University of Minnesota Press

University of Minnesota Press

Authors join peers, scholars, and friends in conversation. Topics include environment, humanities, race, social justice, cultural studies, art, literature and literary criticism, media studies, sociology, anthropology, grief and loss, mental health, and more. read less
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Episodes

Knowing Silence: How children understand and negotiate immigration status and its impact on their lives.
5d ago
Knowing Silence: How children understand and negotiate immigration status and its impact on their lives.
Educators who underestimate children’s knowledge about citizenship and immigration status can marginalize or misunderstand these students and their families. In Knowing Silence: How Children Talk about Immigration Status in School, author Ariana Mangual Figueroa models new ways scholars might collaborate with educators, children, and families—and makes audible the experiences of immigrant-origin students in their own terms, ultimately offering teachers and researchers a crucial framework for understanding citizenship in the contemporary classroom. Here, the author is joined in conversation with collaborators Dra. Aurora Chang, Claudia Rolando, and Lumari Sosa Garzón.Ariana Mangual Figueroa is author of Knowing Silence and associate professor of urban education and Latin American, Iberian, and Latino cultures at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). She is a co-principal investigator at the CUNY Initiative on Immigration and Education (CUNY IIE).Dra. Aurora Chang is associate professor of higher education at Loyola University and incoming Director of Faculty Development and Career Advancement at George Mason University. Chang is founder of Academic Life Simplified.Claudia Rolando is a graduate of Brooklyn College and an educator in New York.Lumari Sosa Garzón is a Mexican student in the Macaulay Honors program with a TheDream.US scholarship at Brooklyn College, majoring in psychology and minoring in anthropology. Lumari is a co-author of the Afterword appearing in Knowing Silence.Episode references:-Published research of Michael Fix and Wendy Zimmerman (“All under One Roof: Mixed-Status Families in an Era of Reform,” International Migration Review)-The Struggles of Identity, Education, and Agency in the Lives of Undocumented Students (Dra. Aurora Chang)-The Undocumented Americans (Karla Cornejo Villavicencio)-The New York State Youth Leadership Council-Lives in Limbo (Roberto G. Gonzales)-concept of Community Cultural Wealth / Dr. Tara Yosso-Plyler v. Doe, Supreme Court decision, 1982-The New School’s Parsons Scholars ProgramRecommended reference:-Areli is a Dreamer / Areli MoralesKnowing Silence: How Children Talk about Immigration Status in School is available from University of Minnesota Press."No words can express all that I think and feel about this beautiful, brilliant book. Narrated innovatively and with the utmost of care, with rich analyses of language data and thought-provoking insights drawn from a longitudinal and intimate ethnographic research relationship, Knowing Silence will surely make you think, wonder, laugh, cry—and see and hear young people who are growing up in contexts of immigration in new ways."—Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, UCLA"Using child-centered methodologies, Ariana Mangual Figueroa unveils the critical yet often invisible aspects of students' lives and highlights unintended chilling effects of school practices. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this is an important and compelling contribution to the field."—Carola Suárez-Orozco, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Art, time, nonlinearity with Manuela Infante and Mandy-Suzanne Wong (Art after Nature 5)
Mar 26 2024
Art, time, nonlinearity with Manuela Infante and Mandy-Suzanne Wong (Art after Nature 5)
Estado Vegetal is Manuela Infante’s riveting experimental performance art through which plants are charged with an agency capable of uprooting culturally grounded conceptions of the world. The book Estado Vegetal: Performance and Plant-Thinking, edited by Giovanni Aloi, is the first book dedicated to this performance and features essays from scholars and artists, including a fictional continuation of Infante’s work by Mandy-Suzanne Wong. Here, Infante and Wong join Art after Nature series editors Giovanni Aloi and Caroline Picard in conversation.Manuela Infante is a Chilean playwright, director, screenwriter, and musician who creates her own performances and tours in America, Europe, and Asia. Her works include Estado Vegetal and Metamorphosis. Mandy-Suzanne Wong is a Bermudian writer of fiction and essays. She is an award-winning author whose books include The Box and Drafts of a Suicide Note.Giovanni Aloi teaches art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is author or editor of many books on the nonhuman and art.Caroline Picard is a writer, cartoonist, curator, and founder of the Green Lantern Press.A performance of Manuela Infante’s Estado Vegetal (Vegetative State), performed by Marcela Salinas, is available to watch on YouTube.Art after Nature is a series edited by Giovanni Aloi and Caroline Picard that explores epistemological questions that emerge from the expanding, environmental consciousness of the humanities.Estado Vegetal: Performance and Plant-Thinking is available from University of Minnesota Press and includes pieces by Maaike Bleeker, Lucy Cotter, Prudence Gibson, Michael Marder, Dawn Sanders, Catriona Sandilands, Sibila Sotomayor Van Rysseghem, and Mandy-Suzanne Wong.Episode references:The Conquest of America / Tzvetan TodorovCapitalist Realism / Mark FisherHorizon / Manuela Infante
Tracing the roots of toxic masculinity.
