Since the French Revolution of 1789, the absence of laws banning interracial marriages has served to reinforce two myths about modern France--first, that it is a sexual democracy and second, it is a color-blind nation where all French citizens can freely marry whomever they wish regardless of their race. Caroline Séquin challenges the narrative of French exc ... Show More
Yesterday
Sarah Hoiland, "Righteous Sisterhood: The Politics and Power of an All-Women's Motorcycle Club" (Temple UP, 2025)
A righteous sister identifies herself as a biker. She might wrench, or maintain, her own bike, and she prefers to ride with other righteous sisters. Righteous Sisterhood: The Politics and Power of an All-Women's Motorcycle Club (Temple UP, 2025) is Dr. Sarah Hoiland’s insightful ... Show More
44m 53s
Nov 22
Shatema Threadcraft, "Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Western democracies are haunted. Michael Hanchard suggests that the specter of race is what haunts our democracies, but it may be more accurate to suggest that they are haunted by their own racialized death machines—by racialized premature death. If this haunting is not adequatel ... Show More
58m 24s
Nov 22
Julie Dobrow, "Love and Loss After Wounded Knee: A Biography of an Extraordinary Interracial Marriage" (NYU Press, 2025)
Like any set of star-crossed lovers, Elaine and Charles came from different worlds. Elaine, an acclaimed childhood poet from a remote corner of the Massachusetts Berkshires, traveled to the Dakota Territories to teach Native American students, undaunted by society’s admonitions. ... Show More
44m 30s
Mar 2024
328. Esclavages en terres d’Islam
L’invité : M’hamed Oualdi, professeur à Sciences Po Paris, historien du Maghreb et de l’empire ottomanLe livre : L’esclavage dans les mondes musulmans, Paris, Amsterdam, 2024. La discussion : Introduction (00:00) Une histoire pas simple à écrire (4:00) Définitions et statuts des ... Show More
50m 41s
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
Aug 2024
Anne Gray Fischer, "The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification" (UNC Press, 2022)
Anne Gray Fischer speaks about her path to and through research, including how sex workers informed her analysis of policing and state violence, the role of law enforcement in struggles over economic development, and the intellectual and practical factors of research design.
Men, ... Show More
1h 12m
May 2025
Women who ruled over Africa
From rainmaking queens to dogged isolationists, the lives and reigns of Africa’s female rulers have long been shrouded in mystery, misunderstanding and misogyny. Over the centuries and throughout the continent, these individuals navigated the rigid traditions of their own culture ... Show More
39m 58s
Dec 2023
Anne E. Linton, "Unmaking Sex: The Gender Outlaws of Nineteenth-Century France" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
A compelling study of medical and literary imaginations, Anne Linton's Unmaking Sex: The Gender Outlaws of Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge University Press, 2022) examines the complex relationship between modes of seeing, thinking, and writing intersex bodies and lives.
In ... Show More
1h 2m
Sep 2023
301. Les “races guerrières” dans l’empire français, avec Stéphanie Soubrier
L’invitée : Stéphanie Soubrier, agrégée et docteure en histoire, maître-assistante à l’université de Genève Le livre : Races guerrières. Enquête sur une catégorie impériale 1850-1918, Paris, Éditions du CNRS, 2023. La discussion : Introduction (00:00) La notion de « races guerriè ... Show More
46m 34s
May 2025
"I have not Finished...": Rokahya Diallo on being Black, Muslim, and frequently interrupted (Emilie Diouf, JP)
Emilie Diouf of Brandeis English, whose monograph on genocide and trauma is forthcoming, joins John to speak with the celebrated French journalist and activist Rokahya Diallo. Diouf places Diallo within a transnational black intellectual tradition, founded in the interwar period ... Show More
46m 39s
Dec 2024
George Steinmetz, "The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought: French Sociology and the Overseas Empire" (Princeton UP, 2024)
It is only in recent years that sociologists and historians of the social sciences have given empire the attention it deserves in histories of the discipline. In this context, George Steinmetz’s The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought: French Sociology and the Overseas Empi ... Show More
1h 54m