Podcasts by New Books in Critical Theory

New Books in Critical Theory

Interviews with Scholars of Critical Theory about their New Books
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Further podcasts by Marshall Poe

Podcast on the topic Sozialwissenschaften

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New Books in Critical Theory
Making Meaning Episode 14: The Challenge of Choice from 2023-02-17T09:00

The vast range of choices we can make about our lives is one of the great blessings of modernity. But that very freedom makes it hard to know what to believe or where we belong. Even more difficult...

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New Books in Critical Theory
The Myth of Modernity: Is There a Bigger Picture? from 2023-01-20T09:00

Many think modernity is about the rise of science, the spread of democracy and capitalism, or the decline of religion or superstition. But those stories ignore the bigger picture about colonialism ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
White Balance: How Do Race and Class Intersect? from 2023-01-06T09:00

Understanding race in America requires understanding its relationship to class. GuestsJoshua Bennett, writer and poet Julian Bourg, Professor of History at Boston CollegeNancy Isenberg, author of ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
(In)efficiency: Should Efficiency be a Moral Value? from 2023-01-05T09:00

Efficiency has moved from a technique for measuring machines to a widely held moral value. But at what cost? GuestsJennifer Alexander, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota and author ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
(In)efficiency: Should Efficiency be a Moral Value? from 2023-01-05T09:00

Efficiency has moved from a technique for measuring machines to a widely held moral value. But at what cost? GuestsJennifer Alexander, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota and author ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
On Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth" from 2022-11-29T09:00

In 1925, on the French occupied island of Martinique, one of the most prominent voices in post colonial theory was born, Frantz Fanon. He was born to parents of both African and French descent, and...

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New Books in Critical Theory
On Michel Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" from 2022-11-22T09:23

We moderns often tell ourselves a story that goes something like this: The past was barbaric, especially when it came to punishing criminals or persecuting minorities. Legal punishment used to incl...

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New Books in Critical Theory
On Karl Marx's "The Communist Manifesto" from 2022-09-23T08:00

1848 was the Year of Revolutions in Europe. It was also the year that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto, proposing a new, classless society. As revolutions erupted ac...

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New Books in Critical Theory
On Karl Marx's "The Communist Manifesto" from 2022-09-23T08:00

1848 was the Year of Revolutions in Europe. It was also the year that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto, proposing a new, classless society. As revolutions erupted ac...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Care Ethics from 2022-06-21T08:00

Merel Visse and Inge van Nistelrooij talk with Kim about Care Ethics. Over the course of the episode, we discuss works by many care ethicists and other philosophically inclined thinkers. Prominent ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Fandom from 2022-06-17T08:00

andré carrington talks about the origins of contemporary fandoms, race and gender as its determinants, and its emancipatory potential in the face of cooption by big media conglomerates. Besides and...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Theory from the South with Borderlines from 2022-06-15T08:00

Olga Verlato and Antara Chakrabarti, contributing editors at Borderlines, talk about the concept of theory from the south, which critiques the notion that theory originating from the global north e...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Decolonial Queerness from 2022-06-10T08:00

Sandeep Bakshi (@sandeepbak on Twitter) talks to Saronik about understanding queerness and its emancipatory politics through transnational solidarity building, the persistent inclusion of trans and...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sexual Difference from 2022-06-07T08:00

Emma Heaney talks about the social organization of the supposedly biologically derived terms of the sex binary into a hierarchy of persons and qualities. She speaks widely about the work that she a...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Experimental Life from 2022-06-03T08:00

Travis Chi Wing Lau talks about the notion that one can experiment on the fundamental conditions and nature of life in order to perfect them. He looks at this idea in diverse literary, scientific, ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Undisciplining from 2022-05-27T08:00

Kim talks to Amy Wong, Ronjaunee Chatterjee, and Alicia Christoff about ‘Undisciplining’, a term they borrowed from Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake and have used in an article and a journal issue to...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Abolition from 2022-05-26T08:00

Leading up to Mayday, the nationwide Day of Refusal, and Abolition May, Saronik talks with Sean Gordon about abolition as an historical movement to end the transatlantic slave trade and a transform...

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New Books in Critical Theory
The Right to Maim from 2022-05-24T08:00

Bassam Sidiki talks about the right to maim, the titular concept in Jasbir K. Puar’s book, and the related concept of debility. He explains how these concepts have changed how the field of disabili...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Autotheory from 2022-05-23T08:00

In this episode Kim speaks with Lauren Fournier about autotheory. Lauren has recently published a book on the subject, titled Autotheory as Feminist Practice in Art, Writing, and Criticism (MIT Pre...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Military Industrial Complex from 2022-05-20T08:00

Kim talks to Patrick Deer about the Military Industrial Complex, a term used by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower in a 1961 speech to describe a permanent war economy, and the political, economic, ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Alienation from 2022-05-18T08:00

In this episode Kim talks with Mustafa Yavas about Alienation. Mustafa quotes Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. He also references Albert Camus’ books The Stranger and The...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Heterotopia from 2022-05-13T08:00

Kim speaks with Amanda Caleb about Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia. Amanda says that the classic definition of “heterotopia” is found in Foucault’s article “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and He...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Dissensus from 2022-05-11T08:00

Kim talks with Gina about Jacques Rancière’s concept of dissensus. Gina refers to several major works of philosophy including:Jacques Rancière’s Dissensus Immanuel Kant’s Critique of JudgementJacqu...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Deterritorialization from 2022-05-10T08:00

Saronik talks to Shweta Krishnan, doctoral candidate in Anthropology at George Washington University. She speaks about how she uses Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of deterritorializatio...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Alyson K. Spurgas, "Diagnosing Desire: Biopolitics and Femininity Into the Twenty-First Century" (Ohio State UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Diagnosing Desire: Biopolitics and Femininity into the Twenty-First Century, (The Ohio State University Press, 2020), Alyson K. Spurgas, Ph.D. examines the “new science of female sexuality” from...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Tanya Kant, "Making it Personal: Algorithmic Personalization, Identity, and Everyday Life" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How are algorithms shaping our experience of the internet? In Making it Personal: Algorithmic Personalization, Identity, and Everyday Life (Oxford University Press), Tanya Kant, a lecturer in Media...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Tim Jelfs, “The Argument about Things in the 1980s: Goods and Garbage in an Age of Neoliberalism” (West Virginia UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Argument about Things in the 1980s: Goods and Garbage in an Age of Neoliberalism (West Virginia University Press, 2018), Tim Jelfs argues that debates about the nature of stuff—its moral val...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jean Casimir. "The Haitians: A Decolonial History" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Haitians: A Decolonial History (UNC Press, 2020), leading Haitian intellectual Jean Casimir argues that the story of Haiti should not begin with the usual image of Saint-Domingue as the rich...

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New Books in Critical Theory
M. Hennefeld and N. Sammond, "Abjection Incorporated: Mediating the Politics of Pleasure and Violence" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From the films of Larry Clark to the feminist comedy of Amy Schumer to the fall of Louis C. K., comedic, graphic, and violent moments of abjection have permeated twentieth- and twenty-first-century...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Richard Baxstrom and Todd Meyers, “Violence’s Fabled Experiment” (August Verlag, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Richard Baxstrom and Todd Meyers are anthropologists who have an interest in studying film for its value in a way to view the world. In Violence’s Fabled Experiment (August Verlag, 2018), they exam...

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New Books in Critical Theory
J. Daniel Elam, "World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth: Anticolonial Aesthetics, Postcolonial Politics" (Fordham UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

World Literature for the Wretched of the Earth: Anticolonial Aesthetics, Postcolonial Politics (Fordham University Press, 2020) recovers a genealogy of anticolonial thought that advocates collectiv...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Orit Kamir, "Betraying Dignity" (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What do medieval knights, suicide bombers and "victimhood culture" have in common? Betraying Dignity: The Toxic Seduction of Social Media, Shaming, and Radicalization (Fairleigh Dickinson Universit...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jacqueline Rose ,”Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I left the kitchen radio on while reading Jacqueline Rose‘s Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018) in preparation for this interview. It was June. Putting the book ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Adam Fabry, "The Political Economy of Hungary: From State Capitalism to Authoritarian Neoliberalism" (Palgrave, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Adam Fabry's book The Political Economy of Hungary: From State Capitalism to Authoritarian Neoliberalism (Palgrave, 2019) explores the political economy of Hungary from the mid-1970s to the present...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Michael Rectenwald, "Beyond Woke" (New English Review Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A few short years ago, Michael Rectenwald was a Marxist professor at NYU, pursuing his career and contemplating becoming a Trotskyist, when the political climate on campus - victimology, cancel-cul...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Joel R. Pruce, “The Mass Appeal of Human Rights” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can human rights campaigns function in consumer and celebrity society? In The Mass Appeal of Human Rights (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Joel Pruce, assistant professor in political science at the...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Khurram Hussain, "Islam as Critique: Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Challenge of Modernity" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Delighting in Khurram Hussain’s consistently sparkling prose is reason enough to read his new book Islam as Critique: Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Challenge of Modernity (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019). B...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Irfan Ahmad, “Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace” (UNC Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the last few decades, questions relating to Islam’s compatibility with liberal secular democracy, or the question of why Islam remains incompatible with Western liberal norms of thought and poli...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Nadine El-Enany, "Bordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire" (Manchester UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can we understand the legacy of colonialism within contemporary society? In Bordering Britain Law, Race and Empire (Manchester University Press, 2020), Nadine El-Enany, a senior lecturer in law...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Nick Hubble, “The Proletarian Answer to the Modernist Question” (Edinburgh UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nick Hubble’s The Proletarian Answer to the Modernist Question (Edinburgh University Press, 2017) is a thrilling, and timely challenge to the orthodoxy that proletarian and high-modernist literatur...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Marika Rose, "A Theology of Failure: Žižek Against Christian Innocence" (Fordham UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christian theology has a long and at times contradictory history, riddled with tensions that make it difficult (if not impossible) to develop a single systematic account of what Christianity is. Ho...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Michael Levien, “Dispossession Without Development: Land Grabs in Neoliberal India” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Historically ubiquitous at least since the 15th century and integral to the rise and consolidation of capitalism, land dispossession has re-emerged as a hot button issue for governments, industries...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Andrew Kettler, "The Smell of Slavery: Olfactory Racism and the Atlantic World" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, The Smell of Slavery: Olfactory Racism and the Atlantic World (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Dr. Andrew Kettler charts the impact that smell had on the making of race and just...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Steven Stoll, “Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia” (Hill and Wang, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As you’ll hear in this interview with Steven Stoll, his latest book Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia (Hill and Wang, 2017) is “really a book about capitalism.” Specifically, it’s about how the...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sasha Costanza-Chock, "Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need (MIT Press, 2020), Sasha Costanza-Chock, an associate professor of Civic Media at MIT, builds the case for designers and resea...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Kurt Dopfer, “Modern Evolutionary Economics: An Overview” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This week we met Prof. Kurt Dopfer (Universität St Gallen, Switzerland) to talk about Modern Evolutionary Economics: An Overview (Cambridge University Press, 2018), a book he co-authored with eight...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Justin Gomer, "White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights" (UNC Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Justin Gomer is the author of White Balance: How Hollywood Shaped Colorblind Ideology and Undermined Civil Rights, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2020. White Balance explore...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Shelley Tremain, “Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability” (U Michigan Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand disability? In Foucault and Feminist Philosophy of Disability (University of Michigan Press, 2017), Dr. Shelley Tremain explores this complex question from the perspective ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ari Linden, "Karl Kraus and The Discourse of Modernity" (Northwestern UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Karl Kraus and The Discourse of Modernity (Northwestern University Press, 2020), Ari Linden analyzes Karl Kraus’s oeuvre while engaging in the conversation about modernism and modernity, which i...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Dagmar Herzog, “Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

‘Create two, three—many Freuds!’ That, Dagmar Herzog shows, was the forgotten slogan of the Cold War. With Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes (Cambridge University Press, 2017...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Christina Dunbar-Hester, "Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Hacking Diversity: The Politics of inclusion in Open Technology Cultures (Princeton University Press, 2020), Christina-Dunbar Hester, an associate professor in the USC Annenberg School for Commu...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Charles Umney, “Class Matters: Inequality and Exploitation in 21st-Century Britain” (Pluto Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is class? In Class Matters: Inequality and Exploitation in 21st-Century Britain (Pluto Press, 2018), Charles Umney, an Associate Professor in Work and Employment Relations at the University of...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Raluca Soreanu, "Working-through Collective Wounds: Trauma, Denial, Recognition in the Brazilian Uprising" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Working-through Collective Wounds: Trauma, Denial, Recognition in the Brazilian Uprising (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) formulates a theory of collective trauma, drawing on the work of Sándor Ferenczi....

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sean Molloy, “Kant’s International Relations: The Political Theology of Perpetual Peace” (U Michigan Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does Kant have to tell us about International Relations? In Kant’s International Relations: The Political Theology of Perpetual Peace (University of Michigan Press, 2017), Sean Molloy, a Reade...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Kevin Escudero, "Organizing While Undocumented: Immigrant Youth’s Political Activism Under the Law" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Undocumented youth activists are at the forefront of the present-day immigrant rights movement. This is especially true surrounding the activism of the recent SCOTUS decision on DACA issued on June...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Larisa Jašarevi?, “Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt” (Indiana UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, Health and Wealth on the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt (Indiana University Press, 2017), Larisa Jašarevi? traces the odd entanglements between the body and the economy in Bosnia-He...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Y. F. Niemann and G. Gutiérrez y Muhs, "Presumed Incompetent II: Race, Class, Power, and Resistance of Women in Academia" (Utah State UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The courageous and inspiring personal narratives and empirical studies in Presumed Incompetent II: Race, Class, Power, and Resistance of Women in Academia (Utah State University Press, 2019) name f...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Yves Citton, “The Ecology of Attention” (Polity Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We are arguably living in the midst of a form of economy where attention has become a key resource and value, labor, class, and currency are being reconfigured as a result. But how is this happenin...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Martin Jay, "Splinters in Your Eye: Frankfurt School Provocations" (Verso, 2020)  from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Although successive generations of the Frankfurt School have attempted to adapt Critical Theory to new circumstances, the work done by its founding members continues in the twenty-first century to ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
The Invisible Committee, “Now” (Semiotext(e), 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What could the communism of the future be? In Now  (Semiotext(e), 2017), The Invisible Committee explores our current crisis by thinking through key critical theory questions, along with specific i...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jonathan Sklar, "Dark Times: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Politics, History and Mourning" (Phoenix, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

"Although small, this book goes against the grain of the current trend for brief soundbites that allow us to pass swiftly over painful information. It will go into the details of some extremely dar...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Simone Wesner, “Artists’ Voices in Cultural Policy: Careers, Myths and the Creative Profession after German Unification” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why is the artist’s voice missing from cultural policy? In Artists’ Voices in Cultural Policy: Careers, Myths and the Creative Profession after German Unification (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), Dr. Si...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Adrian Johnston, "Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism Volume II: A Weak Nature Alone" (Northwestern UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Engaging with almost any Western philosopher of the last couple centuries means you are usually, whether you realize it or not, working in the shadow of Hegel, his work proving stubbornly resistant...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Martin Shuster, “New Television: The Aesthetics and Politics of a Genre” (U Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand our new golden age of television? In New Television: The Aesthetics and Politics of a Genre (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Martin Shuster, Director of Judaic Studies ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Lizzie O’Shea, "Future Histories" (Verso, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When we talk about technology we always talk about the future—which makes it hard to figure out how to get there. In Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ari Heinrich, “Chinese Surplus: Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Medically Commodified Body” (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ari Larissa Heinrich’s new book, Chinese Surplus: Biopolitical Aesthetics and the Medically Commodified Body (Duke University Press, 2018), is a fascinating study of representations of the Chinese ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Crystal Mun-hye Baik, "Reencounters: On the Korean War and Diasporic Memory Critique" (Temple UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This interview coincides with the 70th anniversary of the Korean War, a war that, as Baik reminds us, has not officially ended. How are the particularities of the Korean War, as an unended war, exp...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Noreen Giffney and Eve Watson, “Clinical Encounters in Sexuality: Psychoanalytic Practice and Queer Theory” (Punctum Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Psychoanalysis is a queer theory. That’s what Tim Dean said, according to Eve Watson in the afterword to Clinical Encounters in Sexuality: Psychoanalytic Practice and Queer Theory (Punctum Books, 2...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Marianna Ritchey, "Composing Capital: Classical Music in the Neoliberal Era" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the place of classical music in contemporary society? In Composing Capital: Classical Music in the Neoliberal Era (University of Chicago Press, 2019), Marianna Ritchey, an?assistant profess...