Mar 21 2024
Tracing the roots of toxic masculinity.
Masculinity in Transition is a book that moves the study of masculinity away from an overriding preoccupation with cisnormativity, whiteness, and heteronormativity, and toward a wider and more generative range of embodiments, identifications, and ideologies. Author K. Allison Hammer’s bold rethinking of masculinity and its potentially toxic effects lays bare the underlying fragility of normative masculinity. Here, Hammer is joined in conversation with Kale Bantigue Fajardo. This episode was recorded in late fall of 2023.K. Allison Hammer (they/them) is assistant professor and coordinator of women, gender, and sexuality studies at Southern Illinois University. Hammer is author of Masculinity in Transition.Kale Bantigue Fajardo (he/him) is associate professor of American studies and Asian American studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Fajardo is author of Filipino Crosscurrents: Oceanographies of Seafaring, Masculinities, and Globalization.REFERENCES:The Politics of Friendship / Jacques DerridaThe Feeling of Kinship / David EngMen in Place / Miriam J. AbelsonTrue Sex / Emily SkidmoreMasculinities in Theory / Todd ReeserGertrude SteinFemale Masculinity / Jack HalberstamSons of the Movement / Bobby NobleThe Future of Whiteness / Linda Martín AlcoffDisturbing Attachments / Kadji AminEmily DickinsonWilla CatherStone Butch Blues / Leslie FeinbergMinnie Bruce PrattAndrea GibsonReinaldo ArenasMarlon RiggsPresidential masculinity (Reagan, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden)The Color Pynk / Omise’eke Natasha TinsleyNao BustamanteJudith ButlerThe Crying Game (film, 1992)Disclosure (film, 2020)BuddhismCare Work / Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-SamarasinhaTrans Care / Hil MalatinoNormal Life / Dean SpadeMutual Aid / Dean SpadeWorkers in Industrial America / David BrodyMasculinity in Transition and Filipino Crosscurrents are available from University of Minnesota Press.MORE: Listen to more talks with K. Allison Hammer on the University of Minnesota Press YouTube page (with Greta Olson and Christopher Breu), the Gender Stories podcast, and on In Conversation with Frank Schaeffer."A major intervention into masculinities studies, Masculinity in Transition brilliantly and consistently pushes the field toward a critical understanding of masculinity as a complex gender formation."—Christopher Breu, author of Hard-Boiled Masculinities"How might we understand masculinity if we turn toward culture rather than biology? K. Allison Hammer uncover(s) remakings of masculinity that center care, porosity, and unruly alliances—uplifting models for the precarious now."—Amber Jamilla Musser, author of Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance
Expelling public schools: Antiracist politics and school privatization.
Feb 21 2024
Expelling public schools: Antiracist politics and school privatization.
