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
Irvin Weathersby Jr., "In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space" (Viking, 2025)
Amid the ongoing reckoning over America’s history of anti-Black racism, scores of monuments to slaveowners and Confederate soldiers still proudly dot the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Eli Zaretsky, “Political Freud: A History” (Columbia UP, 2015)
Back in the early 70s, Eli Zaretsky wrote for a socialist newspaper and was engaged to review a recently released book, Psychoanalysis and Feminism by Juliet…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Daniel José Gaztambide, "Decolonizing Psychoanalytic Technique: Putting Freud on Fanon's Couch" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
Both new and seasoned psychotherapists wrestle with the relationship between psychological distress and inequality across race, class, gender, and sexuality…
- New Books in Critical Theory
William Marx, "Libraries of the Mind" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Erich Auerbach wrote his classic work Mimesis, a history of narrative from Homer to Proust, based largely on his memory of past reading. Having left his…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Sarah E. K. Smith, "Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America" (UBC Press, 2025)
hat is the relationship between culture and trade? In Trading on Art: Cultural Diplomacy and Free Trade in North America Sarah E. K. Smith, an Associate…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Chris Washington, "Nonbinary Jane Austen" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
In Nonbinary Jane Austen, Chris Washington theorizes how Jane Austen envisions a nonbinary future that traverses the two-sex model of gender that we can…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Philip Cunliffe, "The National Interest: Politics After Globalization" (Polity Press, 2025)
Globalization is over. With US president Donald Trump pursuing an 'America First' agenda in trade and foreign policy, everyone now recognises the urgency of…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Martin Shuster, "Critical Theory: The Basics" (Routledge, 2024)
Why does critical theory matter today? In Critical Theory: The Basics (Routledge, 2024), Martin Shuster, a Professor of Philosophy and the Isaac Swift…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Dan-el Padilla Peralta, "Classicism and Other Phobias" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Classicism and Other Phobias (Princeton University Press, 2025) shows how the concept of “classicism” lacks the capacity to affirm the aesthetic value of Black…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Thomas M. Kemple, "Marx's Wager: Das Kapital and Classical Sociology" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)
Marx’s Capital looms large today, a century and a half after first publication, a massive tome that attempts to document and map out the dynamics of a society…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Michael Stauch, "Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)
The criminalization of Black youth was central to policing in urban America during the civil rights era and continued in Detroit even after the rise of Black…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Ela Przybylo, "Ungendering Menstruation" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
Ungendering Menstruation by Ela Przybyło discusses why and how menstrual pain needs to be incorporated into discussions of gender, embodiment, and disability…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Dayna Bowen Matthew, "Just Health: Treating Structural Racism to Heal America" (NYU Press, 2022)
In the United States, systemic racism is embedded in policies and practices, thereby structuring American society to perpetuate inequality and all of the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Sabrina L. Hom, "Critical Mixed Race Philosophy: Rethinking Kinship and Identity" (Lexington Books, 2025)
What are dominant narratives of mixed race identity? What are those narratives doing, in everyday life and within philosophical discourse? How can attending to…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Triauna Carey, "The Revolution Will Be Spotified: Music As a Rhetorical Mode of Resistance" (Lexington Books, 2024)
The Revolution Will Be Spotified: Music As a Rhetorical Mode of Resistance (Lexington Books, 2024) investigates the rhetorical strategies present in mainstream…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Renay Richardson and Arisa Loomba, "Human Resources: Slavery and the Making of Modern Britain" (Profile Books, 2025)
Ordinary items take on new meanings when you cast them in different light. The origins of tea, coffee and sugar are well known, but when you discover that gym…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Elizabeth Popp Berman, "Thinking like an Economist: How Efficiency Replaced Equality in U.S. Public Policy" (Princeton UP, 2022)
For decades, Democratic politicians have frustrated progressives by tinkering around the margins of policy while shying away from truly ambitious change. What…
New Books in Critical TheoryOn Bullshit in Politics
Today we’re continuing our series on philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s seminal work, On Bullshit. Our guest is Michael Patrick Lynch, Provost Professor of the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Carl Rhodes, "Stinking Rich: The Four Myths of the Good Billionaire" (Policy Press, 2025)
Billionaires are an ultra-elite social class whose numbers are growing alongside their obscene wealth while others struggle, suffer or even die. They represent…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Noëlle McAfee, "Fear of Breakdown: Psychoanalysis and Politics" (Columbia UP, 2019)
In his classic essay on the fear of breakdown, Donald Winnicott famously conveys to a patient that the disaster powerfully feared has, in fact, already…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Robert G. Morrison, "Merchants of Knowledge: Intellectual Exchange in the Ottoman Empire and Renaissance Europe" (Stanford UP, 2025)
