Shows / New Books in Critical Theory
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
Joshua Castellino, "Calibrating Colonial Crime: Reparations and The Crime of Unjust Enrichment" (Policy Press, 2025)
While decolonization liberated territories, it left the root causes of historical injustice unaddressed. Governance change did not address past wrongs and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
brian bean, "Their End Is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition" (Haymarket, 2025)
Where do cops come from and what do they do? How did “modern policing” as we know it today come to be? What about the capitalist state necessitates policing?…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Rebecca van Laer, "Cat" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Dr. Rebecca van Laer and her partner purchase a home and move in with their senior cats, Toby and Gus. Their loved ones see this as a step toward an inevitable…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Natasha Piano, "Democratic Elitism: The Founding Myth of American Political Science" (Harvard UP, 2025)
Do competitive elections secure democracy, or might they undermine it by breeding popular disillusionment with liberal norms and procedures? The so-called…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Aria Fani, "Reading Across Borders: Afghans, Iranians, and Literary Nationalism" (U Texas Press, 2024)
The dynamic and interconnected ways Afghans and Iranians invented their modern selves through literature. Contrary to the presumption that literary nationalism…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Elif Kalaycioglu, "The Politics of World Heritage: Visions, Custodians, and Futures of Humanity" (Oxford UP, 2025)
What does it take to construct humanity's cultural history and what do these efforts produce in the world? In The Politics of World Heritage (Oxford UP, 2025)…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Gavin Flood, "The Concept of Mind in Hindu Tantra" (Routledge, 2024)
The Concept of Mind in Hindu Tantra (Routledge, 2024) presents an account of the concept of mind in Hindu Tantra through a study of religious and philosophical…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Gilles Deleuze, "On Painting" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
Charles J. Stivale (Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Wayne State University) and Dan Smith (Professor of Philosophy, Purdue University) join me to discuss…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Michael Lazarus, "Absolute Ethical Life: Aristotle, Hegel and Marx" (Stanford UP, 2025)
Absolute Ethical Life: Aristotle, Hegel and Marx by Michael Lazarus Karl Marx gave us not just a critique of the political economy of capital but a way of…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Tim Beasley-Murray, "Critical Games: On Play and Seriousness in Academia, Literature and Life" (Manchester UP, 2025)
Which parts of life are serious, and which are a game? In Critical Games: On Play and Seriousness in Academia, Literature and Life (Manchester UP, 2025) Tim…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Joanna Woronkowicz, "Artists at Work: Rethinking Policy for Artistic Careers" (Stanford UP, 2025)
What does it mean to be an artist? In Artists At Work: Rethinking Policy for Artistic Careers (Stanford UP, 2025) Joanna Woronkowicz, the co-founder of the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
What Do You Want Out of Life? A Philosophical Guide to Figuring Out What Matters
What do you want out of life? To make a lot of money, work for justice, run marathons, sing in a choir, have children, travel the world? The things we care…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Eva Meijer, "Multispecies Assemblies" (Vine Press, 2025)
Animals speak. Plants do too. Seas and mountains are not a mute background to human actions, but have interests and agency. Many more-than-human beings are…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Massimo Modonesi, "The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and Political Action" (Haymarket, 2019)
What does it mean to be a political subject? This is one of the key questions asked by Massimo Modonesi in The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and Political…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Bill V. Mullen, "James Baldwin: Living in Fire" (Pluto Press, 2019)
In the first major biography of Baldwin in more than a decade, James Baldwin: Living in Fire (Pluto Press, 2019), Bill V. Mullen celebrates the personal and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Gianna Englert, "Democracy Tamed: French Liberalism and the Politics of Suffrage" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Does good democratic government require intelligent, moral, and productive citizens? Can our political institutions educate the kind of citizens we wish or…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Hamid Dabashi, "After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization" (Haymarket, 2025)
In this episode, we speak with Hamid Dabashi about his new book, After Savagery: Gaza, Genocide, and the Illusion of Western Civilization (Haymarket, 2025)…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Mahboob Qirvanian and Behnaz Mirzai, "Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran: The Autobiography of Mahboob Qirvanian provides a translation of a compelling autobiography that…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Kevin M. Schultz, "Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A History" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
A bracing, accessible history of white American liberals—and why it’s time to change the conversation about them. If there’s one thing most Americans can agree…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Will Kitchen, "Culture, Capital and Carnival: Modern Media and the Representation of Work" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
