Miss Tibet: Representing Tibet through Beauty Pageants

Urban Labyrinths: Informal Settlements, Architecture, and Social Change in Latin America examines intervention initiatives in informal settlements in Latin American cities as social, spatial, architectural, and cultural processes. From the mid-20th century to the present, Latin America and other regions in the Global South have experienced a remarkable demographic trend, with millions of people moving from rural areas to cities in search of work, healthcare, and education. Without other options, these migrants have created self-built settlements mostly located on the periphery of large metropolitan areas. While the initial reaction of governments was to eliminate these communities, since the 1990s, several Latin American cities began to advance new urban intervention approaches for improving quality of life. This book examines informal settlement interventions in five Latin American cities: Rio de Janeiro, Medellín, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, and Tijuana. It explores the Favela-Bairro Program in Rio de Janeiro during the 1990s which sought to improve living conditions and infrastructure in favelas. It investigates projects propelled by Social Urbanism in Medellín at the beginning of the 2000s, aimed at revitalizing marginalized areas by creating a public transportation network, constructing civic buildings, and creating public spaces. Furthermore, the book examines the long-term initiatives led by SEHAB in São Paulo, which simultaneously addresses favela upgrading works, water pollution remediation strategies, and environmental stewardship. It discusses current intervention initiatives being developed in informal settlements in Buenos Aires and Tijuana, exploring the urban design strategies that address complex challenges faced by these communities. Taken together, the Latin American architects, planners, landscape architects, researchers, and stakeholders involved in these projects confirm that urbanism, architecture, and landscape design can produce positive urban and social transformations for the most underprivileged. This book will be of interest to students, researchers, and professionals in planning, urbanism, architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, urban geography, public policy, as well as other spatial design disciplines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

31 Okt 1h 17min

What does it mean to be a political subject? This is one of the key questions asked by Massimo Modonesi in ​The Antagonistic Principle: Marxism and Political Action (2019)​, published as part of the Historical Materialism book series from Brill and Haymarket books. The book takes on the theories of Marx and Gramsci to develop a philosophical triad of subalternity-antagonism-autonomy as a way of studying political subjectification under oppressive conditions and the potential for resistance. The book then looks at political developments in South and Latin America, trying to understand the underlying dynamics of both where it’s coming from, and what its possibilities are for anticapitalist resistance. Massimo Modonesi is professor and chair of the Political and Social Sciences Faculty at the Autonomous National University in Mexico, and is the author of numerous books on political theory and history in Latin America, his most recent in English being ​Subalternity, Antagonism, Autonomy: Constructing the Political Subject.​ He is a member of the coordinating committee of the International Gramsci Society. Maria Vignau served as a research assistant under Modonesi, and now teaches while working on her PhD at the University of Washington in Seattle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

20 Okt 43min

Upstate New York's Anti-Rent Movement is considered the last struggle over feudalism in the United States. Tenant farmers in the Hudson-Mohawk region engaged in organized protest throughout the 1840s to contest monopoly ownership of the land they worked. Arguing their cause in newspapers, on broadsides, and at rallies, their aspirations also took shape in poetry and song. More than twenty sets of lyrics (and one instrumental composition) were written at various stages of the conflict. Some of their musical sources, such as "Old Dan Tucker" and "Bruce's Address," are still well known. Each fully contextualized song offers insight into the role vernacular music played in one of the nineteenth century's major social reform movements. Songs and Sounds of the Anti-Rent Movement in Upstate New York: Including Twenty-Two New Settings of Period Tunes (SUNY Press, 2025) by Dr. Nancy Newman is the first book to gather the poetry and corresponding tunes into one publication (you can find recordings of some of the songs here). It provides detailed analysis of the repertory, followed by new musical scores of the songs, reconstructed from contemporary historical sources for study and performance. It also examines the movement's later dramatization in novels, film, and public commemorations as successive generations grapple with its meaning. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

18 Okt 53min

In Visible Presence: Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos (MIT Press, 2023) is an absorbing exploration of Soviet-era family photographs that demonstrates the singular power of the photographic image to command attention, resist closure, and complicate the meaning of the past. A faded image of a family gathered at a festively served dinner table, raising their glasses in unison. A group of small children, sitting in orderly rows, with stuffed toys at their feet and a portrait of Lenin looming over their heads. A pensive older woman against a snowy landscape, her gaze directed lovingly at a tombstone. These are a few of the evocative images in In Visible Presence by Dr. Oksana Sarkisova and Dr. Olga Shevchenko, an exquisitely researched book that brings together photographs from Soviet-era family photo archives and investigates their afterlives in Russia.In Visible Presence explores the photographic images' singular power to capture a fleeting moment by approaching them as points of contestation and possibility. Drawing on over a decade of fieldwork and interviews, as well as internet ethnography, media analysis, and case studies, In Visible Presence offers a rich account of the role of family photography in creating communities of affect, enabling nostalgic longings, and processing memories of suffering, violence, and hardship. Together these photos evoke youthful aspirations, dashed hopes, and moral compromises, as well as the long legacy of silence that was passed down from grandparents to parents to children.With more than 250 black and white photos, In Visible Presence is an astonishing journey into domestic photography, family memory, and the ongoing debate over the meaning of the Soviet past that is as timely and powerful today as it has ever been. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

15 Okt 59min

Naomi R Williams is associate professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University. Their primary research interests include labor and working-class history, urban history and politics, gender and women, race and politics, and more broadly, social and economic movements of working people. Naomi focuses on worker voice and late-capitalism at the end of the 20th century. Naomi’s research also examines the ways working people impact local and national political economies and the ways workers participate in collaborative social justice movements. Naomi engages working-class history in urban settings, looking at low-wage service work, industrial employment, and workers in higher education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

12 Okt 45min

Prof Mukul Sharma is a professor of Environmental Studies at Ashoka University. His formal training is in Political Science and has worked as a special correspondent with a leading news outlet in India and received 12 national and international awards for his environmental, rural and human rights journalism. additionally he has also been the Director Amnesty International and South Asia of Climate Parliament. His scholarly has focused on environmental politics and discourses in India and explored crucial intersections of ecology, caste, political ideology and the development rhetoric.  Abhilasha Jain is an anthropologist with an MSc in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an MPhil in Gender Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University. She is currently working as an independent researcher focusing on climate justice, digital infrastructure and digital rights for children/youth.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

12 Okt 43min

In “[M]y ‘case’ to work up’: William Carlos Williams’s Paterson” (William Carlos Williams Review, Volume 41, Number 2, 2024), Walter Scott Peterson argues that as a physician-poet Dr. Williams approaches his poetic material very much as he approaches his patients, and that the form of Paterson in particular is intentionally and actually reminiscent of the various forms taken by the medical case narrative, or “work-up.” This episode concerns the poet and physician William Carlos Williams, whose mother, Raquel Hélène Rose Hoheb Williams, was born and raised in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. This conversation is part of the STEM to STEAM initiative, sponsored by the Teagle Foundation, that links medicine, science, technology and engineering to the sensibilities honed in the humanities—rethinking ways to blend and combine studies in literature, poetry, history, philosophy, and the arts as more central dimensions of technical preparation. The discussion explores the profound connection between medical humanities and poetry, highlighting how their combination enriches our understanding of patient care, fosters empathy, and humanizes the medical experience. Medical humanities is an interdisciplinary field combining arts, literature, philosophy and cultural approaches to the human condition—considering each of these as insights into the emotional and ethical dimensions of healthcare. Poetry can serve as a powerful tool for expressing the complex feelings and narratives that often go unspoken in clinical settings. Blending poetry and the science of healthcare reminds us that medicine is not just a science but also an art, emphasizing compassion, understanding, and the shared human experience at the heart of healing. In this episode are: Walter Scott Peterson is a retired ophthalmologist and William Carlos Williams scholar; he is the author of the first book-length study of William Carlos Williams’s epic poem Paterson, titled An Approach to Paterson (Yale, 1967). Vamsi Koneru is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry in the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera, Professor of Humanities at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

11 Okt 51min

Popular music history collides with data analytics, charts, and numbers in this insightful and surprising look at the greatest hits and musicians, fads, forgotten artists, and much more. Data analyst and musician Chris Dalla Riva reframes everything you thought you knew about music. Did you know that hit songs in the late 1950s were regularly about gruesome death? That a US vice president wrote a number one hit? That while TikTok has spawned countless hits, it's made artists more anonymous than ever before? That pop songs have shaped race relations in the United States? That the key change died around 2003? And that's just the beginning. Coupling hard data with engaging anecdotes, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves (Bloomsbury, 2025) is both a takedown and celebration of popular music and provides new ways to think about your favorite songs, genres, and artists from the last 6 decades using unexpected statistics and playful visualizations. This entertaining history is filled with the most popular musicians of all time from The Beatles and The Bee Gees to Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, and beyond. Whether you danced the twist or the dougie at your senior prom, you're sure to never listen to music again in the same way. Chris Dalla Riva lives at the intersection of music and data. Playing in bands and recording music since his teenage years, Dalla Riva is currently a Senior Product Manager at Audiomack where he focuses on data analytics and personalization. Gregory McNiff is a Managing Director in the New York office of the Blueshirt Group, an IR firm focused on technology. Greg holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, an M. Litt. in Shakespeare Studies from the University of St. Andrews and a B.A. in Classical Languages from Columbia University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

11 Okt 1h 9min