John Arena examines the more than two-decade struggle to privatize public schools in Newark, New Jersey—a conflict that is raging in cities across the country. Arena’s book Expelling Public Schools reveals the political rise of Cory Booker and Ras Baraka and what this particular case study illuminates about contemporary post-civil rights Black politics. Here, Arena is joined in conversation with David Forrest.John (Jay) Arena is associate professor of sociology at CUNY’s College of Staten Island. Arena is author of Expelling Public Schools: How Antiracist Politics Enable School Privatization in Newark and Driven from New Orleans: How Nonprofits Betray Public Housing and Promote Privatization.David Forrest is associate professor of politics at Oberlin College. He is author of A Voice but No Power: Organizing for Social Justice in Minneapolis.Works and scholars referenced:Adolph Reed Jr. (Stirrings in the Jug)David M. Kotz (The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism)Cedric JohnsonFrances Fox Piven (Challenging Authority)Jane McAlevey (No Shortcuts)Preston H. Smith II (Racial Democracy and the Black Metropolis)Sharon Kurtz (Workplace Justice)Marc Doussard and Greg Schrock (Justice at Work)Kristen Buras (Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space)Touré Reed (Toward Freedom)Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Laurence Cox (We Make Our Own History)Colin Barker, Laurence Cox, John Krinsky, and Alf Gunvald Nilsen, editors (Marxism and Social Movements)Rosa Luxemburg (Rosa Luxemburg Speaks)Chris Maisano (“What Does Revolution Mean in the 21st Century?”, Jacobin)Mark R. Beissinger (The Revolutionary City)People and organizations referenced:Cory BookerChris ChristieRas BarakaNewark’s downtown Teachers Village complexSharpe JamesCami AndersonChristopher CerfRandi WeingartenAlbert ShankerKaren LewisAl MoussabNewark Education WorkersThis episode was recorded in September 2023.Expelling Public Schools: How Antiracist Politics Enable School Privatization in Newark is available from University of Minnesota Press."Expelling Public Schools offers a fascinating look into the racial politics of corporate school reform in Newark Public Schools. John Arena takes a long view—just over two decades—and examines the reform movements and countermovements in the district from the top down and the bottom up. In assessing corporate school reform efforts under mayors Cory Booker and Ras Baraka, this deeply researched book illuminates the mechanisms that maintain educational inequality."—Rand Quinn, author of Class Action: Desegregation and Diversity in San Francisco Schools"It is rare to encounter a work that treats actually existing Black life, an approach best articulated by Cedric Johnson, to critically address contemporary Black urban regimes. Thoughtful, careful, and incisive, Expelling Public Schools does just that. In this moment when antiracism (and surface critiques of antiracism) is rife, John Arena’s work provides a wonderful tonic."—Lester Spence, author of Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-hop and Black Politics
Blowdown in the Boundary Waters
Jan 30 2024
Blowdown in the Boundary Waters
More than twenty years ago, a bizarre confluence of meteorological events resulted in the most damaging blowdown in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness’s history. It traveled 1,300 miles and lasted 22 hours, flattening nearly 500,000 acres of the Superior National Forest. Hundreds of campers and paddlers were stranded and dozens injured; amazingly, no one died. The historic storm ultimately reshaped the region’s forests in ways we have yet to fully understand. Here, author Cary J. Griffith is joined in conversation with scientist Lee Frelich and Peter Leschak, who was involved in the response and rescue effort.Cary Griffith is author of several novels and four books of nonfiction, including Gunflint Falling: Blowdown in the Boundary Waters and Gunflint Burning: Fire in the Boundary Waters. He is recipient of a Minnesota Book Award and a Midwest Book Award.Lee Frelich is director of the Center for Forest Ecology at the University of Minnesota. He is listed among the top 1% of scientists in the Web of Science, Ecology, and Environment and has authored more than 200 publications, and has been featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, and the Washington Post.Peter Leschak was chief of the French Township fire department in Side Lake, Minnesota, for thirty years. He has written ten books and has worked in a variety of wildfire-related capacities and held positions of leadership in the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Forest Service.Gunflint Falling: Blowdown in the Boundary Waters is available from University of Minnesota Press."In the tradition of The Perfect Storm, Cary J. Griffith brings readers into the Boundary Waters moment by moment as an epic gale sweeps through. Ample maps and in-depth interviews with witnesses both immerse us in one terrifying day and offer a glimpse of the past and future of Minnesota’s boreal forest."—Kim Todd, author of Sensational: The Hidden History of America’s “Girl Stunt Reporters”"In Gunflint Falling, Cary J. Griffith provides an accurate, comprehensive narrative of those impacted by one of the region’s most devastating storms. The damage and pain brought by the derecho storm was more severe than anything previously experienced in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The reader is taken into the personal experiences of the injured and those searching for them for fourteen days in the million-acre wilderness, and Griffith’s narrative of these experiences demonstrates how, when faced with an emergency, we come together to help one another."—Jim Sanders, retired forest supervisor, Superior National Forest (1996-2011), USDA Forest Service
Sugar, coal, oil: No more fossils.
