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New Books in Critical Theory
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in Critical Theory
Angel Daniel Matos, "The Reparative Impulse of Queer Young Adult Literature" (Routledge, 2024)
The Reparative Impulse of Queer Young Adult Literature (Routledge, 2024) is a provocative meditation on emotion, mood, history, and futurism in the critique of…
New Books in Critical TheoryGhosts In Our Fields
High Theory returns with a series of haunting concepts, places, and figures from our former guests. We asked folks to call in with something spookworthy…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Anuradha Sajjanhar, "The New Experts: Populist Elites and Technocratic Promises in Modi's India" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
How are technocratic experts supporting populist politics? In The New Experts Populist Elites and Technocratic Promises in Modi’s India (Cambridge UP, 2024)…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Lennard J. Davis, "Poor Things: How Those with Money Depict Those Without It" (Duke UP, 2024)
For generations most of the canonical works that detail the lives of poor people have been created by rich or middle-class writers like Charles Dickens, John…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Michael Hardt, "The Subversive Seventies" (Oxford UP, 2023)
A thought-provoking reconsideration of how the revolutionary movements of the 1970s set the mold for today's activism. The 1970s was a decade of "subversives"…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Andrew deWaard, "Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture" (U California Press, 2024)
Sequels, reboots, franchises, and songs that remake old songs—does it feel like everything new in popular culture is just derivative of something old? Contrary…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Kostas Kampourakis, "Ancestry Reimagined: Dismantling the Myth of Genetic Ethnicities" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Recent social and political psychological research indicates that increased access to ancestry testing has strengthened the notion of genetic essentialism…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Matilde Masso, "Contested Money: Towards a New Social Contract" (Routledge, 2023)
Discussing money is always accompanied by controversy as well as enchantment. Debating what money is and how it performs its main functions in the contemporary…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Omer Aijazi, "Atmospheric Violence: Disaster and Repair in Kashmir" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
Atmospheric Violence: Disaster and Repair in Kashmir (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) grapples with the afterlife of environmental disasters and armed conflict and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Deborah Valenze, "The Invention of Scarcity: Malthus and the Margins of History" (Yale UP, 2023)
A radical new reading of eighteenth-century British theorist Thomas Robert Malthus, which recovers diverse ideas about subsistence production and environments…
- New Books in Critical Theory
The End of White Politics: How to Heal Our Liberal Divide
In early June 2020, Christina Gessler and Zerlina Maxwell met remotely to discuss Maxwell’s soon-to-be-released book. This episode is an encore presentation of…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Adam Greenfield, "Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire" (Verso, 2024)
In Lifehouse: Taking Care of Ourselves in a World on Fire (Verso, 2024), Adam Greenfield presents a compelling vision for collective resilience in an age of…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Steven Levitsky, "Tyranny of the Minority: How to Reverse an Authoritarian Turn, and Forge a Democracy for All" (Crown, 2024)
America is undergoing a massive experiment: It is moving, in fits and starts, toward a multiracial democracy, something few societies have ever done. But the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Vanessa Christina Wills, "Marx's Ethical Vision" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Does Marx have a coherent ethical vision? How does that square with his sometimes-scathing dismissal of morality? What does his critique of capital have to do…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Kevin Sanson, "Mobile Hollywood: Labor and the Geography of Production" (U California Press, 2024)
What is the future of the film industry? In Mobile Hollywood Labor and the Geography of Production (U California Press, 2024), Kevin Sanson, Professor of Media…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Psychoanalytic Defense Mechanisms in James Baldwin’s "Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone"
This podcast describes a short history of a man who did something we’ve lost in America. That man was James Baldwin who insisted on telling the truth. He…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Jamie Furlong and Will Jennings, "The Changing Electoral Map of England and Wales" (Oxford UP, 2024)
What is the connection between where people live and how they vote? In The Changing Electoral Map of England and Wales (Oxford UP, 2024), Jamie Furlong a…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Sharad Chari, "Apartheid Remains" (Duke UP, 2024)
Over the course of the 20th century, the South African state attempted to construct a “White Man’s Country” on the African continent using the biopolitical…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Theo Williams, "Making the Revolution Global: Black Radicalism and the British Socialist Movement before Decolonisation" (Verso, 2022)
Theo Williams’ Making the Revolution Global: Black Radicalism and the British Socialist Movement before Decolonisation (Verso, 2022) shows how black radicals…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Chris Cutrone, "Marxism and Politics: Essays on Critical Theory 2006-2024" (Sublation Media, 2024)
Capitalism is a revolutionary situation of the last stage of pre-history, and the potential and possibility for freedom, or else it is just what Hegel said…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Eunsong Kim, "The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property" (Duke UP, 2024)
In The Politics of Collecting: Race and the Aestheticization of Property (Duke University Press, 2024), Eunsong Kim traces how racial capitalism and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor, "Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future" (The New Press, 2024)
A clarion call for justice in the quest for clean energy California’s Salton Sea region is home to some of the worst environmental health conditions in the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Ryan Emanuel, "On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice" (UNC Press, 2024)
Despite centuries of colonialism, Indigenous peoples still occupy parts of their ancestral homelands in what is now Eastern North Carolina--a patchwork quilt…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Frank R. Baumgartner, “Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us about Policing and Race” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
We recently marked the 50th Anniversary of Terry vs. Ohio, the US Supreme Court case that dramatically expanded the scope under which agents of the state could…
- New Books in Critical Theory
A Deep Dive on Karl Marx's "Capital"
Over 150 years ago, Marx published the first volume of Capital, a systematic and voluminous account of capitalism, from the economic bedrock all the way up to…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Natalie Wall, "Black Expression and White Generosity: A Theoretical Framework of Race" (Emerald Publishing, 2024)
In Black Expression and White Generosity: A Theoretical Framework of Race (Emerald Publishing, 2024), Dr. Natalie Wall takes readers on a journey through the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Alan F. Blackwell, "Moral Codes: Designing Alternatives to AI" (MIT Press, 2024)
Why the world needs less AI and better programming languages. Decades ago, we believed that robots and computers would take over all the boring jobs and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Kristina Kolbe, "The Sound of Difference: Race, Class and the Politics of 'Diversity' in Classical Music" (Manchester UP, 2024)
What is the future of classical music? In The Sound of Difference: Race, Class and the Politics of 'Diversity' in Classical Music (Manchester UP, 2024)…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Michael J. Thompson, "Descent of the Dialectic: Phronetic Criticism in an Age of Nihilism" (Routledge, 2024)
In Descent of the Dialectic: Phronetic Criticism in an Age of Nihilism (Routledge, 2024), Michael J. Thompson reconstructs the concept and practice of…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Camille Owens, "Like Children: Black Prodigy and the Measure of the Human in America" (NYU Press, 2024)
Like Children: Black Prodigy and the Measure of the Human in America (NYU Press, 2024) argues that the child has been the key figure giving measure and meaning…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Jon Michaels and David Noll, "Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy" (Atria/One Signal, 2024)
Law professors Jon Michaels and David Noll use their expertise to expose how state-supported forms of vigilantism are being deployed by MAGA Republicans and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Brianna Nofil, "The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Today, U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains an average of 37,000 migrants each night. To do so, they rely on, and pay for, the use of hundreds…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Julia Caterina Hartley, "Iran and French Orientalism: Persia in the Literary Culture of Nineteenth-Century France" (Bloomsbury. 2023)
Today I talked to Julia Caterina Hartley about Iran and French Orientalism: Persia in the Literary Culture of Nineteenth-Century France (Bloomsbury. 2023).New…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Mary Bridges, "Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a Superpower" (Princeton UP, 2024)
There was nothing inevitable or natural about the rise of US finance capitalism in the early twentieth century. In Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Inés Valdez, "Democracy and Empire: Labor, Nature, and the Reproduction of Capitalism" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
In scholarly and popular discourse, popular sovereignty and self-determination are typically conceived of as the antitheses of imperialism, while histories of…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Jack A. Goldstone, "Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2023)
In their pursuit of social justice, revolutionaries have taken on the assembled might of monarchies, empires, and dictatorships. They have often, though not…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Jeff Schuhrke, "Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of U.S. Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade" (Verso, 2024)
How the CIA used American unions to undermine workers at home and subvert democracy abroad.Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of U.S. Labor’s Global…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Caterina Fugazzola, "Words Like Water: Queer Mobilization and Social Change in China" (Temple UP, 2023)
After China officially “decriminalized” same-sex behavior in 1997, both the visibility and public acceptance of tongzhi, an inclusive identity term that refers…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman, "Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite" (Harvard UP, 2024)
Who runs Britain? In Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite (Harvard UP, 2024), Aaron Reeves, and Sam Friedman, both Professors of…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Andrew W. Kahrl, "The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