Between 1450 and 1550, a remarkable century of intellectual exchange developed across the Eastern Mediterranean. As Renaissance Europe depended on knowledge…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Jyotsna G. Singh, "Shakespeare and Postcolonial Theory" (Bloomsbury, 2019)
My guest today is Jyotsna Singh, Professor Emerita of English at Michigan State University. She has written numerous books including Colonial…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Myles Lennon, "Subjects of the Sun: Solar Energy in the Shadows of Racial Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2025)
In the face of accelerating climate change, anticapitalist environmental justice activists and elite tech corporations increasingly see eye to eye. Both…
- New Books in Critical Theory
John Eldevik, "Reading Prester John: Cultural Fantasy and Its Manuscript Contexts" (Arc Humanities Press, 2024)
Reading Prester John: Cultural Fantasy and its Manuscript Contexts by John Eldevik During the Middle Ages, many Europeans imagined that there existed a…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Kevin Guyan, "Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Rainbow Trap: Queer Lives, Classifications and the Dangers of Inclusion (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Dr. Kevin Guyan reveals how the fight for LGBTQ equalities in the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Daanika Kamal, "Domestic Violence in Pakistan: The Legal Construction of 'Bad' and 'Mad' Women" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Pakistani women are increasingly pursuing legal avenues against acts of domestic violence. Their claims, however, are often dismissed through character…
- New Books in Critical Theory
153: What Hannah Arendt Has to Teach Us about Anticipatory Despair (JP)
John recently published “Lying in Politics: Hannah Arendt’s Antidote to Anticipatory Despair" in Public Books. It makes the case against anticipatory despair…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Angela Katrina Lewis-Maddox ed., "Disrupting Political Science: Black Women Reimagining the Discipline" (SUNY Press, 2025)
Political Scientist Angela K. Lewis-Maddox has pulled together an important and useful edited volume focusing on black women political scientists and their…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Michael Cook, "A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity" (Princeton UP, 2024)
A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (Princeton UP, 2024) by Michael A. Cook This book describes and explains the major…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Timothy Stacey, "Saving Liberalism from Itself: The Spirit of Political Participation" (Bristol UP, 2022)
Saving Liberalism from Itself: The Spirit of Political Participation Bristol UP, 2022) By Timothy Stacey In the wake of populism, Timothy Stacey’s book…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Cheryl Thompson, "Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Performing Slavery, Conflict and Freedom, 1812-1895" (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2025)
Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Performing Slavery, Conflict, and Freedom, 1812-1897 (Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2025) traces the origins of theatre…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Sarah Bull, "Selling Sexual Knowledge: Medical Publishing and Obscenity in Victorian Britain" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
What is the relationship between medicine and commerce? In Selling Sexual Knowledge: Medical Publishing and Obscenity in Victorian Britain (Cambridge…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Sarah Kenny, "Growing Up and Going Out: Youth Culture, Commerce, and Leisure Space in Post-War Britain" (Manchester UP, 2025)
Sarah Kenny Growing up and going out: Youth culture, commerce and leisure space in post-war Britain Manchester University Press 2025 How did young people spend…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Nubar Hovsepian, "Edward Said: The Politics of an Oppositional Intellectual" (AUC Press, 2025)
Edward Said was one of the most influential intellectuals of the twentieth century. A literary scholar with an aesthete’s temperament, he did not experience…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Judicial Territory: Law, Capital, and the Expansion of American Empire with Shaina Potts
In this episode, we sit down with Shaina Potts, author of Judicial Territory: Law, Capital, and the Expansion of American Empire (Duke University Press…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Dominik Zechner, "The Violence of Reading: Literature and Philosophy at the Threshold of Pain" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)
The Violence of Reading: Literature and Philosophy at the Threshold of Pain (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) expounds the scene of reading as one that produces an…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, "Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays and Writings" (Harper, 2025)
The New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-nominated author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois and The Age of Phillis makes her nonfiction debut with…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Andrew Hartman, "Karl Marx in America" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Karl Marx in America (University of Chicago Press, 2025), by Andrew Hartman To read Karl Marx is to contemplate a world created by capitalism. People have long…
- New Books in Critical Theory
J. McKenzie Alexander, "The Open Society as an Enemy: A Critique of how Free Societies Turned Against Themselves" (LSE Press, 2024)
The Open Society as an Enemy: A critique of how free societies turned against themselves by J. McKenzie Alexander Nearly 80 years ago, Karl Popper gave a…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Jennifer Crane, "'Gifted Children' in Britain and the World: Elitism and Equality Since 1945" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Who are 'gifted' children? In ‘Gifted Children’ in Britain and the World: Elitism and Equality since 1945 Jennifer Crane, a senior lecturer in the School of…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Alison Griffiths, "Nomadic Cinema: A Cultural Geography of the Expedition Film" (Columbia UP, 2025)