Jan 23 2024
Sugar, coal, oil: No more fossils.
What is fossil civilization? In the book No More Fossils, Dominic Boyer tells the story of how we came to rationalize fossil fuel use through successive phases of sucropolitics (plantation sugar), carbopolitics (industrial coal), and petropolitics (oil and plastics), showing what tethers us to petroculture today and what it will take to overcome the forces that mire us in place. What can we do to make electroculture a more just and sustainable alternative? In this episode, Boyer is joined in conversation about modern energy politics with Cara Daggett.Dominic Boyer is an anthropologist, media maker, and environmental researcher who teaches at Rice University. His books include No More Fossils, Energopolitics, and Hyposubjects.Cara Daggett is associate professor of political science at Virginia Tech and author of The Birth of Energy.References:The Birth of Energy / Cara DaggettAnna TsingCarbon Democracy / Timothy MitchellMichel Foucault on biopowerSweetness and Power / Sidney MintzHegel, Haiti, and Universal History / Susan Buck-MorssFossil Capital / Andreas Malm15-Minute CityJohn LockeAlexander Dunlap on Fossil Fuel+Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More / Alexei YurchakStaying with the Trouble / Donna HarawayAriella AzoulayKyle Powys WhyteGeontologies / Elizabeth PovinelliLow Carbon Pleasure / a collaborative experimental art and performance project by Dominic Boyer, Cymene Howe, and othersStacy Alaimo / ecophiliaNo More Fossils is available from University of Minnesota Press. An open-access edition is available to read free online at manifold.umn.edu.
Comics, visual culture, and feminism in the 1980s
Jan 17 2024
Comics, visual culture, and feminism in the 1980s
In Visible Archives is a book that explores a number of feminist and cultural touchstones of the 1980s and examines how visual culture interacts with these pivotal moments. Author Margaret Galvan goes deep into the archives to bring together a decade’s worth of research that includes comics, collages, photographs, drawings, and other media produced by women including Nan Goldin, Alison Bechdel, Lee Marrs, and Gloria Anzaldúa. Galvan demonstrates how women represented their bodies and sexualities on their own terms and created visibility for new, diverse identities. Galvan is joined here in conversation with Anna Peppard and Ramzi Fawaz.Margaret Galvan is assistant professor of English at the University of Florida and author of In Visible Archives: Queer and Feminist Visual Culture in the 1980s.Anna Peppard is a writer, researcher, podcaster, and educator. Peppard is an adjunct lecturer in the department of Communication, Popular Culture, and Film at Brock University and editor of Supersex: Sexuality, Fantasy, and the Superhero.Ramzi Fawaz is an award-winning queer cultural critic, public speaker, and educator. Fawaz is a Romnes Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and author of Queer Forms and The New Mutants. Episode references:Trina RobbinsHillary Chute / Graphic WomenGloria Anzaldúa / Borderlands and This Bridge Called My BackAlison BechdelNan GoldinDiary (1982) from the Barnard Sex Conference (Hannah Alderfer, Beth Jaker, Marybeth Nelson)Kristen Hogan / The Feminist Bookstore MovementLee Marrs / The Further Fattening Adventures of Pudge, Girl BlimpWitnesses: Against Our Vanishing (exhibit)Roberta GregoryMaria Cotera / Chicana por mi Raza (digital project)Chicana Movidas / edited by Dionne Espinoza, María Eugenia Cotera, and Maylei BlackwellIn Visible Archives: Queer and Feminist Visual Culture in the 1980s is available from University of Minnesota Press. This book has an open-access Manifold edition that is free to read online."Margaret Galvan asks all the right questions about queer and feminist visual storytelling from the 1980s: Where were these works situated? How did communities use them? How have they been archived? Both commentary upon as well as an integral part of the activist project begun by the creators themselves, In Visible Archives helps keep these remarkable works visible for us all."—Justin Hall, California College of the Arts, editor of No Straight Lines"This wonderful book demonstrates the critical importance of community-based archives. Utilizing primary source materials, Margaret Galvan has produced an original and consequential contribution to the history of the feminist sex wars, and her attention to the visual aspects of those documents provides long overdue recognition to the period’s artists, designers, and activists."—Gayle Rubin, University of Michigan
Cactus hunters and the illicit succulent trade.
Nov 14 2023
Cactus hunters and the illicit succulent trade.