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New Books in Critical Theory
James M. Jasper, “The Emotions of Protests” (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do emotions affect participation in protests, and in politics more generally? In The Emotions of Protests (University of Chicago Press, 2018), James M. Jasper develops a solid critique to appro...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Mia Fischer, "Terrorizing Gender: Transgender Visibility and the Surveillance Practices of the U.S. Security State" (U Nebraska Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Terrorizing Gender: Transgender Visibility and the Surveillance Practices of the U.S. Security State, Mia Fischer traces how media and state actors collude in the violent disciplining of trans w...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Paula Serafini, “Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism” (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can art change the world? In Performance Action: The Politics of Art Activism (Routledge, 2018), Paula Serafini, a Research Associate at the University of Leicester’s CAMEo Research Institute f...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Greg Burris, "The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination" (Temple UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is there a link between the colonization of Palestinian lands and the enclosing of Palestinian minds? The Palestinian Idea: Film, Media, and the Radical Imagination (Temple University Press, 2019) ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Hongwei Bao, “Queer Comrades: Gay Identity and Tongzhi Activism in Postsocialist China” (NIAS Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Hongwei Bao’s book is a thoughtful exploration of gay identity and queer activism in China. This work stems from the term and identity tongzhi, which means “comrade” and in more recent decades has ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Evan Smith, "No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech (Routledge, 2020) is the first to outline the history of the tactic of ‘no platforming’ at British universities si...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Rob Sullivan, “The Geography of the Everyday: Toward an Understanding of the Given” (U Georgia Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How to theorize what goes without saying? In The Geography of the Everyday: Toward an Understanding of the Given (University of Georgia Press, 2017), Rob Sullivan develops a general theory of every...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ali Meghji, "Black Middle-Class Britannia: Identities, Repertoires, Cultural Consumption" (Manchester UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Who are the Black middle-class in Britain? In Black Middle-Class Britannia: Identities, Repertoires, Cultural Consumption (Manchester University Press, 2019) Ali Meghji, a lecturer in social inequa...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ignacio Aguiló, “The Darkening Nation: Race, Neoliberalism, and Crisis in Argentina” (U Wales Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Darkening Nation: Race, Neoliberalism, and Crisis in Argentina (University of Wales Press, 2018), Ignacio Aguiló studies the sociocultural impact caused by the failure of the IMF economic me...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Theodor Adorno, "The Authoritarian Personality" (Verso, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

70 years ago, the philosopher Theodore Adorno and a team of scholars released a massive book titled The Authoritarian Personality (Verso, 2019), which attempted to map the psychological and emotion...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Aaron Kuntz, “The Responsible Methodologist: Inquiry, Truth-Telling, and Social Justice” (Left Coast Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, I speak with Aaron M. Kuntz about his book, The Responsible Methodologist: Inquiry, Truth-Telling, and Social Justice (Left Coast Press, 2015). This book offers a thorough and much...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Tsedale Melaku, "You Don’t Look Like a Lawyer: Black Women and Systemic Gendered Racism" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What kind of discrimination do Black women face in the legal profession? Tsedale Melaku explores this question and more in her new book: You Don’t Look Like a Lawyer: Black Women and Systemic Gende...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Bruno Chaouat, “Is Theory Good for the Jews?: French Thought and the Challenge of the New Antisemitism” (Liverpool University Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Is Theory Good for the Jews?” asks author Bruno Chaouat, professor of French at the University of Minnesota, in Is Theory Good for the Jews?: French Thought and the Challenge of the New Antisemiti...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Josh Cerretti, "Abuses of the Erotic: Militarizing Sexuality in the Post-Cold War United States" (U Nebraska Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, Jana Byars talks to Josh Cerretti, Associate Professor of History and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Western Washington University about his new book, Abuses of the Erotic...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Peter Allen, “The Political Class: Why It Matters Who Our Politicians Are” (Oxford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Who is in charge? In The Political Class: Why It Matters Who Our Politicians Are (Oxford University Press, 2018), Peter Allen, a Reader in Comparative Politics in the Department of Politics, Langua...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Mariann Hardey, "The Culture of Women in Tech: An Unsuitable Job for a Woman" (Emerald, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the culture of the tech industry? In The Culture of Women in Tech: An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (Emerald, 2019), Mariann Hardey, an Associate Professor in Marketing at Durham University, s...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Kyla Schuller, “The Biopolitics of Feeling: Race, Sex, and Science in the Nineteenth Century” (Duke UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Beginning with a discussion about Black Lives Matter may seem like an unlikely place to start a book about nineteenth century science and culture. However, by contrasting Black lives with White fee...

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New Books in Critical Theory
George Lawson, "Anatomies of Revolution" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The success of populist politicians and the emergence of social justice movements around the world, and the recent demonstrations against police violence in the United States, demonstrate a widespr...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Christina Scharff, “Gender, Subjectivity, and Cultural Work: The Classical Music Profession” (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What sort of inequalities characterize classical music today? In Gender, Subjectivity, and Cultural Work: The Classical Music Profession (Routledge, 2018), Christina Scharff, a senior lecturer in c...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Minou Arjomand, "Staged: Show Trials, Political Theater, and the Aesthetics of Judgment" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Staged: Show Trials, Political Theater, and the Aesthetics of Judgment (Columbia University Press, 2020), Minou Arjomand provides a startling account of the many intersections between theatre an...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Dieter Vandebroeck, “Distinctions in the Flesh: Social Class and the Embodiment of Inequality” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How is class inequality intertwined with the body? In Distinctions in the Flesh: Social Class and the Embodiment of Inequality (Routledge, 2017),  Dieter Vandebroeck, an assistant professor in soci...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Marcia Chatelain, "Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America" (Liveright, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America (Liveright, 2020) by Marcia Chatelain is a fascinating examination of the relationship between the fast-food industry, Black business owners, and the c...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Mark Rifkin, “Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination” (Duke UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mark Rifkin’s Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination (Duke University Press, 2017) engages fields including physics, phenomenology, native storytelling, and que...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sa’ed Atshan, "Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In?Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique (Stanford University Press, 2020) anthropologist and activist?Sa’ed Atshan?explores the Palestinian LGBTQ movement and offers a window into the diverse...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sarah Schulman, “Conflict is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair” (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sarah Schulman’s Conflict is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016) examines how accusations of harm are appropriated and deployed ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Micol Seigel, "Violence Work: State Violence and the Limits of Police" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Recent calls for the defunding or abolition of police raise important questions about the legitimacy of state violence and the functions that police are supposed to serve. Criticism of the militari...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Leah Bassel and Akwugo Emejulu, “Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and Resistance in France and Britain” (Policy Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the impact of austerity on minority women? How has this impacted on already long standing forms of social inequality across England, France and Scotland? These questions are the subject of ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Joy White, "Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City" (Repeater Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How are black lives lived in the contemporary city? In Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City, Dr Joy White, a sociologist and ethnographer based in London, explores the case study of New...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Aimi Hamraie, “Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability” (U Minnesota Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Americans with Disability Act passed in 1990, but it was just one moment in ongoing efforts to craft the meaning and practice of “good design” that put people with disabilities at the center. I...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Aaron Kamugisha, "Beyond Coloniality: Citizenship and Freedom in the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Aaron Kamugisha reads CLR James and Sylvia Wynter to glean from them ways to navigate the “beyond” of coloniality. In his new book Beyond Coloniality: Citizenship and Freedom in the Caribbean Intel...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sigrid Schmalzer, et. al., “Science for the People: Documents from America’s Movement of Radical Scientists (UMass Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“What is needed now is not liberal reform or withdrawal, but a radical attack, a strategy of opposition. Scientific workers must develop ways to put their skills at the service of the people and ag...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Alberto Harambour, "Soberanías fronterizas: Estados y capital en la colonización de Patagonia" (EUAC, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Alberto Harambour's new book Soberanías Fronterizas. Estados y capital en la colonización de Patagonia (Argentina y Chile, 1840s-1920s) (Universidad Austral de Chile, 2019) examines the explosion o...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Anamik Saha, “Race and the Cultural Industries” (Polity, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do the media make race? This question is at the heart of Race and the Cultural Industries (Polity, 2018), the new book by Anamik Saha, Lecturer in Media, Communications and Promotion at Goldsmi...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Robert Nichols, "Theft Is Property!: Dispossession and Critical Theory" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Robert Nichols, an associate professor of political theory at the University of Minnesota, has written an engaging and important examination of the clash between the western theoretical approaches ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Stephen Monteiro, “The Fabric of Interface: Mobile Media, Design, and Gender” (MIT Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sewing, knitting, quilting, the crafts related to fabric making, are usually not what we think about when we consider our digital communications devices. Yet, many of the activities that we find ou...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Edgar Garcia,  "Signs of the America: A Poetics of Pictography, Hieroglyphs and Khipu" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his sixth thesis on the philosophy of history, Walter Benjamin wrote, “The only writer of history with the gift of setting alight the sparks of hope in the past, is the one who is convinced of t...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Lana Lin, “Freud’s Jaw and Other Lost Objects: Fractured Subjectivity in the Face of Cancer” (Fordham UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In April 1923 Sigmund Freud detected a lesion in his mouth that turned out to be cancerous. From diagnosis to his death, he endured 33 surgeries and 10 prostheses. In 1932 alone, Freud consulted wi...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Fadi A. Bardawil, "Revolution and Disenchantment: Arab Marxism and the Binds of Emancipation" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his Theses on Feuerbach, Marx famously claimed that philosophers had previously only attempted to interpret the world; the point, however, was to change it. In the 20th century, no philosopher h...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Natchee Blu Barnd, “Native Space: Geographic Strategies to Unsettle Settler Colonialism” (Oregon State UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Native Space: Geographic Strategies to Unsettle Settler Colonialism (Oregon State University Press, 2017), Natchee Blu Barnd examines how Indigenous populations create space and geographies thro...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sam Han, "(Inter)Facing Death: Life in Global Uncertainty" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In modern times, death is understood to have undergone a transformation not unlike religion. Whereas in the past it was out in the open, it now resides mostly in specialized spaces of sequestration...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Martijn Konings, “Capital and Time: For a New Critique of Neoliberal Reason” (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today I was joined by Martijn Konings from Australia where he is Associate Professor of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. We had a conversation on his most recent book Capital and Time...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Frank Wilderson III, "Afropessimism" (Liveright, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand the pervasiveness – and virulence – of anti-Black violence in the United State? Why and how is anti-Black racism different from other forms of racism? How does it permeate ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Christopher B. Patterson, “Transitive Cultures: Anglophone Literature of the Transpacific” (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christopher B. Patterson‘s book Transitive Cultures: Anglophone Literature of the Transpacific (Rutgers University Press, 2018) reads English-language literary production from Southeast Asia and i...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Shiu-Yin Sharon Yam, "Inconvenient Strangers: Transnational Subjects and the Politics of Citizenship" (Ohio State UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On this episode of the New Books Network, Lee Pierce (s/t interviews Shiu-Yin Sharon Yam of University of Kentucky on the new book, Inconvenient Strangers: Transnational Subjects and the Politics o...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Stephen Cummings, et al., “A New History of Management” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Did Abraham Maslow actually ever draw a pyramid of hierarchy of needs? Did Kurt Lewin devote substantial work on the development of a change management theory? Why do we omit or misrepresent import...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Brian Greene, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Random House, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Brian Greene is a Professor of Mathematics and Physics at Columbia University in the City of New York, where he is the Director of the Institute for Strings, Cosmology, and Astroparticle Physics, a...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Claudio Sopranzetti, “Owners of the Map: Motorcycle Taxi Drivers, Mobility and Politics in Bangkok” (U California Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When the army brutally dispersed Red Shirts protestors in Bangkok’s busy commercial district in May 2010, motorcycle taxi drivers emerged as a key force, capable of playing cat-and-mouse with secur...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Viet Thanh Nguyen, "Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War" (Harvard UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

According to Viet Thanh Nguyen, all wars are fought twice: first on the field of battle, and then in the struggles over memory. In Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (Harvard Universi...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jon Kraszewski, “Reality TV” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his book Reality TV (Routledge, 2017), author Jon Kraszewski explores reality television’s relationship to the American cityscape. Starting with show such as Candid Camera and An American Family...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Elinor Carmi, "Media Distortions: Understanding the Power Behind Spam, Noise, and Other Deviant Media" (Peter Lang, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is spam? In Media Distortions: Understanding the Power Behind Spam, Noise, and Other Deviant Media, Dr Elinor Carmi, a postdoctoral research associate in digital culture and society at the Uni...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Marshall Poe, “How to Read a History Book: The Hidden History of History” (Zero Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the history of a “history book”? In How to Read a History Book: The Hidden History Of History (Zero Books, 2018), Marshall Poe, founder and Editor-In-Chief of the New Books Network, tells t...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Thomas A. Discenna, "Discourses of Denial: The Rhetoric of American Academic Labor" (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On this episode of the New Books Network, Lee Pierce (they/she) interviews Thomas A. Discenna of Oakland University about the myriad ways that the labor of those employed by universities is situate...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Christopher J. Lee, “Jet Lag” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

My father has this personality quirk that drives me crazy. Whenever and wherever he travels, no matter how far, he refuses to reset his watch to the local time. For him, it’s always whatever time i...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Richard Lachmann, "First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers" (Verso, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Richard Lachmann’s First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers (Verso, 2020) is a two-for-one deal. The first half of the book is a historical analysis ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Nicholas Hengen Fox, “Reading as Collective Action: Texts as Tactics” (U Iowa Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can reading change the world? In Reading as Collective Action: Texts as Tactics (University of Iowa Press, 2017), Nicholas Hengen Fox, who teaches literature, writing and social justice courses...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Dana El Kurd, "Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What demobilizes a once mobilized society? How does international involvement amplify or suppress these dynamics? In Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine (Oxford Uni...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Franklin Obeng-Odoom, “Reconstructing Urban Economics: Towards a Political Economy of the Built Environment” (Zed Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this interview, Carlo D’Ippoliti and Andrea Bernardi interview Franklin Obeng-Odoom who teaches urban economics and political economy in the School of Built Environment at the University of Tech...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Santiago Zabala, "Being at Large: Freedom in the Ago of Alternative Facts" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In recent years, questions around the nature of ?truth ?and ?facts have reentered public debate, often in discussions around journalistic bias, and whether politically neutral reporting is possible...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Alison Gerber, “The Work of Art: Value in Creative Careers” (Stanford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is making art a job? This question is central to The Work of Art: Value in Creative Careers (Stanford University Press, 2017), the new book by Alison Gerber, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department...

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New Books in Critical Theory
James M. Jasper, "Public Characters: The Politics of Reputation and Blame" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Did Donald Trump win the U.S. presidency in 2016 because he was a master of character work – able to sum up opponents in pithy epithets that encourage the public to see them as weak or immoral? Wha...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ella Shohat, “On the Arab-Jew, Palestine, and Other Displacements” (Pluto Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Spanning several decades, the work of Ella Shohat, a Professor of Cultural Studies and Middle Eastern Studies at New York University, has introduced conceptual frameworks that fundamentally challen...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Noëlle McAfee, "Fear of Breakdown: Psychoanalysis and Politics" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 happened. Taking her cue from Winnicott, Noël...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Malcolm Harris, “Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials” (Little, Brown and Co, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Every young generation inspires a host of comparisons—usually negative ones—with older generations. Whether preceding a criticism or punctuating one, “kids these days” is a common utterance. Perhap...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Yassir Morsi, “Radical Skin, Moderate Masks: De-radicalising the Muslim and Racism in Post-racial Societies” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Muslims living in locations like Australia, Europe, or North America exist within a context dominated by white racial norms and are forced to grapple with those conventions on a daily basis. If the...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Alfie Bown, “The Playstation Dreamworld” (Polity, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can Lacan help us to understand the subversive potential of video games? In The Playstation Dreamworld (Polity, 2017), Alfie Bown, Assistant Professor of Literature at HSMC, Hong Kong, explores...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Massimo Modonesi, "The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and Political Action?" (Haymarket, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

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 Action (2019)?, published as part of th...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jack Jacobs, ed. “Jews and Leftist Politics: Judaism, Israel, Antisemitism, and Gender” (Cambridge University Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Jews and Leftist Politics: Judaism, Israel, Antisemitism and Gender (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Jack Jacobs, Professor of Political Science at John Jay College and the Graduate Center, C...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Nancy J. Chodorow, "The Psychoanalytic Ear and the Sociological Eye" (Routledge 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Psychoanalytic Ear and the Sociological Eye: Toward an American Independent Tradition (Routledge 2020) Professor Nancy J. Chodorow gives name and shape to an American middle group between th...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sareeta Amrute, “Encoding Race, Encoding Class: Indian IT Workers in Berlin” (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Associate professor of anthropology at the University of Washington Sareeta Amrute has written Encoding Race, Encoding Class: Indian IT Workers in Berlin (Duke University Press, 2016), a study of c...

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New Books in Critical Theory
John D. Caputo, "Hoping Against Hope" (Fortress Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John D. Caputo has a long career as one of the preeminent postmodern philosophers in America. The author of such books as Radical Hermeneutics, The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, and The Wea...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Lars Rensmann, “The Politics of Unreason: The Frankfurt School and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism” (SUNY Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, The Politics of Unreason: The Frankfurt School and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism (SUNY Press, 2017) , Lars Rensmann, Professor of European Politics and Society at the Universi...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Paul Harkins, "Digital Sampling: The Design and Use of Music Technologies" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does technology shape music? In Digital Sampling: The Design and Use of Music Technologies (Routledge, 2019), Paul Harkins, a lecturer in music at Edinburgh Napier University, looks at the rela...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Eli Cook, “The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life” (Harvard UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I was joined by Eli Cook from Israel to talk about his amazing new book The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life (Harvard University Press, 2017). While ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Richard Williams "Why Cities Look the Way They Do" (Polity, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand our cities? In Why Cities Look the Way They Do (Polity, 2019), Richard Williams, Professor of Contemporary Visual Cultures in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Kinneret Lahad, “A Table for One: A Critical Reading of Singlehood, Gender and Time” (Manchester UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why are you still single? This question is often asked of single women, especially those who are deemed by loved ones or friends to be too old to be single. In her newest book, A Table for One: A ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Adrian Johnston, "Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism: The Outcome of Contemporary French Philosophy " (Northwestern UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the contemporary philosophical landscape, a variety of materialist ontologies have appeared, all wrestling with various political and philosophical questions in light of a post-God ontology. Ent...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Pasquale Tridico, “Inequality in Financial Capitalism” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I was joined by Pasquale Tridico, Professor of Political Economy at Roma Tre University in Italy. His latest book, Inequality in Financial Capitalism, was published by Routledge in 2017. The issue ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Matthew McManus, "The Rise of Post-Modern Conservatism" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 shocked and surprised a number of commentators, especially because his own attitudes seemed to be in conflict with much of what people often associate with cons...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jeremy Milloy, “Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Violence at Work in the North American Auto Industry, 1960-1980” (U. of Illinois Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the twenty first century, violence at work is often described in the context of a lone employee “snapping” and harming coworkers or management. In his new book, Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Violence ...

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Dominik Finkelde, "Excessive Subjectivity: Kant, Hegel, Lacan and the Foundations of Ethics" (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How are we to conceive of acts that suddenly expose the injustice of the current order? This is a question that has puzzled philosophers for centuries, and it’s the question that animates Dominik F...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jo Littler, “Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power, and Myths of Mobility” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does the idea of ‘meritocracy’ serve to reinforce social inequality? In Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power and Myths of Mobility (Routledge, 2017) Dr Jo Littler, Reader in Culture and Creativ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Danny Haiphong, "American Exceptionalism and American Innocence" (Skyhorse, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Fake news existed long before Donald Trump…. What is ironic is that fake news has indeed been the only news disseminated by the rulers of U.S. empire.”—From American Exceptionalism and American In...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Carlo D’Ippoliti et.al., “The Routledge Handbook of Heterodox Economics: Theorizing, Analyzing, and Transforming Capitalism” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Routledge Handbook of Heterodox Economics: Theorizing, Analyzing, and Transforming Capitalism (Routledge, 2017), a new handbook of economics has been published; it is a very special one. In thi...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Alexander Zevin, "Liberalism at Large: The World According to the Economist" (Verso, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Economist is a curious publication. It always takes a point of view (as opposed to the all-the-news-that’s-fit-to-print approach). It maintains a uniform voice (editors and writers are typicall...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Stuart Elden, “Foucault: The Birth of Power” (Polity Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did Foucault become a public, political intellectual? In Foucault: The Birth of Power (Polity Press, 2017), Stuart Elden, Professor of Political Theory and Geography at the University of Warwic...

