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
Jake Monaghan, "Just Policing" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Policing is a source of perennial conflict and philosophical disagreement. Current political developments in the United States have only increased the urgency…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Maïa Pal, "Jurisdictional Accumulation: An Early Modern History of Law, Empires, and Capital" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
With rigorous attention to history and empire, Maïa Pal's Jurisdictional Accumulation: An Early Modern History of Law, Empires, and Capital (Cambridge UP…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Eunji Kim, "The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy" (Princeton UP, 2025)
In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite all…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Ipek A. Celik Rappas, "Filming in European Cities: The Labor of Location" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Filming in European Cities: The Labor of Location (Cornell University Press, 2025) explores the effort behind creating screen production locations. Dr. Ipek A…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Martin Thomas, "The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Empires, until recently, were everywhere. They shaped borders, stirred conflicts, and set the terms of international politics. With the collapse of empire came…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Maliha Safri et al., "Solidarity Cities: Confronting Racial Capitalism, Mapping Transformation" (U of Minnesota Press, 2025)
In this episode, Maliha Safri, Marianna Pavlovskaya, Stephen Healy, and Craig Borowiak talk about their new co-authored book Solidarity Cities: Confronting…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Laleh Khalili, "Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy" (Profile Books, 2025)
Whether it's pumping oil, mining resources or shipping commodities across oceans, the global economy runs on extraction. Promises of frictionless trade and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice
When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground. Polarizing debates over their meaning have intensified into legislative maneuvering to…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Franck Billé, "Somatic States: On Cartography, Geobodies, Bodily Integrity" (Duke UP, 2025)
In Somatic States: On Cartography, Geobodies, Bodily Integrity (Duke UP, 2025), Franck Billé examines the conceptual link between the nation-state and the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Nat Dyer, "Ricardo’s Dream: How Economists Forgot the Real World and Led Us Astray" (Bristol UP, 2024)
From the workings of financial markets to our response to the ecological crisis, economic theory shapes the world. But where do these ideas come from?…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Philip V. McHarris, "Beyond Policing" (Legacy Lit, 2024)
What would happen if policing disappeared? Would we be safe? This book imagines a world without police. It's evident that policing is a problem. But what is…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Emma Casey, "The Return of the Housewife: Why Women Are Still Cleaning Up" (Manchester UP, 2025)
How has the rise of digital platforms changed domestic labour? In The Return of the Housewife: Why Women Are Still Cleaning Up (Manchester UP, 2025), Emma…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Russell Blackford, "How We Became Post-Liberal: The Rise and Fall of Toleration" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Liberalism is in trouble. As a set of ideas, it has lost much of its historical authority in guiding public policy and personal behaviour. In this post-liberal…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Steven Hahn, "Illiberal America: A History" (Norton, 2024)
If your reaction to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol was to think, 'That’s not us,' think again. In Illiberal America: A History (Norton…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Sophie Lewis, "Enemy Feminisms: Terfs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation" (Haymarket Books, 2025)
Enemy Feminisms: Terfs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation (Haymarket Books, 2025) is a provocative compendium of the feminisms we love to dismiss…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Pil Ho Kim, "Polarizing Dreams: Gangnam and Popular Culture in Globalizing Korea" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
Gangnam is an exclusive zone of privilege and wealth that has lured South Korean pop culture industries since the 1980s and fueled the aspirations of Seoul’s…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Michael Rosino, "Democracy Is Awkward: Grappling with Racism Inside American Grassroots Political Organizing" (UNC Press, 2025)
In uncertain times, confronting pressing problems such as racial oppression and the environmental crisis requires everyday people to come together and wield…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Talia Mae Bettcher, "Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)
What does transphobic oppression have to do with sexism, heterosexism, and racism? How does a decolonial analysis help us understand trans oppression? How are…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Mary Bosworth, "Supply Chain Justice: The Logistics of British Border Control" (Princeton UP, 2024)
In the UK’s fully outsourced “immigration detainee escorting system,” private sector security employees detain, circulate and deport foreign national citizens…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Jina B. Kim, "Care at the End of the World: Dreaming of Infrastructure in Crip-Of-Color Writing" (Duke UP, 2025)
