Water Logics: Materialist Epistemologies for the Environmental Humanities (U Virginia Press, 2026) examines the epistemological adjustments that take place when we make water the source and medium for thinking about the world. Eschewing metaphorical readings of rivers, seas, and oceans, it brings together leading voices from across the social sciences and th ... Show More
Oct 11
The French Médersa: Islamic Education and Empire in Northwest Africa with Samuel D. Anderson (Cornell UP, 2026)
The French Médersa: Islamic Education and Empire in Northwest Africa (Cornell UP, 2026) explores how the French state pursued a century-long project of bicultural Franco-Muslim education in its northwest African colonies, resulting in a new type of school, the médersa, that combi ... Show More
55m 48s
Oct 4
Ecotexts in the Postcolonial Francosphere with Nsah Mala, Richard Watts and Giulia Champion
Through a postcolonial lens, Ecotexts in the Postcolonial Francosphere (Liverpool, 2025) explores the various ways in which francophone writers, visual artists and activists are responding to the global climate and environmental crises threatening the Earth today.The volume cover ... Show More
48m 27s
Sep 12
Debarati Sanyal, "Arts of the Border: Fugitive Bodies at Europe’s Edges" (Fordham, 2025)
Arts of the Border: Fugitive Bodies at Europe’s Edges (Fordham, 2025) investigates the consequences of unfolding catastrophes across the world and the displacement they continue to produce. Through recent narratives and media representations of the refugee “crisis” at Europe’s ed ... Show More
40m 35s
Mar 2024
Michel Foucault & The Age of Consent
In this episode, I unpack the infamous 1977 letter signed by many French intellectuals including Simone de Beauvoir, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Félix Guattari, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and others critiquing France's consent laws. If you want to support me, you can do that wit ... Show More
22m 15s
Mar 2021
Robert Launay, "Savages, Romans, and Despots: Thinking about Others from Montaigne to Herder" (U of Chicago Press, 2018)
Take a look at a globe. Europe is there in big letters, and, to us, this hardly merits a passing thought. But Europe is a concept, a construct, an idea. So too is modernity. These categories have rich and contested histories. It is to their lineage that Robert Launay looks in Sav ... Show More
1h 3m