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New Books in Critical Theory
M. R. Michelson and B. F. Harrison, "Transforming Prejudice: Identity, Fear, and Transgender Rights" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Since the mid-1990s, there has been a seismic shift in attitudes toward gay and lesbian people, with a majority of Americans now supporting same-sex marriage and relations between same-sex, consent...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Eric Lee, “The Experiment: Georgia’s Forgotten Revolution, 1918-1921” (Zed Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Eric Lee‘s The Experiment: Georgia’s Forgotten Revolution, 1918-1921 (Zed Books, 2017) is about the Georgian Social Democratic/ Menshevik Revolution that took place in 1918. As the world celebrate...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Andre Brock, "Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Technology has been instrumental in allowing audiences to encounter expressions of culture to which they may have no direct connection. The popular commercial platforms like Twitter and Instagram m...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Joshua Clark Davis, “From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs” (Columbia UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs (Columbia University Press, 2017), historian Joshua Clark Davis offers an unconventional history of the 1960s and 1970...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jathan Sadowski, "Too Smart" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The ubiquity of technology that collects massive volumes of all kinds of data lends itself to one overarching question: “What?” As in what is the purpose(s) of this collection? What are the benefit...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Claudia Leeb, “Power and Feminist Agency in Capitalism: Towards a New Theory of the Political Subject” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Claudia Leeb’s new book, Power and Feminist Agency in Capitalism: Toward a New Theory of the Political Subject (Oxford University Press, 2017), takes up pressing issues within contemporary politica...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Fiona Vera-Gray, "The Right Amount of Panic: How Women Trade Freedom for Safety" (Policy Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Have you ever thought about how much energy goes into avoiding sexual violence? The work that goes into feeling safe goes largely unnoticed by the women doing it and by the wider world, and yet wom...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Daromir Rudnyckyj and Filippo Osella, eds., “Religion and the Morality of the Market: Anthropological Perspectives” (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, there has been a widespread affirmation of economic ideologies that conceive the market as an autonomous sphere of human practice. In the wake of the 2008 fin...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Leslie M. Harris, "Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris, James T. Campbell, and Alfred L. Brophy, is the first edited collection of schola...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Clayton Childress, “Under the Cover: The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel” (Princeton UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does a book come into being? In Under the Cover: The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel (Princeton University Press, 2017), Clayton Childress, Assistant Professor in the Department...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Mark Sedgwick, "Key Thinkers of the Radical Right" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The resurgence of the radical Right in America and Europe has drawn attention to the existence of political philosophers and writers whose names are only sometimes familiar and whose thought is gen...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jamie Woodcock, “Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centers” (Pluto Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What are the working conditions and what are the possibilities for change in the contemporary economy? In Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centers (Pluto Press, 2017), Jamie Wood...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Caspar Melville, "It's a London Thing: How Rare Groove, Acid House and Jungle Remapped the City" (Manchester UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does music help us to understand the contemporary city? In It's a London Thing: How Rare Groove, Acid House and Jungle Remapped the City (Manchester UP, 2019), Caspar Melville, co-chair of the ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Shaun Scott, “Millennials and the Moments that Made Us: A Cultural History of the U.S. from 1982-Present” (Zero Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Millennials and the Moments that Made Us: A Cultural History of the U.S. from 1982-Present (Zero Books, 2018), Shaun Scott critiques the America millennials inherited and using a pop culture len...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Thomas Piketty, "Capital and Ideology" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It seems easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism; perhaps that is due to some weakness in our imaginations - ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sarah Haley, “No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity” (UNC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Recent popular and scholarly interest has highlighted the complex and brutal system of mass incarceration in the United States. Much of this interest has focused on recent developments while other ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
K. Aronoff, et al., "A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal" (Verso, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In early 2019, freshman representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Senator Ed Markey proposed a bold new piece of legislation, now very well known as the Green New Deal. Intended as a means of com...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Aled Davies, “The City of London and Social Democracy: The Political Economy of Finance in Post-war Britain” (Oxford UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the decades following the end of the Second World War, the British economy evolved from a manufacturing-based economy to one driven by service industries, most notably finance. As Aled Davies ex...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Max Blumenthal, "The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump" (Verso, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump (Verso, 2019), Max Blumenthal excavates the real, connected story behind the...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Rosemary Lucy Hill, “Gender, Metal and the Media: Women Fans and the Gendered Experience of Music” (Palgrave Macmillan 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do women experience and participate in Metal? This question forms the core of Gender, Metal and the Media: Women Fans and the Gendered Experience of Music (Palgrave Macmillan 2016), the new bo...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Katherine Franke, "Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Abolition" (Haymarket Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Katherine Franke’s ambitious new book challenges Americans to face our collective responsibility for ongoing racial inequality. Rather than fall back on what Franke calls a “palliative history” tha...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Brooke Erin Duffy “(Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media and Aspirational Work” (Yale UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is life like in the aspirational economy? In (Not) Getting Paid to Do What You Love: Gender, Social Media and Aspirational Work (Yale University Press, 2017) Brooke Erin Duffy, an assistant ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Matthew McManus and Marion Trejo, "Myth and Mayhem: A Leftist Critique of Jordan Peterson?" (Zero Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 2016, Jordan Peterson, a relatively obscure professor of psychology, released several videos on YouTube making critical remarks on political correctness and related political legislation. This w...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ivan Ascher, “Portfolio Society: A Capitalist Mode of Prediction” (Zone Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Is Marx still relevant? Any social scientist will answer with a resounding yes! In what he refers to as a thought experiment, Ivan Ascher uses Marx to understand the financial market. In Portfolio ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Anna Bull, "Class, Control, and Classical Music" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the relationship between inequality and classical music? In Class, Control, and Classical Music (Oxford University Press, 2019), Anna Bull, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ilana Gershon, “Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don’t Find) Work Today” (U. Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Labor markets are not what they used to be, as Ilana Gershon argues in Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (or Don’t Find) Work Today (University of Chicago Press, 2017). Job seekers a...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Marco Z. Garrido, "The Patchwork City: Class, Space and Politics in Metro Manila" (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In contemporary Manila, slums and squatter settlements are peppered throughout the city, often pushing right up against the walled enclaves of the privileged, creating the complex geopolitical patt...

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New Books in Critical Theory
David Beer, “Metric Power” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do metrics rule the social world? In Metric Power (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) David Beer, Reader in Sociology at the University of York, outlines the rise of the metric and the role of metrics i...

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New Books in Critical Theory
V. Hudson, D. Bowen, P. Nielsen, "The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Global history records an astonishing variety of forms of social organization. Yet almost universally, males subordinate females. How does the relationship between men and women shape the wider pol...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Tommy J. Curry, “The Man-Not: Race, Class, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood” (Temple UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (Temple University Press, 2017) is a book-length justification for the burgeoning field of Black Male Studies. The author posits t...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Matt Cook, "Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like ra...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jacob Emery, “Alternative Kinships: Economy and Family in Russian Modernism” (Northern Illinois U. Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Alternative Kinships: Economy and Family in Russian Modernism (Northern Illinois University Press, 2017), Jacob Emery presents literary texts as intersections of aesthetic, social, and economic ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Tobie Stein, "Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Performing Arts Workforce" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Has can the performing arts confront racial inequality? In Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Performing Arts Workforce (Routledge, 2020), Tobie S. Stein, Professor Emerita in the Department of The...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Franck Cochoy, et al. eds., “Markets and the Arts of Attachment’ (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand markets? In Markets and the Arts of Attachment (Routledge, 2017) Franck Cochoy, Liz McFall, and Joe Deville (from University Toulouse- Jean Jaures,Open University and Lanca...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Zahi Zalloua, "?Žižek on Race: Towards an Anti-Racist Future?" (Bloomsbury, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek’s prolific quips on various cultural and political issues around race and related issues, found either in short YouTube clips or lengthy b...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jon Dean, “Doing Reflexivity: An Introduction” (Policy Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Doing Reflexivity: An Introduction (Policy Press, 2017) by Jon Dean, a senior lecturer in politics and sociology at Sheffield Hallam University, explores and explains reflexivity as one of the esse...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Todd McGowan, "Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

An Interview with Todd McGowan about his recent Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution (Columbia University Press, 2019). The book advocates for the relevance of Hegel’s dia...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Michael Youngblood, “Cultivating Community: Interest, Identity, and Ambiguity in an Indian Social Mobilization” (South Asian Studies Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Cultivating Community: Interest, Identity, and Ambiguity in an Indian Social Mobilization by Michael Youngblood, a cultural anthropologist based in San Francisco, was published in November, 2016 by...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Joshua Foa Dienstag, "Cinema Pessimism: A Political Theory of Representation and Reciprocity" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Joshua Foa Dienstag, Professor of Political Science and Law at UCLA, considers, in his new book, the interaction between our experiences in watching films and our positions as citizens in a represe...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Michelle D. Commander, “Afro-Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic” (Duke UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Afro-Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic (Duke University Press, 2017), Michelle D. Commander examines the (im)possibility of literal and figurative returns to Africa of...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Áine O'Healy, "Migrant Anxieties: Italian Cinema in a Transnational Frame" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her recently published Migrant Anxieties: Italian Cinema in a Transnational Frame (Indiana University Press, 2019), Áine O'Healy explores how filmmakers in Italy have probed the tensions accompa...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Mark Banks, “Creative Justice: Cultural Industries, Work and Inequality” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can we address inequity and injustice in cultural and creative industries? In Creative Justice: Cultural Industries, Work and Inequality (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), Mark Banks, a professor ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sukey Fontelieu, "The Archetypal Pan in America: Hypermasculinity and Terror" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Relying on Carl Jung’s theory of the complex, as well as the archetypal narratives of the Greek character Pan, Sukey Fontelieu’s The Archetypal Pan in America: Hypermasculinity and Terror (Routledg...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Bruno Perreau, “Queer Theory: The French Response” (Stanford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

At once wonderfully clear and bursting with complexity, the title of Bruno Perreau‘s book, Queer Theory: The French Response (Stanford University Press, 2016) is one of my favorites of the past sev...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Lewis Raven Wallace, “The View from Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity” (U Chicago Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From the New York Times to NPR, many major news organizations have strict policies about how reporters can conduct themselves in relation to the stories they cover. Journalists are discouraged from...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Michael J. Turner” Radicalism and Reputation: The Career of Bronterre O’Brien” (Michigan State UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From humble beginnings James Bronterre O’Brien became one of the leading figures in British radical politics in the first half of the 19th century, thanks in no small measure to his skills as a jou...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Dennis Baron, "What's Your Pronoun?: Beyond He and She" (Liveright, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today Dennis Baron talks about his new book What's Your Pronoun?: Beyond He & She (Liveright, 2020). Baron is professor emeritus in English at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and has wr...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ashon T. Crawley, “Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility” (Fordham UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility (Fordham University Press, 2016) is innovative and lyrical, challenging and beautiful. Ashon Crawley brings together black studies, queer theo...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Nick Crossley, "Connecting Sounds: The Social Life of Music" (Manchester UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does music tell us about society? In Connecting Sounds: The Social Life of Music (Manchester University Press, 2020), Nick Crossley, Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester, int...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ralph Young, “Dissent: The History of an American Idea” (NYU Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ralph Young is a professor of history at Temple University. His book Dissent: The History of an American Idea (New York University Press, 2015) provides a fast-paced four hundred years people’s his...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Megan T. Neely and Ken Hou-Lin, "Divested: Inequality in the Age of Finance" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Megan Tobias Neely and Ken Hou-Lin's new book Divested: Inequality in the Age of Finance (Oxford University Press, 2020) explores the rise of finance in American life over the last forty years and ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sharrona Pearl, “Face/On: Face Transplants and the Ethics of the Other” (U. Chicago Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sharrona Pearl‘s new book is an absolute pleasure to read. Face/On: Face Transplants and the Ethics of the Other (The University of Chicago Press, 2017) looks closely at facial allotransplantations...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Andrew Milner, "Again, Dangerous Visions: Essays in Cultural Materialism?" (Brill/Haymarket, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Again, Dangerous Visions: Essays in Cultural Materialism (Brill/Haymarket, 2018) brings together twenty-six essays charting the development of Andrew Milner's distinctively Orwellian version of cul...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Stanley Corkin, “Connecting the Wire: Race, Space, and Postindustrial Baltimore” (U. Texas Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Critically acclaimed as one of the best television shows ever produced, the HBO series The Wire (2002-2008) is a landmark event in television history, offering a raw and dramatically compelling vis...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jonathan Hopkin, "Anti-System Politics: The Crisis of Market Liberalism in Rich Democracies" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Should we understand the rise of Trump or the success of Brexit in terms of populism? Culture? Xenophobia? Do the same political forces produce Sanders and Trump? In his new book Anti-System Politi...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Clea Bourne, “Trust, Power and Public Relations in Financial Markets” (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Almost 10 years after the great financial crisis, how has the finance industry regained its preeminent social position? In Trust, Power and Public Relations in Financial Markets (Routledge, 2017) C...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Salman Sayyid, "Recalling the Caliphate: Decolonization and World Order" (Hurst, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his paradigm shifting book, Recalling the Caliphate: Decolonization and World Order (Hurst, 2014), which was recently translated into Arabic as Isti‘adat al-Khilafa Tafkik al-Isti‘mar wa al-Niza...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Lizabeth Cohen, “Making A New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939” (Cambridge UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lizabeth Cohen‘s Making A New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 was originally published in 1990, and recently re-published in 2014. In this book, Cohen explores how it was that Chicag...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Richard Polt, "Time and Trauma: Thinking Through Heidegger in the Thirties" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

For some time, the German philosopher Martin Heidegger has been treated with a certain level of skepticism because of his engagement with the Nazi party, a skepticism that has resurfaced with the p...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Benjamin Fondane, “Existential Monday” (NYRB Classics, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Benjamin Fondane, a Franco-Romanian writer and contributor to the development of existential philosophy in the 1930s and 40s, is in the process of being rediscovered. His work has gained a new rele...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein, "Data Feminism" (MIT Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The increased datafication our interactions and permeation of data science into more aspects of our lives requires analysis of the systems of power surrounding and undergirding data. The impacts of...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Marie Hicks, “Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing” (MIT Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did gender relations change in the computing industry? And how did the UK go from leading the world to having an all but extinct computer industry by the 1970s? In Programmed Inequality: How Br...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Phillipa Chong, “Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times” (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong, assistant professor in sociology at McM...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Todd McGowan, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Todd McGowan‘s Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets (Columbia University Press, 2016) elegantly employs psychoanalytic thinking to unpack the lure of capitalism. He argues that w...

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New Books in Critical Theory
matthew heinz, "Entering Transmasculinity: The Inevitability of Discourse" (Intellect Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Published by intellect books in 2016, and currently distributed by The University of Chicago Press, Entering Transmasculinity: The Inevitability of Discourse is a holistic study of the intersecting...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Emily K. Hobson, “Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left” (U. Cal Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left (University of California Press, 2016), Emily K. Hobson challenges conceptions of LGBTQ activism as single-issue analogous...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ariella Aisha Azoulay, "Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism" (Verso, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ariella Aisha Azoulay argues that the institutions that make our world, from archives and museums to ideas of sovereignty and human rights to history itself, are all dependent on imperial modes of ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Nancy Wang Yuen, “Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism” (Rutgers UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can we challenge the way film and television represents the world around us? In Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism (Rutgers University Press, 2017) Nancy Wan Yuen, and Associate Profe...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Phil Christman, "Midwest Futures" (Belt Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does the future hold for the Midwest? A vast stretch of fertile farmland bordering one of the largest concentrations of fresh water in the world, the Midwestern US seems ideally situated for t...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Christopher Lowen Agee, “The Streets of San Francisco: Policing and the Creation of a Cosmopolitan Liberal Politics, 1950-1972” (U. Chicago Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Policing tactics have recently been the subject of lively political debates and the target of protest groups like the Black Lives Matter movement. Police reform is not new, of course. The 1950s and...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Megan Burke, "When Time Warps: The Lived Experience of Gender, Race, and Sexual Violence" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In When Time Warps: The Lived Experience of Gender, Race, and Sexual Violence (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), Megan Burke considers the relationship of sexual violence to lived time by reexa...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Andre Carrington, “Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction” (U. Minnesota Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Have you ever watched a futuristic movie and wondered if there will actually be any black people in the future? Have you ever been surprised, disappointed, or concerned with the lack of diversity d...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Virginia Eubanks, "Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor" (St. Martin's, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The State of Indiana denies one million applications for healthcare, foodstamps and cash benefits in three years?because a new computer system interprets any mistake as “failure to cooperate.” In L...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Leilah Danielson, “American Gandhi: A.J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the 20th Century” (U. Penn Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

During a life that stretched from the Progressive era to the 1960s, A. J. Muste dedicated himself to fighting against war and the exploitation of working Americans. In American Gandhi: A. J. Muste ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Richard Seymour, "The Twittering Machine" (Verso, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Former social media executives tell us that the system is an addiction-machine. We are users, waiting for our next hit as we like, comment and share. We write to the machine as individuals, but it ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Iyko Day, "Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism" (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In our efforts to comprehend the systematic dispossession of indigenous peoples in settler colonies such as the United States, Canada, Australia, or Israel, the notion that "invasion is a structure...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ryan Vieira, “Time and Politics: Parliament and the Culture of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the British World” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did the idea of time change during the nineteenth century? In Time and Politics: Parliament and the Culture of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Britain and the British World (Oxford University ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Rebecca Harrison, "The Empire Strikes Back" (Bloomsbury, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why does The Empire Strikes Back matter? In BFI Classics Series's The Empire Strikes Back (Bloomsbury, 2020), Rebecca Harrison, a lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgo...

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Shai M. Dromi, "Above the Fray: The Red Cross and the Making of the Humanitarian NGO Sector" (U Chicago Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand humanitarian NGOs? In Above the Fray: The Red Cross and the Making of the Humanitarian NGO Sector (University of Chicago Press, 2020), Shai M. Dromi, a lecturer in sociolog...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Amy Brown, “A Good Investment? Philanthropy and the Marketing of Race in an Urban Public School (U. Minnesota Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There has been much talk in the news recently about funding for public education, the emergence of charter schools, and the potential of school vouchers. How much does competition for financing in ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Rosemary-Claire Collard, "Animal Traffic: Lively Capital in the Global Exotic Pet Trade" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Parrots and snakes, wild cats and monkeys---exotic pets can now be found everywhere from skyscraper apartments and fenced suburban backyards to roadside petting zoos. In Animal Traffic: Lively Capi...

