Allan E. S. Lumba, "Monetary Authorities: Capitalism and Decolonization in the American Colonial Philippines" (Duke UP, 2022)
Monetary Authorities: Capitalism and Decolonization in the American Colonial Philippines (Duke UP, 2022) investigates the ways in which racial and class hierarchies shaped the monetary policy and bank...
15 Jun 202342min
Moon-Ho Jung, "Menace to Empire: Anticolonial Solidarities and the Transpacific Origins of the US Security State" (U California Press, 2022)
As the American imperial project in the Pacific World grew at the end of the nineteenth century, so too did the American security and intelligence state, argues Dr. Moon-Ho Jung in Menace to Empire: A...
14 Jun 202343min
The Rhetoric of Decline
In this episode of High Theory, Jed Esty talks about the Rhetoric of Decline. Declinism names the contradictory political narrative that America will always be the greatest country in the world, yet i...
13 Jun 202319min
Samuel J. Redman, "The Museum: A Short History of Crisis and Resilience" (NYU Press, 2022)
On an afternoon in January 1865, a roaring fire swept through the Smithsonian Institution. Dazed soldiers and worried citizens could only watch as the flames engulfed the museum’s castle. Rare objects...
13 Jun 20231h 1min
Malini Ranganathan et al., "Corruption Plots: Stories, Ethics, and Publics of the Late Capitalist City" (Cornell UP, 2023)
Corruption Plots: Stories, Ethics, and Publics of the Late Capitalist City (Cornell UP, 2023) illuminates how corruption is fundamental to global storytelling about how states and elites abuse entrust...
13 Jun 20231h 20min
Arturo Rodríguez Morató and Alvaro Santana-Acuña, "Sociology of the Arts in Action: New Perspectives on Creation, Production, and Reception" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023)
What are the latest developments in the sociology of the arts? In Sociology of the Arts in Action: New Perspectives on Creation, Production, and Reception (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023), Arturo Rodríguez ...
11 Jun 20231h 3min
Maitrayee Chaudhuri and Manish Thakur, "Doing Theory: Locations, Hierarchies and Disjunctions" (Orient Blackswan, 2018)
We live in times where theory is often understood as irrelevant in the real world. It appears to have no practical results. This has been further complicated in a post-fact world, where our ‘identitie...
11 Jun 202342min
Graham Harman and Christopher Witmore, "Objects Untimely: Object-Oriented Philosophy and Archaeology" (Polity Press, 2023)
Objects generate time; time does not generate or change objects. That is the central thesis of this book by the philosopher Graham Harman and the archaeologist Christopher Witmore, who defend radical ...
10 Jun 20231h 4min
