New Books in Critical Theory

Interviews with Scholars of Critical Theory about their New Books

Science
Social Sciences
1801
Sarah Haley, “No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment...
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 scholars have revealed the connections between the deve...
53 min
1802
Aled Davies, “The City of London and Social Dem...
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 explains in his book The City of London and Social Democr...
47 min
1803
Rosemary Lucy Hill, “Gender, Metal and the Medi...
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 book from Rosemary Lucy Hill,
46 min
1804
Brooke Erin Duffy “(Not) Getting Paid to Do Wha...
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 professor in the Department of Communication at Cornell U...
37 min
1805
Ivan Ascher, “Portfolio Society: A Capitalist M...
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 Society: A Capitalist Mode of Prediction (Zone Books,
27 min
1806
Ilana Gershon, “Down and Out in the New Economy...
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 are increasingly being taught that they need to sell the...
42 min
1807
David Beer, “Metric Power” (Palgrave Macmillan,...
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 in shaping everyday life.
32 min
1808
Tommy J. Curry, “The Man-Not: Race, Class, and ...
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 that we should conceptualize the black male as a victim,...
60 min
1809
Jacob Emery, “Alternative Kinships: Economy and...
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 phenomena.
47 min
1810
Franck Cochoy, et al. eds., “Markets and the Ar...
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 Lancaster University respectively) bring together essays eng...
47 min
1811
Jon Dean, “Doing Reflexivity: An Introduction” ...
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 essential concepts in modern social research.
33 min
1812
Michael Youngblood, “Cultivating Community: Int...
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 the South Asian Studies Association Press.
35 min
1813
Michelle D. Commander, “Afro-Atlantic Flight: S...
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 African-descended peoples throughout the diaspora.
80 min
1814
Mark Banks, “Creative Justice: Cultural Industr...
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 of culture and communication and director of CAMEo,
47 min
1815
Bruno Perreau, “Queer Theory: The French Respon...
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 several years. An interrogation of the meanings of queer,
59 min
1816
Michael J. Turner” Radicalism and Reputation: T...
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 journalist and writer.
54 min
1817
Ashon T. Crawley, “Blackpentecostal Breath: The...
Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility (Fordham University Press, 2016) is innovative and lyrical, challenging and beautiful. Ashon Crawley brings together black studies, queer theory, theology,
59 min
1818
Ralph Young, “Dissent: The History of an Americ...
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 history of dissenters in America and the role they played ...
55 min
1819
Sharrona Pearl, “Face/On: Face Transplants and ...
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 (FAT), commonly known as face transplants,
66 min
1820
Stanley Corkin, “Connecting the Wire: Race, Spa...
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 vision of the teeming drug trade and the vitality of life ...
52 min
1821
Clea Bourne, “Trust, Power and Public Relations...
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) Clea Bourne, a Lecturer in PR,
48 min
1822
Lizabeth Cohen, “Making A New Deal: Industrial ...
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 Chicago workers,
69 min
1823
Benjamin Fondane, “Existential Monday” (NYRB Cl...
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 relevance in the contemporary period due in part to the way...
70 min
1824
Marie Hicks, “Programmed Inequality: How Britai...
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 Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge i...
28 min
1825
Todd McGowan, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psych...
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 we are drawn to capitalism because,
57 min