Matthew Crain, "Profit over Privacy: How Surveillance Advertising Conquered the Internet" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
The contemporary internet's de facto business model is one of surveillance. Browser cookies follow us around the web, Amazon targets us with eerily prescient ads, Facebook and Google read our messages...
15 Nov 202241min
Igor Shoikhedbrod, "Revisiting Marx’s Critique of Liberalism: Rethinking Justice, Legality and Rights" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
Is Marx relevant today, after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe? Is Marx’s political theory compatible with individual rights? You will be surprised to learn that the answers are yes and yes...
14 Nov 202255min
Therí Alyce Pickens, "Black Madness :: Mad Blackness" (Duke UP, 2019)
In Black Madness :: Mad Blackness (Duke UP, 2019), Therí Alyce Pickens rethinks the relationship between Blackness and disability, unsettling the common theorization that they are mutually constitutiv...
14 Nov 20221h 2min
Bradley Onishi, "Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism--And What Comes Next" (Broadleaf Books, 2023)
The insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, was not a blip or an aberration. It was the logical outcome of years of a White evangelical subculture's preparation for war. Religion scholar an...
10 Nov 202250min
Helen De Cruz ed. "Philosophy Illustrated: Forty-Two Thought Experiments to Broaden your Mind" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Thought experiments are tools philosophers and scientists use to investigate how things are, without actually having to go out and experiment in the real world. Philosophy Illustrated: Forty-Two Thoug...
8 Nov 20222h 1min
Neta Yodovich, "Women Negotiating Feminism and Science Fiction Fandom: The Case of the 'Good' Fan" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
How do women balance feminist identities whilst being science fiction fans? In Women Negotiating Feminism and Science Fiction Fandom: The Case of the “Good” Fan (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022), Neta Yodovi...
8 Nov 202240min
On Edward Said's "Orientalism"
Beginning in the 17th century, European countries began colonizing countries east of Europe. They imposed their own ideas over local cultures and extracted free labor and resources. One way that Europ...
8 Nov 202233min
Can We Square the Circle? Universalism Versus Communitarianism
The political Left has long faced tension regarding its universalistic commitments and those to the nation it inhabits. The dilemma is captured succinctly in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and C...
7 Nov 202247min