In Care at the End of the World: Dreaming of Infrastructure in Crip-Of-Color Writing (Duke UP, 2025), Jina B. Kim develops what she calls crip-of-color…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Anita Say Chan, "Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future" (U California Press, 2025)
It’s a common refrain: AI is neither good nor bad because that depends on how its used. Professor Anita Say Chan begs to differ. Chan is the author of…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Neil Kraus, "The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement" (Temple UP, 2023)
Wage stagnation, growing inequality, and even poverty itself have resulted from decades of neoliberal decision making, not the education system, writes Neil…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Mingwei Huang, "Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century" (Duke UP, 2024)
In Reconfiguring Racial Capitalism: South Africa in the Chinese Century (Duke UP, 2024), Mingwei Huang traces the development of new forms of racial capitalism…
- New Books in Critical Theory
What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions
Leaders who introduce anti-racist approaches to their organizations often face backlash. In What Might Be: Confronting Racism to Transform Our Institutions…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Ysabel Gerrard, "The Kids Are Online: Confronting the Myths and Realities of Young Digital Life" (U California Press, 2025)
How do young people use digital platforms? In The Kids are Online: Confronting the Myths and Realities of Young Digital Life (U California Press, 2025), Ysabel…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Mimi Thi Nguyen, "The Promise of Beauty" (Duke UP, 2024)
In The Promise of Beauty (Duke UP, 2024), Mimi Thi Nguyen explores the relationship between the concept of beauty and narratives of crisis and catastrophe…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Rebecca Zorach, "Temporary Monuments: Art, Land, and America's Racial Enterprise" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Art has long played a key role in constructing how people understand and imagine America. Starting with contemporary controversies over public monuments in the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
"Queer Jews, Queer Muslims" with Adi Saleem and Shanon Shah
In this episode of Radio ReOrient, Claudia Radiven and Chella Ward spoke to Adi Saleem and Shanon Shah. They discussed the recent publication of the book Queer…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Ståle Holgersen, "Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World" (Verso, 2024)
In Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World (Verso, 2024), Ståle Holgersen develops a conceptualization of 'crisis' that moves beyond…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Sam Wetherell, "Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
What does the history of Liverpool tell us about the future of Britain? In Liverpool and the Unmaking of Britain (Bloomsbury, 2025), Sam Wetherall, a Senior…
- New Books in Critical Theory
What it Means to Forget
The recent removal of information about Black, Indigenous, and female military personnel from the Arlington National Cemetery’s website exemplifies how cancel…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Bruno Leipold, "Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought" (Princeton UP, 2024)
In Citizen Marx: Republicanism and the Formation of Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought (Princeton UP, 2024), Bruno Leipold argues that, contrary to…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Atiya Husain, "No God But Man: On Race, Knowledge, and Terrorism" (Duke UP, 2025)
Atiya Husain’s No God but Man: On Race, Knowledge and Terrorism (Duke University Press, 2025) uses the FBI Most Wanted lists to rethink theoretical…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Populism, Power, and the Crisis of Globalism: A Conversation with Wolfgang Streeck
What explains the growing divide between elites and the broader public in democracies across Europe and the United States? In this episode of International…
- New Books in Critical Theory
We Have Never Been Woke: A Conversation with Musa al-Gharbi
Why does occupation reliably predict political leanings? What is social capitalism, and how does it span income classes? If social capitalists are sincerely…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Tiffany D. Joseph, "Not All In: Race, Immigration, and Health Care Exclusion in the Age of Obamacare" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2025)
Despite progressive policy strides in health care reform, immigrant communities continue to experience stark disparities across the United States. In Not All…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Jason L. Newton, "Cutover Capitalism: The Industrialization of the Northern Forest" (West Virginia UP, 2024)
What happened to the loggers of America’s past when lumbermen moved west and south in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? How did these…
- New Books in Critical Theory
William Max Nelson, "Enlightenment Biopolitics: A History of Race, Eugenics, and the Making of Citizens" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
In Enlightenment Biopolitics (U Chicago Press, 2024), historian William Max Nelson pursues the ambitious task of tracing the context in which biopolitical…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Alisha Ali et al., "Mad Studies Reader: Interdisciplinary Innovations in Mental Health" (Routledge, 2024)
The last few years have brought increased writings from activists, artists, scholars, and concerned clinicians that cast a critical and constructive eye on…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Anita Say Chan, "Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future" (U California Press, 2025)
Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future (University of California Press, 2025) illuminates the throughline between the…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Peter Sloterdijk Knows it All
Today’s guest is Dr Thomas Sutherland, author of the Bloomsbury title, Speaking Philosophically: Communication at the Limits of Discursive Reason (Bloombury…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Matt Mahmoudi, "Migrants in the Digital Periphery: New Urban Frontiers of Control" (U California Press, 2025)
As the fortification of Europe's borders and its hostile immigration terrain has taken shape, so too have the biometric and digital surveillance industries…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Amanda M. Greenwell, "The Child Gaze: Narrating Resistance in American Literature" (UP of Mississippi, 2024)
The Child Gaze: Narrating Resistance in American Literature (UP of Mississippi, 2024) theorizes the child gaze as a narrative strategy for social critique in…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Rahul Rao, "The Psychic Lives of Statues: Reckoning with the Rubble of Empire" (Pluto Press, 2025)
From Cape Town to Bristol and Richmond, statues have become sites of resistance and contestation of our imperial past and postcolonial present. The Psychic…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Colby Gordon, "Glorious Bodies: Trans Theology and Renaissance Literature" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Glorious Bodies: Trans Theology and Renaissance Literature (U Chicago Press, 2024) offers a prehistory of transness that recovers early modern theological…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, "Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana" (UNC Press, 2023)
Every year between 1998 to 2020 except one, Louisiana had the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the nation and thus the world. Prison Capital: Mass…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Mark Neocleous, "Pacification: Social War and the Power of Police" (Verso, 2025)
Today I talked to Mark Neocleous about his new book Pacification: Social War and the Power of Police (Verso, 2025). For more than two decades, Neocleous has…
New Books in Critical TheoryAction Without Hope
In his new book, Nathan K. Hensley describes a mood or a vibe or an intuitive response to the contemporary moment when one feels powerless in the face of…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Maggie M. Cao, "Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies (University of Chicago Press, 2025) by Dr. Maggie Cao is the first book to offer a synthetic…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Tahrir Hamdi, "Imagining Palestine: Cultures of Exile and National Identity" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Tahrir Hamdi is a Professor of Resistance Literature at the Arab Open University in Jordan. She is the author of the award-winning Imagining Palestine and…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Karl Berglund, "Reading Audio Readers: Book Consumption in the Streaming Age" (Bloomsbury, 2024)
What is the future of reading? In Reading Audio Readers: Book Consumption in the Digital Age (Bloombury, 2024), Karl Berglund, Assistant Professor in…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Nima Bassiri, "Madness and Enterprise: Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Uncovers a powerful relationship between pathology and money: beginning in the nineteenth century, the severity of mental illness was measured against a…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Abby Innes, "Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Why has the United Kingdom, historically one of the strongest democracies in the world, become so unstable? What changed? Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Maria Kaika and Luca Ruggiero, "Class Meets Land: The Embodied History of Land Financialization" (U California Press, 2024)
Class Meets Land: The Embodied History of Land Financialization (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Maria Kaika & Dr. Luca Ruggiero reveals something…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Alfie Bown, "Post-Comedy" (Polity, 2025)
Not so long ago, comedy and laughter were a shared experience of relief, as Freud famously argued. At their best, ribbing, roasting, piss-taking and insulting…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Sam Srauy, "Race, Culture and the Video Game Industry: A Vicious Circuit" (Routledge, 2024)
My guest today Sam Srauy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations at Oakland University, Her research…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Wan-Chuan Kao, "White before Whiteness in the Late Middle Ages" (Manchester UP, 2024)
White before Whiteness in the Late Middle Ages (Manchester University Press, 2024) by Dr. Wan-Chuan Kao analyses premodern whiteness as operations of…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Linh Thuy Nguyen, "Displacing Kinship: The Intimacies of Intergenerational Trauma in Vietnamese American Cultural Production" (Temple UP, 2024)
Nearly fifty years after the end of the war in Vietnam, American children of Vietnamese refugees continue to process the meanings of the war and its…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Giampaolo Conte, "A History of Capitalist Transformation: A Critique of Liberal-Capitalist Reforms" (Routledge, 2024)
A History of Capitalist Transformation: A Critique of Liberal-Capitalist Reforms highlights how, since the recent financial crises, the expression ‘liberal…
- New Books in Critical Theory
Tabish Khair, "Literature Against Fundamentalism" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Acclaimed novelist and academic Tabish Khair argues that literature as a distinct mode of thinking can counteract fundamentalism. Literature is a mode of…