change (Rutgers UP, 2014) has become the classic analysis of the emergence of artists as a force of gentrification and the related rise of "creative city" policies around the world. This 25th anniversary edition, with a new introduction, illustrates how loft living has spread around the world and that artists' districts--trailing the success of SoHo in New York--have become a global tourist attraction. Sharon Zukin reveals the economic shifts and cultural transformations that brought widespread attention to artists as lifestyle models and agents of urban change, and explains their role in attracting investors and developers to the derelict loft districts where they made their home. Prescient and dramatic, Loft Living shows how a declining downtown Manhattan became a popular "scene," how loft apartments became hot commodities for the middle class, and how investors, corporations, and rich elites profited from deindustrializing the city's factory districts and turning them into trendy venues for art galleries, artisanal restaurants, and bars. However, this edition points out that the artists who led the trend are now priced out of the loft market. Even in New York, where the loft living market was born, artists have no legal claim on loft districts, nor do they get any preferential treatment in the harsh real estate market. From the story of SoHo in Lower Manhattan to SoWa in Boston and SoMa in San Francisco, Zukin explains how once-edgy districts are transformed into high-price neighborhoods, and how no city can restrain the juggernaut of rising property values.

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Steffen Mau et al., "The Trigger Points: Inequality and Political Polarization in Contemporary Society" (Policy Press, 2026)

Fri, 08 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Today’s political debates are fiercely polarized. But looking beyond the headlines, The Trigger Points: Inequality and Political Polarization in Contemporary Society (Policy Press, 2026) shows that ordinary citizens hold much more nuanced, less divided views.

Drawing on rich survey data and group discussions, this work maps four major areas of conflict: migration, climate change, diversity, and economic justice.

Across these conflicts, most citizens take positions that are middle-of-the-road, contradictory, or undecided. It is only certain ‘trigger points' – like gendered pronouns or refugee admissions – that predictably ignite tensions and deep disagreement.

Political entrepreneurs know this and weaponize trigger points for their agenda. Yet the real key to contemporary conflicts, the book argues, lies in social inequality.

This is a vital work that maps today’s political landscape without sensationalism, offering a fresh lens on public debate.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Hannah Pool, a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Studies of Societies. Her research focuses on human mobilities and her new book has been published in 2025 by Oxford University Press.

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Are We Entering An Arms Race in Outer Space?

Fri, 08 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This week on International Horizons, RBI interim director Eli Karetny interviewed Mallory Stewart, Chief Executive Officer of the Council on Strategic Risks. Stewart discusses the evolving role of the US Space Force and the shift in its doctrine toward achieving "space superiority" and orbital control. The blurry lines between the militarization and weaponization of space were widely noted, especially given the challenges of operating in a grueling and opaque environment. Stewart also commented on the limitations of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty in regulating modern technology, noting the US's preference for establishing norms of responsible behavior rather than entering new, unverifiable treaties. Finally, Stewart recognized the importance of public-private partnerships in building resilience, but also acknowledged the urgent need for international risk reduction measures to prevent a destabilizing space arms race.

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Antisemitism: What Everyone Needs To Know by David Harris

Fri, 08 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

History teaches that antisemitism is a disease which begins with the Jews but does not end with them. Once antisemitism is unleashed, it knows no bounds and can attack the very fabric of society. This deadly strain of hatred often turns against other minority groups too, not to mention foundational democratic values, beginning with equal rights and equal protection before the law. Therefore, antisemitism should be viewed as a universal human rights issue of importance to all, and not solely as a parochial Jewish or Israeli concern.
Antisemitism: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford UP, 2025) explores how, in the 21st century, antisemitism is once again resurgent. In recent years, the FBI reported that well over half of all religiously motivated hate crimes in the United States targeted Jews, even though Jews comprise just over two percent of the population. It is striking how little understood antisemitism, including the term itself, still is. This extends quite widely to political leaders, educational authorities, law enforcement and the judiciary, civic groups, and media outlets. Polls have also shown how knowledge of the Holocaust, which was widely considered to be a firewall against the resurgence of antisemitism, is declining, notwithstanding ongoing attention to the topic in education, museums and memorials, and culture.

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Jewish Anarchist Women 1920–1950: The Politics of Sexuality

Fri, 08 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Anarchist theory includes the belief in freedom for all - that no one person, nor group of people, should have power over any others; that individuals can best decide how to live (and love). In this presentation Elaine Leeder will discuss eight Jewish women who identified as anarchists, active during the 1920s to 1950s. Through analysis of in-depth interviews Leeder explores the complete sexual freedom that these women sought at a time when conventionality and conformity was the norm. These women attempted to create equality in the public and private spheres, some living communally and raising their children in progressive schools. They also sought to maintain complete equality of the sexes through economic independence and maintaining non-conformist sexual relationships. This talk will place a particular focus on the way that ethnicity played a role in these women’s identities, emphasizing their atheism, while still maintaining Jewish values and traditions.

This lecture originally took place on June 10, 2021.

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Radio ReOrient S14:6: The Road to Sarajevo, with Haris Tagari, hosted by Claudia Radiven and Saeed Khan

Fri, 08 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, Claudia Radiven and Saeed Khan spoke with Haris Tagari about his recent journey to Sarajevo in a 20 year old Toyota Yaris. Along the way he documented lost Islamic history throughout Europe, before arriving in Bosnia where he discusses genocide, solidarity and Muslim identity. Haris is a freelance journalist working as a reporter and videographer, with a degree in history from the University of Lancaster. Haris is widely known for his Instagram series, travelling to and reporting on destroyed and lost Muslim heritage across the world. He has filmed documentaries and political explainers from Syria, Iraq, Turkiye, Bosnia, Kosovo, Hungary, Serbia and Montenegro. You can follow the journeys of Haris in a Yaris on Instagram @harristory.

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Edith Szanto, "Twelver Shi'i Self-flagellation Rites in Contemporary Syria: Mourning Sayyida Zaynab" (Edinburgh UP, 2025)

Thu, 07 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Edith Szanto’s Twelver Shi'i Self-Flagellation Rites in Contemporary Syria: Mourning Sayyida Zaynab (Edinburgh UP, 2025) is a striking and deeply immersive ethnographic study that takes the reader into the shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab in Syria. This town was a vibrant center of Shi‘i life, pilgrimage, and healing, especially for Iraqi refugees until the 2011 Syrian uprising. By combining meticulous fieldwork conducted between 2004 and 2010 with rich historical and social context, Szanto shows how these contested rituals served as both spiritual expression and pathways to worldly and psychological healing. The book examines controversial Muharram practices, especially self-flagellation, not simply as ritual acts but as deeply meaningful responses to trauma, displacement, and the search for justice and healing. In doing so, Szanto pays close attention to how people actually live their religion: through relationships with saints, engagement with religious authorities, media, ritual performance, and forms of spiritual healing.

In this conversation, Szanto and I explore specific Muharram practices, including self-flagellation, the wedding of Qasim, and other ritualized forms of mourning, as well as gendered dynamics in who participates and why. We discuss what these practices looked like on the ground—what Muharram in Sayyida Zaynab felt like, how different communities understood and debated these rituals, and what purposes they served for those who participated in them. We talk about the Zaynabiyya seminary and how changes in its physical and institutional structure reshaped how knowledge was taught and who held authority. We also discuss relationships with saints, spiritual healers like Shaykh Abu Ahmad, and the ways that media, music, and ritual performance mediate piety. Szanto also treats us to reflecting on some of her experiences observing and engaging with these rituals.

This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Islamic studies generally, Shi‘i studies, Middle Eastern religious life, or the ways that communities navigate devotion, trauma, and healing through ritual.

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Lucy Stewart, "The Japanese Garden: Ella Christie and Cowden" (Birlinn, 2026)

Thu, 07 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

As detailed in The Japanese Garden: Ella Christie and Cowden (Birlinn, 2026) by Lucy Stewart, at the turn of the twentieth century, Scottish adventurer Ella Christie returned home from a trip to Japan inspired to build her own Japanese garden.

As might be expected from a woman who thought nothing of travelling to the other side of the world in search of the unusual, Ella’s approach to developing the garden was trailblazing. She chose a female designer – the gifted Taki Handa – to create the seven-acre site in the grounds of Cowden Castle, near the Scottish town of Dollar. In doing so, the Japanese Garden at Cowden became the first and only garden of its size and scale to be designed by a woman. It remains a unique and utterly authentic bridge between British and Japanese culture. This book tells the remarkable story of Ella Christie, her travels and the creation of her garden, its gradual decline and triumphant restoration.

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Place Presents Itself To You in Fragments: Ivan Vladislavić and Jeanne-Marie Jackson (MAT)

Thu, 07 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How to write about place is a question that cuts across the career of the South African Ivan Vladislavić. The questions of place and space are pressing ones in the context of South Africa, where the transition to democracy in 1994 included a redrawing of the national map, and the last three decades have seen the large-scale transformation of urban centers such as Johannesburg. What defines Johannesburg a literary city? asks the critic Jeanne-Marie Jackson. From this unfurls a series of reflections about the writer’s relationship to place and the various ways in which narrative form can be bent to capture the experience of place—and in particular the experience of a place as it changes across time. The resulting work may feel fragmentary, Ivan allows, but that is a function of the nature of place rather than an imposition on the part of the writer. Finally, the conversation turns toward Ivan’s choice to study Afrikaans literature in the 1970s. As a tradition often at odds with Afrikaner politics and urgently concerned with the world Ivan himself inhabited, reading the work of Afrikaans writers such as Ingrid Winterbach, Entienne Leroux, André Brink, and Breyten Breytenbach offered a vital counterpoint to Ivan’s training in the English canon. Ivan closes by fondly remembering the teacher who introduced him to the writer’s notebook, a habit that continues to be crucial to his practice today.

Mentioned in this episode:

The Folly
Double Negative
The Near North
Zoë Wicomb, You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town
Georges Pérec
Gauteng
John Miles, Ampie Coetzee, Ernst Lindenberg, and Taurus Publishers
Marlene van Niekerk
Nadine Gordimer
The Goon Show

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Fighting for a Foothold: How Government and Markets Undermine Black Middle-Class Suburbia

Thu, 07 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Prince George’s County, Maryland, is a suburban jurisdiction in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and is home to the highest concentration of Black middle-class residents in the United States. As such, it is well positioned to overcome white domination and anti-Black racism and their social and economic consequences. Yet Prince George’s does not raise tax revenue sufficient to provide consistent high-quality public goods and services. In Fighting for a Foothold: How Government and Markets Undermine Black Middle-Class Suburbia (Russell Sage Foundation, 2026) sociologist Angela Simms examines the factors contributing to Prince George’s financial troubles.

Dr. Simms draws on two years of observations of Prince George’s County’s budget and policy development processes, interviews with nearly 60 Prince George’s leaders and residents, and budget and policy analysis for Prince George’s County and its two Whiter, wealthier neighbors, Montgomery County, Maryland, and Fairfax County, Virginia. She argues legacy and ongoing government policies and business practices—such as federal mortgage insurance policy prior to 1968, local government reliance on property taxes, and private investment patterns—have resulted in disparities in wealth accumulation between Black and white Americans, not only for individuals and families but local jurisdictions as well. Fighting for a Foothold is an in-depth analysis of the fiscal challenges experienced by Prince George’s County and by the suburban Black middle-class and majority-Black jurisdictions, more broadly. The book reveals how race, class, and local jurisdiction boundaries in metropolitan areas interact to create different material living conditions for Americans.

Our guest is: Dr. Angela Simms, who is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of Fighting for a Foothold.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a writing coach and developmental editor for academics. She is the creator and producer of the Academic Life podcast.

Listeners may enjoy this playlist:

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Nithin Sridhar, "Chatuh Shloki Manusmriti: An English Commentary" (Vitasta, 2025)

Thu, 07 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Manusmriti occupies a prominent place in Indian textual tradition as one of the authentic sources of dharma. However, contemporary engagement with the text has been wrought with prejudice and discomfort left in the wake of colonialism. Chatuh Shloki Manusmriti: An English Commentary (Vitasta, 2025) aims to address the gap in contemporary approach and facilitate a better understanding through a philosophical analysis of the first four verses of Manusmriti, shedding light on the object, purpose and relevance of dharma texts. Rather than reducing Manusmriti to a mere relic of the past through a historical study, the book locates the text within the larger Hindu epistemological, ontological, and theological worldview and extracts the eternal teachings embedded within it. The book addresses common misconceptions on topics such as the definition of dharma, the integrity and importance of Manusmriti, the notion of ritual competency, and the Hindu conception of varna.

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Julia Stephens, "Worldly Afterlives: Tracing Family Trails Between India and Empire" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Thu, 07 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The British Empire covered much of the world during the 19th century–and each time someone moved through it, they left a paper trail in their wake. Julia Stephens, the author of Worldly Afterlives: Tracing Family Trails Between India and Empire (Princeton UP, 2025), uses that archive of documents to try to piece together the stories of Indian migrants that traveled the empire throughout their lives–and, in some cases, after their lives were over.

Julia joins us today to talk about her book and her attempt to find a different approach to studying these histories: Figures like Kuala Lumpur magnate Thamboosamy Pillai, Zanzibar–Bombay matriarch Jambai, and the elusive sailor John Muhammad.

Julia Stephens is associate professor of history at Rutgers University. She is also the author of Governing Islam: Law, Empire, and Secularism in South Asia (Cambridge University Press: 2018)

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. You can read its review of Worldly Afterlives here. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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What Waltham Does When the Water Rises: Rachel McKane and Danielle Jacques (JP)

Thu, 07 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Permafrost melts, desert cities boil, inland lakes dry up; but Waltham too in its own way has become one of the dark places of the earth. Adverse manmade climate change is seeping into basements everywhere, and a wonderful new research project, “Building Collective Resilience via Collective Memory” (that website launches very soon) counts some of the ways.

John is joined by two Brandeis colleagues who spearheaded the project and supplied some of the local interviews that bring climate change dynamics vividly to life. Danielle Jacques is at work on a dissertation exploring the social and spatial dynamics of the renewable energy transition. Rachel McKane is Assistant Professor of Sociology with interests in community-based approaches to environmental justice through networks of solidarity and mutual aid, and articles in such journals as Environmental Research Letters, Environmental Justice, Environmental Sociology, and Local Environment. We also hear from Mark and from Colleen (about peaches!) in this episode.

Mentioned in the episode

Follow the project's growth at Building Collective Resilience via Collective Memory. Or read about its origins in a local newspaper story here.

John Dittmer, Local People

Victorian neighborhood class proximity maps of London include the famous Booth "poverty maps."

Yuki Kato, Gardens of Hope.

Read the episode here.

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Mary Lucia, " What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

Thu, 07 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To (U Minnesota Press, 2025) an iconic rock DJ of the Twin Cities tells her harrowing story of being stalked while living her very public life What's it like to be in the public spotlight when it just might get you killed? For Mary Lucia, becoming a wildly popular rock DJ meant connecting with a multitude of fans through a shared love of music and deep cuts. But for one listener, that connection became a dangerous obsession, catapulting Lucia into the terrifying three-year nightmare that she chronicles in this raw, wry, and profoundly courageous memoir. With electrifying wit and anger, Lucia shares her experience of navigating constant terror while life absurdly goes on: interview rock stars, curate a radio show song list, judge high school battles of the band, kick a drug addiction cold turkey . . . all while fearing what might be waiting in her mailbox or who might be waiting on her front step or at her back door. Lucia was no stranger to inappropriate or weird contact from fans, but things turned sinister when ten pounds of raw meat were delivered to her at work, followed by a steady stream of ominous letters, cards, packages, and messages. When the letters included threats to her dogs' safety, she tried to get help, but without a name and return address on these communications there was nothing she could do. As the stalker's actions escalated, Lucia felt more and more isolated. Police responding to her 911 calls were insensitive and dismissive, and even her friends implied that being stalked was just a hazard of her high-profile job and her high-energy personality. No one seemed to take seriously the danger she faced. Inseparable from this ordeal is the story of how Mary Lucia became the notorious radio malcontent known by so many avid listeners. From the good, bad, and weird of growing up in her eccentric family to drugs, death, and dogs, Lucia finally shares her life on her own terms in What Doesn't Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To. Applying her signature dark humor to her own traumatic experiences, Lucia's memoir is idiosyncratic, bold, and--ironically--relatable

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Peter Darbyshire, "The Wonder Lands War" (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025)

Thu, 07 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery interviews Peter Darbyshire about the fourth book in his Cross series, The Wonder Lands War (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025).

The Book of Cross 4

I would take the whole world apart to find her.

The immortal Cross is back in a wild new adventure – a desperate hunt to find the enigmatic Alice from the Wonderland tales. Alice has helped Cross save the world countless times over since she stepped out of the pages of her book, but now she is the one that needs rescue after vanishing during an apocalyptic battle. Aided by the faerie queen Morgana and her court, Cross journeys to mystical islands populated with murderous immortals and into famous libraries with powerful librarians and magical texts until they reach the chaotic and terrifying Wonder Lands, the dangerous inspiration for the original Alice tales. But they are not the only ones looking for Alice – a rogue group of angels are also hunting her for mysterious reasons of their own. The very fate of the world may rest upon who finds Alice first.

Peter Darbyshire is the author of six books and more stories than he can remember. He lives near Vancouver, British Columbia, where he spends his time writing, raising children and playing D&D with other writers. It’s a good life.

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Max Morris, "Not Sex Work: Queer Intimacy, Post-identity, and Incidental Encounters in the Digital Era" (Routledge, 2025)

Wed, 06 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Max Morris's Not Sex Work: Queer Intimacy, Post-identity, and Incidental Encounters in the Digital Era (Routledge, 2025) brings together feminist theory, media studies, and queer research methodologies to offer new, compelling insight the relationships between money, digital platforms, and sex.

Through longstanding engagement with gay, queer, and bisexual men who do not describe themselves as sex workers and who exchange sex or sexual services for money through digital platforms, Morris highlights how ‘incidental sex work’ problematizes commonly-held assumptions of both work and intimacy. By starting from the position of unsettling what sex work might be, Morris holds space for ambivalences about labour, risk, and sex itself—destabilizing binaries found within both research and policy work.

Not Sex Work's attention to how economics and intimacy shapes identity offers important analyses of not only what we might understand sex work to be, but also how digital platforms shape and reshape understandings of gender and sexuality.

Max Morris is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Sociology at Oxford Brookes University. Using creative and feminist methodologies, their research focuses on gender, sexuality, HIV, digital platforms, and sex work.

Rine Vieth is an FRQ Postdoctoral Fellow at Université Laval. They are currently studying how anti-gender mobilization shapes migration policy, particularly in regards to asylum determinations in the UK and Canada.

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Sara Maurer, "A Good Animal" (St. Martin's Press, 2026)

Wed, 06 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Sara Maurer's debut, A Good Animal (St. Martin's Press, 2026). Staying is his dream. Leaving is hers. One secret threatens them both. In the farm country outside Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan—a border town where life moves slow and dreams run fast—most kids want out. Not Everett Lindt. He’s set on staying put, rebuilding his family’s sheep farm, and carving a future from the land he loves. Then he meets Mary, a new girl in town with restless energy and bigger plans. When their relationship reaches a crossroads, Everett sees a life together. Mary, however, is desperate to find a way out. Together, they make an impulsive choice—one that could change everything. Tense, lyrical, and deeply felt, Sara Maurer's unforgettable debut breathtakingly captures the ache of first love, the beauty and brutality of rural life, and how one decision can echo through generations and shape who we become.

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Frontier Films for America250: On the Western Genre and Beyond with Matthew J. Franck

Wed, 06 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Here in Episode 7 of Season 5, I interview Dr. Matthew J. Franck. A senior contributing fellow at Public Discourse, a visiting lecturer in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, as well as a senior fellow at the Witherspoon Institute and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Radford University, he has written, edited, and contributed to many books, including Against the Imperial Judiciary (1996).

Drawing on his Public Discourse column, “The Bookshelf,” which often veers into film history and criticism, we discuss American frontier films broadly construed in light of our country’s 250th anniversary and the successful Artemis II rocket mission. Using Frederick Jackson Turner’s essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (1893), we look at why the western is the most prolific genre in film history and how it offers viewers a vicarious lens into its pioneer heroic ethos, from literary works like those of James Fenimore Cooper and Mark Twain, to cinema, whether the westerns of John Ford or science and space exploration movies today. Although the western frontier may have closed, Americans still keep making new ones.

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Yiddish: Biography of a Language

Wed, 06 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Jeffrey Shandler’s new book, Yiddish: Biography of a Language (Oxford UP, 2020), presents the story of Yiddish, the defining vernacular of Ashkenazi Jews, from its origins to the present. Shandler relates the multifaceted history of Yiddish in the form of a biographical profile. Through a series of thematic chapters—from “Name” and “Date and Place of Birth” to “Religion” and “Life Expectancy”—he offers surprising insights into the dynamic interrelation of the language, its speakers, and their culture and explores the varied symbolic investments that Yiddish speakers and others have made in the language. Join us for a conversation celebrating this new book with Jeffrey Shandler, Anita Norich, and Ayala Fader, moderated by YIVO's Academic Advisor and Director of Exhibitions Eddy Portnoy.

Buy the book

This book talk originally took place on February 17, 2021.

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Kim Haines-Eitzen, "The Gospel of John: A Biography" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Wed, 06 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The contentious life and times of the most widely cited book of the New Testament. Written some two thousand years ago, the Gospel of John is the only Christian Gospel to place Jesus at the creation of the world, and the only one where we find the stories of the raising of Lazarus, the woman taken in adultery, and the changing of water into wine at the wedding in Cana. The Gospel of John also points an accusing finger at Jesus’s Jewish opponents and has been used by medieval crusaders, Protestant reformers, and white supremacists to legitimize antisemitic violence. In The Gospel of John: A Biography (Princeton UP, 2026) Kim Haines-Eitzen traces the legacy of this complex, beautiful, and at times deeply troubling work, from its composition in the late first century to its enduring power today. Haines-Eitzen sheds light on the book’s reception by early Christian gnostic and patristic commentators, its use in the Crusades and Reformation, its revered status among American evangelicals, and the many ways it has inspired novels, films, music, and art. The earliest papyrus fragment of an identifiably Christian Gospel is a fragment of John, and John is the only canonical Gospel that depicts Jesus as a savior who teaches openly about his divinity. Haines-Eitzen shows how John simultaneously carries a message of inclusion and intolerance, and how its story teaches us about the nature and enormous influence of scriptural religions. Compelling and provocative, The Gospel of John reveals how this dynamic, malleable biblical work has both unified and divided Christians over centuries of translation, interpretation, and creative reimagining.

Kim Haines-Eitzen (Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1997) is a Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Religions with a specialty in Early Christianity, Early Judaism, and Religion in Late Antiquity in the Department of Near Eastern Studies. Her most recent book is Sonorous Desert: What Deep Listening Taught Early Christian Monks and What It Can Teach Us (Princeton University Press, 2022), a project that traces how desert sounds shaped early Christian monasticism and includes field recordings she has made in desert environments. She is the author of Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature (Oxford University Press, 2000), a social history of the scribes who copied Christian texts during the second and third centuries; and The Gendered Palimpsest: Women, Writing, and Representation in Early Christianity, which deals with the intersection of gender and text transmission (Oxford University Press, 2012). She is a member of the programs in Religious Studies, Jewish Studies, Medieval Studies, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Cornell. For the 2024-25 academic year, she is a Fellow at the National Humanities Center where she is working on a new project, tentatively entitled Earth, Wind, and Fire: A Field Guide to the Apocalypse. To learn more about her recent work and her media appearances, visit her website: http://kimhaineseitzen.wordpress.com

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Odd Arne Westad, "The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History" (Henry Holt and Co, 2026)

Wed, 06 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

From a renowned Yale historian comes a chilling look at the looming threat of the next Great Power war and the urgent interventions necessary to avoid it in the twenty-first century.
The vast majority of people alive today have come of age in a world of remarkable stability, presided over by either one or two Superpowers. This is not to say the world has been peaceful; but it has, to a great extent, been predictable. As an increasing number of Great Powers jostle for regional supremacy, as well as competitive advantage in nuclear technology, artificial intelligence, space exploration, and trade, our world has become more fragile, unpredictable—and combustible. The outbreak of global war among today’s Great Powers seems increasingly likely. Such war, as Odd Arne Westad powerfully argues in this urgent book The Coming Storm: Power, Conflict, and Warnings from History (Henry Holt and Co, 2026), would be of a magnitude and devastation never before seen.
To understand the threats that face us in this complex new terrain, we must look to the lessons of the past, and especially the late nineteenth and early twentieth century—a time when Great Powers clashed and sought regional dominance, nationalism and populism were on the rise, and many felt that globalization had failed them; a time when tariffs increased, immigration and terrorism were among the biggest issues of the day, and a growing number of people blamed the citizens of other countries for their problems. A time, in other words, that carries eerie parallels with our own.

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Carmen Lansdowne, "Wearing a Broken Indigene Heart on the Sleeve of Christian Mission" (CMU Press, 2025)

Wed, 06 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In my conversation with Rev. Dr Carmen Lansdowne about her book Wearing a Broken Indigene Heart on the Sleeve of Christian Mission (CMU Press, 2025), she emphasised the priority of truth-telling over comfort. Her work does not offer a polished narrative of reconciliation or a toolkit for “better mission.” Instead, it confronts Christian mission with its unresolved colonial entanglements and asks whether the church is willing to pursue justice rather than seek emotional closure.

Carmen’s language of a “broken heart” names the cost of remaining Christian while being Indigenous within institutions that continue to benefit from colonial structures. In our interview, she spoke candidly about vulnerability as a theological practice, not as confession for its own sake but as witness.

The book also challenges dominant ways of knowing. As Carmen explains, Indigenous epistemologies reveal how Western theology has privileged abstraction and certainty at the expense of relational responsibility and right action. For anyone engaged in theology, ministry, or scholarship, especially in North American, European, or settler contexts, this is a deeply unsettling yet necessary challenge.

During our conversation, Carmen also highlighted helpful resources and ongoing reflections available on her website, which readers and listeners may find valuable. You can explore them here.

She also writes regularly on Substack, where you can follow or subscribe to keep engaging with her thoughts beyond the book.

Wearing a Broken Indigene Heart on the Sleeve of Christian Mission poses a difficult but important question: What kind of church emerges when justice matters more than innocence? It is a question worth sitting with, uncomfortably and honestly.

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J. Michael Cole, "The Taiwan Tinderbox: The Island-Nation at the Centre of the New Cold War" (Polity, 2025)

Wed, 06 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

J. Michael Cole is a Taipei-based security analyst and writer who has spent over two decades documenting Taiwan’s political and security landscape. A former analyst with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), he is a Research Fellow and Executive Editor with the Prospect Foundation in Taiwan, and advises various private and governmental actors. He is also a Senior Non-Resident Fellow with the Global Taiwan Institute in Washington, D.C., the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, and the University of Nottingham’s Taiwan Hub.

In this episode of the New Books Network, we chat with Cole about his latest book, The Taiwan Tinderbox: The Island-Nation at the Centre of the New Cold War (Polity, 2025).

Starting with the Sunflower Student Movement and rise of Xi Jinping, the book explores why the Taiwan Strait has become such a “tinderbox”, and surveys various tactics that the People’s Republic of China has used to destabilize Taiwan. With the Ukraine War’s shadow looming, Cole also examines the prospects of conflict between Taiwan and China, and discusses various means through which Taiwan and its liberal democratic allies can build resilience and interconnection.

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Angela Dimitrakaki, "Feminism. Art. Capitalism" (Pluto Press, 2026)

Wed, 06 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Can art change the contemporary world? In Feminism, Art, Capitalism Angela Dimitrakaki, a Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the university of Edinburgh, offers a Marxist Feminist perspective on a variety of issues in both society and the cultural sector. Engaging with a huge range of examples, as well as theorising key issues such as work and labour, the long modern, communing practices and technology, the book offers a global perspective on the contradictions that feminism faces under capitalist culture. A rich examination of the book will be of interest across the humanities, as well as for anyone interested in the importance of art today.

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Ana I. Oancea, "Dangerous Creations: The Inventor Novel in Fin-de-siècle France" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

Wed, 06 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Dangerous Creations: The Inventor Novel in Fin-de-siècle France (U Toronto Press, 2025) presents a master narrative of the inventor in fin-de-siècle French literature by analyzing the works of Jules Verne, Albert Robida, Émile Zola, and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. Their writings challenge the role of science in shaping French national identity and aim to transform contemporary understandings of science and technology. The book reveals how Verne, Robida, Zola, and de l’Isle-Adam reimagine the figure of the inventor, reshaping the literary standards of their time. Universally male in these narratives, the inventor serves as a flawed exemplar of national heroism during the Age of Empire – a period marked by significant external threats and internal strife – while also embodying unrestrained creativity. Ultimately, the inventor novel reflects broader French anxieties surrounding scientific progress, empire, and gender. Ana Oancea explores the transmedia and transnational legacy of the fin-de-siècle inventor novel through vignettes that highlight similarly themed narratives in contemporary popular culture. These sections engage with films, television series, graphic narratives, and video games that reinterpret key aspects of the inventor narrative, shedding light on its power structures, racial and gender politics, and colonial aspirations.

Guest Ana Oancea is Associate Professor of French at the University of Delaware. Her research interests include the intersections of science and literature, adaptation studies, and visual culture. She has recently published articles in Forum for Modern Language Studies, Science Fiction Film and Television, and French Screen Studies.

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James Cahill, "The Violet Hour" (Pegasus Books, 2026)

Tue, 05 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A wealthy, old art collector always wants more, a successful gallery owner finds herself alone, and a famous painter at the top of his game might have been involved with the mysterious death of an art gallery employee. The world of buying and selling art is portrayed as hazy and ridiculous, but the astronomical numbers are serious. While some of the characters are a bit unlikable, everyone has a story and perceptions about who they are and what they need to be happy. The Violet Hour (Pegasus Books, 2026) is a well-written novel about the business of art, the power of wealth, and the transitional aspect of relationships.

JAMES CAHILL was born and grew up in London. He has worked in the art world and academia for the past fifteen years, having originally studied Classics and English at Magdalen College, Oxford, followed by a master’s degree in contemporary art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. In 2018, he was awarded a PhD in Classics at the University of Cambridge. His debut novel, Tiepolo Blue (2022) was shortlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award and selected for H.M. The Queen’s Reading Room. To quote Her Majesty Queen Camilla: “Surprising, unsettling and gracefully told; ‘Tiepolo Blue’ is a story about art and academia, which reads like a thriller.” He writes for publications including Artforum, the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement and the Spectator. Cahill has curated several exhibitions spanning contemporary art and classical antiquity. He divides his time between London and Los Angeles.

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Antony Valentini, "Beyond the Quantum: A Quest for the Origin and Hidden Meaning of Quantum Mechanics" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Tue, 05 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Based on decades of research, Beyond the Quantum: A Quest for the Origin and Hidden Meaning of Quantum Mechanics (Oxford UP, 2026) offers a panoramic rethink of quantum physics, with potentially revolutionary implications for cosmology, quantum gravity, and quantum technology.

Properly understood, 'pilot-wave theory' provides a deeper foundation for quantum mechanics, while also going beyond it. First proposed in the 1920s by French aristocrat and physicist Louis de Broglie, and revived in the 1950s by American physicist David Bohm, the theory posits hidden particle motions we cannot currently see or control. The theory is usually regarded as merely an alternative account of the same physics we already know. In fact, pilot-wave theory implies a wealth of new and radical physics beyond the reach of quantum mechanics.

Pilot-wave theory tells us that quantum physics is a special case of something broader and deeper. In more general 'nonequilibrium' conditions, Einstein's relativity and Heisenberg's uncertainty break down. Superluminal signalling becomes possible, and quantum particles can be clearly seen and controlled. This new physics could have left traces in the early universe, and it might be visible today in radiation from exploding primordial black holes. Harnessing this new physics would have transformative technological implications, in particular for communication, cryptography, and computing.

Drawing intriguing parallels between the present era of quantum physics and past episodes of scientific confusion, this book tells the story of how pilot-wave theory was discovered and abandoned, revived and reconstructed, and how today it can pave the way to a new and radical physics beyond the quantum.

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Christopher Cusack et al. eds., "The Corpse in Modern Irish Literature" (Liverpool UP, 2026)

Tue, 05 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

From the bodies rotting by the wayside in Famine fiction, Synge's sodden corpses and Joyce's dead, to Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill's talking corpses and the unburied and dissected remains of Celtic Tiger fiction, the figure of the corpse is ubiquitous in Irish writing. This collection examines the Irish corpse as a conceptually rich centrepoint with multiple differently signifying implications across this historical period as expressed in different social, political and creative contexts.

Taking Irish literature's obsession with death as its starting point, The Corpse in Modern Irish Literature (Liverpool UP, 2026) demonstrates the wide-ranging implications of this fixation, extending it through the contexts of the tragedies of the Irish past and the emergence of new identities in the wake of colonial modernity. In their range of authors and genres from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, the chapters bring into focus patterns of change and continuity and extend current understanding of the Gothic mode, the national tale, the Irish modernist novel, Irish-language poetry, the elegiac mode, comic and tragic revivalist writings and the generic complexity of autofiction and contemporary fiction. In so doing, The Corpse in Modern Irish Literature makes a significant intervention in Irish studies, Gothic studies, death studies and medical and health humanities.

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María Dolores Águila, "A Sea of Lemon Trees: The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez" (Roaring Brook Press, 2025)

Tue, 05 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In my very special interview with children's author María Dolores Águila we discuss her multi-award winning new middle grade book, A Sea of Lemon Trees: The Corrido of Roberto Alvarez (Roaring Brook Press), published a few months back. We talk about her childhood, her journey to traditional publishing (finding her agent, Lindsay Auld, through the slush pile, no less), her dualness (at once Mexican and American) and her advice for up and coming authors. Maria has also published two popular picture books, with a third on the way next year. I'm already planning our next interview!

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What Does the American Presidency Mean?

Tue, 05 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Coming in the thick of the second Trump term, What Does the American Presidency Mean? The Need for Interpretation in Presidency Studies is a timely and provocative new title for the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods. In it, Richard Holtzman sets an agenda for interpretivist presidency research. Using Tulis’s The Rhetorical Presidency as a bridge between presidency studies and interpretive political science, the book succinctly outlines how by interpreting presidential words and symbols our understanding of the presidency is enriched, and causal-inferential studies of presidential behaviour, complemented. Though the book directly addresses researchers of the American presidency, as we discuss in this episode of New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science, it holds lessons for researchers of executive power everywhere.

Presidency studies your thing? Other episodes on the New Books Network that might interest you include Coe and Scacco on The Ubiquitous Presidency, and Hennessey and Wittes talking about their Unmaking the Presidency.

Looking for something to read? To start the day Rich suggests Thich Nhat Han’s Peace is Every Step, and perhaps to conclude it, Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut.

This interview summary was not synthesised by a machine. Unlike the makers and owners of those machines, the author accepts responsibility for its contents.

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Aya Elyada, "A Lingering Legacy: The Afterlife of Yiddish in German-Jewish Culture, 1818–1938" (Stanford UP, 2026)

Tue, 05 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Aya Elyada is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on German and German-Jewish cultural history, Yiddish-German encounters, and the social history of language and translation. She is the author of A Lingering Legacy: The Afterlife of Yiddish in German-Jewish Culture (SUP 2026) and A Goy Who Speaks Yiddish: Christians and the Jewish Language in Early Modern Germany (SUP 2012), and co-editor of German-Jewish Studies: Next Generations (Berghahn 2023). She is currently working on a DFG-funded project (in collaboration with Prof. Astrid Lembke) on Old Yiddish adaptations of German literary texts, 1400–1800.

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Jeremy Harding's Analogue Africa: Notes on the Anti-Colonial Imagination

Tue, 05 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Jeremy Harding has long been one of the premier essayists and journalists of our day. Elegant, committed and free of cant, Harding's writing has often appeared in the London Review of Books, from which a number of these essays were drawn. Harding explores the intersection of politics and culture on the African continent, and unearths stories that explain the dialectical relations between the two spheres during the colonial and post-colonial moments. Never heavy-handed, Harding's mode is the exploratory, and one comes away from his nuanced narratives edified. Discussed in the podcast are several of Harding's pieces, including the complicated and unanticipated journey of Kamel Daoud in his rewriting of Camus's The Stranger, and Camus's own ambivalent legacy around colonial rule.

Read the transcript here.

Leonard Benardo is a vice president for the Open Society Foundations.

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Lerone Martin, "Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King Jr." (Amistad, 2026)

Tue, 05 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

We know who Martin Luther King Jr. became, but who was he at the beginning of his life? How did his youth inform his outlook and activism?

Before Martin Luther King, Jr. was a civil rights leader, a Nobel Laureate, and a global hero, he was an emotional boy, a middling high school student devoted to fashion, dancing, and dating. Lerone A. Martin, Faculty Director of the Martin Luther King Institute at Stanford University, traces these roots to develop a fuller understanding of the influential preacher’s emotional life, his youthful confusion about his future and career direction, his teenage missteps, and his inspiration to fight for justice.

Revelatory, humanizing, and compassionate, Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King Jr. (Amistad, 2026) unearths MLK’s days as “Little Mike,” the ever-eager middle child and a precocious prankster; his early experiences of segregation and the summers he spent on a Connecticut tobacco farm, his first trip outside the Jim Crow South; his transformative time at Morehouse, playing basketball, hosting parties, studying sociology, and joining the Ministers’ Union; and his winding path to seminary, his spiritual devotion, and his relationship with Coretta, his wife-to-be.

As America undergoes another era of turmoil and change, this powerful biography—and this discussion—provides a vital roadmap for how greatness comes to light, and how history shapes a leader.

You can find Lerone Martin, and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute on Facebook and Instagram.

Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.

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William Stell, "Born Again Queer: A History of Evangelical Gay Activism and the Making of Antigay Christianity" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Tue, 05 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Evangelicals claim that their opposition to homosexuality is an inherent feature of their faith, rooted in their unchanging beliefs about the Bible. Most scholars, journalists, and observers have accepted this account; in Born Again Queer: A History of Evangelical Gay Activism and the Making of Antigay Christianity (Princeton UP, 2026) William Stell upends it. Arguing that the antigay majority in evangelicalism has been less dominant and more vulnerable than previously thought, Stell describes a network of authors, ministers, and professors—all veterans of major evangelical institutions—who worked in the 1970s and 1980s to persuade Christians that their churches should affirm the relationships and ministries of gay and lesbian members. By the late 1970s, some even thought that these activists might shape the future of evangelicalism.
Of course, that speculation proved mistaken, and the antigay evangelical majority eventually overpowered the gay-affirming minority. Stell’s history of the rise and fall of evangelical gay activism shines a light on this largely forgotten chapter in American evangelicalism. Drawing on extensive archival research and interviews, Stell documents the work of four prominent activists: the founder of a predominantly LGBTQ+ denomination called the Metropolitan Community Churches, the leader of a gay advocacy organization called Evangelicals Concerned, and the evangelical feminist coauthors of the influential book Is the Homosexual My Neighbor? By recovering the successes of evangelical gay activists and the struggles of their opponents, Stell’s account transforms how we think about evangelicalism, how we talk about the culture wars, and how we approach both religion in queer movements and queer activism in religious movements.

William Stell teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at New York University.

This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com

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Bilingual Writers and Corpus Analysis

Tue, 05 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Ingrid Piller speaks with Professor David Palfreyman (United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain) about his 2023 book Bilingual writers and corpus analysis.

Palfreyman, D. M., & Habash, N. (2023). Bilingual writers and corpus analysis. Routledge. Link here

Bilingual writers and corpus analysis is one of the first to represent the usage of bilingual writers in both their languages, offering insight into language corpora as extremely valuable tools in contemporary applied linguistics research, and in turn, into how much of the world’s population operate daily.

This book discusses one of the first examples of a bilingual writer corpus, the Zayed Arabic-English Bilingual Undergraduate Corpus (ZAEBUC), which includes writing by hundreds of students in two languages, with additional information about the writers and the texts. The result is a rich resource for research in multilingual use and learning of language. The book takes the reader through the design and use of such a corpus and illustrates the potential of this type of corpus with detailed studies that show how assessment, vocabulary, and discourse work across two very different languages.

This volume will be of interest to scholars, policymakers, and educators in bilingualism, plurilingualism, language education, corpus design, and natural language processing.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

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Sophie Rose, "Intimacy and Social (Dis)Order in Dutch Colonial Expansion: Regulating Sex, Marriage, and Family Life, 1600–1800" (Brill, 2025)

Mon, 04 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Explosive sexual scandals, bitter domestic conflicts, and dramatic changes in fortune. Sex, marriage, and family life were matters of enormous consequence in the highly complex societies that formed across the early modern Dutch overseas empire. This was not only true for the colonial authorities that administered settlements on behalf of the Dutch East and West India Companies (VOC and WIC), but also for the people of various backgrounds and statuses that inhabited these places. Focusing primarily on the eighteenth century, this book explores how these disparate and unequally empowered groups contested the norms that governed intimate life in Dutch colonial outposts from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic.

Sophie Rose, Ph.D. (2023), is a post-doctoral researcher at Leiden University.

This interview is conducted by Dr Lewis Wade, a Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Bamberg. He is the author of the prize-winning Privilege, Economy and State in Old Regime France and can be found on Bluesky @wadehistory.bsky.social.

