How is the world of work depicted on page and on screen? In Culture, Capital and Carnival: Modern Media and the Representation of Work Dr Will Kitchen, an Associate Lecturer at Arts University Bournemouth explores this question using a series of literary and media case studies. Drawing on Bakhtin’s theories of the carnivalesque, the book assesses the possibi ... Show More
Today
Kevin M. Schultz, "Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A History" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
A bracing, accessible history of white American liberals—and why it’s time to change the conversation about them.If there’s one thing most Americans can agree on, it’s that everyone hates white liberals. Conservatives hate them for being culturally tolerant and threatening to ush ... Show More
1h 26m
Oct 8
Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan, "Overdetermined: How Indian English Literature Becomes Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Anglophone" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Why is it so difficult to account for the role of identity in literary studies? Why do both writers and scholars of Indian English literature express resistance to India and Indianness? What does this reveal about how non-Western literatures are read, taught, and understood? Draw ... Show More
1h 11m
Oct 3
Vincent Pak, "Queer Correctives: Discursive Neo-homophobia, Sexuality and Christianity in Singapore" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Queer Correctives: Discursive Neo-homophobia, Sexuality and Christianity in Singapore (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025) explores Christian discourses of sex and sexuality in Singapore to argue that metanoia, the theological concept of spiritual transformation, can be read as a form of ... Show More
53m 28s
Mar 2024
Ali Bhagat, "Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Governing the Displaced: Race and Ambivalence in Global Capitalism (Cornell UP, 2024) answers a straightforward question: how are refugees governed under capitalism in this moment of heightened global displacement? To answer this question, Ali Bhagat takes a dual case study appro ... Show More
50 m
Oct 2024
Lisa-Jo K. Van den Scott, "Walled-In: Arctic Housing and a Sociology of Walls" (Lexington Book, 2024)
Walls profoundly shape the spaces we live in and the places we move through, impinge on our everyday lives, and entangle power relations, identity, and hierarchies. Walled-In: Arctic Housing and a Sociology of Walls (Lexington Books, 2024) explores these effects in the context of ... Show More
55m 30s
Oct 2024
Michael J. Thompson, "Descent of the Dialectic: Phronetic Criticism in an Age of Nihilism" (Routledge, 2024)
In Descent of the Dialectic: Phronetic Criticism in an Age of Nihilism (Routledge, 2024), Michael J. Thompson reconstructs the concept and practice of dialectics as a means of grounding a critical theory of society. At the center of this project is the thesis of phronetic critici ... Show More
1 h
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
Mar 2024
Noah L. Nathan, "The Scarce State: Inequality and Political Power in the Hinterland" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
States are often minimally present in the rural periphery. Yet a limited presence does not mean a limited impact. Isolated state actions in regions where the state is otherwise scarce can have outsize, long-lasting effects on society. The Scarce State: Inequality and Political Po ... Show More
52m 9s
Jun 2025
Kevin B. Anderson, "The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism" (Verso, 2025)
Kevin Anderson’s The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism (Verso, 2025) encourages to look again at the intellectual and political work of a figure some may assume has been exhausted: Karl Marx. Following on from his earlier landmark stud ... Show More
1h 4m
Jun 2025
Kevin B. Anderson, "The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism" (Verso, 2025)
Kevin Anderson’s The Late Marx's Revolutionary Roads: Colonialism, Gender, and Indigenous Communism (Verso, 2025) encourages to look again at the intellectual and political work of a figure some may assume has been exhausted: Karl Marx. Following on from his earlier landmark stud ... Show More
1h 4m
Mar 2023
Charles L. Briggs, "Unlearning: Rethinking Poetics, Pandemics, and the Politics of Knowledge" (Utah State UP, 2021)
A provocative theoretical synthesis by renowned folklorist and anthropologist Charles L. Briggs, Unlearning: Rethinking Poetics, Pandemics, and the Politics of Knowledge (Utah State UP, 2021) questions intellectual foundations and charts new paths forward. Briggs argues, through ... Show More
1h 22m
Feb 2025
Magnus Course, "Three Ways to Fail: Journeys Through Mapuche Chile" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
An ethnographic exploration of anthropological failures through the Mapuche archetypes of witch, clown, and usurper, Three Ways to Fail: Journeys Through Mapuche Chile (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) invites readers to consider concepts of failure, knowing, and being in the world wi ... Show More
1h 16m