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Chenyang Wang, "Subjectivity In-Between Times: Exploring the Notion of Time in Lacan's Work" (Palgrave, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If you thought Jacques Lacan’s essay on "Logical Time" was the psychoanalyst’s final word on the subject, then this interview has a lot to teach you! In his new book Subjectivity In-Between Times: ...

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Raphael Dalleo, “American Imperialisms Undead: The Occupation of Haiti and the Rise of Caribbean Anti-colonialism” (UVa Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As Raphael Dalleo demonstrates in his wide-ranging and compelling American Imperialism Undead: The Occupation of Haiti and the Rise of Caribbean Anti-colonialism (University of Virginia Press, 2016...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Andrea Jain, "Peace Love Yoga: The Politics of Global Spirituality" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Peace Love Yoga: The Politics of Global Spirituality (Oxford University Press, 2020), Andrea Jain examines the interconnectedness between global spirituality and neoliberal capitalism through an...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider, "Why Does Patriarchy Persist?" (Polity, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Activists have been working to dismantle patriarchal structures since the feminist and civil rights movements of the last century, and yet we continue to struggle with patriarchy today. In their ne...

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Stacy Alaimo, “Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times” (U. Minnesota Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Stacy Alaimo’s Exposed: Environmental Politics and Pleasures in Posthuman Times (University of Minnesota Press, 2016) is a provocative reflection on environmental ethics, politics, and forms of kno...

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David Newheiser, "Hope in a Secular Age: Deconstruction, Negative Theology and the Future of Faith" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, Hope in a Secular Age: Deconstruction, Negative Theology, and the Future of Faith (Cambridge University Press, 2020), David Newheiser argues that hope is the indispensable precondi...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Kyle Devine, "Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music" (MIT Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the human and environmental cost of music? In Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music (MIT Press, 2019),Kyle Devine, an Associate Professor in the Department of Musicology at the Univers...

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Helen Glew, “Gender, Rhetoric and Regulation: Women’s Work in the Civil Service and the London County Council, 1900-1955” (Manchester UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What role has gender played in government institutions? In Gender, Rhetoric and Regulation: Women’s Work in the Civil Service and the London County Council 1900-1955, Helen Glew, a Senior Lecturer ...

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Adam Kotsko, "Neoliberalism's Demons: On the Political Theology of Late Capital" (Stanford UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It’s hard to avoid conversations about ‘neoliberalism’ these days. The meaning of the term—indeed its very existence—is hotly contested. Adam Kotsko argues in Neoliberalism’s Demons: On the Politic...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sean Jacobs, "Media in Postapartheid South Africa: Postcolonial Politics in the Age of Globalization" (Indiana UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sean Jacobs, Associate Professor of International Affairs at The New School in New York City. Jacobs is also the founder and editor of the acclaimed Africa is A Country website, a leader His new bo...

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New Books in Critical Theory
David Rosen and Aaron Santesso, “The Watchman in Pieces: Surveillance, Literature, and Liberal Personhood” (Yale UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Surveillance and literature, as kindred practices, have light to shed on each other.” When David Rosen and Aaron Santesso considered the discipline of surveillance studies in the wake of the atta...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ani Maitra, "Identity, Mediation, and the Cunning of Capital" (Northwestern UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The politics of identity have played center stage in many political debates in the last few years, and is often seen somewhat pejoratively as an epiphenomenal manifestation of the dynamics of capit...

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New Books in Critical Theory
K. Linder et al., "Going Alt-Ac: A Guide to Alternative Academic Careers" (Stylus Publishing, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years work...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jessie Daniels, Karen Gregory, and Tressie McMillan Cottom, eds “Digital Sociologies” (Policy Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do we do sociology in the digital era? In Digital Sociologies (Policy Press, 2016) Jessie Daniels, Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY, Karen Gregory a Lectur...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Peter Mandler, "The Crisis of the Meritocracy: Britain's Transition to Mass Education Since the Second World War" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did public demand shape education in the 20th century? In The Crisis of the Meritocracy: Britain’s Transition to Mass Education since the Second World War (Oxford UP, 2020), Peter Mandler, Prof...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Adrian Johnston, "A New German Idealism: Hegel, Žižek and Dialectical Materialism" (Columbia UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 2012, the world-renowned philosopher, psychoanalyst and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek released his 1000-page tome ?Less Than Nothing?, following it up afterwards with its shorter reformulation ?A...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Robyn C. Spencer, “The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender and the Black Panther Party in Oakland” (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As the first substantive account of the birthplace of the Black Panther Party (BPP), Robyn C. Spencer’s The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender and the Black Panther Party in Oakland (Duke Uni...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Eithne Quinn, "A Piece of the Action: Race and Labor in Post–Civil Rights Hollywood" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the history of equal rights in Hollywood? In A Piece of the Action: Race and Labor in Post–Civil Rights Hollywood (Columbia UP, 2019), Eithne Quinn, a senior lecturer in American Studies at...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Helen Taylor, "Why Women Read Fiction: The Stories of Our Lives" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why and how is fiction important to women? In Why Women Read Fiction: The Stories of Our Lives (Oxford University Press, 2020), Helen Taylor, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Exet...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Justin Parkhurst, “The Politics of Evidence: From Evidence-Based Policy to the Good Governance of Evidence” (Routledge, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the role of evidence in the policy process? In The Politics of Evidence: From Evidence-Based Policy to the Good Governance of Evidence (Routledge, 2016), Justin Parkhurst, Associate Profess...

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New Books in Critical Theory
William Callison and Zachary Manfredi, "Mutant Neoliberalism: Market Rule and Political Rupture" (Fordham UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The neoliberal consensus, once thought to be undefeatable, seems to have been broken both in the wake of the fiscal crisis of 2008, as well as a series of surprise movements and elections throughou...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Manisha Sinha, “The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition” (Yale UP, 2016). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. She was born in India and received her Ph.D from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Tad DeLay, ?"Against: What Does the White Evangelical Want?"? (Cascade Book, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does the white evangelical want? In our moment of crisis and rage, this question is everywhere. Scholars ask from where its desires emerged, pundits divine its political future, and the public...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Matt Houlbrook, “Prince of Tricksters: The Incredible True Story of Netley Lucas, Gentleman Crook” (U. of Chicago Press 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand the interwar years in Britain? In Prince of Tricksters: The Incredible True Story of Netley Lucas, Gentleman Crook (University of Chicago Press, 2016) Matt Houlbrook, Profe...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ben Green, "The Smart Enough City: Putting Technology in its Place to Reclaim Our Urban Future" (MIT Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The “smart city,” presented as the ideal, efficient, and effective for meting out services, has capture the imaginations of policymakers, scholars, and urban-dweller. But what are the possible draw...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Bill V. Mullen, “W.E.B. Du Bois: Revolutionary Across the Color Line,” (Pluto Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Born just five years after the abolition of slavery, W. E. B. Du Bois died the night before Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his I Have a Dream speech at the March on Washington in 1963. In the ma...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Wendy Bottero, "A Sense of Inequality" (Roman and Littlefield, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand inequality? In A Sense of Inequality (Roman and Littlefield, 2020), Wendy Bottero, a Reader in Sociology at the University of Manchester offers a detailed and challenging n...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Paul Benneworth et al., “The Impact and Future of Arts and Humanities Research” (Palgrave, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the future for Arts and Humanities in Europe? The podcast discusses these questions with Paul Benneworth, one of the authors, along with Magnus Gulbrandsen and Ellen Hazelkorn, of The Impac...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Josh Reno, "Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Seven decades of military spending during the cold war and war on terror have created a vast excess of military hardware – what happens to all of this military waste when it has served its purpose ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Banu Bargu, “Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the relationship between state power and self-destructive violence as a mode of political resistance? In her book Starve and Immolate: The Politics of Human Weapons (Columbia University Pre...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jonathan Erickson, "Imagination in the Western Psyche: From Ancient Greece to Modern Neuroscience" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Imagination is one of the most important elements of being human, but is most often assumed we know what it is, while rarely being analyzed. Here with me today is Jonathan Erickson to discuss his r...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sarah Jaffe, “Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt” (Nation Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sarah Jaffe has written Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt (Nation Books, 2016). Jaffe is a Nation Institute fellow and an independent journalist. Over the last few years, several authors on th...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Gonzalo Lamana, "How 'Indians' Think: Colonial Indigenous Intellectuals and the Question of Critical Race Theory" (U Arizona Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, How “Indians” Think: Colonial Indigenous Intellectuals and the Question of Critical Race Theory (University of Arizona Press, 2019), Dr. Gonzalo Lamana carefully investigates the w...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Tom Mills, “The BBC: Myth of a Public Service” (Verso, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The BBC is often thought to be a great, impartial, defender of British values and society. In The BBC: Myth of a Public Service (Verso, 2016), Tom Mills, a lecturer in Sociology at Aston University...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Alys Eve Weinbaum, "The Afterlife of Reproductive Slavery: Biocapitalism and Black Feminism’s Philosophy of History" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Afterlife of Reproductive Slavery: Biocapitalism and Black Feminism’s Philosophy of History (Duke University Press, 2019), University of Washington Professor of English Alys Eve Weinbaum inv...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Kirsty Sedgman, “Locating the Audience: How People Found Value in National Theatre Wales” (Intellect Books 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The value of the arts is a constant and vital question in contemporary culture. In Locating the Audience: How People Found Value in National Theatre Wales (Intellect Books, 2016) Kirsty Sedgman, Br...

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New Books in Critical Theory
H. Appel, S. Whitley, C. Kline, "The Power of Debt: Identity and Collective Action in the Age of Finance" (Institute on Inequality and Democracy, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As the upcoming 2020 U.S. election finally brings questions of economic justice center stage, this episode discusses the powerful short open-source book The Power of Debt: Identity and Collective A...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Paul C. Taylor, “Black is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics” (Wiley Blackwell, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why is it controversial to cast light-skinned actress Zoe Saldana as the lead character in a film about the performer Nina Simone? How should we understand the coexisting desire and revulsion of th...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Raj Patel, "A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things" (U California Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Award winning activist and researcher Raj Patel has teamed up with innovative environmental historian and historical geographer Jason W. Moore to produce an accessible book which provides historica...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Patrick Wolfe, “Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race” (Verso, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Widely known for his pioneering work in the field of settler colonial studies, Patrick Wolfe advanced the theory that settler colonialism was, “a structure, not an event.” In early 2016, Wolfe deep...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Mark Bartholomew, "Adcreep: The Case Against Modern Marketing" (Stanford Law Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Advertising is everywhere. By some estimates, the average American is exposed to over 3,000 advertisements each day. Whether we realize it or not, "adcreep"?modern marketing's march to create a wor...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, “Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did the preeminent theorist and philosopher Michel Foucault experience and observe the Iranian revolution? How did he find the revolution disruptive of a teleological notion of history? And how...

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New Books in Critical Theory
M. Schneider-Mayerson and B. R. Bellamy, "An Ecotopian Lexicon" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

By choice or not, the catastrophes of global warming and mass extinction task young generations with reorienting human relationships with the earth’s systems, resources, and lifeforms. The extracta...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Charlotte Mathieson, ed. “Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present” (Palgrave, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the relationship between the sea and culture? In Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present (Palgrave, 2016) , Charlotte Mathieson, a lecturer in English Literature at the ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jason Read, "The Politics of Transindividuality" (Haymarket Books, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Many major political questions today revolve around questions of human nature; what sort of people we are and what sort of people we're capable of being constitute both the goals and limits of the ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Andrew Cole, “The Birth of Theory” (U. of Chicago Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Was Hegel a medieval thinker? In The Birth of Theory (University of Chicago Press, 2014), Andrew Cole puts forward a reexamination of Hegelian dialectics that embeds Hegel in a long tradition of m...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Phoebe Moore, "The Quantified Self in Precarity: Work, Technology and What Counts" (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Humans are accustomed to being tool bearers, but what happens when machines become tool bearers, calculating human labour via the use of big data and people analytics by metrics? Phoebe Moore's The...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Matthew MacWilliams, “The Rise of Trump: America’s Authoritarian Spring” (Amherst College Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

NB: Because Amherst College Press is open-access, this book is available free for download here. Just when I thought I had a pretty good handle on the ways and means of American politics, Donald T...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Xiao Liu, "Information Fantasies: Precarious Mediation in Postsocialist China" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

International and transnational historiography has given us vivid glimpses of the development and impact of cybernetics on a national scale in such countries as the Soviet Union, Chile and, of cour...

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New Books in Critical Theory
McKenzie Wark, “Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene” (Verso, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

McKenzie Wark’s new book begins and ends with a playful call: “Workings of the world untie! You have a win to world!” Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene (Verso, 2015) creates a conversation...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Chris Arnade, "Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America" (Sentinel, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A lot of politicians like to say that there are “two Americas,” but do any of them know what life is really like for the marginalized poor? We speak with journalist and photographer, Chris Arnade, ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Stevphen Shukaitis, “The Composition of Movements to Come: Aesthetics and Cultural Labor after the Avant-Garde” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How is the notion of the avant-garde in art relevant today? What can contemporary social movements learn from the Situationists? What is the meaning of artistic value to forms of resistance? These,...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Simone Knox and Kai Hanno Schwind, "Friends: A Reading of the Sitcom" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does Friends mean to us now? In Friends: A Reading of the Sitcom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Simone Knox, an Associate Professor in the Department of Film, Theatre, and Television at the Unive...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Stuart Elden “Foucault’s Last Decade” (Polity Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why did Michel Foucault radically recast the project of The History of Sexuality? How did he work collaboratively? What was the influence of Antiquity on his thought? In Foucault’s Last Decade (Pol...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Vicky Pryce, "Women vs. Capitalism: Why We Can't Have It All in a Free Market Economy" (Hurst, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Free market capitalism has failed women, and even the recent progress that had been made in closing the gender wage gap has leveled off in many rich democracies. Vicky Pryce helps us understand the...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Mary Hawkesworth, “Embodied Power: Demystifying Disembodied Politics” (Routledge, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can we explain the “occlusion of embodied power” and “lack of attention to race, gender, and sexuality” in the discipline of political science, a field “that claims power as a central analytica...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Victoria Reyes, "Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence, and Empire in Subic Bay, Philippines" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Increasing levels of globalization have led to the proliferation of spaces of international exchange. In her new book, Global Borderlands: Fantasy, Violence, and Empire in Subic Bay, Philippines (S...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Darian M. Parker, “Sartre and New Child Left Behind: An Existential Psychoanalytic Anthropology of Urban Schooling” (Lexington, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Darian M. Parker joins the New Books Network to discuss his recently published book, Sartre and No Child Left Behind: An Existential Psychoanalytic Anthropology of Urban Schooling (Lexington Books,...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Lundy Braun, "Breathing Race into the Machine" (U Minnesota Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“We cannot get answers to questions that cannot be asked.” Lundy Braun’s influential book, Breathing Race into the Machine: The Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics (Univ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Matt Dawson “Social Theory for Alternative Societies” (Palgrave, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What can social theory offer to visions of an alternative society? In his new book, Social Theory for Alternative Societies (Palgrave, 2016), Dr Matt Dawson, a Lecturer in Sociology at the Universi...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Alberto Cairo, "How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information" (Norton, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous?and easier to sh...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ibram X. Kendi, “Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America” (Nation Books, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Ibram X. Kendi is an assistant professor of African American history at the University of Florida. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Nation Books, 2016)...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Srdja Popovic, "Blueprint for Revolution" (Spiegel and Grau, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

20 years ago, Srdja Popovic was part of a revolution — literally. He was a founding member of the Otpor! movement that ousted Serbia Slobodan Milsovic from power in 1999. It’s easy to characterize ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco, “Cuba, the United States, and the Cultures of the Transnational Left, 1930-1975” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco’s new book, Cuba, the United States, and the Cultures of the Transnational Left, 1930-1975 (Cambridge University Press, 2015), reaches across the Atlantic ocean and connect...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sarah Marie Wiebe, "Everyday Exposure: Indigenous Mobilization and Environmental Justice in Canada’s Chemical Valley" (UBC Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In a foreword to Everyday Exposure: Indigenous Mobilization and Environmental Justice in Canada’s Chemical Valley (University of British Columbia Press, 2016), the public philosopher James Tully wr...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jean Chalaby, “The Format Age: Television’s Entertainment Revolution” (Polity, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Television had been transformed by the rise of the format. In The Format Age: Television’s Entertainment Revolution Jean Chalaby, Professor of International Communication at City University London,...

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New Books in Critical Theory
James Gordon Finlayson, "The Habermas-Rawls Debate" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls are perhaps the two most renowned and influential figures in social and political philosophy of the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1990s, they had a fam...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Peter Trawny, “Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy” (U. of Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewish World Conspiracy (University of Chicago Press, 2015), Peter Trawny, professor of philosophy and founder and director of the Martin Heidegger Institute at the U...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Marcos González Hernando, "British Think Tanks After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did the financial crisis of 2018 change politics? In British Think Tanks After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Marcos González Hernando, an Affiliated Researcher at...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jack Jacobs, “The Frankfurt School, Jewish Lives, and Antisemitism” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In The Frankfurt School, Jewish Lives, and Antisemitism (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Jack Jacobs, Professor of Political Science at John Jay College and the CUNY Graduate Center, investigate...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Richard J. Bernstein, "Why Read Hannah Arendt Now" (Polity, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nobody should feel excited about the renewed relevance of Hannah Arendt's work today. Her foresight about the fragility of democratic life is relevant for the worst possible reasons: populism, whit...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Eric Schickler, “Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932-1965” (Princeton UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Eric Schickler is the author of Racial Realignment: The Transformation of American Liberalism, 1932-1965 (Princeton University Press, 2016). Schickler is the Jeffrey and Ashley McDermott Professor ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jonathan Rothwell, "A Republic of Equals: A Manifesto for a Just Society" (Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Inequality in the U.S. has increased dramatically over the past decades -- on that there is agreement. There is less agreement on the causes of that inequality, the consequences of it, and, perhaps...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Russell Rickford, “We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power and the Radical Imagination” (Oxford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Russell Rickford is an assistant professor of history at Cornell University. We Are an African People: Independent Education, Black Power and the Radical Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2016)...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Penelope Plaza Azuaje, “Culture as Renewable Oil: How Territory, Bureaucratic Power and Culture Coalesce in the Venezuelan Petrostate" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do states use cultural policy? In Culture as Renewable Oil: How Territory, Bureaucratic Power and Culture Coalesce in the Venezuelan Petrostate (Routledge, 2018), Penelope Plaza Azuaje, a lectu...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Susan Cahan, “Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power” (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The struggle for representation within the art museum is the focus of a timely and important new book by Susan Cahan, Associate Dean for the Arts at Yale College. Mounting Frustration: The Art Muse...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ian Parker, "Psychoanalysis, Clinic, and Context: Subjectivity, History, and Autobiography" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There are many pathways into the world of psychoanalysis. Some arrive from fields like psychiatry and psychology; some from literature, philosophy, and the humanities; and others from political org...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ayten Gundogdu, “Rightlessness in an Age of Rights: Hannah Arendt and the Contemporary Struggles of Migrants” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does one “rethink and revise the key concepts of Hannah Arendt’s political theory in light of the struggles of asylum seekers, refugees, and undocumented immigrants” (207)? In her new book Righ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Johanna Taylor, "The Art Museum Redefined: Power, Opportunity, and Community Engagement" (Palgrave, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the future of the museum? In The Art Museum Redefined: Power, Opportunity, and Community Engagement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), Johanna Taylor, an assistant professor at the Herberger Insti...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Les Back, “Academic Diary: Or Why Higher Education Still Matters” (Goldsmiths Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why does higher education still matter? In Academic Diary: Or Why Higher Education Still Matters, Les Back, a professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London, offers a series o...