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James Q. Whitman, "Masters of Slaves to Lords of Lands: The Transformation of Ownership in the Western World" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Mon, 04 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Today we think of land as the paradigmatic example of property, while in the past, the paradigmatic example was often a slave. In this seminal work, James Q. Whitman asserts that there is no natural form of ownership. Whitman dives deep into the long Western history of this transformation in the legal imagination – the transformation from the ownership of humans and other living creatures to the ownership of land. This change extended over many centuries, coming to fruition only on the threshold of the modern era. It brought with it profound changes, not only in the way we understand ownership but also in the way we understand the state. Its most dramatic consequence arrived in the nineteenth century, with the final disappearance of the lawful private ownership of humans, which had been taken for granted for thousands of years.

James Q. Whitman is the Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School. He earned his B.A. and J.D. from Yale University and Law School and also holds an M.A. in European History from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Intellectual History from the University of Chicago.

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos

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Benjamin Y. Fong and Paul Prescod, "Rustin's Challenge" (2026)

Mon, 04 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

There was no more trenchant and substantive critic of the Left from the Left in the 1960s and 1970s than Bayard Rustin. Some liberals and leftists today valorize Rustin on the basis of his multiple oppressed identities and civil rights organizing. On the other hand, many others dismiss him for being compromised by his commitment to the Democratic Party or by his deep suspicion of the new forms of left activism that appeared in the mid-1960s.

While Rustin certainly made some strategic mis-steps later in life, his challenges to the New Left, Black Power, and a regressing liberal establishment from 1964 until his passing in 1987 were insightful, cutting, and often quite prescient. At a time when the Left is in dire need of self-reflection and reorientation, Rustin’s work has gained a new relevance and urgency.

In a new collection of Rustin's writings from this period, Fong and Prescod gathered together articles and speeches that represent Rustin's Challenge to the Left of his day. Some of the pieces of Rustin’s writing chosen for inclusion have been published before, but only in pamphlets or newspapers from many decades ago. Some will be published for the first time here.
The volume also includes commentaries on these pieces by Adolph Reed, Jr., Jennifer Silva, Les Leopold, Mark Dudzic, Jen Pan, John-Baptiste Oduor, and many others, all contextualizing Rustin's challenge and demonstrating its continuing applicability.

Matthis Frickhoeffer is a scholar of critical theory and French thought with a background in literature studies, linguistics and art theory. His work focuses on questions of form, semiotics, and intertextuality. He teaches at the University of Texas at Dallas.

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Alana Lentin, "The New Racial Regime: Recalibrations of White Supremacy" (Pluto Books, 2025)

Mon, 04 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The New Racial Regime begins by interrogating the backlash against critical race theory and explains how the so-called war on woke can be used against educators or to curtail struggles challenging settler colonialism. Alana Lentin grounds her analysis with an engagement of the ideas making up the Black radical tradition and explicates the work of Cedric Robinson in particular. She builds a historically situated analysis of ‘race’ as inherently unstable and explains that the racial regime requires constant recalibration to maintain hierarchies of dominance within global systems of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy.

Exposing the limitations of liberal anti-racism, Lentin’s analysis explores how racialism is embedded in social institutions and can inhibit a clear understanding of antisemitism, as well as anti-Indigenous and anti-Black racism. The New Racial Regime is an insightful and principled response to present-day struggles over culture, education, and politics.

Alana Lentin is a Professor of Cultural and Social Analysis at Western Sydney University.

Genevieve Ritchie is a lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Western Sydney University.

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The Religion Department: An Online Learning Platform with Andrew Mark Henry and Andrew Ali Aghapour

Mon, 04 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Religion Department is an online learning platform dedicated to the academic, nonsectarian study of religion, created by the team behind Religion for Breakfast — the YouTube channel with over a million subscribers. Co-founded by Dr. Andrew Mark Henry and Dr. Andrew Ali Aghapour, The Religion Department offers guest lectures, multi-week seminars, and guided reading courses taught by scholars of religion, all designed to make university-level religious studies accessible to anyone, anywhere. Inspired by creator-driven platforms like Dropout TV and Nebula, The Religion Department is built on a user-funded model that compensates scholars fairly for their teaching and expertise. Current offerings include a guided reading of Attar's twelfth-century Sufi masterpiece The Conference of the Birds with Dr. Patrick D'Silva, a 52-week course on key concepts in religious studies led by Dr. Henry, and many more upcoming programs. In this episode, we talk with the co-founders about how Religion for Breakfast grew into something bigger, what The Religion Department offers, and why they believe the academic study of religion deserves a home beyond the traditional university. Learn more and become a member at religiondepartment.com

Dr. Andrew Mark Henry is a scholar of late Roman religion who holds a PhD from Boston University. He is the creator and host of Religion for Breakfast, and the 2026 recipient of the American Academy of Religion's Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion.

Dr. Andrew Ali Aghapour is a scholar of religion and science who holds a PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is an award-winning comedian and storyteller, and has served as the Consulting Scholar of Religion and Science for the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

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The World According to Sound: Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett on Audio Art, Wonder, and Humanistic Reasoning

Mon, 04 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, and special guest host, Melanie Kiechle (Associate Professor of History, Virginia Tech), chat with radio producers Chris Hoff and and Sam Harnett about their sound production project, The World According to Sound. Hoff and Harnett came to Virginia Tech to put on their octophonic sound show, Ways of Knowing. We recorded this special livestream edition of Peoples & Things in Virginia Tech's Athenaeum, and the conversation includes thoughts and questions from a live audience that gathered there.

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Malcolm Sen, "Irish Anthropocene: Literature, Climate Change, Sovereignty" (Syracuse UP, 2026)

Mon, 04 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Irish Anthropocene, Malcolm Sen traces the ways in which contemporary Irish literature responds to climate breakdown. Drawing upon concepts of sovereignty, precarity, and disaster, Sen examines Irish literary works to reveal how they engage with the entangled relations between ecology, economy, and politics. Irish writers not only critique the association of greenness with Ireland and the corporatization of sustainability discourses, they also illuminate the acute challenges that the climate crisis poses to political, social, and cultural forms in addition to ecosystems.

The Irish canon has historically played a crucial role in Irish nationalism. But contemporary works are written at a time when questions of statehood and citizenship are yielding to the cross-border, multi-generational pressures of climate breakdown. Writing in the shadow of modernity's rhetorical and carbon emissions, contemporary authors are skeptical of business-as-usual sustainability jargon emanating from institutions. Instead, they focus on the local variations of the planetary-level threats dominating the discourse of the Anthropocene, placing the country in a webwork of ecological and geo-political relations.

Cleverly written and groundbreaking in scope, Sen's analyses shows that Ireland's postcolonial identity can be especially helpful to analyze the cultural footprint of the climate crisis.

Malcolm Sen is the director of the Environmental Humanities Specialization and an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the editor of A History of Irish Literature and the Environment and Race in Irish Literature and Culture.

Helen Penet is a lecturer in English and Irish Studies at Université de Lille (France).

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Nicholas Thompson, "The Running Ground: A Father, a Son, and the Simplest of Sports" (Random House, 2025)

Mon, 04 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, Nicholas Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, and University of Puerto Rico professors Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Maritza Stanchich, discuss something deceptively simple: putting one foot in front of the other—and how that act can reshape the way we perceive the world. Seizing an idea from Steve Prefontaine—that running can be an act of creation—this episode considers how running can extend beyond the physical and extend into memory, relationships, and inheritance. They discuss how running can be a way of thinking, a way of loving, and, at times, a way of understanding who we are.

The Running Ground: A Father, a Son, and the Simplest of Sports (Harper/Random House, 2025).

Nuevos Horizontes is the podcast of the Instituto Nuevos Horizontes at the Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez.

Quotes, organizations, books, athletes and scholars mentioned in this conversation:

Tony Ruiz, Central Park Track Club

“There’s a lot you can get from Tony Ruiz’s life that you can’t get through mine.” -Nicholas Thompson

“The dignity of enduring the complexity of my father.…she plays a major role in shaping me.” -Nicholas Thompson, about his mother

“It’s really hard when people are still alive to write these kinds of books. It takes a lot of courage on everyone’s part.” -Maritza Stanchich

“Only the disciplined ones in life are free.” -Eliud Kipchoge

Steve Prefontaine

W. Scott Thompson

Puerto Rican boycott of 1980 Olympic Games

Bobbi Gibb

Yaelis Carmona, University of Puerto Rico

Biomechanics

Falmouth Road Race

Paul Souza, Wheaton College

Souzapalooza, East Falmouth music festival

Phil (PJ) Alessi, North Attleboro

Bill Jennings, Brockton High School Track Coach

William McKay, Falmouth High School English Teacher

Mario Watts

Sergei Bubka

Matt Booth

Joe Gohring

Phillips Academy

Falmouth High School
Eric Gethers

Falmouth Road Race

Northfield Mount Hermon

Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism

Frank Shorter

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Siniša Malešević, "Nationalism as a Way of Life: The Rise and Transformation of Modern Subjectivities" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Mon, 04 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

While nationalism is a term that is often associated with instability, violence, extremism, terrorism, wars and even genocide, in fact most forms of nationalism are nonviolent.

Beyond politics, it is a set of discourses and practices that shape economic, social, legal, and cultural life all over the globe.

Siniša Malešević's Nationalism as a Way of Life: The Rise and Transformation of Modern Subjectivities (Cambridge University Press, 2025) explores the global rise and transformation of nationalism and analyses the organisational, ideological, and micro-interactional mechanisms that have made it the dominant way of life in the twenty-first century.

In a series of case studies across time and space, the book zooms in on three key forms of lived experience: how nationalism operates as a multi-faceted meta-ideology, how national categories have become organisationally embedded in everyday practices and why nationalism has become the dominant form of modern subjectivity.

The book is aimed at readers interested in understanding how nation-states and nationalisms have attained such influence in contemporary world.

Siniša Malešević is Professor of Comparative Historical Sociology at the University College, Dublin, and Senior Fellow at CNAM, Paris. He is the author of the award winning books Grounded Nationalisms (Cambridge, 2019) and Why Humans Fight (Cambridge, 2022). His work has been translated into fourteen languages.
Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar with research areas spanning Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, Military History, War Studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, and Russian and East European history. He is currently the Book Review Editor for Comparative Civilizations Review.

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Russell McCutcheon, "Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia, second edition" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Mon, 04 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

First published in 1997, Manufacturing Religion was a controversial book because it critiqued a widely adopted style of scholarship that presumes that religion is utterly unique, inexplicable, and therefore able only to be interpreted by privileged scholars. Claiming religion to be sui generis (or self-caused), this approach has undisclosed practical effects--institutional and geo-political--at a variety of sites, from the types of textbooks commonly used in introductory classes to the way that political events are often represented in the mass media. Russell McCutcheon documented the ubiquity of this approach and showed how harmful it was Updating its wide-ranging evidence and adding new chapters, this new edition demonstrates the impact of this critique while showing how little the field has generally moved in the past thirty years.

Russell T. McCutcheon earned his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto and is now an honorary life member of the International Association for the History of Religions. Beginning in 2001, he was the Department Chair at the University of Alabama, a role that he played for 18 years. His many publications on the history of the field and the practical effects of the category religion in liberal democracies, along with a number of resources created specifically for teachers and students, are widely used in the field today.

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Nicholas Tochka, "The Musical Lives of Charles Manson: The Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Invention of the Sixties" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Sun, 03 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Nicholas Tochka analyzes the role of rock music in the life of Charles Manson, the Family, and the August 1969 Tate-LaBianca killings, which also gives larger insight into Sixties counterculture.

Failed singer-songwriter. Devious cult leader. A rock Pied Piper. The product of a sick society. Just another dime-a-dozen singing hippy mystic. Did the guitar-playing guru personify the violence that the rock counterculture inflicted on America? Or did his music diagnose the dehumanizing effects of that society's broken institutions?

For over five decades, commentators have debated the meaning of Charles Manson and the Tate-LaBianca killings. Rock music links their narratives: from the acid drenched singalongs at the Spahn Movie Ranch, to a bizarre theology centered on Beatles songs, to his commune's alleged links with Hollywood's elite, to an album, LIE: The Love and Terror Cult (1970). In this first comprehensive examination of the Manson Family's music, Nicholas Tochka writes with, against, and alongside the many authors-true-crime hacks, gonzo journalists, conspiracy theorists, and rock critics alike-who have told and retold the story of "the Manson murders." Playing the truth games that these postwar Americans helped invent, The Musical Lives of Charles Manson: The Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Invention of the Sixties (Bloomsbury, 2026) presents a new take on the story of the commune-and on rock's role in fracturing the possibility of writing trustworthy histories after the Sixties.

"They are afraid of it, because it tells the truth," Manson once claimed, describing his music. Just what truths did the Manson Family's music-making tell?

Nicholas Tochka is Associate Professor of Music (Ethnomusicology) at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and the author of several books including Rocking In the Free World: Music and the Politics of Freedom in Postwar America and Audible States: Socialist Politics and Popular Music in Albania. His work examines the politics of music-making in the postwar world.

Nicholas on the University of Melbourne’s website.

Bradley Morgan is a media arts professional in Chicago and author of U2's The Joshua Tree: Planting Roots in Mythic America (Backbeat Books, 2021), Frank Zappa's America (LSU Press, 2025), and U2: Until the End of the World (Gemini Books, 2025). He manages partnerships on behalf of CHIRP Radio 107.1 FM and is the director of its music film festival.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, "Rambam Mishne Torah, Volume 1" (Koren Publishers, 2026)

Sun, 03 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Rambam, Maimonides, was one of the intellectual giants of world history. His greatest and most ambitious work was the Mishne Torah. And now the Steinsaltz Center together with Koren Publishers have produced a beautiful new edition with English translation and commentary by the late and esteemed Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz.

Tune in as we speak with Rav Meni Even-Israel about the Rambam.

Rabbi Meni Even-Israel serves as the Executive Director of the Steinsaltz Center, which oversees the teachings and publications of his father, Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz.

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Arely M. Zimmerman, "Contentious Citizenship: Salvadoran Activism and Belonging Across Borders" (U Arizona Press, 2026)

Sun, 03 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Contentious Citizenship: Salvadoran Activism and Belonging Across Borders (U Arizona Press, 2026) reshapes how we understand belonging, identity, and political participation in the context of migration. Drawing on decades of Salvadoran activism from the 1980s solidarity movement to the post–civil war era, Arely M. Zimmerman offers a powerful ethnographic account of how migrants challenge exclusionary state practices and redefine citizenship on their own terms using transnational networks and revolutionary politics that transcend borders.
Drawing on nearly fifty interviews with activists who fled El Salvador, Zimmerman traces how political refugees carried with them strategies of resistance and community organizing that shaped social justice movements in the United States. The book addresses the political turmoil and grassroots mobilizations in El Salvador, the sanctuary movement of the 1980s, contemporary activism, and the impact of women’s strategies and forms of resistance.
Essential reading for scholars and students of migration, Central American studies, and political movements, Contentious Citizenship is a bold intervention into contemporary debates on identity, legality, and resistance. Zimmerman’s work honors the ingenuity and resilience of Salvadoran activists and invites readers to consider what it means to belong.

This interview was conducted by Mary Reynolds, publicity manager for the University of Arizona Press. Her book, The Quake That Drained the Desert (forthcoming in 2026) investigates the 1887 borderlands earthquake that changed surface water and groundwater in Arizona and Sonora, Mexico.

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Roger Frie, "Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm, Fascism and the Holocaust" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Sun, 03 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Erich Fromm, the prominent twentieth-century public intellectual and psychoanalyst, was recognized for his courageous stand against fascism, racism, and human destructiveness. Until now, however, little has been known about the extent to which Fromm's personal experience of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust shaped his outlook and work.
In Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm, Fascism and the Holocaust (Oxford 2024), Roger Frie introduces for the first time the unpublished Holocaust correspondence in Fromm's family. The letters provide insight into Fromm's life as a German-Jewish refugee and help us to understand the effect of Nazi Germany's racial terror on Fromm and his German-Jewish family. In the aftermath of the genocide, Fromm returned again and again to the themes of responsibility, social justice, and human solidarity, yet without revealing his own experience. As this book powerfully shows, Fromm's social, political, and psychological writings take on new meaning in light of the traumas and tragedies that he and his family experienced.
The image of Fromm that emerges from this book enriches our understanding of what it means to be both a social critic and practicing psychologist. In light of the racial hatred and antisemitism we see today, Frie demonstrates that a politics of engagement and a psychology of well-being go hand in hand. Frie suggests that there is much to be learned from the urgency in Fromm's writings as we seek to respond to the social crises and the renewed threat of fascism in our present age.

Roger Frie is Professor of Psychoanalysis and Education at the University of Vienna in Austria, Affiliate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia, and Professor Emeritus at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He is also Faculty and Supervisor at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology, and the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and associate member of the Columbia University Seminar on Cultural Memory in New York.

He is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice as well as a trained historian and social philosopher and brings both of these perspectives to bear in his publications. He is author most recently Wounds of Silence: Legacies of Genocide and Racial Violence (Oxford 2026), Edge of Catastrophe: Erich Fromm, Fascism and the Holocaust (Oxford 2024) and Not in My Family: German Memory and Responsibility after the Holocaust (Oxford 2017). His most recent edited book is Culture, Politics and Race in the Making of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2022, with Pascal Sauvayre). He is additionally co-editor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis.

Your host for this episode, Ben Greenberg, PsyD is a psychoanalytic psychologist and founding director of both the Center for Dynamic Practice (CFDP) in Santa Fe, NM and Southwestern Alliance for Psychoanalytic Psychology (SWAPP). A disabled former symphony French hornist and musical pedagogue, Ben has published several scientific papers among other written media, and is currently working on several manuscripts.

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Alice Echols, "Black Power, White Heat: From Solidarity Politics to Radical Chic" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Sun, 03 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A rich history of cross-racial coalitions and alliances of the Sixties' freedom movement, acclaimed historian Alice Echols's Black Power, White Heat reshapes our understanding of the entire era.

One of the most divisive issues in recent progressive politics has been what role, if any, allies might legitimately play in other people's movements. Despite the significance of this debate, it has taken place in a historical vacuum.
In Black Power, White Heat: From Solidarity Politics to Radical Chic, (Oxford UP, 2026) the Sixties historian Alice Echols explores what happened some sixty years ago when whites and Blacks came together in the fight against racism. She tells this story by focusing on two Black-led organizations that bookend the Sixties: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Black Panther Party. In SNCC, whites were, in part, meant to generate a "white heat" so searing it would accelerate change. Results were mixed, and white activists formed new movements, from women's liberation to draft resistance.
By 1967, the Black Panther Party was advancing its own unique brand of "revolutionary nationalism," and seeking out white supporters. Partnering with whites brought the group visibility and resources, but it also put the Panthers at odds with other Black radicals, with unfortunate consequences.
Black Power, White Heat explains how solidarity lost credibility, and not just from within the movement. Here, the FBI played a key role, and so did the discourse of "radical chic," advanced most effectively by the journalist Tom Wolfe. Still, even as Black-white solidarity lost steam, it was not entirely played out. In some of the era's most important political trials, even courtrooms became sites of solidarity as predominantly white juries returned verdicts that suggested they trusted Black Panther defendants more than the District Attorneys prosecuting them. Clear-eyed about the difficulties of solidarity, Black Power, White Heat nonetheless emphasizes the achievements and considerable promise of uniting across difference, and in ways that will inform and deepen current debates roiling progressive politics.

Alice Echols is Professor of History at the University of Southern California. She is the author of numerous books, including Daring to Be Bad, Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin, Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture.

YouTube Channel: here

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Patrick Brodie and Darin Barney eds., "Media Rurality" (Duke UP, 2026)

Sun, 03 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Media Rurality (Duke UP, 2026), edited by Darin Barney and Patrick Brodie, investigates the centrality of rural places and people within the media systems and technologies that shape daily life in and across rural and urban settings alike. Edited by Darin Barney and Patrick Brodie, from the boglands of Ireland to data centers in the Oregon countryside to the homemade media systems of rural Tanzania, the contributors to this volume show how rural territories are highly mediated, technologized spaces profoundly enmeshed with global capitalism and colonialism. Approaching the study of rurality through a materialist lens that foregrounds infrastructure, this collection shows how rural spaces often bear the environmental brunt of capitalist development while being relegated to the economic and cultural periphery.
Contributors: Christopher Ali, Patrick Bresnihan, Patrick Brodie, Darin Barney, Jenna Burrell, Jordan B. Kinder, Burç Köstem, Cindy Lin, Emily Ng, Lisa Parks, Anne Pasek, Esther Peeren, Nicole Starosielski, Ishita Tiwary, Hunter Vaughan, Ayesha Vemuri, Megan Wiessner, Assatu Wisseh.

This episode features a conversation with host Sadie Couture, editors Patrick Brodie and Darin Barney, and contributors Burç Köstem and Megan Wiessner.

Sadie Couture is a PhD candidate in Communication Studies at McGill University, and an incoming Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. https://www.sadiecouture.com/

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Eric McDonnell, "The Formation of Psalms 1–3 and the Arrangement of the Hebrew Psalter" (Mohr Siebeck, 2026)

Sun, 03 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The shape and shaping of the Psalter continues to be one of the more fascinating areas of biblical research. In his recent monograph on Psalm 1-3, Eric McDonnell argues that Psalms 1 and 2 constitute a two-part preface, added to an earlier collection beginning with Psalm 3.

Tune in as we speak with Eric McDonnell about his new book, The Formation of Psalms 1-3 and the Arrangement of the Hebrew Psalter (Mohr Siebeck, 2026).

Dr. Eric McDonnell is Adjunct Professor at Emory University, Technical Editor for TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism, Technical Editor also for Bible Odyssey, and Digital Initiatives Manager for Society of Biblical Literature/ SBL Press.

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Daniel Gross, "Unions of Our Own: Eight Building Blocks to Change Work and the World" (Haymarket, 2026)

Sun, 03 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

My guest today, Daniel Gross, comes to NBN to discuss his new book Unions of Our Own: Eight Building Blocks to Change Work and the World (Haymarket, 2026). Written with workers in mind, it’s an accessible and very practical guide to organizing one’s workplace, bringing Gross’ multiple decades as a union organizer and labor lawyer to readers who might know what they need, but don’t know where to start or how to get there. Gross breaks the massive task of organizing ones workplace into easy steps that also leave a lot of room for individuals to flexibly apply to their own particular situations, giving them some basic scaffolding on which to operate. It also comes with sample forms one can use at various stages of the process, giving readers a clear sense of how to organize and break everything down into clearly compartmentalized and more manageable tasks. Readers can also go online to Unions of Our Own to get printable versions of these forms as an accessible way to start their journey.

Daniel Gross is a longtime labor organizer and labor lawyer. He is the coauthor of Labor Law for the Rank & Filer: Building Solidarity While Staying Clear of the Law, and currently works with the Solidarity Union Network.

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Ray Welling, "Byline for the Dead: A Novel of Labor, Conspiracy, a Bloody Uprising and Two Ambitious Journalists" (Sager Group, 2025)

Sun, 03 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Byline for the Dead: A Novel of Labor, Conspiracy, a Bloody Uprising and Two Ambitious Journalists (Sager Group, 2025) is a historical mystery-thriller that interweaves stories from different eras as two journalists, five decades apart, work to unravel the truths about one of the most violent labor strikes in American history. In 1984, Gray Wheeler is a disillusioned young reporter working for The Toledo Sword. Assigned to cover the 50th anniversary of the Auto-Lite strike-known as the "Battle of Toledo," a bloody, five-day labor uprising involving 10,000 union workers and 1,300 Ohio National Guard troops-Gray stumbles across a mystery left unpublished a half-century earlier by another young reporter that connects the 1934 massacre to present-day political machinations. Putting together the pieces, past and present, the two reporters work in tandem across the decades, unravelling the corruption that led to the deadly strike. As the story proceeds, we learn of desperate workers, soulless political agitators, ruthless National Guard troops, suppressed government reports, buried testimonies, and suspicious deaths. As Gray and newspaper librarian Kirby Peters dig deeper into the story, they discover the chilling truths behind the spark that ignited the bloodshed. And they find their lives at risk. The deeper they dig, the greater the danger. Threats culminate in a deadly confrontation in the ruins of the old Auto-Lite factory. Byline for the Dead explores themes of journalistic integrity, institutional memory, and the power of the past to shape the present. As Gray confronts Toledo's forgotten history and the ghost of his own unfulfilled ambitions, he must decide whether exposing the truth is worth the cost-especially when the truth fights back.

Ray Welling, PhD, grew up in Toledo, Ohio and earned a journalism degree at Northwestern University in Chicago. Later, he migrated to Australia, where he has worked as a journalist, editor, publisher, content director, writer, marketing manager, lecturer and podcaster. He lives in Sydney with his wife. Byline for the Dead is his first novel and was a finalist for the 2025 American Writing Awards for Best New Debut Fiction.

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Michelle P. Brown, "Illumino: A History of Medieval Britain in Twelve Illuminated Manuscripts" (Reaktion, 2025)

Sun, 03 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The history of medieval Britain through twelve remarkable illuminated manuscripts.

Illumino: A History of Medieval Britain in Twelve Illuminated Manuscripts (Reaktion, 2025) explores the history of medieval Britain through the biographies of twelve remarkable illuminated manuscripts and of their creators and owners. The manuscripts each serve as portals into these lives and as springboards into the era of their production. For illuminated manuscripts are among the most intricate and fascinating forms of evidence for the Middle Ages, blending the fruits of human intellect – the arts, the sciences, politics, philosophy and faith – with the materiality of their production. By undertaking the detective work needed to determine the nature of each project and the underlying human-interest stories, this book reveals their manifold social, economic and cultural contexts and charts the exchange of ideas, techniques and materials over time and space. Featuring more than a hundred beautiful illustrations, this is a unique and accessible introduction to Britain’s history, art history and book history across a thousand years.

Michelle P. Brown is Professor Emerita of Medieval Manuscript Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and was formerly Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library. Her books include Bede and the Theory of Everything (Reaktion, 2023).

YouTube Channel: here

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Paola De Santo, "The Ambassador and the Courtesan: Political Bodies in Renaissance Italy" (U Delaware Press, 2026)

Sat, 02 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Paola de Santo joins Jana Byars to talk about her new book, The Ambassador and the Courtesan: Political Bodies in Renaissance Italy (U Delaware Press, 2026). Drawing on literature, legal texts, and archival materials, The Ambassador and the Courtesan offers a comparative analysis of these two emerging roles in the early modern period and in Renaissance Italian society. While these two figures may appear unrelated, this book demonstrates their shared relation to the body politic, including the relationship of their very bodies to that metaphorical body. One imagines the early modern ambassador as traveling from one center of power to another, gathering news and disseminating it in writing, as well as negotiating in person. The courtesan, in contrast, is normally imagined employing her body in the service of entertaining elite clients in the enclosed space of the urban salon. These characterizations reinforce their very different roles in Renaissance Italian society and culture, but by placing them in dialogue, salient points of convergence emerge detailing how they were integral to the concurrent emergence of a modern subjectivity of the individual and the formation of the modern state.

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Richard Ivan Jobs and Steven Van Wolputte, "In the Land of the Lacandón: A Graphic History of Adventure and Imperialism" (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2025)

Sat, 02 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the mid-1930s the amateur French ethnographer and filmmaker Bernard de Colmont ventured into the mountainous state of Chiapas to study the Lacandón people and broadcast their way of life to a curious European public. Considered a “lost tribe,” the Lacandón were thought to be the closest living relatives of the ancient Maya.
De Colmont became a celebrity explorer whose adventures generated considerable attention. The Lacandón themselves, however, were silenced in his tale. Nearly a century later, in In the Land of the Lacandón: A Graphic History of Adventure and Imperialism (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2025), Dr. Richard Ivan Jobs and Dr. Steven Van Wolputte have taken up this story in all its complexity, creating a graphic history from de Colmont’s narratives and images in the form of a heroic adventure comic. An essay contextualizing and historicizing the tale follows, as does an evocative, reflective poem by Tsotsil writer Manuel Bolom Pale, which offers an Indigenous perspective on the encounter. A captivating experiment in form, the book puts an immersive new spin on studying the past.
In the Land of the Lacandón illuminates de Colmont’s expedition against the backdrop of late imperialism on the eve of the Second World War in Europe. It investigates the history of exploration, science, and media, revealing how these narratives represented and constructed Indigenous Peoples for the public – and how such representations continue to resonate.

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Brianna Jett, "Under a Carnivore Sky" (Page Street YA, 2026)

Sat, 02 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Under a Carnivore Sky (Page Street YA, 2026) is Brianna Jett's debut young adult novel in verse. Sixteen-year-old Lili is a hunter, which means she has one goal: Find the monster lurking in the carnivorous, labyrinthian swamp that borders their hometown—and slay it. Her father failed to kill the beast, and like all townsfolk over eighteen, bits of his flesh and bone are being stolen away by its curse. With all roads out of town leading back in, they’re trapped with the curse unless Lili stops it; yet the ease with which she wanders the swamp leaves her more feared than favored. When a boy, Caleb, offers to map the swamp in exchange for her help in finding a way through it, Lili agrees, hoping to track down the monster. But the more they explore, the more she resents the town and questions the curse itself. Confronted with the truth, Lili must decide if duty or her own freedom is a worthier pursuit.

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David McMullin, "Rock 'N' Roll, Baby!" (Random House, 2026)

Sat, 02 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How great to interview an author who writes splendid music-oriented children's books! In this episode, I was fortunate to interview Author (and I should add, singer) David McMullin, celebrating his brand new board book Rock 'N' Roll, Baby! (Random House, 2026), illustrated by Allison Black, and published (March, 2026) by Random House Books for Young Readers. I discovered that this is a book that can be sung (to the tune of Rockabye Baby), adding another fun element. We talked about David career from Broadway to children's literature, and got him to sing from a favorite musical (that wasn't too difficult).

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Cooking Sections, "Waves Lost at Sea" (Spector Books, 2026)

Sat, 02 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Waves Lost at Sea (Spector Books, 2026) traces the evolving practice of Cooking Sections, whose work spans visual arts, architecture, and ecology. Since 2013, they have been investigating anthropogenic infrastructures, industrial food systems, and human-made climates: from artificially colored farmed salmon and drained buffalo wetlands to ocean-filtering oysters and Sicilian tomatoes outlawed under EU regulations. Their research-based practice exposes the legal, environmental, and metabolic struggles behind what ends up on our plates, while simultaneously working to create prospects for the future. This monograph brings together six newly commissioned essays alongside an extensive series of images with detailed captions and reflective annotations. The book traverses legal fictions, queer ecologies, disappearing landscapes, multispecies entanglements, and speculative tastes. Through these layered investigations, Waves Lost at Sea invites readers to rethink food cultures and agricultural imaginaries, decentering humans at both microscopic and planetary scales.

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David Krolikoski, "Lyrical Translation: The Creation of Modern Poetry in Colonial Korea" (U Hawai'i Press, 2026)

Sat, 02 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Lyrical Translation: The Creation of Modern Poetry in Colonial Korea (U Hawai'i Press, 2026)is a literary history of modern Korean poetry's origins and its development through translation. As the use of Korean became increasingly restricted during the Japanese occupation, translation was not a choice but a necessity for higher education and intellectual labor. Yet it also had an expansive, creative function: Korean poets wielded it as an instrument to reimagine their literature. Around the turn of the twentieth century, intellectuals began abandoning classical Chinese as the default written language to embrace a new vernacular style in prose and verse that was closer to everyday speech. Pushing back against the perception of translation as a process of simple replication, Lyrical Translation reveals how poets used it to forge an entirely new mode of poetic composition.

Dr. David Krolikoski is an assistant professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in the Department of East Asian Languages & Literatures. His research interests include modern Korean poetry, translation, poetics, postcolonial theory, and transnational literature, and his articles have appeared in Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature and Culture, The Routledge Companion to Korean Literature, Hyŏndae sihak, among others.

Visit Dr. David Krolikoski’s University Profile here

Buy Lyrical Translation: The Creation of Modern Poetry in Colonial Korea here

About the host: Leslie Hickman is an Anthropology graduate student at Emory University. She has an MA in Korean Studies and a KO-EN translation certificate from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. You can contact her at leslie.hickman@emory.edu

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Dylan Baun, "Beirut Radical: A Global Microhistory from the Sixties to the Lebanese Civil War" (I.B. Tauris, 2026)

Sat, 02 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Imad Yusuf Nuwayhid was born in 1944 in the Lebanese village of Ras al-Matn. He came of age in the 1960s, splitting time between Beirut and Europe. And he died in 1975, the start of the Lebanese Civil War.

But who was Imad Nuwayhid? Was he a leftist intellectual? A self-interested hotel worker? A fighter dedicated to Palestinian liberation? A tragic symbol of what happened to those caught in the crosshairs during the war? Through archival and oral history, Beirut Radical finds that Imad was none of these things alone, but all of them together.Beirut Radical: A Global Microhistory from the Sixties to the Lebanese Civil War (I.B. Tauris, 2026) takes up Imad Nuwayhid as a global microhistory-a window into the global sixties, the war, and its aftermath. Baun argues that Imad's beliefs and actions, crystalized during two tumultuous decades of the Cold War, signal a young generation of what he terms “practical radicals.” While much more is known about their politics and support for left-wing ideologies, Imad's life highlights how they pursued them, equally, alongside their career aspirations. Imad's death in the war, then, shows the twisting path by which some young leftists ceded their autonomy to liberation struggles. Lastly, Beirut Radical follows Imad's afterlife, examining how multiple actors to Lebanon's war, some in concert (party and family members), some in resistance (some family), claim individuals and their memory, during and beyond wartime. More than anything perhaps, Beirut Radical is a meditation on the intimate, the personal, the ethics, and the micro-level of history.

Roberto Mazza is currently a visiting scholar at the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at robbymazza@gmail.com. Blusky and IG: @robbyref

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Katie Batza, "AIDS in the Heartland: How Unlikely Coalitions Created a Blueprint for LGBTQ Politics" (UNC Press, 2025)

Sat, 02 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Katie Batza on their recently published book, AIDS in the Heartland: How Unlikely Coalitions Created a Blueprint for LGBTQ Politics. Published by the University of North Carolina Press, AIDS in the Heartland demonstrates the unique collaborations of crop duster pilots, church van drivers, nuns, tribal leaders, and synagogue ladies in places such as decommissioned convents, backyard barbecues, high school gyms, and city parks that fostered loud, radical queer politics and homonormative strategies alike. As a result, Batza contends with the respectability of the heart of the nation and how it prevails as core values in national LBGTQ political strategies today.

Histories of AIDS in the United States typically regard San Francisco and New York to be the epicenters of the crisis. The Midwest, if considered at all, appears as a footnote to the social, medical, and political struggles of coastal queer communities and communities of color. But the US heartland cultivated its own distinct strategies for survival that became the surprising and lasting blueprint for LGBTQ politics today. Though AIDS cases were relatively low compared to the coasts, the conservative political and religious landscape, lack of medical infrastructure, and diffuse gay communities brought Midwesterners together in unexpected ways. Unearthing this complex story, health activism expert Katie Batza masterfully illustrates the diversity, resilience, innovation, and influence of the Midwest’s responses to the AIDS epidemic.

Katie Batza is chair of women, gender, and sexuality studies at the University of Kansas and the author of Before AIDS: Gay Health Politics in the 1970s. Their research explores the intersection of sexuality, health, and politics in the late 20th-century United States.

Donna Doan Anderson is a research assistant professor in History at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Maile Aihua Young is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Bioethics and Health Humanities at the University of Texas-Medical Branch.

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Scott Kurashige, "American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism" (U California Press, 2026)

Sat, 02 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This probing account shines a new light on the problem of anti-Asian violence and inspires us to build lasting solidarity.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, racist demagoguery fomented a campaign of terror against Asian Americans. But these attacks were part of a much longer pattern that made anti-Asian racism integral to the outbreak of white supremacist, misogynist, and colonial violence across 175 years of U.S. history. Written in the radical spirit of Howard Zinn, American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism (U California Press, 2026) represents the culmination of thirty-five years of study and activism by award-winning scholar Scott Kurashige.

From the lynching of Asian immigrants during the exclusion era to the ongoing slaughter of Asian civilians by the U.S. military, the book connects domestic and global events that have been erased from the official record. Going beyond victimhood, Kurashige traces the rise of Asian American community protest and activism in response to the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin and other overlooked tragedies. While many have worked to legislate and prosecute hate crimes, Kurashige argues that hope lies in grassroots activism for multiracial solidarity.

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D. Vance Smith, "Atlas’s Bones: The African Foundations of Europe" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Sat, 02 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A major new look at Africa’s influence on European culture and how colonization remade Africa in the image of a medieval Europe.
Virgil. Chaucer. Petrarch. These names resonate with many as cornerstones of European culture. Yet, in Atlas’s Bones: The African Foundations of Europe (U Chicago Press, 2025), D. Vance Smith reveals that much of what is claimed as European culture up to the Middle Ages—its great themes in literature, its sources in political thought, its religious beliefs—originated in the writings of African thinkers like Augustine, Fulgentius, and Martianus Capella, or Europeans who thought extensively about Africa. In fact, a third of Virgil’s Aeneid takes place in Africa. Francis Petrarch believed his most important achievement was his epic Africa; while Geoffrey Chaucer wrote repeatedly about the figures of Scipio Africanus, actually two different men who defeated and destroyed Carthage.
Smith tells the story of how Europe created a false “medieval” version of Africa to acquire resources and power during the era of imperialism and colonialism. The first half of the book, “Reading Africa,” traces Egypt’s, Libya’s, and Carthage’s influence on classical and medieval thinking about Africa, highlighting often ignored literary and legendary traditions, for example, that Alexander the Great named himself the son of an African god. The second part, “Writing Africa,” focuses on how the different cultures of the two great African cities—Carthage and Alexandria—shaped modern literary criticism and political theology and examines the cross-influences of modern anthropology, medieval studies, and colonial law.
Atlas’s Bones firmly re-establishes the significance of Africa in European intellectual history. It will be essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how much of Africa informs our artistic and cultural world.

D. Vance Smith is professor of English and former director of medieval studies at Princeton University. His many books include Arts of Dying: Literature and Finitude in Medieval England, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

YouTube Channel: here

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Anthony Kaldellis, "1453: The Conquest and Tragedy of Constantinople" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Fri, 01 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A detailed account of the siege and fall of Constantinople in 1453, a watershed year that closed the book, once and for all, on the Roman Empire and confirmed for Europeans their worst fears about an expanding Ottoman Empire.
Anthony Kaldellis offers a new narrative of the siege and fall of Constantinople in 1453, a watershed year that closed the book, once and for all, on the Roman Empire and confirmed for Europeans their worst fears about an expanding Ottoman Empire.

By the fifteenth century, Constantinople had seen better days, but it was still a vibrant center of learning, worship, commerce, and information. 1453: The Conquest and Tragedy of Constantinople (Oxford UP, 2026) sketches the tense but exciting shared world of Italians, Turks, and Romans that was thrown into crisis by Mehmed II's decision to conquer the city. Kaldellis showcases a detailed reconstruction following events on a day-by-day basis, pulling from gripping eye-witness testimonies in Latin, Italian, Greek, Russian, and Turkish. He weighs the strategies of both the attackers and defenders, and proves that, contrary to the fatalism that marks almost all narratives written with hindsight, in reality the defense was hardly a lost cause. The defenders knew exactly what they were doing. They were willing to risk their lives, but it was not their intention to become martyrs. Instead, it was the sultan who was scrambling to neutralize a seemingly impregnable defense. That he did so was a testament to his ingenuity and tenacity.

The final chapters of 1453 trace the fate of the vanquished and their captivity. It also weighs the impact of the city's fall on the conquerors, the conquered, and on world history. 1453 was not merely a symbol for the passing of the Middle Ages and the onset of early modernity: it changed the very nature of the Ottoman empire and redirected the transmission of cultural legacies, especially those of Greek classical scholarship. The fall of Constantinople is therefore a nexus of converging pathways between east and west, medieval and modern, ends and beginnings.

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Roundtable on Genocide Studies on the occasion of the 20th Anniversary of Genocide Studies International

Fri, 01 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

2026 marks the 20th year of publishing Genocide Studies International. The journal's first issue was a special issue on genocide in Darfur. Twenty years later, newspapers and podcasts are talking again about mass violence in Sudan.

So I thought it would be a good time to host a discussion among current and former editors of the journal about the state of genocide studies and about how academic journals can contribute to its goals. We talked about the nature of the field of genocide studies, about what it means to be a scholar in a field where activism is common, and about how GSI understands its purpose. And we say a bit to graduate students and early career academics about how to get an article published in GS.

If you're interested in this interview, I'd suggest looking back in the NBGS archives to look for discussions about the purpose of genocide education with Maureen Hiebert and Jim Waller and an interview with John Roth and Carol Rittner about their belief that Holocaust and Genocide education is failing to achieve that purpose.

Genocide Studies International is a journal of the Zoryan Institute and is published by University of Toronto Press. You can find more information about Zoryan here Home - Zoryan Institute and suscribe to the journal here Genocide Studies International Home | University of Toronto Press

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Mapping Out Food and Philosophy

Fri, 01 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This episode introduces a special issue on food and philosophy. Robert T. Valgenti, of Gastronomica’s Editorial Collective, talks with Andrea Borghini about the increasing attention to food within philosophy over the last three decades and shares the inspiration behind their special issue. They discuss how this issue of Gastronomica engages with different disciplines and formats by bringing together short essays and reflections on the field of philosophy from scholars around the world. By attending to ethics, value, and aesthetics through a range of topics that include art, taste, hunger, sustainability, food waste, and bioethics and GLP-1s, the special issue highlights different perspectives on how food can enter philosophical practice.

Gastronomica’s special issue on food and philosophy was published in Fall 2025 (25.3) and is available online here.

