Benjamin Fondane, “Existential Monday” (NYRB Classics, 2016)
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 relevan...
7 Huhti 20171h 11min
Marie Hicks, “Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing” (MIT Press, 2017)
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 Brita...
28 Maalis 201730min
Todd McGowan, “Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets” (Columbia UP, 2016)
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 a...
19 Maalis 201759min
Emily K. Hobson, “Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left” (U. Cal Press, 2016)
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 to...
16 Maalis 20171h 10min
Nancy Wang Yuen, “Reel Inequality: Hollywood Actors and Racism” (Rutgers UP, 2017)
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 Professo...
14 Maalis 201738min
Christopher Lowen Agee, “The Streets of San Francisco: Policing and the Creation of a Cosmopolitan Liberal Politics, 1950-1972” (U. Chicago Press, 2014)
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 19...
9 Maalis 20171h 8min
Andre Carrington, “Speculative Blackness: The Future of Race in Science Fiction” (U. Minnesota Press, 2016)
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 demo...
3 Maalis 20171h 5min
Leilah Danielson, “American Gandhi: A.J. Muste and the History of Radicalism in the 20th Century” (U. Penn Press, 2014)
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 and...
28 Helmi 20171h 6min
