The War on Words: 10 Arguments Against Free Speech—And Why They Fail (Heresy Press, 2025) constitutes a bulwark against the persistent censorial efforts from both the political left and right. At a time when conformist pressures threaten viewpoint diversity, and when political attacks on free expression are mounting, this book is a valuable resource for all ... Show More
Oct 5
Amanda Belantara and Emily Drabinski, "Ways of Knowing: Oral Histories on the Worlds Words Create" (Litwin Books, 2024)
Ways of Knowing: Oral Histories on the Worlds Words Create (Litwin Books, 2025) sits at the heart of the library project, shaping how materials are described and organized and how they can be retrieved. The field has long understood that normative systems like Dewey Decimal and L ... Show More
36m 15s
Sep 28
Karen Stollznow, "Bitch: The Journey of a Word" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Bitch is a bitch of a word. It used to be a straightforward insult, but today – after so many variations and efforts to reject or reclaim the word – it's not always entirely clear what it means. Bitch is a chameleon. There are good bitches and bad bitches; sexy bitches and psycho ... Show More
29m 46s
Mar 2022
N. J. Enfield, "Language Vs. Reality: Why Language Is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists" (MIT Press, 2022)
Nick Enfield’s book, Language vs. Reality: Why Language is Good for Lawyers and Bad for Scientists (MIT Press, 2022), argues that language is primarily for social coordination, not precisely transferring thoughts from one person to another. Drawing on empirical research, Enfield ... Show More
1h 8m
Jul 2023
Shaul Shenhav, "Analyzing Social Narratives" (Routledge, 2015)
Analyzing Social Narratives (Routledge, 2015) is one of the concise and informative volumes in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods, whose titles we have been featuring on New Books in Interpretive Political and Social Science. Its author, Shaul Shenhav, organizes the boo ... Show More
52m 54s
Mar 2021
R. A. Judy, "Sentient Flesh: Thinking in Disorder, Poiesis in Black" (Duke UP, 2020)
In this episode, I interview R.A. Judy, professor of Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, about his book Sentient Flesh: Thinking in Disorder, Poiēsis in Black, which was published by Duke University Press in 2020. In Sentient Flesh R. A. Judy takes up f ... Show More
1h 15m
Oct 2023
Resentment: The Complexity of an Emotion and its Effect on Politics
In this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey interviews Rob Schneider, Professor of History at Indiana University-Bloomington, about the political effects of resentment. Schneider begins by discussing the psychological complexity of resentment and then delv ... Show More
39m 8s
May 2024
How Can We Be More Effective With Language?
Have you ever wondered what’s up with double negation, the history of gender neutral pronouns, or why swearing is taboo? Then get ready for this week’s guest, linguist Anne Curzan! Anne and Jonathan talk about how the English language has evolved since the 1300s and how our words ... Show More
55m 20s
May 2023
Jo Littler, "Left Feminisms: Conversations on the Personal and Political" (Lawrence Wishart, 2023)
What is the history and future of feminism? In Left Feminisms: Conversations on the Personal and Political (Lawrence Wishart, 2023), Jo Littler, Professor of Social Analysis and Cultural Politics at City, University of London, collects almost a decade of interviews with key think ... Show More
34m 58s
Mar 2023
Patrick L. Schmidt, "Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science: The Rise and Fall of the Department of Social Relations" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022)
Harvard's Department of Social Relations made history in the 1950s and 1960s as the most ambitious program in social science in the United States. Dedicated to a synthesis of sociology, anthropology, psychology, and other disciplines, the scope of its ambitions were matched only ... Show More
1h 21m
Aug 2023
Sara Protasi, "The Philosophy of Envy" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Envy is almost universally condemned and feared. But is its bad reputation always warranted? In The Philosophy of Envy (Cambridge UP, 2022), Sara Protasi argues that envy is more multifaceted than it seems, and that some varieties of it can be productive and even virtuous. Protas ... Show More
54 m