Monumental Names: Archival Aesthetics and the Conjuration of History in Moscow (Routledge, 2022) asks us to consider: what stands behind the propensity to remember victims of mass atrocities by their personal names? Grounded in ethnographic and archival research with Last Address and Memorial, one of the oldest independent archives of Soviet political repres ... Show More
Apr 2025
Amy Zhang, "Circular Ecologies: Environmentalism and Waste Politics in Urban China" (Stanford UP, 2024)
After four decades of reform and development, China is confronting a domestic waste crisis. As the world's largest waste-generating nation, the World Economic Forum projects that by 2030, the volume of household waste in China will be double that of the United States. Starting in ... Show More
1h 7m
Aug 10
Dalit Studies with Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana and Sanal Mohan
This episode featured a conversation with Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana, and Sanal Mohan, three scholars in the burgeoning field of Dalit Studies. We began with the significance of the 1990s as a point of departure for new work in this field and segued to the interventions m ... Show More
1h 7m
May 3
Arely M. Zimmerman, "Contentious Citizenship: Salvadoran Activism and Belonging Across Borders" (U Arizona Press, 2026)
Contentious Citizenship: Salvadoran Activism and Belonging Across Borders (U Arizona Press, 2026) reshapes how we understand belonging, identity, and political participation in the context of migration. Drawing on decades of Salvadoran activism from the 1980s solidarity movement ... Show More
23m 24s
Sep 2023
Antony Kalashnikov, "Monuments for Posterity: Self-Commemoration and the Stalinist Culture of Time" (Cornell UP, 2023)
Antony Kalashnikov's Monuments for Posterity: Self-Commemoration and the Stalinist Culture of Time (Cornell UP, 2023) analyzes Stalinist monument-building. From the 1930's through the Great Patriotic War, architectural monuments such as subway stations were designed to emphasize ... Show More
59m 16s
Jan 2024
Jelena Subotić, "Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism" (Cornell UP, 2019)
In her new book Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism (Cornell University Press, 2019) Jelena Subotić asks why Holocaust memory continues to be so deeply troubled―ignored, appropriated, and obfuscated―throughout Eastern Europe, even though it was in those l ... Show More
50m 8s
Sep 2023
Elyse Semerdjian, "Remnants: Embodied Archives of the Armenian Genocide" (Stanford UP, 2023)
Foremost among the images of the Armenian Genocide is the specter of tattooed Islamized Armenian women. Blue tribal tattoos that covered face and body signified assimilation into Muslim Bedouin and Kurdish households. Among Armenians, the tattooed survivor was seen as a living et ... Show More
1h 24m
Apr 2023
Cristina Mejia Visperas, "Skin Theory: Visual Culture and the Postwar Prison Laboratory" (NYU, 2022)
An abolitionist approach to STS and the history of the life sciences: this is the model that Cristina Mejia Visperas offers in her book, Skin Theory: Visual Culture and the Postwar Prison Laboratory (NYU 2022). By now, scientists’ experiments on captive men at Philadelphia’s Holm ... Show More
56m 32s
Mar 2024
Mpho Ngoepe and Sindiso Bhebhe, "Indigenous Archives in Postcolonial Contexts: Recalling the Pasts" (Routledge, 2024)
Mpho Ngoepe and Sindiso Bhebhe's Indigenous Archives in Postcolonial Contexts: Recalling the Pasts (Routledge, 2024) revisits the definition of a record and extends it to include memory, murals, rock art paintings and other objects.
Drawing on five years of research and examples ... Show More
46m 25s
Jul 2023
Margareta von Oswald and Jonas Tinius, "Awkward Archives: Ethnographic Drafts for a Modular Curriculum" (Archive Books, 2022)
Awkward Archives: Ethnographic Drafts for a Modular Curriculum (Archive Books, 2022) proposes a manual for academic teaching and learning contexts. An ethnographic research approach is confronted with the demands of archival research as both disciplines challenge their inner logi ... Show More
50m 32s
May 2022
The Crimes of History, with Linda Kinstler and Peter Pomerantsev
How do you put a ghost on trial? In Linda Kinstler's deeply personal new book, Come to This Court and Cry, she uncovers the atrocities of her Latvian grandfather's involvement in the Holocaust. In conversation with author, broadcaster and academic, Peter Pomerantsev, she asks how ... Show More
41m 26s