May 10
Peter S. Soppelsa, "Paris After Haussmann: Living with Infrastructure in the City of Light, 1870–1914" (U Pittsburgh Press, 2026)
Modern Paris is often hailed as a capital of urban infrastructure. Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann’s rebuilding of Paris in 1853–1870, branded “Haussmannization,” helped define urban modernity for cities worldwide. But even as infrastructures expanded and modernized, some Parisian ... Show More
51m 34s
May 7
What Waltham Does When the Water Rises: Rachel McKane and Danielle Jacques (JP)
Permafrost melts, desert cities boil, inland lakes dry up; but Waltham too in its own way has become one of the dark places of the earth. Adverse manmade climate change is seeping into basements everywhere, and a wonderful new research project, “Building Collective Resilience via ... Show More
37m 59s
May 7
Lucy Stewart, "The Japanese Garden: Ella Christie and Cowden" (Birlinn, 2026)
As detailed in The Japanese Garden: Ella Christie and Cowden (Birlinn, 2026) by Lucy Stewart, at the turn of the twentieth century, Scottish adventurer Ella Christie returned home from a trip to Japan inspired to build her own Japanese garden. As might be expected from a woman wh ... Show More
53 m
Nov 2024
Alice Rudge, "Sensing Others: Voicing Batek Ethical Lives at the Edge of a Malaysian Rain Forest" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)
How do we confront difference and change in a rapidly shifting environment? Many indigenous peoples are facing this question in their daily lives. Sensing Others: Voicing Batek Ethical Lives at the Edge of a Malaysian Rain Forest (U Nebraska Press, 2024) explores the lives of Bat ... Show More
1h 11m
Jul 2023
Stephen Davies, "Adornment: What Self-Decoration Tells Us About Who We Are" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
Elaborating the history, variety, pervasiveness, and function of the adornments and ornaments with which we beautify ourselves, Stephen Davies's Adornment: What Self-Decoration Tells Us About Who We Are (Bloomsbury, 2020) takes in human prehistory, ancient civilizations, hunter-f ... Show More
31m 19s
Jan 2025
Eva Van Roekel and Fiona Murphy, "A Collection of Creative Anthropologies" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024)
In this NBN episode, I am joined by anthropologists Eva van Roekel (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and Fiona Murphy (Dublin City University) to talk about theit edited book, A Collection of Creative Anthropologies: Drowning in Blue Light and Other Stories. This beautiful collectio ... Show More
48m 8s
Oct 2023
Özge Yaka, "Fighting for the River: Gender, Body, and Agency in Environmental Struggles" (U California Press, 2023)
Fighting for the River: Gender, Body, and Agency in Environmental Struggles (U California Press, 2023) portrays women's intimate, embodied relationships with river waters and explores how those relationships embolden local communities' resistance to private run-of-the-river hydro ... Show More
54m 32s
Sep 2023
Daniel R. Reichman, "Progress in the Balance: Mythologies of Development in Santos, Brazil" (Cornell UP, 2023)
Progress and development have long been important issues in anthropology and social sciences. Based on extensive archives and ethnographic fieldwork, Progress in the Balance: Mythologies of Development in Santos, Brazil (Cornell UP, 2023) addresses and assesses an anthropological ... Show More
45m 1s
Jul 2024
Oneka LaBennett, "Global Guyana: Shaping Race, Gender, and Environment in the Caribbean and Beyond" (NYU Press, 2024)
Previously ranked among the hemisphere’s poorest countries, Guyana is becoming a global leader in per capita oil production, a shift which promises to profoundly transform the nation. This sea change presents a unique opportunity to dissect both the environmental impacts of moder ... Show More
53m 52s
Dec 2024
Charles Foster, "Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness" (Metropolitan Books, 2021)
How did humans come to be who we are? In his marvelous, eccentric, and widely lauded book Being a Beast, legal scholar, veterinary surgeon, and naturalist extraordinaire Charles Foster set out to understand the consciousness of animal species by living as a badger, otter, fox, de ... Show More
59m 18s
May 2023
Daniel Ruiz-Serna, "When Forests Run Amok: War and Its Afterlives in Indigenous and Afro-Colombian Territories" (Duke UP, 2023)
In When Forests Run Amok: War and Its Afterlives in Indigenous and Afro-Colombian Territories (Duke University Press, 2023) Daniel Ruiz-Serna follows the afterlives of war, showing how they affect the variety of human and nonhuman beings that compose the region of Bajo Atrato: th ... Show More
1h 15m
Dec 2024
Charles Foster, "Being a Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness" (Metropolitan Books, 2021)
How did humans come to be who we are? In his marvelous, eccentric, and widely lauded book Being a Beast, legal scholar, veterinary surgeon, and naturalist extraordinaire Charles Foster set out to understand the consciousness of animal species by living as a badger, otter, fox, de ... Show More
59m 18s
In this episode of High Theory, Rasheed Tazudeen tells us about the inhuman. The inhuman offers a way of moving beyond the legacies of humanism and across categories and scales of being. Thinking with the inhuman world, from spools of thread to microplastics, helps us try and think otherwise about the complex assemblages that shape our lives.
If you want to ... Show More
