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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
In Pursuit of the Inconceivable: An Investigation of Metaphysics and Mysticism with Peter G. Jones (Essentia Books, 2025)
In Pursuit of the Inconceivable: An Investigation of Metaphysics and Mysticism (Essentia Books, 2025) is a compelling exploration of fundamental questions…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Once Upon a Time in South Central LA: John Singleton's Hood Trilogy with Mark D. Cunningham (UP of Mississippi, 2026)
After the groundbreaking success of his debut film, Boyz N the Hood in 1991, filmmaker John Singleton (1968–2019) gained worldwide acclaim, earned the respect…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Poetry in General: How a Literary Form Became Public with Keegan Cook Finberg (Columbia UP, 2025)
What is the place of poetry in the modern world? In Poetry in General: How a Literary Form Became Public (Columbia UP, 2025), Keegan Cook Finberg, an Associate…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Rehearsing the Future: The Thought and Practice of James and Grace Lee Boggs with Michael Doan (AK Press, 2026)
In Rehearsing the Future: The Thought and Practice of James and Grace Lee Boggs (AK Press, 2026), Michael Doan explores the work and legacy of James and Grace…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Radioactive Governance: The Politics of Revitalization in Post-Fukushima Japan with Maxime Polleri (NYU Press, 2026)
The 2011 Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear disaster was the worst industrial nuclear catastrophe to hit Japan. It was a major event, rated at the highest severity…
- New Books in Critical Theory
In Praise of Agnes Heller (1929-2019)
Agnes Heller loved being part of the Budapest School--and she hated being part of any school. In his 2019 In Memoriam piece, John explored her ambivalence…
- New Books in Critical Theory
No! The Art and Activism of Complaining
To be heard as complaining is not to be heard, writes Sara Ahmed. In No! The Art and Activism of Complaining, her sweeping exploration of complaint as a means…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Rooted Movements: The Radical Poetics of Palestinian Space with Amanda Batarseh (Syracuse UP, 2026)
A Conversation with the author Amanda Batarseh about Rooted Movements: The Radical Poetics of Palestinian Space (Syracuse UP, 2026). Present in the heart of…
- New Books in Critical Theory
First Among Equals: Visions of Equality Before Egalitarianism with Teresa M. Bejan (Harvard UP, 2026)
Today, political theorists and philosophers treat as axiomatic the claim that all persons are equal. Dig deeper, however, and what we mean by equality—and what…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Searching for Jane Crow: Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America from the Auction Block to the Cell Block with Talitha LeFlouria (Beacon Press, 2022)
In Searching for Jane Crow: Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America from the Auction Block to the Cell Block (Beacon Press, 2022), historian Talitha L…
- New Books in Critical Theory
In Defence of the Human Being: Foundational Questions of an Embodied Anthropology with Thomas Fuchs (Oxford UP, 2021)
At a time when artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and digital technologies increasingly shape our understanding of what it means to be human, Fuchs argues…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Living Chinese Philosophy: Zoetology As First Philosophy with Roger T. Ames (SUNY Press, 2025)
Contrasts classical Greek ontology ("the science of being in itself") with Confucian "zoetology" ("the art of living"). In Living Chinese Philosophy: Zoetology…
- New Books in Critical Theory
God and Humanity: Herman Bavinck and Theological Anthropology with N Gray Sutanto (Bloomsbury, 2024)
God and Humanity: Herman Bavinck and Theological Anthropology (Bloomsbury, 2024)is the first book to apply Bavinck's theological anthropology to contemporary…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Realism After the Individual: Women, Desire, and the Modern American Novel with Rafael Walker (U Chicago Press, 2025)
The realist novel, so the story goes, isn’t really an American genre but a European and British one. And what the realist novel does—again, according to…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Healing and the Invention of Metaphor: Towards a Poetics of Illness Experience with Laurence J. Kirmayer (Cambridge UP, 2025)
It has long been understood that illness is influenced not only by our bodies' physiology, but also language, culture, and meaning. Healing and the Invention…
- New Books in Critical Theory
An Anticolonial Development: Race, Schooling, and Emancipation in Twentieth-Century West Africa with Elisa Prosperetti (Cambridge UP, 2026)
In An Anticolonial Development: Race, Schooling, and Emancipation in Twentieth-Century West Africa (Cambridge UP, 2026), Elisa Prosperetti argues that while…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Painting Paranoia: Cold War Art and Anti-Communism with Julia Bailey (U Illinois Press, 2026)
The Soviet Union’s rise as a totalitarian state and economic rival to the United States sparked a cultural cold war. The conflict was colored by paranoia and a…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Working with Critical Realism: Stories of Methodological Encounters with Alpesh Maisuria and Grant Banfield (Routledge, 2022)
Working with Critical Realism: Stories of Methodological Encounters (Routledge, 2022) is an international and interdisciplinary collection that gathers stories…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Think of England: Nation, People, and Race in the English Imagination with Paul Kléber Monod (Cambridge UP, 2026)
What is the basis of English national identity? How has this changed over time, and what is its future? Tracing the history of English identity over more than…
- New Books in Critical Theory
To Exist as a Problem: Being Black, Being Palestinian with Zahi Zalloua (Bloomsbury, 2026)