Andrea Borghini is an associate professor of philosophy and the director of Culinary Mind, a research center for the philosophy of food, at the University of Milan. Learn more about his work here and about Culinary Mind here.

Robert T. Valgenti is a professor of liberal arts and food studies at The Culinary Institute of America. A philosopher and translator, he works on the philosophy of food, Italian philosophy, and hermeneutics and is a member of the Editorial Collective at Gastronomica.

Listeners can now find the Gastronomica podcast on the New Books Network here. Subscribe to Gastronomica’s podcast feed to stay updated on the newest episodes.

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Jinwoo Park, "Oxford Soju Club" (Dundurn, 2025)

Fri, 01 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Jinwoo Park about his novel, Oxford Soju Club (Dundurn Press, 2025).

A SHELF AWARENESS BEST BOOK OF 2025 • A CBC BOOKS BEST CANADIAN FICTION BOOK OF 2025 • A CRIMEREADS BEST BOOK OF 2025

The natural enemy of a Korean is another Korean. When North Korean spymaster Doha Kim is mysteriously killed in Oxford, his protégé, Yohan Kim, chases the only breadcrumb given to him in Doha’s last breath: “Soju Club, Dr. Ryu.” In the meantime, a Korean American CIA agent , Yunah Choi, races to salvage her investigation of the North Korean spy cell in the aftermath of the assassination. At the centre of it all is the Soju Club, the only Korean restaurant in Oxford, owned by Jihoon Lim, an immigrant from Seoul in search of a new life after suffering a tragedy. As different factions move in with their own agendas, their fates become entangled, resulting in a bitter struggle that will determine whose truth will triumph. Oxford Soju Club weaves a tale of how immigrants in the Korean diaspora are forced to create identities to survive, and how in the end, they must shed those masks and seek their true selves.

Jinwoo Park is a Korean Canadian writer based in Montreal. He completed a master's degree in creative writing at the University of Oxford, and currently works as a marketer in the tech industry. In 2021, he won the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award. Oxford Soju Club is his first novel.

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Mostafa Hussein, "Hebrew Orientalism: Jewish Engagement with Arabo-Islamic Culture in Late Ottoman and British Palestine" (Princeton UP, 2025)

Fri, 01 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the decades before the establishment of a Jewish state in 1948, native and immigrant Jews in Palestine mediated between Jewish and Arab cultures while navigating their evolving identities as settler colonists. Hebrew Orientalism: Jewish Engagement with Arabo-Islamic Culture in Late Ottoman and British Palestine (Princeton UP, 2025) challenges the conventional view that Hebrew thinkers were dismissive of Arabo-Islamic culture, revealing how they both adopted and adapted elements of it that enhanced Zionist aims.
Drawing on a wealth of sources ranging from Arabic medieval chronicles, travel narratives, and poetry to modern Hebrew geography and botany texts, Mostafa Hussein provides a nuanced understanding of Hebrew orientalism by focusing on the practical activities of Hebrew writers, such as recuperating the Jewish past in the East, constructing Jewish indigeneity, consolidating Jewish ties to Palestine’s landscape, enhancing understanding of the Hebrew Bible, reviving Hebrew language, and undertaking translation projects. Through the lens of a diverse group of Jewish intellectuals—ranging from Palestine-born Sephardi/Oriental and Ashkenazi Jews to Eastern European immigrants—he unveils the complex realities of cultural exchange and knowledge production, highlighting the dual role of these intellectuals in connecting with the East and promoting Zionist aspirations. Hussein offers fresh insights into the role of scholarly practices in advancing new perspectives on the region and its peoples and forging a modern Zionist Hebrew identity.
Illuminating the intricate and often contradictory engagement of Hebrew scholars with Arabo-Islamic culture, Hebrew Orientalism informs contemporary discussions of postcolonialism and settler colonialism and enriches our understanding of the historical dynamics between Jews and Arabs in Palestine.

Mostafa Hussein is assistant professor of Jewish-Muslim studies at the Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the editor (with Brahim El Guabli) of Remembering Jews in Maghrebi and Middle Eastern Media.

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Caroline Kuzemko, "Climate Politics: Can't Live with It, Can't Mitigate without It" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Fri, 01 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

By exploring the dynamic relationships between politics, policymaking, and policy over time, Climate Politics: Can't Live with It, Can't Mitigate without It (Cambridge UP, 2026) aims to explain why climate change mitigation is so political, and why politics is also indispensable in enacting real change. It argues that politics is poorly understood and often sidelined in research and policy circles, which is an omission that must be rectified, because the policies that we rely on to drive down greenhouse gas emissions are deeply inter-connected with political and social contexts. Incorporating insights from political economy, socio-technical transitions, and public policy, this book provides a framework for understanding the role of specific ideas, interests, and institutions in shaping and driving sustainable change. The chapters present examples at global, national, and local scales, spanning from the 1990s to 2020s. This volume will prove valuable for graduate students, researchers, and policymakers interested in the politics and policy of climate change. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

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Jason R. Young, "The Mask of Memory: White Racial Fantasy After the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2026)

Fri, 01 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the early twentieth century, a group of white writers, artists, and performers from the cultural hub of Charleston, South Carolina, created and curated a highly sanitized view of slavery. They imagined a once and future plantation society that would reestablish them as the proper heirs of the slave past. In the process, they crafted a set of dangerously durable and virulent stereotypes about slavery.

Many of the sights and sounds that Americans associate with slavery are rooted in this grandiose historical myth. The image of the Big House, sitting atop carefully manicured rolling green hills, is in large part, a fantasy, as is the idea of the plantation as an expansive family home to chivalrous planters and content slaves. Jason R. Young explores the persistence of these myths and the historical memory of slavery by focusing on the elite white mythmakers who helped shape our understanding of slavery. Examining literature, art, and performance, Young interrogates both the power and the folly of these ideas. In uncovering their origins, The Mask of Memory : White Racial Fantasy After the Civil War (UNC Press, 2026) resists these racial fantasies and challenges their stubborn resurgence in our own time.

You can find Jason Young at the University of Michigan website.

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Charles W. A. Prior, "Treaty Ground: Diplomacy and the Politics of Sovereignty, from Roanoke to the Republic" (U Nebraska Press, 2026)

Fri, 01 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Treaty Ground: Diplomacy and the Politics of Sovereignty, from Roanoke to the Republic (U Nebraska Press, 2026), Professor Charles W. A. Prior offers a new account of the sovereign claims of Native Americans, the Crown, and colonies in early America, arguing that Native American diplomacy shaped how sovereignty was negotiated and contested among all three, from Virginia’s founding to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. Previous scholars have focused on the contested relationship between the British imperial state and the colonies it established along the Atlantic Coast without addressing how sovereign Native nations shaped the colonial process through warfare, diplomacy, trade, peace-making, and treaty-making.

Dr. Prior adopts a new interpretive framework for examining sovereignty in early America, arguing that the Native and colonial spaces of the Northeast were a treaty ground thickly layered with agreements and negotiated rules of interaction. Drawing on an extensive range of treaty records, writings on colonial and imperial affairs, letters, and official documents, Treaty Ground argues that sovereignty was negotiated within diplomacy and shaped the norms of war, the terms of peace and alliances, the rightful ownership of territory, and appropriate responses to treaty violations. This process in turn structured relations between the Crown and colonies and framed initial positions on how the power of congress related to that of the states.

Treaty Ground offers historical depth to our understanding of how Native nations articulated Indigenous power within colonialism, cuts settler colonialism down to size, and expands contemporary understandings of the sovereign relationships between Native nations in the United States and Canada.

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Radio ReOrient 14:5: Racial Justice, Human Rights and Surveillance, with Alba Kapoor, hosted by Claudia Radiven and Amina Easat-Daas

Fri, 01 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode Claudia Radiven and Amina Easat-Daas were joined by Alba Kapoor. Kapoor is the racial justice lead at Amnesty International UK and previously led the policy team at the Runnymede Trust. Alba Kapoor shared the cutting edge work that Amnesty International UK is leading around racial justice, the surveilling of black and brown communities in the UK through existing policy infrastructure such as Prevent, or new and emergent facial recognition technologies. She also discussed forthcoming research from Amnesty examining the silencing of pro-Palestine narratives in academic contexts and the broader questions that this raises around freedoms and rights. Finally, Kapoor linked this to the pressing issues posed by the growth of the far-right in the UK.

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For All Mankind’s Story of Martian Revolution

Fri, 01 May 2026 08:00:00 -0000

It’s the Pop Culture Professors, and we continue our analysis of season 5 of For All Mankind. In this show, we discuss episode 3 “Home”; Episode 4 “Open Source”; and Episode 5 “Svoboda.”

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Empathy Takes Action: An Autistic Therapist on the Radical Work of Connection

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Mainstream psychology has long accepted that some people (like those with autism) are naturally more logical and unemotional, while others (like so-called empaths) intuitively experience the feelings of those around them as deeply as their own. But this is wrong. Aimee Cliff, an autistic psychotherapist who empathizes for a living, knows this firsthand. We are all are capable of empathy, because empathy is something you do, not something you are—meaning you can get better at it if you choose to practice.

Drawing on scientific research, clinical experience, and interviews with neurodivergent people, Aimee Cliff examines how empathy works in the brain and body and lays out the five pillars of true empathy: Empathy is humble, empathy is embodied, empathy is amoral, empathy is radical, and empathy is work. At the heart of this expansive new definition is the promise that every one of us can learn to improve our relationships with our fellow humans. We just have to be willing to do the work to close the space between us.

Empathy Takes Action shows us the way to build more loving, kind, and supportive communities and to make room for every kind of mind.

Our guest is: Aimee Cliff, who is a writer and therapist based in London. As a freelance writer, she has bylines in The Guardian, Pitchfork, The Independent, Vice, and more. She currently works for a disability charity. She is the author of Empathy Takes Action.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You help support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Miranda Yaver, "Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality in the United States" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Miranda Yaver’s new book, Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality in the United States (Cambridge UP, 2026), has lots of examples and incidents that will seem quite familiar to anyone who has dealt with health insurance coverage in the United States. In a sense, this book speaks to everyone because we have all been in situations like the ones that Yaver hears about from her interviewees. We know what it is like to have a test or a scan or a prescription ordered by a medical professional for us only to have an insurance company tell us that we cannot have that test or scan or medicine. Yaver dives into this quagmire and unearths the constellations of causes and reasons why this is now the essential operating process for much of American health insurance. By unpacking these causes and reasons, Coverage Denied clarifies so many of our experiences and helps us to think about the myriad ways in which health insurers and health insurance contribute to inequality in the United States, across a range of dimensions including race, socio-economic position, gender, sexuality, ability, and more.

Part of what Yaver’s research finds is that very few individuals appeal coverage denials with their insurance companies. The question becomes one of who is denied coverage or tests or prescriptions, and who is going to try to access the means for getting those denials reversed. This is part of the administrative burden that is not equally distributed, given different economic, disability, employment, and family situations. Thus, the appeals process is part of the driver of inequality in terms of healthcare and healthcare coverage. The findings also note that women are more likely to be denied coverage than are men, in part because women often make more use of healthcare than do men. But this inequity translates across minoritized groups, including those who are disabled and sick, of lower economic status, and/or are Black or Hispanic. Thus, the access to medical care is distributed unequally across a number of different vectors.

The denial of coverage, thus the denial of care, also leaves the medical professionals in a quandary as well, since they are unsure of what to prescribe and what is likely to actually happen for a patient. Thus, those trying to prescribe different kinds of care, be it tests or prescriptions or interventions, have little certainty that their patients will receive what the prescribing individual intends for them. While the initial reason behind coverage assessments and the requirement for prior authorization was cost containment, the results, at this point, are a system that often does not work for those who need medical assistance and for the medical professionals working with their patients. Coverage Denied: How Health Insurers Drive Inequality in the United States is a patient-centered book in that it focuses on the experiences of patients as they try to work their way through this distorted and obtuse system, but it also brings in the perspective of medical providers because they are often equally lost in terms of knowing what kind of care their patients can and do receive.

This book is as must read for anyone who is interested in the way healthcare and health insurance operate in the United States, and why these issues, policies, and processes are often so confusing and confounding.

Coverage Denied can be purchased at The White Whale Bookstore in Pittsburgh, PA.

Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University. She is co-host of New Books in Political Science. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume I: The Infinity Saga and of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Volume II: Into the Multiverse as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics. She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social

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Paul Blustein, "King Dollar: The Past and Future of the World's Dominant Currency" (Yale UP, 2025)

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The U.S. dollar is the world’s most important currency. Trade is priced in dollars, the world’s central banks keep U.S. dollars in reserve, some places–including my home of Hong Kong, peg their currencies to the dollar. But what explains the U.S. dollar’s success? And why have some challengers, like the Japanese yen or the Chinese yuan, failed to gain traction?

Paul Blustein, author of King Dollar: The Past and Future of the World's Dominant Currency, joins us on the show today; the book was released last year, and is now in paperback. In his book, Paul talks about how the U.S. dollar got to where it is today and punctures some of the myths surrounding dollar dominance–like the idea that the “petrodollar” made a difference.

Paul is a senior associate with the Economics Program and Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). He is also the author of several critically acclaimed books about global economic affairs. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, he spent much of his career as a reporter at the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.

A programming note: we recorded this interview on April 4th, about a month after the U.S. first launched its strikes on Iran.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Samira K. Mehta, "God Bless the Pill: The Surprising History of Contraception and Sexuality in American Religion" (UNC Press, 2026)

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Most people today understand contraception as central to women’s liberation, and when the birth control pill arrived in 1960, the media thought it would usher in a sexual revolution. But a surprising number of religious Americans in the mid-twentieth century also saw contraception as part of God’s plan—a tool to create happy, prosperous American families in the post–World War II era.
In God Bless the Pill: The Surprising History of Contraception and Sexuality in American Religion (UNC Press, 2026), Dr. Samira K. Mehta traces the remarkable story of how mid-twentieth-century Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish voices promoted the use of birth control and made it more accessible for many Americans. They hoped birth control methods would curb divorce rates by encouraging sexually dynamic marriages and families unstrained by “too many” children—thereby creating a postwar upwardly mobile middle class. Religious leaders also promoted this understanding of the family as tied to Cold War capitalism and encouraged neither racial nor gender equity.
But then came the backlash, both from the Right—which failed to anticipate the feminist potential of contraception—and from the Left, where women, particularly women of color, sought to ensure that birth control was a tool of liberation rather than one rooted in patriarchal and racial oppression. Ultimately, Dr. Mehta offers compelling new insights into the way religion accommodates itself to social, technological, and medical change.

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Through the Lens of Taiwan: Film, History, and Identity

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This podcast episode is hosted by Mart Tšernjuk, the Taiwan Coordinator at the University of Tartu Asia who is talking to Prof. Robert Chen, a leading scholar of Taiwanese cinema, discussing the relationship between film, history, and identity in Taiwan.

Drawing on Chen’s teaching experience at the University of Tartu, he highlights how Estonian students engage deeply with Taiwanese films, particularly due to shared historical experiences of colonisation and political repression. This common ground allows students to connect emotionally with themes such as trauma and national identity, especially in films addressing the White Terror period.

Chen emphasises that understanding Taiwan’s cinema requires strong historical awareness, as film history closely mirrors Taiwan’s broader political and social development. Unlike other East Asian film industries, Taiwan’s cinematic identity is shaped by its complex colonial past, multicultural society, and ongoing geopolitical tensions. Language also plays a crucial role, reflecting shifts in identity from a China-centred perspective toward a distinctly Taiwanese consciousness.

Aesthetically, Taiwanese cinema, especially the New Cinema movement, is characterised by realism, long takes, and a contemplative style that resonates globally. Directors like Hou Hsiao-Hsien create stories with universal themes, allowing international audiences to relate to Taiwanese experiences.

Chen also discusses King Hu’s films, which blend action with Buddhist philosophy, emphasising harmony with nature and the concept of emptiness. In contrast, films about the White Terror demonstrate how cinema helps process collective trauma and educate younger generations. While earlier films treated these topics with gravity, newer filmmakers approach them more lightly, making them more accessible.

Ultimately, Chen suggests that films such as Dust in the Wind capture the essence of Taiwan through universal coming-of-age narratives, offering an accessible entry point into understanding Taiwanese culture and cinema.

Robert Chen (陳儒修) is a Professor at the Department of Radio and Television at National Chengchi University in Taipei. He earned his PhD in Cinema-Studies from the University of Southern California (USC) and is a prolific author, known for foundational works such as Historical Memory and National Identity in Taiwan Cinema. Throughout his career, he has taught and researched extensively on how national identity and historical trauma are projected onto the silver screen. Robert is currently visiting University of Tartu as the Taiwan Chair. He is teaching a course "Culture and Politics in Taiwan Cinema".

Mart Tšernjuk is the Taiwan Coordinator at the University of Tartu Asia Centre. He is also a lecturer in Chinese language and culture at the Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures, and President of the Estonian Academic Oriental Society. He has lived and studied in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

---

Chen’s selection of films for introducing yourself to the history of Taiwan cinema:

The Mountain (1962) depicts young people living under a repressive atmosphere.
Raining in the Mountain (by King Hu, 1979)
Super Citizen Ko (by Wan Jen, 1995)
Dust in the Wind (by Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1986)
The Skywalk Is Gone (2003) explores modernity and urban alienation and shows how Taiwan undergoes similar modernisation processes as Estonia and other developed countries.
The Electric Princess House (2007) brings the focus back to Taiwanese cinema itself and connects to the shared experience of watching films in theatres.
As well as Raining in the Mountain (by King Hu, 1979); Super Citizen Ko (by Wan Jen, 1995); Dust in the Wind (by Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1986)

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Vidhya & Parani, "O Dharmaputri!: Indian Heart, Yogic Wings" (Garuda Prakashan, 2025)

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A parent's heartfelt letter to their daughter, Uma—and you—on abundant and conscious living—with the light of timeless Indian wisdom. Standing at the threshold of her adult life, Uma asks: “What’s my purpose? How do I choose meaningfully? What is true fulfilment?” As parents, rooted in a lineage of freedom fighters and now global citizens, we’ve shared the teachings of our ancestors—from childhood stories to dinner debates. But will this knowledge still guide Uma’s heart as she soars toward new horizons? Discover how wisdom that sustained generations can enlighten your path—whether you’re in Mumbai or Manchester, seeking purpose in career, joy in relationships, or just figuring out the meaning of existence.

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Scott Solomon, "Becoming Martian: How Living in Space Will Change Our Bodies and Minds" (MIT Press, 2026)

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How living in space will affect future generations—and what the potential unintended consequences of space settlements are.
We are on the cusp of a golden age of space travel in which, for the first time, it will be possible for large numbers of people to venture into space. Some intend to stay. But what happens—and will happen—to us in the extreme conditions of space? What should space tourists expect to happen to them during a journey to an orbiting space station, the Moon, or Mars? What would happen to children born on another planet? Would they evolve into a new species? In Becoming Martian: How Living in Space Will Change Our Bodies and Minds (MIT Press, 2026) Scott Solomon explores the many ways in which humanity’s migration into space will change our bodies and our minds.
This book focuses on the latest science, taking readers to the front lines of research. We hear from astronauts, including Scott Kelly who writes the foreword, and we join a team of scientists guiding a rover across the surface of Mars. We visit a high-security lab where engineers are simulating space radiation to measure its effects on the body. We travel to isolated islands where field biologists are gleaning insights into evolutionary processes applicable to people isolated on faraway planets. We meet synthetic biologists developing gene-editing tools to equip future humans to thrive in alien environments. We watch a rocket designed to carry humanity to Mars make its first successful launch. And then we ask, knowing what we know: Should we go?

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William I. Robinson, "Epochal Crisis: The Exhaustion of Global Capitalism" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Epochal Crisis: The Exhaustion of Global Capitalism (Cambridge UP, 2025) is the most recent book from Professor William Robinson, Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This title is the latest in excellent and ground-breaking titles from Professor Robinson in a distinguished career, where he began writing books on United States intervention into Nicaragua in the late 1980s and early 1990s, expanding this focus on United States hegemony more broadly in the ground-breaking book Promoting Polyarchy in 1996, up to then grappling with the totality of the capitalist world system more recently in titles such as The Global Police State in 2020, Can Global Capitalism Endure in 2022, and War, Global Capitalism and Resistance in 2024, alongside many other books.

Professor Robinson’s latest instalment we discuss in this episode, Epochal Crisis, tracks the multifactorial crises that are impacting the global capitalist system today, across economic, social, ecological, political and other dimensions, and how these intersecting and overlapping crises are degrading or exhausting the ability for capitalism to renew itself. This contemporaneous epochal crisis, as Professor Robinson carefully details, is catalysing morbid symptoms that express themselves as wars, unprecedented violence, ecological emergencies, rock-bottom political legitimacy and a host of other dangerous and cataclysmic effects. Epochal Crisis is both a wide-ranging and extensive investigation into the current, overlapping and intersecting crises that are plaguing the world capitalist system, as it appears in its final, violent death throes, and also a highly engaging work that is easy to digest and will help you understand the very naked reality of capital crisis that is so obvious to us all today. Thankfully, Professor Robinson also addresses what we can do in this latest, perhaps final, epochal breakdown of the capitalist system, to find some revolutionary hope in these dark times.

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Deirdre Loughridge & Thomas Patteson, "The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments" (Reaktion, 2026)

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments (Reaktion, 2026) by Dr. Deirdre Loughridge & Dr. Thomas Patteson is a guided tour through centuries of instruments that never existed. From ancient myths to futuristic media, these imagined devices appear in literature, theory, video games and art, at times echoing real instruments, other times pushing far beyond the bounds of technology. This book presents a wide-ranging collection of such creations, showing how they reflect changing ideas about sound, invention and the limits of the possible. At once a cultural history and a study of creative thought, it uncovers unexpected links between music, design and the human urge to make meaning through sound. These are not just fictional artefacts – they are windows into what music might mean, even when it cannot be played.

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Andrea Horbinski, "Manga's First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905-1989" (U California Press, 2025)

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Andrea Horbinski's Manga's First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905-1989 (U California Press, 2025) centers the fans and creators who built Japanese comics into a massive global phenomenon. The book traces the history of manga from the art form's distinctly modern emergence in the early 1900s, one that first hybridized the artistic legacy of Japan with the world of Western political satire but very quickly expanded its scope. By the 1920s and 1930s, manga was already beginning to show some of the breadth of genre and style that has become a trademark of Japanese comics and their byproducts today. In the postwar, manga's embrace of new audiences and stylistic conventions, and the embrace of these new forms by audiences of amateur consumer-creators especially since the mid-1970s, led to an explosion in popularity that has made manga a global phenomenon.

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Ana Fernández-Aballí et al. eds., "Creative and Inclusive Heritage Education: Teaching Handbook for Use in Classrooms, Museums and Organizations" (U Groningen Press, 2025)

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Heritage is a hot topic in public debates today. Many politicians invoke it to exclude marginal groups from belonging to the national story. Yet, in the new two-volume resource for educators Creative and Inclusive Heritage Education, contributors explore how heritage can be used for inclusive experiences in the classroom. The open-access Handbook and an Activity Book provide educators--from high school teachers to university professors to museum guides--with the necessary theoretical tools and practical exercises turn heritage into a vehicle for self-awareness, collective meaning-making and conflict resolution. By helping educators to identify and counter exclusionary narratives, by stimulating their interest in their own histories and those of their students, and by using creative performance techniques, the handbook and the activity book allow educators to make the best of the social and educational value of heritage. In this interview with two of the editors, we discuss the ambitions and experiences of REBELAH, the European Union funded project behind these resources, which brought together creative artists, community organizers and academics in Spain, France, the Netherlands and Hungary.

Free, Open Access here.

Ana Fernández-Aballí Altamirano is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Groningen working on environmental education and epistemological diversity.

Todd Weir is professor of the History of Christianity and Modern Culture at the University of Groningen. His research focuses on religion and secularism in modern Europe.

Patricia Salvaia is a psychologist and Research Master’s student at the University of Groningen.

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Stephen B. Young ed., "Adam Smith and Modern Economics: Reclaiming the Moral High Ground" (de Gruyter, 2026)

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

For more than two centuries, economists and researchers have struggled with the conundrum of reconciling Adam Smith’s views on economics and ethics. While some held that Smith’s capitalism and free markets institutionalized selfishness, greed, inequality and injustice, others focused on his theory of the moral nature of all human persons and the application of conscience and self-restraint in capitalist activities.

Adam Smith and Modern Economics: Reclaiming the Moral High Ground (de Gruyter, 2026) suggests that neither of these two conventional understandings alone is accurate and conducive to human flourishing. Smith put markets in the context of morality, observing that markets serve best when our moral sentiments are followed.

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Rhea Rahman, "Racializing the Ummah: Muslim Humanitarians Beyond Black, Brown, and White" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Racializing the Ummah: Muslim Humanitarians Beyond Black, Brown and White (U Minnesota Press, 2026) is an ethnography of Islamic Relief (IR), the largest Islamic NGO based in the West. Racializing the Ummah explores how a Muslim organization can do good in a world that defines Muslimness as less than human. Rooted in more than a decade of international research, Rhea Rahman’s study on the organization’s projects, methods, and limitations reveals how racial capitalism permeates all aspects of humanitarianism.

Beginning with a counterhistory of Muslims in the United Kingdom following World War II, Rahman analyzes IR’s mission and transnational activities in and across places including the UK, South Africa, and Mali in the broader context of global white supremacy. She shows how IR’s approaches often effectively secularize Islam to evade anti-Muslim racism and Islamophobia, implicating concepts such as the “good” Muslim aid worker, who complies with War on Terror surveillance while attending to victims of Western colonialism. Meanwhile, Rahman theorizes the tactics of aid workers on the ground, who creatively draw on an Islamic Black radical tradition to drive real change.

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Philip Abbott, "Sounds for a New World: The Christianizing Soundscapes of Late Antiquity" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the Greco-Roman world, gods were known to tame soundscapes, or acoustic landscapes. Zeus, Apollo, Orpheus, and other Classical deities demonstrated their power by bringing order to chaotic sound worlds, replacing cacophony with harmony. In late antiquity, Christians took up this archetype and applied it to Jesus. For many early Christians, the advent of Christ resembled the modern phenomenon of a musical key change, but on a grand scale: Jesus initiated a recalibration of the cosmic soundscape, ushering in a new world. However, according to many Christians in late antiquity, this universal key change was not yet complete. Late ancient Christians believed that they could participate in the ongoing sonic work of Christ by Christianizing the acoustic landscapes of the world.
In Sounds for a New World: The Christianizing Soundscapes of Late Antiquity (Oxford UP, 2026), Dr. Philip Abbott explores how late ancient Christians envisioned themselves as participants in the worldwide retuning effort, harmonizing the Classical world to the new Christian reality. Rejecting the sounds of traditional Greco-Roman and Persian cultures, Christians advocated a variety of sonic practices to realize their grand retuning endeavor, including shouting, singing, silent meditation, chanting, and even belching. From the Latin West to the Syriac East, late ancient Christians formed a polyphonous chorus of diverse voices all joining in the great harmonizing work of Jesus as they Christianized the soundscapes of the world.
For years, scholars have noted the monumental changes that took place in early Christianity during the so-called Constantinian Revolution. But Dr. Abbott turns our attention to an unexplored aspect of this transitional moment, arguing that it was not simply a political or religious revolution - it was a revolution of the senses. Central to this sensorial transformation was sound. As Christianity gained imperial power in the fourth century, Christians began the process of re-tuning the world for Christ.

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Vindhya Buthpitiya, "A Volatile Picture: War and the Political Work of Photography in Sri Lanka" (U Washington Press, 2026)

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A Volatile Picture: War and the Political Work of Photography in Sri Lanka (U Washington Press, 2026) by Dr. Vindhya Buthpitiya is a groundbreaking ethnography that explores how, in the context of Sri Lanka’s protracted civil war and its turbulent aftermath, photography has become bound to the Tamil political imagination. From state-commissioned images meant to surveil and rebel documentation of armed resistance, to the fragile memorials created from identity photographs of the disappeared, A Volatile Picture traces the making and moving of images across borders, communities, and generations. Studio portraits, passport pictures, family albums, atrocity photography, social media posts, and more act not only as records of loss and horror but also as vital tools for protest, solidarity, and the realization of alternate political futures. Drawing on transnational archival and ethnographic encounters and long-term fieldwork in northern Sri Lanka, Dr. Buthpitiya situates photography as both a volatile medium and a political practice. Photographs emerge here as incendiary agents—simultaneously evidencing and triggering violence, sustaining memory, and inciting new visions of liberation.
This is the first in-depth study of Tamil photographic practices in Sri Lanka, offering a major contribution to the anthropology of war, visual culture, and South Asian studies. Richly researched and deeply humane, A Volatile Picture demonstrates how, amid devastation and displacement, photographs continue to generate truths, solidarities, and hopes that resist erasure.

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Elena Foulis, "Embodied Encuentros: Oral History Archives of Latina/o/e Experiences" (Ohio State UP, 2026)

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Embodied Encuentros: Oral History Archives of Latina/o/e Experiences (Ohio State UP, 2026), Elena Foulis offers a practical guide for completing ethical fieldwork in Latina/o/e communities, emphasizing equitable and culturally sustaining practices for gathering oral histories. In her critical decolonial model, Foulis centers the agency of the people within these communities while considering the diversity and complexity of their experiences. In doing so, she advocates for the importance of building oral history archives that challenge our understandings of Latina/o/e peoples.

Foulis provides a conceptual framework for building on community knowledge that considers language, cultural practices, gender, and race. She suggests ways to involve students in ethical research; collect evolving oral histories; employ a language justice approach that acknowledges linguistic oppression, translanguaging, and bilingualism as essential aspects of this community; and consider the importance of digital archives for the creation of multimedia projects that foster community pláticas. Grounded in both theoretical approaches and a feminist ethics praxis, Embodied Encuentros ultimately outlines an important model for doing collaborative, ethical research—not only within Latina/o/e communities but within other minoritized communities as well.

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Who Is Democracy Actually For? People, Power, and the Fight Against Democratic Decline

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This week on Democracy Dialogues, host Esam Boraey speaks with Shandana Khan Mohmand and Marjoke Oosterom, democracy experts at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex, to unpack the takeaways of the newly released Democracy Report “Where’s the Dēmos in Democracy? Building Democratic Futures and Resisting Autocracy.” At a moment when autocracies outnumber democracies for the first time in twenty years, this report argues that the democratic crisis is not simply an institutional one, it is a crisis of exclusion. For too long, efforts to build democracy have focused on formal institutions like legislatures, courts, and electoral commissions, while neglecting the people those institutions are supposed to serve. The report puts forward eight building blocks for recentering citizens in democratic life, from building active citizenship and supporting informal mobilization, to reclaiming digital agency and strengthening accountability mechanisms. Drawing on decades of research across the Global South, from Pakistan and Zimbabwe to Uganda, Brazil, and beyond, Shandana and Marjoke bring the report's findings to life with vivid examples of how ordinary people fight back against backsliding, reclaim civic space, and keep democratic values alive even under authoritarian pressure. The conversation also addresses the role of inequality in driving democratic decline, the double-edged nature of digital technology, the power of youth movements, and what the dismantling of USAID means for global democracy support.

Transcript here and the report is here.

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Kenneth Anderson, "Sanitariums, Hospitals, and the Belladonna Cure: Volume Three of the Untold History of Addiction Treatment in the United States" (The HAMS Harm Reduction Network, Inc., 2022)

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Author and experienced harm reductionist Kenneth Anderson is back on the New Books Network to discuss the three new titles in his series exploring the history of America's addiction treatment industry. We discussed the first two books of his series, Strychnine and Gold, in 2022. Today, Emily and Ken discuss the books he's published since:

From Inebriate Asylums to Narcotic Farms (2022), which covers the inebriate asylum movement of the 19th and early 20th century, which sought to rival the insane asylums of the era;
Sanitariums, Hospitals, and the Belladonna Cure (2022), which covers the history of for-profit institutions for the treatment of drug and alcohol habits which were established prior to the Repeal of Prohibition, as well as a number of miscellaneous entities such as mail-order opium cures; and
Alcoholism Treatment Rebirth (2025), which covers the alcoholism treatment facilities established between the repeal of Prohibition in 1933 and 1956.

Anderson has produced this series of encyclopedia-like compilations of America's vast network of treatment facilities to satisfy his own curiosity, but his work benefits the reader, too. Serious scholars of American drug and alcohol history will benefit from his thorough mining (and many useful reproductions) of primary sources, as well as the charts and graphs he's compiled. These are both damning and illuminating.

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Are Libraries the Hidden Book Market? with Erin Cox of Words & Money

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 23:36:00 -0000

What if the most powerful tool in your book marketing strategy isn't social media — it's your local library? In the debut episode of The Publishing Playbook, host Sarah Russo of Page One Media sits down with publishing veteran Erin Cox to unpack one of the industry's most overlooked opportunities: libraries. With a career spanning publicity at Scribner and HarperCollins, agenting, and her current role as publisher of Publishing Perspectives and co-founder of Words and Money, Erin brings rare, 360-degree expertise to the conversation. Together, Sarah and Erin break down how libraries actually buy books, why they're a powerful (and underutilized) marketing channel for authors, and the misconceptions that are costing publishers real money. Whether you're a debut author, a seasoned writer, or publishing-curious, this episode will change how you think about getting your book into readers' hands.

Words & Money: https://www.wordsandmoney.com/

Publishing Perspectives: https://publishingperspectives.com/

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David Womersley, "Thinking Through Shakespeare" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the eighteenth century, Samuel Johnson famously argued that Shakespeare is enduringly popular because he “is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life.” Johnson’s view largely prevailed until the late twentieth century, when it was challenged by a growing scepticism about the existence of a general human nature. In Thinking Through Shakespeare (Princeton UP, 2026), eminent literary critic David Womersley pushes back against this change by exploring how Shakespeare’s plays think through—and invite us to think through—deep human questions of lasting importance.
Thinking Through Shakespeare explores four perennial human problems: personal identity, the distinction between civilization and barbarism, the relation between political power and religious authority and the tension between means and ends. It examines the history of these problems, from antiquity to today, and traces how Shakespeare engages with them in the great tragedies—Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear—but also in his other plays. Without arguing that human nature is universal or unchanging, or that Shakespeare has some special access to timeless wisdom, the book makes the case that his drama is powerful because it serves as a forensic tool, probing rival perspectives on questions that have preoccupied many people in many societies over many centuries.
By revealing in new ways how Shakespeare’s plays are animated and driven by central human problems, and why he should again be viewed as the great poet of human nature, Thinking Through Shakespeare opens up a richer understanding and appreciation of his work.

David Womersley is the Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. His books include Divinity and State, Gibbon and the “Watchmen of the Holy City” and The Transformation of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He is also the editor of many books, including the Penguin Classics editions of Gibbons’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson and David Hume’s complete essays. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society.

YouTube Channel: here

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Stephanie Bolster, "Long Exposure" (Palimpsest Press, 2025)

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with award-winning poet Stephanie Bolster about her new book, Long Exposure (Palimpsest Press, 2025).

After Hurricane Katrina, the photographer Robert Polidori flew to New Orleans to document the devastation. In the wreckage he witnessed, and in her questions about what she saw in what he saw, Stephanie Bolster found the beginnings of a long poem. Those questions led to unexpected places; meanwhile, life kept pouring in. The ensuing book, Long Exposure, is Bolster's fifth, a roaming, associative exploration of disasters and their ongoing aftermaths, sufferings large and small, and the vulnerability and value of our own lives. Incremental, unsettling, Long Exposure rushes to and through.

Stephanie Bolster has published four books of poetry, the most recent of which, A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth, appeared with Brick Books in 2011 and was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award. Her first book, White Stone: The Alice Poems (Véhicule Press, 1998) won the Governor General's and the Gerald Lampert Awards, and her second, Two Bowls of Milk (McClelland & Stewart, 1999), won the Archibald Lampman Award and was a finalist for the Trillium Award. Her work has been translated into French (Pierre Blanche: poèmes d'Alice, Les Éditions du Noroît, 2007), Spanish, German, and Serbo-Croatian. She edited The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008 (Tightrope), the inaugural volume in that ongoing series; and co-edited Penned: Zoo Poems (Signal/Véhicule, 2009). Born in Vancouver, she grew up in Burnaby, BC, now lives in Pointe-Claire, Québec on the Mohawk (Kanien'kehá:ka) territory of Skaniatará:ti, and has taught creative writing at Concordia University in Montréal since 2000.

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William R. Brody, "Uncommon Sense: Rethinking Ordinary Problems in Extraordinary Ways" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Today I’m speaking with William R. Brody about his book, Uncommon Sense: Rethinking Ordinary Problems in Extraordinary Ways (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026). Bill is an interventional radiologist who served as the President of Johns Hopkins University, from 1996 to 2009, and President of the Salk Institute from 2009 to 2015. When he became president of Johns Hopkins University, Bill set out to teach a course to juniors and seniors that would serve as a crash course for dealing with the messy realities of life. Through stories and anecdotes, Bill explores a variety of important concepts that regularly manifest in all aspects of life: from survivorship bias to why career-planning doesn’t often go as planned. Uncommon Sense is one of those books that one can only write after a lifetime of learning, teaching, and doing.

Caleb Zakarin is the CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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Mary Lisa Gavenas, "Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay" (Penguin, 2026)

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

As detailed in Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay (Penguin, 2026) by Mary Lisa Gavenas, as the only woman in Forbes’ Greatest Business Stories of All Time and the first woman to chair a company on the New York Stock Exchange, Mary Kay Ash has a life story that reads like a Barbara Taylor Bradford novel.

Growing up in Depression-era Texas, Mary Kathlyn Wagner is a dutiful daughter and diligent student with ambition aplenty and no place to use it. Married at sixteen, she is a grandmother at thirty-four. When she is not cooking or cleaning or taking care of the kids, she peddles cleaning products to other housewives. The work has no salary and no security but she sticks with it, sure that direct selling will make her dreams come true.

In 1963, after she has been divorced three times and widowed twice, she sets up her own company, selling second chance and self-invention for the price of a skin care showcase. Soon millions know her as the little lady in the big wig who gives away pink Cadillacs. From its unpromising start in a 500-square-foot Dallas storefront, Mary Kay Inc. grows into a global phenomenon with 3.5 million reps in over 35 countries. She becomes the most famous saleswoman in the world. Maybe the most famous ever.

Based on fifteen years of research, Selling Opportunity gives us a page-turning rags-to-riches story set against the background of direct selling in all its overstated, over-the-top glory. Here, for the first time, is the definitive history of a peculiarly American industry and a mid-century mindset that ennobled extreme self-reliance, sticking to your guns, and blind faith in the American dream.

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The Lost World of African American Cantors 1915–1953

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Histories of Black-Jewish cultural interaction often focus on how Jews adopted and adapted Black vernacular music—ragtime, jazz, swing, R&B, blues—as performers, promoters, managers, club owners, and record labels. The phenomenon of African American musicians who performed Yiddish and cantorial music in and for the Jewish community in theaters, on record, on radio, and in concert between the World Wars deserves such scholarly inquiry. This talk will honor the memory of now forgotten Black cantors – Mendele der Shvartser Khazn, Reb Dovid Kalistrita, Abraham Ben Benjamin Franklin, Thomas LaRue Jones, and Goldye di Shvartse Khaznte, the first known Black woman cantor. This talk by award winning producer, author, and ethnomusicologist Henry Sapoznik will feature dozens of historic graphics, translations of period Yiddish newspaper previews, ads, and reviews, and the playing of the one known 1923 Yiddish and Hebrew recording of Thomas Jones LaRue.

This lecture originally took place on June 15, 2021.

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Trevor Jackson, "The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World" (Norton, 2026)

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How did an economic system that was the result of largely uncoordinated and unplanned individual decisions come to dominate our modern world? This is the core question that my guest, Berkeley economic historian Trevor Jackson, tries to answer in his new book, The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World (Norton, 2026). Jackson begins with the origins of the global monetary system in the fifteenth century and ends in the early twentieth century, when capitalism faced its most serious challenges from communism and socialism. While wage labor and financial instruments like loans and stocks feel unremarkable today, he reminds us that “it wasn’t always this way.” Capitalism is not natural, timeless, or inevitable.

Trevor Jackson is an economic historian at the University of California, Berkeley. He previous book, Impunity and Capitalism: The Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690–1830, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022.

Steven P. Rodriguez is a scholarly publishing professional and historian.

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Francisco Martínez, "The Future of Hiding: Secrecy, Infrastructure, and Ecological Memory in Estonia's Siberia" (Cornell UP, 2025)

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How can lives and things that are rendered invisible be crucial to identity, politics, and the future? Drawing on experimental ethnographic research in northeastern Estonia, this book offers vivid answers.

The Future of Hiding: Secrecy, Infrastructure, and Ecological Memory in Estonia's Siberia (Cornell UP, 2025) analyzes the territorial dimensions of secrecy and how concealment occurs in relation to energy infrastructure and identity politics in eastern Estonia. It shows that secrets and hiding places are intrinsic to human affairs, while reconsidering the possibilities of relating ethnographically to what appears to be the extraneous. Francisco Martínez highlights how basements, garages, bunkers, holes, and cottages favor alternative forms of sociality, allowing local residents to redesign the terms of their public selves. Shadow spaces in this liminal region, at the border with Russia, are created against the institutional demand to be knowable. People engage in ordinary forms of ambivalence and refusal to negotiate a sense of loss and the consequences of a century of extractive activities. The Future of Hiding invites cross-disciplinary dialogue on topics like mining, transparency, belonging and cultural landscapes, offering insights into infrastructure's reproduction and destruction, recolonizations, and the ecological memory of a sacrificed area.

