In Black Enlightenment (Duke UP, 2023), Surya Parekh reimagines the Enlightenment from the position of the Black subject. Parekh examines the works of such Black writers as the free Jamaican Francis Williams (1697–1762), Afro-British thinker Ignatius Sancho (1729?–1780), and Afro-American poet Phillis Wheatley (1753?–1784), placing them alongside those of th ... Show More
Yesterday
Heather Davis, "Plastic Matter" (Duke UP, 2022)
Plastic is ubiquitous. It is in the Arctic, in the depths of the Mariana Trench, and in the high mountaintops of the Pyrenees. It is in the air we breathe and the water we drink. Nanoplastics penetrate our cell walls. Plastic is not just any material—it is emblematic of life in t ... Show More
1h 1m
Yesterday
Mary Edwards, "Sartre’s Existential Psychoanalysis: Knowing Others" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
Thinking of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, it is hard to think of him without imagining him in very particular contexts. One will likely imagine him in a Parisian cafe working through a pack of cigarettes and coffee, working on his latest play while waiting for his frie ... Show More
1h 47m
Oct 2023
Frederick V. Engram, "Black Liberation Through Action and Resistance: MOVE" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)
Black Liberation through Action and Resistance: MOVE (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) serves as a call to action for Black millennials and co-conspirators who are immersed in the work of Black liberation or want to begin their own journey toward anti-racism. Its central mission is to ... Show More
38m 35s
Aug 2024
Devonya N. Havis, "Creating a Black Vernacular Philosophy" (Lexington Books, 2022)
What can philosophy do? By taking up Black American cultural practices, Devonya N. Havis suggests that academic philosophy has been too narrow in its considerations of this question, supporting domination and oppression.
In Creating a Black Vernacular Philosophy (Lexington Books ... Show More
49m 56s
Sep 22
Wendell Marsh, "Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities (Columbia University Press, 2025), is a groundbreaking book that recasts the role of knowledge in the making of a colonial and postcolonial nation. It makes a case for a new literary and intellectual-historical approach ... Show More
53m 46s
Nov 2022
Ryan Thomas Skinner, "Afro-Sweden: Becoming Black in a Color-Blind Country" (U Minnesota Press, 2022)
Contemporary Sweden is a country with a worldwide progressive reputation, despite an undeniable tradition of racism within its borders. In the face of this contradiction of culture and history, Afro-Swedes have emerged as a vibrant demographic presence, from generations of diaspo ... Show More
1h 46m
Sep 2024
J. C. D. Clark, "The Enlightenment: An Idea and Its History" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Enlightenment studies are currently in a state of flux, with unresolved arguments among its adherents about its dates, its locations, and the contents of the 'movement'. This book cuts the Gordian knot. There are many books claiming to explain the Enlightenment, but most assume t ... Show More
30m 40s
Feb 2024
Class 2: The Heritage of the Enlightenment
“Our Western heritage is reason—reason, analysis, action, progress!” –Settembrini the organ-grinder in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. HIST 271/HUMS 339: European Intellectual History since Nietzsche is a survey course designed to introduce students to the dominant trends in mo ... Show More
47m 7s
Sep 2024
Sarah Lewis, "The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America" (Harvard UP, 2024)
In a masterpiece of historical detective work, Sarah Lewis exposes one of the most damaging lies in American history. There was a time when Americans were confronted with the fictions shoring up the nation’s racial regime and learned to disregard them. The true significance of th ... Show More
43m 23s
Feb 2024
Andrius Gališanka, "John Rawls: The Path to a Theory of Justice" (Harvard UP, 2019)
It is hard to overestimate the influence of John Rawls on political philosophy and theory over the last half-century. His books have sold millions of copies worldwide, and he is one of the few philosophers whose work is known in the corridors of power as well as in the halls of a ... Show More
1h 14m
Aug 2024
Tisha Brooks, "Spirit Deep: Recovering the Sacred in Black Women’s Travel" (U Virginia Press, 2023)
What would it mean for American and African American literary studies if readers took the spirituality and travel of Black women seriously?
With Spirit Deep: Recovering the Sacred in Black Women’s Travel (U Virginia Press, 2023), Tisha Brooks addresses this question by focusing ... Show More
35m 23s
Jan 2024
Darnise C. Martin, "Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church" (NYU Press, 2005)
Darnise C. Martin's Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church (NYU Press, 2005) draws on rich ethnographic work in a Religious Science church in Oakland, California, to illuminate the ways a group of African Americans has adapted a religion typically thought ... Show More
44m 19s