In the first pages of The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois meditates on the question, "How does it feel to be a problem?" In this profound response to…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Strung Up: How White America Learned to Lynch Black Children with Stacey Patton (Beacon Press, 2026)
A powerful, unsettling, and unflinching exploration that forces readers to confront lynching as a devastating legacy of white childhood conditioning, and to…
- New Books in Critical Theory
The Real Pain of Punishment: Prison, Belonging, and the Quest for Humanized Justice with Federica Coppola (Cambridge UP, 2026)
The Real Pain of Punishment: Prison, Belonging, and the Quest for Humanized Justice (Cambridge UP, 2026) highlights the concept of 'belonging' as an…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Rhetorical Powers: How Rising States Shape International Order with Sasikumar Sundaram (Columbia UP, 2026)
Recent years have seen a striking resurgence of anti-imperial and anticolonial rhetoric on the international stage, from Global South to Global North and from…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Born Again: Romanticism and Fundamentalism with Jeffrey Champlin (U Toronto Press, 2025)
Born Again: Romanticism and Fundamentalism (U Toronto Press, 2025) examines the deep historical roots of fundamentalism in Protestantism and the imaginative…
- New Books in Critical Theory
How to Stay Human Forever: On America's Digital Technology Crisis with James Poulos
Many Americans have a constant dread of impending doom. Glued to the screens of our computers and smartphones, we sense that some total catastrophe is just…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Do We Really Need To Choose Between Jobs and the Environment?
Host Licia Cianetti talks to Lorenzo Feltrin about his recent book Workers and the World: Fighting Ecological Crisis from Within (Verso, 2016). They discuss…
- New Books in Critical Theory
How Real Is Race?: Unraveling Race, Biology, and Culture with Carol C. Mukhopadhyay and Rosemary Henze (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025)
Tune in to this discussion about How Real Is Race?: Unraveling Race, Biology, and Culture by Carol C. Mukhopadhyay, Rosemary Henze, and Yolanda T. Moses…
- New Books in Critical Theory
The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to 21st-Century Fascism with Max Haiven (MIT Press, 2026)
A provocative examination of the ways our economy has been rigged by financialization, and the importance of games to our dangerous political moment. In an age…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Vulgar Marxism: Revolutionary Politics and the Dilemmas of Worker Education, 1891-1931 with Edward Baring (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Offers a transformative reading of the Marxist tradition by uncovering its connections to the institutions and practices of worker education. For the past…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature with Matthew Leggatt (SUNY Press, 2026)
Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature with Matthew Leggatt (SUNY Press, 2026) is an edited collection exploring utopias ad…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Femmephilia: Love Letters to Trans Mermaids, Queer Mothers, and Marilyn Monroe with Sophie Lewis
This episode’s centers on Sophie Lewis’s new book Femmephilia. A collection of essays published in various outlets over the last several years, this book will…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Water Logics: Materialist Epistemologies for the Environmental Humanities with yasser elhariry and Edwige Tamalet Talbayev (U Virginia Press, 2026)
Water Logics: Materialist Epistemologies for the Environmental Humanities (U Virginia Press, 2026) examines the epistemological adjustments that take place…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Assemblage Theory and Affect with Ian Buchanan (Bloomsbury, 2026)
From the inside flap: “ In this lucid and inventive work, Ian Buchanan argues that the pivotal concepts ‘assemblage’ and ‘affect,’ which were separated at…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Driven to Their Knees: Humiliation in Contemporary Politics with Roxanne L. Euben (Princeton UP, 2025)
Humiliation pervades our politics, from images of stripped Palestinian men in Gaza to mocking chants at MAGA rallies. It suffuses pictures and videos, speaks…
- New Books in Critical Theory
The Nature of Freedom: On the Republican Tradition with Philip Pettit
What is freedom? Benjamin Constant and Isaiah Berlin divided the answers to that question into two categories: the positive conception of the ancients (freedom…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Angela Last, "Tainted Tools: New Materialisms As a Decolonial Project" (Manchester University Press, 2026)
In Tainted Tools: New Materialisms As a Decolonial Project (Manchester University Press, 2026), Angela Last offers a provocative intervention into the tense…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Joe Jackson, "Kahlil Joseph and the Audiovisual Atlantic: Music, Modernity, Transmedia Art" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
Kahlil Joseph has collaborated with musicians FKA twigs, Flying Lotus, Sampha and Shabazz Palaces among many others. He has directed numerous films, music…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Abi Bae and Hamza Hamouchene eds., "Towards Palestinian Liberation: Global Perspectives on Anti-Colonial Resistance and Solidarity" (Daraja Press, 2026)
The book Towards Palestinian Liberation: Global Perspectives on Anti-Colonial Resistance & Solidarity (Daraja Press, 2026), published by Daraja Press…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Catherine A John, "Afroindigenization: A Theory of Grassroots Cultural Practice" (Duke UP, 2026)
In Afroindigenization: A Theory of Grassroots Cultural Practice (Duke University Press, 2026), Catherine A. John addresses the underbelly of spiritual…
- New Books in Critical Theory
John Charles Simon and Jennalee Donian, "Understanding Laughter and Humor: Why We Laugh, Why We Don’t, and Why It Matters" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2026)
In John Charles Simon and Jennalee Donian’s Understanding Laughter and Humor: Why We Laugh, Why We Don’t, and Why It Matters (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Robert A. Wilson, "Kin Matters: Relational Beings in the Fragile Sciences" (Oxford UP, 2026)