Francisco Martínez is an anthropologist dealing with contemporary issues of material culture through ethnographic research. His work is known for its critical insights and experimental style. He was awarded with the Early Career Prize of the European Association of Social Anthropologists and currently works as a Ramón y Cajal Senior Research Fellow at the University of Murcia, Spain. His email address is francisco.martinez14@um.es.

Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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Raffaele Danna, "The Craft of Indo-Arabic Numerals: How Practical Arithmetic Shaped Commerce and Mathematics in Western Europe, 1200–1600" (Harvard UP, 2026)

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the thirteenth-century Mediterranean, commerce transformed as merchants shifted from Roman to Indo-Arabic numerals—an alternative that better facilitated complex calculations. It has long been known that this transition stemmed from Europe’s increasing exchanges with India, Persia, and the Arabic world. Yet much remains to be understood about how Indo-Arabic numerals—and the practical arithmetic they enabled—actually spread across Europe. As Dr. Raffaele Danna shows in The Craft of Indo-Arabic Numerals: How Practical Arithmetic Shaped Commerce and Mathematics in Western Europe, 1200–1600 (Harvard University Press, 2026), it was hundreds of ordinary merchants, schoolmasters, and artisans who nurtured these changes, thereby driving key advances in both commerce and mathematics.

Drawing on an original catalog of more than 1,200 practical arithmetic manuals, Dr. Danna charts the incremental spread of the new figures with unprecedented precision. While Italian merchants were the early adopters, it took nearly three centuries for Indo-Arabic numerals to become established in northern Europe. As Dr. Danna shows, adoption did not follow the routes of maritime trade. Rather, Indo-Arabic numerals moved gradually across the continent through inland networks of practitioners. Everywhere they went, the ten figures enhanced commercial practices and facilitated the emergence of a coherent language of mathematical craft. The growing social circulation of this knowledge, in turn, had a lasting impact on the economic trajectory of Western Europe. By the late sixteenth century, even academics were absorbing lessons from the vernacular tradition—a development that led to the first major breakthroughs in European mathematical theory since antiquity.

Combining economic history with the social history of mathematics, The Craft of Indo-Arabic Numerals illuminates the integral role of practical arithmetic in both intellectual and commercial transformations across Western Europe.

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Stephanie Farnsworth, "Games That Haunt Us: Gothic Game Space as a Living Nightmare" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Games That Haunt Us: Gothic Game Space as a Living Nightmare (Bloomsbury, 2026) is an examination of how the Gothic appears in game space to interrogate an area of substantial importance to contemporary games, with a focus on environments, bodies, and defining the Gothic in games. The Gothic, both as a literary and videogame genre has increased in prominence amongst literature, media, and culture scholars globally, as games studies becomes a more recognized and exciting field of study and as Gothic scholars find new ways to apply their works across emerging mediums. But why have Gothic games risen in popularity since 2010? What do players feel when they play these games? Why are themes surrounding fraught identities, mourning, and monstrosity gaining so much attention? Games That Haunt Us investigates the very nature of the Gothic and how video games provide new ways of connecting with the genre. The scholars in this collection look at why Gothic games are having their moment of popularity, the unsettling themes they evoke in unstable times, why we are fascinated with death and decay, theories surrounding body horror, and how games transform avatars and ourselves. Games That Haunt Us is arranged into three sequential themes: what makes a Gothic game; Gothic environments in game space; and how Gothic bodies are approached and utilized in ludonarratives.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist.

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Rugged Individualism

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 16:37:00 -0000

In this special student edition of High Theory, Andrew Bennett, Jo Hoffman, Kai North, and Ally Sullivan tell us about Rugged Individualism, a concept they link to Marxist theory. They made this episode for an assignment in Professor John Linstrom’s course on Theory and Criticism at Centenary College of Louisiana. The students provided the show notes below.

The baby theorist pictured in the fetching onesie is John's newest daughter, and not a member of the theory class that produced this episode.

The transcript of the episode lives here as a WordDoc and here as a PDF.

Show Notes

1. First minute or so is spent in the introduction of each speaker, being Centenary senior Andrew

Bennett and Centenary junior Jordan Hoffman, Andrew starts off with name dropping the podcast name, being High-Theory student version.

2. The discussion is first spent in going over the origins of rough individualism and what encourages it, which is mostly due to monetary stability.

3. Rugged individualism was seen most utilized during American expansionism during the mid to late nineteenth century, as citizens who moved to the frontier had little to no government to assist them and their families. The discussion later follows up into its more referenced era during the economic boom of the 1920’s under President Herbert Hoover and his take on rugged individualism.

4. First question: Socioeconomic status quo

5. Under the modern era, rugged individualism has been viewed as a negatively impacting idea, especially with lower economic citizens. That is not to say that there aren’t examples of individuals succeeding; however, it is not common. It is a system to keep the poor poorer and the rich richer. This shift started to fully come into view within the Reagan and Clinton administrations from the 80’s to the 90’s and even still in the present day.

6. If we were to compare the American lifestyle to other communities that center around having a community life, they would view it as a form of self-destructiveness.

7. Second question: How to utilize rugged individualism and Marxist, feminist theories

8. Rugged individualism can only work in a true meritocracy with definable gender structures, given the eras it could be said rugged individualism was properly utilized, at least before it was subverted by the wealthy's schemes for power.

9. Third question: Understanding Rugged Individualism in saving the world

10. Having the lower classes become aware of the system that holds them from achieving success for the rich.

11. The discussion begins to arrive to its end as the speakers dwell on how the rich scheme away to keep their advantage, as well as comments regarding gender roles that rugged individualism promotes, particularly with masculinity

12. Conclusion with some minor mentions to previous topics and how they correlate to their lives.

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Assessing Global Democratic Health Amidst a Growing Shadow of Autocracy

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This week on Democracy Dialogues, host Maya Tudor speaks with two democracy experts at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Freedom House to understand the headlines from Freedom House’s 2026 Report, entitled the growing shadow of autocratization. We discuss the drivers behind the 20th consecutive year of global democratic decline and compare the similarities and differences between Freedom House and Varieties of Democracy reports. We conclude by anticipating what lies ahead, what our experts are looking to understand, and what everyday citizens can do to strengthen democracy.

Links:

Freedom in the World 2026

25 Years of Autocratization

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The British General Election of 2024: A Conversation with Robert Ford and Paula Surridge

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Why and how did Labour win the 2024 election? In The British General Election of 2024 Robert Ford, a Professor of Politics at the University of Manchester, Tim Bale , Professor of Politics at Queen Mary, University of London, Will Jennings, Professor of Politics at the University of Southampton, and Paula Surridge, Professor of Politics at the University of Bristol present a detailed analysis of the context, campaign and election result. Part of a long running series of books that offer definitive accounts of British elections, the book uses a range of methods, including examining of social, print and televisual media, fieldwork with individuals from the key political parties, and deep psephological analysis to both describe and explain the 2024 result. As accessible and engaging as it as academically rigorous, the book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand contemporary politics.

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Chinatown

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

“Forget it, Jake—it’s Chinatown.” This piece of advice is as famous as it is useless: Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) will never be able to forget what he’s seen. Chinatown (1974) is also impossible to forget: whether it’s the perfect nod to noir or the best noir of all time, it’s endlessly fascinating, compelling, and disturbing. Join us for an improvised conversation about why the film still fascinates and why Noah Cross (John Huston) might be the best movie villain of all time.

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

If you want to read a great in-depth book about the making of Chinatown, check out Sam Wasson’s The Big Goodbye.

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Kaitlin P. Reed, "Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California" (U Washington Press, 2023)

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Despite it's centrality to a hippie counterculture which claimed an environmentalist ethos, California's "green rush" of cannabis growing from the mid-twentieth century onwards has been anything but. In Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California, Cal Poly Humboldt Native American Studies professor Kaitlin Reed (Yurok/Hupa/Oneida) argues that the state's booming cannabis industry can be situated squarely within other extractive settler colonial enterprises such as gold mining and overfishing. From illegal land use practices to toxic pollutants in rivers, cannabis growing in northern California has been disruptive to Indigenous relations to the land and nonhuman life, and has been for decades - a problem only worsening as the industry grows from an underground enterprise into an economic engine worth billions. Yet, as Reed argues, cannabis-as-colonialism is only part of the story, as the Yurok and other California Native people engage in acts of survivance from the court room to the cannabis field here, fighting and insisting that northern California is still Native land.

Kaitlin Reed (Yurok/Hupa/Oneida) is assistant professor of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University.

Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann has been hosting New Books Network podcasts since 2017. Currently, he is a an assistant professor of American environmental history at Appalachian State University. He can be reached at hausmannsr@appstate.edu

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Heather Shay, "Identity Building Among Role-Playing Gamers: Slaying Goblins in the Real World" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Identity Building Among Role-Playing Gamers: Slaying Goblins in the Real World (Bloomsbury 2025), Heather Shay draws from 19 months of participant-observation and 20 in-depth interviews with players. She found that gamers derive significant social and psychological benefits from table-top role-playing games-not least in that players often feel the hobby makes them better people.

Playing these games allow players to depict themselves as good, moral actors through their in-game actions as well as by making the game enjoyable for their fellow players in real life. Table-top role-playing games also serve a psychological function by allowing participants to take imaginary risks with their characters, which in turn make them feel more alive than their everyday experiences allow them to. As they pretend to be fictional characters in fictional worlds, players use these games to create identities that make their lives more meaningful.

Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Sociology at William Penn University, where he focuses on the cultural and interpretive analysis of space, behavior, and identity. His work examines how built and designed environments shape social interaction, networks, and morality in everyday life across a range of settings. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023), Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022), and his most recent book Smalltown Urban: Performing the City in Rural America (Bloomsbury, under contract).

His current research advances several interconnected projects, including the study of escape rooms as emotion-structured environments, the production of temporary urbanism in rural historic towns, and the ways students experience “hanging out” and feeling at home in higher education. He is also developing new work on the social organization and cultural meaning of rodeo.

More broadly, his scholarship is united by an interest in how people actively produce meaning, attachment, and identity within specific spatial and temporal contexts. To learn more about his work, visit his personal website or Google Scholar, connect with him on Bluesky (@professorjohnst.bsky.social) or X (@ProfessorJohnst), or reach out directly via email (johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu).

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Caste and Race: Ambedkar and King with the Ambedkar King Study Circle

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This episode features S. Karthikeyan and S. Subbulakshmi, the Convenor and Secretary of the Ambedkar King Study Circle, an anti-caste organization based in Silicon Valley. Our conversation began with a discussion of the choice of B. R. Ambedkar and Martin Luther King Jr. as the titular heads of the organization, then moved on to a conversation about its membership-based structure, the anti-caste struggles in which the AKSC has participated, and the significance of California in general, and the Silicon Valley in particular, as an epicenter of caste consolidation and anti-caste mobilization.

Guests:

S. Karthikeyan is an IT professional based in Silicon Valley and regular contributor to public outlets such as The Wire.

S. Subbulakshmi is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Centre on Longevity.

Mentioned in the episode:

B. R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

Martin Luther King Jr., “Where Do We Go from Here?”

Savera is a multiracial, interfaith, anticaste coalition of organizations and activists.

S. Karthikeyan, “The Hindu Supremacist Disinformation Campaign Against the Caste Discrimination Litigation in US”

S. Karthikeyan, “How Protections Against Caste Discrimination Are Being Opposed in the US”

S. Karthikeyan, “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing”

Ajantha Subramanian, The Caste of Merit

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Susanna Elm and Kristina Sessa, "War and Community in Late Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Susanna Elm and Kristina Sessa, War and Community in Late Antiquity (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Late Antiquity (ca. 250–600 CE) was a world at war: barbarian migrations, civil wars, raids, and increasingly porous frontiers affected millions of its inhabitants. While military and political historians have long grappled with this history, scholars of late antique society and culture rarely interrogate the consequences of near constant warfare on civilian populations, fighting forces, and the built environment. War and Community in Late Antiquity responds to this oversight by assembling archeologists, art historians, social historians, and scholars of religion to examine the impact of war on communities (households, cities, religious groups, elites and non-elites) and their reactions to ongoing stressors. Topics include the violence of everyday life as backdrop to that of war; the rhetoric of warfare and its significance for Christian authors; the effects of captivity and billeting on households; communal agency and the fortification of civilian spaces; and the challenges of articulating Christian imperial power in wartime.

New Books in Late Antiquity is presented by Ancient Jew Review

Susanna Elm She is the Sidney H. Ehrman Professor of European History at the Department of History at the University of California, Berkeley.

Kristina Sessa is Professor of History at The Ohio State University

Michael Motia teaches in Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

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A Shakeup Is Coming for the Nation-State: A Conversation with Stephen Sims

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Stephen Sims’ New Atlantis essay examines how emerging technologies are reshaping the structure and authority of the modern nation-state. He argues that innovations such as artificial intelligence, drones, and networked warfare are weakening the traditional link between territorial control and the projection of power, enabling smaller actors to operate with unprecedented reach. At the same time, advanced states are enhancing their internal capabilities through data-driven governance and automation, increasing their ability to monitor and manage populations. This dynamic creates a paradox in which states grow more powerful domestically while becoming more vulnerable externally. Sims contends that sovereignty is fragmenting, with authority dispersing both to non-state actors and to transnational technological systems. The result is not the end of the nation-state, but its evolution into a more contested, uneven, and technologically mediated form.

Stephen Sims is associate professor of political science at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Greg is the Executive Director and Founder of the World War II Discussion Forum (wwiidf.org). He also has a strong interest in literature, culture, religion, science and philosophy (translation: he's an eclectic reader who is constantly missing deadlines for book reviews).

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Karen Hao, "Empire of AI: Inside the Race for Total Domination" (Allan Lane, 2025)

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Hello! Thanks for reaching out. I'm glad you're here! Do you have any questions or thoughts about the recent discussion with Karen Hao on AI and its societal impacts?Hello! Thanks for reaching out. I'm glad you're here! Do you have any questions or thoughts about the recent discussion with Karen Hao on AI and its societal impacts?

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Jack Cheevers, "Kennedy’s Coup: A White House Plot, a Saigon Murder, and America's Descent into Vietnam" (Simon and Schuster, 2026)

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Based on a decade of research and writing, enriched by eyewitness interviews and revealing documents obtained through dozens of freedom of information requests, Kennedy’s Coup vividly recreates the Kennedy Administration’s secret encouragement of the fatal 1963 military coup against South Vietnam’s president Ngo Dinh Diem.
The brutal assassination of Diem by his own generals—which capped weeks of bitter White House infighting—led to dreadful consequences for the United States, opening the door to nine years of costly and futile warfare in Vietnam. Jack Cheevers provides unforgettable portraits of the people behind this fascinating drama: the kindly, philosophy-loving American ambassador who tried to save Diem; the powerful Pentagon and State Department figures who battled for JFK’s ear; the hard-driving young American journalists in Saigon who braved police beatings and death threats to dig out the story; the adder-tongued Madame Nhu, Diem’s beautiful sister-in-law, who enraged critics with outrageous insults; the scheming South Vietnamese generals who slowly tightened a noose around their commander in chief; the hard-drinking CIA agent who carried secret US messages to the generals; and Diem and his Machiavellian brother Nhu, head of the feared secret police, who tried but failed to outwit both the Americans and their traitorous generals.
While many Vietnam books mention Diem’s murder in passing, this gripping account delves into the participants’ personalities, motives, and actions in greater detail than ever before. The definitive history of one of the most catastrophic decisions ever made by a US president, shedding new light on events that altered the world, Kennedy’s Coup will be a work of lasting importance.

Luca Trenta is an Associate Professor in International Relations at Swansea University, in Wales (UK).

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Douglas Waller, "The Determined Spy: The Turbulent Life and Times of CIA Pioneer Frank Wisner" (Penguin, 2026)

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Frank Wisner was one of the most powerful men in 1950s Washington, though few knew it. Reporting directly to senior U.S. officials--his work largely hidden from Congress and the public-- Wisner masterminded some of the CIA’s most daring and controversial operations in the early years of the Cold War, commanding thousands of clandestine agents around the world.
Following an early career marked by exciting escapades as a key World War II spy under General William “Wild Bill” Donovan, Wisner quickly rose through the postwar intelligence ranks to lead a newly created top-secret unit tasked--under little oversight--with overseeing massive propaganda, economic warfare, sabotage, subversion, and guerrilla operations all over the world, including such daring initiatives as the CIA-backed coups in Iran and Guatemala.
But simultaneously, Wisner faced a demon few at the time understood: bipolar disorder. When this debilitating disease resulted in his breakdown and transfer to a mental hospital, the repercussions were felt throughout Washington’s highest levels of power.
Waller’s sensitive and exhaustively researched biography is the riveting story of both Frank Wisner as a national figure who inspired a cadre of future CIA secret warriors, and also an intimate and empathetic portrait of a man whose harrowing struggle with bipolar disorder makes his impressive accomplishments on the world stage even more remarkable.

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Kaie Kellough, "Interposition" (McClelland & Stewart, 2026)

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks wit Griffin Prize winner Kaie Kellough about his new long poem, Interposition (McClelland & Steward, 2026).

Featured in the Publishers Weekly Spring 2026 Preview
From Kaie Kellough, poet, sound performer, and Griffin prize winner, comes a linguistic incursion into desire, technology, and the absurd.
Kaie Kellough (Magnetic Equator, Griffin Poetry Prize winner, 2020) returns with a long poem that repurposes the language of the present. Interposition borrows its vocabulary from the news, entertainment, war, advertising, technology, and the everyday tragedies of popular culture. It reveals the morbid humour of our inability to distinguish between the urgencies of personal achievement and climate crisis. It compresses sound and rhythm into paradox, and it conflates absurdity and emergency.
Mapping the continued encroachment of capital and virtual culture upon our psychic space, Interposition examines how, with each click, we are reconstituted online and sold back to ourselves, and asks: How do we uncouple our selves from our avatars?

KAIE KELLOUGH is a poet, fiction writer, and sound performer living in Montreal. His previous collection, Magnetic Equator, won the 2020 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is a writer and vocalist for the group FYEAR and is pursuing graduate work in English at Queen’s University.

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Gennady Estraikh, "The History of Birobidzhan: Building a Soviet Jewish Homeland in Siberia" (Bloombury, 2023)

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, Alisa interviews Dr. Gennady Estraikh. His book titled, The History of Birobidzhan: Building a Soviet Jewish Homeland in Siberia (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023) was published as a part of the "Russian Shorts" series. Gennady Estraikh's book explores the birth, growth, demise and afterlife of the Birobidzhan Jewish Autonomous Region (JAR). The History of Birobidzhan looks at how the shtetl was widely used in Soviet propaganda as a perfect solution to the 'Jewish question', arguing that in reality, while being demographically and culturally insignificant, the JAR played a key, and essentially detrimental, role in determining Jewish rights and entitlements in the Soviet world. Estraikh brings together a broad range of Russian and Yiddish sources, including archival materials, newspaper articles, travelogues, memoirs, belles-letters, and scholarly publications, as he describes and analyses the project and its realization not in isolation, but rather in the context of developments in both domestic and international life. As well as offering an assessment of the Birobidzhan project in the contexts of Soviet and Jewish history, the book also focuses on the contemporary 'Jewish' role of the region which now has only a few thousand Jewish occupants amongst its residents.

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Brook Flagg, "I Go There with You: The U2 Sites of Southern California, from Significant to Sacred" (Nine Criteria, 2025)

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

U2 is a band from the north side of Dublin that became a global phenomenon-and while its four members have traveled the world over for almost fifty years, some of the most critical points on their journey have been in Southern California.

The Joshua Tree is the best-known example of U2's artistic immersion in the Golden State, but the band began drawing inspiration from California's landscape as early as 1981 during their first arrival in the U.S. for the Boy tour.

From deserts to beaches to urban streets, Southern California features dozens of sites that are both sacred and significant to U2 history. For the first time, these sites are documented and categorized in a single resource to inform and support the Southern California pilgrimages of U2 fans. I Go There With You (2026) provides the information U2 fans need before embarking on such a quest, whether individually or in groups. Each site has a story, and this book tells those stories-along with must-have details for trips that require extra planning and foresight.

In addition to essential information on each site's place in U2 history, author Brook W. Flagg aims to inspire U2's most devoted followers with anecdotes and scrapbooked images. Just as Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. traveled through Southern California along the road from innocence to experience, their fans can find catharsis and healing by going into the mystic portals of the past-places where, over the decades, U2 found pieces of what they were looking for.

Brook Flagg on Twitter.

Bradley on Facebook and Bluesky.

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Oil and Militancy in Nigeria: A Conversation with Noo Saro-Wiwa

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Noo Saro-Wiwa is an author and journalist. Born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and raised in England, she attended King's College London and Columbia University in New York.

Her first book, Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria (Granta), was published to critical acclaim in 2012. It was selected as BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week in 2012; named The Sunday Times Travel Book of the Year, 2012; shortlisted for the Author’s Club Dolman Travel Book of the Year in 2013; nominated by The Financial Times as one of the best travel books of 2012. Looking for Transwonderland has been translated into French and Italian, and was awarded the Albatros Travel Literature Prize in Italy in 2016.

Noo's second book, Black Ghosts (Canongate, 2023) explores the African community in China and was named Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year in 2025.

Her latest publication, The Burning Ground: Oil and Militancy in Nigeria (Columbia Global Reports) examines the social and environmental effects of the insurgency that arose in the oil-rich Niger Delta after the death of her father, the environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. In the report, Noo highlights the undervalued role of women and meets individuals who are working towards sustainable development. It will be published in the US on 14th April 2026, and in the UK on 28th May 2026.

Noo has also contributed to the following anthologies: Go Girl 2: The Black Woman’s Book of Travel and Adventure (2024); An Unreliable Guide to London (Influx Press, 2016); A Place of Refuge (Unbound, 2016), an anthology of writing on asylum seekers; and La Felicità Degli Uomini Semplici, an Italian-language anthology based around football.

Noo is a staff writer for Condé Nast Traveller magazine, and she has contributed book reviews, travel, opinion and analysis articles for various publications including The Guardian newspaper, The Financial Times, The Times Literary Supplement, City AM, and Chatham House.

She lives in London and supports Liverpool FC.

Ayisha Osori is a lawyer and Director at Open Society Foundations Ideas Workshop.

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Josh Franklin, "Where Are You?: Finding Yourself in the Bible" (Wipf & Stock, 2026)

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Where are you—spiritually, emotionally, and morally? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with Rabbi Josh Franklin to discuss his book Where Are You? Finding Yourself in the Bible, a thoughtful exploration of the Torah as a map of the human soul.

The question God asks Adam—“Where are you?”—echoes throughout the biblical narrative and into our own lives. In Where Are You? Finding Yourself in the Bible, Rabbi Franklin traces the emotional geography of Torah, moving through landscapes of beginnings, wandering, revelation, rupture, exile, and return. These are not only places in Scripture, but experiences that define the human journey.

Weaving together biblical text, midrash, psychology, and personal storytelling, Franklin shows how the places of the Torah reflect the inner terrain of human life—moments of uncertainty, transformation, loss, and renewal. More than a commentary on Scripture, the book offers readers an invitation to locate themselves within the sacred story and to ask what it means to move forward with purpose and awareness.

Together, Franklin and Katz explore how ancient texts speak to modern struggles, how geography becomes metaphor, and why the question “Where are you?” remains one of the most powerful spiritual prompts in Jewish tradition.

About the Guest

Josh Franklin is the Senior Rabbi of Jewish Center of the Hamptons and the author of Where Are You? Finding Yourself in the Bible. A dynamic teacher and preacher, his work blends classical Jewish texts, contemporary psychology, and personal reflection to help readers engage Torah as a guide for navigating life’s emotional and spiritual challenges.

About the Host

Marc Katz is the rabbi of Temple Ner Tamid and the author of several books on Jewish thought and the Talmud including Yochanan's Gamble: Judaism's Pragmatic Approach to Life. Through his teaching, writing, and podcast conversations with scholars and rabbis, Katz brings timeless Jewish texts into conversation with contemporary questions and lived experience.

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Kirsten Clark, "Practical Project Management for Librarians" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Librarians continue to work under budget constraints while still needing to increase the user experience and remove barriers to library resources. Learning to evaluate the best options for managing projects to accomplish goals while balancing with the reality of day-to-day work needs is integral to overall success.
In Practical Project Management for Librarians (Bloomsbury, 2025), Kirsten Clark takes readers through the process of learning how to balance the goals of the project with the reality of working in libraries today, what key questions can help move readers effectively through the project process and choose the right tools, best practices to ensure sustainability in project plans as well as outcomes, and how to incorporate diversity, inclusion, and accessibility principles into your project management. This practice guide provides step-by-step instructions to determine what project management tools and techniques match the needs of the particular library project and person/team's skills level, while also providing these in the context of libraries' specific cultures and norms.

Guest: Kirsten Clark is the director of Library Enterprise Systems at the University of Minnesota Libraries, USA, where her department oversees systems for five system campuses as well as ensures consistent and transparent application of access policies for students, faculty, researchers, and community users. In a career that has spanned working for small liberal arts colleges to research universities, she has led projects within a variety of library areas including research and instruction, collection development, access and information services, and information technology and systems.

Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

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Nathanial Gardner, "A Companion to Latin American Photography" (Tamesis, 2025)

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 04:00:00 -0000

A Companion to Latin American Photography (Tamesis Books, 2025) introduces the reader to the role that photography plays in Latin America, offers ways in which it can be studied, and reveals how this medium can promote a deeper awareness of the region. In this companion, author Nathanial Gardner reviews the history of photography in Latin America; ways in which the technology transmits distinctive information; the influence of specific photographers and their relationships with patrons, mentors, and students; the role of institutions in promoting photography; and the developing Latin American canon. The Companion to Latin American Photography also explores how the medium can shape Latin American narratives and cultural identities; assert or question power; serve as testimony and memory; and represent and empower women, children and youth, as well as marginalized groups such as the disappeared. The study is intended not only to provide an overview of Latin American photography, it also discusses innovative work taking place there. Above all, this book can be viewed as a guide to the ways in which photography can enhance and expand a viewer's knowledge of Latin America.

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Zaakir Tameez, "Charles Sumner: Conscience of a Nation" (Henry Holt, 2025)

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 09:00:00 -0000

A landmark biography of Charles Sumner, the unsung hero of the American Civil War and Reconstruction
Charles Sumner is mainly known as the abolitionist statesman who suffered a brutal caning on the Senate floor by the proslavery congressman Preston Brooks in 1856. This violent episode has obscured Sumner’s status as the most passionate champion of equal rights and multiracial democracy of his time. A friend of Alexis de Tocqueville, an ally of Frederick Douglass, and an adviser to Abraham Lincoln, Sumner helped the Union win the Civil War and ordain the Emancipation Proclamation, the Thirteenth Amendment, the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the Civil Rights Act of 1875.
In a comprehensive but fast-paced narrative, Zaakir Tameez presents Sumner as one of America’s forgotten founding fathers, a constitutional visionary who helped to rewrite the post–Civil War Constitution and give birth to modern civil rights law. He argues that Sumner was a gay man who battled with love and heartbreak at a time when homosexuality wasn’t well understood or accepted. And he explores Sumner’s critical partnerships with the nation’s first generation of Black lawyers and civil rights leaders, whose legal contributions to Reconstruction have been overlooked for far too long.
An extraordinary achievement of historical and constitutional scholarship, Charles Sumner brings back to life one of America’s most inspiring statesmen, whose formidable ideas remain relevant to a nation still divided over questions of race, democracy, and constitutional law.

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Constance Bailey et al. "Get It While It's Hot: Gas Station, Roadside, and Convenience Cuisine in the U.S. South" (LSU Press, 2026)

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Get It While It’s Hot (LSU Press, 2026) is an innovative collection that examines an increasingly commonplace belief across the U.S. South—that some of the best, most enjoyable food comes from places you would not expect: a gas station, the back of a pickup truck, or a ramshackle building made of plywood.

These essays bring together scholars, food writers, influencers, and even a CEO to discuss the phenomenon of eating by the side of the road. They look at the delicious food that can be found in such spaces, but also at the ways that gas station, roadside, and convenience cuisine contributes to the social and cultural identities of people and communities in the U.S. South. Sometimes these roadside spaces serve goals of equity and food justice as they relate particularly to race, class, and gender, and sometimes they stymy them. Contributors address the importance of roadside vendors to low-income areas and communities of color, while also revealing how gas stations and convenience stores are particularly prone to anti-Black surveillance and community gatekeeping. Several essays examine the appearance of service stations and unconventional food vendors in southern literature. Interviews with photojournalist Kate Medley, social media influencer Stafford Shurden, and Stuckey’s CEO Stephanie Stuckey provide firsthand perspectives on the diverse landscapes of food culture in the South.

By surveying the importance of roadside and convenience cuisine to communities across the region, Get It While It’s Hot illustrates that these spaces do not function like typical restaurants. They mark boundaries of community, establish consistency and familiarity, and invite people, sometimes paradoxically, to pull up a chair and sit a while.

This is Constance’s second time on the podcast. She first appeared on September 24, 2025 alongside author Kiese Laymon, discussing her book, Conversations with Kiese Laymon (University Press of Mississippi, 2025). In this episode, we also mention the Catherine Coleman Literary Arts, Food, and Social Justice Summer Program.

If you are finding this episode in real time, you can attend the virtual launch for Get It While It’s Hot on Facebook, Wednesday, April 29, 2026 at 2:00pm CT.

You can find co-editor Constance Bailey at her website and on Instagram.

Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Tiffany Jo Werth, "The Lithic Imagination from More to Milton" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Lithic Imagination from More to Milton (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Tiffany Jo Werth explores how stones, rocks, and the broader mineral realm play a vital role in early modern England's religious and cultural systems, a role that, in turn, informs the period's poetic and visual imagination. The scale of the human lifespan and the gyre-like turns of England's long Reformation provide a conceptual framework for the various stony textual and visual archives this book studies. The texts and images participate in specifically English histories (literary, artistic, political, religious) although Continental influences are frequently in dialogue. The religious orbit encompasses the Christian rivalry with Jewish culture, touches on Christianity's tension with Islam, but most intently centers on the antagonism between Catholic and variants of Protestant and Reformed belief.
The volume features canonical writers such as Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne, Wroth, Herbert, Milton and Pulter, but puts them in company with lesser-known religious polemicists, alchemists, anatomists, painters, mothers and stonemasons. Accordingly, the multimedia archive includes drama, lyric and prose as well as biblical illustrations, tapestries, church furniture, paintings, anatomical drawings and statues. The lithic too is capaciously construed as a continuum of rocky as well as mineral forms ranging from bodily encrustations like the kidney and bezoar stone, to salt, iron, limestone, marble, flint and silicon. The assemblage of materials bears witness to aspirational imperial fantasies and looming colonial conquests; it engages in both syncretism and supersession; upholds and subverts gender hierarchies; limns the race-making category of hue with desire; and supports, and sometimes thwarts, elitist ideologies of an elect, chosen people. All come together via the storied pathways of stone as densely material and as a foundation for the abstract imaginary along the scala naturae. Across the lithic-human fold, stone promises, fascinates, betrays. As alpha and omega, stone can herald salvation or it can threaten with damnation.

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Mia Martin Hobbs and Joan Beaumont, "Challenging Anzac: Stories That Don't Fit the Legend" (NewSouth, 2026)

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Challenging Anzac: Stories that don’t fit the legend Edited by Mia Martin Hobbs, Carolyn Holbrook,

The Anzac legend has shaped Australia’s national identity for more than a century. Yet many experiences of war do not fit comfortably within this.

In Challenging Anzac, leading historians explore some of these stories: Aboriginal activists, deserters on the Western Front, veterans who took their own lives and soldiers who became radicalized by their service. They reveal how episodes in Australia’s war history that unsettled the Anzac legend – from the relief of Tobruk, nuclear testing on Australian soil and feminist protests against war, to alleged atrocities in Afghanistan – have been elided or adapted to ‘fit’ the legend.

Edited by award-winning historians Mia Martin Hobbs, Carolyn Holbrook and Joan Beaumont, Challenging Anzac examines how the reality of warfare has always been at odds with mythic representation and considers why, despite this, the Anzac legend has survived.

Mia Martin Hobbs is an oral historian of war and conflict, with a research focus on the Vietnam War, War on Terror, gender, peace, security and postwar reconciliation. Her first book, Return to Vietnam: An Oral History of American and Australian Veterans’ Journeys, won the Oral History Australia Book Award in 2022 and was highly commended for the Memory Studies First Book Award in 2023. She has written widely on anti-war veteran activism, war crimes and the impact of the Anzac revival on Australian veterans’ war memory. She is presently an ARC DECRA fellow at Deakin University.

Carolyn Holbrook is a historian at Deakin University. Her latest books are Challenging Anzac: Stories that Don’t Fit the Legend, co-edited with Mia Martin Hobbs and Joan Beaumont (2026), Australia Fair? Democracy, Bureaucracy and the Making of Modern Australia, co-authored with James Walter (2026), and Gold Standard? Remembering the Hawke Government, co-edited with Frank Bongiorno and Joshua Black (2026). She is the director of the Australian Policy and History network and the Australian Health and History digital archive.

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos

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Jonathan Gray and Daphne Gershon, "Reading Media: How to Do Textual Analysis" (NYU Press, 2026)

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Reading Media: How to do Textual Analysis reinvigorates one of media and cultural studies’ most foundational methods at a moment when it is most needed, showing its continuing vitality by adapting it to new media environments, cultural objects, and scholarly questions.
The volume insists that the close study of meaning, form, and representation remains central to understanding media’s power. With contributions from leading and emerging scholars, the book offers a diverse toolkit: from narratological and semiotic analysis of film and TV, to historical poetic accounts of TikTok, multimodal analysis of Afrobeats music videos, and postcolonial criticism of games. Essays extend the scope of textual analysis to unexpected objects—such as plastic waste, memes, and refugee-authored media—while others demonstrate how texts operate across platforms, genres, and transmedia franchises. Beyond offering new and improved approaches to textual analysis, each chapter illustrates its approach using a specific case study, functioning both as a step-by-step how-to guide and as an example of textual analysis in action.
Reading Media advances a vision of textual analysis that is rigorous yet flexible, attuned to both aesthetics and politics, and responsive to today’s media environment. Essential for students and scholars in media, communication, and cultural studies, Reading Media both reaffirms and renews textual analysis as an indispensable way of engaging with the mediated worlds that shape contemporary life.

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Justin Bailey, "An Anthropology of Wandering: How Adventure Can Alleviate a Fearful Culture" (2026)

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In a culture saturated by speed, safety protocols, and mediated fear, what might we rediscover by walking or hiking slowly into the unknown?

In this episode of the New Books Network, I speak with Justin S. Bailey, author of An Anthropology of Wandering: How Adventure Can Alleviate a Fearful Culture, published by Those Who Wonder Press in 2026. Drawing on his Appalachian Trail journey, Bailey offers a wide‑ranging reflection on wandering as an ancient human practice, one tied to resilience, trust, and the shaping of perspective.

Our conversation explores how fear is culturally produced and amplified, particularly through media and information overload, and how embodied experiences of movement can recalibrate our sense of risk. Bailey also reflects on the social world of long‑distance hiking, where shared hardship fosters community, vulnerability, and unexpected forms of solidarity.

At the same time, the interview raises broader ethical and structural questions, who is able to move freely, whose mobility is celebrated, and whose is constrained or scrutinized. We discuss migration, gendered safety, and the responsibilities that come with movement through landscapes shaped by inequalities.

This episode will be of interest to listeners working in anthropology, sociology, migration studies, psychology, archeology, religious studies, and anyone reflecting on fear, movement, and what it means to live well in an uncertain world.

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Michael Lee Nirenberg, "Cinematic Immunity" (Feral House, 2026)

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The unbelievable insider stories of how they “got the shot,” Cinematic Immunity tells the story of New York City's movie industry from the crew members who created the sets, lit the scenes, and shot the film. Focused on the golden age (1950-1990) of New York filmmaking, Cinematic Immunity covers On the Waterfront through The Sopranos.

The East Coast film industry, thousands of miles from the Los Angeles executives, existed by its own rules and with little oversight. It was a close-knit and freewheeling community of movie technicians that took on the most outrageous challenges to get every shot perfect. Behind-the-scenes documentaries and books feature “above the line” talent—actors, producers, directors, and writers. For the first time, readers will hear the unvarnished truth of the New York movie industry—tales about union politics, labor strikes, movie families, dangerous locations, difficult shots, volatile directors, anecdotes about actors, pranks, friendships, rivalries, generational shifts, substance use and abuse, technical feats, and more.

Readers will hear never heard before stories about classic (and not so classic) films and television shows including: Midnight Cowboy, The Warriors, The French Connection, The Exorcist, The Godfather, The Wiz, The Taking of Pelham 123, Annie Hall, Cruising, Do The Right Thing, When Harry Met Sally, Home Alone 2, The Sopranos, and Law and Order.

Expect to discover secrets about how your favorite scenes were shot and the outrageous characters with outsized talents whose personalities sometimes dwarfed actors and directors. Tales of their exploits, what they saw (and did) on these sets was previously only passed among themselves as showbiz lore but now, readers learn of Marlon Brando’s pranks on the set of The Godfather, how crews kept William Friedkin from killing them, the actors, and himself, and how consummate New Yorker Sidney Lumet was the angel to Friedkin’s demons.

Michael Lee Nirenberg has worked as a scenic artist in New York since 2006, and in many cases, alongside many of the people featured in the book. This book is a labor of love comprised of over 150 interviews and hundreds of hours of recordings. Cinematic Immunity includes hundreds of behind-the-scenes images from studio archives and from the technicians who were there.

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Jes Battis, "It's Only Forever: Labyrinth" (ECW Press, 2026)

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Jes Battis' new book, It's Only Forever. Labyrinth (ECW Press, 2026) is a wild, intimate, and political deep dive into Jim Henson’s 1986 classic starring David Bowie and its cast of lovable, gender-defying goblins. In the 40 years since Labyrinth’s release, Jim Henson’s cult classic starring a menagerie of goblin puppets, the conversation about it has only grown louder. Fans are still holding viewing parties and masquerade balls, and creating memes inspired by David Bowie’s sardonic and sexy goblin king, numerous Etsy crafts, and even a Japanese video game. But what makes the film so enduring, beyond its technical mastery and clever script, is how it presents childhood as something dangerous, heroic, and even queer. It's Only Forever explores Labyrinth as an ’80s time capsule that both reflects and challenges its era, offering its young audience an alternative to conservatism and soulless economics, at a time when U.S. president Ronald Reagan ignored the HIV/AIDS crisis, pushing queerness further into the shadows. As Sarah, played by a teenaged Jennifer Connelly, faces down the king and his destructive whims, she exclaims, “You have no power over me,” and in that moment she is everyone who has ever felt marginalized, who has instead turned to the goblins over social and political toxicity every single time. From the costuming to the twisting plot, this classic example of 1980s fantasy shows us that the magic and comfort of childhood never need to be discarded as we are forced to enter a world that may very well seek to destroy us. Instead, Labyrinth reveals a universal and beautiful truth: that our strength comes from what we have always known ourselves to be — beastly, loving, and wildly joyful.

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Ker Gibbs, "The Fragile Dragon: Trade, Trump, and China's Vulnerabilities" (Earnshaw Books, 2026)

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The Fragile Dragon offers a unique exploration of China's rapid transformation and its evolving commercial relationship with the West. Drawing on the author's experience as president of the American Chamber of Commerce under Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden, the book examines key business and political developments from both Western and Chinese perspectives. The narrative intertwines the story of his family -- including an opium addict, an American codebreaker, and a Chinese revolutionary -- with broader geopolitical themes. As an American businessman of Chinese ancestry, the author had firsthand access to leaders on both sides and provides insightful analysis on why tensions between the US and China have escalated, threatening global commerce and stability. Finally, the author offers guidance on how business people can think about China, and what it takes to succeed, whether it's navigating the narrow corridor between what China wants and what the US will allow, partnering with rather than competing against local players, or structuring businesses to minimize risk if a catastrophic event takes place, as appears more and more likely.

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Ida Susser, "The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy: Taking to the Streets of Paris in the 21st Century" (Routledge, 2026)

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 04:00:00 -0000

Written under the shadow of growing authoritarianism in the United States and Europe, this book is an effort to understand resistance movements of the twenty-first century. It foregrounds the Yellow Vests to present an accurate and timely picture of a protest movement that baffled analysts and blurred the boundaries of left and right.

Comprehensively exploring the meaning of “les Gilets Jaunes triompheront” (the yellow vests will win), written on the Arc de Triomphe in 2018, The Yellow Vests and the Battle for Democracy details how people of all ages, many from the provinces and the urban periphery, rushed through the Paris streets, breaking windows and braving tear gas, challenging the ruling class in extraordinary and unpredictable ways. Avoiding hierarchy and stable organization, and claiming a right to a territory or space that is between the private and the public, these protests imagined a different form of collectivity that is not commodified but established by the social practice of “commoning”—of momentarily linking protests in the streets and other spaces.

An essential book for activists and researchers on contemporary protest movements, this book offers crucial insight into the formation of protests and popular resistance and how social movements generate their own political and ideological character.

