Paul C. Taylor, “Black is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics” (Wiley Blackwell, 2016)
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 b...
15 Nov 20161h 6min
Patrick Wolfe, “Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race” (Verso, 2016)
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 deepene...
7 Nov 201650min
Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, “Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment” (U. of Minnesota Press, 2016)
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 di...
6 Nov 201638min
Charlotte Mathieson, ed. “Sea Narratives: Cultural Responses to the Sea, 1600-Present” (Palgrave, 2016)
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 Uni...
27 Okt 201648min
Andrew Cole, “The Birth of Theory” (U. of Chicago Press, 2014)
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 medi...
27 Okt 20161h 3min
Matthew MacWilliams, “The Rise of Trump: America’s Authoritarian Spring” (Amherst College Press, 2016)
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 Trum...
22 Okt 201650min
McKenzie Wark, “Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene” (Verso, 2015)
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 be...
10 Okt 20161h 2min
Stevphen Shukaitis, “The Composition of Movements to Come: Aesthetics and Cultural Labor after the Avant-Garde” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016)
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, an...
5 Okt 201639min