What inspires desire for plants? In The Cactus Hunters, Jared Margulies takes readers through the intriguing world of succulent collecting, where collectors and conservationists alike are animated by passions that sometimes exceed the limits of the law. His globe-spanning journey offers complex insight into the fields of botany and criminology, political ecology and human geography, and psychoanalysis. Here, Margulies is joined in conversation with Samantha Walton.Jared Margulies is assistant professor of political ecology in the Department of Geography at the University of Alabama. Margulies is author of The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade.Samantha Walton is professor of modern literature at Bath Spa University in England. Walton is author of Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure and The Living World: Nan Shepherd and Environmental Thought.EPISODE REFERENCES:Nan ShepherdThe Detectorists (British comedy series)Sheffield Branch of the British Cactus and Succulent SocietyCactus and Succulent Society of AmericaJacques LacanSigmund FreudHannah DickinsonPaul KingsburyAnna SecorLucas PohlRobert Fletcher / Failing ForwardAlberto Vojtech FričLocations discussed:EnglandBrazilCzech RepublicMexicoThe Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade is available from University of Minnesota Press."This book offers a powerful example of the value of close attention to the entangled lives of plants and their people."—Thom van Dooren, author of A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions"A deeply felt and nuanced reckoning with desire as a structurally produced and world-making force—a unique and major contribution to political ecology."—Rosemary Collard, author of Animal Traffic: Lively Capital in the Global Exotic Pet Trade
Redefining extinction through thawing permafrost.
Oct 26 2023
Redefining extinction through thawing permafrost.
In Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood, Charlotte Wrigley considers how permafrost—and its disappearance—redefines extinction to be a lack of continuity that affects both life and nonlife on earth. With a look at the coldest regions in the world, Wrigley examines the wild new economies and mitigation strategies responding to thawing permafrost, including such projects as Pleistocene Park, Colossal, and Sooam Biotech, and offers a new angle on extinction through the concept of discontinuity. Here, Wrigley is joined in conversation with Pey-Yi Chu.Charlotte Wrigley is a postdoctoral researcher at The Greenhouse – Center for Environmental Humanities at the University of Stavanger, Norway. She is author of Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood: Permafrost and Extinction in the Russian Arctic.Pey-Yi Chu is associate professor of history at Pomona College in Claremont, California. She is author of The Life of Permafrost: A History of Frozen Earth in Russian and Soviet Science. PUBLICATION REFERENCES:The Life of Permafrost / Pey-Yi ChuOnce Upon the Permafrost / Susan CrateThe Breath of the Permafrost / Nikolai Sleptsov-SylykCryopolitics / Joanna Radin and Emma Kowal, editorsPLACES REFERENCED:-Yakutsk, the capital of the Russian region of the Sakha Republic-Chersky, Arctic port in the Sakha District on the Kolyma River-Permafrost bank on the Kolyma called Duvanny Yar-Pleistocene Park in CherskyPEOPLE MENTIONED:-Sergey and Nikita Zimov, geophysicist and son behind Pleistocene Park project-George Church of Harvard University, behind the business Colossal-Hwang Woo-Suk (Sooam Biotech), biotechnology expert and veterinarian who claimed to clone human embryonic cells and does work in Yakutsk with mammoths.-Stewart Brand, environmentalist and founder of the Long Now Foundation, known for quote: “We are as gods, so we have to get good at it.”More about the book: z.umn.edu/EarthIceBoneBlood
Emergency response and its significant toll.
Oct 17 2023
Emergency response and its significant toll.