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How Bolsonaro was Convicted: The Role of the Judiciary During and After Autocratization

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Former Brazilian president Bolsonaro was found to have attempted a coup after losing the 2022 presidential elections, and he was convicted to 27 years in prison. Such a conviction is unusual both for Brazil and in global comparison and speaks to the difficult but crucial role the judiciary can play when an elected leader tries to concentrate power and exceed constitutional constraints. In this second PPP episode about Brazil (you can listen to the first one, on the role of the military, here), host Licia Cianetti talks to Luciano Da Ros and Manoel Gehrke about the role the courts played in Bolsonaro’s downfall, based on their recent article “How to Bring Authoritarians to Justice” published in the January 2026 issue of the Journal of Democracy.

Transcript here

Guests:

Luciano Da Ros is Associate Professor of political science at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. His research explores the links between democracy, judicial politics, corruption and anticorruption, particularly in Latin America, and he is the co-author of the book Brazilian Politics on Trial: Corruption and Reform under Democracy (Lynne Rienner, 2022).

Manoel Gehrke is a Research Fellow at the University of Pisa, Italy, and former Research Fellow at CEDAR. He works on political accountability, contemporary threats to democracy, judicial politics, and the political economy of environmental degradation. He has published widely on the causes and consequences of prosecuting and convicting former heads of government.

Presenter:

Licia Cianetti is Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham and Founding Deputy Director of CEDAR.

The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Follow us on LikedIn

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Dawn Macdonald, "Northerny" (U Alberta Press, 2024)

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Dawn MacDonald about her Griffin Prize winning collection, Northerny (University of Alberta Press, 2024).

Northerny: winner of the 2025 Canadian First Book Prize, awarded by the Griffin Poetry Prize.

Fresh, funny, and imbued with infectious energy, Northerny tells a much-needed and compelling story of growing up and living in the North. Here are no tidy tales of aurora borealis and adventures in snow. For Dawn Macdonald, the North is not an escape, a pathway to enlightenment, or a lifestyle choice. It’s a messy, beautiful, and painful point of origin. People from the North see the North differently and want to tell their own stories in their own way, including about their experiences growing up on the land, getting an education, and struggling to find jobs and opportunities. Expertly balancing lyric reflection and ferocious realism, Macdonald busts up the cultural myths of self-interest and superiority that have long dominated conversations about both Northern spaces and working-class identities.

Dawn Macdonald lives in Whitehorse, Yukon where she grew up without electricity or running water. Her poetry collection Northerny (University of Alberta Press) won the 2025 Canadian First Book Prize and was longlisted for the Nelson Ball Prize. Her latest publication is the chapbook Weeds of Canada (above/ground press)

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Sunita Sah, "Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes" (Random House, 2025)

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How many times have you wanted to object, disagree, or opt out of something but ended up swallowing your words, shaking your head, and just going along? Featuring groundbreaking research, gripping stories, and easy everyday strategies, Defy reveals how to show up for yourself and others personally, professionally, and beyond. Sah’s data-driven approach shows why everyone needs the power of defiance and how to build this essential skill. In a moment when we are anxious and unsure what to do—whether we’re confronting injustice on a social scale or facing something closer to home—here are strategies to activate your values.

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Vin Nardizzi, "Marvellous Vegetables in the English Renaissance" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Today, I interview Vin Nardizzi, Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, about his new monograph Marvellous Vegetables in the English Renaissance (U Toronto Press, 2025), published by the University of Toronto Press. Vin Nardizzi is the author of Wooden Os: Shakespeare’s Theatres and England’s Trees (University of Toronto, 2013). He is also the co-editor of Queer Renaissance Historiography: Backward Gaze (Ashgate, 2009) and The Indistinct Human in Renaissance Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

In Marvellous Vegetables in the English Renaissance, a wide-ranging, elegantly written book, Vin argues that one of the major works of sixteenth-century plant writing, John Gerard’s The Herball, can reanimate our thinking about early modern literature and visual art. Marvellous Vegetables in the English Renaissance brings together a rich archive include Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, Ovid’s Metamorphoses and its English translations, seventeenth-century anatomy textbooks, and the paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldi and Nicholas Hilliard. The book also makes exciting methodological interventions in the critical practices of early modern scholarship.

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Radio ReOrient 14:4: The Coconut Trial with Marieha Hussain, hosted by Fatima Rajina and Stephen Lawrence Research Centre

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, Dr Fatima Rajina is joined by Marieha Hussain to talk about her experience of the Coconuts trial. A case that saw the political activist being charged with, and eventually proven innocent of, a racially aggravated public order offence for showcasing a satirical placard labelling Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman as “coconuts” prompting the fundamental question “Who has the right to police your language”?

In November 2023, Marieha was arrested for displaying a placard labelling prominent exponents of the then-Tory government as “coconuts” during a pro-Palestine protest. According to the charges put on her, the term coconut was equivalent to a racist slur. Yet, Black and Brown activists have historically used it to call out members of their communities who aligned with colonial powers and white supremacists. This episode was initially aired by Stephen Lawrence Research Centre Podcast.

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Charlotte Linton, "Dyeing with the Earth: Textiles, Tradition, and Sustainability in Contemporary Japan" (Duke UP, 2025)

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The past, present and future of ethical production in fashion

In Dyeing with the Earth, Charlotte Linton explores the intersection of small-scale traditional craft production with contemporary sustainability practices. Focusing on natural textile dyeing on the southern Japanese island of Amami Ōshima, Linton details the complex relationship between preservation practices, resource extraction, and land access in the production of Oshima tsumugi kimono cloth, which uses the indigenous technique of dorozome (or mud-dyeing). As global interest in sustainable fashion grows, textile manufacturers on Amami have expanded from kimono production to dyeing garments and textiles for high-profile designers. While traditional craft may appear at odds with the large-scale global textile industry, Linton reveals how Amamian and global producers face similar social, economic, and environmental pressures. Ethical production in fashion, Linton contends, should focus on understanding local everyday practices that sustain direct relationships between people, place, and environment rather than rely on short-term solutions via new processes or materials. Weaving together ethnography, photography, and illustration, Linton underscores the continued relevance of traditional craft and material cultures amid ongoing climate change and biodiversity loss.

Charlotte Linton is Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

Lucas Tse is Examination Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.

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Mattie Fitch, "The People, the Workers, and the Citizens: Antifascist Cultures and the Popular Front in France, 1934–1939" (Routledge, 2025)

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Today we are joined by Mattie Fitch, Associate Professor at Marymount University and author of The People, The Workers and the Citizens: Antifascist Cultures and the Popular Front in France, 1934-1939 (Routledge, 2026).

In our conversation, we discussed the way that antifascist culture undergirded the French Popular Front, the tensions between the Communists, Socialists, and Radical antifascist projects, and the ways that each Popular Front party of defined “the people.”

In The People, The Workers and the Citizens, Fitch explores Popular Front antifascist programs and the cultural work that illuminated their diverse visions for a “people’s government.” The book is thematic: in her first chapter, Fitch examines the Communists’ Maison de la Culture and the Fédération musicale populaire. The communist’s efforts to produce a worker’s culture successfully mobilized French national symbols in novel ways but had difficulties navigating between high and low culture.

By contrast, chapter 2 centres on Jean Zay and the Radicals. Zay’s influence abounded and he was willing to work with anyone in the Popular Front to see cultural access extended to all French citizens. Yet his vision of a civic nationhood clashed with his Communist and Socialist allies who privileged workers.

The most enigmatic were the Socialists. Although they were the largest party in the French National Assembly, Leon Blum’s party struggled to articulate an antifascist program that encompassed all of their voters. Their pacifism proved a problem in the context of a rising Nazi Germany, and they were squeezed between the increasing nationalism of the French Communists and the Radicals’ appeal to the working class.

Fitch’s analysis moves beyond earlier studies that focus mostly (or only) on Paris. In chapters 4 and 5, she looks at the antifascist activities of politicians in Marseille and Rouen and finds two very different Popular Fronts at work in the regions. In Marseille, working class politics dominate and an authentic endogenous Popular Front culture precedes directives from the capital. While in Rouen, extremely moderate Radicals battle working class activists on the other side of town.

Fitch’s work is compelling and shines a new light on the history of the Popular Front. It will be of interest to scholars of modern France and political culture.

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Vanda Krefft, "Expect Great Things!: How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women" (Algonquin Books, 2026)

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

It’s a safe bet that most of the secretaries on the TV series Mad Men would have attended the Katharine Gibbs School in New York City. The iconic institution was in its heyday in the 1950 and '60s synonymous with supplying secretaries—always properly attired in heels, ladylike hats, and white gloves—to male executives. In Expect Great Things! Vanda Krefft turns the notion of a “Gibbs girl” on its head, showing us that while the school was getting women who could type 90 words per minute into the C-suite, its more subversive mission was to get them out of the secretarial pool to assume positions of power on the other side of the desk. And Gibbs graduates did just that, tackling the sexism of the era and paving the way for 21st-century women to succeed in any profession.
Katharine Gibbs was one her own success stories. She started her school when, as a 46-year-old widow, she was left near-broke with two young sons. The school taught typing and stenography but Gibbs also hired accomplished professors from elite colleges to teach academic subjects—it was a well-rounded education that produced early feminists ready to tackle the sexism of their era. "Expect great things!" was her motto and her philosophy. Within a decade she’d opened schools in three elegant locations. With nostalgic period photographs throughout, Expect Great Things! takes us back to Katie Gibbs’s life and tells the stories of the women she influenced. We meet Gibbs graduates who worked for the Walt Disney, Marilyn Monroe, and Robert F. Kennedy. Others forged pathfinding roles as an Emmy-winning television star, a women’s rights advisor to four U.S. presidents, a writer of Wonder Woman comic books, the head of the Women’s Marines, a best-selling young adult author, and a U.S. Ambassador.
For readers of The Barbizon and Come Fly the World, Expect Great Things! reveals the seismic impact the Katharine Gibbs school had on the American workplace—and on women’s opportunities today.

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Mujun Zhou, "The Death and Life of Chinese Civil Society" (U Michigan Press, 2026)

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In a society undergoing rapid transformation, how do people engage in debates around a foreign concept and in doing so, pursue contested political futures?

The Death and Life of Chinese Civil Society examines how a group of Chinese intellectual elites referred to as the liberals or ziyou pai edified the civil society project beginning in the 1990s to build an independent space to constrain state power, increase political participation, and promote China’s democratization. In the early 2000s, activists in movements such as the environmental and the AIDS movements identified with the liberals and regarded their activism as part of the project of building civil society. However, since the late 2000s the liberals’ influence has gradually declined. In prominent social movements in the 2010s such as the labor and feminist movements, activists have openly criticized the liberal interpretation of civil society and regarded liberals’ civil society agenda as irrelevant.

In the book, Mujun Zhou employs the concept of interstitial space, or the space where the exercise of power has not been fully institutionalized, to examine the history of the civil society project over the past three decades and its changing relationship with other social movements. Zhou suggests that by advocating for civil society the liberals gained allies and thematized many social problems rising during China’s economic reform; however, liberals’ activism also produced new forms of power inequalities.

Mujun Zhou is a cultural-political sociologist. She is currently Associate Professor of Sociology at Zhejiang University. Her major research interests lie in issues in political culture and social change.

Yadong Li is an anthropologist-in-training. He is a PhD candidate of Socio-cultural Anthropology at Tulane University. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here.

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Shameem Black, "Flexible India: Yoga's Cultural and Political Tensions" (Columbia UP, 2023)

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Yoga has offered the Indian state unprecedented opportunities for global, media-savvy political performance. Under Modi, it has promoted yoga tourism and staged mass yoga sessions, and Indian officials have proposed yoga as a national solution to a range of social problems, from reducing rape to curing cancer. But as yoga has gone global, its cultural meanings have spiraled far and wide. In Flexible India: Yoga's Cultural and Political Tensions (Columbia University Press, 2024), Dr. Shameem Black travels into unexpected realms of popular culture in English from India, its diaspora, and the West to explore and critique yoga as an exercise in cultural power.

Drawing on her own experience and her readings of political spectacles, yoga murder mysteries, court cases, art installations, and digital media, Dr. Black shows how yoga’s imaginative power supports diverse political and cultural ends. Although many cultural practices in today’s India exemplify “culture wars” between liberal and conservative agendas, Flexible India argues that visions of yoga offer a “culture peace” that conceals, without resolving, such tensions. This flexibility allows states, corporations, and individuals to think of themselves as welcoming and tolerant while still, in many cases, supporting practices that make minority populations increasingly vulnerable. However, as Dr. Black shows, yoga can also be imagined in ways that offer new tools for critiquing hierarchical structures of power and race, Hindu nationalism, cultural appropriation, and self-help capitalism.

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Yair Mintzker, "I, Wandering Jew: A Five-Century History of Our Modern Condition" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The story behind the mythical figure of "the Wandering Jew" is one of the most fascinating tales in European history. In I, Wandering Jew, National Jewish Book Award-winning historian Yair Mintzker traces the tale back to its source, follows its many metamorphoses through five centuries, and relates it to the fraught present moment.

According to a mysterious pamphlet published in 1602, the Wandering Jew was a real person, named Ahasversus, who was cursed by Jesus to eternal wandering after refusing to help him as he was led to his crucifixion. For more than four hundred years, many otherwise reliable witnesses have claimed to have seen the Wandering Jew. Moving in reverse chronological order, I, Wandering Jew explores crucial episodes in the story of this figure. We meet an unforgettable, Wandering Jew-like character who appeared out of nowhere in Israel in the 1950s; a nineteenth-century novelist who was the first Jew to favorably describe the Wandering Jew; an eighteenth-century German scholar who saw the Wandering Jew emerging from a devastating fire; and the man who likely inspired the 1602 pamphlet.

A work of history that reads like a detective story, I, Wandering Jew is also part memoir. As Mintzker discovers affinities between his own story and that of the Wandering Jew, the surprising history of an old antisemitic trope and its meanings becomes a profound meditation on home and exile, Judaism and Christianity, poetry and truth, the deep past and the present.

Yair Mintzker is professor of European history at Princeton University, where he also serves as the faculty head of Yeh College. Mintzker’s work explores the Sattelzeit, the time period in German history roughly between 1750 and 1850, with books dedicated to urban history, law, intellectual history, Jewish history, and literature. A future project involves military history as well.

Born and raised in Jerusalem, Mintzker received his M.A. in history from Tel-Aviv University (2003) and his Ph.D. from Stanford (2009). His latest book combines historical research and memoir in retelling the legend of Ahasver, the Wandering Jew. Its title is I, Wandering Jew: A Five-Century History of Our Modern Condition (Princeton UP, 2026).

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Craig Perry, "Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: A History" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Slavery was a key part of pre-modern Islamic society, spanning from soldiers to concubines. And one of the most revealing repositories of evidence we have for how slavery worked in practice comes from the Cairo Geniza, a cache of hundreds of thousands of discarded documents from a medieval synagogue in Cairo.

Craig Perry examined these documents for his new book: Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: A History (Princeton University Press, 2026). The book dives into everyday documents, like wills and manumission deeds, to reconstruct how Jewish households in Egypt bought, sold, owned and freed enslaved people—and how they grappled with the morality of owning slaves, given Judaism’s own history.

Craig Perry is assistant professor at Emory University in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies, the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, and the Islamic Civilizations Studies Graduate Program. He is the 2024 Andrew W. Mellon Family Foundation Rome Prize winner in Medieval Studies and the coeditor of The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 2, AD 500–AD 1420.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon.

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The MANTRAMS Project: Mantras in Religion, Media, and Society in Global Southern Asia

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Carola Lorea discusses the MANTRAMS project, a major ERC Synergy Grant initiative jointly hosted by Oxford, Vienna, and Tübingen dedicated to producing a history and anthropology of mantras. The six-year project investigates mantras across millennia and geographies — from their roots in Indian religious traditions through their circulation across South and Southeast Asia to their role in global spiritualities today — building extensive sonic, textual, and visual archives along the way.

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Liz Bucar, "Beyond Wellness: How Restoring the Religious Roots of Spiritual Practices Can Heal Us" (Penguin, 2026)

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Liz Bucar is a religious ethicist and professor of religion at Northeastern University, as well as a certified intenSati and Kripalu yoga instructor. Her popular writing has appeared in The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, Teen Vogue, and The Wall Street Journal, and she is the author of four books, including the award-winning Stealing My Religion and Pious Fashion. She lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. For more about how religion shapes us all, even if we don’t believe, subscribe to Liz’s newsletter at LizBucar.com.

In the chaos of today’s world, we’re all searching for meaning. The wellness industry has sold us a promise that we can find it if we just buy the right products, attend the right retreats, and follow the right celebrity gurus. But is this true? Or are we picking and choosing from a self-care salad bar in ways that satisfy our hunger but don’t truly nourish us?
When we approach practices like yoga and ayahuasca as fitness routines and life hacks, we miss out on the sacred wisdom they have to offer us. But by digging into the real and often ancient religious traditions behind these practices, from Buddhism to Christianity and beyond, we can make them more meaningful, ethical, and effective—without the often unpleasant baggage of joining an organized religion.
In this engaging and deeply personal book, award-winning scholar and writer Liz Bucar embarks on a quest to get to the heart of “spiritual but not religious” activities from detox diets to sound baths. As she tries out each practice for herself, she asks how we can get more out of it by tuning out the hype and taking the religious meaning behind it seriously—with emotionally profound and often surprising results. Whether it’s as simple as setting an intention for a yoga asana or as complex as reevaluating what a “higher power” is, it’s time to understand, experience, and simply get more out of our spiritual practices. It’s time to dig deeper with Beyond Wellness.

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Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Caroline Bicks became the first scholar granted extended access by Stephen King to his private archives, a treasure trove of manuscripts that document the legendary writerʼs creative process—most of them never before studied or published. The year she spent exploring King’s early drafts and hand-written revisions was guided by a question millions of Kingʼs enthralled and terrified readers (including her) have asked themselves: What makes Stephen King’s writing stick in our heads and haunt us long after we’ve closed the book? Dr. Bicks focuses on The Shining, Carrie, Pet Sematary, ʼSalemʼs Lot, and Night Shift—to reveal how he crafted his language, story lines, and characters to cast his enduring literary spells.

While tracking King’s margin notes and editorial changes, she discovered cut scenes and alternative endings that King is allowing her to publish now. The book also includes her interviews with King, that reveal new insights into his writing process and personal history. Part literary master class, part biography, part memoir and investigation into our deepest anxieties, Monsters in the Archive is unlike anything published about the master of horror. It chronicles what Dr. Bicks found when she set out to unearth how King crafted some of his scariest, most iconic moments. But it’s also a story about an English professor facing her childhood fears and getting to know the man whose monsters helped unleash them.

Guest: Dr. Caroline Bicks is the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine. She is the author of Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s World and Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare’s England; co-author of Shakespeare Not Stirred: Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas; and co-host of the Everyday Shakespeare Podcast.

Show Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the creator and producer of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Once Upon A Tome

The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker

Claire Myers Owens and the Banned Book

Before and After the Book Deal

Your Art Will Save Your Life

Becoming The Writer You Already Are

The Top 10 Struggles in Writing A Book Manuscript and What To Do About It

Do You Need A Developmental Editor?

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Indigenous Employment and Cultural Safety: Building Real Pathways with guest Craig Seinor-Davies

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 05:00:00 -0000

*Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this episode may contain the name of deceased persons.*

Podcast description: In the final episode of our first season, we sit down with Craig Seinor-Davies about what it means to create meaningful pathways for marginalised groups across our institutions. Craig is a proud Darug man, and the Indigenous Employment Manager here at the University of Sydney. Tune in to hear Craig share his reflections on identity, home, culture, and how his professional experience in community work and supporting at-risk youth through mentoring and holistic support networks influences his work for creating culturally safe and inclusive spaces. We explore what cultural competence and cultural safety look like in practice and unpack the lessons that shape his approaches to equity and inclusion.

Produced by: Adubi Plange, Dr Amy McHugh, Sarah Mashman

Podcast Artwork: Zein Arif

Resources:

Mental Health Support Services:

For University of Sydney staff: CONVERGE

Converge offers multiple dedicated helplines for specialist services:

All staff: 1300 687 327
First Nations helpline: 1300 287 432
LGBTQIA+ Helpline: 1300 542 874
Domestic and Family Violence Helpline: 1300 338 465
Aged Care Helpline: 1300 035 337
Disability and Carers Helpline: 1300 243 543
Youth and Student Helpline: 1300 687 399
Spiritual and Pastoral Care Helpline: 1300 772 435
www.convergeinternational.com.au

Wellmob – social, emotional and cultural wellbeing resources for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

https://wellmob.org.au/

24-hour crisis hotlines

13 Yarn
Beyond Blue
LifeLine:
NSW Mental Health Line

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Daisuke Miyao, "Ozu and the Ethics of Indeterminacy" (Duke UP, 2026)

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Ozu and the Ethics of Indeterminacy (Duke University Press, 2026) re-examines cinema studies through the work of Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu, employing the multiple methodologies and indeterminacy of Ozu’s films as a model for discussions of cinema’s relationship to the world and the formation of film studies as a discipline.

Author Daisuke Miyao is Professor and Hajime Mori Chair in Japanese Language and Literature at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author and editor of several books, including Japonisme and the Birth of Cinema, The Aesthetics of Shadow: Lighting and Japanese Cinema, and Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom, published by Duke University Press.

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Sarah Jaffe, "From the Ashes: Grief and Transformation in a World on Fire" (Bold Type Books, 2024)

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

From the author of Work Won't Love You Back, a stirring examination of how collective grief can ignite powerful change. Our era is one of significant and substantial loss, yet we barely have time to acknowledge it. The losses range from the personal grief of a single COVID death to the planetary disaster wrought by climate change, in an age of unraveling hopes and expectations, of dreams curtailed, of aspirations desiccated. This is capitalism's death phase. It has become clear that the cost of wealth creation for a few is enormous destruction for others, for the marginalized and the vulnerable but increasingly for all of us. At the same time, we are denied the means of mourning those futures that are being so brutally curtailed. At such a moment, taking the time to grieve is a political act. Sarah Jaffe shows how the act of public memorialization has become a radical statement, a vibrant response to loss, and a path to imagining a better world. When we are able to grieve well the ones we have lost, the causes they fought for, or the examples they bequeathed us, we are better prepared to fight for a transformed future.

Sarah Jaffe is a journalist and labor reporter who writes about work, inequality, and social movements. Her work has appeared in major publications such as The Nation, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. Jaffe has long reported on labor struggles and worker organizing, including movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Fight for $15 campaign. She is also the author of Necessary Trouble and Work Won't Love you Back. She is co-host of the labor podcast Belabored. Her writing focuses on how economic systems shape everyday life and workers’ experiences.

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Jan Cress Dondi, "The Navigator's Letter" (Union Square, 2026)

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

One of the riskiest air raids of World War II occurred on August 1, 1943, over the oil fields at Ploesti, Romania--Nazi Germany's primary fuel source. The Allies believed that the destruction of Hitler's oil refineries would shorten the war. Using an untested strategy, it was worth the gamble, but the mission did not go according to plan--with 53 aircraft and 532 crewmen lost, it was the costliest US air raid of the war.

A true story, The Navigator's Letter is a tale of uncanny coincidences: two friends from the same small Illinois town; both joined the Air Corps; both became navigators; both were assigned to B-24 Liberators; both flew missions over Europe; both of their planes were forced down over Ploesti; and both went missing-in-action.

Intertwined with events of WWII, the story follows the two B-24 navigators coursing through wartime, both with ties to the same woman. Their lives unfurl with the Air Force's darkest day, Operation Tidal Wave. It was the first-ever zero-altitude air raid followed by multiple high-altitude raids culminating in Operation Reunion, the largest evacuation by air in history with the Tuskegee Airmen of the 332nd Fighter Group flying escort repatriating 1,162 POWs from Romania back to American air bases in Italy.

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Sarah Murray, "Powered by Smart: A Prehistory of Everyday AI" (NYU Press, 2026)

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Powered by Smart traces the techno-cultural evolutions that made artificial intelligence feel more familiar than futuristic. From wearables and streaming platforms to home voice assistants and AI toasters, smart is an inescapable feature of postdigital life. Today, thousands of products and platforms define smart as routine automation and friendly digital kinship. Yet smartness was not always so digital. Sarah Murray uncovers the century-long process through which smart became synonymous with seamless interaction between bodies and machines, showing how this intimate interfacing helped to normalize today’s algorithmic world.
Offering a critical, feminist prehistory of everyday AI, Powered by Smart reveals how the pursuit of convenience, comfort, and efficiency has long been a gendered campaign. Smartness has often been associated with women — from early switchboard operators and industrial designer Lillian Gilbreth’s test kitchens to Jane Fonda’s Jazzercise empire and Disney’s computer-housewife PAT in Smart House. These moments illuminate how machine intelligence has already been made ordinary, and how the smart ideal was built over time through domesticity, discipline, and desirability.
Moving across factory floors, suburban kitchens, exercise trends, and digital homes, Murray shows how twentieth-century innovations in wearability, solutionism, and recognition laid the groundwork for our contemporary tolerance of — and attachment to — AI. Far from a sudden technological revolution, everyday AI emerged through decades of cultural conditioning of smart life as a caring, attentive endeavor that cast human–machine harmony as both natural and necessary. Powered by Smart reframes artificial intelligence not as the next frontier of progress, but as the logical extension of a much older dream of efficiency made ordinary and personal.

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The Information State: How is the State Surveilling and Manipulating us These Days?

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Acting Director Eli Karetny interviews Jacob Siegel, writer, Army veteran, and author of The Information State. Siegel traces how military information operations, post‑9/11 surveillance programs, and Silicon Valley’s rise converged to create a new public‑private regime of control over information, attention, and consent. He discusses the intellectual roots of technocratic governance from Francis Bacon and Leibniz through progressivism, World War I propaganda, and cybernetics, and explains how the “information state” differs from classical authoritarianism. Finally, Siegel reflects on Trumpism, the tech counter‑elite around figures like Elon Musk, and how AI may usher in a more “Pharaonic” and quasi‑spiritual form of politics beyond traditional expert‑driven technocracy.

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Drew Flanagan, "From Occupation to Integration: Recivilizing the French Zone of Post-Nazi Germany, 1945-1955" (LSU Press, 2026)

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

After the collapse of the National Socialist regime in May 1945, France became one of four principal occupying powers in a defeated Germany. Within their zone of occupation along the Upper and Middle Rhine, French occupiers participated in the Allied project to remake German society. In the process, they confronted the long history of Franco-German rivalry in the region and their country’s diminished power in the wake of World War II.
From Occupation to Integration: Recivilizing the French Zone of Post-Nazi Germany, 1945-1955 (LSU Press, 2026) by Dr. Drew Flanagan explores how French ideas about civilization and the civilizing process shaped the practice of occupation in the French Zone and the early stages of European integration. The French Zone was set apart from the other Allied zones by the occupiers’ belief that Nazi “barbarism” was deeply rooted in German culture and history. In seeking to transform the Germans along their border into acceptable partners for France within a united western Europe, the French occupiers applied aspects of France’s universal “civilizing” mission, adapting strategies and practices developed in the country’s overseas colonies to fit a European population.
Whether implementing counterinsurgency methods developed in French North Africa in the pacification and control of their zone or attempting to address what they perceived as the deep-rooted flaws of German culture through reeducation and propaganda, the French applied their civilizational thinking, using that vision to justify and guide the first postwar attempts at cross-border economic integration. Through both conflicts and cooperation with the German population, the French in occupied Germany negotiated a shared vision of western European civilization that they hoped would ensure French leadership in Europe.
In this engaging study, Dr. Flanagan deftly details and analyzes the entanglement between the Europeanization of the French Zone and decolonization in France’s empire, prompting readers to consider the continued impact of colonial and imperial ideas and practices on contemporary Europe and the European Union.

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The Crisis of American Political Economy: On the New Conservative Policy Agenda with Chris Griswold

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this sixth episode of Season 5, I interview Mr. Chris Griswold. An alum of Wheaton College and Princeton Theological Seminary, he was formerly a senior advisor to then Senator Marco Rubio, and is currently the Policy Director for American Compass—a leading center-right public policy think-tank.

Recently, he contributed to the book, The New Conservatives (2025), an anthology edited by his colleague, Oren Cass, that re-articulates a conservative economic vision for the country. Drawing on it, we discuss the crisis of America’s political economy, from questions surrounding current AI, automation, and the end of free trade; political instability and populism; how economic policy can best serve American workers and families; and what makes us hopeful for the country’s future during its 250th anniversary.

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Masud Husain, "Our Brains, Our Selves: What a Neurologist’s Patients Taught Him About the Brain" (Canongate, 2025)

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What makes us who we are?
Through the stories of seven of his patients, acclaimed Oxford University neurologist Masud Husain shows us how our brains create, change and can even restore our identity. Husain introduces us to a man who ran out of words, a woman who lost all inhibitions and another who believed she was having an affair with the man who was really her husband.
These compelling human dramas reveal how our identities are created by different functions within the brain. It will ignite new ideas about who we really are – and why we act in the ways we do.

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Sarah Jean Grimm, "Hog Lagoon" (blush, 2023) and "Soft Focus" (Metatron, 2017)

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Sarah Jean Grimm is the author of Soft Focus (Metatron, 2017) and the chapbook Hog Lagoon (blush, 2023). She was a founding editor of Powder Keg Magazine (2014-2019) and currently edits the small poetry press After Hours Editions. She lives in upstate New York and works as a book publicist with Broadside PR.

Book Recommendations:

Niina Pollari Paths of Totality

Song Cave Press, Emily Skillings, Tantrums in Air

Michael Earl Craig, Thin Kimono

Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers.

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Berardino Palumbo, "Where Saints Show Respect: Mafia, Modernity, and Rituals of Power" (Berghahn Books, 2026)

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Where Saints Show Respect: Mafia, Modernity, and Rituals of Power is an anthropological exploration of how authority is produced not only through violence or secrecy but also through public ritual. Drawing on more than thirty years of ethnographic research in Sicily, Professor Berardino Palumbo turns our attention to saints’ festivals, processions, fireworks, ritual gestures and moments when power becomes visible, tangible, and socially negotiated.

At the centre of the book is the now well-known practice of saints “showing respect”: statues pausing or bowing during processions in front of particular homes or streets. Palumbo treats these not as traditional leftovers, but as modern political acts through which hierarchy, recognition, and moral worth are publicly visible. Power, he argues, is learned not only through fear or coercion, but through piety, celebration, play, and spectacle.

The English edition is translated and edited by Cornelia Mayer Herzfeld. The book opens with a foreword by Michael Herzfeld, who situates it within broader debates on modernity, Europe, and anthropological critique. It closes with an afterword by Jane and Peter Schneider, placing Palumbo’s work in dialogue with the long tradition of anthropological research on Sicily and the mafia, while highlighting what is novel in his approach.

Rather than treating the mafia as a hidden or external force, Where Saints Show Respect shows how it is woven into everyday social relations, religious life, and shared moral worlds. In doing so, the book challenges readers to rethink modernity, not as the disappearance of ritual, but as its reconfiguration.

This is an invitation to look more closely at how power operates wherever it appears festive, familiar, or “traditional” and to ask what makes us see some rituals as political and others not.

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Stephen F. Jones, "The First Social Democracy: The Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918–1921" (Harvard UP, 2026)

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Following the collapse of the Russian Empire, the small nation of Georgia established its independence in May 1918. Its leaders surprised the world by creating the first social democratic state. Based on a combination of parliamentarianism and direct democracy, it was a representative government of the peasants and workers themselves, with ballots in their hands.

The First Social Democracy: The Democratic Republic of Georgia, 1918–1921 (Harvard University Press, 2026) is the definitive history of a government that should inspire social democrats today. Professor Stephen F. Jones chronicles how the founders of the new state navigated myriad challenges, including territorial threats from abroad, internal ethnic conflicts, and geopolitical rivalries between the imperial Ottomans, the British, and the Germans. In the midst of these existential challenges, Georgia’s social democrats set about writing a constitution to put the country on a distinctive path of genuine self-government—protecting democratic rights, promoting political pluralism, and championing equality. Professor Jones brings to life the passionate debates that shaped Georgia’s democracy during a moment of acute global instability.

The Democratic Republic of Georgia was strangled in its crib. Just four days after the constitution was ratified, the capital fell to the Red Army. Under Soviet rule, the republic was lost to history. Soviet scholars were forbidden to research this Georgian story, and Western scholars had little interest in a small and peripheral state that was independent for only three years. Recovering a forgotten experiment in democratic citizenship and statecraft, Dr. Jones reminds us of those audacious times when Georgians created and defended political freedom against the rise of Soviet communism.

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Lauren J.A. Bear, "Aphrodite in Pieces" (Ace, 2026)

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Aphrodite in Pieces gathers diverse myths featuring the goddess and unites them to create a comprehensive portrait. Beginning with her innocent days on the island of Cyprus, progressing to her disappointing welcome in the pantheon of Olympus, and culminating in her shattering experiences of the Trojan war, Aphrodite is depicted in all her aspects—calculating and vengeful, kind and forgiving, passionate and abandoned.

A woman does not live her life independent of society. As it is above, so it is below. Sometimes Aphrodite is praised for her beauty, and other times, her pulchritude condemns her to be judged as a whore. As Aphrodite grows in wisdom, she finds compassion for women such as Helen of Troy who suffer a similar fate.

The stories of Aphrodite remain pertinent today. In them, Lauren J.A. Bear finds reflections and connections between art, love, and beauty.

Gabrielle Mathieu writes historically inspired fantasy with a dash of romance and a dollop of adventure. You can find out more about her books and upcoming interviews on authorgabrielle.com.

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The (Un)imagined Work of Linguistic Inclusion

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Emily Pacheco speaks with PhD candidate Brynn Quick (Macquarie University, Australia) about her 2025 paper, The (un)imagined work of determining patients’ English language proficiency. The conversation focuses on language policies in healthcare, the monolingual logic, and language access.

Quick, B., Piller, I., & Lising, L. (2025). The (un)imagined work of determining patients’ English language proficiency. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2025.2594462

Abstract. This study investigates how Australian healthcare policies imagine communication between limited English proficiency (LEP) patients and healthcare providers to occur. This is done through a work as imagined (WAI) vs. work as done (WAD) analysis of 13 Australian medical policies from four levels of governance. Findings reveal that policies mostly conceptualise the work of determining if a patient needs a professional interpreter as an act of self-assessment that patients will do themselves. When policies direct healthcare staff to assess patients’ English language proficiency, they often instruct staff to ‘determine if the patient can understand English’, usually without clear instruction on how to do this. Finally, while communication is the goal that drives many of these policies, ‘successful’ communication is conceptualised as language-neutral, implicitly privileging English and erasing LEP patients’ language needs. These findings reflect a novel way of framing policies’ monolingual logic of WAI within the multilingual reality of WAD and mark an innovative contribution to the study of language access rights.

For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here.

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Francis Young, "Fairies: A History" (John Wiley & Sons, 2026)

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Many people think they know what fairies are, what a fairy looks like, and how a fairy is expected to behave. Dr. Francis Young's Fairies: A History (Polity, 2026) demonstrates that the truth about belief in fairies is far stranger than clichéd images of tiny figures with wings and wands.
Before the rise of the 'small winged fairy' in the nineteenth century, the category of fairies included a vast range of supernatural human-like creatures, from the elves of Scandinavia and the aos sí of Ireland to the vilas of the Balkans and the fadas of Iberia. Dr. Young traces the ancient origins of belief in such creatures and how it adapted to the rise of Christianity and then flourished in medieval Europe, before being transformed – but not destroyed – by the upheavals of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and even European colonial expansion, which made fairies a global phenomenon. He concludes this uniquely wide-ranging history by reflecting on the surprising ways in which fairy belief endures in our apparently disenchanted contemporary world.
No one who reads this brilliant tour through the enchanted pathways of fairyland will ever look at the winged creatures of contemporary popular culture – or the woods at the bottom of their garden – in the same way again.

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David Blumenthal and James A. Morone, "Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science" (Yale UP, 2026)

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

For nearly a century, every Democratic president—and many Republicans—entered office promising to restructure America’s health care system. Barack Obama finally broke through but, in the process, opened a tumultuous decade in which battles over health care dominated American politics. In Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science (Yale University Press, 2026), Dr. David Blumenthal and Dr. James A. Morone go behind the scenes to describe how three very different presidents—pursuing very different goals—maneuvered through the fraught politics of health care.
President Obama ended the century-long quest for reform but ignited a screaming culture war that blazed into the Trump administration and blew up during the COVID epidemic. President Trump, facing the greatest health crisis in a century, denied and dithered. Then he directed a medical triumph in Operation Warp Speed. He and President Biden, facing the pandemic’s devastation, mounted the most successful anti-poverty program in eighty years. But in the tumult, Trump launched a shattering new political war, not over coverage but over science itself.
Authoritative and gripping, this book describes the remarkable achievements of these years while also showing how respect for science clashed with scorn toward the deep state and left the nation unprepared for the next health crisis.

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Wade Bishop et al., "A Critical Look at Information Science and Librarianship in a New Age" (Emerald Publishing, 2026)

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A Critical Look at Information Science and Librarianship in a New Age: Constellation of Insanity (Emerald, 2026) fosters a platform for information scientists to engage in reflection and contemplation regarding the profound questions of our era. By drawing insights from pioneers in the field whose contributions were once marginalized or, in some instances, overlooked within the realm of information science, chapter authors strive to re/center the field's focal point.

Chapter authors draw from a diverse array of frameworks including critical theory, deconstruction, queer theory, borderlands, among others. What sets this book apart is its direct confrontation of the status quo and aggressively re/claims intellectual space for “others”. This is the only book to critique the entire discipline of Information Science from as many angles as possible in one volume and as far outside of the traditional organizations.

Guest: Wade Bishop is a Professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. His research foci include research data management, data discovery, geographic information science, as well as the study of data occupations, education, and training. He has published many works evaluating the services and resources of academic and public libraries. He earned an MLIS from the University of South Florida School of Information and a PhD from Florida State University’s School of Information.

Renate Chancellor is Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Access, Ethics, & Belonging at the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. She holds both a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Information Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and is affiliated with the Syracuse University Lender Center for Social Justice. Dr. Chancellor’s research is grounded in critical race theory and critical cultural information studies, with a focus on access, equity, ethics, belonging, and social justice in Library and Information Science (LIS). She is the author of seminal biographies of Black librarians, including E.J. Josey: Transformational Leader of the Modern Library Profession and Breaking Glass Ceilings: Clara Stanton Jones and the Detroit Public Librarypractices, which foreground Black leadership and institutional transformation in librarianship. Her current research explores information objects and fugitive epistemology, with particular attention to alternative knowledge systems and practices of resistance.

Dr. Chancellor serves on the editorial boards of The Library Quarterly and Education for Information and is the recipient of numerous honors, including the ALISE Excellence in Teaching Award (2014) and the Norman Horrocks Leadership Award (2012).

Joe Sánchez is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Information Studies at Queens College (CUNY). He studies the information worlds of BIPOC high school students, subcultures and information, and undergraduate research experiences for underrepresented students. He earned a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. He serves on the editorial board of Library Hi-Tech, the advisory board of the Library of Congress Literacy Awards Program, the American Library Association (ALA) Spectrum Doctoral Fellows Program, and ALA’s Committee on Accreditation. He is a Mellon Fellow and a Google/ALA Fellow in the Libraries Ready to Code Program and a Founder of the iSchool Inclusion Institute (i3).

Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College.

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Jim Downs, "Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine" (Harvard UP, 2023)

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Jim Downs’ most recent book is Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery, and War Transformed Medicine. Professor Downs is the Gilder Lehrman-National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Civil War Era Studies and History at Gettysburg College.

The book offers a new history of epidemiology by shifting focus to the people behind the data points—people who were enslaved, imprisoned, or in some circles overlooked by conventional histories of epidemiology. The book shifts across locations and empires from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century because it wants to show how the confluence of war, imperialism, and slavery really made modern epidemiology.

This interview was a collaborative effort among Professor Laura Stark and students at Vanderbilt University in the course, “American Medicine & the World.” Please email Laura with any feedback on the interview or questions about how to design collaborative interview projects for the classroom. Read Laura's article, "Can New Media Save the Book?"

email: laura.stark@vanderbilt.edu

Jim Downs is the Gilder Lehrman-National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Civil War Era Studies and History at Gettysburg College.

Laura Stark is Associate Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Center for Medicine, Health, and Society.

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James Bultema, "Free Enough to Grow: The Turkish Protestant Movement, 1961-2016" (Springer, 2026)

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Free Enough to Grow: The Turkish Protestant Movement, 1961-2016 (Springer Nature, 2026), James Bultema identifies and investigates four central factors that gave rise to the Turkish Protestant movement in the latter half of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first century. Drawing on qualitative interviews and historical studies the book explores the complex interplay of religious freedom, missionary activity, interdependent choice, and multilevel plausibility structures. An imperfect but sufficient religious freedom created the soil for the growth of mostly tiny Turkish Protestant churches that were countercultural and vulnerable, but also vitally interconnected. This work provides an extensive mission history of the Turkish Protestant movement.

The book is part of the Springer series Boundaries of Religious Freedom: Regulating Religion in Diverse Societies and was awarded the Science Award on Religious Freedom 2026 the Freie Theologische Hochschule (FTH) Gießen, Germany.

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Radha Lin Chaddah, "And the Ancestors Sing" (Rising Action, 2026)

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Starting in the late 1970s, three women navigate post Cultural Revolution China: Lulu, who’s forced to become a prostitute in Shanghai to save her mother and sister from starving, Lei who is sold in marriage for cigarettes and a few eggs, and Yan, Lei’s smart, beautiful daughter, whose kindness to the farmer master’s neurodivergent son allows her to get an education. Both Lei and Lulu must put aside their dreams and suffer indignity after indignity, Lei from her husband, and Lulu from her pimp, while Yan ultimately sacrifices her career to help her family. With a cast of unforgettable characters struggling through China’s transition to modernity, and grappling with the impact of mental illness, prostitution, and Aids, And the Ancestors Sing is a stunning gripping historical novel.

