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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
Jennifer C. Nash, "How We Write Now: Living with Black Feminist Theory" (Duke UP, 2024)
In How We Write Now: Living with Black Feminist Theory (Duke UP, 2024), Jennifer C. Nash examines how Black feminists use beautiful writing to allow writers…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Larry S. Temkin, "Being Good in a World of Need" (Oxford UP, 2022)
In a world filled with both enormous wealth and pockets of great devastation, how should the well-off respond to the world's needy? This is the urgent central…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Jess A. Goldberg, "Abolition Time: Grammars of Law, Poetics of Justice" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
How can Black Atlantic literature challenge conventions and redefine literary scholarship? Abolition Time: Grammars of Law, Poetics of Justice (U Minnesota…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Whiteness, Accents, and Children's Media
In this episode of the Language on the Move podcast, Brynn Quick speaks with Dr. Laura Smith-Khan about language and accents in children’s media, from…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Nick Couldry, "The Space of the World: Can Human Solidarity Survive Social Media and What If It Can't?" (Polity, 2024)
Is human solidarity achievable in a world dominated by continuous digital connectivity and commercially managed platforms? And what if it’s not? Professor Nick…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Matthew Chin, "Fractal Repair: Queer Histories of Modern Jamaica" (Duke UP, 2024)
In Fractal Repair: Queer Histories of Modern Jamaica (Duke UP, 2024), Matthew Chin investigates queerness in Jamaica from early colonial occupation to the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, "The Unequal Effects of Globalization" (MIT, 2023)
The recent retreat from globalization has been triggered by a perception that increased competition from global trade is not fair and leads to increased…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Lindsay Weinberg, "Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)
In Smart University: Student Surveillance in the Digital Age (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024), Lindsay Weinberg evaluates how this latest era of tech…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Ulises Ali Mejias and Nick Couldry, "Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech and How to Fight Back" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
In the present day, Big Tech is extracting resources from us, transferring and centralizing resources from people to companies. These companies are grabbing…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Neil Atkinson, "Transformer: Klopp, the Revolution of a Club and Culture" (Canongate, 2024)
How did Jurgen Klopp change Liverpool? In Transformer: Klopp, the Revolution of a Club and Culture (Canongate, 2024), Neil Atkinson, host of The Anfield Wrap…
New Books in Critical TheoryIn Conversation: Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter
In this episode, Dr. Hizer Mir speaks with Momodou Taal on Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter. Support our show by becoming a premium member!…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Jarrett Zigon, "How Is It Between Us?: Relational Ethics and Care for the World" (HAU Books, 2023)
How Is It Between Us?: Relational Ethics and Care for the World (HAU Books, 2023) offers a new theory of relational ethics that tackles contemporary issues. In…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Sara Cantillon et al., "Feminist Political Economy: A Global Perspective" (Agenda, 2023)
Challenging mainstream narratives in political economy, the new book Feminist Political Economy: A Global Perspective (Agenda Publishing, 2023) serves as an…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Barbara A. Biesecker, "Reinventing World War II: Popular Memory in the Rise of the Ethnonationalist State" (Penn State Press, 2024)
By the 1970s, World War II had all but disappeared from US popular culture. But beginning in the mid-eighties it reemerged with a vengeance, and for nearly…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Toby Manning, "Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music" (Repeater, 2024)
From rock & roll to contemporary pop, Mixing Pop and Politics: A Marxist History of Popular Music (Repeater, 2024) is a timely and original exploration of…
New Books in Critical TheoryIn Conversation: Palestine and Decoloniality
In this episode, Dr. Ismail Patel talks with Prof. Hatem Bazian about structural Islamophobia, global politics and the demonisation of the Muslim. Support our…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Reem Hilu, "Digitizing Domesticity in the 1980s: The Intimate Life of Computers" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
Digitizing Domesticity in the 1980s: The Intimate Life of Computers (U Minnesota Press, 2024) shows how the widespread introduction of home computers in the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Benjamin J. Shestakofsky on How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Benjamin Shestakofsky about his book, Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, "Did It Happen Here?: Perspectives on Fascism and America" (W. W. Norton, 2024)
Today I’m speaking with Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins about the new, edited volume, Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America (W.W. Norton, 2024)…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Andy Hines, "Imagining After Capitalism" (Triarchy Press, 2025)
Imagining After Capitalism (Triarchy Press, 2025) is the culmination of a decade-long exploration of what comes next after capitalism. It leverages previous…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Eric Drott, "Streaming Music, Streaming Capital" (Duke UP, 2024)