In The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America (U Chicago Press, 2024), Andrew W. Kahrl uncovers the history of inequitable…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Ilias Alami and Adam D. Dixon, "The Spectre of State Capitalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)
After close to three decades of the hegemony of free market ideas, the state has made a big comeback as an economic actor since the 2008 financial crisis…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Lucy Weir, "Performance, Masculinity, and Self-Injury" (Routledge, 2024)
Can self-harm be art? In Performance, Masculinity, and Self-Injury (Routledge, 2024), Lucy Weir, a Reader in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Sarah Lewis, "The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America" (Harvard UP, 2024)
In a masterpiece of historical detective work, Sarah Lewis exposes one of the most damaging lies in American history. There was a time when Americans were…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Shane Burley and Ben Lorber, "Safety through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism" (Melville House, 2024)
Antisemitism is on the rise today. From synagogue shootings by white nationalists, to right-wing politicians and media figures pushing George Soros conspiracy…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, "Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde" (FSG, 2024)
We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-center…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions
Today’s book is: Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions (Columbia UP, 2024), by Ernesto Castaneda and Carina Cione, which is a practical…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Danny Sriskandarajah, "Power to the People: Use Your Voice, Change the World" (Headline Press, 2024)
Power to the People: Use Your Voice, Change the World (Headline Press, 2024) is Danny Sriskandarajah‘s radical manifesto for change designed to inspire citizen…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Karl Marx, "Capital: Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was living in exile in England when he embarked on an ambitious, multivolume critique of the capitalist system of production. Though only…
New Books in Critical TheoryDecolonial Muslim Political Activism and Thought in Britain
Hizer Mir in conversation with Yahya Birt who speaks on decolonial Muslim political activism and thought in Britain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Melissa Osborne, "Polished: College, Class, and the Burdens of Social Mobility" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Why do people go to college? In Polished: College, Class, and the Burdens of Social Mobility (U Chicago Press, 2024), Melissa Osborne, an associate professor…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Are We Experiencing a Crisis of Culture?
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey spoke with Olivier Roy, professor of social and political sciences at the European…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Josh Cowen, "The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers" (Harvard Education Press, 2024)
School vouchers are often framed as a way to help students and families by providing choice, but evidence shows that vouchers have a negative impact on…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Red Chidgey and Joanne Garde-Hansen, "Museums, Archives and Protest Memory" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
In Museums, Archives and Protest Memory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), Red Chidgey and Joanne Garde-Hansen address the emergence of ‘protest memory’ as a powerful…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Jess Whatcott, "Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics" (Duke UP, 2024)
In Menace to the Future: A Disability and Queer History of Carceral Eugenics (Duke UP, 2024), Jess Whatcott traces the link between US disability institutions…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Oren Kroll-Zeldin, "Unsettled: American Jews and the Movement for Justice in Palestine" (NYU Press, 2024)
Unsettled: American Jews and the Movement for Justice in Palestine (NYU Press, 2024) digs into the experiences of young Jewish Americans who engage with the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
David H. Price, "The American Surveillance State: How the US Spies on Dissent" (Pluto Press, 2022)
When the possibility of wiretapping first became known to Americans they were outraged. Now, in our post-9/11 world, it's accepted that corporations are vested…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Andy Clarno et al., "Imperial Policing: Weaponized Data in Carceral Chicago" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
Chicago is a city with extreme concentrations of racialized poverty and inequity, one that relies on an extensive network of repressive agencies to police the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
David Lay Williams, "The Greatest of All Plagues: How Economic Inequality Shaped Political Thought from Plato to Marx" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Political Theorist David Lay Williams has a new book that traces the problem of economic inequality through the thought of many of the canonical thinkers in…
- New Books in Critical Theory
How Mechanisms of Psychoanalytic Defense Perpetuate Racism in America
The third podcast in this series focuses on an article written by Dr. Dionne Powell who participated in the 2014 documentary, “Black Psychoanalysts Speak,”…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Karyne E. Messina, "The Power of Community: A 45 Day Action Plan to Stop Trump from Turning Our Democracy into His Autocracy" (PI Press, 2024)
An Amazon # 1 top release Kindle book during its debut, The Power of Community: A 45 Day Action Plan to Stop Trump from Turning Our Democracy into His…