From his first days as a rookie firefighter and emergency medical technician to his command of a company as a twenty-year veteran, Jeremy Norton has made regular, direct encounters with the sick, the dying, and the dead. In his memoir, Trauma Sponges: Dispatches from the Scarred Heart of Emergency Response, Norton documents the life of an emergency responder in Minneapolis, revealing the stark realities of humanity at its finest and its worst. Here, Norton is joined in conversation with colleagues: Captain Ricardo Anaya, Captain Shana York, and retired Captain Bridget Bender.Jeremy Norton has been a firefighter/EMT with the Minneapolis Fire Department since 2000. He was born and raised in Washington, DC, and was a high school teacher in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He taught creative writing at the Loft Literary Center before joining the MFD.Bridget Bender is a recently retired captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department.Ricardo Anaya is a captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department and has been a Minneapolis firefighter since 2015.Shana York is a longtime firefighter and captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department.Trauma Sponges is available from University of Minnesota Press."While many bear witness to injustice and decide that silence best serves their privilege, some use their privilege to dismantle the inequities that created the disparities in the first place. Jeremy Norton is the latter."—Dr. Michele Harper, author of The Beauty in Breaking"Trauma Sponges is a powerful book, by turns tender, brutal, and incisive, full of wisdom and wonder."—Sam Lipsyte, author of No One Left to Come Looking for You and The Ask"Norton is the Poet Laureate of Emergency Services, a writer whose talent and heart spark and crackle on every page, devastating and dazzling with equal measure. He sorts through the wreckage of the lives he's saved and those that were lost, presenting us with what remains: our raw humanity and, somehow, hope."—Nora McInerny, founder of the Terrible, Thanks for Asking podcast and best-selling author of Bad Vibes Only"With clarity and sensitivity, Jeremy Norton has written an eye-opening book that shows us what firefighting is often about: encountering medical emergencies more often than fires, helping strangers through the trauma of death and loss, and witnessing the ways that racism, poverty, and violence singe our society. Theirs is a particular courage that we must all celebrate."—Dr. Sunita Puri, author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour
The New American War Film
Sep 28 2023
The New American War Film
Unfolding amid an atmosphere of profound anxiety and disillusionment, the new American war film demonstrates a breakdown of the prevailing cultural narratives that had come to characterize conflict in the previous century. In the wake of 9/11, both the nature of military conflict and the symbolic frameworks that surround it have been dramatically reshaped.  The New American War Film charts society’s shifting attitudes toward violent conflict and what is broadly considered to be its acceptable repercussions. Drawing attention to changes in gender dynamics and the focus on war’s lasting psychological effects within films such as The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, Eye in the Sky, American Sniper, and others, author Robert Burgoyne analyzes how cinema both reflects and reveals the makeup of the national imaginary.Robert Burgoyne taught film studies for several decades at Wayne State University and at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He is author of seven books including The New American War Film and Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at U.S. History. Kim Nelson is the Director of the Humanities Research Group and an Associate Professor at the University of Windsor in Canada. Her films have been screened internationally at film festivals and by broadcasters in Canada and the US. She is co-editor of The Routledge Companion to History and the Moving Image and author of Making History Move: Five Principles of the Historical Film.FILM REFERENCES:The Hurt Locker (2008)Saving Private Ryan (1998)Spanish–American War films of Thomas Edison’s 1898-99 seriesEye in the Sky (2015)Restrepo (2010)American Sniper (2014)Zero Dark Thirty (2012)A Private War (2018)Platoon (1986)Full Metal Jacket (1987)Born on the Fourth of July (1989)Battleship Potemkin (1925)DOCUMENTARY REFERENCES:Restrepo (2010 film)Infidel (2010 photo series)Into the Korengal (2010 photo series)Sleeping Soldiers—single screen (2009 short video, Tim Hetherington)OTHER REFERENCES:Fredric JamesonHomer/The IliadThomas Elsaesser on “productive pathology”-Robert Burgoyne's The New American War Film and Film Nation are available from University of Minnesota Press.
Gramsci at Sea
Sep 19 2023
Gramsci at Sea
In Gramsci at Sea, author Sharad Chari asks how the environmental crisis of the oceans is linked to legacies of capitalism and imperialism across and within the oceans. Chari reads Antonio Gramsci as a thinker of the oceanic crisis, drawing on the philosopher’s prison notes and questions concerning waves of imperial power in the inter-war oceans of his time. Here, Chari is joined in conversation with Charne Lavery, Melissa Marschke, and Philippe Le Billon.Sharad Chari is associate professor of geography and critical theory at the University of California, Berkeley. He is author of Gramsci at Sea and Fraternal Capital.Charne Lavery is senior lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. She is author of Writing Ocean Worlds.Melissa Marschke is professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. She is author of Life, Fish and Mangroves.Philippe Le Billon is professor in the Department of Geography and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. He is author of Wars of Plunder.Persons and works referenced:-Fernando Coronil-The Many-Headed Hydra by Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh-Meg Samuelson, “Thinking with Sharks,” Australian Humanities Review-Matthew Shutzer-Gavin Capps-Damien Hirst’s shark tanks-Moby Dick by Herman Melville (character of Pip)-Ellen Gallagher-Katherine McKittrick-Drexciya-John Akomfrah’s Vertigo Sea-Kamau Brathwaite’s “tidalectics”More about the book:Gramsci at Sea is available from University of Minnesota Press. An open-access edition is available to read for free online at manifold.umn.edu.
