Jan 22
Lauren D. Sawyer, "Growing Up Pure: White Girls, Queer Teens, and the Racial Foundations of Purity Culture" (NYU Press, 2025)
Gaining mass popularity in the mid-1990s with the True Love Waits rally on the Washington Mall, purity culture began as an urge from evangelical conservatives for Christian adolescents to publicly commit to practicing abstinence until marriage. Throughout this decade and the next ... Show More
44m 5s
Jan 20
Robert Dorschel, "The Social Codes of Tech Workers: Class Identity in Digital Capitalism" (MIT Press, 2025)
Who are the people staffing the digital economy? In The Social Codes of Tech Workers: Class Identity in Digital Capitalism (MIT Press, 2025) Robert Dorschel an Assistant Professor in Digital Sociology at the University of Cambridge, explores an occupation that has emerged as cen ... Show More
40m 31s
Jan 19
Emily Hund, "The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media" (Princeton UP, 2023)
Before there were Instagram likes, Twitter hashtags, or TikTok trends, there were bloggers who seemed to have the passion and authenticity that traditional media lacked. The Influencer Industry: The Quest for Authenticity on Social Media (Princeton UP, 2023) tells the story of ho ... Show More
49m 2s
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
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
Sep 2024
Sarah Miller-Davenport, "Gateway State: Hawai’i and the Cultural Transformation of American Empire" (Princeton UP, 2019)
One of my talking points when hanging out with my fellow diplomatic historians is the painful absence of scholarship on Hawaii. Too many political histories treat Hawaii’s statehood as a kind of historical inevitability, an event that was bound to pass the moment the kingdom was ... Show More
57m 12s
Sep 2023
Ian Patel, "We're Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire" (Verso, 2021)
What are the origins of the hostile environment against immigrants in the UK? In We’re Here Because You Were There: Immigration and the End of Empire (Verso, 2021), Patel retells Britain's recent history in an often shocking account of state racism that still resonates today.
In ... Show More
1h 1m
Aug 2024
Elena Borisova, "Paradoxes of Migration in Tajikistan: Locating the Good Life" (UCL Press, 2024)
Paradoxes of Migration in Tajikistan: Locating the Good Life (UCL Press, 2024) by Dr. Elena Borisova is the first ethnographic monograph on migration in Tajikistan, one of the most remittance-dependent countries in the world. Moving beyond economistic push-pull narratives about p ... Show More
55m 11s
Sep 2025
Chelsi West Ohueri, "Encountering Race in Albania: An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Encountering Race in Albania: An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife (Cornell University Press, 2025) is the first book to interrogate race and racial logics in Albania. Chelsi West Ohueri examines how race is made, remade, produced, and reproduced through constructions of whi ... Show More
51m 10s
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
Apr 2024
Philipp Demgenski, "Seeking a Future for the Past: Space, Power, and Heritage in a Chinese City" (U Michigan Press, 2024)
In Seeking a Future for the Past: Space, Power, and Heritage in a Chinese City (U Michigan Press, 2024), Philipp Demgenski examines the complexities and changing sociopolitical dynamics of urban renewal in contemporary China. Drawing on ten years of ethnographic fieldwork in the ... Show More
1h 20m
May 2023
Reece Jones, "White Borders: The History of Race and Immigration in the United States from Chinese Exclusion to the Border Wall" (Beacon Press, 2021)
Recent racist anti-immigration policies, from the border wall to the Muslim ban, have left many Americans wondering: How did we get here? In White Borders: The History of Race and Immigration in the United States from Chinese Exclusion to the Border Wall (Beacon Press, 2021), Dr. ... Show More
58m 58s
Aug 2023
Christopher C. Sellers, "Race and the Greening of Atlanta: Inequality, Democracy, and Environmental Politics in an Ascendant Metropolis" (U Georgia Press, 2023)
Race and the Greening of Atlanta: Inequality, Democracy, and Environmental Politics in an Ascendant Metropolis (U Georgia Press, 2023) turns an environmental lens on Atlanta’s ascent to thriving capital of the Sunbelt over the twentieth century. Uniquely wide ranging in scale, fr ... Show More
1h 3m
In 1986 the Compact of Free Association marked the formal end of U.S. colonialism in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, while simultaneously re-entrenching imperial power dynamics between the two countries. The U.S.-RMI Compact at once enshrined exclusive U.S. military access to the islands and established the right of “visa-free” migration to the United ... Show More
