Scott Cunningham, "Causal Inference: The Mixtape" (Yale UP, 2021)
Just about everyone knows correlation does not equal causation, and probably that a randomized controlled experiment is the best way to solve that problem, if you can do one. If you’ve been following ...
19 Nov 20211h 6min
Nicole C. Bourbonnais, "Birth Control in the Decolonizing Caribbean: Reproductive Politics and Practice on Four Islands, 1930–1970" (Cambridge UP, 2016)
Over the course of the twentieth century, campaigns to increase access to modern birth control methods spread across the globe and fundamentally altered the way people thought about and mobilized arou...
19 Nov 202150min
Karla Huebner, "Magnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2020)
Karla Huebner’s Magnetic Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020) follows the life and career Czech artist Toyen (Marie Čermínová, 1902-1980). Toyen’s career spans...
16 Nov 20211h 9min
Robert Brooks, "Artificial Intimacy: Virtual Friends, Digital Lovers, and Algorithmic Matchmakers" (Columbia UP, 2021)
What happens when the human brain, which evolved over eons, collides with twenty-first-century technology? Machines can now push psychological buttons, stimulating and sometimes exploiting the ways pe...
15 Nov 20211h 1min
April Sizemore-Barber, "Prismatic Performances: Queer South Africa and the Fragmentation of the Rainbow Nation" (U Michigan Press, 2020)
At his 1994 inauguration, South African president Nelson Mandela announced the "Rainbow Nation, at peace with itself and the world." This national rainbow notably extended beyond the bounds of racial ...
15 Nov 20211h 1min
Julia Bahner, "Sexual Citizenship and Disability: Understanding Sexual Support in Policy, Practice and Theory" (Routledge, 2021)
What does ‘sexual citizenship’ mean in practice for people with mobility impairments who may need professional support to engage in sexual activity? Sexual Citizenship and Disability: Understanding Se...
12 Nov 202142min
Darian Leader, "Jouissance: Sexuality, Suffering and Satisfaction" (Polity Press, 2021)
Although the term 'jouissance' is common currency in psychoanalysis today, how much does it really tell us? While often taken to designate a fusion of sexuality, suffering and satisfaction, the term h...
12 Nov 202153min
Sima Shakhsari, "Politics of Rightful Killing: Civil Society, Gender, and Sexuality in Weblogistan" (Duke UP, 2020)
In the early 2000s, mainstream international news outlets celebrated the growth of Weblogistan—the online and real-life transnational network of Iranian bloggers—and depicted it as a liberatory site t...
10 Nov 20211h 4min