On Nietzsche and posthumanist philosophy
Aug 18 2023
On Nietzsche and posthumanist philosophy
Focusing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s reception of the life sciences of his day (including concerns with insects and the emergent social properties they exhibit) and his reflections on technology—research areas as central to Nietzsche’s work as they are to posthumanism—Edgar Landgraf provides fresh readings of Nietzsche and a critique of posthumanist and transhumanist philosophies in his new book, Nietzsche’s Posthumanism. Here, Landgraf is joined in conversation with Christian Emden and Stefan Herbrechter.Edgar Landgraf is distinguished research professor of German at Bowling Green State University. He is author of Nietzsche’s Posthumanism and Improvisation as Art, and coeditor of Posthumanism in the Age of Humanism and Play in the Age of Goethe.Christian Emden is Frances Moody Newman Professor at Rice University where he teaches German intellectual history and political thought. He is author of several books on Nietzsche, including Nietzsche’s Naturalism and Nietzsche on Language, Consciousness, and the Body.Stefan Herbrechter is former Reader in Cultural Theory at Coventry University and former professor of English and cultural studies at Heidelberg University in Germany. He is an independent scholar of critical posthumanism and author of several books including Before Humanity and Posthumanism.Episode references:Friedrich NietzscheCary WolfeBaruch SpinozaJane BennettAlfred EspinasBernard StieglerErnst KappCharles DarwinRosi BraidottiFrancesca FerrandoPatricia MacCormackTamar Sharon Reading list:Vibrant Matter / Jane BennettOn Animal Societies / Alfred EspinasNietzsche’s Animal Philosophy / Vanessa LemmMeeting the Universe Halfway / Karen BaradNietzsche’s Naturalism / Christian J. EmdenNietzsche on Language, Consciousness, and the Body / Christian J. EmdenHow We Became Posthuman / N. Katherine HaylesStaying with the Trouble / Donna HarawayPosthumanism / Stefan HerbrechterThe Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism / Arthur KrokerInsect Media / Jussi ParikkaBefore the Law / Cary WolfeKeywords: Nietzsche, posthumanism, transhumanism, critical posthumanism, swarm theory, insects, history of technology, human agency, posthumanist ethics, posthumanist politics
Ark thinking: Climate change and the Great Flood
Aug 8 2023
Ark thinking: Climate change and the Great Flood
In Noah’s Arkive, Jeffrey J. Cohen and Julian Yates examine the long history of imagining endurance against climate change catastrophe—as well as alternative ways of creating refuge. Arguing that the biblical ark may well be the worst possible exemplar of human behavior, this book uncovers the startling afterlife of the Genesis narrative and surveys the long history of dwelling with the consequences of choosing only a few to survive in order to start the world over. Here, Cohen and Yates are interviewed by Steven Swarbrick.Jeffrey J. Cohen is Dean of Humanities at Arizona State University. He is author or editor of several books, including Noah’s Arkive, Stone, Veer Ecology, and Elemental Ecocriticism.Julian Yates is H. Fletcher Brown Professor of English and Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware. He is author or editor of several books, including Noah’s Arkive; Of Sheep, Oranges, and Yeast; and Error, Misuse, Failure.Steven Swarbrick is assistant professor of English at Baruch College, City University of New York. He is author of The Environmental Unconscious.Episode references:Bible (Genesis)Athanasius Kircher (Arca Noe)N. K. Jemisin (Emergency Skin)Jeanette Winterson (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit)Rebecca Solnit (A Paradise Built in Hell, “disaster utopias”)Donna Haraway (A Cyborg Manifesto, The Companion Species Manifesto)Anna TsingSilo (Apple TV+ show) (with speculation spoiler alert)William de Brailes (The Flood of Noah) (image appearing in color in the book)Arks visited in this book include:Ark Encounter, Williamstown, KentuckyBiosphere 2, Pinal County, ArizonaThe Ark of Safety, Frostburg, MarylandKeywords: environmental humanities, climate change, Genesis, catastrophe, disaster utopias, artificial intelligence, ark thinking, medieval studies, monsters, giants, groundless reading, tension, contradiction, hope“The worst thing you can do, we have learned, is to imagine that you are no longer on an ark.” (from Noah’s Arkive, page 3)
Have we ever been civilian? On war’s expansion beyond the battlefield.
