New Books in Critical Theory

Though early American labor organizers agitated for the eight-hour workday on the grounds that they were entitled to “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will,” free time as a political good has received little attention from politicians and political philosophers. In her book, Free Time (Princeton University Press, 2018), Julie L. Rose explains that this neglect arises from the mistaken characterization of free time as a matter of personal choice and preference. The book instead argues that not only should we understand free time as a resource that is required for the pursuit of one’s chosen ends and for the exercise of formal liberties and opportunities, but also that it is a resource to which citizens are entitled on the basis of the widely held liberal principles of individual freedom and equality. The claim that the fair distribution of free time is required for justice serves as grounds for the book to interrogate a whole host of policy choices—including maximum work hours provisions, restrictions on over time, universal basic income, income subsidies to caregivers, publicly provided caregiving services and facilities for the elderly, disabled, and children, and workplace accommodations, among others. Though Rose notes that the specific choices societies make about how much free time is required and how exactly to guarantee it will vary, she ultimately argues that the just society must ensure that all citizens have their fair share of free time—time not consumed by meeting the necessities of life, time to devote to their own projects and commitments, whatever those might be. Emily K. Crandall is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the Graduate Center, CUNY. She is a fellow at the Center for Global Ethics and Politics in the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

28 Nov 201857min

What can a researcher do to promote social justice? A conventional image of a researcher describes her staying in the ivory tower for most of the time, producing papers filled with academic jargons periodically, and occasionally providing consultations for policymakers. In Just Research in Contentious Times: Widening the Methodological Imagination (Teachers College Press, 2018), renowned critical psychologist Michelle Fine challenges us to imagine social research radically differently. According to Fine, if a researcher’s social justice work was only targeted at top politicians of this era, she probably would feel our era had never been darker. Fine argues that social research can do far more than that: It could create new solidarities across multiple marginalized groups, democratize the knowledge production process, disrupt the reproduction of oppressive social structure, and ultimately, sow the seed of positive social changes.  Just Research in Contentious Times documents Fine’s long-term grounded research efforts at the frontline of the battle for social justice. She and her research team work with dropout students, female prisoners, Muslim youths, LGBTQ teachers, and many other marginalized social groups to bear the witness of their sufferings, probe the inequality of the current system, and raise the public’s consciousness on pressing social issues. By doing that, she champions a research approach which emphasizes the participation of community members as co-researchers, one that she terms as critical participatory action research (CPAR). Just Research in Contentious Times blends her passion for CPAR with highly personal yet profoundly touching self-reflection, rigorous data analysis, and innovative theoretical discussions. It is a compelling and inspiring read for anyone who is interested in social justice work. Michelle Fine is a distinguished professor of critical social psychology, women’s studies, and urban education at the Graduate Center, the City University of New York. She is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including Framing Dropouts: Notes on the Politics of an Urban High School (1991), Disruptive Voices: The Possibilities of Feminist Research (1992), Working Method: Research and Social Justice (with Lois Weis, 2004), and Muslim American Youth: Understanding Hyphenated Identities through Multiple Methods (with Selcuk Sirin, 2008). Pengfei Zhao holds a doctoral degree in Inquiry Methodology from Indiana University-Bloomington. Among her research interests are youth culture, identity formation, qualitative research methods, and comparative sociological and educational studies. She is currently working on a book manuscript studying the coming of age experience of rural Chinese youth during and right after the Cultural Revolution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

16 Nov 20181h 20min

Television started as a dream of nineteenth-century science fiction. It took its place in the twentieth-century home, and became a fixture of family life and a transformative cultural force. Today, televisions are both less visible and more present than ever, thanks to screens on our walls and in our pockets. Chris Horrocks traces the cultural history of the television set in The Joy of Sets: A Short History of the Television (Reaktion Press, 2017). Horrocks is a filmmaker and professor in the School of Critical Studies and Creative Industries at Kingston University in London. His previous books include Cultures of Colour: Visual, Material, Textual (Berghahn, 2012), and Marshall McLuhan and Virtuality (Icon, 2000). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

8 Nov 201838min

What are the hidden structures of the television industry? In The Talent Industry: Television, Cultural Intermediaries and New Digital Pathways (Palgrave, 2018), Raymond Boyle, a professor of communications at the University of Glasgow‘s Centre for Cultural Policy Research, explores this question by focusing on the idea of talent. The book offers a rich theoretical and empirical engagement with the contemporary television landscape, giving detailed analysis of the history of talent development, as well as the impact of digital and new platforms. The shifting landscape of talent, television, and the infrastructure of cultural intermediaries is illustrated with key case studies, ultimately showing how the winners and losers of the talent industry map onto existing inequalities. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary media. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