Radha Lin Chaddah was born in London to an East Indian father and a Malaysian Chinese mother, and grew up in Kenya, the UK and the US, graduating from New Trier High School in Winnetka, IL. She majored in Biology at the University of Chicago, earned medical and law degrees at the University of Illinois, and a Master of Public Health at Harvard University. She completed Internal Medicine residency training, and later practiced, at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston. Radha and her family moved, over the course of twenty years, from Boston to NYC to Taipei to Shanghai to Beijing to Princeton, and finally to Philadelphia. Radha worked as a primary care physician in Boston, NYC and Beijing; worked with the China CDC to co-write the book, HIV/ AIDS: Beyond the Numbers; and provided mental healthcare to patients in several states as a telemedicine doctor upon settling in Philadelphia. When not reading and writing, Radha enjoys learning new Mandarin characters, tackling novice knitting projects, painting with watercolors and acrylics, catching a live, stand-up comedy show with her husband, Avery, trying out new recipes with their young adult daughters, Yani and Ayo, and, of course, jotting down story notes for her next writing project. You can visit Radha online at radhalinchaddah.com.

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Abigail Ocobock, "Marriage Material: How an Enduring Institution Is Changing Same-Sex Relationships" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

It is no secret that marriage rates in the United States are at an all-time low. Despite this significant decline, the institution of marriage endures in our society amid historic changes to its meaning and practice. How does the continuing strength of marriage impact the relationships of same-sex couples after the legalization of same-sex marriage?

Drawing on over one hundred interviews with LGBTQ+ people, Marriage Material: How an Enduring Institution Is Changing Same-Sex Relationships (University of Chicago Press, 2024) reveals the transformative impact marriage equality has had on same-sex relationships. Sociologist Dr. Abigail Ocobock looks to same-sex couples across a wide age range to illuminate the complex ways institutional mechanisms work in tandem to govern the choices and behaviors of individuals with different marriage experiences. Dr. Ocobock examines both the influence of marriage on the dynamics of same-sex relationships and how LGBTQ+ people challenge heteronormative assumptions about marriage, highlighting the complex interplay between institutional constraint and individual agency.

Marriage Material presents a bold challenge to dominant scholarly and popular ideas about the decline of marriage, making clear that gaining access to legal marriage has transformed same-sex relationships, both for better and for worse.

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Aurore Spiers, "Archiving the Past: Women's Film History in France, 1927–1978" (U California Press, 2026)

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What happens when we assume women’s presence in film history instead of their absence? This is the question at the heart of Archiving the Past: Women’s Film History in France, 1927–1978, the newest addition to the Feminist Media Histories book series at the University of California Press.

The first book by Aurore Spiers, Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at Texas A&M University, Archiving the Past is a fascinating account of some of the many women in France whose labor had a decisive role in the formation of cinema history across the twentieth century. Aurore shows that the film-historical archive has always been a site of feminist agency and power, even if women’s work in and around the archive has been diminished, interrupted, erased, or ignored.

In this conversation with fellow feminist film scholar Alix Beeston, Aurore shares about the historical, methodological, and political stakes of her work, from the archive to the classroom. She describes her process for discerning the traces of women’s archival labor, however fleeting, contingent, or speculative they may be. She reflects on how gendered ideas and norms have defined—and limited—our sense of what counts as film-historical labor. And she ruminates on what it means for feminist scholars, in and beyond film and media studies, to collect and recollect the past—for the sake of the feminist present and its still-possible futures.

Alix Beeston is Reader in Literature and Visual Culture at Cardiff University. She's the author of In and Out of Sight: Modernist Writing and the Photographic Unseen (Oxford UP, 2018) and the co-editor of the award-winning volume Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film (University of California Press, 2023).

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Adam Henig, "Baseball's Outcast: The Story of Ron LeFlore" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

When twenty-three-year-old Ron LeFlore played his first organized baseball game, it was in a yard at the State Prison of Southern Michigan where he was serving five to fifteen years for armed robbery. An extraordinary athlete, the Detroit native had luck on his side: his coach, a convicted felon, had connections to the Detroit Tigers. Within three-and-a-half years, Ron went from a prison inmate to a Tiger centerfielder.

In Baseball's Outcast: The Story of Ron LeFlore (Bloomsbury, 2026), Adam Henig tells for the first time in full the unbelievable life and career of Ron LeFlore. Blessed with blinding speed and a powerful swing, Ron shed his jailbird past to become one of the game's premiere hitters and its most dangerous base stealer during the latter half of the 1970s. His rags-to-riches life story became a bestselling book and a made-for-television movie starring actor LeVar Burton, fresh from his performance in Roots. But the good times did not last. Less than a decade after making his Major League debut, Ron was finished with baseball.

Baseball's Outcast is not just another book about the rise and fall of a troubled athlete. Henig goes deeper, tracing the star player's family roots, exploring the segregated world that Ron was raised in, examining the criminal justice system he was subjected to, and revealing how childhood trauma shaped his success and downfall. Filled with insight from Ron himself, as well as from former teammates, coaches, front-office personnel, inmates, childhood friends, and relatives, Baseball's Outcast provides unprecedented access into Ron's life story and the obstacles he faced every step of the way.

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Am Yisrael High: The Story of Jews and Cannabis

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Mentioned in the Bible and discussed in numerous traditional texts, cannabis has long been a part of Jewish life. For millennia, Jews have been buying, selling, and using cannabis for religious and medicinal purposes and as an intoxicant. The opening of YIVO’s latest exhibit, Am Yisrael High: The Story of Jews and Cannabis, will feature a panel discussion moderated by Eddy Portnoy, who will provide a brief overview of the relationship between Jews and cannabis. He’ll then moderate a discussion with Ed Rosenthal, Adriana Kertzer, Rabbi/Dr. Yosef Glassman, and Madison Margolin. Their discussion will consider the many connections of the Jews to cannabis – religious and spiritual, historical, scientific, and more.

Find more information about the exhibit here: https://yivo.org/Cannabis

This panel discussion originally took place on May 5, 2022.

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Adrian Woolfson, "On the Future of Species: Authoring Life by Means of Artificial Biological Intelligence" (MIT Press, 2026)

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Imagine a future where we grow houses rather than build them. Where smartphones are alive, clothing has opinions and all human knowledge fits into a speck of DNA. A world where disease is a thing of the past and the human lifespan is dramatically extended.
To achieve this, says Adrian Woolfson, founder of the genome writing company Genyro, we must transform biology into a predictive, programmable engineering material. That means decoding the generative grammar of DNA: the language of life itself. We will then be able to author genomes—and, if we choose, even rewrite our own.
In On the Future of Species: Authoring Life by Means of Artificial Biological Intelligence (MIT Press, 2026), Woolfson describes how we are at the cusp of a technological revolution, driven by the convergence of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. Currently at the scribbling phase—writing the genomes of viruses, bacteria and yeast—we will eventually author the genomes of extinct and never-before-realized species. Life will become computable, detached from its past and no longer bound by Darwinian evolution.
While offering extraordinary opportunities, this power also carries great risk, and it is vital for everyone to understand what the future might hold. In this groundbreaking work, Woolfson provides a guide to this bold new world, offering a moral compass to help us do so safely, wisely and ethically.

Adrian Woolfson is the cofounder of Genyro, a California-based biotechnology company specializing in synthetic genome design and construction. He studied medicine at Balliol College, Oxford, and was formerly the Charles and Katherine Darwin Research Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge, working at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

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Qi Ai, "Feng Xiaogang's New Year Films: Industry, Regulation, Humour and Authorship" (Routledge, 2025)

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Feng Xiaogang's New Year Films: Industry, Regulation, Humour and Authorship (Routledge, 2025) offers not only an in-depth study of Feng Xiaogang as a cinematic auteur but also a comprehensive and informative discussion of the industrial transformation of mainstream Chinese cinema under party-state regulation from the 1990s to the 2010s.

Ai Qi is a lecturer at the School of Journalism and Communication, Shandong Normal University, China. Qi holds a Ph.D. in Film and Television Studies from the University of Nottingham, UK. His current research mainly focuses on Chinese cinema, new media and cultural studies, non-human celebrities in the digital age in particular. Recently, he published an article on Capybara, discussing why this animal species becomes popular online with attention to Chinese Sang culture.

Victoria Oana Lupașcu is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies at University of Montréal. Her areas of interest include medical humanities, visual art, 20th and 21st Chinese, Brazilian and Romanian literature and Global South studies.

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Ladder or Lottery? Gary Hoover on the Consequences of Broken Economic Promises

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Gary Hoover about his new book, Ladder or Lottery: Economic Promises and the Reality of Who Gets Ahead (University of California Press, 2026). Gary is Professor of Economics and Executive Director of the Murphy Institute at Tulane University. One of the most challenging aspects of life is that sometimes, despite our very best efforts, we still miss the mark. Life can feel like a lottery, where success comes down to luck or the privilege to have the resources to buy as many lottery tickets as possible. For some, life appears like a ladder. No matter where you start, all you need to do is climb to get to the top. These metaphors encapsulate the dilemmas explored by Gary in his important work, as he examines in a variety of case studies whether economic conditions look more like a ladder or more like a lottery. When enough people feel that the system is more like a lottery than a ladder, social order breaks down, protests erupt, and, on occasion, revolutions take place. To take on this weighty topic, I’m thrilled today to have Gary Hoover on the podcast.

Gary A. Hoover is Executive Director of the Murphy Institute, Professor of Economics, and Affiliate Professor of Law at Tulane University.

Caleb Zakarin is the CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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Eileen G'Sell, "Lipstick" (Bloomsbury, 2026)

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

From Revlon to Glossier, from Marilyn to Gaga, lipstick is as shape-shifting and unwieldy as femininity itself.
Who wears lipstick today – as a matter of routine? And for those who do, is it out of obligation to a strict feminine standard, or some other reason entirely? Lipstick reconsiders the beauty world's most conspicuous – and contentious – tool of artifice. Tossing expired ideas about femininity like so many tubes of melting wax, Lipstick (Bloomsbury, 2026) by Eileen G’Sell, part of the Object Lessons series, explores how self-adornment can be a source of play, pleasure, and transformation, as well as how lipstick can knock gender norms off balance.

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Rebecca Buxton and Samuel Ritholtz, "The Way Out: Justice in the Queer Search for Refuge" (U California Press, 2026)

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The global refugee regime has shifted under our feet. Over the last forty years, international asylum practices have expanded to include the queer and trans displaced. At least thirty-seven countries now recognize LGBTIQ refugees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, with some states providing specialized support. Yet amid this expansion, backlash has intensified against refugee protection as well as the hard-earned rights of LGBTIQ people. In this disquieting context, the protection of LGBTIQ refugees remains partial and exclusionary.

The Way Out: Justice in the Queer Search for Refuge (University of California Press, 2026) examines the complexities of queer and trans displacement around the world. Centering personal narratives of LGBTIQ refugees, the book exposes the shortcomings of an international protection regime that is unable to address the harms that drive displacement.

Rebecca Buxton and Samuel Ritholtz's analysis of the stakes of queer and trans inclusion in accounts of displacement justice offers a vibrant example of theory brought to life.

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Sasha Senderovich and Harriet Murav, "In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union" (Stanford UP, 2026)

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In their anthology, In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union (Stanford University Press, 2026), Sasha Senderovitch and Harriet Murav provide an underappreciated perspective on the Holocaust, as it was experienced and remembered in the former Soviet Union. In these works, Jewish authors from Ukraine, Lithuania, Russia, and Belarus, writing in Yiddish and Russian, tell the stories of ordinary people living on after the devastation of the Holocaust. Filled with memories, love, and loss, these narratives describe not only how people died, but also how they continued to live. Despite the official view in the Soviet Union that Jewish deaths should be subsumed under the larger tragedy of Nazi Germany's invasion, Jews in the USSR profoundly engaged with thinking about and memorializing the Holocaust, addressing it in a wide range of literary works.

Interviewees: Sasha Senderovich is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages & Literatures and of International Studies at the University of Washington. Harriet Murav is Center for Advanced Study Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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Generic

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of High Theory, Kim talks to Ben Mangrum about Generic. A curious term that denotes both the conventions and rules of genre, and the impersonal or nameless quality of things like generic drugs or generic devices; the generic structures many of our cultural codes. Ben uses both senses to talk about the history of computing. He tells us about the surprising role the genre of comedy has played in our interactions with computers.

Ben suggested that we reference Spike Jones’s 2010 short film I’m Here as an example of computational comedy. In the episode Ben references Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg’s Modern Romance (Penguin Books 2016), a book of comedy and social critique about online dating, as well as classics like Agatha Christie’s Muder on the Orient Express (Collins Crime Club 1934), William Gibson’s Neuromancer (Ace Books 1984), and the film You’ve Got Mail (1998). He also talks about David Schumway’s writing on screwball comedies, “Screwball Comedies: Constructing Romance, Mystifying Marriage” in Cinema Journal 30 no. 4 (Summer 1991): 7-23, doi: 0.2307/1224884, and Lauren Berlant’s on genre, “Genre Flailing” in Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry 1 no. 2 (2018).

If you want to learn more, check out Ben’s book, The Comedy of Computation: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Obsolescence (Stanford 2025). In this cultural history of the computer, Ben shows that comedy has been central to how we've made sense of the technology's sweeping effects on public life and private experience. From the first Broadway play to include a computer in the 1950s to popular films and joke-telling digital assistants, many have used comedy to make the computer seem ordinary. Others have tried to stage the assimilation of computers within corporate life as a kind of comic drama. Mangrum describes these and many other ways in which comedy and computation have come together as a new genre of experience: the comedy of computation.

Ben Mangrum works as an Associate Professor of Literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research examines topics ranging from the environmental humanities to twentieth-century “world literature” and the history of ideas and media underlying contemporary methods in the digital humanities. His first book, Land of Tomorrow: Postwar Fiction and the Crisis of American Liberalism, was published in 2019 by Oxford University Press.

The transcript of this episode lives here as a WordDoc and here as a PDF. The image for this episode shows a happy computer, drawn in a few pixels on a blue background. It was made for High Theory by Lili Epstein.

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From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg: Memoir and Testimony

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

After escaping the Vilna Ghetto and surviving winter in the forest among partisan fighters, Avrom Sutzkever was airlifted to Moscow in 1944. The renowned Yiddish poet turned to memoir to detail his two years in the Vilna Ghetto. In his sobering account, Sutzkever details the Nazi occupation and establishment of the ghetto, daily life in the ghetto, and mass killings at Ponar. He also details armed Jewish resistance, how Jews organized collectively to retain their dignity, and demand for historical justice.

The memoir, From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg: Memoir and Testimony, was originally published in Yiddish in 1946, and has been translated into English for the first time by professor of Jewish studies and world literatures Justin Cammy. Join Justin Cammy and YIVO's Executive Director and CEO Jonathan Brent for a discussion of the great poet’s account of the Holocaust.

Buy the book

This book talk originally took place on January 27, 2022.

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Masako Ichihara, "Climate Change Litigation in Japan: Cases, Challenges, and Opportunities for Environmental Law" (Brill, 2026)

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Climate Change Litigation in Japan: Cases, Challenges, and Opportunities for Environmental Law (Brill, 2026) provides the details of Japanese climate litigation, positioning them both within the global trends of climate litigation and on the trajectory of Japanese past pollution lawsuits. It identifies the barriers that hinders the number of climate cases in Japan, a country known with a significant low litigation use. It then discusses the future prospects for climate change litigation in Japan by comparing with tobacco litigation in the United States. This original work makes a significant contribution to the international academic community, by describing Japan's climate cases, previously little known internationally.

Masako Ichihara, Ph.D. (2021), Kyoto Univeristy, is Program-specific Assistant Professor at the Unit of the Environment and Law, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of Law and Policy, Kyoto University.

Caleb Zakarin is the CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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Miranda Banks and Kate Fortmueller, "Boom to Bust: How Streaming Broke Hollywood Workers" (U California Press, 2026)

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Boom to Bust is a timely investigation into the rise of Peak TV and the perfect storm that caused a rapid decline in Hollywood work.

When Hollywood writers and actors went on strike in 2023, they drew attention to the rapidly changing nature of film and television production. In Boom to Bust, media industry experts Miranda Banks and Kate Fortmueller combine economic and cultural analysis and interviews with industry workers to capture the lived experience of Hollywood in crisis. Tracking major disruptions of the preceding decade—including the transformation of streaming services into studios, the overproduction of series during Peak TV, as well as #MeToo and COVID—the authors explain how the conflicting interests of studio executives, creative workers, and workers' unions compelled a renegotiation of the terms of work. Grounding readers in the history of Hollywood labor negotiations, the authors provide a road map to make sense of Hollywood’s present—and what comes next.

Miranda Banks is Professor of Film, Television, and Media Studies at Loyola Marymount University, author of The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild, and coeditor of Production Studies.

Kate Fortmueller is Associate Professor of Film and Media History at Georgia State University and author of Below the Stars: How the Labor of Working Actors and Extras Shapes Media Production and Hollywood Shutdown: Production, Distribution, and Exhibition in the Time of COVID.

Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University.

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Nathaniel Greenberg, "The Long War of Ideas: American Public Diplomacy in Arabic After 9/11" (Columbia UP, 2026)

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, US officials identified the so-called battle for hearts and minds as the “second front” in the war on terror. A wave of funding flowed into public diplomacy in the Middle East, seeking to change views of the United States through Arabic-language communications—often while hiding the traces of American origins. To what extent did this vast propaganda apparatus sway Arab public opinion? Which ideas and actors shaped American public diplomacy in this period? What are the lessons for information strategy today?

The Long War of Ideas: American Public Diplomacy in Arabic After 9/11 (Columbia University Press, 2026) by Dr. Nathaniel Greenberg tells the story of American propaganda campaigns in the Middle East after 9/11, drawing on in-depth interviews with key players and previously classified documents. Dr. Greenberg shows how the United States tried to control perceptions of its response to 9/11 through news and entertainment, and reveals that Arab governments and unofficial actors were involved—knowingly or not—in distributing US propaganda. He explores the institutions, strategy, and rhetoric deployed in the war on terror, placing them in the context of American and Soviet influence campaigns during the Cold War. Greenberg argues that US government-backed broadcasting laid the groundwork for global information warfare, such as the rise of competing Russian and Chinese state media operations. Shedding light on the ideological underpinnings of American propaganda in Arabic after 9/11, The Long War of Ideas offers new insight into soft power in the twenty-first century.

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Kasey Jernigan, "Commod Bods: Embodied Heritage, Foodways, and Indigeneity" (U Arizona Press, 2026)

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The term "commod bod" is used with humor and affection. It also offers a critical way to describe bodies shaped by long-term reliance on U.S. federal commodity food programs.

In Commod Bods: Embodied Heritage, Foodways, and Indigeneity (University of Arizona Press, 2026), Kasey Jernigan shares her ongoing collaborative research with Choctaw women and describes the ways that shifting patterns of participation in food and nutrition assistance programs (commodity foods) have shaped foodways; how these foodways are linked to bodies and health, particularly "obesity" and related conditions; and how foodways and bodies are intertwined with settler colonialism and experiences of structural violence, identity making, and heritage in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

Organized thematically, the book moves from a critical history of obesity and health in Indian Country to narratives of Choctaw women navigating food, memory, and belonging. Chapters such as "Food and Fellowship" and "Heritage, Embodied" center personal stories that show how food is not only sustenance but also a site of connection, resistance, and meaning making.

Food is critical to cultural survival and affirmation. For Choctaw people, the intentional demise of traditional foodways and dependence on federal food programs are specific experiences that inform part of what it means to be Choctaw today.

Kasey Jernigan is an assistant professor of American studies and anthropology at the University of Virginia, where she also co-directs the Black and Indigenous Feminist Futures Institute. She is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

Caleb Zakarin is the CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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Karolina Przewrocka-Aderet, "Polanim: From Poland to Israel" (Academic Studies Press, 2026)

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What does it mean to leave one's homeland behind—and how do memories of that place shape the next generation? In this episode, Rabbi Marc Katz sits down with journalist and author Katarzyna Przewrocka-Aderet to discuss her book Polanim: From Poland to Israel, a sweeping portrait of Jews whose lives stretched between Poland and Israel.

Blending literary journalism with oral history, Polanim draws on extensive interviews with Israelis of Polish origin and their children. Each chapter centers on a different experience—memories of prewar antisemitism, the devastation of postwar Poland, or the political expulsions of 1968—and the difficult journeys that carried families from Poland to Palestine and later Israel.

Through these individual stories, Przewrocka-Aderet captures nearly a century of Jewish life, from the 1920s through the 1990s. The people she profiles left at different moments and under different circumstances: some fleeing hostility, some escaping unbearable loss, others forced out by political pressure. They arrived with different languages, classes, politics, and hopes—but their lives reveal how identity is shaped not only by history, but by the unpredictable paths of human experience.

Together, Przewrocka-Aderet and Katz explore the emotional weight of migration, the persistence of memory across generations, and how the story of Polish Jews continues to echo in Israeli society today.

Katarzyna Przewrocka-Aderet is a journalist and writer whose work focuses on Jewish history, migration, and memory. In Polanim: From Poland to Israel, she combines in-depth interviews with narrative storytelling to illuminate the lives of Israelis of Polish origin and the complex histories that shaped them.

Marc Katz is the rabbi of Temple Ner Tamid and the author of several books on Jewish thought and the Talmud. Through his teaching, writing, and podcast conversations with scholars and storytellers, Katz brings history, memory, and Jewish experience into conversation with contemporary life.

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Kristan Stoddart, "Russia's Hybrid Warfare Offensive Against the West" (de Gruyter, 2025)

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Kristan Stoddart's Russia's Hybrid Warfare Offensive Against the West (de Gruyter, 2025) is a timely and systematic analysis of Russian hybrid warfare with a particular focus on Russian cyberespionage and cyberwarfare. It especially analyzes Russian policy from the election of President Vladmir Putin in 2000 to date.

It takes a long term, long lens, view of Russian policies and actions internationally and domestically, fundamentally questioning the relationship and boundaries between active measures, espionage, cyberespionage, and hybrid warfare.

The most up-to-date and systematic analysis of Russia’s hybrid warfare.
Draws on a wide range of multi-disciplinary literature.
Questions the boundaries between active measures, espionage, cyberespionage, and hybrid warfare.

Dr. Kristan Stoddart is an Associate Professor at Swansea University where he is director of the Geopolitical Challenges Research Institute. Previously he was a Reader in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University. From 2014 to 2017, Kristan was part of a £1.2 million project examining Cyber Security Lifecycles funded by Airbus Group and the Welsh Government. He also was a member of the UK’s Independent Digital Ethics in Policing Panel for around four years through to 2018. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is the author of eight books and many articles and book chapters.
Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar with research areas spanning Civilizational Sciences, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, Military History, War Studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, and Russian and East European history. He is currently the Book Review Editor for Comparative Civilizations Review.

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Twelve Lives: Creating Literary Community with Raymond Williams, PhD

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

From the moment I began working with the New Books Network, my vision was bigger than author interviews. I envisioned my platform one where people could connect what they were hearing about the past to their own lives in the present and, in that way, perhaps see themselves as an important part of a continually-evolving community. Through this work, I have been fortunate to connect, not only authors, but also with readers and thinkers who, like me, are committed to the preservation and expansion of our collective archive.

Raymond Williams is one such person. Raymond has a PhD in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland, College Park. He was an executive board member of Black Readers Con, and is currently an administrator of the Black Men Read Book Club sponsored by Resist Booksellers. I was thrilled to have Raymond on the podcast to talk about the creation of literary community around reading challenges, including those centering Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, and, for 2026, what Raymond calls, “The 12 Lives Challenge.” Listen in as we discuss the work he is doing to cultivate an intellectually curious community of real-life readers in the virtual world.

You can find Raymond on Instagram, and the 12 Lives Challenge on StoryGraph.

Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and wherever you get your podcasts.

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Michał Mycka, "Games User Research Cookbook: Tools and Techniques for Better Player Experience" (CRC Press, 2026)

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This book offers a comprehensive and practical guide to Games User Research (GUR). Blending theory and hands-on experience, it walks readers through methods, tools, and techniques tailored to the real-world constraints of small and medium-sized game development studios to support them in delivering better player experiences. The book is divided into three parts. Part one introduces core concepts to game development, and explores gameplay experience, together with factors that influence player behaviour and decisions. The part ends by exploring the games user researcher's role and its common challenges. Next, part two presents readers with a 10-step end-to-end research process for a single study. From understanding stakeholders, designing methods, through recruiting participants, moderating sessions and analysing results, to delivering actionable insights. It provides guidance, real-life examples, and templates for integrating research in the game development practices, even when the budget and timeline are tight. Finally, part three provide readers with ready-to-use "recipes" for 10 research methods covering every phase of the game production cycle. Each recipe includes practical tips, pitfalls to avoid, and actual report excerpts. Whether you're an indie developer wanting to better understand your players, UX designer or researcher moving from application software to the world of games, this book will provide you with all the information on how to use research to gain the insights needed to create better player experiences.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist.

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Emely Rumble, "Bibliotherapy in The Bronx" (Row House, 2025)

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Bibliotherapy in The Bronx (Row House, 2025) by Emely Rumble, LCSW, is a groundbreaking exploration of the healing power of literature in the lives of marginalized communities. Drawing from her personal and professional experiences, Rumble masterfully intertwines storytelling with therapeutic insights to reveal how reading can be a potent tool for self-discovery, emotional transformation, and social change.
In this transformative work, Rumble offers readers an intimate glimpse into her journey as a psychotherapist in the Bronx, where she has spent over 14 years using books to help clients navigate complex emotions, heal from trauma, and find their voices. Through vivid anecdotes and real-world case studies, she demonstrates how literature can serve as a bridge between personal pain and collective healing.
Rich with practical tips, reflective exercises, and book recommendations, Bibliotherapy in The Bronx is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the power of words to change lives. Whether you're a therapist, educator, bibliophile, or simply someone seeking deeper understanding and growth, this book offers a compassionate, culturally affirming guide to the transformative potential of storytelling.
Rumble's work is a testament to the enduring power of books to heal, empower, and liberate. In a time when the world feels increasingly divided, Bibliotherapy in The Bronx reminds us that the stories we tell—and the stories we read—can unite us in our shared humanity.

-Raymond Williams, PhD is a political scientist, blogger, and book club administrator with an interest in American History and Politics. You can find Raymond on Instagram, Threads, and Twitter at @rtwilliams16.

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Manuel Barcia, "Pirate Imperialism: Trade, Abolition, and Global Suppression of Maritime Raiding, 1825–1870" (Yale UP, 2026)

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, imperial powers around the world came into direct confrontation with local resistance in the form of maritime raiding. From the Atlantic basin to the western Mediterranean Sea, the Persian Gulf and the east coast of Africa, and Southeast Asia and China, imperial powers claimed that progress was being held back by the barbarity and greed of pirates, who repeatedly attacked imperial vessels. The suppression of piracy, justified under the banner of spreading civilization and free trade and abolishing slavery and the slave trade, provided both western and non-western powers with a back door for territorial expansion and the enforcement of imperialist agendas.

In Pirate Imperialism: Trade, Abolition, and Global Suppression of Maritime Raiding, 1825–1870 (Yale UP, 2026), Professor Manuel Barcia tells the story of these conflicts, showing how imperialist powers frequently used anti–maritime raiding efforts as excuses to cement western supremacy in various parts of the world, while simultaneously resorting to violent means that were indistinguishable from the methods of those they accused of being pirates.

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Sayantani DasGupta, "Theft of the Ruby Lotus" (Scholastic Press, 2026)

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Sayantani DasGupta's latest middle grades novel, Theft of the Ruby Lotus (Scholastic, 2026) is an adventure heist. Ria Bailey finds herself in quite a fix, and it's all because of a strange treasure that turns up in the mail one fateful day. It might be a ruby, and it just might hold the key to some troubling developments in her life. Most importantly, if she and her besties Miracle Owusu and Annie Hernandez can trace the significance and stay one step ahead of the mysterious strangers tracking their moves through the Metropolitan Museum of Art and out into the city streets of New York, then just maybe Ria can turn things around for herself. Sayantani DasGupta returns in rare form with a brand new story that's part love letter to the Metropolitan Museum and New York City immigrant families, part twisting and turning heist, and completely an examination of where art belongs, who gets to keep it, and what it means to be on display.

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Gautamiputra Kamble, "The Seekers" (Blaft Publication, 2025)

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The seekers in these stories travel through worlds both ancient and modern, worlds of symbol and fantastical allegory, on their paths to greater truth.

The state of Maharashtra is famous for its ancient Buddhist cave complexes. It's also known as the birthplace of leaders in the struggle against caste oppression: Jyotirao and Savitribai Phule in the early 1800s, and B. R. Ambedkar in 1891. It is here that Dr. Ambedkar, architect of the Indian constitution and warrior against the practice of untouchability, led marches for the right of Dalit people to draw water from community wells, to enter temples, to live with dignity.

The Seekers (Blaft Publication, 2025) consists of five stories that hold Phule-Ambedkarite thought at their core, weaving together the history of ideological conflict, the pursuit of artistic excellence, and the unquenchable human thirst for freedom. The book tells of ancient revelations, of flood and fire, of vast deadly deserts, of people turned to stone.

It is a unique work of anti-caste Marathi literature that feels both timeless and sparklingly new.

"...Gautamiputra’s stories shun the beaten path, chart their own course, and leave indelible footprints for others to follow" —Raja Dhale (1940-2019), writer and activist, co-founder of the Dalit Panthers

Gautamiputra Kamble is an award-winning Marathi writer. His background in literature and philosophy informs his interests and activism—he is the editor of Secular Vision magazine, coordinator of the Secular Art Movement, and President of the Secular Movement and Secular Education and Research Institute, Sangli, Maharashtra. He has also served as the President of Phule-Ambedkar Shahu Teachers Association, Kolhapur. Parivrajak (The Seekers) was first published in Marathi in 2004; it has featured in curricula for post-graduate courses and civil service examinations in Maharashtra.

Sirus Libeiro is a translator based in Mumbai. The Seekers is his first full length translation in print. He has a background in Economics and Urban Studies. He is currently working on a translation of 'Jayanti' (2022), Gautamiputra Kamble's second fiction novel.

You can order the pdf copy of this book here for $5.32. This collection of short stories is perfect for undergraduate classroom teaching.

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Laughter and Leadership: A Conversation with Tikva Blaukopf Schein, Ph.D.

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

We laugh without thinking — but what if laughter is one of the most revealing human acts?

In this episode of The Van Leer Institute Series On Ideas, Dr. Tikva Blaukopf Schein explores laughter not as humor, but as power. Across ancient Roman and rabbinic texts, laughter could strengthen leadership, threaten institutions, or expose hidden fear. The same laugh that comforts one audience can unsettle another.

Our conversation moves from classical literature to contemporary academic life, touching on scholarship, family, identity, and the challenges facing Jewish and Israeli scholars today. Along the way emerges a surprising idea: societies become nervous about laughter precisely when they feel most fragile.

Thoughtful, personal, and deeply relevant, this episode asks why humans so often laugh in moments of crisis — and what that laughter reveals about hope, survival, and meaning.

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Jane Vaynman, "Enemies in Agreement: Political Volatility and the Design of Arms Control" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Why do adversaries sometimes cooperate to restrain their military competition? Why do they design arms control agreements with intrusive verification in some cases but rely on minimal transparency in others? Amidst ongoing international competition, arms control remains rare despite potential mutual benefits, and agreements vary dramatically in their approaches to monitoring. Enemies in Agreement: Political Volatility and the Design of Arms Control (Cambridge UP, 2026) reveals how uncertainty from domestic political changes, such as leadership transitions or social unrest, can enable arms control.

The book identifies two paths to agreement: during periods of uncertainty, states that previously relied on informal understandings hedge by establishing lightly monitored agreements, while those that anticipated deception take calculated risks through agreements with intensive verification.

Through comprehensive data analysis and rich case studies, Jane Vaynman challenges conventional wisdom about uncertainty in international relations while offering policymakers insights. As states confront challenges from nuclear competition to emerging technologies, understanding when arms control becomes viable is more vital than ever.
Our guest is Professor Jane Vaynman, an Assistant Professor of Strategic Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University.

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

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Dybbuks, Golems, S. An-ski, and Jewish Legends in Times of Fear

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

S. An-ski’s play The Dybbuk, a story of possession set in a shtetl (think The Exorcist meets Fiddler on the Roof), is the foundation of modern Jewish drama. This talk by scholar Gabriella Safran explores its roots: in Jewish folklore, the scandalous blood libel trial in Kiev in 1913, and the political passions of Russian-Jewish revolutionaries. In composing the play, An-ski was torn between two Jewish myths, each still modern: the tragic ambivalence of the dybbuk, a lost, wandering soul, and the technological triumphalism of the golem, a robot set in motion by practical kabbalah and capable of defending the Jews from every harm.

This lecture originally took place on June 3, 2020.

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Myung-jin Han with Nicolas Levi, "I Was a North Korean Diplomat: Inside the Secret World of Pyongyang's Foreign Service" (Independently Published, 2026)

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Nicolas Levi is a researcher at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has authored numerous books related to North Korea and is a regular commentator on the country’s elite social and political structures.

I Was a North Korean Diplomat: Inside the Secret World of Pyongyang's Foreign Service (Independently Published, 2026) is Levi’s tenth book, a collaborative work based on extensive dialogues with Han Jin-myung (a pseudonym), a former member of the North Korean elite who served in a specialized military drone unit and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, before defecting in 2015. The book provides a rare, ground-level look at the life of the North Korean upper class, tracing Han’s journey from a privileged childhood in Pyongyang to the high-pressure world of international diplomacy and illicit regime fundraising in Southeast Asia.

Through Han’s testimony, the book explores the psychological realities of loyalty, the "golden cage" of the North Korean elite, and the climate of fear following the 2013 execution of Jang Song-thaek, offering readers a unique perspective on the inner workings of the North Korean state.

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Samuel Clowes Huneke, "I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women in Nazi Germany" (Aevo UTP, 2026)

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

I Will Not Abandon You: Queer Women in Nazi Germany (Aevo UTP, 2026) brings to life the unrelenting defiance of queer women in fascist Germany.

In his latest book, award-winning historian Samuel Clowes Huneke shows how love, queer resistance, and collective action survived in the harrowing circumstances of Nazi rule. Drawing on a decade of archival research, Huneke takes readers into a hidden world, from the wartime balls that lesbian activists continued to organize to the concentration camps where women accused of loving women were imprisoned. Following a diverse cast of characters, Huneke reveals both the oppression that queer women faced and how they resisted fascism in solidarity with one another. Arguing that this solidarity – which transcended race, class, and gender – offers a compelling alternative to today’s fractured identity politics, I Will Not Abandon You is a vital, new history of queer life under fascism and a call to rethink the foundations of progressive politics today.

Deep Acharya is a PhD student and a George L. Mosse fellow of Modern European Cultural History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison working on the history of fatherhood in 20th century Germany.

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Audrey Borowski, "Leibniz in His World: The Making of a Savant" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Described by Voltaire as “perhaps a man of the most universal learning in Europe,” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) is often portrayed as a rationalist and philosopher who was wholly detached from the worldly concerns of his fellow men. Leibniz in His World: The Making of a Savant (Princeton UP, 2026) provides a groundbreaking reassessment of Leibniz, telling the story of his trials and tribulations as an aspiring scientist and courtier navigating the learned and courtly circles of early modern Europe and the Republic of Letters.
Drawing on extensive correspondence by Leibniz and many leading figures of the age, Audrey Borowski paints a nuanced portrait of Leibniz in the 1670s, during his “Paris sojourn” as a young diplomat and in Germany at the court of Duke Johann Friedrich of Hanover. She challenges the image of Leibniz as an isolated genius, revealing instead a man of multiple identities whose thought was shaped by a deep engagement with the social and intellectual milieus of his time. Borowski shows us Leibniz as he was known to his contemporaries, enabling us to rediscover him as an enigmatic young man who was complex and all too human.
An exhilarating work of scholarship, Leibniz in His World demonstrates how this uncommon intellect, torn between his ideals and the necessity to work for absolutist states, struggled to make a name for himself during his formative years.

Audrey Borowski is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Isaac Newton Trust Fellow at the University of Cambridge working on the philosophy of AI. She received her PhD from the University of Oxford and is a regular contributor to The Times Literary Supplement and Aeon.

YouTube Channel: here

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Penny Roberts, "Huguenot Networks: Truth and Secrecy in Sixteenth-Century Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Huguenot Networks: Truth and Secrecy in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge UP, 2025), Penny Robert's latest book, takes us into the world of secret intelligence gathering during the French Wars of Religion. Robert's discovery of the interrogation record of a Huguenot merchant, Jean Tivinat, arrested in May 1570 for attempting to secretly carry letters to England, unspools into a broader story about the intersections between confessional affiliations, international affairs, knowledge, trust, and networking in a tumultuous time. As she argues, clandestine communication was crucial to maintaining ties amongst a widely dispersed and threatened religious community. Huguenot Networks is a lively read and sure to appeal to anyone interested in the history of espionage, Huguenots, international affairs in Elizabethan England, or the French Wars of Religion.

Elspeth Currie is a PhD Candidate in the Department of History at Boston College where she studies women’s intellectual history in early modern Europe.

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Lewis Sage-Passant, "Beyond States and Spies: The Security Intelligence Services of the Private Sector" (Edinburgh UP, 2024)

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Scholars have long viewed intelligence as the preserve of nation states. Where the term ‘private sector intelligence’ is used, the focus has been overwhelmingly on government contractors. As such, a crucial aspect of intelligence power has been overlooked: the use of intelligence by corporations to navigate and influence the world. Where there has been academic scrutiny of the field, it is seen as a post-9/11 phenomenon, and that a state monopoly of intelligence has been eroded.

Beyond States and Spies: The Security Intelligence Services of the Private Sector (Edinburgh UP, 2024) by Dr. Lewis Sage-Passant demonstrates - through original research - that such a monopoly never existed. Private sector intelligence is at least as old as the organised intelligence activities of the nation state. Beyond States and Spies offers a comparative examination of private and public intelligence, and makes a compelling case for understanding the dangers posed by unregulated intelligence in private hands. Overall, this casts new light on a hitherto under investigated academic space.

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The Shawshank Redemption in China: An Interview with Matti Lehtonen

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How can an entirely foreign cast perform the American “The Shawshank Redemption” in the Chinese language across China? In this episode of the Nordic Asia podcast, Julie Yu-Wen Chen talks with Matti E. Lehtonen, a Finnish national who shares his journey from a decades-long career in engineering and business to a starring role in the first Chinese-language stage production of The Shawshank Redemption performed by an all-foreign cast.

Directed by the legendary Zhang Guoli, this production marks a cultural milestone in Chinese theater. Matti discusses his portrayal of the librarian, a tragic figure who represents the “saddest role” in a story otherwise defined by hope.

This episode dives into why Zhang Guoli insisted on foreign actors to avoid stereotypical and slightly fake portrayals of foreigners and how this choice may have helped the play navigate censorship. Matti also discusses the complexities of proactive self-censorship, securing government approvals for every city, and performing with a censor in the audience. Join us for a fascinating look at cross-cultural artistic collaboration and the evolving landscape of performance art in contemporary China.

Julie Yu-Wen Chen is Professor of Chinese Studies and Asian studies coordinator at the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki (Finland).

The Nordic Asia Podcast is a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region, brought to you by the following academic partners: Asia Centre, University of Tartu (Estonia), Asian studies, University of Helsinki (Finland), Centre for Asian Studies, Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania), Centre for East Asian Studies, University of Turku (Finland), Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Lund University (Sweden) and Centre for South Asian Democracy, University of Oslo (Norway).

We aim to produce timely, topical and well-edited discussions of new research and developments about Asia.

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Amanda Anderson and Simon During, "Humanities Theory" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Humanities Theory (Oxford UP, 2026) pioneers a new topic: the theory of the humanities. It is an urgent topic right now because the humanities face a suite of forceful new challenges and are in a period of significant change. For these reasons, it has become important to analyse and understand what the humanities are as a whole, beyond disciplinary divisions and yet without resorting to simplistic notions of their worth. Remarkably little attention has been paid to this topic. Most discussions of the humanities have been polemical if not defensive.

This book argues that there exists a global humanities world which not only transcends disciplinary divisions but joins the professional academic humanities to a thriving amateur public humanities. This world has no essence, it is plural. Nevertheless, powerful, if contested, ethical orientations run through it and help shape it, including a will to truthfulness, a will to openness and generosity, a will to examine values.
In their essays Simon During and Amanda Anderson each bring different emphases to their shared orientation towards a large plural humanities world:
During analyses how key disciplines—sociology, philosophy and history—might be used to think about the humanities as a whole and, on this basis, offers some predictions of the future awaiting the humanities.
Anderson analyzes media representations of the humanities and considers the general conceptual frameworks through which the humanities focus on value and proffer critique. She analyses a series of examples of contemporary critical engagements in the humanities to press a case for value pluralism in the humanities and the university more broadly.

Amanda Anderson is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English and Humanities and Director of the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University. She is the author, most recently, of Psyche and Ethos: Moral Life after Psychology (Oxford, 2018) and Bleak Liberalism (Chicago, 2016). She previously served as the Director of the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell and serves on the advisory board of the international Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI).

