New Books in Critical Theory
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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2151
Matt Houlbrook, “Prince of Tricksters: The Incr...
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, Professor of Cultural History at the University of Birmingha...
40 min
2152
Bill V. Mullen, “W.E.B. Du Bois: Revolutionary ...
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 many decades between, W. E. B.
50 min
2153
Paul Benneworth et al., “The Impact and Future ...
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 Impact and Future of Arts and Humanities Research (Palgrave,...
42 min
2154
Banu Bargu, “Starve and Immolate: The Politics ...
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 Press, 2016), Banu Bargu (Politics,
53 min
2155
Sarah Jaffe, “Necessary Trouble: Americans in R...
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 the podcast have discussed the growth of the Tea Party,
20 min
2156
Tom Mills, “The BBC: Myth of a Public Service” ...
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, re-reads the history of the BBC to offer a more probl...
40 min
2157
Kirsty Sedgman, “Locating the Audience: How Peo...
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, British Academy Research Fellow at the University of Bris...
39 min
2158
Paul C. Taylor, “Black is Beautiful: A Philosop...
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 the black body that traces its roots to Thomas Jefferson’...
64 min
2159
Patrick Wolfe, “Traces of History: Elementary S...
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 deepened this analysis through his most recent book,
48 min
2160
Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, “Foucault in Iran: Isl...
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 did the Iranian revolution impact and shape Foucault’s...
36 min
2161
Charlotte Mathieson, ed. “Sea Narratives: Cultu...
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 University of Surrey,
46 min
2162
Andrew Cole, “The Birth of Theory” (U. of Chica...
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 medieval dialectical thinking and suggests that it is pre...
62 min
2163
Matthew MacWilliams, “The Rise of Trump: Americ...
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 Trump “happened.
48 min
2164
McKenzie Wark, “Molecular Red: Theory for the A...
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 between work from two very different Soviet and Americ...
61 min
2165
Stevphen Shukaitis, “The Composition of Movemen...
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, and many other,
37 min
2166
Stuart Elden “Foucault’s Last Decade” (Polity P...
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 (Polity Press, 2016) Stuart Elden,
48 min
2167
Mary Hawkesworth, “Embodied Power: Demystifying...
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 analytical concept” (17)? In her new book,
61 min
2168
Darian M. Parker, “Sartre and New Child Left Be...
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, 2015). Through an ethnographic lens,
34 min
2169
Matt Dawson “Social Theory for Alternative Soci...
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 University of Glasgow,
39 min
2170
Ibram X. Kendi, “Stamped from the Beginning: Th...
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) offers a fast moving narrative of racist ideas beginni...
55 min
2171
John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco, “Cuba, the United Sta...
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 connects journalists, musicians,
48 min
2172
Jean Chalaby, “The Format Age: Television’s Ent...
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, charts the beginnings of the format for TV shows,
40 min
2173
Peter Trawny, “Heidegger and the Myth of a Jewi...
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 University of Wuppertal,
19 min
2174
Jack Jacobs, “The Frankfurt School, Jewish Live...
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, investigates how the Jewish backgrounds of major Critical Theorist...
45 min
2175
Eric Schickler, “Racial Realignment: The Transf...
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 of Political Science at the University of California,
18 min