6 Nov 201840min

From Dancing with the Stars to the high-profile airport abandonment of seven-year-old Artyom Savelyev by his American adoptive parents in April 2010, popular representations of post-Soviet immigrants in America span the gamut of romantic anti-Communist origin stories to horror stories of transnational adoption of children from Russia. In her latest book, The New Immigrant Whiteness: Race, Neoliberalism, and Post-Soviet Migration to the United States (New York University Press, 2018), Claudia Sadowski-Smith analyzes a plethora of sources from reality tv shows to memoirs and interviews to examine how post-Soviet migrants represent idealized examples of immigrant assimilation and upward mobility in the United States. Sadowski-Smith’s work adds critical analysis to both public and academic American immigration discourses. She evaluates how these migrants have access to a white racial identity often denied to Latino/a and Asian immigrants, how modes of migration impact post-Soviet migrants access to upward mobility, and how these migrants understand anti-immigration legislation aimed at migrants of color. Overall, she examines post-Soviet migrants in the contemporary context of the racialization of immigrants in the United States. Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon is a History Instructor at Lee College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

30 Okt 201853min

How have academics been represented in children’s books? In Picture-Book Professors: Academia and Children’s Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Melissa Terras, Professor of Digital Cultural Heritage at the University of Edinburgh, tells the story of the professor in children’s books since 1850. The book details the history of highly problematic depictions of academics, usually as kindly old men, baffled buffoons, or evil madmen, depictions that exclude those who are not white, often middle class origin, men. Terras’ work is a great example for digital humanities scholarship, offering a powerful case for new methods to answer crucial questions of equality and diversity for humanities scholars and across universities more generally. Alongside the analysis, Terras has published an anthology, The Professor in Children’s Literature, including some of the works discussed in the book. Both Picture-Book Professors and the accompanying anthology are open access and free to read, and will be of interest to every academic as well as the wider public too! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

23 Okt 201832min

How does postcolonial theory and the work of Freud help us understand trauma? In The Future Life of Trauma: Partitions, Borders, Repetition (Fordham University Press, 2017), Dr. Jennifer Yusin, Associate Professor of English and Philosophy at Drexel University, explores both of these approaches for thinking trauma in the the context of a range of historical examples. The book offers a detailed engagement with a host of theorists and theoretical positions from Freud and the theory of psychoanalysis, through postcolonial theories of trauma, to Derrida’s political ideas. The extensive discussion of theory is placed in the context of Rwanda, the memorialisation of genocide, and the partition of India and Pakistan. In the current political context the book offers urgent insights into trauma, and will be of interest across the humanities. More information about the Kigali Genocide Memorial is available here along with the organization that supports widows of the genocide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

15 Okt 201833min

In The Argument about Things in the 1980s: Goods and Garbage in an Age of Neoliberalism (West Virginia University Press, 2018), Tim Jelfs argues that debates about the nature of stuff—its moral valence, its spiritual value, and its status as either “goods” or “garbage”—have been at the heart of American cultural discourse for centuries, and reached a particularly fevered pitch in the 1980s. Bookended by Jimmy Carter’s “Crisis of Confidence” speech in 1979 and George H. W. Bush’s 1989 inaugural address, both of which lamented the apparent spiritual failings of materialism while at the same time avoiding a full condemnation of the same, Jelfs frames the 1980s as the “Age of Neoliberalism.” This period saw the resurgence of market-based responses to a series of crises, including oil price shocks and inflation. In this context, Jelfs examines texts as wide-ranging as political speeches, films, photography and other visual arts, and novels, using them to explore the particular nuances of American cultural discourse about stuff. Tim Jelfs is Assistant Professor in American Studies at the University of Groningen. His research focuses on interdisciplinary studies of literature, film, art, and more, with particular interest in discussions of materialism in post-1945 American culture. In addition to his current book on “Goods and Garbage,” his next project examines conversations about crisis and narrative culture in the United States from 9/11 to Donald Trump. David Fouser is an adjunct faculty member at Santa Monica College, Chapman University, and American Jewish University. He completed his Ph.D. in 2016 at the University of California, Irvine, and studies the cultural and environmental history of wheat, flour, and bread in Britain and the British empire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

12 Okt 20181h 4min