Simon During, educated in New Zealand and at Cambridge, has taught at the University of Melbourne and Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of pioneering work in post-colonialism, cultural studies, and the history of entertainment but in recent years has concentrated on thinking about literature and the humanities under their difficult contemporary conditions

YouTube Channel: here

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New Book Releases 2026 on Japan, Taiwan

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This episode of the Books on Asia podcast introduces new fiction and non-fiction on Japan to be published this year, 2026, along with two upcoming books on Taiwan. Books are presented in the order they appear on the podcast. Listen to the episode for more information on each title:

Phantom Paradise: Escape from Manchuria, by Kay Enokido (Bold Story Press, January 13, 2026)
Kokun: The Girl from the West, by Nahoko Uehashi (transl. Cathy Hirano) (Europa Editions, January 13, 2026)
When the Museum Is Closed, by Emi Yagi (transl. Yuki Tejima) (Soft Skull Press, January 27, 2026)
Hooked: A Novel of Obsession, by Asako Yuzuki (transl. Polly Barton) (HarperVia, March 17, 2026)
Sisters in Yellow, by Mieko Kawakami (transl. Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio) (Knopf, March 31, 2026)
Hollow Inside, by Asako Otani (transl. Ginny Tapley Takemori) (Pushkin Press, May 5, 2026)
Japan’s Anime Revolution!: Twenty Animated Films That Changed the World, by Jonathan Clements (Tuttle Publishing, May 12, 2026)
Troubled Waters, by Ichiyō Higuchi (transl. Bryan Karetnyk) (Pushkin Press Classics, May 26, 2026)
Taiwan 22: Travels in Paradox, by Tyrel Eskelson (Plum Rain Press, TBA)
Hidden Formosa: Life and Travels in Rural Taiwan, an anthology edited by John Ross
(Plum Rain Press, TBA)

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Mark A. Johnson, "American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon" (U Georgia Press, 2026)

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon (U Georgia Press, 2026), Dr. Mark A. Johnson asks (and answers) a seemingly simple question: How has bacon overcome centuries of religious prohibition, cultural contempt, and dietary advice to become a twenty-first-century culinary and cultural powerhouse? Starting in early modern Britain and tracing the story of bacon through the colonial era, the Civil War, the Progressive Era, modern fad diets, and the emerging craft bacon industry, Johnson provides a new perspective on some familiar American narratives. More than a story of production, marketing, and consumption, Johnson argues, this cultural history connects bacon to race, class, and gender while also illuminating major historical forces, such as migration, warfare, urbanization and suburbanization, reform movements, cultural trends, and globalization. For Dr. Johnson, bacon’s story from “most dangerous food in the supermarket” to pop culture and gastronomic phenomenon reflects the cultural values of a nation.

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Radio ReOrient 14:3: Islamophobia in the Academy and the ‘Everyday’, with Izram Chaudry, hosted by Claudia Radiven and Saeed Khan

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, Claudia Radiven and Saeed Khan spoke with Dr Izram Chaudry about his recent report (written with Dr Yunis Alam) regarding Islamophobia on Campus. Whilst discussing Islamophobia in the context of higher education we also delved into the issue of Everyday Islamophobia, microaggressions and academic freedoms in the current UK context as well as more broadly. Izram Chaudry is a lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Bradford and is the author of ‘BrAsian Family Practices and Reflexivity: Beyond the Boxing Ropes’ (2024). He is also the co-editor of the forthcoming collected edition ‘Social Class, Physical Education and Community Sport’.

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169* Hannah Arendt on Oases (JP)

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Our Recall This Buck series began by speaking with Christine Desan of Harvard Law School about how key ideas—and the actual currency, physical coins and bills— underlying the modern monetary system get “invisibilized” with that system’s success, so that seeing money clearly is both harder and more vital. Today, illustrious Princeton historian Peter Brown narrates the … Continue reading "42 Recall This Buck 2: Peter Brown on wealth, charity and managerial bishops in early Christianity (JP)"

Elizabeth Ferry is Professor of Anthropology at Brandeis University. Email: ferry@brandeis.edu. John Plotz is Barbara Mandel Professor of the Humanities at Brandeis University and co-founder of the Brandeis Educational Justice Initiative. Email: plotz@brandeis.edu.

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Jinwoo Park, "Oxford Soju Club" (Dundurn Press, 2025)

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Doha, a North Korean spymaster, is found stabbed in an alley in Oxford. Doha tells his mentee–another North Korean spy named Yohan—to go to the Oxford Soju Club, a restaurant in the British college town. That starts a dance between three different Koreans: Yohan; Jihoon, the South Korean owner of the Soju Club; and Yunah, a Korean-American recruited to weed out Yonah.

Oxford Soju Club (Dundurn Press, 2025), the debut novel from Jinwoo Park, uses this spy thriller setting to explore ideas of history, migration and identity.

Jinwoo Park is a Korean Canadian writer based in Montreal. He completed a master's degree in creative writing at the University of Oxford, and currently works as a marketer in the tech industry. In 2021, he won the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Oxford Soju Club. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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Jason Welle, "Companionship and Virtue in Classical Sufism: The Contribution of al-Sulami" (I.B. Tauris, 2024)

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In his debut work, Companionship and Virtue in Classical Sufism: The Contribution of al-Sulami (I.B. Tauris, 2024), Jason Welle sheds a new light on al-Sulami, an influential Sufi master during Sufism's formative era, by examine his work on suhba (companionship). Welle provides a historical reconstruction of Sufi companionship in Khurasan in the period, arguing that al-Sulami's concept of suhba, specifically among and between young disciples, envisioned the transformation of society as whole, not just the master-disciple relationship. Bringing debates in contemporary virtue ethics to bear on al-Sulami's spiritual method, the book offers an original analysis of the latter's thought that will be of interest to scholars of early Islam and classical Sufism as well as moral theologians interested in virtue ethics, character and friendship.

Jason Welle is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Boston College, where he teach courses on Christian-Muslim Relations and Islamic Mysticism.

Saman Nasser holds an MA in history from James Madison University, where he works as an educational staff.

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Alisa Kessel, "Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Political theorist Alisa Kessel (University of Puget Sound) has an important and impressive new book, Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence. Kessel’s research grew out of her work on questions of consent and how consent is embedded within the social contract structure. Initially the plan for the research was to critique this concept of “rape culture” which had found its way into popular discourse as well as academic work and was somewhat unclear in terms of application and understanding. Kessel notes in the book and in our conversations that her thinking about the idea of rape culture owes a great deal to black feminists who had been writing about and discussing the underlying issue at the heart of rape culture, which is not just about violence against women, but more broadly about the political, societal, and cultural dimensions of domination, victimhood, and human value. Rape Fantasies develops this understanding and provides fascinating examples of this intersectional concept. One of the key claims of the book is that sexual violence is not accidental, it is not necessarily based on physical urges that just cannot be controlled; it is, instead, based in the dynamic of political domination thus making rape itself a political act. Part of the unexamined problem with rape is that it is built around an entitlement to dominate, which also makes the threat of sexual violence a political act. Rape Fantasies traces this idea through a number of different case studies that unpack the dimensions of this threat of sexual violence in a variety of circumstances and situations, tied, inevitably, to the duality of domination and subordination or victimization, which is also wrapped up with questions of who is deserving of protection and who is not as deserving.

Kessel explains that in examining sexual violence, what she found was multifaceted reflections and refractions, since the issue and the individual’s experience with sexual violence are neither simple nor linear. And the examples and case studies that make up the thrust of the book present this multidimensional nature of sexual violence. This multifaceted thinking about sexual violence also integrates an intersectional analysis, drawing on work from indigenous studies, feminist and women’s studies, feminist theory, black feminism, political theory and other connected schools of thought. The interrogation of rape and rape culture, particular in context of the political valence, “occurs across multiple axes of oppression, including white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, cisgender, settler colonial, and capitalist axes.”[1] The case study examples in Rape Fantasies include bathroom bills across the states, the idea of the frontier and modes of extraction, consent contracts and consent apps, and OnlyFans and intimacy on demand. Each example is deeply researched and unpacked, providing the reader with historical, legal, political, economic, cultural, and societal analyses of these complex areas of domination and entitlement.

Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence is an expansive undertaking, bringing together theoretical frameworks from different schools of thought and analysis, threaded with important case studies that help the reader think deeply about this concept and how it is operationalized in our daily lives. Even if we are not aware of these narratives, they surround us and shape so much of our thinking about how the world works. And why sexual violence remains so persistent.

Susan Liebell is Professor Emerita of Political Science at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.

Lilly J. Goren is a Professor of Political Science at Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

[1] Alisa Kessel. Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence. Oxford University Press, 2025. p. 6.

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Jerry West and Jonathan Coleman, "West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life" (Little, Brown and Co, 2011)

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

He is one of basketball's towering figures: "Mr. Clutch," who mesmerized his opponents and fans. The coach who began the Lakers' resurgence in the 1970s. The general manager who helped bring "Showtime" to Los Angeles, creating a championship-winning force that continues to this day.

Now, for the first time, the legendary Jerry West tells his story -- from his tough childhood in West Virginia, to his unbelievable college success at West Virginia University, his 40-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers, and his relationships with NBA legends like Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O'Neal, and Kobe Bryant. Unsparing in its self-assessment and honesty, West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life (Little, Brown and Co, 2011) is far more than a sports memoir: it is a profound confession and a magnificent inspiration.

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Security and Risk: Challenges for Economy and Business in the Global 20th Century: A Conversation with Marie Huber, Nina Kleinöder, and Christian Kleinschmidt

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The volume addresses issues of security and risk in economic and business history. A focus lies on the study of security in order to highlight the central role of preventive measures, corresponding corporate strategies, (public) demands for measures to promote security, and the conscious avoidance of actions considered risky. It is less on questions of risk avoidance and more on the analysis of decisions and strategies for creating stability and averting potential threats.

The book aims at understanding how these security-oriented interventions and forward-looking approaches have shaped economy and businesses.
With contributions by Dolly Afoumba | Anna Corsten | Marie Huber | Nina Kleinöder | Christian Kleinschmidt | Andreas Langenohl | Christian Marx | Cornelia Sahling | Tim Salzer | Tonio Schwertner
This title is also available as open access. https://www.nomos-shop.de/en/p/security-and-risk-gr-978-3-7560-3577-9

Interview host, Paula de la Cruz-Fernández

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Andrew W. M. Smith, "Make Cheese Not War: Transnational Resistance and the Larzac in Modern France" (Manchester UP, 2026)

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In 1971, the French government announced a massive extension of its military base on the Larzac plateau in southern France. Land was to be expropriated from 107 farms around the small town of La Cavalerie. Limited resistance was expected, but what happened next exceeded all expectations.

Local sheep farmers set up protest camps and occupied the land. They soon attracted an astonishing level of support, pioneering a form of regional radicalism with global implications. Drawing out the international dimensions of the protest, Make cheese not war: Transnational resistance and the Larzac in modern France (Manchester University Press, 2026) by Dr. Andrew Smith explores a transnational resistance movement in the 1970s that challenged dominant visions of modernity and became a wellspring of radical alternatives. Exploring previously unconsulted archives in France and elsewhere, the book offers an in-depth analysis of the decade-long peasant movement and its aftermath.

Repositioning the Larzac struggle within a wider network of French and international solidarities, from the US to the UK, Germany, Burkina Faso, New Caledonia and Japan, the book retraces political networks of pacifist activism, as well as environmental movements and anti-nuclear protest. It shows how this French peasant campaign became both a platform and a model for popular engagement.

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The Barton Brothers, Mickey Katz, and Others: Yiddish-English Bilingual Parody Songs

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In the years immediately following the Second World War, the Barton Brothers, an anarchic Catskill comedy duo, began recording humorous macaronic (that is, bilingual) parody songs that relied in no small part on Yiddish theater and radio for raw material. The Bartons’ unexpected success—their send-up of Yiddish radio, “Joe & Paul,” was a bona fide hit, however improbable—inspired clarinetist Mickey Katz, based in Los Angeles and working with first-rate studio players, to begin recording his own exceedingly funny Yiddish-mixed-with-English lyrics set to the melodies of current Hit Parade songs. Capitol Records issued (possibly to their own amazement) a steady stream of these Yinglish albums by Katz all through the 1950s and into the ‘60s. These in turn inspired Allan Sherman, a TV gameshow writer/producer, to begin recording his own parodies of standards and folk songs. Though hardly any of Sherman’s lyrics had actual Yiddish content, many still had a clearly Jewish inflection that often alluded—phonetically, grammatically, or syntactically—to Yiddish beginnings.

Close readings of selected tracks by the Bartons, by Katz, and by Sherman will focus on their language, their music, their delivery, and what made them so influential and so very funny.

This lecture originally took place on July 9, 2020.

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Gwyneth Lonergan, "Borders, Citizenship, and Pregnancy: Migrant Women’s Experiences of Pregnancy and Maternity Care in the UK" (Bristol UP, 2025)

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Using the analytical framework of reproductive justice, Borders, Citizenship, and Pregnancy: Migrant Women’s Experiences of Pregnancy and Maternity Care in the UK (Bristol UP, 2025) by Dr. Gwyneth Lonergan examines migrant women’s experiences of pregnancy and maternity care within the broader context of gendered and racialised discourses and policies around health, reproduction and citizenship, austerity and an expanding border regime.

Based on interviews and focus groups with migrant mothers, third sector workers and NHS staff, this open-access book explores how immigration policies impact reproductive practices and unevenly distribute access to essential resources and support.

The book provides valuable insights into the underlying social causes behind migrant women’s relatively poor maternal outcomes and contributes significantly to scholarship on the intersections of citizenship, reproduction and expanding border controls.

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Rawlston Williams, "The Caribbean Cookbook" (Phaidon Press, 2026)

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

An exploration of Caribbean cuisine and culinary history, featuring more than 380 authentic home cooking recipes from across the region Caribbean cuisine reveals a culture of boundless imagination and creativity. It is the result of resourcefulness and ingenuity, where the need to survive and thrive shaped dishes that stand as powerful representations of its various cultures. In The Caribbean Cookbook, chef Rawlston Williams celebrates the diverse foods, flavors, and culinary traditions of this vibrant region. Featuring more than 380 recipes from 28 countries and island nations, the book includes classic marinades, sauces, and preserves; broths and soups; rices, grains, and vegetables; and chapters dedicated to Sea & River, On Land, Flour, Sugar, Juice, and Rum. The iconic ingredients synonymous with the Caribbean - citrus, nutmeg, coconut, tamarind, pimento, pineapple, rum - are showcased throughout, with spices as the stars, elevating other ingredients to create layered and satisfying dishes. This intensively researched recipe collection includes both beloved classics and lesser-known specialties. Home cooks around the world will discover Jamaica's Jerk Chicken and Dominica's Callaloo Soup; Puerto Rico's plantain-based Mofongo; Green Fig Salad from Saint Lucia; Haiti's Seafood Creole; a sweet Cashew Cake from Aruba; and other authentic dishes. There's plenty for armchair travelers to enjoy, too: Rawlston's descriptions of the islands' histories, culture, and traditions bring each recipe to life, while stunning color photography of the food and landscapes offers a whirlwind journey across one of the world's most beautiful destinations. Beautifully designed in bold tropical shades, The Caribbean Cookbook is a powerful, joyful ode to the many flavors of this incredible region.

Dr. N'Kosi Oates is a curator. He earned his Ph.D. in the Department of Africana Studies from Brown University.

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Security and Risk: Challenges for Economy and Business in the Global 20th Century: A Conversation with Marie Huber, Nina Kleinöder, and Christian Kleinschmidt

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Interview host, Paula de la Cruz-Fernández

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Gudrun Bühnemann, "Scholar, Serpent, Yogin, and Devotee: The Many Faces of Patañjali in Indian Traditions" (Brill, 2025)

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Scholar, Serpent, Yogin, and Devotee: The Many Faces of Patañjali in Indian Traditions (Brill, 2025) illuminates the many faces of Patañjali in Indian traditions. Often regarded as an incarnation of the cosmic serpent Ādiśeṣa or Anantanāga, Patañjali is celebrated, in both story and art, as a grammarian, scholar and practitioner of yoga, physician-alchemist, medical authority, teacher, ascetic, and devotee of the Dancing Śiva (Naṭarāja).

The first three chapters examine the literary works attributed to Patañjali, explore legendary accounts and beliefs associated with this multifaceted figure, and survey temples and shrines dedicated to the sage. The following five chapters trace the development of Patañjali’s iconography from its earliest forms in Tamilnadu, South India, to contemporary examples.

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The Case for Career Services

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

What exactly is career services? If you don’t know, you aren’t alone. Most of us operate from a limited or outdated idea of what career services offers, why it’s necessary, and how soon you should start consulting with a career advisor [hint: as soon as possible]. Dr. Rebekah Paré joins us to demystify the how, what, where and why of college to career pathways.

This episode explores: career services as a strategic asset for both student retention and post-graduation thriving, pipelines and pathways, the tension around tuition and student debt, the “ROI” mindset, translating coursework jargon to skills acquisition competencies, reclaiming the importance of the liberal arts, understanding what higher education can do, the lifelong value of learning, and why we can all plan for job change.

Our guest is: Dr. Rebekah Paré, who is a higher education strategist focusing on strengthening coordination across academic and student affairs, and building roadmaps for career preparation. She has held numerous leadership roles in higher ed, and has a Ph.D. in Music History and German Literature.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is a writing coach and editor for academics. She is the creator and producer of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening!

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Victor Li, "Supreme Pressure: The Rejection of John J. Parker and the Birth of the Modern Supreme Court Confirmation Process" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025)

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Supreme Pressure: The Rejection of John J. Parker and the Birth of the Modern Supreme Court Confirmation Process (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025) examines the 1930 Supreme Court nomination of John J. Parker, a turning point in American judicial politics. Alarmed by some of his past statements and opinions, labor and civil rights groups mounted a fierce campaign to block his confirmation. Not only was control of the Supreme Court hanging in the balance, but Parker's nomination symbolized a profound clash of ideologies, political agendas, economic doctrines, and interpretations of the Constitution. Their efforts sparked a dramatic Senate revolt, marking the first successful grassroots campaign to block a Supreme Court nominee.

By exploring the circumstances of Parker's rejection, this book traces how that battle laid the foundation for today's highly partisan and contentious confirmation process. The book also reintroduces Parker as a consequential but largely forgotten figure in American jurisprudence--one whose rulings helped shape the South's legal response to Brown v. Board of Education. Beyond the nomination fight, it delves into Parker's political campaigns, judicial opinions, and relationships with key public figures, charting his dramatic rise, humiliating defeat, and enduring influence.

Packed with intrigue, strategy, and the clash of competing ideologies, this is the story of how one nomination forever changed the rules of the game.

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Lia Kent, "The Unruly Dead: Spirits, Memory, and State Formation in Timor-Leste" (U Wisconsin Press, 2024)

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

“What might it mean to take the dead seriously as political actors?” asks Lia Kent in this exciting new contribution to critical human rights scholarship The Unruly Dead: Spirits, Memory, and State Formation in Timor-Leste (U Wisconsin Press, 2024). In Timor-Leste, a new nation-state that experienced centuries of European colonialism before a violent occupation by Indonesia from 1975 to 1999, the dead are active participants in social and political life who continue to operate within familial structures of obligation and commitment. On individual, local, and national levels, Timor-Leste is invested in various forms of memory work, including memorialization, exhumation, reburial, and commemoration of the occupation’s victims. Such practices enliven the dead, allowing them to forge new relationships with the living and unsettling the state-building logics that seek to contain and control them.

With generous, careful ethnography and incisive analysis, Kent challenges comfortable, linear narratives of transitional justice and argues that this memory work is reshaping the East Timorese social and political order—a process in which the dead are active, and sometimes disruptive, participants. Community ties and even the landscape itself are imbued with their presence and demands, and the horrific scale of mass death in recent times—up to a third of the population perished during the Indonesian occupation—means Timor-Leste’s dead have real, significant power in the country’s efforts to remember, recover, and reestablish itself.

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Keith Cooper, "Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact" (Reaktion, 2025)

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to watch a double sunset on Tatooine, stand among the sand dunes of Arrakis or gaze at the gas-giant planet Polyphemus from the moon Pandora? In Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact (Reaktion, 2025), Keith Cooper explores the fictional planets of films such as Star Wars, Dune and Avatar, and discusses how realistic they are based on our current scientific understanding and astronomical observations. The real exoplanets astronomers are now discovering are truly stranger than fiction, as the author shows. Featuring insights from over a dozen scientists and award-winning science-fiction authors, including Charlie Jane Anders, Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds, Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact is perfect for readers of popular science and fans of science fiction.

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Lisa Lee, "American Han" (Algonquin Books, 2026)

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s, Jane Kim and her brother, Kevin, dutifully embodied the model minority myth as their parents demanded: both stellar tennis players and academically gifted, they worked hard to make their parents proud. Jane went on to law school. Kevin came close to becoming a professional tennis player.

But where they started is nowhere near where they have ended up: Jane has stopped going to her law school classes, and Kevin, now a policeman, has become increasingly distant. Their parents, each on their own path toward the elusive American Dream (their mother hell-bent on having the perfect house and the perfect family, their father obsessed with working his way up from one successful business to the next), don't want to see the family unraveling. When Kevin goes missing, no one recognizes his absence as the warning sign it is until it erupts, forcing them all to come to terms with their past and present selves in a country that isn't all it promised it would be.

Both deeply serious and wickedly funny, American Han (Algonquin Books, 2026) is a profound story about striving and assimilation, difficult love, and family fidelity. A searing portrait that challenges assumptions about the immigrant experience, Lisa Lee's debut introduces a powerful new voice on the literary landscape.

Lee is the recipient of the Marianne Russo Emerging Writer Award from the Key West Literary Seminar, a n Emerging Writer Fellowship from the Center for Fiction, and a Pushcart Priz e. She has received additional fellowships and awards from Kundiman, M illay Ar ts, H edgebrook, the Rona Ja ffe Foundation, T in House, J entel Art i st Residency, the Korea Foundation, and others. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, North American Review, Sycamore Review, Gulf Coast, Tusculum Review, Reed Magazine, New World Writing, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Houston and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California. She lives in Los Angeles and grew up in Napa, California.

Recommended Books:

Giada Scodellaro, Ruins, Child
Morgan Day, The Oldest Bitch Alive
Elaine H. Kim, “Home is Where the Han Is”

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Linda Hamilton, "The Fourth Wife" (Kensington, 2026)

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

There must be a shift in the Zeitgeist of the publishing world, because after a long drought in Gothic novels, this is the second one I’ve encountered in little more than a month. The Fourth Wife (Kensington, 2026) takes place near Salt Lake City, Utah, during the years when the Mormon community there still practiced polygamy but was coming under increasing pressure from the US government to abandon the practice, pressure that included a law making multiple, simultaneous marriages a criminal offense.

It’s 1882. Twenty-year-old Hazel Russon, a talented pianist, has grown up in a polygamous family, but she has a secret agreement with her childhood friend Elijah Crowther that they will become each other’s only spouse once they are permitted to marry. When Elijah’s father, a powerful figure in Salt Lake City society, summons Hazel and informs her that Elijah has rejected her in favor of a return to the fundamental principles of Mormon life—the most fundamental of which is polygamy, known only as the Principle—she is shattered by her love’s betrayal. As a result, she allows Elder Crowther to talk her into becoming the fourth wife of Brother Jacob Manwaring, a wealthy older man who promises Hazel a home of her own, including a piano.

Hazel has long struggled with what most of us in the twenty-first century would categorize as an anxiety disorder, in part caused by the difficulty she has in meeting the extreme demands of her religion for female submissiveness. And although initially attracted to Jacob, she soon discovers that not everything Elder Crowder told her about her husband-to-be was the truth….

It’s all delightfully creepy and fast-paced, and the interactions among Jacob’s wives are even more interesting than those between them and Jacob.

Linda Hamilton studies and writes about nineteenth-century Mormon life as both a historian and a novelist—including, most recently, The Fourth Wife.

C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels. Her next book, Song of the Silk Weaver, will appear in the summer of 2026.

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Yingyi Ma, "Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education" (Columbia UP, 2020)

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education (Columbia UP, 2020), sociologist Yingyi Ma offers a multifaceted analysis of a new wave of international Chinese students—mostly self-funded—who have transformed American higher education over the past decade. This privileged yet diverse group of young people, emerging from a rapidly changing China, must navigate the complications and confusions of their formative years while bridging the world’s two most powerful countries. How do these students come to study in the United States? What does that experience mean to them? And what does American higher education need to know—and do—in order to continue attracting these students and supporting them adequately?

Drawing on research conducted in both Chinese high schools and American colleges and universities, Ma’s book offers illuminating insights into the experiences that define this new wave of students: above all, a duality of ambition and anxiety rooted in the transformative social changes of contemporary China. These students and their families are ambitious in seeking to navigate two very different educational systems and societies. Yet, at the same time, the complexity and pressure of these systems generate profound anxiety—from the challenges of applying to colleges, to studying and socializing on campus, to deciding what comes next after graduation. Ambitious and Anxious also offers valuable policy implications for American colleges and universities, touching on recruitment, student life, faculty support, and career services.

About the Author

Yingyi Ma is Professor of Sociology at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, where she also serves as Director of the Asian/Asian American Studies Program. She is a Fellow of the Public Intellectuals Program of the National Committee on United States–China Relations.

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Larry M. Bartels and Katherine J. Cramer, "The Politics of Social Change: From the Sixties to the Present Through the Eyes of a Generation" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Few time periods have been as defined by waves of monumental social change as the United States during the 1960s. Even today, almost sixty years later, the era is often depicted as a triumph of social progress. Yet, as Dr. Larry M. Bartels and Dr. Katherine J. Cramer show in The Politics of Social Change: From the Sixties to the Present Through the Eyes of a Generation (U Chicago Press, 2026), it was Americans’ diverse reactions to the milestone events of the time—from the welcoming, to the fiercely resistant, to the largely oblivious—that planted the seeds of our current political turmoil.

Their masterful analysis draws on a unique historical resource: the longest-running systematic tracking of individual Americans’ political attitudes and behavior ever attempted. The study began in 1965 when researchers interviewed hundreds of high school students across the country and then periodically reinterviewed them over the next three decades. Bartels and Cramer supplement this historical record with in-depth interviews with dozens of the original students, painting a detailed picture of the generation’s individual and collective political development. By tracing the responses of the Class of ’65 to major events of their political lifetimes—including the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights movements, the Vietnam War, the shifting role of religion, escalating economic inequality, immigration, and the rise of Donald Trump—Dr. Bartels and Dr. Cramer shed new light on the evolution of public opinion and the unsteady progress of American democracy.

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Kate Crane, "Whatever Happened to Eddy Crane?: A Memoir and an Investigation" (Hanover Square Press, 2026)

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Kate Crane's new memoir, Whatever Happened to Eddy Crane?: A Memoir and an Investigation" (Hanover Square Press, 2026) starts when Crane was in eighth grade and her father, a truck mechanic in an industrial neighborhood of Baltimore, left for work and didn't come home. City detectives figured he must have run away, but Kate had a deep-rooted instinct: he must have been killed. Kate, her mother, and her younger sister were left stunned, with no answers, no explanation, and no concrete resolution on the horizon. Twenty years later in New York, Kate is determined to unearth the truth. She reopens the investigation with the Baltimore police department, tracks down retired detectives who'd worked on Eddy's case, and chases leads with old friends through the dark back alleys of her hometown, dead set on finding solace, for her family and herself.

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Daniel A. Bell, "Why Ancient Chinese Political Thought Matters: Four Dialogues on China’s Past, Present, and Future" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Daniel A. Bell joins the podcast to discuss his new book, Why Ancient Chinese Political Thought Matters: Four Dialogues on China’s Past, Present, and Future (Princeton UP, 2026). This isn't your standard, dusty history — it’s a series of modernized dialogues that grew out of Bell’s own classroom at the University of Hong Kong. In this episode, Daniel tells us about the time he spent as an academic Dean at Shandong University, and where he saw firsthand how ancient Legalist ideas about strict punishment were making everyday life, and even faculty meals, feel rigid and 'joyless'. We talk about why he chose to write the book as a 'heavyweight match' between the descendants of thinkers like Confucius and Zhuangzi, and why he believes the ancient concept of 'harmony' is actually about celebrating differences rather than enforcing sameness. Whether we're talking about the 'fire exit' of modern divorce laws or the high stakes of corruption in Beijing, Daniel shows why these ancient voices are still the most relevant ones in the room.

The book is an entertaining introduction to ancient Chinese thinkers, and what they can teach us about today’s most pressing political questions in China and beyond. China’s most original, diverse, and fascinating political debates took place more than two millennia ago, but they have profoundly shaped Chinese political thinking and practice ever since and, remarkably, their influence on the country’s leaders is only growing today. Yet these timeless debates which are very likely to influence the answers to such questions as whether China should use military force to take control of Taiwan seem far too little understood in the West. In this enlightening and entertaining book, Professor Bell takes the greatest thinkers from China’s past — Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi, Shang Yang, Han Feizi, Zhuangzi, and Mozi—and puts them in dialogue with each other in modern settings.

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David-James Gonzales, "Breaking Down the Walls of Segregation: Mexican American Grassroots Politics and Civil Rights in Orange County, California" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

On March 2, 1945, five Mexican American families and their Jewish American lawyer filed a class-action lawsuit against four school districts in Orange County, California, to end the segregation of ethnic Mexican children. In a shocking decision, the court ruled in favor of plaintiffs, setting a legal and historical precedent in Mendez, et al. v. Westminster School District of Orange County that shook the foundations of Jim Crow America and led to the end of de jure school segregation across the nation.

Breaking Down the Walls of Segregation: Mexican American Grassroots Politics and Civil Rights in Orange County, California (Oxford UP, 2025) tells the story of how ethnic Mexicans in a relatively unknown agricultural backwater built the unprecedented movement that led to this decision. Beginning in the 1880s, David-James Gonzales details the social and economic history of Orange County, explaining how citrus capitalists, seeking increased market share and profitability, established the walls of segregation to manage ethnic Mexican family labor. By the early 1930s, ethnic Mexicans were segregated into over fifty underserved colonias and barrios. Without training or support from national civil rights organizations, they mobilized against segregation and inequality beginning in the late 1920s. Ethnic Mexican grassroots organizations proliferated throughout the county, intent on engaging in civic affairs and ending anti-Mexican discrimination and segregation. This movement, comprised of immigrants, citizens, parents, children, emerging activists, and their non-Mexican allies, paved the way for the growth of LULAC and nationwide organizing. As an essential part of the "long civil rights movement," the ethnic Mexican struggle against segregation in Orange County illustrates how minoritized groups have historically pushed US social, economic, and political institutions to live up to the nation's founding ideals.

David-James Gonzales is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements.

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Voices from a Century of Struggle: Writings of the Jim Crow Era

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Tuesday, April 7, 2026—Confronting disenfranchisement, legal segregation, and terrorist violence in the aftermath of the Civil War, Black Americans challenged white supremacy in word and deed in a prolonged struggle to create a better, more just nation.

Join Tyina L. Steptoe, editor of the new two-volume LOA edition of writings from the Jim Crow era, and historians Keisha N. Blain and Manisha Sinha for a conversation about courageous voices and revelatory firsthand documents that bring this crucial period to life and speak powerfully to the present.

Hosted by Max Rudin

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Elizabeth Rosner, "Third Ear: Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening" (Catapult, 2025)

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

This illuminating book Third Ear: Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening (Catapult, 2025) weaves personal stories of a multilingual upbringing with recent scientific breakthroughs in interspecies communication, revealing how the skill of deep listening enriches our curiosity and empathy toward the world around us. This book braids personal narrative with scholarly inquiry to examine the power of listening in building interpersonal empathy and social transformation. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Rosner recounts growing up in a home where six languages were spoken, exploring how psychotherapy, neurolinguistics, and creativity illuminate the complex ways we are shaped by the sounds and silences of others.

Drawing on insights from journalists, podcasters, performers, translators, acoustic biologists, spiritual leaders, composers, and educators, this hybrid text moves fluidly along a spectrum from the molecular to the global, revealing how “third-ear listening” can serve as a collective means of deepening understanding and connection to the natural world.

About the Author

Elizabeth Rosner is a bestselling novelist, poet, and essayist. Her works include Survivor Café: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, and the novel Electric City, named a best book by NPR. Rosner’s essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Elle, and numerous anthologies. She lives in Berkeley, California.

In my questions, I focus only on certain aspects of your book—especially language. This does not mean that your book lacks other dimensions to explore. It is a beautifully written work that invites discussion from several angles and points of view.

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Jason Reynolds, "Soundtrack: A Novel" (Random House, 2026)

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The print adaptation of Jason Reynolds acclaimed, award-winning audiobook Soundtrack (Crown Books, 2026)—a stirring story of music, friendship, and finding your voice in 2000s New York City. Stuy Grey plays the drums, just like his mom, a founding member of the all-black punk band the Bed-Stuy Magic Dusters. He teaches himself by watching videos of tap dancers. Now he’s left home, estranged from his mom and her abusive boyfriend. He’s camping out with his uncle on the Lower East Side. His landlord, Dunks, has chops: He shreds on only five strings. Add Alexis on bass guitar and Keith on horn: These teens are a band, busking in New York City subway stations to scrape enough money to record an album. As their popularity grows, so do the pressures, from complicated family dynamics to the glare of unexpected public attention. And when the police start looking for their bassist, Stuy faces his toughest decision yet. Adapted from the acclaimed Listening Library original audiobook and written with Jason Reynolds’s signature rhythm, heart, and honesty, Soundtrack: A Novel is a raw, resonant story about friendship, creativity, and what it truly means to find, and fight for, your voice.

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Daphne A. Brooks, "Blackstar Rising and the Purple Reign: The Sonic Afterlives of David Bowie and Prince" (Duke UP, 2026)

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Blackstar Rising and the Purple Reign: The Sonic Afterlives of David Bowie and Prince (Duke UP, 2026) is the first critical anthology dedicated to exploring the legacies of the pop music icons David Bowie and Prince. Daphne A. Brooks brings together an extraordinary array of writers, artists, and scholars, including Greg Tate, Jack Halberstam, Kara Keeling, Eric Lott, and Ann Powers, to offer fresh insight into how Bowie and Prince each fundamentally changed pop culture as musicians who emerged at the intersections of modern movements surrounding race, gender, sexuality, and art. Featured alongside these pieces are interviews with trusted collaborators of Bowie and Prince such as D. A. Pennebaker, Sheila E., and Marie France, giving vital insider context to the impact both artists had on pop culture and the complexities of their repertoires, politics, and private lives. This work is essential reading for any fan of two of the most formidable and eminent figures in pop culture history.
Contributors: Christine Bacareza Balance, Emma Balázs, Victoria Broackes, Daphne A. Brooks, Daphne Carr, Andreana Clay, Ashon Crawley, Jonathan Flatley, Nicole R. Fleetwood, Lynell George, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Michelle Habell-Pallán, Jack Halberstam, Matthew Frye Jacobson, Kara Keeling, Jason King, Josh Kun, Kathryn Lofton, Emily J. Lordi, Eric Lott, Maureen Mahon, Greil Marcus, Geoffrey Marsh, Michaelangelo Matos, Tiffany Naiman, Tavia Nyong'o, Ann Powers, Sonnet Retman, Morgan Rhodes, Francesca T. Royster, Gustavus Stadler, Jacqueline Stewart, Greg Tate, Karen Tongson, Van My Truong, Alexandra T. Vazquez, Michael E. Veal, Shane Vogel, Gayle Wald, Oliver Wang, Alexander G. Weheliye, Richard Yarborough, Kristen Zschomler

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Devika Dutt et al., "Decolonizing Economics: An Introduction" (Polity Press, 2025)

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Decolonization has long been debated across the social sciences, but the economics discipline has so far avoided such critical engagement. Decolonizing Economics: An Introduction (Polity, 2024) provides a much-needed intervention.
Dutt, Alves, Kesar, and Kvangraven uncover the deeply Eurocentric foundations that shape how economists study the world today. These have rendered the discipline ill-equipped to tackle critical questions, such as structural racism, uneven development, the climate crisis, labour relations, and how structural power shapes economic outcomes. Decolonizing economics entails challenging the norms of neutrality and objectivity that economists claim to speak from, while fostering alternative ways of understanding the economy that take seriously structural power relations and contemporary processes of economic development. Readers will come to understand the political stakes of decolonization and the wide range of scholarship that already exists that can help us grasp economics from non-Eurocentric perspectives. Through such scholarship, we can gain an enriched understanding of capitalism and its relationship to exploitation, colonialism, and racialization.

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Nabil Ali, "Gold from Newton's Apple Tree: Historical Recipes for Natural Inks, Paints, and Dyes" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Flowering currant, ivy, Portuguese laurel, and woad might all have grown in a medieval garden, but it would have taken special expertise to extract and create rich blue and purple pigments from them. Humans have been extracting dyes and inks from natural materials for millennia, and the practice was firmly established during the medieval era, recorded in manuscripts that survive today. Gold from Newton's Apple Tree: Historical Recipes for Natural Inks, Paints, and Dyes (Princeton UP, 2026) by Nabil Ali brings together recipes for making natural colors according to season, method, and ingredients.
This unique book takes its title from an ink recipe derived from a descendant of Sir Isaac Newton’s apple tree, in which ingredients extracted from the bark are transformed, seemingly by magic, from brown to a yellow gold. But gold pigments can also be extracted from cornflower, crocus, greater celandine, myrrh, and turmeric. Ali shares his own accessible adaptations for preparing these and other recipes rooted in medieval craft traditions. Along the way, he provides an engaging and informative natural history of the plants used, alongside the broad spectrum of marvelous colors they produce.
Presenting original translations of medieval recipes taken from painters’ and illuminators’ technical manuscripts from the third century BCE through to the twenty-first century, alongside stunning botanical illustrations, Gold from Newton’s Apple Tree is a captivating celebration of colors derived from nature.

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Donald Sassoon, "Revolutions: A New History" (Verso Books, 2025)

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Revolutions: A New History (Verso Books, 2025) is a sparkling account of political upheaval and the power of history. We think of revolutions in terms of fleeting events, such as the fall of the Bastille or the storming of the Winter Palace. In reality, they take decades to burn out, if they ever do.
Historian Donald Sassoon takes the long view of some of the most famous upheavals: the English Civil War, the American War of Independence, the national uprisings that unified Italy and Germany, and the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions. This is a history rich in irony and surprises. As Sassoon shows in this tour de force account, revolutions usually catch revolutionaries themselves by surprise, and the consequences are difficult to fathom at any remove. Revolutions will change how you think about the transformative moments in history, both big and small.

Revolutions is a sparkling account of political upheaval and the power of history. We think of revolutions in terms of fleeting events, such as the fall of the Bastille or the storming of the Winter Palace. In reality, they take decades to burn out, if they ever do.
Historian Donald Sassoon takes the long view of some of the most famous upheavals: the English Civil War, the American War of Independence, the national uprisings that unified Italy and Germany, and the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions. This is a history rich in irony and surprises. As Sassoon shows in this tour de force account, revolutions usually catch revolutionaries themselves by surprise, and the consequences are difficult to fathom at any remove. Revolutions will change how you think about the transformative moments in history, both big and small.

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos

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Rory Naismith, "Offa: King of the Mercians" (Yale UP, 2026)

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Offa: King of the Mercians (Yale UP, 2026), Professor Rory Naismith presents an authoritative biography of Offa of Mercia, revealing his importance as the king who stood at the turning point of Anglo-Saxon history.

Offa ruled the Mercian heartland of the west midlands from 757 to 796. But while Alfred the Great and his dynasty are seen as agents of a new beginning that resulted in a unified Anglo-Saxon kingdom, Offa is best remembered as the builder of a great dyke and as a symbol of an older, divided order.

In this major new biography, Professor Naismith challenges this view. Professor Naismith reveals how Offa cemented Mercia’s position as the dominant force in the southern part of Britain, strengthened the internal cohesion of his domains, and laid the basis for a new model of kingship. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including charters, coins, and chronicles, Professor Naismith reveals Offa as a king who was ambitious and successful, and who carefully constructed his image and that of the royal family. Far from just one in a sequence of overlords, Offa had a lasting impact on how kingship was practised and conceived across England.

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Lisa Siraganian, "The Problem of Personhood: Giving Rights to Trees, Corporations, and Robots" (Verso, 2026)

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Over the last twenty-five years, the concept of per-sonhood has become central to many contentious debates. Corporations have won free speech protections, as if they were individuals. The right to life or freedom has been claimed on behalf of fetuses, trees, and elephants. The fund of human rights is spilling over into the nonhuman.
Lisa Siraganian’s The Problem of Personhood: Giving Rights to Trees, Corporations, and Robots (Verso, 2026) reveals the unsettling consequences of granting rights to imagined persons, such as Sophia the robot citizen or New Zealand’s Whanganui River. Synthesizing the political and philosophical debates on personhood and drawing on a varied cast of thinkers that includes Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt, and Dr. Seuss, Siraganian uncovers the disturbing impact of this contemporary development. Awarding rights to robots and rivers all too easily becomes a legal tool to turn people into capital. When robot Sophia is made a citizen, “she” is transformed into a subject in the law without the corresponding legal duties that protect us from her.
At the root of this trend is the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling that grants First Amendment rights to corporations as if they were individuals. The result has not been the transformation of things into humans so much as humans into things, when animals and the environment would be better protected with reference to our humanity rather than to theirs.

Lisa Siraganian is the J. R. Herbert Boone Chair in Humanities and Professor in the Department of Comparative Thought and Literature at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Maryland, USA). Her work has won multiple awards and has been supported by fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Endowment of the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Siraganian has written award-winning scholarly monographs that bridge literary criticism, art criticism, and legal and philosophical scholarship. More recently, she was the Editor of the Norton Anthology of American Literature, 10th edition, Volume D (1914-1945) (2022).

