New Books Podcasts

Decolonizing 1968: Transnational Student Activism in Tunis, Paris, and Dakar (Cornell UP, 2022) explores how activists in 1968 transformed university campuses across Europe and North Africa into sites of contestation where students, administrators, and state officials collided over definitions of modernity and nationhood after empire. Burleigh Hend…

When Kasimir’s Malevich’s Black Square was produced in 1915, no one had ever seen anything like it before. And yet it does have precedents. In fact, over the previous five hundred years, several painters, writers, philosophers, scientists, and censors alighted on the form of the black square or rectangle, as if for the first time. Foreshadowed: Mal…

Women, Mysticism, and Hysteria in Fin-De-Siècle Spain (Vanderbilt UP, 2021) argues that the reinterpretation of female mysticism as hysteria and nymphomania in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Spain was part of a larger project to suppress the growing female emancipation movement by sexualizing the female subject. This archival-historica…

Atheism in Five Minutes, by Professor Teemu Taira, is part of Equinox Publishing’s “Religion in 5 Minutes” series. It offers insights into a number of commonly held questions about the ideas, practices, and attitudes concerning atheism and atheists. The volume highlights approaches based on the study of religion, sociology, history, anthropology, p…

This book cuts new ground, challenging the assumption of law as an objective concept. It draws out the way that binary frameworks situate and create the notion of the individual in law, delininating responsibilities and rights between concepts such as the state / individual, public / private, care / disability and capacity / incapacity. In The Spac…

In 874 CE, the eleventh Imam died, and the Imami community splintered. The institutions of the Imamate were maintained by the dead Imam's agents, who asserted they were in contact with a hidden twelfth Imam. This was the beginning of 'Twelver' Shiʿism. In Agents of the Hidden Imam: Forging Twelver Shi‘ism, 850-950 CE (Cambridge UP, 2022), Edmund Ha…

Dealing with the colonial archive entails acknowledging the inability to know everything, accounting for the archive’s limited and incomplete condition. Dealing with the colonial archive is not merely about stories of the past but also about the history of the present, and how it is interrupted by the past. — Irene Hilden, in conversation with New …

The two parallel Palace Museums in Beijing and Taiwan, and their separate collections of thousands of precious artworks and artifacts from imperial times, reflects a key moment in the 1940s when the Republic of China and the People’s Republic became distinct entities. But the very survival of these vast troves of porcelain, sculpture, jade, paintin…

Eraldo Souza dos Santos talks about the invention of civil disobedience as a form of political action around the world, and the need for its redefinition to describe activism present and future. In the episode, he references John Rawls’s classic definition from A Theory of Justice (Harvard UP, 1971) and Erin Pineda’s new book, Seeing Like an Activi…

Along with football and religion, housing is a fundamental cornerstone of Egyptian life: it can make or break marriage proposals, invigorate or slow down the economy, and popularize or embarrass a ruler. Housing is political. Almost every Egyptian ruler over the last eighty years has directly associated himself with at least one large-scale housing…

A man is arrested for a single typo, a woman gets on buses at random, and two friends reunite in a changed world.... Diverse in form, scope and style, Amanat: Women's Writing from Kazakhstan (Gaudy Boy, 2022) brings together the voices of thirteen female Kazakhstani writers, to offer a glimpse into the many lives, stories, and histories of one of t…

A short guidebook to understanding and discussing privilege among vegans and vegan organizations in the wake of #metoo, including how to establish accountability while honoring dignity and ways to communicate effectively. In The Vegan Matrix: Understanding and Discussing Privilege Among Vegans to Build a More Inclusive and Empowered Movement (Lante…

Today I talked to Chris McMorran about his new book Ryokan: Mobilizing Hospitality in Rural Japan (U Hawaii Press, 2022). Amid the decline of many of Japan’s rural communities, the hot springs village resort of Kurokawa Onsen is a rare, bright spot. Its two dozen traditional inns, or ryokan, draw nearly a million tourists a year eager to admire its…

What is the journalism culture in Vietnam? What role does Sweden play in the transformation of Vietnamese journalism? How has Swedish media aid fulfilled its political aim to contribute to the democratic development of media in Vietnam? Andreas Mattsson speaks about how two media aid projects from Sweden were used to intervene in the development of…

In The Wandering Army: The Campaigns that Transformed the British Way of War (Yale University Press, 2022), Dr. Huw J. Davies presents a compelling history of the British Army in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—showing how the military gathered knowledge from campaigns across the globe. At the outbreak of the War of Austrian Succession in 1…

The idea of legitimate political opposition is familiar. A decent political order permits citizens, parties, and coalitions to challenge those in power. Under such conditions, there is an ongoing nonviolent contest for power. Typically, the value of legitimate opposition is understood in terms of democracy. Here, the idea is that democracy is damag…

The Nuclear Club: How America and the World Policed the Atom from Hiroshima to Vietnam (Stanford UP, 2022) reveals how a coalition of powerful and developing states embraced global governance in hopes of a bright and peaceful tomorrow. While fears of nuclear war were ever-present, it was the perceived threat to their preeminence that drove Washingt…

We all know that academic integrity matters. But do we all agree on what academic integrity really is? Somewhere beyond the nuances and gray areas is blatant cheating. And that’s always wrong . . . but what if your professor asks you to cheat? This episode explores: How well students understand academic integrity. Why Dr. Heng Hartse designed a cou…

Today I talked to Chris De Santis about his new book Why I Find You Irritating: Navigating Generational Friction at Work (Ampify, 2022). Soon, those who qualify as Millennials or part of Gen Z will constitute 70% of the workplace in America. What kinds of work environments and interactive styles will appeal or repel them most? Among the suggestions…

Whose fault are financial crises, and who is responsible for stopping them, or repairing the damage? Impunity and Capitalism: The Afterlives of European Financial Crises, 1690-1830 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) develops a new approach to the history of capitalism and inequality by using the concept of impunity to show how financial crises stop…

Monica Juneja and Sumathi Ramaswamy's Motherland: Pushpamala N.'s 'Woman and Nation' (Roli Books, 2022) examines Motherland, an important series of photo-performances by the acclaimed artist Pushpamala N. on the Indian nation personified as woman, mother, and goddess. The series shows Pushpamala taking on Mother India's myriad personifications: nub…

In Indexicalism: The Metaphysics of Paradox (Edinburgh UP, 2021), Hilan Bensusan clarifies the logic and structure of an essentially situated and indexical metaphysics that is paradoxical and can also be regarded as a chapter in the critique of metaphysics. Bensusan articulates a metaphysical view of the other – both human and non-human, in what Me…

Over the past twenty years, DNA ancestry testing has morphed from a niche market into a booming international industry that encourages members of the public to answer difficult questions about their identity by looking to the genome. At a time of intensified interest in issues of race and racism, the burgeoning influence of corporations like Ancest…

Just over half a century since Neil Armstrong first stepped foot on the lunar surface, a new space race to the Moon is well underway and rapidly gaining momentum. Laying out a vision for the next fifty years, Back to the Moon: The Next Giant Leap for Humankind (Princeton UP, 2022) is astrophysicist Joseph Silk's persuasive and impassioned case for …

Russell McCutcheon shares his views on the academic study of religion, and the path ahead for religion graduates and the field itself. McCutcheon is a professor of religious studies at the University of Alabama and a contributor to the Religious Studies Project podcast. Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford…