Melinda N. Ritchie, "Backdoor Lawmaking: Evading Obstacles in the US Congress" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Civics textbooks focus on how Congress makes policy through the legislative process, but the reality is that members of Congress have limited opportunities to advance their policy priorities. In fact,...
12 Dec 202342min
Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Threats to Democracy and H.L. Mencken’s "Notes on Democracy"
A century ago, journalist H. L. Mencken provocatively stated in Notes On Democracy (new edition by Warbler Press, 2023) that anti-democratic behavior is not only not shocking but that we should in fac...
9 Dec 202354min
Katharine M. Millar, "Support the Troops: Military Obligation, Gender, and the Making of Political Community" (Oxford UP, 2022)
In the past, it was assumed that men, as good citizens, would serve in the armed forces in wartime. In the present, however, liberal democratic states increasingly rely on small, all-volunteer militar...
8 Dec 20231h 5min
Humanitarian Issues of Immigration in Japan: From Historical Background to Current Policies
Japan has historically maintained extended periods of isolationist policies and continues to uphold some of the strictest immigration laws in the world today. The country has also long had a tumultuou...
8 Dec 202327min
Wendy S. Hesford, "Violent Exceptions: Children's Human Rights and Humanitarian Rhetorics" (Ohio State UP, 2021)
Violent Exceptions: Children's Human Rights and Humanitarian Rhetorics (Ohio State UP, 2021) turns to the humanitarian figure of the child-in-peril in twenty-first-century political discourse to bette...
7 Dec 202344min
Violent Majorities, Indian and Israeli Ethnonationalism. Episode 1
"The Slippery Slope to a Multiculturalism of Caste" Professor Balmurli Natrajan has long studied questions of caste, nationalism and fascism in the Indian context: his many works include a 2011 book, ...
7 Dec 202351min
Gregory J. Goalwin, "Borders of Belief: Religious Nationalism and the Formation of Identity in Ireland and Turkey" (Rutgers UP, 2022)
Despite theories to the contrary, religious nationalism, and the use of religion to determine membership in the national community, has continued to play a role in processes of identification in socie...
7 Dec 20231h 39min
James A. Chamberlain, "Undoing Work, Rethinking Community: A Critique of the Social Function of Work" (ILR Press, 2018)
This revolutionary book presents a new conception of community and the struggle against capitalism. In Undoing Work, Rethinking Community: A Critique of the Social Function of Work (ILR Press, 2018), ...
6 Dec 202345min