Tim Wyman-McCarthy is a Lecturer in the discipline of Human Rights and Associate Director of Graduate Studies at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights and the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. He can be reached at tw2468@columbia.edu.

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Paul Robichaud, "Stories of the Stones: Imagining Prehistory in Britain, Ireland and Brittany" (Reaktion, 2026)

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:10:00 -0000

Stories of the Stones: Imagining Prehistory in Britain, Ireland and Brittany (Reaktion, 2026) by Dr. Paul Robichaud explores how ancient monuments – standing stones, megaliths and earthworks – have been reimagined across the centuries in folklore, literature, art and popular culture. From medieval myths to Romantic fascination and from folk-horror cinema to Julian Cope, the powerful stories inspired by these enigmatic sites reflect the beliefs and anxieties of each era. Spanning Britain, Ireland and Brittany, the book includes iconic places such as Stonehenge and Newgrange, as well as lesser-known sites steeped in local lore. While the monuments' original meanings remain mysterious, our interpretations reveal deep emotional and cultural connections to the ancient landscape. Richly illustrated and wide-ranging, this book is ideal for readers interested in prehistoric monuments, storytelling traditions and the enduring power of place.

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Michael L. Satlow, "An Enchanted World: The Shared Religious Landscape of Late Antiquity" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Late Antiquity (ca. 200–600 CE), the world was alive with unseen forces—divine agents who influenced every aspect of daily life. For most ordinary people, religion was not found in temples, synagogues, and churches, but in lived experience as they interacted with the supernatural in a world of uncertainty and danger. In An Enchanted World, Michael Satlow uncovers a shared spiritual landscape that stretched beyond the confines of Judaism, Christianity, and the pantheon of Greek and Roman deities. From healing rituals to protective amulets, spiritual practices were a matter of necessity, transcending religious labels. To get by in the world required being on good terms with the right supernatural beings and being able to ward off the bad ones.
Rejecting traditional narratives that focus on institutional religion and theological divisions, Satlow presents a compelling case for viewing the period through the lens of “lived religion.” This was not a religion of abstractions formulated by rabbis and priests, but an enchanted world populated by divine beings who had as much—if not more—agency as any person. Drawing on archaeological evidence, historical documents, and a rich trove of magical texts, Satlow vividly reconstructs how ordinary people lived in a world that crackled with the energy of the supernatural. His account reimagines the spiritual history of Late Antiquity, centering shared human fears and aspirations and challenging preconceived notions about religious boundaries. With An Enchanted World, Satlow offers a fresh perspective on a transformative period—one that has much to teach us even today about the role that spirituality can play in the secular world.

New Books in Late Anqituiy is Presented by Ancient Jew Review

Michael Satlow is professor of Judaic Studies and Religious Studies at Brown University

Michael Motia teaches Classics and Religious Studies at UMass Boston

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Elias V. Messinas, "Synagogues of Greece: A Study of Synagogues in Macedonia and Thrace" (Bloch Publishing, 2011)

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Across Greece, once-thriving Jewish communities stood for more than two thousand years. From the Romaniote Jews of Ioannina to the great Sephardic center of Salonika, Jewish life shaped the cultural and urban fabric of the eastern Mediterranean.

During the Holocaust, approximately 87 percent of Greek Jewry was murdered — one of the highest destruction rates in Europe. Entire communities disappeared almost overnight.

What remained were buildings — sometimes abandoned, sometimes altered, sometimes barely recognizable — silent witnesses to lives erased.

For more than three decades, architect, researcher, and author Elias V. Messinas has devoted his life to documenting, restoring, and re-interpreting these synagogues and Jewish spaces.

His major works include:

The Synagogues of Greece: A Study of Synagogues in Macedonia and Thrace, a foundational architectural and historical survey,
The Synagogue of Verona, a landmark study in restoration practice,
Kahal Shalom: The Synagogue of Kos — A Chronicle of Research, Restoration, Sanctity and Ecology, and
his recent reflective work, The Synagogue, which explores memory, encounter, and meaning through these spaces.

Messinas is both architect and historian — but perhaps most importantly, a custodian of memory, working to preserve places whose congregations no longer exist.

Renee Garfinkel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, writer, Middle East television commentator, and host of the New Books Network’s Van Leer Jerusalem Series on Ideas. Write her at reneeg@vanleer.org.il. She's on Twitter @embracingwisdom. She blogs here and also contributes here.

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Decolonizing the Novum

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode of High Theory, Zac Zimmer talks to Kim about Decolonizing the Novum. The novum is a concept developed by Darko Suvin that names the new element of a science fiction or speculative fiction narrative. SF narratives from the Americas that rewrite archival material about colonization and first contact have begun an imaginative project of decolonizing that novum.

In Zac’s words, the "novum" has been part of our definition of science fiction since Darko Suvin first offered up the concept of part of his critical assessment of SF. This idea of "novelty" is linked to conquest and colonialism through the figure of the New World, i.e. the post-1492 Americas. Thus untangling the relationship between colonialism, novelty, and science fiction must pass through the historical record of the conquest. One way to do this is to focus on SF that deeply engages the archival record of the XVIth century in the Americas: texts and artworks that use speculation to depart from the knowledge that things didn't quite occur the way the dominant paradigms would lead us to believe, and to imagine other futures linked to past moments of historical contingency.

In the episode, Zac references an incredible list of writers and theorists, including Edmundo O'Gorman and Walter Benjamin, Saidiya Hartman’s “Venus in Two Acts,” You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue, Destrucción de todas las cosas by Hugo Hiriart, and “Decolonization is not a metaphor” by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang.

The transcript lives here as a WordDoc and here as a PDF.

Zac’s book, First Contact: Speculative Visions of the Conquest of the Americas (Northwestern University Press 2025), is a comparative study of Latin American science fiction and narratives of the sixteenth century conquest of the Americas. It moves through a corpus of Mexican novels, Andean visual arts practices, and other cultural artifacts that have dramatized counterfactual narratives. Reimagining the early colonial period’s historiography from a south-to-north directionality while inventing parallel realities, these texts, which are concerned with limit cases, alterities, and alternative temporalities, refuse any reliance on the imperial ontologies of European expansion. Zac examines these works to explore the slippage that exists between science fiction as the exemplary genre of the modern, colonial reality and literary speculation as an aesthetic tool that can be used to imagine other possible worlds. You can read a review in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Zac Zimmer works as an Associate Professor of Literature at UC Santa Cruz. His research explores questions of literature, aesthetics, politics, and technology in the Americas.In addition to his current research on the cultural infrastructure of technosystems, he co-facilitates the Ethics & Astrobiology reading group, part of UCSC's Astrobiology Initiative. In the Literature department, he teaches classes on Latin American literature, science fiction, ethics & technology, and the poetics of California infrastructure.

The image for this episode is the view from the Hubble Space Telescope, showing the birth of a sun-like star, retrieved from Flicker for High Theory by Lili Epstein. Image credit: NASA, ESA, G. Duchene (Universite de Grenoble I); Image Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

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Get Shorty

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Hollywood loves making movies about itself: on this show alone, we’ve done Sunset Boulevard, Sullivan’s Travels, and Singin’ in the Rain. Get Shorty (1995) is Elmore Leonard’s contribution to the genre, a film that was “meta” before the term became overused: we are given the illusion of spontaneity and the story–like one of Leonard’s novels–seems like it’s being made up as it moves along. This perfect 90s movie is a lighthearted and wholly enjoyable dramatization of screenwriter William Goldman’s famous description of the industry: “Nobody knows anything.”

Incredible bumper music by John Deley.

If you’re interested in reading the original novel, you can find it here.

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Gabriel S. Estrada, "Queer Indigenous Cinemas: Sovereign Genders from Seven Directions" (U Arizona Press, 2026)

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Queer Indigenous Cinemas, scholar Gabriel S. Estrada offers an analysis of queer Indigenous media from the Americas, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. This groundbreaking work uses Indigenous directional space and sovereign mapping methods to uncover the emotional, spiritual, and cultural dimensions of queer Indigenous lives. The book's seven chapters--each one of the directions--look closely at media such as cinema and streaming videos that draw on Indigenous concepts from diverse nations such as Diné, Caxcan, Kanaka Maoli, and Nehiyawak.

Gabriel S. Estrada is a Caxcan/Xicanx professor in religious studies at California State University Long Beach, where ze teaches queer spirituality, Indigenous graduate classes, and Nahuatl literature.

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David Kirsch on the Dot Com Bubble and Bust

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

We chat with historian David Kirsch, Associate Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School, about how to understand the Dot Com bubble and bust of the late 1990s and early 2000s. David both lived through the Dot Com moment as a California resident and is a scholar of technology bubbles, including through his coauthored book, Bubbles and Crashes: The Boom and Bust of Technological Innovation (Stanford University Press, 2019). We talk to him about how to think about past and contemporary bubbles from both personal and professional historical perspectives.

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The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this episode, Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and Alex Rivera Cartagena discuss the looming social, cultural, and knowledge catastrophe described in The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want (Harper, 2025). They explore how narratives around artificial intelligence are shaped by powerful tech companies, often obscuring the real limitations, risks, and social costs of these systems.

Their conversation challenges many common assumptions about AI’s inevitability and neutrality, examining how the hype surrounding it threatens university life, just labor practices, and resource allocation. They also bring to light practical ways that individuals, communities, and institutions can resist misleading claims and advocate for more accountable technologies. They argue on behalf of a critical roadmap for rethinking our relationship with AI—one grounded not in hype and speculation, but in democratic values and collective action.

This is the first of two episodes about The AI Con. The second, in Spanish, will appear on the New Books Network en español.

This conversation is sponsored in part by the Teagle Foundation and the “STEM to STEAM” program, which stresses the importance of reading and integrating humanistic perspectives in the sciences.

Quotes, organizations, books, scholars, and articles mentioned in this conversation:

Instituto Nuevos Horizontes
Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez
Elogio a las cercanías: crítica a la cultura tecnológica actual, Héctor José Huyke.
The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking, Shannon Vallor.
The Costs of Connection and "Rethinking Big Data's Relation to the Contemporary Subject," by Nick Couldry and Ulises Ali Mejias.
DukeGPT
Wendy Brown
Ivan Illich
"Has such promise but is so empty." -Alex Rivera Cartagena
"We know that they don't understand." -Emily M. Bender
"The real privilege is not using this technology; it is avoiding it." -Alex Rivera Cartagena
"AI flattens relationships into the words we exchange instead of the things we do." -Emily M. Bender
"It's not about the text specifically but the idea the text enables." -Alex Hanna
"It doesn't make us think about process." -Alex Hanna
"The groups that are already formed can be very powerful pathways for political education and for ensuring there's an integration of society and tech that works for people." -Alex Hanna
"The very idea of intelligence is that you can rank people based on one property...that same racist eugenicist concept." -Emily M. Bender
"The imposition of technology is presented as philanthropy." -Emily M. Bender
"Metaphor of data colonialism" -Alex Hanna
"How do we get there without a natural disaster?" -Emily M. Bender

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Money Beyond Borders with Barry Eichengreen

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Doubts about the international dominance of the dollar are only growing amid worries about tariffs, political dysfunction, and fraying international alliances. Will the dollar continue to reign supreme? In Money Beyond Borders, the leading authority on international currencies, Barry Eichengreen, puts the dollar's prospects in deep historical perspective by chronicling the entire history of cross-border currencies, from the invention of coins in the seventh century BCE to the cryptocurrencies of today and the central bank digital currencies of tomorrow.

Money Beyond Borders: Global Currencies from Croesus to Crypto (Princeton University Press, 2026) recounts how Greek and Roman coins became the first true international currencies. It tells how the Florentine gold florin became the "greenback of the Renaissance," and how it was succeeded by Spanish silver and a Dutch fiat currency. The book explains why the British pound dominated the international economy in the nineteenth century, why the dollar rose to the top during World War II, and why the dollar has survived predictions of the imminent loss of its preeminence since the 1970s.

The long history of international currencies shows that the same factors that encourage their widespread use eventually lead to their abandonment. Money Beyond Borders makes a powerful case that the dollar is now on the downside of this cycle, and it considers who the winners and losers will be when there is flight away from the greenback. Revealing important patterns in the life cycles of international currencies over the past 2,500 years, the book offers valuable lessons and insights about how currencies rise--and why they fall.

Barry Eichengreen is the George C. and Helen N. Pardee Chair and Distinguished Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

Caleb Zakarin is the CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network.

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Transnational Solidarities with Nico Slate

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

My conversation with Nico Slate began with him reflecting on his own path into the study of historical connections between South Asia and the United States. We then moved to a wide-ranging discussion covering the importance of the transnational scale for an understanding of antiracist and anticaste politics, the repurposing of ‘race’ and ‘caste’ through creative acts of transnational translation, the interplay between the race-colony and race-caste analogies in solidaristic politics across the late 19th and 20th centuries, and the conjunctural factors that have shaped the rise and fall of race-caste scholarship.

Guest bio:

Nico Slate, Professor of History. Carnegie Mellon University.

References:

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: Indian social reformer, nationalist, feminist, and socialist who promoted handicrafts, handlooms, and theatre.

W.E.B. Du Bois: American sociologist, historian, and Pan-Africanist who authored some of the most consequential works on the global color line and racial capitalism.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi: Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political thinker who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India's independence from British rule.

Daniel Immerwahr, “Caste or Colony? Indianizing Race in the United States” (2007)

Oliver Cox: Trinidadian sociologist of race relations.

B.R. Ambedkar: Indian jurist and anticaste thinker who chaired the committee that drafted the Indian Constitution and served as the independent India’s first Minister of Law.

Lala Lajpat Rai: Indian revolutionary, politician, and author.

Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020)

W.E.B. Du Bois, Dark Princess (1928).

Katherine Mayo, Mother India (1927).

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Flower Darby, "The Joyful Online Teacher: Finding Our Fizz in Asynchronous Classes" (U Oklahoma Press, 2026)

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The happier the teacher, the better the learning experience--for instructor and student alike. With this equation at its core, The Joyful Online Teacher: Finding Our Fizz in Asynchronous Classes (U Oklahoma Press, 2026) provides practical guidance for making distance learning infinitely more enjoyable and effective, and for improving the online teaching experience in asynchronous classes that often take place in Learning Management Systems (LMSs) like Canvas or Blackboard Learn, and where instructors and students rarely interact in real time, contributing to low completion rates. One of the most pervasive challenges in distance learning is the absent online instructor; and one clear reason for this problem is the often unsatisfying nature of teaching online. A leading voice on online education, Flower Darby draws on the sciences of learning, emotion, and motivation, three decades of her own teaching, extensive research on online student experience, and the stories of joyful online teachers to present concrete tips for making online teaching more rewarding. The key, Darby suggests, is learning to love teaching online. To that end, her book offers instructors accessible, inspiring, common-sense hacks for connecting with students, finding passion, navigating the structural inequities of higher ed, and more--all with a focus on building rapport and relationships, the central ingredients of happiness and satisfaction. These time-tested strategies and hard-won insights promise to help online teachers find meaning, purpose, and, yes, joy in their work--and, consequently, to fulfill the enormous, largely untapped potential of online education.

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Jasper Bernes, "The Future of Revolution: Communist Prospects from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising" (Verso Books, 2025)

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

How might a twenty-first-century revolution against class society succeed?

Communism comes from the future, but its hopes haunt our past. Reading revolutionary history from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising by the light of communist theory, from Marx to C. L. R. James, The Future of Revolution: Communist Prospects from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising (Verso Books, 2025) illuminates the possibilities for overcoming class society in the twenty-first century.
When Marx wrote that the Paris Commune of 1871 showed that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes,” he identified a principle that will remain true as long as capitalism and its class antagonism persist. Historical revolutions reveal essential features of our communist horizon, which would-be revolutionaries, then as now, must negotiate one way or another. In chapters that move from a critical history of the workers’ council to a reading of Marx’s theory of value as an inverted description of communism, Jasper Bernes synthesizes from a history of failure the key criteria for success. He defines for our present moment the urgent mission of the world proletariat.

Jasper Bernes lives in Oakland and teaches in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley. A regular contributor to the Field Notes section of the Brooklyn Rail, he is the author of The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization and two books of poetry, We Are Nothing and So Can You and Starsdown.

YouTube Channel: here

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Christian Henderson, "Monarchies of Extraction: The Gulf States in the Global Food System" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In a region known for its export of oil, Monarchies of Extraction: The Gulf States in the Global Food System (Cambridge UP, 2026) explores how the Gulf states are simultaneously defined by the importation of food. Charting the economics and politics of the Gulf through an examination of its food system, Christian Henderson demonstrates how these states constitute a distinct social metabolism within the global food system. Starting with the pre-oil phase, this book examines the politics of agrarian change in the Gulf. In the contemporary period, Henderson considers the way that the Gulf states have evolved into 'inverted farms', where the import of prodigious quantities of agricultural commodities has enabled these economies to overcome their lack of arable land. As a result of this trade, states such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia have developed their own agribusiness sectors. Henderson further shows how food and consumption in the Gulf states constitute political questions of diet, sustainability, and boycott.

Christian Henderson is a lecturer at the University of Leiden. His research focuses on the Arab region, with a particular focus on Gulf investment in the states of North Africa and the Levant, rural development and business politics. Alongside his academic work, he has worked as a journalist in Lebanon and with Al Jazeera in Qatar.

Alec Fiorini is a PhD student at Queen Mary University London's Centre for Labour, Sustainability and Global Production (CLaSP) researching the political economy of nitrogen fertilizer supply chains.

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Clifton Crais, "The Killing Age: How Violence Made the Modern World" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

A bracing account of how our current planetary crisis emerged from the worst cataclysmic destruction in human history, which Clifton Crais terms the Mortecene—the killing age.

We are used to speaking of the Anthropocene and the outsized impact humans have had on the planet. But we sometimes lose sight of a fundamental truth at the heart of modern world history: the legacy of human predation, slavery, and imperialism that has devastated the natural world and led us to our present moment. As historian Clifton Crais shows in this magisterial work The Killing Age: How Violence Made the Modern World (U Chicago Press, 2025), the period that we most associate with human progress—which gave us the Enlightenment, the rise of democracies, the Industrial Revolution, and more—was at the same time catastrophically destructive.
In this bracing, landmark book, Crais urges us to view the growth of global capitalism between 1750 and the early 1900s not as the Anthropocene, but as the Mortecene: the Killing Age. Killing brought the world together and tore it apart, as profiteering warlords committed mass-scale slaughter of humans and animals across Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The newfound ease and profitability of killing created a disturbing network of global connections and economies, eliminating tens of millions of people and sparking an environmental crisis that remains the most urgent catastrophe facing the world today.
Drawing on years of scholarship and marshaling myriad sources across world history, The Killing Age (University of Chicago Press 2025) turns our vision of past and present on its head, illuminating the Mortecene in all its horror—how it shaped who we are, what we value and fear, and the precarious present we inhabit today.

Our guest is Professor Clifton Crais, a Professor of History at Emory University

Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023).

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Matthew Bothwell, "The Invisible Universe: Why There's More to Reality than Meets the Eye" (Simon and Schuster, 2021)

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Since the dawn of our species, people all over the world have gazed in awe at the night sky. But for all the beauty and wonder of the stars, when we look with just our eyes we are seeing and appreciating only a tiny fraction of the Universe. What does the cosmos have in store for us beyond the phenomena we can see, from black holes to supernovas? How different does the invisible Universe look from the home we thought we knew? In The Invisible Universe: Why There's More to Reality than Meets the Eye (Simon and Schuster, 2021) Dr Matt Bothwell takes us on a journey through the full spectrum of light and beyond, revealing what we have learned about the mysteries of the Universe.
This book is a guide to the ninety-nine per cent of cosmic reality we can’t see – the Universe that is hidden, right in front of our eyes. It is also the endpoint of a scientific detective story thousands of years in the telling. It is a tour through our Invisible Universe.

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John Bechtold, "U.S. Militarism and the Terrain of Memory: Negotiating Dead Space" (Taylor & Francis, 2024)

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In U.S. Militarism and the Terrain of Memory: Negotiating Dead Space (Taylor & Francis, 2024), John Bechtold examines how the US military understands information and the media as a contested terrain. Focusing on the assaults on the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004, Bechtold shows the efforts the US military went through to make sure it was able maintain control over the battles’ narrative. This effort is more than public affairs and trying to shape how others understand the operations. Just like the military will fight over physical terrain, Bechtold argues that the military understands the information space and the news media as places of contestation that it must work to control. Using examples ranging from official memorialization efforts by the military to Luis Sinco’s photograph of James Blake Miller (the “Marlboro Marine”) to Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury, this book shows how the assaults on Fallujah are remembered in US military history. Moreover, Bechtold shows how the military set the conditions for the Battle for Fallujah to remembered.

You can find a transcript of our interview here.

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Fermenting and Foraging: Resourcefulness in the Historical and Contemporary Kitchen

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Today, techniques such as fermenting and foraging are increasingly appealing to those seeking to create economical, nourishing, waste-free meals. This panel, moderated by Jane Ziegelman and featuring chefs Ari Miller and Jeremy Umansky, will explore today’s innovative tactics and the historical precedents for these strategies in the Ashkenazi Jewish immigrant kitchen at the turn of the 20th century.

This panel discussion originally took place on November 18, 2020.

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Alberto Galasso, "The Management of Innovation: Managing and Creating Technology Capital" (Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2024)

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Despite the importance of innovation for the growth of firms, industries, and the national economy, the strategic tools available to effectively manage and create new technologies are often neglected by entrepreneurs and corporate managers. The Management of Innovation: Managing and Creating Technology Capital (Rotman-UTP Publishing, 2024) examines how firms can leverage and create technology capital. The analysis considers the two key stages of the innovation process: technology management and technology creation. Each stage involves complex managerial decisions related to resource allocation and the assessment of relevant costs and benefits. This book examines the most frequent trade-offs that shape the innovation process across these two stages. It also provides an introduction to intellectual property and patent analytics.

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Katharina Wiedlack, "Under Western Eyes: Vulnerable Minorities and the Russian State in New Cold War Cultures" (Academic Studies Press, 2025)

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Under Western Eyes: Vulnerable Minorities and the Russian State in New Cold War Cultures (Academic Studies Press, 2025) examines the New Cold War between Anglophone Western and Russian media, focusing on its coverage of LGBTIQ+ topics and representations of Russian femininity, masculinity, racial and gender diversity, and disability. It interrogates how the Anglophone media constructs images of vulnerable bodies and groups in Russia, juxtaposing them with the vengeful state and the powerful figure of Putin. These media discourses delineate and unify liberal values as American and Western and contrast them with "backward" Russian values. Paradoxically, in its endeavor to accentuate American dominance and its role in global affairs, various news outlets and entertainment media amplify homophobic, heteronormative, and racist narratives stemming from Russian sources and lend support to Putin's self-portrayal as a formidable opponent to the West. While the West expresses outrage at Putin’s criminalization of LGBTIQ+ activity, it draws on homophobic language to mock his shirtless horse-riding and “bromance” with Trump; the West condemns Russia's oppression of women, yet peddles the Orientalist idea of the "Slavic Femme"―that is, the hypersexualized trickster.

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Kim Embrey, "Coca and the Victorians: From Botanical Curiosity to Regulated Drug, 1835–1912" (Transcript Publishing, 2025)

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

The South American coca plant was established in 19th-century Britain as a medical product before it became a globally restricted drug. Drawing on botanical, economic, pharmaceutical, social, and political perspectives, in Coca and the Victorians: From Botanical Curiosity to Regulated Drug, 1835–1912 (Transcript Publishing, 2025), Dr. Kim Embrey analyses how the use and perception of coca changed as it was transferred to Europe. In a process of cultural dissimilation, coca was not simply adopted, but embedded into new medical, social, and scientific contexts. The study shows how a plant from the Andes was repositioned in British modernity.

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Margaret Heffernan, "Embracing Uncertainty: How Writers, Musicians and Artists Thrive In An Unpredictable World" (Policy Press, 2025)

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Most people hate and fear uncertainty. It causes such stress and anxiety that we often choose certain surrender over doubt, becoming passive, dependent, addicted―and more anxious than ever. Doubling down on the certainties promised by technology and micro-management only makes things worse, leaving no opportunity for innovation, adaptation or invention. Artists live with uncertainty constantly―but instead of waiting for the future, they run towards making it, with agency and freedom. What can we learn from them, about facing into a future that grows more uncertain daily?

At a time when organizations of all kinds crave innovation but complain their people lack creativity and initiative, the arts have never been so essential to our future. We may not all be artists, but we can learn to think like them. In Embracing Uncertainty: How Writers, Musicians and Artists Thrive In An Unpredictable World (Policy Press, 2025) Margaret Heffernan makes a compelling argument for the vital integration of art into all aspects of our lives and for artists to guide us with their stamina, freedom and endurance.

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David Potter, "Master of Rome: A Life of Julius Caesar" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

By any measure, Julius Caesar is one of the most significant and famous figures in Roman history. Self-identified as a "popular" politician, he advocated for effective government to better the lives of average Romans,but believed such a government could not be based upon the existing democracy. Only through his personal authority and the massive organization he built to overthrow the government could the prosperity of all Rome's citizens be ensured.

Through a careful analysis of the ancient sources, especially Caesar's own writings, David Potter offers us a stunning and original portrait of this great general and statesman. Master of Rome: A Life of Julius Caesar (Oxford UP, 2025) reveals Caesar as a highly organized manager with an extraordinary ability to adjust to circumstances while maintaining the ancient equivalent of a positive "media presence." After his death, Caesar's followers put forward a narrative of his life that made his rise to power seem inevitable, but Caesar's own writing tells us a different story—one of a detail-oriented general who demanded a high degree of accountability from his subordinates.
A critical aspect of Caesar's philosophy of command was the need to find room for former enemies to serve in his organization. While this philosophy catapulted Caesar to great fame as a general during the wars in Gaul, when he attempted to put this method into effect in the wake of the civil war that established him as the master of Rome, it led to his brutal assassination in 44 BCE.
Master of Rome tells the dramatic story of one of history's most intriguing figures, who rose from the fringes of Roman political society to unprecedented heights. Along the way, Potter identifies the extraordinary qualities that enabled Caesar to dominate the world in which he lived.

David Potter is Francis W. Kelsey Collegiate Professor of Greek and Roman History and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan. His previous books include The Origin of Empire: Rome from the Republic to Hadrian, Constantine the Emperor, The Victor's Crown: A History of Ancient Sport from Homer to Byzantium, and Theodora: Actress, Empress, Saint.

YouTube Channel: here

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Beans Velocci, "Sex Isn't Real: The Invention of an Incoherent Binary" (Duke UP, 2026)

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In Sex Isn’t Real: The Invention of an Incoherent Binary (Duke UP, 2026), Beans Velocci traces the history of current high stakes attempts to define sex and to create a world devoid of trans life. Drawing on lab notes, family genealogies, medical case studies, and more, Velocci follows scientists and clinicians from the mid-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century and across five disciplines—zoology, eugenics, gynecology, statistical sexology, and transsexual medicine—as their ideas and practices created a definitional tangle. They demonstrate how the sorting of bodies into male and female persists not despite but because of sex’s incoherence: the defining features of these categories shift to contain various understandings of anatomy and physiology, theories of race, developments in research and medical methodologies, and bodies that cannot be accounted for in a binary framework. Exposing the endless work required to produce a world in which most people have a binary gender identity that neatly fits their binarily sexed body, Velocci demonstrates that it is not cis people who fit the categories; it’s the categories that flex to make them fit.

Beans Velocci is Assistant Professor of History and Sociology of Science and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Annahid Dashtgard, "Fire and Silence: A Roadmap for BIPOC Leaders" (Dundurn Press, 2026)

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Annahid Dashtgard about her new book, Fire and Silence: A Roadmap for BIPOC Leaders (Dundurn Press, 2026).

Necessary tactics for BIPOC leaders to navigate from survive to thrive.
In these politically fraught times, organizations need strong leadership to help navigate uncertainty and complexity. A crucial yet overlookedgroup of leaders are also racial minorities, who often move into positions of influence with little support or acknowledgement. If you’re one of these leaders (or hope to be), this book is specifically for you. Fire and Silence offers a roadmap to leadership using compassion instead of trauma, authority without victimhood, and strength inclusive of vulnerability, in ways that are fair to all.
From the trenches of social activism to coaching boardroom executives, Annahid Dashtgard offers proven strategies and real-world stories alongside practical tips and tools to support growing numbers of BIPOC leaders in achieving the impact and recognition they so richly deserve — without having to sacrifice who they are in the process.

Annahid Dashtgard is CEO of Anima Leadership, a racial justice consulting firm. Over the last two decades she has worked with hundreds of organizations and leaders to create more inclusive workplaces. Her first book, Breaking the Ocean: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion and Reconciliation, met rave reviews. Toronto is her chosen home.

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Peter D. McDonald, "The Impossible Reversal: A History of How We Play" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Tracing the cultural history of play--from Fluxus to SimCity Games and gamified activities have become ubiquitous in many adults' lives, and play is widely valued for fostering creativity, community, growth, and empathy. But how did we come to our current understanding of what it means to play? The Impossible Reversal: A History of How We Play charts the transformation of notions of playfulness beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, when a legion of artists, academics, and engineers developed new ways of theorizing, structuring, and designing ludic activity. Through examples ranging from experimental Fluxus games to corporate role-playing exercises and from the Easy Bake Oven to Tetris, The Impossible Reversal presents four styles of playfulness characteristic of the "era of designed play": the impossible reversal, which puts a player in a seemingly hopeless scenario they must upend with a tiny gesture; expending the secret, which involves silly rules that gain an obscure power and require players to embrace failure; simulated freedom, a satiric criticism of the ordinary world; and oblique repetition, a way of playing that stumbles toward unimaginable outcomes through simple, meaningless, and endlessly iterated acts. A unique genealogical account of play as both concept and practice, The Impossible Reversal illuminates how playfulness became essential for understanding cultural, technical, and economic production in the United States. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.

Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since 1985. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds two PhDs in game studies (LMU & University of Passau). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the HNU University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal Titel kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist.

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Matthew P. Romaniello, "Europe's Laboratory: Climate and Health in Eighteenth-Century Russia" (Cornell UP, 2025)

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Europe's Laboratory: Climate and Health in Eighteenth-Century Russia (Cornell UP, 2025) is a history of eighteenth-century naturalists and physicians who were involved in the creation of a classification system for the people of the Russian Empire. These Enlightened scholars traveled through Russia describing its people, landscape, and customs. In an era when climate was seen as a significant factor affecting health and bodies, these men wondered: How did the Russians, a "cold" people—phlegmatic or melancholic, according to humoral theory—manage an empire?

The experiences and observations of doctors and scholars working within the Russian Empire contributed to advances in understanding and/or treating diseases like scurvy, smallpox, and more. Key insights were embedded in the travel writings and correspondences of colorful eighteenth-century figures who Romaniello brings to life with vibrant biographies. Medical knowledge was entangled with stories of culture and imperial politics as well. In Europe's Laboratory, Romaniello’s deft contextualization helps make sense of these intextricable branches of eighteenth-century taxonomies as he demonstrates that the Russian Empire was a part of global knowledge networks.

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Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic with Mia Bennett

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 08:00:00 -0000

Nowhere is the dual threat of climate change and geopolitical contest felt more strongly than in the Arctic. Sea ice is declining rapidly, wildfires are burning, and permafrost is thawing. All the while, global interest is gathering apace as the region transforms from being a frozen desert into an international waterway. In this episode, Mia Bennett—co-author with Kalus Dodds of Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic (Yale UP, 2025)—discusses the state of the Arctic today, highlighting the twin dangers of climate change and geopolitical competition, as well as how the region is becoming a space for experimentation in everything from Indigenous governance to subsea technologies. Growing geopolitical competition is accompanying environmental disruption. Countries including Russia, China, and the United States are investing in the Arctic and consolidating their interests in strategic access, resource exploitation, and alliance-building. The consequences of this emerging Arctic Anthropocene are truly global, from rising sea levels due to melting glaciers to tensions between great powers determined to protect their territory and resources, and the well-being of Indigenous Peoples who have fought for centuries for rights and recognition. If you are to read one book to understand the Arctic today, from its history to global stakes, this is the one.

—

Mia Bennett is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Washington. She is a 2025-26 British Academy Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Outer Space Studies at University College London and a Fulbright Arctic Initiative scholar. As a political geographer with geospatial skills, she traces, maps, and critiques processes of Arctic frontier-making from the edges of settler-colonial states and orbits of space powers like China to the depths of Indigenous lands.

She is currently examining how the frontiers of the Arctic and outer space are intersecting through case studies involving the rise of Starlink satellite internet and the development of commercial spaceports and ground stations in places like Kodiak, Alaska and Svalbard, Norway. She has done fieldwork on bridges, both real and imagined, in the Russian Far East, on a new highway to the Arctic Ocean in Canada’s Northwest Territories, atop the melting Greenland Ice Sheet, and inside air-conditioned offices in Singapore.

Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic (Yale University Press 2025)

Cryopolitics (started by Mia)

A complete list of Mia’s publications on GoogleScholar.

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New Books Network

Gloria Sibson Ayob, "The Concept of Emotional Disorder" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Alex Law, "The Roots of Sociology: Scottish Enlightenment and the Civilising Process" (Routledge, 2026)

On The State of Black Men's Studies and Black Masculinist Thought Scholarship

Rahul Mukherjee, "Unlimited: Aspirational Politics and Mobile Media Distribution" (MIT Press, 2026)

Kati Curts, "Assembling Religion: The Ford Motor Company and the Transformation of Religion in America" (NYU Press, 2025)

Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word and Me" (37 Ink, 2026)

Martha Conway, "We Meet Apart" (Regal House Publishing, 2026)

Steven Nadler, "Spinoza, Atheist" (Princeton UP, 2026)

For All Mankind Concludes Its Search For New Life

The Predictable Shock of Brexit: Cultural Dissonance and the Rise of Populism with Iain Quinn

Many Cultures, One Hope: Cultural Competence in the Uniting Church with guest Reverend Seforosa Carroll

Homes of the Past

Dougald O’Reilly, "Empires of the Southern Ocean: Early Civilizations of Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026)

Kenna Neitch, "A Praxis of Persistence: Central American Feminist Testimony and Sustainable Activism" (SUNY Press, 2026)

Helen Veit, "Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History" (St Martin's Press, 2026)

Mackenzi Lee, "Masters of the Universe: Teela: Daughter of Eternos" (Mattel, 2026)

David Petruccelli, "A Scourge of Humanity: The Origins of Interpol and the End of Empire in Central and Eastern Europe" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Cultural Competence Isn’t One-Size-Fits-All: Talking culturally responsive teaching with Dr Remy Low

Sierra Bainbridge and James Kitchin, "Seeking Abundance: Design, Ecology and a Flourishing Planet" (Axio, 2026)

Joanna Dee Das, "Faith, Family, and Flag: Branson Entertainment and the Idea of America" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

﻿Craig Fehrman, "This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark" (Simon & Schuster, 2026)

Jonatan Leer and Stinne Gunder Strøm Krogager, "Food Porn: Food Aesthetics in a Digital Age" (Bristol UP, 2026)

Chloe Chapin, "Suitable: The Sartorial Revolution and the Fashioning of Modern Men" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Julie J. Park, "Race, Class, and Affirmative Action: College Admissions in a New Era" (Harvard Education Press, 2026)

Janani Balasubramanian and Natalie Gosnell, "Art-Science Undisciplined: A Playbook for Transformative Collaboration" (U California Press, 2026)

“You Sound So Australian”: From Being Read to Rewriting the Room with guest Zindzi Okenyo

Pedro Domingos, "The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World" ﻿(Basic Books, 2018)

Kevin Warsh: "What did you have to say in order to get this job?"

Andrew Demshuk, "The Filthiest Village in Europe: Grassroots Ecology and the Collapse of East Germany" (Cornell UP, 2026)

Charlie Qiuli Xue and Arwen Yingting Chen, "American-Designed Shopping Malls in China" (Hong Kong UP, 2026)

Gary Hoover, "Ladder or Lottery: Economic Promises and the Reality of Who Gets Ahead" (U California Press, 2026)

Christos Lynteris, "How Plague Got Rats: Mastering a Zoonotic Pandemic" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2026)

Annette Gordon-Reed ed., "Jefferson on Race: A Reader" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Sean Scalmer, "A Fair Day's Work: The Quest to Win Back Time" (Simon and Schuster, 2025)

Yiddish Ethnography and An-ski

Lauren W. Westerfield, "Woman House: Essays and Assemblages" (U Massachusetts Press, 2026)

India’s 2026 State Elections and Indian Democracy?

Gregory Kenicer, "Scottish Plant Names: An A–Z" (Birlinn, 2026)

Amy Thomas, "Copyright, Contract, and Video Games: Terms of Play" (Hart Publishing, 2026)

Radio ReOrient 14:9: Racializing the Ummah, with Rhea Rahman, hosted by Saeed Khan and Claudia Radiven

Media, Power, and the Gaza Narrative

Robin R. Means Coleman and Novotny Lawrence eds., "The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Ashley Rose Young, "Nourishing Networks: The Public Culture of Food in New Orleans" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Chunmei Du, "Everyday Occupation: American Soldiers and Chinese Civilians in the Aftermath of World War II" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Paige Towers, "What They Stole: A Familicide Rooted in Intercountry Adoption" (U Iowa Press, 2026)

Frances Kneupper, "Prophecy and the Battle for Spiritual Authority, 1360–1400" (Oxford UP, 2025)

H. A. Drake, "The Wisdom of the Ancients: Four Ideas That Changed the World" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Shefalee Vasudev, "Stories We Wear: Status, Spectacle and the Politics of Appearance" (Westland Non-Fiction, 2025)

Patrick S. D. McCartney, "Sanskrit-Speaking' Villages, Linguistic Utopias and the Metaphysics of Development" (Routledge, 2026)

The Instigators

Michael E. Sawyer, "The Door of No Return: Being-As-Black" (Temple UP, 2026)

Timothy Mason Roberts, "After Barbary: Algeria's Roles in the French and American Empires" (Cornell UP, 2025)

Barnaby B. Barratt, "Free Association: ﻿A Contemporary Introduction" ﻿(Routledge, 2026)

Turn Your LinkedIn Profile into a Book Marketing Machine with Louise Brogan

Laura Tisdall, "﻿We Have Come to Be Destroyed: Growing Up in Cold War Britain" (Yale UP, 2026)

Christopher S. Celenza, "The Evolution of Western Thought: Volume 1, From the Ancient World to Late Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Judith Hill, "Gothic: Building Castles in Post-Union Ireland" (Four Courts Press, 2026)

Franziska Sittig and Noam Petri, "Intellectual Self-Destruction: How the West Gambles Away Its Future" (Ibidem Press, 2025)

Hannah Shepherd, "The Narrowing Sea: Fukuoka, Pusan, and the Rise and Fall of an Imperial Region" (U California Press, 2025)

Janet Hinson Shope and Richard Pringle, "Campus Whisper Networks: Knowing with Sexual Assault Survivors" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

David Faflik, "Segregation Games: Boston, Busing, and the Making of Red Sox Nation" (U Massachusetts Press, 2026)

Damien Van Puyvelde, "The DGSE: A Concise History of France's Foreign Intelligence Service" (Georgetown UP, 2026)

Kanika Singh, "The Story of a Sikh Museum: Heritage, Politics, Popular Culture" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Billionaire Backlash: Can It Help Save Democracy?

Why Elected Leaders Subvert Democracy

Learning Languages on Social Media

Mapping a New Politics in For All Mankind

chaun webster, "Without Terminus: untraining an archive" (Greywolf, 2026)

What AI Means for Fiction: A Discussion with Literary Critic Mark McGurl

Angela Byrne, "Finding Mary: The untold story of an Inishowen murder, 1844" (Four Courts Press, 2025)

Petal Kimberly Samuel, "The Quiet Zone: Caribbean Expressive Cultures and the Feminist Aesthetics of Disturbance" (Rutgers UP, 2026)

Andrea Zarafshon Moore, "Audible Loss: New Music and the Crisis of Memory" (Fordham UP, 2025)

Why Elected Leaders Subvert Democracy

Patrick Wyman, "Lost Worlds: How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World" (HarperCollins, 2026)

Timothy K. August, "The Refugee Aesthetic: Reimagining Southeast Asian America" (Temple UP, 2020)

Timothy McCall, "Making the Renaissance Man: Masculinity in the Courts of Renaissance Italy" (Reaktion Books, 2023)

Matthieu Felt, "Meanings of Antiquity: Myth Interpretation in Premodern Japan" (Harvard UP, 2023)

Julia F. Irwin, "Catastrophic Diplomacy: US Foreign Disaster Assistance in the American Century" (UNC Press, 2023)

Dalit Feminism with Thenmozhi Soundararajan

Rahul Mukherjee, "Unlimited: Aspirational Politics and Mobile Media Distribution" (MIT Press, 2026)

Craig Fehrman, "This Vast Enterprise: A New History of Lewis & Clark" (Simon & Schuster, 2026)

Pedro Domingos, "The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World" (Basic Books, 2018)

Barnaby B. Barratt, "Free Association: A Contemporary Introduction" (Routledge, 2026)

Laura Tisdall, "We Have Come to Be Destroyed: Growing Up in Cold War Britain" (Yale UP, 2026)

Carlos Martins, "Fascism: Beyond Hitler and Mussolini" (Desassossego, 2022)

Carlos Martins, "Fascism: Beyond Hitler and Mussolini" (Desassossego, 2022)