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Serin D. Houston, "Imagining Seattle: Social Values in Urban Governance" (U Nebraska Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Imagining Seattle: Social Values in Urban Governance (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), the geographer Serin Houston complicates Seattle’s liberal and progressive reputation through a close e...

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Geoffrey McCormack and Thom Workman, “The Servant State: Overseeing Capital Accumulation in Canada” (Fernwood, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Two Canadian political science professors contend that the grotesque inequities of the capitalist system feed hatred, nourish misogyny, promote chronic dispossession and wreak havoc on the environm...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Stuart Schrader, "?Badges Without Borders: How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing?" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Following World War II, in the midst of global decolonization and intensifying freedom struggles within its borders, the United States developed a worldwide police assistance program that aimed to ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jeremy Ahearne, “Government through Culture and the Contemporary French Right” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did two right wing presidents use culture to govern France? In Government through Culture and the Contemporary French Right (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Jeremy Ahearne, a Professor of French Stu...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Nina Sun Eidsheim, "The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre and Vocality in African American Music" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In 2018, Nicolle R. Holliday and Daniel Villarreal published the results of a study they conducted asking people to rank how “black” President Obama sounded when given four different examples of hi...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Alfred Frankowski, “The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization: Towards a Political Sense of Mourning” (Lexington Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How are cultural practices that suggest social inclusion at the root of marginalizing social suffering? In The Post-Racial Limits of Memorialization: Towards a Political Sense of Mourning (Lexingto...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Kathryn Conrad on University Press Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Katie Gentile, ed., “The Business of Being Made” (Routledge, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this interview, Dr. Katie Gentile discusses the research, writing and creative thinking about compulsory parenthood and Assisted Reproductive Technologies (or ARTs) that animate the essays appea...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Lynne Pettinger, "What’s Wrong with Work?" (Policy Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand work? In What’s Wrong with Work? (Policy Press, 2019), Lynn Pettinger, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, explores how work is organised, interc...

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Nicholas Vrousalis, “The Political Philosophy of G.A. Cohen: Back to Socialist Basics” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his book The Political Philosophy of G.A. Cohen: Back to Socialist Basics (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), Nicholas Vrousalis (Leiden University) provides a thorough and complex reconstruction of G....

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New Books in Critical Theory
Benjamin Fong, "Death and Mastery: Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and the Subject of Late Capitalism" (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Benjamin Fong’s Death and Mastery: Psychoanalytic Drive Theory and the Subject of Late Capitalism (Columbia UP, 2016) revitalizes two oft’ maligned psychoanalytic concepts, the death drive and the ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Bernard Harcourt, “Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age” (Harvard UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The landscape described in Bernard Harcourt‘s new book is a dystopia saturated by pleasure. We do not live in a drab Orwellian world, he writes. We live in a beautiful, colorful, stimulating, digit...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Christian Sorace, "Afterlives of Chinese Communism” (Verso-ANU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What to make of the fact that China is ruled by a Communist Party which detains and arrests people studying Maoism, organising workers, or campaigning for women’s liberation is a difficult task. Al...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Malcolm James, “Urban Multiculture: Youth, Politics and Transformations in a Global City” (Palgrave, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How is youth culture changing in a globalised city? In Urban Multiculture: Youth, Politics and Transformations in a Global City Malcolm James, a lecturer at the University of Sussex, introduces the...

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New Books in Critical Theory
J. Neuhaus, "Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers" (West Virginia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not nec...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Garrett M. Broad, “More Than Just Food: Food Justice and Community Change” (U of California Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Resistance to the industrial food system has, over the past decades, led to the rise of alternative food movements. Debate about genetically modified food, sugar consumption, fast food and the obes...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Erik Harms, "Luxury and Rubble: Civility and Dispossession in the New Saigon" (U California Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What happens when market-oriented policy reforms butt heads with a single-party state’s strictly maintained limits on political freedoms? That question sets the terms for Luxury and Rubble: Civilit...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Lynne Pettinger, “Work, Consumption and Capitalism” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What do jeans tell us about the contemporary world? They provide the starting point for Lynne Pettinger‘s Work, Consumption and Capitalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Pettinger, an associate profes...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Melanie Simms, "What Do We Know and What Should We Do About the Future of Work?" (Sage, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the future of work? In What Do We Know and What Should We Do About the Future of Work? (Sage, 2019), Melanie Simms, a Professor of Work and Employment at the University of Glasgow offers an...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Linsey McGoey, “No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy” (Verso, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy (Verso Books, 2015), Linsey McGoey proposes a new way of discussing philanthropy and, in doing so, revives associ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
David Farber, "Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A shattering account of the crack cocaine years from award-winning American historian David Farber, Crack: Rock Cocaine, Street Capitalism, and the Decade of Greed (Cambridge University Press, 2019...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Mark Schuller, “Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti” (Rutgers UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The earthquake that shook Haiti on January 12, 2010 killed and destroyed the homes of hundreds of thousands of people. Mark Schuller‘s book Humanitarian Aftershocks in Haiti (Rutgers University Pr...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Wendy Brown, "In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West" (Columbia UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Neoliberalism is one of those fuzzy words that can mean something different to everyone. Wendy Brown is one of the world’s leading scholars on neoliberalism and argue that a generation of neolibera...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Mark Carrigan, “Social Media for Academics” (Sage, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can academics respond to the rise of social media? Or should they respond at all? In Social Media for Academics (Sage, 2016), Mark Carrigan, from the Centre for Social Ontology, offers an infor...

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New Books in Critical Theory
T. L. Bunyasi and C. W. Smith, "Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter" (NYU Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Tehama Lopez Bunyasi and Candis Watts Smith have written an accessible and important book about the #BlackLivesMatter social movement and broader considerations of, essentially, how we got to where...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Eben Kirksey, “Emergent Ecologies” (Duke UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Eben Kirksey new book asks and explores a series of timely, important, and fascinating questions: How do certain plants, animals, and fungi move among worlds, navigate shifting circumstances, and f...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Amy Allen and Mari Ruti, "Critical Theory Between Klein and Lacan: A Dialogue," Part 2 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What happens when a Kleinian and Lacanian have a committed, generous, and accessible conversation about the commonalities and differences between their psychoanalytic perspectives? In this special,...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Alfie Bown, “Enjoying It: Candy Crush and Capitalism” (Zero Books, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is enjoyment and what can contemporary critical theory tell us about it? In Enjoying It: Candy Crush and Capitalism (Zero Books, 2015), Alfie Bown, a lecturer at Hang Seng Management College a...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Remi Joseph-Salisbury, "Black Mixed-Race Men: Transatlanticity, Hybridity and 'Post-Racial' Resilience" (Emerald, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What are the experiences of mixed-race men? In Black Mixed-Race Men: Transatlanticity, Hybridity and 'Post-Racial' Resilience (Emerald Publishing, 2018),  Remi Joseph-Salisbury, a Presidential Fell...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Emma Jackson, “Young Homeless People and Urban Space: Fixed in Mobility” (Routledge, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the experience of young homeless people? What does this experience tell us about space, place and society? In Young Homeless People and Urban Space: Fixed in Mobility (Routledge, 2015), Dr....

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New Books in Critical Theory
Anastasia Denisova, "Internet Memes and Society: Social, Cultural, and Political Contexts" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How have memes changed politics? In Internet Memes and Society: Social, Cultural, and Political Contexts(Routledge, 2019), Anastasia Denisova, a lecturer in journalism at the University of Westmins...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Roshanak Kheshti, “Modernity’s Ear: Listening to Race and Gender in World Music” (NYU Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The origins of world music can be found in early ethnographic recordings as anthropologists and ethnomusicologists sought to record the songs of lost or dying cultures. In Modernity’s Ear: Listenin...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Matt Christman, "The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason" (Simon & Schuster, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Let’s face it, 2020 has been a hell of a year. We could all use a good laugh. But as historians and/or fans of history, we have to read something historically grounded, right? Well, fear not! Felix...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ronald E. Purser, "McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality" (Repeater Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his recent exposé, McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality (Repeater Books, 2019), Ronald Purser Ph.D. takes a hard look at the mindfulness movement that has taken ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Lisa McCormick, “Performing Civility: International Competitions in Classical Music” (Cambridge UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The competition seems to be a crucial part of the classical music world. In Performing Civility: International Competitions in Classical Music (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Dr. Lisa McCormick...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Isar P. Godreau, "Scripts of Blackness: Race, Cultural Nationalism, and U.S. Colonialism in Puerto Rico" (U Illinois Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This is part of our Special Series on Third World Nationalism. In the wake of a rise in nationalism around the world, and its general condemnation by liberals and the left, in addition to the rise ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Amy Allen and Mari Ruti, "Critical Theory Between Klein and Lacan: A Dialogue" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What happens when a Kleinian and Lacanian have a committed, generous, and accessible conversation about the commonalities and differences between their psychoanalytic perspectives? In this special,...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Colette Soler, “Lacanian Affects: The Function of Affect in Lacan’s Work”, trans. Bruce Fink (Routledge, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Affect is a weighty and consequential problem in psychoanalysis. People enter treatment hoping for relief from symptoms and their attendant unbearable affects. While various theorists and schools o...

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New Books in Critical Theory
L. Layton and M. Leavy-Sperounis, "Toward a Social Psychoanalysis: Culture, Character, and Normative Unconscious Processes" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, J.J. Mull interviews Lynne Layton and Marianna Leavy-Sperounis, author and editor respectively of Toward a Social Psychoanalysis: Culture, Character, and Normative Unconscious Proc...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Alexandra Minna Stern, "White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination" (Beacon Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, Dr. Alexandra Minna Stern and I discuss her latest book, Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination (Beacon Press, 2019). Our conver...

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New Books in Critical Theory
John M. Chamberlain, “Medical Regulation, Fitness to Practice and Revalidation: A Critical Introduction” (Policy Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How is the medical profession regulated in a ‘risk society’. This is the core question of John M. Chamberlain‘s Medical Regulation, Fitness to Practice and Revalidation: A Critical Introduction (Po...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Stuart Elden, "Shakespearean Territories" (U Chicago Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What can Shakespeare tell us about territory, and what can territory tell us about Shakespeare?  In Shakespearean Territories (University of Chicago Press, 2018), Stuart Elden, Professor of Politic...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Mubbashir A. Rizvi, "The Ethics of Staying: Social Movements and Land Rights Politics in Pakistan" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The military coup that brought General Pervez Musharraf to power as Pakistan's tenth president resulted in the abolition of a century-old sharecropping system that was rife with corruption. In its ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Amy Allen, “The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory” (Columbia UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can we de-colonize critical theory from within, and reimagine the way it grounds its normative claims as well as the way it relates to post- and de-colonial theory? Amy Allen (Philosophy and Wo...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ashley E. Lucas, "Prison Theatre and the Global Crisis of Incarceration" (Bloomsbury, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The world of theater performances is often thought of as being composed of wealthy persons who received elite educations at art institutions all so they could be observed by a small, wealthy elite ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Adem Yavuz Elveren, "The Economics of Military Spending: A Marxist Perspective" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I spoke with Dr Adem Yavuz Elveren about his book on the economics of military spending; this is a very original theoretical and empirical contribution Adem Yavuz Elveren is Associate Professor at ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Nadim Bakhshov, “Against Capitalist Education: What is Education for?” (Zero Books, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nadim Bakhshov joins the New Books in Network to discuss his book Against Capitalist Education: What is Education for? (Zero Books, 2015). The book posits new alternatives to educational thought an...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jennifer C. Lena, "Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts" ( Princeton UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did American elites change the meaning of Art? In Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts (Princeton University Press, 2019), Jennifer C. Lena, associate professor of arts...

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New Books in Critical Theory
David R. Brake, “Sharing our Lives Online: Risks and Exposure in Social Media” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With the growth of social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, we are increasingly heading toward a radically open society. In Sharing our Lives Online: Risks and Exposure in Soci...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Patricia A. Banks, "Diversity and Philanthropy at African American Museums: Black Renaissance" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the future, and what is the past, of the African American Museum? In Diversity and Philanthropy at African American Museums: Black Renaissance(Routledge, 2019), Patricia Banks, an associate...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Nicola Rollock et al. “The Colour of Class: The Educational Strategies of the Black Middle Classes” (Routledge, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The experience of the African American middle class has been an important area of research in the USA. However, the British experience has, by comparison, not been subject to the same amount of att...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Polina Kroik, "Cultural Production and the Politics of Women’s Work in American Film and Literature" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does thinking about gender and work help to rethink cultural hierarchies? In Cultural Production and the Politics of Women’s Work in American Film and Literature(Routledge, 2019), Polina Kroik,...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Finn Brunton, “Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet” (MIT Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Finn Brunton‘s Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet (MIT Press, 2013) is a cultural history of those communications that seek to capture our attention for the purposes of exploiting it. From pran...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Nazia Kazi, "Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Nazia Kazi’s Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018) is a brilliant and powerful meditation on the intersection and interaction of Islamophobia, racism, and U.S. imperi...

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New Books in Critical Theory
David Wright, “Understanding Cultural Taste: Sensation, Skill and Sensibility,” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is cultural taste? How is it formed, imagined and patterned? In Understanding Cultural Taste: Sensation, Skill and Sensibility (Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), David Wright, Associate Professor at ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Alpa Shah, et al., "Ground Down by Growth: Tribe, Caste, Class and Inequality in 21st-Century India" (Pluto Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A recent UNDP report makes the astonishing claim that India has halved its poverty between 2006 and 2016. Moving us past the rosy picture, Alpa Shah and her co-author's  multi-authored, masterful G...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Leigh Claire La Berge, “Scandals and Abstraction: Financial Fiction of the Long 1980s” (Oxford UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What stories do we tell about finance? How does financial print culture shape our lives? Our guest today explores the narratives we have been told, and tell, about finance. A literary scholar, Leig...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jaime Alves, "Anti-Black City: Police Terror and Black Urban Life in Brazil (U Minnesota Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The 2018 election of far-right president Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil has brought the issues of police violence, racial discrimination, and misogyny to the fore. Jaime Alves’s book the Anti-Black City:...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Oli Mould, “Urban Subversion and the Creative City” (Routledge, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Every city seems to be ‘creative’, whether because it has a creative brand, a creative quarter or is home to creative industries. In his new book Urban Subversion and the Creative City Routledge, 2...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Aimee Bahng, "Migrant Futures: Decolonizing Speculation in Financial Times" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Migrant Futures: Decolonizing Speculation in Financial Times (Duke UP, 2018), Aimee Bahng traces the cultural production of futurity by juxtaposing the practices of speculative finance against t...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Neil Roberts, “Freedom as Marronage” (U of Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does it mean to be free? How can paying attention to the relationship between freedom and slavery help construct a concept and practice of freedom that is “perpetual, unfinished, and rooted in...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Anne O’Brien, "Women, Inequality and Media Work" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How do women experience gender inequality in film and television production industries? In Women, Inequality and Media Work (Routledge, 2019), Dr Anne O’Brien, lecturer in the Department of Media S...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jason W. Moore, “Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital” (Verso, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Capitalism in the Web of Life: Ecology and the Accumulation of Capital (Verso, 2015), author Jason W. Moore seeks to undermine popular understandings of the relationship among society, environme...

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New Books in Critical Theory
A. Ricardo López-Pedreros, "Makers of Democracy: A Transnational History of the Middle Classes in Colombia" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

This tightly argued social and intellectual history of the middle classes in Colombia makes a compelling case for the importance of both transnationalism and gender in the mid-century idea of middl...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, “To Defend the Revolution is to Defend Culture: The Cultural Policy of The Cuban Revolution” (PM Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What are the alternatives to the current neo-liberal cultural settlement prevailing in much of the global north? In To Defend the Revolution is to Defend Culture: The Cultural Policy of The Cuban R...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Courtney Pace, "Freedom Faith: The Womanist Vision of Prathia Hall" (U Georgia Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Freedom Faith: The Womanist Vision of Prathia Hall (University of Georgia Press, 2019) is the first full-length critical study of Rev. Dr. Prathia Laura Ann Hall (1940–2002), an undersung leader in...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Philip Roscoe, “A Richer Life: How Economics Can Change the Way We Think and Feel” (Penguin, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

So many of our social questions are now the subject of analysis from economics. In A Richer Life: How Economics can Change the Way We Think and Feel (Penguin, 2015), Phillip Roscoe, a reader at the...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, “Automating Finance: Infrastructures, Engineers, and the Making of Electronic Markets” (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How are markets made? In Automating Finance: Infrastructures, Engineers, and the Making of Electronic Markets (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, an assistant professor in ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Katie Ellis, “Disability and Popular Culture: Focusing Passion, Creating Community and Expressing Defiance” (Ashgate, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Popular culture has been transformed in its attitudes towards disability, as representations across media forms continues to respond to the contemporary politics of disability. In Disability and Po...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Stijn Vanheule, Derek Hook and Calum Neill, "Reading Lacan’s Écrits" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Lacan published his Écrits in 1966, a compilation of his written work up to that middle period in his teaching. Notoriously difficult to read, the editors of the book we’re discussing today describ...

