Viet Thanh Nguyen, "Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War" (Harvard UP, 2016)
According to Viet Thanh Nguyen, all wars are fought twice: first on the field of battle, and then in the struggles over memory. In Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (Harvard University ...
28 Maj 20201h 10min
Thomas A. Discenna, "Discourses of Denial: The Rhetoric of American Academic Labor" (Routledge, 2017)
On this episode of the New Books Network, Lee Pierce (they/she) interviews Thomas A. Discenna of Oakland University about the myriad ways that the labor of those employed by universities is situated a...
27 Maj 202059min
Richard Lachmann, "First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers" (Verso, 2020)
Richard Lachmann’s First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers (Verso, 2020) is a two-for-one deal. The first half of the book is a historical analysis of ...
27 Maj 20201h 10min
Santiago Zabala, "Being at Large: Freedom in the Ago of Alternative Facts" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2020)
In recent years, questions around the nature of truth and facts have reentered public debate, often in discussions around journalistic bias, and whether politically neutral reporting is possible, o...
25 Maj 202057min
Dana El Kurd, "Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine" (Oxford UP, 2020)
What demobilizes a once mobilized society? How does international involvement amplify or suppress these dynamics? In Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine (Oxford Univer...
25 Maj 202053min
Yassir Morsi, “Radical Skin, Moderate Masks: De-radicalising the Muslim and Racism in Post-racial Societies” (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017)
Muslims living in locations like Australia, Europe, or North America exist within a context dominated by white racial norms and are forced to grapple with those conventions on a daily basis. If they s...
22 Maj 20201h 14min
Noëlle McAfee, "Fear of Breakdown: Psychoanalysis and Politics" (Columbia UP, 2019)
In his classic essay on the fear of breakdown, Donald Winnicott famously conveys to a patient that the disaster powerfully feared has, in fact, already happened. Taking her cue from Winnicott, Noëlle ...
22 Maj 202057min
James M. Jasper, "Public Characters: The Politics of Reputation and Blame" (Oxford UP, 2020)
Did Donald Trump win the U.S. presidency in 2016 because he was a master of character work – able to sum up opponents in pithy epithets that encourage the public to see them as weak or immoral? What i...
22 Maj 202041min
