The Shtetl: Myth and Reality with Samuel Kassow
Even those who do not know much Yiddish have probably heard the word “shtetl,” but what does that word mean exactly? Can we just say that it was a small town in Eastern Europe with a lot of Jews—and l...
27 Feb 1h 8min
A Light in the Tower: A New Reckoning with Mental Health in Higher Education
A Light in the Tower argues that excellent education and radical support for mental health struggles can coexist, and provides detailed advice for how to do so. Dr. Katie Rose Guest Pryal debunks clai...
26 Feb 1h 3min
Zalman Newfield, "Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey Out of Hasidism" (Temple UP, 2026)
Growing up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn as a member of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic Orthodox Jewish community, Zalman Newfield was raised in an atmosphere of strict gender segregation, rigorous religiou...
23 Feb 1h 18min
Michelle Jackson, "The Division of Rationalized Labor" (Harvard UP, 2025)
How have jobs changed in the last 150 years? In The Division of Rationalized Labor (Harvard UP, 2025) Michelle Jackson, an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University e...
21 Feb 1h 1min
Jessica Martin, "Feminisms and Domesticity in Times of Crisis: The Rise of the Austerity Celebrity" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Is the home still a site for feminist resistance? In Feminisms and Domesticity in Times of Crisis: The Rise of the Austerity Celebrity Jessica Martin, a Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy at the ...
21 Feb 36min
The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy
In an age of growing wealth disparities, politicians on both sides of the aisle are sounding the alarm about the fading American Dream. Yet despite all evidence to the contrary, many still view the Un...
19 Feb 48min
Agustín Santella and Adrián Piva, "Marxism, Social Movements and Collective Action" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023)
Marxists have an obvious interest in understanding social movements. Less obvious, even with the voluminous theoretical archives at hand, is how to pull their various forms together into a cohesive th...
16 Feb 34min
Alexis Lerner, "Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States" (U Toronto Press, 2025)
Post-Soviet Graffiti: Free Speech in Authoritarian States (University of Toronto Press, 2025) is an empirically grounded ethnographic study of how graffiti and street art can be used as a political to...
16 Feb 46min
