Yesterday
Lim Tse Wei, "Little Perfections: Eating in Singapore" (Kitchen Arts and Letters, 2026)
Despite the implications of its subtitle, this is not a travel guide to Singapore, although readers run the risk of becoming tempted to venture there. Author Lim Tse Wei begins this collection of essays with the candid admission, “I am a somewhat unusual cook. My main qualificati ... Show More
42m 27s
Apr 15
Lia Kent, "The Unruly Dead: Spirits, Memory, and State Formation in Timor-Leste" (U Wisconsin Press, 2024)
“What might it mean to take the dead seriously as political actors?” asks Lia Kent in this exciting new contribution to critical human rights scholarship The Unruly Dead: Spirits, Memory, and State Formation in Timor-Leste (U Wisconsin Press, 2024). In Timor-Leste, a new nation- ... Show More
1h 4m
Apr 10
Nurhaizatul Jamil, "Faithful Transformations: Islamic Self-Help in Contemporary Singapore" (U Illinois Press, 2025)
Nurhaizatul Jamil’s Faithful Transformations: Islamic Self-Help in Contemporary Singapore (U Illinois Press, 2025) is a complex and meticulous ethnography of recent trends in Islamic self-help circles based in Singapore. Drawing on research conducted with primarily young, college ... Show More
51m 36s
Feb 2021
Łukasz Stanek, "Architecture in Global Socialism: Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War" (Princeton UP, 2020)
In the course of the Cold War, architects, planners, and construction companies from socialist Eastern Europe engaged in a vibrant collaboration with those in West Africa and the Middle East in order to bring modernization to the developing world. Architecture in Global Socialism ... Show More
41m 20s
Oct 2020
Andrew Demshuk, "Bowling for Communism: Urban Ingenuity at the End of East Germany" (Cornell UP, 2020)
Bowling for Communism: Urban Ingenuity at the End of East Germany (Cornell University Press, 2020) illuminates how civic life functioned in Leipzig, East Germany's second-largest city, on the eve of the 1989 revolution by exploring acts of urban ingenuity amid catastrophic urban ... Show More
56m 49s
Apr 2020
Christopher Houston, "Istanbul, City of the Fearless: Urban Activism, Coup D’Etat, and Memory in Turkey" (U California Press, 2020)
Based on extensive field research in Turkey, Istanbul, Christopher Houston's new book Istanbul, City of the Fearless: Urban Activism, Coup D’Etat, and Memory in Turkey (University of California Press, 2020) explores social movements and the broader practices of civil society in I ... Show More
1h 3m
Jul 2021
Jacob Lederman, "Chasing World-Class Urbanism: Global Policy Versus Everyday Survival in Buenos Aires" (U Minnesota Press, 2020)
What makes some cities world class? Increasingly, that designation reflects the use of a toolkit of urban planning practices and policies that circulates around the globe. These strategies—establishing creative districts dedicated to technology and design, “greening” the streets, ... Show More
53m 25s
May 2022
Heba Gowayed, "Refuge: How the State Shapes Human Potential" (Princeton UP, 2022)
As the world confronts the largest refugee crisis since World War II, wealthy countries are being called upon to open their doors to the displaced, with the assumption that this will restore their prospects for a bright future. Refuge: How the State Shapes Human Potential (Prince ... Show More
53m 50s
Mar 1
Maurice Rafael Magaña, "Cartographies of Youth Resistance: Hip-Hop, Punk, and Urban Autonomy in Mexico" (U California Press, 2020)
In Cartographies of Youth Resistance: Hip-Hop, Punk, and Urban Autonomy in Mexico (U California Press, 2020), based on a decade of ethnographic fieldwork, Maurice Magaña considers how urban and migrant youth in Oaxaca embrace subcultures from hip-hop to punk and adopt creative or ... Show More
1h 4m
Nov 2020
Zainab Saleh, "Return to Ruin: Iraqi Narratives of Exile and Nostalgia" (Stanford UP, 2020)
With the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Iraqis abroad, hoping to return one day to a better Iraq, became uncertain exiles. Return to Ruin: Iraqi Narratives of Exile and Nostalgia (Stanford UP, 2020) tells the human story of this exile in the context of decades of U.S. imperial interests ... Show More
51m 26s
Sep 2020
Carla Yanni, "Living on Campus: An Architectural History of the American Dormitory" (U Minnesota Press, 2019)
Every fall on move-in day, parents tearfully bid farewell to their beloved sons and daughters at college dormitories: it is an age-old ritual. The residence hall has come to mark the threshold between childhood and adulthood, housing young people during a transformational time in ... Show More
30m 8s
Following a decade of U.S. bombing campaigns that obliterated northern Vietnam, East Germany helped Vietnam rebuild in an act of socialist solidarity. In Building Socialism: The Afterlife of East German Architecture in Urban Vietnam (Duke UP, 2020) Christina Schwenkel examines the utopian visions of an expert group of Vietnamese and East German urban planner ... Show More