What is kinship? This central question in cultural anthropology is standardly answered in terms of culturally constructed relationships that are unconstrained…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Leonhard Emmerling, "The Idiots: The History of the Homo Nullus" (Seagull Books, 2026)
In a world obsessed with expertise and control, the figure of the idiot illuminates deeper truths about society. In this interview, Morteza Hajizadeh…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Kevin Van Meter and Robert Ovetz eds. "Points of Departure: Refusal of Work and the Crisis of Capitalism: the Collected Writings of Harry Cleaver" (Common Notions, 2026)
“The general thrust of capitalist policy in this period aims at the intensified imposition of work in response to ongoing struggle against it.” —Harry Cleaver…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Marnie Hughes-Warrington, "Artificial Historians" (Routledge, 2025)
I spoke with Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington about her 2026 book Artificial Historians, co-authored with Anne Martin and Lewis Yarlupurka O’Brien. A…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Chika Watanabe, "Play to Survive: Disaster Preparedness Along the Ring of Fire" (Stanford UP, 2026)
We live in a fragile world. This much is evident as stories abound of natural disasters that wipe out communities in an instant. How can we survive the future…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Piergiorgio Di Giminiani, "Alterhumanism: Becoming Human on a Conservation Frontier" (U Arizona Press, 2025)
In the Anthropocene, a question has become increasingly urgent: What does it mean to be human? Set against the backdrop of southern Chile’s conservation…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Jonathan Quong, "Political Philosophy: The Puzzle of Legitimate Injustice" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Can laws be unjust and yet remain, in some sense, morally legitimate? In Political Philosophy: The Puzzle of Legitimate Injustice (Princeton UP, 2026)…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Michael Diniscia and Ellyn M Toscano eds. "Civility Unbound: Contesting a Democratic Value" (NYU Press, 2026)
The idea of civility goes back to classical Rome and the ways in which citizens engaged one another within the republic. The term itself is often used in a…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Duty, Banality, and Hopefulness with Alex Cain
In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Alex Cain. Dr Alex Cain researches in the fields of political theory and ethical theory, with a particular focus on the work…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Gastronomy as Sensory Engineering
One year after the publication of Gastronomica’s special feature on food and philosophy, Robert T. Valgenti of the Editorial Collective revisits the question…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Raf de Bont et al eds., "Globalizing Wildlife" (UNC Press, 2026)
Humans have always incorporated wildlife into processes of work, capture, and exchange. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, globalization became the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
María Angélica Thumala Olave, "The Love of Books: Attachment to a Changing Cultural Object" (Manchester UP, 2026)
Why do people read? In The Love of Books: Attachment to a Changing Cultural Object (Manchester University Press, 2026) María Angélica Thumala Olave, a Senior…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Prakash Kashwan, "Decolonizing Environmentalism: Alternative Visions and Practices of Environmental Action" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
Brought to you by the BISA Environment and Climate Politics Working Group. Decolonizing Environmentalism: Alternative Visions and Practices of Environmental…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Stefan Collini, "Literature and Learning: A History of English Studies in Britain" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Literature and Learning: A History of English Studies in Britain (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Stefan Collini The study and teaching of English…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Paul Johnson, "Challenging Inequalities: How We Got Stuck and Where We Go Next" (Princeton UP, 2026)
There is a widespread sense throughout the developed world that progress towards a better society has stalled. Many countries, including the UK, have…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Niharika Pandit, "Occupying the Everyday: Militarisation and Gendered Politics of Living in Kashmir" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Our recent conversation about Occupying the Everyday: Militarisation and Gendered Politics of Living in Kashmir (Oxford UP, 2026), with author Niharika Pandit…
- New Books in Critical Theory
A.J.A. Woods, "The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West" (Verso, 2026)
The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy: Why the Right Blames the Frankfurt School for the Decline of the West (Verso Books, 2026) is the definitive history of a…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Ryan Engley, "Seriality: Media and the Psychic Form of Everyday Life" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
This material and theoretical history of seriality shows it to be the dominant form of culture since its inception within 19th-century print culture, as both a…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Beth Weinstein, "Architecture and Choreography: Collaborations in Dance, Space and Time" (Routledge, 2024)
Architecture and Choreography: Collaborations in Dance, Space and Time (Routledge, 2024) examines the field of archi-choreographic experiments: unique…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Joseph Acquisto, "Baudelaire's Objects" (Bloomsbury, 2026)
Baudelaire's Objects (Bloomsbury, 2026) examines Baudelaire's multifaceted use of natural, domestic, urban, and esthetic objects in his verse and prose poetry…