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Am Johal, “Ecological Metapolitics: Badiou and the Anthropocene” (Atropos Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The French philosopher Alain Badiou is not best known for his engagement with ecological matters per se. Badiou’s insights regarding being, truth, and political militancy are, however, highly relev...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jinah Kim, "Postcolonial Grief: The Afterlives of the Pacific Wars in the Americas" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Postcolonial Grief: The Afterlives of the Pacific Wars in the Americas (Duke University Press, 2019), Jinah Kim explores questions of loss, memory, and redress in post WWII Asian diasporic decol...

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Hilary Neroni, “The Subject of Torture: Psychoanalysis and Biopolitics in Television and Film” (Columbia UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Did you notice that after 9/11, the depiction of torture on prime-time television went up nearly seven hundred percent? Hilary Neroni did. She had just finished a book on the changing relationship ...

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Eric Blanc, "Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics" (Verso, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Eric Blanc is the author of Red State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics(Verso, 2019). Blanc is a former teacher, journalist, and doctoral student in sociology at New York...

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Aileen Moreton-Robinson, “The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty” (U of Minnesota Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Owning property. Being property. Becoming propertyless. These are three themes of white possession that structure Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s brilliant new inquiry into the dynamics of race and Indig...

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New Books in Critical Theory
M. L. Mitma and J. P. Heilman, "Now Peru is Mine: The Life and Times of a Campesino Activist" (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Now Peru is Mine: The Life and Times of a Campesino Activist (Duke University Press, 2016), tells the remarkable story of a campesino and indigenous political activist whose career spanned much of ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Paul Bonin-Rodriguez, “Performing Policy” (Palgrave, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How has American cultural and artistic policy changed over the last 25 years? Performing Policy: How Contemporary Politics and Cultural Programmes Redefined US Artists for the Twenty-First Century ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Bhakti Shringarpure, "Cold War Assemblages: Decolonization to Digital" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bhakti Shringarpure has written a fascinating, multidimensional analysis of the Cold War and decolonization and the often-under-explored connections between these events. In her book, Cold War Asse...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Kate Pahl, “Materializing Literacies in Communities: The Uses of Literacy Revisited” (Bloomsbury, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Literary practices are often associated with specific social groups in particular social settings. Kate Pahl‘s Materializing Literacies in Communities: The Uses of Literacy Revisited (Bloomsbury, 2...

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David Beer, “The Data Gaze: Capitalism, Power and Perception“ (Sage, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the social role of data? In The Data Gaze: Capitalism, Power and Perception (Sage, 2019), David Beer, a professor of sociology at the University of York, considers this question by introduc...

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Eugene Thacker, “Horror of Philosophy” (Zero Book, 2011-2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Eugene Thacker‘s wonderful Horror of Philosophy series includes three books – In the Dust of this Planet (Zero Books, 2011), Starry Speculative Corpse (Zero Books, 2015), and Tentacles Longer than ...

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Carolina Alonso Bejarano, "Decolonizing Ethnography: Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Science" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Almost 30 years ago, following the lead of scholars and thinkers of color and from the global South, anthropologist Faye Harrison and some of her colleagues published Decolonizing Anthropology: Mov...

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Isabelle Dussauge, Claes-Fredrik Helgesson, and Francis Lee, “Value Practices in the Life Sciences and Medicine” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Valuation is a central question in contemporary social science. Indeed the question of value has a range of academic projects associated with it, whether in terms of specific questions or in terms ...

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Daniel Nemser, "Infrastructures of Race: Concentration and Biopolitics in Colonial Mexico" (U Texas Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Daniel Nemser’s Infrastructures of Race: Concentration and Biopolitics in Colonial Mexico(University of Texas Press, 2017) examines the long history of how Spanish imperial rule depended upon spati...

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Lois Lee, “Recognizing the Non-religious: Reimagining the Secular” (Oxford UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does non-religion mean? In a new book Recognizing the Non-Religious: Reimagining the Secular (Oxford University Press, 2015), Lois Lee, one of the editors of Secularism and Non-Religion, inter...

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P. L. Caballero and A. Acevedo-Rodrigo, "Beyond Alterity: Destabilizing the Indigenous Other in Mexico" (U Arizona Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What happens when scholars approach the category of “indigenous” without presupposing its otherness? Edited by Paula López Caballero and Ariadna Acevedo-Rodrigo, Beyond Alterity: Destabilizing the ...

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Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Srila Roy, “New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Hegemony and Resistance in Contemporary India” (Oxford UPs 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

New Subaltern Politics: Reconceptualizing Hegemony and Resistance in Contemporary India (Oxford University Press, 2015), edited by Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Srila Roy, is a wonderfully rich and theore...

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Kristen Ghodsee, "Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Communism" (Duke UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I am a child of the so-called transition in Bulgaria and growing-up I could never understand why my parents and grandparents would spend our family gatherings talking about the socialist past. It w...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Liz McFall, “Devising Consumption Cultural Economies of Insurance, Credit and Spending” (Routledge, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The role of financial services in individuals’ and communities’ everyday lives is more important than ever. In Devising Consumption: Cultural Economies of Insurance, Credit and Spending (Routledge,...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Hye-Kyung Lee, "Cultural Policy in South Korea: Making a New Patron State" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Why does Korean cultural policy matter? In Cultural Policy in South Korea: Making a New Patron State (Routledge, 2018), Hye-Kyung Lee, a Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Creative Industries at Kings...

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New Books in Critical Theory
William Davies, “The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being” (Verso, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Are you happy? In his new book The Happiness Industry: How the Government and Big Business Sold Us Well-Being (Verso, 2015), William Davies, a senior lecturer at Goldsmiths’ College, University of ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Dorinne Kondo, "Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Worldmaking: Race, Performance, and the Work of Creativity (Duke University Press 2018), Dorinne Kondo brings together critical race studies, affect theory, psychoanalysis and her critically kee...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Christopher Vitale, “Networkologies: A Philosophy of Networks for a Hyperconnected Age” (Zero Books, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Networks seem to be the dominant metaphor for contemporary society. In Networkologies: A Philosophy of Networks for a Hyperconnected Age (Zero Books, 2014), Christopher Vitale sets out a manifesto ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Nick Estes, "Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline" (Verso, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The historian Nick Estes traces two centuries of Indigenous-led resistance and anti-colonial struggle. Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradi...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Craig Martin, “Capitalizing Religion: Ideology and the Opiate of the Bourgeoisie” (Bloomsbury, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Whether you need help being more focused at work, are having a spiritual crisis, or want to understand how you can change your inner self for the better, the popular self-help and spiritual well-be...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Anne A. Cheng, "Ornamentalism" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her original and thought-provoking book Ornamentalism (Oxford University Press, 2019), Anne A. Cheng illustrates the longstanding relationship between the ‘oriental’ and the ‘ornamental’. So doi...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Alexander Etkind, “Warped Mourning: Stories of the Undead in the Land of the Unburied” (Stanford UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Theoretical and historical accounts of postcatastrophic societies often discuss melancholia and trauma at length but leave processes of mourning underexplored. In Warped Mourning: Stories of the Un...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Camisha Russell, "The Assisted Reproduction of Race" (Indiana UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) such as in vitro fertilization and surrogacy have been critically examined within philosophy, particularly by feminists and bioethicists, but the role of r...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Joe Deville, “Lived Economies of Default: Consumer Credit, Debt Collection and the Capture of Affect” (Routledge, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Credit, debt and default are embedded into everyday life, whether as a constant part of people’s daily routines or as a constantly discussed topic in news media. Joe Deville‘s new book, Lived Econo...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Nancy Fraser, “Transnationalizing the Public Sphere” (Polity, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How is “the public sphere” best conceptualized on a transnational scale? Nancy Fraser (The New School for Social Research) explores this pressing question in her book Transnationalizing the Public ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Bryan McCann, "The Mark of Criminality: Rhetoric, Race, and Gangsta Rap in the War-on-Crime Era" (U Alabama Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Communication at SUNY Geneseo--interviews Bryan McCann (he/his)--Associate Professor of Communication at Louisiana State University--on a ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Christian Fuchs, “Culture and Economy in the Age of Social Media” (Routledge, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Social media is now a pervasive element of many people’s lives. in order to best understand this phenomenon we need a comprehensive theory of the political economy of social media. In Culture and E...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Chandra Russo, "Solidarity in Practice: Moral Protest and the US Security State" (Cambridge UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her book Solidarity in Practice: Moral Protest and the US Security State (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Chandra Russo explores how solidarity activists contest the practices of the US secur...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Robin James, “Resistance and Melancholy: Pop Music, Feminism and Neo-Liberalism” (Zero Books, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How are contemporary pop culture ideas about resilience used by Neoliberal capitalism? Robin James addresses this question using philosophy of music (and by doing philosophy through music) in her n...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Clare Daniel, "Mediating Morality: The Politics of Teen Pregnancy in the Post-Welfare Era" (U Massachusetts Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On this episode, Dr. Lee Pierce (she/they)--Asst. Prof. of Rhetoric and Communication at the State University of New York at Geneseo--interviews Dr. Clare Daniel (she/hers)--Administrative Assistan...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Nick Crossley, “Networks of Sound, Style, and Subversion” (Manchester UP, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Can sociology explain punk? In a new book, Networks of Sound, Style, and Subversion: The Punk and Post-Punk Worlds of Manchester, London, Liverpool, and Sheffield, 1975-80 (Manchester University Pr...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Daniel HoSang and Joseph E. Lowndes, "Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity" (U Minnesota Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dan HoSang and Joe Lowndes’ new book,Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity (University of Minnesota Press, 2019) documents the changing politics of race ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Deborah Cowen, “The Deadly Life of Logistics” (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Our guest today tells us that the seemingly straightforward field of logistics lies at the heart of contemporary globalization, imperialism, and economic inequality. Listen to Deb Cowen, the author...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Annie McClanahan, "Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and Twenty-First Century Culture" (Stanford UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When teaching a public course called “The Age of Debt” this winter break, I had the strange realization that one of the the most successful readings in that course, the one which most clearly expla...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Timothy Jordan, “Information Politics: Liberation and Exploitation in the Digital Society” (Pluto Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Struggles over information in the digital era are central to Tim Jordan‘s new book, Information Politics: Liberation and Exploitation in the Digital Society (Pluto Press, 2015). The book aims to co...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Manu Karuka, "Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad" (U California Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What does anti-imperialism look like from the vantage point of North America? In Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad(University of California Pre...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Zoe Thompson, ‘Urban Constellations: Spaces of Cultural Regeneration in Post-industrial Britain’ Ashgate 2015 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the fate of culture and urban regeneration in the era of austerity? In Urban Constellations: Spaces of Cultural Regeneration in Post-industrial Britain (Ashgate, 2015), Zoe Thompson applies...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Abigail De Kosnik and Keith P. Feldman, "#Identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation" (U Michigan Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the new book #Identity: Hashtagging Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Nation (University of Michigan Press, 2019), Abigail De Kosnik and Keith Feldman bring together a broad array of chapters that di...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Amanda Rogers, “Performing Asian Transnationalisms: Theatre, Identity and the Geographies of Performance” (Routledge, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Identity, performance and globalisation are at the heart of the cultural practices interrogated by Amanda Rogers in Performing Asian Transnationalisms: Theatre, Identity and the Geography of Perfor...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Niall Geraghty, "The Polyphonic Machine: Capitalism, Political Violence, and Resistance in Contemporary Argentine Literature" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What options for resistance are left to the author of fiction in a nation structured by totalizing political and economic violence? This is the question at the heart of Niall Geraghty’s eloquent an...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Helena Gurfinkel, “Outlaw Fathers in Victorian and Modern British Literature” (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is a father? In Outlaw Fathers in Victorian and Modern British Literature: Queering Patriarchy (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2014), Helena Gurfinkel offers an insightful new vision of fatherhood th...

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New Books in Critical Theory
John Pat Leary, "Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism" (Haymarket Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

John Pat Leary's Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism (Haymarket Books, 2019) chronicles the rise of a new vocabulary in the twenty-first century. From Silicon Valley to the White House, from k...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Nick Turnbull, ‘Michel Meyer’s Problematology: Questioning and Society” (Bloomsbury, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

To be human is to question. This act of questioning is the essence of philosophy, as it allows ontology and epistemology to exist. For example, to understand what it is to be we must first ask the ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Zachary Kramer, "Outsiders: Why Difference is the Future of Civil Rights" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Outsiders: Why Difference is the Future of Civil Rights(Oxford University Press, 2019) by Zachary Kramer (Oxford University Press, 2019) sets forth an imaginative critique of the way that civil rig...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Victoria Hesford, “Feeling Women’s Liberation” (Duke University Press, 2013). from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Victoria Hesford is an associated professor of Women and Gender Studies at Stony Brook University in New York. Her book Feeling Women’s Liberation (Duke University Press, 2013) examines the pivotal...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Dia Da Costa, "Politicizing Creative Economy: Activism and a Hunger Called Theater" (U Illinois Press, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In a world where heritage, culture, creativity, and the capacity to imagine are themselves commodified and sold under the banner of neoliberal freedom, (how) can art be harnessed for anti-capitalis...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jen Harvie, “Fair Play: Art, Performance and Neoliberalism” (Palgrave, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Arts and culture are under threat in the age of austerity. This threat is underpinned by the misuse of the idea of participation in contemporary performance. This is one of the central arguments of...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jinhua Dai (ed. Lisa Rofel), "After the Post-Cold War: The Future of Chinese History" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Although not all that well known to English-speaking audiences, cultural critic and Peking University professor Jinhua Dai’s incisive commentaries and critiques of contemporary Chinese life have el...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch, “The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire” (Verso, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Two Canadian socialist thinkers have published a new book on the successes and failures, the crises, contradictions and conflicts in present-day capitalism. In The Making of Global Capitalism: The ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Kimberly Chong, "Best Practice: Management Consulting and the Ethics of Financialization in China" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What do management consultants do, and how do they do it? These two deceptively simple questions are at the centre of Best Practice: Management Consulting and the Ethics of Financialization in Chin...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Martin Shuster, “Autonomy after Auschwitz: Adorno, German Idealism and Modernity” (U of Chicago Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The work of Theodore Adorno is well established as a crucial resource for understanding the complexities of contemporary capitalism, playing a foundational role in Critical Theory. Dialectic of Enl...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Melanie Ramdarshan Bold, "Inclusive Young Adult Fiction: Authors of Colour in the United Kingdom" (Palgrave, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Does publishing have a diversity problem? In Inclusive Young Adult Fiction: Authors of Colour in the United Kingdom Dr Melanie Ramdarshan Bold, an associate professor at UCL’s Centre for Publishing...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Steven Shaviro, “The Universe of Things: On Speculative Realism” (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Steven Shaviro‘s new book is a wonderfully engaging study of speculative realism, new materialism, and the ways in which those fields can speak to and be informed by the philosophy of Alfred North ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Robin Truth Goodman, "The Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st-Century Feminist Theory" (Bloomsbury, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The book I’m bringing you today, The Bloomsbury Handbook of 21st-Century Feminist Theory (Bloomsbury, 2019) is the most comprehensive available survey of the state of the art of contemporary femini...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Robert Hewison, “Cultural Capital: The Rise and Fall of Creative Britain” (Verso, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How did a golden age of cultural funding in UK turn to lead? This is the subject of a new cultural history by Robert Hewison. Cultural Capital: The Rise and Fall of Creative Britain (Verso, 2014) ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
David Courtwright, "The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business" (Harvard UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We are living in an age of addiction, from compulsive gaming and binge eating to pornography and opioid abuse. Today I talked with historian David Courtwright about the global nature of pleasure, v...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Steven Fielding, “A State of Play” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

To understand contemporary politics we must understand how it is represented in fiction. This is the main argument in A State of Play: British Politics on Screen, Stage and Page, from Anthony Trol...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ann Gleig, "American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity" (Yale UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her new book, American Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Modernity (Yale University Press, 2019), Ann Gleig makes a major contribution to scholarship on American Buddhism. Gleig focuses on meditation-base...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Beth Driscoll, “The New Literary Middlebrow: Readers and Tastemaking in the Twenty-First Century” (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It is a cliche to suggest we are what we read, but it is also an important insight. In The New Literary Middlebrow: Readers and Tastemaking in the Twenty First Century (Palgrave-MacMillan, 2014), B...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Emily Dawson, "Equity, Exclusion and Everyday Science Learning: The Experiences of Minoritised Groups" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Who is excluded from science? What is the role of museums in this exclusion? In Equity, Exclusion and Everyday Science Learning: The Experiences of Minoritised Groups (Routledge, 2019), Dr Emily Da...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sam Friedman, “Comedy and Distinction” (Routledge, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is funny? What makes you laugh? We think of laughter as being universal idea that applies to everyone, no matter their age, ethnicity, gender or social class. In Comedy and Distinction: The Cu...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jamila Lee-Johnson, and Ashley Gaskew, "Critical Theory and Qualitative Data Analysis in Education" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jamila Lee-Johnson and Ashley Gaskew, doctoral students in education at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, join us in this episode to discuss their recently published co-edited volume entitled,...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Bruce Fink, “Against Understanding. Volume 1: Commentary and Critique in a Lacanian Key” (Routledge, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What can possibly be wrong with the process of understanding in psychoanalytic treatment? Everything, according to Bruce Fink. In Against Understanding. Volume 1: Commentary and Critique in a Lacan...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Leta Hong Fincher, "Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China" (Verso, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

On the eve of International Women’s Day in 2015, five activists were detained by the police in China for their plans to distribute anti-sexual harassment stickers. Although such detainments usually...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Randal Marlin, “Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion” (Broadview Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It’s been 100 years since the start of the First World War, a conflict that cost millions of lives. In his recently revised book, Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion (2013), Randal Marlin write...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Mickey and Dick Flacks, "Making History/Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America" (Rutgers UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Mickey and Dick Flacks' new book Making History/Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America (Rutgers UP, 2018) is a chronicle of the political and personal li...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Bonnie J. Mann, “Sovereign Masculinity: Gender Lessons from the War on Terror” (OUP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the aftermath of 9/11, the American political landscape and its discourses took a peculiar turn. America’s national sovereignty-conceived as the expression of its indomitable masculinity-had bee...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Laurence Cox, "Why Social Movements Matter: An Introduction" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his book Why Social Movements Matter: An Introduction (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018), Senior Lecturer Laurence Cox, from Maynooth University, highlights how social movements have shaped the worl...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Marisol Sandoval, “From Corporate to Social Media” (Routledge, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What would a truly ‘social’ social media look like? This is the core question of From Corporate to Social Media: Critical Perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility in Media and Communication ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
John Komlos, "Foundations of Real-World Economics: What Every Economics Student Needs to Know" (Routledge, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I met with John Komlos, an American economic historian of Hungarian descent and former holder of the Chair of Economic History at the University of Munich. We spoke about his latest book, Foundatio...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Kathrin Yacavone, “Benjamin, Barthes, and the Singularity of Photography” (Bloomsbury, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kathrin Yacavone‘s Benjamin, Barthes, and the Singularity of Photography (Bloomsbury, 2013) is an engaging study that explores connections between two of the most significant thinkers of the twenti...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Tina Sikka, "Climate Technology, Gender, and Justice: The Standpoint of the Vulnerable" (Springer, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can feminist theory help address the climate crisis? In Climate Technology, Gender, and Justice: The Standpoint of the Vulnerable (Springer Verlag, 2019), Tina Sikka, a lecturer in media and cu...