Streaming Music, Streaming Capital (Duke University Press, 2024) provides a much-needed study of the political economy of music streaming, drawing from Western…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Larry Alan Busk, "The Right-Wing Mirror of Critical Theory: Studies of Schmitt, Oakeshott, Hayek, Strauss, and Rand" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)
What really separates emancipatory thinking from its opposite? The prevailing Left defines itself against neoliberalism, conservative traditionalism, and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Helena Hansen et al., "Whiteout: How Racial Capitalism Changed the Color of Opioids in America" (U California Press, 2023)
The phrase "racial capitalism" was used by Cedric Robinson to describe an economy of wealth accumulation extracted from cheap labor, organized by racial…
- New Books in Critical Theory
J. Mijin Cha, "A Just Transition for All: Workers and Communities for a Carbon-Free Future" (MIT Press, 2024)
To meet the greenhouse gas emissions reductions needed to stave off the worst impacts of climate change, a transition away from fossil fuels must occur, as…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Simin Fadaee, "Global Marxism: Decolonisation and Revolutionary Politics" (Manchester UP, 2024)
For much of the twentieth century, the ideas of Karl Marx provided the backbone for social justice around the world. But today the legacy of Marxism is…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Toby Bennett, "Corporate Life in the Digital Music Industry: Remaking the Major Record Label from the Inside Out" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
How does the music industry actually work? In Corporate Life in the Digital Music Industry: Remaking the Major Record Label from the Inside Out Toby Bennett, a…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Geneviève Rousselière, "Sharing Freedom: Republicanism and Exclusion in Revolutionary France" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
The French have long self-identified as champions of universal emancipation, yet the republicanism they adopted has often been faulted for being exclusionary –…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Joy White, "Like Lockdown Never Happened: Music and Culture During Covid" (Repeater, 2024)
What happened to culture in 2020? In Like Lockdown Never Happened: Music and Culture During Covid (Repeater, 2024), Joy White, a Lecturer in Applied Social…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Matthew Gardner Kelly, "Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequity" (Cornell UP, 2024)
In Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequity (Cornell UP, 2024), Matthew Gardner Kelly takes aim at the racial and economic…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Laura C. Chávez-Moreno, "How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America" (Harvard Education Press, 2024)
In How Schools Make Race: Teaching Latinx Racialization in America (Harvard Education Press, 2025), Dr. Laura C. Chávez-Moreno uncovers the process through…
- New Books in Critical Theory
How Psychoanalytic Mechanisms of Defense Affected the 2024 Presidential Campaign and Election
Even though this is not a political show, today we will be talking about the ways in which mechanisms of defense effected both parties in the 2024 campaign and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Sidney A. Shapiro and Joseph P. Tomain, "How Government Built America" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
How Government Built America (Cambridge UP, 2024) challenges growing, anti-government rhetoric by highlighting the role government has played in partnering…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Too Black and Rasul A. Mowatt, "Laundering Black Rage: The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits" (Routledge, 2024)
Laundering Black Rage: The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits (Routledge, 2024) examines the dilution and commodification of Black…
New Books in Critical TheoryIn Conversation: Islamophobia, Race and Global Politics
In this episode, Dr. Ismail Patel sits down with Prof. Nazia Kazi to discuss her book “Islamophobia, Race and Global Politics” Support our show by becoming a…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Sabrina Strings, "The End of Love: Racism, Sexism, and the Death of Romance" (Beacon Press, 2024)
More men than ever are refusing loving partnerships and commitment, and instead seeking out “situationships.” When these men deign to articulate what they are…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Sandipto Dasgupta, "Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Anticolonial movements of the twentieth century generated audacious ideas of freedom. Following decolonization, the challenge was to give an institutional form…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Megan Rae Blakely, "Technology, Intellectual Property Law, and Culture: The Tangification of Cultural Heritage" (Routledge, 2024)
How can we protect diverse cultural expressions in an era of huge technological change? In Technology, Intellectual Property Law and Culture: The Tangification…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Steve J. Shone, "Dangerous Anarchist Strikers" (Brill, 2023)
Dangerous Anarchist Strikers (Brill, 2023) explores the ideas of three largely forgotten radical women who participated in labor union strikes in Argentina and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Infrastructure, Development, and Racialization
International development projects supported by governments of wealthy countries, international financial institutions, and influential NGOs like the Gates…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Jennifer Denbow, "Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype" (Duke UP, 2024)
In Reproductive Labor and Innovation: Against the Tech Fix in an Era of Hype (Duke UP, 2024), Jennifer Denbow examines how the push toward technoscientific…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Kevin B. Smith, "The Jailer's Reckoning: How Mass Incarceration Is Damaging America" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)
