Luke Munn, "Automation Is a Myth" (Stanford UP, 2022)
For some, automation will usher in a labor-free utopia; for others, it signals a disastrous age-to-come. Yet whether seen as dream or nightmare, automation, argues Munn, is ultimately a fable that res...
27 Des 20221h 5min
Ruth Tsoffar, "Life in Citations: Biblical Narratives and Contemporary Hebrew Culture" (Routledge, 2019)
In her latest book, Life in Citiations: Biblical Narratives and Contemporary Hebrew Culture (Routledge, 2019), Ruth Tsoffar studies several key biblical narratives that figure prominently in Israeli c...
25 Des 20221h 48min
Edward E. Curtis IV, "Muslims of the Heartland: How Syrian Immigrants Made a Home in the American Midwest" (NYU Press, 2022)
The American Midwest is often thought of as uniformly white, and shaped exclusively by Christian values. However, this view of the region as an unvarying landscape fails to consider a significant comm...
23 Des 202236min
Annuska Derks et al. "Fragrant Frontier: Global Spice Entanglements from the Sino-Vietnamese Uplands" (NIAS Press, 2022)
Where do the spices we find in our kitchen cabinets come from? What can we learn from tracing spices and their commodities and how does their trade impact the livelihoods of ethnic minority farmers in...
23 Des 202225min
Rumya Sree Putcha, "The Dancer's Voice: Performance and Womanhood in Transnational India" (Duke UP, 2022)
In The Dancer's Voice: Performance and Womanhood in Transnational India (Duke UP, 2022) Rumya Sree Putcha theorizes how the Indian classical dancer performs the complex dynamics of transnational India...
22 Des 20221h 18min
Holly Walters, "Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas" (Amsterdam UP, 2020)
Today I talked to Holly Walters about her new book Shaligram Pilgrimage in the Nepal Himalayas (Amsterdam UP, 2020). For roughly two thousand years, the veneration of sacred fossil ammonites, called S...
22 Des 202247min
Geoff Harkness, "Changing Qatar: Culture, Citizenship, and Rapid Modernization" (NYU Press, 2020)
Qatar, an ambitious country in the Arabian Gulf, grabbed headlines as the first Middle Eastern nation selected to host the FIFA World Cup. As the wealthiest country in the world—and one of the fastest...
21 Des 202237min
Jenny L. Davis, "How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things" (MIT Press, 2020)
A conceptual update of affordance theory that introduces the mechanisms and conditions framework, providing a vocabulary and critical perspective. Technological affordances mediate between the feature...
20 Des 202234min