From In Borneo, the Land of the Head-Hunters to The Epic of Everest to Camping Among the Indians, the early twentieth century was the heyday of expedition…
- New Books in Critical Theory
antonio c. cuyler, "Achieving Creative Justice in the U.S. Creative Sector" (Routledge, 2025)
How can cultural organisations better support diversity? In Achieving Creative Justice in the U.S. Creative Sector antonio c. cuyler, Professor of Music in…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Kevin B. Anderson, "The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism" (Verso, 2025)
Kevin Anderson’s The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism (Verso, 2025) encourages to look again at the intellectual…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Sladja Blažan, "Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World in Early America" (University of Virginia Press, 2025)
In Ghosts and Their Hosts: The Colonization of the Invisible World in Early America (University of Virginia Press, 2025), Dr. Sladja Blažan explains the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Kevin Potter, "Poetics of the Migrant: Migrant Literature and the Politics of Motion" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
Since the 1980s, readers and scholars alike have celebrated migrant literature for not only depicting migration, but for inspiring reflections on class, race…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Quinn Slobodian and Philip J. Stern on Political Economy
• Philip J. Stern, Empire, Incorporated. The Corporations That Built British Colonialism (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press in 2023), by. • Quinn…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Christoph Schuringa, "Karl Marx and the Actualization of Philosophy" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
It is indisputable that Marx began his intellectual trajectory as a philosopher, but it is often thought that he subsequently turned away from philosophy. In…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Anthony C. Infanti, "The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America" (NYU Press, 2025)
The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America (NYU Press, 2025) by Anthony C. Infanti documents how the American colonies used tax law to dehumanize…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Katie Beswick, "Slags on Stage: Class, Sex, Art and Desire in British Culture" (Routledge, 2025)
How are working class women represented in contemporary culture? In Slags on Stage: Class, Sex, Art and Desire in British Culture (Routledge, 2025), Katie…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Nneka D. Dennie, "Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth Century Black Radical Feminist" (Oxford UP, 2023)
In 1849, the Mary Ann Shadd Cary had not yet become one of the first Black woman newspaper editors in North America. She was decades away from being admitted…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Peter Allen, "How to Think about Politics: A Guide in Five Parts" (Oxford UP, 2025)
What part should politics play in our everyday lives? In How to Think About Politics: A Guide in Five Parts (Oxford University Press, 2025) Peter Allen, a…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Jaleh Mansoor, "Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction: A Counterhistory" (Duke UP, 2025)
Join me for conversation with Dr. Jaleh Mansoor (Associate Professor of Art History in the Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory, University of…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Tamara Lea Spira, "Queering Families: Reproductive Justice in Precarious Times" (U California Press, 2025)
Envisioning queer futures where we lovingly wager everything for the world's children, the planet, and all living beings against all odds, and in increasingly…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Rasheedah Phillips, "Dismantling the Master's Clock: On Race, Space, and Time" (AK Press, 2025)
Why do some processes—like aging, birth, and car crashes—occur in only one direction in time, when by the fundamental symmetry of the universe, we should…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Lucia Soriano, "Embodying Normalcy: Women's Work in Neoliberal Times" (Lexington Books, 2024)
Embodying Normalcy: Women’s Work in Neoliberal Times (Lexington Books, 2024) calls attention to how women in the United States do a type of unpaid work to…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Eric Heinze, "Coming Clean: The Rise of Critical Theory and the Future of the Left" (MIT Press, 2025)
What has gone wrong with the left—and what leftists must do if they want to change politics, ethics, and minds. Leftists have long taught that people in the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Myka Tucker-Abramson, "Cartographies of Empire: The Road Novel and American Hegemony" (Stanford UP, 2025)
The road novel is often dismissed as a mundane, nostalgic genre: Jack, Sal, and other tedious white men on the road trying to recapture an authentic youth and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Robert F. Darden and Stephen M. Newby, "Soon and Very Soon: The Transformative Music and Ministry of Andraé Crouch" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Gospel singer and seven-time Grammy winner Andraé Crouch (1942-2015) hardly needs introduction. His compositions--"The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power,"…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Maron E. Greenleaf, "Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon" (Duke UP, 2024)
Forest Lost: Producing Green Capitalism in the Brazilian Amazon (2024) is an ethnography of forest carbon offsets and the wider effort to make the living…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Seulghee Lee, "Other Lovings: An Afroasian American Theory of Life" (Ohio State UP, 2025)
Join me for a conversation with Dr. Seulghee Lee (Assistant Professor of African American Studies and English, University of South Carolina) about his recently…