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New Books in Critical Theory
William Viney, “Waste: A Philosophy of Things” (Bloomsbury, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is waste? William Viney‘s Waste: A Philosophy of Things (Bloomsbury, 2014) explores the meaning of waste across a variety of contexts, including literature, sculpture and architecture. The tex...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Discussion of Massive Online Peer Review and Open Access Publishing from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In the information age, knowledge is power. Hence, facilitating the access to knowledge to wider publics empowers citizens and makes societies more democratic. How can publishers and authors contri...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Vernadette V. Gonzalez, “Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai’i and the Philippines” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Vernadette Vicuna Gonzalez‘s Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai’i and the Philippines (Duke University Press, 2013), examines the intertwined relationship between tourism and milita...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Natalie Koch, "Critical Geographies of Sport: Space, Power, and Sport in Global Perspective" (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by Natalie Koch, Associate Professor of Geography at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, and editor of Critical Geographies of Sport: Sp...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Karl Spracklen, “Whiteness and Leisure” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Our taken for granted assumptions are questioned in a new book by Karl Spracklen, a professor of leisure studies at Leeds Metropolitan University in England. Whiteness and Leisure (Palgrave, 2013) ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Kate Ervine, "Carbon" (Polity, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The crisis of global warming overwhelms the imagination with its urgency, yet more than ever we need patient, clear-sighted. and careful assessments of the possibilities for transforming the global...

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New Books in Critical Theory
John Protevi, “Life, War, Earth: Deleuze and the Sciences” (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Right now, humanists across very different disciplinary fields are trying to create the kinds of cross-disciplinary conversations that might open up new ways to conceptualize and ask questions of o...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Betty Rojtman, "The Fascination with Death in Contemporary French Thought" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The Fascination with Death in Contemporary French Thought: A Longing for the Abyss (Palgrave MacMillan, 2020) analyses a cultural phenomenon that goes to the very roots of Western civilization: the...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Farhana Shaikh, "From Imposter to Impact: Arts Leadership in the 21st Century" (Dahlia Publishing, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What are the characteristics of the 21st Century arts leader? In From Imposter to Impact: Arts Leadership in the 21st Century (Dahlia Publishing, 2019), Farhana Shaikh, a writer, publisher, and jou...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Helene Snee, “A Cosmopolitan Journey: Difference, Distinction and Identity Work in Gap Year Travel” (Ashgate, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Helene Snee, a researcher at the University of Manchester, has written an excellent new book that should be essential reading for anyone interested in the modern world. The book uses the example of...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Lisa Adkins, et al., "The Asset Economy" (Polity, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“The key element shaping inequality is no longer the employment relationship but rather whether one is able to buy assets that appreciate at a faster rate than both inflation and wages”. So argue L...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Martin Demant Frederiksen, "An Anthropology of Nothing in Particular" (Zero Books, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

An Anthropology of Nothing in Particular (Zero Books, 2018) is an “exploration of what goes missing when one looks for meaning” (p. 1). The book is both an experimental ethnography and a theoretica...

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New Books in Critical Theory
William E. Connolly, “The Fragility of Things: Self-Organizing Processes, Neoliberal Fantasies, and Democratic Activism” (Duke UP, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Bill Connolly‘s new book proposes a way to think about the world as a gathering of self-organizing systems or ecologies, and from there explores the ramifications and possibilities of this notion ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Christine Hong, "A Violent Peace: Race, U.S. Militarism, and Cultures of Democratization in Cold War Asia and the Pacific" (Stanford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The image of the US as leading a good war to establish liberal democracy and move towards racial equality dominate the discourses of the Cold War. In her work, A Violent Peace: Race, U.S. Militaris...

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Jacob Johanssen, "Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture: Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can insights from psychoanalysis help us understand digital culture? in Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture: Audiences, Social Media, and Big Data (Routledge, 2018), Jacob Johanssen, a senior le...

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New Books in Critical Theory
David Hesmondhalgh, “Why Music Matters” (Wiley Blackwell, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the value of music and why does it matter? These are the core questions in David Hesmondhalgh‘s new book Why Music Matters (Wiley Blackwell, 2014). The book attempts a critical defence of...

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New Books in Critical Theory
K. Yazdani and D. M. Menon, "Capitalisms: Towards a Global History" (Oxford UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Capitalisms: Towards a Global History (Oxford University Press, 2020), edited by Kaveh Yazdani and Dilip M. Menon, aims to decenter work on the history of capitalism by looking at the longue durée ...

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Jocelyn M. Boryczka, "Suspect Citizens: Women, Virtue, and Vice in Backlash Politics" (Temple UP, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her book Suspect Citizens: Women, Virtue, and Vice in Backlash Politics (Temple University Press, 2012), Jocelyn M. Boryczka explores the fraught position that women find themselves in as citize...

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New Books in Critical Theory
William Davies “The Limits of Neo-Liberalism: Authority, Sovereignty and the Logic of Competition” (Sage, from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, The Limits of Neo-Liberalism: Authority, Sovereignty, and the Logic of Competition (Sage, 2014), William Davies, from Goldsmiths College University of London presents a detailed a...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Silvie Jacobi, "Art Schools and Place: Geographies of Emerging Artists and Art Scenes" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is an art school? In Art Schools and Place: Geographies of Emerging Artists and Art Scenes (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020), Dr Silvie Jacobi, a researcher and head of education at London School...

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Oded Nir, "Signatures of Struggle: The Figuration of Collectivity in Israeli Fiction" (SUNY Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Signatures of Struggle: The Figuration of Collectivity in Israeli Fiction (SUNY Press, 2018) offers a new understanding on Israeli literature and literary history. Using Marxist theorization of the...

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M. Gail Hamner, “Imaging Religion in Film: The Politics of Nostalgia” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011 from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

When we watch film various visual elements direct our understanding of the narrative and its meaning. The subjective position of each viewer informs their reading of images in a multitude of ways. ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Zakkiyah Imam Jackson, "Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World" (NYU Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In a world where black(ened) flesh, particularly feminine flesh, is considered the ontological zero of humanness, what interventions and complications are available from art and speculative fiction...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Catherine Baker, “Race and the Yugoslav Region: Postsocialist, Post-Conflict, Postcolonial?” (Manchester UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Catherine Baker’s fascinating new book poses a deceptively simple question: what does race have to do with the Yugoslav region? Eastern European studies has often framed the region as unimplicated ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Brett Scott, “The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money” (Pluto Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Brett Scott is the author of The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money (Pluto Press, 2013). Scott is a journalist, urban deep ecologist, and Fellow at the Finance Innovatio...

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New Books in Critical Theory
M. Sobolewska and R. Ford, "Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What are the identity conflicts that define contemporary society? In Brexitland: Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of British Politics (Cambridge UP, 2020) Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford, pro...

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New Books in Critical Theory
David Ray Papke, "Containment and Condemnation: Law and the Oppression of the Urban Poor" (Michigan State UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The law does things, writes David Ray Papke, and it says things, and if we are talking about poor Americans, especially those living in big cities, what it does and says combine to function as powe...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Patricia Ventura, “Neoliberal Culture: Living With American Neoliberalism” (Ashgate, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Culture is inescapably linked to questions of political economy. In Neoliberal Culture: Living With American Neoliberalism (Ashgate, 2012), Patricia Ventura explores the relationship between cont...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Francesca Sobande, "The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain" (Palgrave, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What are the possibilities and what are the inequalities of the digital world? In The Digital Lives of Black Women in Britain (Palgrave, 2020), Francesca Sobande, a lecturer in Digital Media Studie...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, "State Capture: How Conservative Activists, Big Businesses, and Wealthy Donors Reshaped the American States and the Nation" (Oxford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Back on the podcast for the second time in two years is Alex Hertel-Fernandez. You might recall his last book Politics at Work which examined the way employers are increasingly recruiting their wor...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Lynne Huffer, “Are the Lips a Grave? A Queer Feminist on the Ethics of Sex” (Columbia University Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her fourth book, Lynne Huffer argues for a restored queer feminism to find new ways of thinking about sex and about ethics. Are the Lips a Grave? A Queer Feminist on the Ethics of Sex (Columbia...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sianne Ngai, "Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form" (Harvard UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Theory of the Gimmick: Aesthetic Judgment and Capitalist Form (Harvard University Press, 2020), Sianne Ngai continues her theoretical work of demystifying the vernacular aesthetic categories enc...

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New Books in Critical Theory
B.R. Ambedkar, "Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition" (Verso, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition, edited by S. Anand (Verso, 2016) and with an Introduction ‘The Doctor and the Saint’ by Arundhati Roy, is based on a speech by Dr. B.R. Ambeda...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Bradley Garrett, “Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City” (Verso, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

More and more of the world is living in cities, yet we rarely stop to examine how our spaces are organised and controlled. In a remarkable new book, Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City (Vers...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Elisabeth Paquette, "Universal Emancipation: Race Beyond Badiou" (U Minnesota Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is Badiou’s theory of emancipation? For whom is this emancipation possible? Does emancipation entail an indifference to difference? In Universal Emancipation: Race Beyond Badiou (University of...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Matthew Longo, "The Politics of Borders: Sovereignty, Security, and the Citizen after 9/11" (Cambridge UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book, Matthew Longo takes the reader on an unusual journey, at least within political theory, since his work combines a normative political theory approach with an ethnographic approach ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sarah Franklin, “Biological Relatives: IVF, Stem Cells, and the Future of Kinship” (Duke University Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Sarah Franklin‘s new book is an exceptionally rich, focused yet wide-ranging, insightful account of in vitro fertilization (IVF) and the worlds that it creates and inhabits. Biological Relatives: I...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Tamura Lomax, “Jezebel Unhinged: Loosing the Black Female Body in Religion and Culture” (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

One of the central threads in the public discourse on Black womanhood is the idea of the “Jezebel.” This trope deems Black women and girls as dishonorable and sexually deviant and the stereotype is...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Steven Attewell, "People Must Live by Work: Direct Job Creation in America, from FDR to Reagan" (U Penn Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

There’s lot of talk these days, at least in some circles on the left, of a Universal Basic Income. There’s also talk in many of the same circles of a jobs guarantee. Join us as we speak with Steven...

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Timothy Morton, “Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World” (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

So much of Science Studies, of STS as a field or a point of engagement, is deeply concerned with objects. We create sociologies and networks of and with objects, we study them as actors or agents o...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Adam Knowles, "Heidegger’s Fascist Affinities: A Politics of Silence" (Stanford UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s influence over the last several decades of philosophy is undeniable, but his place in the canon has been called into question in recent years in the wake o...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Sam Friedman and Daniel Laurison, "The Class Ceiling: Why it Pays to be Privileged" (Policy Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Who gets in to top professions? In The Class Ceiling: Why it pays to be privileged (Policy Press, 2019), Drs Sam Friedman, an associate professor of sociology at LSE, and Daniel Laurison, an assist...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Timothy Shenk, “Maurice Dobb: Political Economist” (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The British Marxist economist Maurice Dobb is now largely forgotten. That’s too bad for a number of reasons. He was a brilliant thinker who wrote some of the most insightful analyses of the develop...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Elleni Centime Zeleke, "Ethiopia in Theory: Revolution and Knowledge Production, 1964-2016" (Haymarket Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Between the years 1964 and 1974, Ethiopian post-secondary students studying at home, in Europe, and in North America produced a number of journals where they explored the relationship between socia...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Rosalind Fredericks, "Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The production and removal of garbage, as a key element of the daily infrastructure of urban life, is deeply embedded in social, moral, and political contexts. In her book Garbage Citizenship: Vita...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Constance DeVereaux and Martin Griffin, “Narrative, Identity, and the Map of Cultural Policy” (Ashgate, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Narrative, Identity, and the Map of Cultural Policy: Once Upon a Time in a Globalized World (Ashgate, 2013), a new book by Constance DeVereaux (Colorado State University) and Martin Griffin (Uni...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Dave O’Brien, "Culture is Bad for You: Inequality in the Cultural and Creative Industries" (Manchester UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It would be hard to overstate the importance of culture. It teaches us, heals us, rips us apart and puts us back together in new and surprising ways. Given its fundamental importance to the human e...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Marcia Morgan, "Black Women Prison Employees: The Intersectionality of Gender and Race" (Edwin Mellen Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

With prison reform a topic of international conversation and debate, Marica Morgan’s Black Women Prison Employees: The Intersectionality of Gender and Race  offers an in-depth and unique analysis o...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Anastasia Karandinou, “No Matter: Theories and Practices of the Ephemeral in Architecture” (Ashgate, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The intersection of empirical research and critical theory is the basis for Anastasia Karandinou‘s new book No Matter: Theories and Practices of the Ephemeral in Architecture (Ashgate, 2013). The...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Kristin J. Jacobson, "The American Adrenaline Narrative" (U Georgia Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Kristin J. Jacobson In her new book, The American Adrenaline Narrative (University of Geo...

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Arnika Fuhrmann, "Ghostly Desires: Queer Sexuality and Vernacular Buddhism in Contemporary Thai Cinema" (Duke UP, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Since the late 1990s Thai cinema has come to global attention with movies like the famous ghost film, Nang Nak, and more recently the evocative films of director Aphichatpong Weerasethakul, who won...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Tony Bennett, “Making Culture, Changing Society” (Routledge, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his new book Making Culture, Changing Society (Routledge, 2013), Professor Tony Bennett aims to change the way we think about culture. The book uses four core ideas about the nature and meaning...

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Sophie Richter-Devroe, "Women’s Political Activism in Palestine: Peacebuilding, Resistance, and Survival" (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dr. Sophie Richter-Devroe’s book, Women’s Political Activism in Palestine: Peacebuilding, Resistance, and Survival (University of Illinois Press, 2018) offers an analysis of the forms assumed by wo...

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Katie Beswick, "Social Housing In Performance: The English Council Estate On and Off Stage" (Methuen Drama, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How has the council estate been represented on stage? In Social Housing In Performance: The English Council Estate On and Off Stage (Methuen Drama, 2018),  Dr. Katie Beswick, a lecturer in drama at...

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Greg Hainge, “Noise Matters: Towards an Ontology of Noise” (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is noise? In his new book Noise Matters: Towards an Ontology of Noise (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), Greg Hainge, Reader in French at University of Queensland, Australia, explores this question...

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Joshua Chambers-Letson, "After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life" (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life (NYU Press, 2018) Joshua Chambers-Letson invites you to a party featuring Eiko, Nina Simone, Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas, Danh V?, Felix Gonzalez-...

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Clarence Taylor, "Fight the Power: African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in New York City" (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his most new book Fight the Power: African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in New York City (NYU Press, 2018), Clarence Taylor, dean of the history of the civil rights movemen...

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David Beer, “Popular Culture and New Media: The Politics of Circulation” (Palgrave, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Popular Culture and New Media: The Politics of Circulation (Palgrave, 2013) is written by David Beer, a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at York University in the UK. He blogs here and tweets here. The...

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Michele Goodwin, "Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood (Cambridge University Press, 2020) a brilliant but shocking account of the criminalization of all aspects of reproduction, p...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Shanna de la Torre, "Sex for Structuralists: The Non-Oedipal Logics of Femininity and Psychosis" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What might Levi-Strauss and structuralism have to offer to psychoanalysis beyond the incest prohibition and the Oedipus complex? What happens if we understand Lacan’s notion of the symbolic as crea...

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Sarah Banet-Weiser, “Authentic: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture” (NYU Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Authentic: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture (NYU Press, 2013), Sarah Banet-Weiser scrutinizes the spread of brand culture into other spheres of social life that the market–at leas...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Laura Briggs, "Taking Children: A History of American Terror" (U California Press 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Laura Briggs’s Taking Children: A History of American Terror (University of California Press 2020) is a forceful and captivating book that readers won’t be able to put down, and that listeners from...

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New Books in Critical Theory
M. Evans, S. Moore, and H. Johnstone, "Detecting the Social: Order and Disorder in Post-1970s Detective Fiction" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can detective fiction explain the social world? In Detecting the Social: Order and Disorder in Post-1970s Detective Fiction(Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Mary Evans and Hazel Johnstone, both from ...

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Brian Michael Goss, “Rebooting the Herman and Chomsky Propaganda Model in the Twenty-First Century” (Peter Lang, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Brian Michael Goss, professor of communication at St. Louis University in Madrid, has taken one of media’s most studied theories and given it a facelift. In Rebooting the Herman and Chomsky Propag...

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Yves Citton, "Mediarchy" (Polity Press, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

We think that we live in democracies: in fact, we live in mediarchies. Our political regimes are based less on nations or citizens than on audiences shaped by the media. We assume that our social a...

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Robin Marie Averbeck, "Liberalism is not Enough: Race and Poverty in Postwar Political Thought" (UNC Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Robin Marie Averbeck is a writer, activist and teacher at California State University, Chico. Liberalism is not Enough: Race and Poverty in Postwar Political Thought (The University of North Caroli...

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Stacy Alaimo, “Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self” (Indiana UP, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her book, Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self (Indiana University Press, 2010), Stacy Alaimo approaches the concepts of “science, environment, and self” in an extremely n...

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Karl Gerth, "Unending Capitalism: How Consumerism Negated China's Communist Revolution" (Cambridge UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Karl Gerth’s new book, Unending Capitalism: How Consumerism Negated China's Communist Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2020) details how the state created brands, promoted and advertised par...

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Alf Gunvald Nilsen, "Adivasis and the State: Subalternity and Citizenship in India's Bhil Heartland" (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Almost a decade in the making, Adivasis and the State: Subalternity and Citizenship in India's Bhil Heartland(Cambridge University Press, 2018) draws on collaboratively collected oral histories of ...