How is the world of work depicted on page and on screen? In Culture, Capital and Carnival: Modern Media and the Representation of Work Dr Will Kitchen, an…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, "Overdetermined: How Indian English Literature Becomes Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Anglophone" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Why is it so difficult to account for the role of identity in literary studies? Why do both writers and scholars of Indian English literature express…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Madison Schramm, "Why Democracies Fight Dictators" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Over the course of the last century, there has been an outsized incidence of conflict between democracies and personalist regimes—political systems where a…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Vincent Pak, "Queer Correctives: Discursive Neo-homophobia, Sexuality and Christianity in Singapore" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Queer Correctives: Discursive Neo-homophobia, Sexuality and Christianity in Singapore (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) explores Christian discourses of sex and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Katharine Jenkins, "Feminist Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Katharine Jenkins offers an introduction to feminist philosophy, giving the reader an idea of what it is, why it is important, and how to think about it. She…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Matt Myers, "The Halted March of the European Left: The Working Class in Britain, France, and Italy, 1968-1989" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The European left seemed to be in rude health during the 1970s. Never had so many political parties committed to representing the working class been in power…
- New Books in Critical Theory
William H. F. Altman, "The Revival of Platonism in Cicero's Late Philosophy: Platonis Aemulus and the Invention of Cicero" (Lexington Books, 2016)
The Revival of Platonism in Cicero's Late Philosophy: Platonis Aemulus and the Invention of Cicero (Lexington Books, 2016) argues that Cicero deserves to be…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Carol Atack, "Plato: A Civic Life" (Reaktion, 2025)
Plato is a key figure from the beginnings of Western philosophy, yet the impact of his lived experience on his thought has rarely been explored. Born during a…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Natacha Chetcuti-Osorovitz and Sara Garbagnoli "La Pensée Wittig: Une Introduction" (Payot, 2025)
How is it possible to be a subject when faced with oppression? The revolutionary thought and work of French novelist and lesbian thinker Monique Wittig are…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Constance Bailey, "Conversations with Kiese Laymon" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)
This is a very special episode of the New Books Network, as the editor of Conversations with Kiese Laymon (UP of Mississippi, 2025), Dr. Constance Bailey…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Robert F. Carley, "Culture and Tactics: Gramsci, Race, and the Politics of Practice" (SUNY Press, 2019)
While scholars of social and political movements tend to analyze tactics in terms of their effectiveness in achieving specific outcomes, Robert F. Carley…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Kenja McCray, "Essential Soldiers: Women Activists and Black Power Movement Leadership" (NYU Press, 2025)
Academics and popular commentors have expressed common sentiments about the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s—that it was male dominated and overrun…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Marcus Rediker, "Freedom Ship: The Uncharted History of Escaping Slavery by Sea" (Penguin Group, 2025)
Conspiracy, mutiny and liberation on America’s waterfront by the award-winning author of The Slave Ship. Freedom Ship: The Uncharted History of Escaping…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Paying Attention with Anya Daly
In this episode Pat speaks with Dr Anya Daly. Dr Anya Daly investigates the intersections of phenomenology with philosophy of mind, the philosophy of…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Zahi Zalloua, "Fanon, Žižek and the Violence of Resistance" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
n a novel pairing of anti-colonial theorist Frantz Fanon with Marxist-Lacanian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, Zahi Zalloua explores the ways both thinkers expose…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Laura Garbes, "Listeners Like Who?: Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Why is radio so white? In Listeners Like Who? Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry (Princeton UP, 2025) Laura Garbes, a Sociologist and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Matthew Benjamin Cole, "Fear the Future: Dystopia and Political Imagination in the Twentieth Century" (U of Michigan Press, 2025)
Are we already living in some kind of fascist or technocratic dystopia? How do we avert the AI dystopia? These are the types of things that you'll see thrown…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Simon James Copland, "The Male Complaint: The Manosphere and Misogyny Online" (Polity, 2025)
Inspired by leaders such as Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson, the online Manosphere has exploded in recent years. Dedicated to anti-feminism, these communities…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Anna Strhan and Rachael Shillitoe, "Growing Up Godless: Non-Religious Childhoods in Contemporary England" (Princeton UP, 2025)
What do children believe in? In Growing Up Godless: Non-Religious Childhoods in Contemporary England (Princeton UP, 2025) Anna Strhan, a Reader in the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Ariel Colonomos, "Pricing Lives: The Political Art of Measurement" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Pricing Lives: The Political Art of Measurement (Oxford UP, 2023) discusses how human lives are equated with the material, and argues that pricing lives lies…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Robert T. Tally, Jr., "For a Ruthless Critique of All That Exists: Literature in an Age of Capitalist Realism" (Zero Books, 2022)