How does a Black man in Austin get sent to prison on a 70-year sentence for stealing a tuna sandwich, likely costing Texas taxpayers roughly a million dollars?…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Lauren D. Olsen, "Curricular Injustice: How U.S. Medical Schools Reproduce Inequalities" (Columbia UP, 2024)
Medical schools have increasingly incorporated the humanities and social sciences into their teaching, seeking to make future physicians more empathetic and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Steven Swarbrick and Jean-Thomas Tremblay, "Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction" (Northwestern UP, 2024)
In Negative Life: The Cinema of Extinction (Northwestern UP, 2024), Steven Swarbrick and Jean-Thomas Tremblay enact a dialogue between cinema, philosophy, and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Jordan S. Carroll, "Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
Fascists such as Richard Spencer interpret science fiction films and literature as saying only white men have the imagination required to invent a high-tech…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Serene Khader, "Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for White Feminism and How We Can Stop" (Beacon Press, 2024)
After over 175 years, the feminist movement, now in its fourth wave, is at risk of collapsing on its eroding foundation. In Faux Feminism: Why We Fall for…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Carrie J. Preston, "Complicit Participation: The Liberal Audience for Theater of Racial Justice" (Oxford UP, 2024)
In this incisive critique of the ways performances of allyship can further entrench white privilege, author Carrie J. Preston analyses her own complicit…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Andrew Stone Higgins, "Higher Education for All: Racial Inequality, Cold War Liberalism, and the California Master Plan" (UNC Press, 2023)
The 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education remains to this day the largest and most ambitious attempt to provide free, universal college education in…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Nick Bernards, "Fictions of Financialization: Rethinking Speculation, Exploitation and Twenty-First Century Capitalism" (Pluto Press, 2024)
Since the global financial crisis that began in 2008, the role of the financial sector in contemporary capitalism has come under increasing scrutiny. In the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Whitney Kemble, "Contested Spaces: A Critical History of Canadian Public Libraries As Neutral Places, 1960-2020" (Library Juice Press, 2024)
Contested Spaces: A Critical History of Canadian Public Libraries As Neutral Places, 1960-2020 (Library Juice Press, 2024) is the first comprehensive and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Laure Astourian, "The Ethnographic Optic: Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and the Turn Inward in 1960s French Cinema" (Indiana UP, 2024)
The Ethnographic Optic: Jean Rouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, and the Turn Inward in 1960s French Cinema (Indiana UP, 2024) traces the surprising role of…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Anthony Grasso, "Dual Justice: America's Divergent Approaches to Street and Corporate Crime" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
The United States incarcerates its citizens for property crime, drug use, and violent crime at a rate that exceeds any other developed nation – and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Amín Pérez, "Bourdieu and Sayad Against Empire: Forging Sociology in Anticolonial Struggle" (Polity Press, 2023)
How did the Algerian war of independence shape contemporary sociology? In Bourdieu and Sayad Against Empire: Forging Sociology in Anticolonial Struggle (Polity…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Daniela Berghahn, "Exotic Cinema: Encounters with Cultural Difference in Contemporary Transnational Film" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
Daniela Berghahn's award-winning monograph Exotic Cinema: Encounters with Cultural Difference in Contemporary Transnational Film (Edinburgh UP, 2023) is the…
New Books in Critical TheoryNon-literary Fiction
In this episode of High Theory, Esther Gabara talks with us about Non-Literary Fiction, that is, works of fiction that belong to the world of contemporary art…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Doyle D. Calhoun, "The Suicide Archive: Reading Resistance in the Wake of French Empire" (Duke UP, 2024)
A note about content: This episode involves discussion of suicide, specifically in the contexts of slavery, colonization and empire. Please use your discretion…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Anne M. Whitesell, "Living Off the Government?: Race, Gender, and the Politics of Welfare" (NYU Press, 2024)
Who deserves public assistance from the government? This age-old question has been revived by policymakers, pundits, and activists following the massive…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Adam Hanieh, "Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market" (Verso, 2024)
Oil is everywhere. It’s in our cars, it’s in the fertilizer used to grow our food, and it’s in the plastics used to produce and transport our consumer goods…
- 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 happens when the elitist space of 'Western' classical music seeks to diversify itself? And what are the social effects worked through diversity discourses…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Robert A. Schneider, "The Return of Resentment: The Rise and Decline and Rise Again of a Political Emotion" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
The term “resentment,” often casually paired with words like “hatred,” “rage,” and “fear,” has dominated US news analysis since November 2016. Despite its…
- 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…