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Michael Serazio, “Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerrilla Marketing” (NYU Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“Power through freedom.” Michael Serazio‘s Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerrilla Marketing (NYU Press, 2013) traces the mushrooming world of guerrilla marketing–defined to include word-of-mouth,...

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Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin, "Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet" (Verso Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (Verso Books, 2020), Noam Chomsky, the world’s leading public intellectual, and Robert Pollin, the renown...

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Tania Li, "Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier" (Duke UP, 2014) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

If you want to read just one book to properly understand capitalism, let it be Tania Li’s award-winning 2014 book Land’s End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier (Duke University Press, ...

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Dominic Pettman, “Human Error” (UMinnesota, 2011)/”Look at the Bunny” (Zero Books, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

“The humans are dead.” Whether or not you recognize the epigram from Flight of the Conchords (and if not, there are worse ways to spend a few minutes than by looking here, and I recommend sticking...

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Bethany Klein, "Selling Out: Culture, Commerce and Popular Music" (Bloomsbury, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does the music industry work in the modern world? In Selling Out: Culture, Commerce and Popular Music (Bloomsbury, 2020), Bethany Klein, a Professor of Media and Communication at the University...

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Andrea Micocci and Flavia Di Mario, "The Fascist Nature of Neoliberalism" (Routledge, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today I spoke with Flavia di Mario, a young scholar of political economy and industrial relations. She coauthored a very provocative book with Andrea Micocci, The Fascist Nature of Neoliberalism (R...

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Amir Eshel, “Futurity: Contemporary Literature and the Quest for the Past” (University of Chicago Press, 2013) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his very recent work, Futurity: Contemporary Literature and the Quest for the Past(University of Chicago Press, 2013), Amir Eshel presents us with a very interesting examination of what he refer...

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Filippo Menozzi, "World Literature, Non-Synchronism, and the Politics of Time" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In World Literature, Non-Synchronism, and the Politics of Time (Palgrave Macmillan) Filippo Menozzi offers to look at literature and literary processes through the prism of non-synchronism. The boo...

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Irmak Karademir Hazir, "Enter Culture, Exit Arts? The Transformation of Cultural Hierarchies in European Newspaper Culture Sections, 1960–2010" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How has European culture changed since the 1960s? In Enter Culture, Exit Arts? The Transformation of Cultural Hierarchies in European Newspaper Culture Sections, 1960–2010 (Routledge, 2018), Dr. Ir...

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Nicholas De Villiers, “Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol” (University of Minnesota Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his book, Opacity and the Closet: Queer Tactics in Foucault, Barthes, and Warhol (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), Nicholas de Villiers takes up an examination of the work of the three titu...

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Patrick Ffrench, "Roland Barthes and Film: Myth, Eroticism and Poetics" (Bloomsbury, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Roland Barthes and Film: Myth, Eroticism and Poetics (Bloomsbury) is a book by Patrick Ffrench, Professor of French at Kings College. It is a comprehensively researched and finely argued book that ...

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Victoria Cann, "Girls Like This, Boys Like That: Understanding the (Re)Production of Gender in Contemporary Youth Cultures" (I.B.Tauris, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does cultural taste regulate our lives? In Girls Like This, Boys Like That: Understanding the (Re)Production of Gender in Contemporary Youth Cultures (I.B. Tauris, 2018), Dr. Victoria Cann, a l...

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Avner Baz, “When Words Are Called For: A Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy” (Harvard University Press, 2012) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In When Words Are Called For: A Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy (Harvard University Press, 2012), Avner Baz sets out to make a case for the reconsideration of Ordinary Language Philosophy, ...

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Kathryn Sikkink, "The Hidden Face of Rights: Toward a Politics of Responsibilities" (Yale UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her latest book, The Hidden Face of Rights: Toward a Politics of Responsibilities (Yale University Press), Kathryn Sikkink puts forward a framework of rights and responsibilities; moving beyond ...

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Hannah Holleman, "Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics, and the Injustice of 'Green' Capitalism" (Yale UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

None of the climate news that we’re getting is good right now, especially now that a number of governments are reversing or failing to meet commitments they made as part of the Paris Climate Accord...

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Ulrich Plass, “Language and History in Theodor W. Adorno’s Notes to Literature” (Routledge, 2007) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Language and History in Theodor W. Adorno’s Notes to Literature (Routledge, 2007), Ulrich Plass makes the case for the importance and relevance of Adorno’s often forgotten and derided attempts...

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Ben Burgis, "Give Them an Argument: Logic for the Left" (Zero Books, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Logic, the study of how certain arguments either succeed or fail to support their conclusions, is one of the most important topics in philosophy, its importance illustrated by the common assumption...

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Sarah Banet-Weiser, "Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the relationship between popular misogyny and popular feminism? In Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny(Duke University Press, 2018), Sarah Banet-Weiser, Professor of Media and ...

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J. Hillis Miller, “The Conflagration of Community: Fiction Before and After Auschwitz” (University of Chicago Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In his recent book, The Conflagration of Community: Fiction Before and After Auschwitz (University of Chicago Press, 2011), J. Hillis Miller sets outs to address Theodor Adorno’s famous proclamatio...

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Angèle Christin, "Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms" (Princeton UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How are algorithms changing journalism? In Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms (Princeton University Press), Angèle Christin, an assistant professor in the Departmen...

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McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty...

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Wendy Steiner, “The Real Real Thing: The Model in the Mirror of Art” (University of Chicago Press, 2010) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

As the last of what Wendy Steiner refers to as “a loose trilogy” with her earlier works, The Scandal of Pleasure (1995) and Venus in Exile (2001), The Real Real Thing: The Model in the Mirror of Ar...

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Albena Azmanova, "Capitalism on Edge: How Fighting Precarity Can Achieve Radical Change Without Utopia or Crisis" (Columbia UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Capitalism seems to many to be in a sort of constant crisis, leaving many struggling to make ends meet. This desperation was intensified in 2008, and for many never went away in spite of claims of ...

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Julian Meyrick, Robert Phiddian and Tully Barnett, "What Matters?: Talking Value in Australian Culture" (Monash UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we value culture? In What Matters? Talking Value in Australian Culture (Monash University Press, 2018), Professors Julian Meyrick, Robert Phiddian and Tully Barnett, from Flinders Univer...

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Stephen Collier, “Post-Soviet Social: Neoliberalism, Social Modernity, Biopolitics” (Princeton UP, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Pipes matter. That’s right: pipes. Anyone who has spent time in Russia knows that the hulkish cylinders that snake throughout its cities are the lifeblood of urban space, linking apartment block af...

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Sabrina Mittermeier, "A Cultural History of the Disneyland Theme Parks: Middle Class Kingdoms" (Intellect, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand the theme park in our globalised world? In A Cultural History of the Disneyland Theme Parks: Middle Class Kingdoms (Intellect, 2020), Dr. Sabrina Mittermeier, a postdoctora...

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Jessica Whyte, "Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism" (Verso, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Drawing on detailed archival research on the parallel histories of human rights and neoliberalism, in Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism (Verso), Jessica Whyte uncover...

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Llerena Searle, "Landscapes of Accumulation: Real Estate and the Neoliberal Imagination in Contemporary India" (U Chicago Press, 2015) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Few who have visited India in the past two decades will have failed to noticed the sudden and spectacular urban transformation that has taken place in many of its cities. Gated residential complexe...

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Scott Morgensen, “Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Here’s a study-guide prepared to accompany the interview. For as much as recent decades have witnessed a patriarchal backlash against the growing visibility of LGBTQ people in North American socie...

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Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder, "Access All Areas: The Diversity Manifesto for TV and Beyond" (Faber and Faber, 2021) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How can we create a more equal media industry? In Access All Areas: The Diversity Manifesto for TV and Beyond, Marcus Ryder and Sir Lenny Henry, both founder members of the The Sir Lenny Henry Cent...

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C. De Beukelaer and K. M. Spence, "Global Cultural Economy" (Routledge, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How should we understand the role of cultural industries in contemporary society? In Global Cultural Economy (Routledge) Christiaan De Beukelaer, a senior lecturer in cultural policy at the Univers...

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Catherine Russell, "Archiveology: Walter Benjamin and Archival Film Practices" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In her book Archiveology: Walter Benjamin and Archival Film Practices (Duke University Press, 2018), Catherine Russell defines "archiveology" as “the reuse, recycling, appropriation and borrowing o...

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Jodi A. Byrd, “The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism” (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In a world of painfully narrow academic monographs, rare is the work that teams with ideas, engagements, and interventions across a wide terrain of social life. In The Transit of Empire: Indigenous...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Leigh Claire La Berge, "Wages Against Artwork: Decommodified Labor and the Claims of Socially Engaged Art" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The last twenty years have seen a rise in the production, circulation, and criticism of new forms of socially engaged art aimed at achieving social justice and economic equality.  Leigh Claire La B...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Ronak K. Kapadia, "Insurgent Aesthetics: Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War"(Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Insurgent Aesthetics: Security and the Queer Life of the Forever War (Duke University Press), Ronak K. Kapadia theorizes the world-making power of contemporary art responses to US militarism in ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Oli Mould, "Against Creativity" (Verso, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Can every aspect of society be 'creative'? In Against Creativity (Verso, 2018), Oli Mould, a lecturer in geography at Royal Holloway, University of London, explains the need to resist and recast th...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Brian Christian, “The Most Human Human: A Defense of Humanity in the Age of the Computer” (Penguin, 2011) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Can computers think? That was the question which provoked English mathematician Alan Turing to come up with what we call the Turing Test, in which a computer engages a human in conversation while a...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Peter E. Gordon, "Migrants in the Profane: Critical Theory and the Question of Secularization" (Yale UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

A beautifully written exploration of religion's role in a secular, modern politics, by an accomplished scholar of critical theory, Migrants in the Profane: Critical Theory and the Question of Secul...

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New Books in Critical Theory
João Costa Vargas, "The Denial of Antiblackness: Multiracial Redemption and Black Suffering" (U of Minnesota Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

An incisive new look at the black diaspora, examining the true roots of antiblackness and its destructive effects on all of society. Thanks to movements like Black Lives Matter, Western society's c...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Grant Farred, "The Burden of Over-Representation: Race, Sport, and Philosophy" (Temple UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Today we are joined by Grant Farred, Professor of Africana Studies and English at Cornell University.  Farred is the author of The Burden of Over-Representation: Race, Sport, and Philosophy(Temple ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Thomas Wheatland, “The Frankfurt School in Exile” (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

I have a friend who, as a young child, happened to meet Herbert Marcuse, by that time a rock-star intellectual and darling of the American student movement. Upon seeing the man, he exclaimed “Marcu...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Matthew McManus, "A Critical Legal Examination of Liberalism and Liberal Rights" (Palgrave, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The tradition of political liberalism has a long and complicated history, filled with twists, turns, critiques and responses that have filled books, essays and lectures for several centuries now. Q...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Waleed Mahdi, "Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation" (Syracuse UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Dr. Waleed Mahdi’s book, Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation (Syracuse University Press) offers a comparative analysis of the portrayals of Arab A...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Keisha Lindsay, "In a Classroom of Their Own: The Intersection of Race and Feminist Politics in All-Black Male Schools" (U Illinois Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

According to most experts, boys have more trouble in schools than girls. Further, African-American boys have even more trouble than, say, white boys. What to do? According to some, one possible sol...

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New Books in Critical Theory
John H. Summers, “Every Fury on Earth” (Davies Group, 2008) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The vast majority of historians write history. Perhaps that’s good, as one should stick to what one knows. But there are historians who braves the waters of social and political criticism. One thin...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Christoph Menke, "Critique of Rights" (Polity, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Christoph Menke, who is professor of philosophy at the Goethe University in Frankfurt Germany and considered the most important representative of the third generation of the "Frankfurt School of Cr...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Lauren Michele Jackson, "White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue ... and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation" (Beacon, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue ... and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation (Beacon, 2019), Lauren Michele Jackson analyzes Christina Aguilera, high fashion, the conceptual poetr...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jeong-Hee Kim, "Understanding Narrative Inquiry: The Crafting and Analysis of Stories as Research" (Sage Publications, 2016) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In today’s episode, I talked with Dr. Jeong-Hee Kim about her new book, Understanding Narrative Inquiry: The Crafting and Analysis of Stories as Research (Sage Publications, 2016). The book offers ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Tom Holert, "Knowledge Beside Itself: Contemporary Art's Epistemic Politics" (Sternberg Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What is the role and function of contemporary art in economic and political systems that increasingly manage data and affect? Knowledge Beside Itself: Contemporary Art's Epistemic Politics (Sternbe...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Danielle Knafo, "The New Sexual Landscape and Contemporary Psychoanalysis" (Confer Books, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

The sexual landscape has changed dramatically in the past few decades, with the meaning of gender and sexuality now being parsed within the realms of gender fluidity, nonheteronormative sexuality, ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Julie L. Rose, "Free Time" (Princeton UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Though early American labor organizers agitated for the eight-hour workday on the grounds that they were entitled to “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will,” ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Barbara Dennis, "Walking with Strangers: Critical Ethnography and Educational Promise" (Peter Lang, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Barbara Dennis of Indiana University on her new ethnography, Walking with Strangers: Critical Ethnography and Educational Promise, published in 2020 by Peter Lang ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Laura Gómez, "Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism" (The New Press, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Latinos have long influenced everything from electoral politics to popular culture, yet many people instinctively regard them as recent immigrants rather than a longstanding racial group. In Invent...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Michelle Fine, “Just Research in Contentious Times: Widening the Methodological Imagination” (Teachers College, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What can a researcher do to promote social justice? A conventional image of a researcher describes her staying in the ivory tower for most of the time, producing papers filled with academic jargons...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jemma Deer, "Radical Animism: Reading for the End of the World" (Bloomsbury, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Jemma Deer’s Radical Animism: Reading for the End of the World (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2020) invites the reader to take a moment and to ponder on the way of reading. In her book, the author cha...

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New Books in Critical Theory
S. Daulatzai and J. Rana, “With Stones in Our Hands: Reflections on Racism, Muslims and US Empire” (U Minnesota Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In this current moment it has become increasingly clear that US society is deeply entangled in racist policies and logics of white supremacy. While this affects numerous communities, anti-Muslim ra...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Chris Horrocks, “The Joy of Sets: A Short History of the Television” (Reaktion Press, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Television started as a dream of nineteenth-century science fiction. It took its place in the twentieth-century home, and became a fixture of family life and a transformative cultural force. Today,...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Laura Hyun Yi Kang, "Traffic in Asian Women" (Duke UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Can we ever overcome the epistemological barrier to conceptualizing Asian women not as particular cases but as theories, and can women of color academics be heard in this process? This is one of th...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Madina Tlostanova, "What Does it Mean to be Post-Soviet? Decolonial Art from the Ruins of the Soviet Empire" (Duke UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In What Does it Mean to be Post-Soviet? Decolonial Art from the Ruins of the Soviet Empire (Duke University Press, 2018), Madina Tlostanova traces how contemporary post-Soviet art mediates this hum...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Raymond Boyle, “The Talent Industry: Television, Cultural Intermediaries and New Digital Pathways” (Palgrave, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

What are the hidden structures of the television industry? In The Talent Industry: Television, Cultural Intermediaries and New Digital Pathways (Palgrave, 2018), Raymond Boyle, a professor of commu...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jodi Rios, "Black Lives and Spatial Matters: Policing Blackness and Practicing Freedom in Suburban St. Louis" (Cornell UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Black Lives and Spatial Matters: Policing Blackness and Practicing Freedom in Suburban St. Louis (Cornell University Press, 2020), Dr. Jodi Rios examines relationships between blackness, space, ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Caron Gentry, "Disordered Violence: How Gender, Race and Heteronormativity Structure Terrorism" (Edinburgh UP, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

In Disordered Violence: How Gender, Race and Heteronormativity Structure Terrorism (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), Caron Gentry looks at how gender, race, and heteronormative expectations of pu...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Claudia Sadowski-Smith, “The New Immigrant Whiteness: Race, Neoliberalism, and Post-Soviet Migration to the United States” (NYU Press, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

From Dancing with the Stars to the high-profile airport abandonment of seven-year-old Artyom Savelyev by his American adoptive parents in April 2010, popular representations of post-Soviet immigran...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Regina Rini, "The Ethics of Microaggression" (Routledge, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

Seemingly fleeting and barely legible insults, slights, and derogations might seem morally insignificant. They’re the byproducts of ordinary thoughtlessness and insensitivity; moreover, insofar as ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Mack Hagood, "Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control" (Duke UP, 2019) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How have we used twentieth- and twenty-first-century sound technologies to carve out sonic space out of the hustle and bustle of contemporary life? In search for an answer, in this episode I speak ...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Melissa Terras, “Picture-Book Professors: Academia and Children’s Literature” (Cambridge UP, 2018) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How have academics been represented in children’s books? In Picture-Book Professors: Academia and Children’s Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Melissa Terras, Professor of Digital Cult...

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New Books in Critical Theory
K. A. Young and M. Schwartz, "Levers of Power: How the 1% Rules and What the 99% Can Do About It" (Verso, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

It is often assumed that American politics is dominated by financial elites and the 1%, who use their massive wealth to gain power and influence, pushing for legislation that benefits them at the e...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Karen Patel, "The Politics of Expertise in Cultural Labour: Arts, Work and Inequalities" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How has social media changed inequality in the cultural industries? In The Politics of Expertise in Cultural Labour: Arts, Work and Inequalities (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020), Karen Patel, AHRC Le...

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New Books in Critical Theory
Jennifer Yusin, “The Future Life of Trauma: Partitions, Borders, Repetition” (Fordham UP, 2017) from 2021-01-31T22:10:42.023393

How does postcolonial theory and the work of Freud help us understand trauma? In The Future Life of Trauma: Partitions, Borders, Repetition (Fordham University Press, 2017), Dr. Jennifer Yusin, Ass...

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New Books in Critical Theory
John H. Summers, “Every Fury on Earth” (Davies Group, 2008) from 2008-12-16T20:35:14

The vast majority of historians write history. Perhaps that’s good, as one should stick to what one knows. But there are historianswho braves the waters of social and political criticism. One think...

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New Books in Critical Theory
John H. Summers, “Every Fury on Earth” (Davies Group, 2008) from 2008-12-16T20:35:14

The vast majority of historians write history. Perhaps that’s good, as one should stick to what one knows. But there are historians who braves the waters of social and political criticism. One thin...

Listen