Robert T. Tally, Jr.'s book For a Ruthless Critique of All That Exists: Literature in an Age of Capitalist Realism (Zero Books, 2022) takes as its point of…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Lyndsey Stonebridge on Hannah Arendt's Lessons on Love and Disobedience (JP)
An Arendt expert has arrived at Arendt-obsessed Recall This Book. Lyndsey Stonebridge discusses her widely praised 2024 We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Santiago Zabala, "Signs from the Future: Philosophy of Warnings" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Returning to NBN is the philosopher Santiago Zabala, here to introduce his new book Signs from the Future: A Philosophy of Warnings (Columbia University Press…
- New Books in Critical Theory
David McNally, "Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History" (U California Press, 2025)
David McNally's Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History (U California Press, 2025)presents the first systematic Marxist account of the capitalist…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Maddalena Cerrato, "Michel Foucault's Practical Philosophy: A Critique of Subjectivation Processes" (SUNY Press, 2025)
Michel Foucault's thought, Maddalena Cerrato writes, may be understood as practical philosophy. In this perspective, political analysis, philosophy of history…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Cordelia Fine, "Patriarchy Inc.: What We Get Wrong About Gender Equality – and Why Men Still Win at Work" (W.W. Norton, 2025)
Inequality in the workplace impacts all areas of our lives, from health and self-development to economic security and family life. But, despite the world's…
- New Books in Critical Theory
David Edmonds, "Death in a Shallow Pond: A Philosopher, a Drowning Child, and Strangers in Need" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Imagine this: You’re walking past a shallow pond and spot a toddler thrashing around in the water, in obvious danger of drowning. You look around for her…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Pauwke Berkers and Yosha Wijngaarden, "A Sociology of Awkwardness: On Social Interactions Going Wrong" (Taylor & Francis, 2025)
How does sociology help to explain modern life? In A Sociology of Awkwardness: On Social Interactions Going Wrong (Routledge, 2025)Pauwke Berkers, a full…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Patrice D. Douglass, "Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence" (Stanford UP, 2025)
In Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence (Stanford UP, 2025) Patrice D. Douglass interrogates the relationship between sexual…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Ian Scoones, "Navigating Uncertainty: Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World" (Polity, 2024)
Uncertainties are everywhere. Whether it’s climate change, financial volatility, pandemic outbreaks or new technologies, we don’t know what the future will…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Aaron Hammes, "TransGenre" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
TransGenre (Cambridge UP, 2025) is a reconsideration of genre theory in long-form fiction through transgender minor literature in the US and Canada. Using four…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Michelle P. Brown, "Bede and the Theory of Everything" (Reaktion Books, 2023)
Bede and the Theory of Everything (Reaktion Books, 2023) investigates the life and world of Bede (c. 673–735), foremost scholar of the early Middle Ages and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Kathleen Wilson, "Strolling Players of Empire: Theater and Performances of Power in the British Imperial Provinces, 1656–1833" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Why did Britons get up a play wherever they went? In Strolling Players of Empire: Theater and Performances of Power in the British Imperial Provinces…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Alyssa Battistoni, "Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Capitalism is typically treated as a force for relentless commodification. Yet it consistently fails to place value on vital aspects of the nonhuman world…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Todd Mcgowan, "Pure Excess: Capitalism and the Commodity" (Columbia UP, 2024)
Todd McGowan forges a new theory of capitalism as a system based on the production of more than what we need: pure excess. He argues that the promise of…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Enrique Dussel, "The Theological Metaphors of Marx" (Duke UP, 2024)–A Conversation with Camilo Pérez-Bustillo and Eduardo Mendieta
The Theological Metaphors of Marx (Duke UP, 2024) by Enrique Dussel – A Conversation with Camilo Pérez-Bustillo and Eduardo Mendieta In The Theological…
- New Books in Critical Theory
David Theo Goldberg, "The War on Critical Race Theory: Or, The Remaking of Racism" (Polity Press, 2023)
The War on Critical Race Theory: Or, The Remaking of Racism (Polity Press, 2023) by David Theo Goldberg discusses how “Critical Race Theory” is consuming…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Bryon L. Garner, "Black Veteranality: Military Service and the Illusion of Inclusive Patriotism" (Routledge, 2025)
Military service in the United States has long been associated with patriotism. But for Black veterans, this association with patriotism, love for country, is…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Jirí Anger, "Towards a Film Theory from Below: Archival Film and the Aesthetics of the Crack-Up" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
Jiří Anger is a scholar, archivist, and videographic critic devoted, as he says in this interview, to "making weird shapes shine." In this episode of New…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Alan M. Wald, "Bohemian Bolsheviks: Dispatches from the Culture and History of the Left" (Brill, 2025)
For several decades now, Alan Wald has been thoroughly documenting the history of the literature and cultural output of the American left. While his numerous…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Alexandra Freidus, "Unequal Lessons: School Diversity and Educational Inequality in New York City" (NYU Press, 2025)
Unequal Lessons: School Diversity and Educational Inequality in New York City (NYU Press, 2025) argues that diversity and racial integration efforts are not…