Across the global South, poor women’s lives are embedded in their social relationships and governed not just by formal institutions – rules that exist on paper – but by informal norms and practices. Village Ties: Women, NGOs, and Informal Institutions in Rural Bangladesh (Rutgers UP, 2021) takes the reader to Bangladesh, a country that has risen from the ash ... Show More
Yesterday
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 21
Janice M. McCabe, "Making, Keeping, and Losing Friends: How Campuses Shape College Students’ Networks" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
We’re all familiar with the sentiment that “college is the best time of your life.” Along with a newfound sense of freedom, students have a unique opportunity to forge lifelong friendships at a point in life when friendship is particularly important. Why is it, then, that so many ... Show More
51m 53s
Nov 17
Thomas Piketty, "A Brief History of Equality" (Harvard UP, 2022)
It's easy to be pessimistic about inequality. We know it has increased dramatically in many parts of the world over the past two generations. No one has done more to reveal the problem than Thomas Piketty. Now, in this surprising and powerful new work, Piketty reminds us that the ... Show More
28m 56s
Oct 2024
Brianna Nofil, "The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Today, U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains an average of 37,000 migrants each night. To do so, they rely on, and pay for, the use of hundreds of local jails. But this is nothing new: the federal government has been detaining migrants in city and county jails for ... Show More
39m 39s
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
Jun 2023
Osman Balkan, "Dying Abroad: The Political Afterlives of Migration in Europe" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
On any given day, the remains of countless deceased migrants are shipped around the world to be buried in ancestral soils. Others are laid to rest in countries of settlement, sometimes in cemeteries established for religious and ethnic minorities, where available. For immigrants ... Show More
1h 5m
Aug 2018
Ana Raquel Minian, “Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration” (Harvard UP, 2018)
In the 1970s, the Mexican government acted to alleviate rural unemployment by supporting the migration of able-bodied men. Millions crossed into the United States to find work that would help them survive as well as sustain their families in Mexico. They took low-level positions ... Show More
1h 3m
Oct 2023
Katherine Jensen, "The Color of Asylum: The Racial Politics of Safe Haven in Brazil" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
In 2013, as Syrians desperate to escape a brutal war fled the country, Brazil took the remarkable step of instituting an open-door policy for all Syrian refugees. Why did Brazil—in contrast to much of the international community—offer asylum to any Syrian who would come? And how ... Show More
47m 10s
Oct 2023
Katherine Jensen, "The Color of Asylum: The Racial Politics of Safe Haven in Brazil" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
In 2013, as Syrians desperate to escape a brutal war fled the country, Brazil took the remarkable step of instituting an open-door policy for all Syrian refugees. Why did Brazil—in contrast to much of the international community—offer asylum to any Syrian who would come? And how ... Show More
47m 10s
Nov 2024
Muhammad H. Zaman, "We Wait for a Miracle: Health Care and the Forcibly Displaced" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
Around the world, millions are forcibly displaced by conflict, climate change, and persecution. Some cross international borders, while others are displaced within their own countries. In We Wait for a Miracle: Health Care and the Forcibly Displaced (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023), Muha ... Show More
48m 26s
May 2023
Susan Hartman, "City of Refugees: The Story of Three Newcomers Who Breathed Life into a Dying American Town" (Beacon Press, 2022)
How can scholars employ the practices and techniques of investigative journalism?
Susan Hartman provides an answer in her intimate look at refugee experience in the United States. In City of Refugees: The Story of Three Newcomers Who Breathed Life Into A Dying American Town (Beac ... Show More
40m 45s
Jul 2024
Laura Robson, "Human Capital: A History of Putting Refugees to Work" (Verso, 2023)
When Americans and other citizens of advanced capitalist countries think of humanitarianism, they think of charitable efforts to help people displaced by war, disaster, and oppression find new homes where they can live complete lives.
However, as the historian Laura Robson argue ... Show More
51m 1s