Aug 1 2023
Have we ever been civilian? On war’s expansion beyond the battlefield.
As military and other forms of political violence become the planetary norm, On Posthuman War traces the expansion of war as manifest within humanity’s individual, sociocultural, and biological existence. Author Mike Hill identifies three human-focused disciplines newly turned against humanity (demography, anthropology, and neuroscience) and questions the very notion of society. This episode brings Hill into conversation with Robyn Marasco and Warren Montag.Mike Hill is professor of English at SUNY Albany. He is coauthor (with Warren Montag) of The Other Adam Smith and author of After Whiteness and On Posthuman War.Robyn Marasco teaches political theory at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. Marasco is author of The Highway of Despair.Warren Montag is professor of English at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Montag is author of several books including Althusser and His Contemporaries.Episode references:Immanuel KantClaus von Clausewitz (On War)Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3–24) of 2006The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (from University of Chicago Press)The Gates DoctrineNational Security StrategyAmerican Sniper (opening of the film)Alain BadiouTopics:US war strategy (specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan)Gender politics in the USCrisis in the humanitiesClimate changeTerms/keywords:CivilianizedDe-civilianizedIdentity infiltrationComputation“Moving through the three fields of study identified in what follows as war disciplines (demography, anthropology, and neuroscience), computational technology is key … because, like war, it is both ubiquitous and largely invisible.” (from the Preface, page xxi)
The Rise of Economic and Racial Justice Coalitions in Cities
Jun 13 2023
The Rise of Economic and Racial Justice Coalitions in Cities
In the 2010s cities and counties across the US witnessed long-overdue change as they engaged more with questions of social, economic, and racial justice. After decades of urban economic restructuring that intensified class divides and institutional and systemic racism, dozens of local governments countered the conventional wisdom that cities couldn’t address inequality—enacting progressive labor market policies, from $15 minimum wages to paid sick leave. In their book Justice at Work: The Rise of Economic and Racial Justice Coalitions in Cities, Marc Doussard and Greg Schrock visit case studies in cities including Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Seattle, and New Orleans, and show that the contemporary wave of successful progressive organizing efforts is likely to endure—but their success hinges on a few factors including sustaining power at the grassroots. Here, Marc Doussard is in conversation with David B. Reynolds.Marc Doussard is professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is coauthor of Justice at Work: The Rise of Economic and Racial Justice Coalitions in Cities and author of Degraded Work: The Struggle at the Bottom of the Labor Market.David B. Reynolds was director of the Center for Labor and Community Studies at University of Michigan. Reynolds has been a labor educator for 20 years and is coauthor of A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement and coeditor of Igniting Justice and Progressive Power: The Partnership for Working Families Cities.Books and published works referenced:-Justice at Work: The Rise of Economic and Racial Justice Coalitions in Cities by Marc Doussard and Greg Schrock-Degraded Work: The Struggle at the Bottom of the Labor Market by Marc Doussard-A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement by Amy B. Dean and David B. Reynolds-Igniting Justice and Progressive Power: The Partnership for Working Families Cities by David B. Reynolds and Louise Simmons-Partnering for Change: Unions and Community Groups Build Coalitions for Economic Justice, edited by David B. Reynolds (with essay by Reynolds and Jen Kern: Labor and the Living Wage Movement)-”Living Wage Campaigns: An activist’s guide to building the movement for economic justice.” David Reynolds and Jen Kern. (Labor Studies Center, Wayne State University and Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2000.)-Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies by John Kingdon-The City Is the Factory, edited by Miriam Greenberg and Penny LewisOther references:-Fight for 15-ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now)-PowerSwitch Action: https://www.powerswitchaction.org/-American Rescue Plan (also known as the American Rescue Plan Act or ARPA)-The Green New DealCities mentioned:SeattleDetroitDenverChicagoSan JoseSan DiegoSilicon ValleyAnn Arbor