Yesterday
Mark Hlavacik, "Willing Warriors: A New History of the Education Culture Wars" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education. On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusatio ... Show More
29m 17s
Mar 27
Sarah James, "The Politics of Failed Policies" (Oxford UP, 2025)
The Politics of Failed Policies (Oxford UP, 2025) examines how the interplay of politics and data affects when failed policies get recognized. It shows how compelling data and analysis is an important political tool for highlighting failure. Importantly, the research demonstrates ... Show More
28m 14s
Mar 26
The Criminal Record Complex: Risk, Race, and the Struggle for Work in America
Most employers in the United States routinely conduct criminal background checks on job applicants, weeding out those with criminal convictions—and thus denying opportunities to those who need them most. In The Criminal Record Complex: Risk, Race, and the Struggle for Work in A ... Show More
54m 13s
Aug 2024
Catherine Boone, "Inequality and Political Cleavage in Africa: Regionalism by Design" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Inequality and Political Cleavage in Africa: Regionalism by Design (Cambridge University Press, 2024) by Dr. Catherine Boone integrates African countries into broader comparative theories of how spatial inequality shapes political competition over the construction of markets, sta ... Show More
1h 10m
Jul 2024
Jessie Abrahams, "Schooling Inequality: Aspirations, Opportunities and the Reproduction of Social Class" (Bristol UP, 2024)
Despite a mass expansion of the higher education sector in the UK since the 1960s, young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds remain less likely to enter university than their advantaged counterparts.
Drawing on unique new research gathered from three contrast ... Show More
55m 36s
Nov 2023
Charles S. Maier, "The Project-State and Its Rivals: A New History of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries" (Harvard UP, 2023)
We thought we knew the story of the twentieth century. For many in the West, after the two world conflicts and the long cold war, the verdict was clear: democratic values had prevailed over dictatorship. But if the twentieth century meant the triumph of liberalism, as many intell ... Show More
50m 49s
Feb 2024
Youjin B. Chung, "Sweet Deal, Bitter Landscape: Gender Politics and Liminality in Tanzania's New Enclosures" (Cornell UP, 2024)
During the “global land grab” of the early twenty-first century, legions of investors rushed to Africa to acquire land to produce and speculate on agricultural commodities. In Sweet Deal, Bitter Landscape: Gender Politics and Liminality in Tanzania's New Enclosures (Cornell UP, 2 ... Show More
52m 4s
Sep 2023
Shai M. Dromi and Samuel D. Stabler, "Moral Minefields: How Sociologists Debate Good Science" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
Where does morality fit into contemporary social science? In Moral Minefields: How Sociologists Debate Good Science (U Chicago Press, 2023), Shai Dromi, an Associate Senior Lecturer at the Department of Sociology at Harvard University and Samuel Stabler Associate Teaching Profes ... Show More
50m 32s
Sep 2025
Tiffany Earley-Spadoni, "Landscapes of Warfare: Urartu and Assyria in the Ancient Middle East" (UP of Colorado, 2025)
Landscapes of Warfare: Urartu and Assyria in the Ancient Middle East (University Press of Colorado, 2025) by Dr. Tiffany Earley-Spadoni offers an in-depth exploration of the Urartian empire, which occupied the highlands of present-day Turkey, Armenia, and Iran in the early first ... Show More
58m 49s
Apr 2024
Loren D. Lybarger, "Palestinian Chicago: Identity in Exile" (U California Press, 2020)
Chicago is home to one of the largest, most politically active Palestinian immigrant communities in the United States. For decades, secular nationalism held sway as the dominant political ideology, but since the 1990s its structures have weakened and Islamic institutions have gai ... Show More
1h 21m
Jun 2024
Race, Social Reproduction, and Capitalist Totality
We live in a historical conjuncture characterized by the rise of a range of social movements that aim to challenge different forms of domination: capitalism, patriarchy, racism, settler colonialism, just to name a few. However, critical scholars remain divided about how to think ... Show More
1h 28m
Aug 2024
Miguel Montalva Barba, "White Supremacy and Racism in Progressive America: Race, Place, and Space" (Policy Press, 2024)
White Supremacy and Racism in Progressive America: Race, Place, and Space (Policy Press, 2024) examines the connections between race, place, and space, and sheds light on how they contribute and maintain racial hierarchies.
Dr. Miguel Montalva Barba focuses on the White residents ... Show More
51m 27s
States are often minimally present in the rural periphery. Yet a limited presence does not mean a limited impact. Isolated state actions in regions where the state is otherwise scarce can have outsize, long-lasting effects on society. The Scarce State: Inequality and Political Power in the Hinterland (Cambridge University Press, 2023) by Dr. Noah Nathan refr ... Show More
