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Anthropology
African American Studies May 27, 2022

There's a Disco Ball Between Us

A Theory of Black Gay Life

Jafari S. Allen

Hosted by Brittney Edmonds
In There's a Disco Ball Between Us: A Theory of Black Gay Life (Duke UP, 2022), Jafari S. Allen offers a sweeping and lively ethnographic and intellectual history of what …

Anthropology

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Interviews with anthropologists about their new books.

African American Studies May 25, 2022

Academic Apartheid

Race and the Criminalization of Failure in an American Suburb

Sean J. Drake

Hosted by Mickell Carter
In Academic Apartheid: Race and the Criminalization of Failure in an American Suburb (U California Press, 2022), sociologist Sean J. Drake addresses long-standing problems of educational inequality from a nuanced …
Anthropology May 24, 2022

Chinese Environmental Ethics

Religions, Ontologies, and Practices

Mayfair Yang

Hosted by Gustavo Gutiérrez Suárez
An interdisciplinary collection in the new field of environmental humanities, Chinese Environmental Ethics: Religions, Ontologies, and Practices (Rowman and Littlefield, 2021) brings together Chinese environmental ethics, religious ontology, and religious …
Genocide Studies May 23, 2022

Global Burning

Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis

Eve Darian-Smith

Hosted by Jeff Bachman
Recent years have seen out-of-control wildfires rage across remote Brazilian rainforests, densely populated California coastlines, and major cities in Australia. What connects these separate events is more than immediate devastation …
Asian American Studies May 23, 2022

Archipelago of Resettlement

Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization Across Guam and Israel-Palestine

Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi

Hosted by Ann Choi
“Nước Việt Nam: a home, a cradle, a point of departure” (Gandhi, 1). The Vietnamese word nước embraces the duality of land and water with an idea of “home.” Through …
Science, Technology, and Society May 23, 2022

Unmasked

COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji

Emily Mendenhall

Hosted by Austin Clyde
Unmasked: COVID, Community, and the Case of Okoboji (Vanderbilt UP, 2022) is the story of what happened in Okoboji, a small Iowan tourist town, when a collective turn from the …
Mobilities and Methods May 18, 2022

Refuge

How the State Shapes Human Potential

Heba Gowayed

Hosted by Alize Arıcan
As the world confronts the largest refugee crisis since World War II, wealthy countries are being called upon to open their doors to the displaced, with the assumption that this …
Anthropology May 18, 2022

Waste Worlds

Inhabiting Kampala's Infrastructures of Disposability

Jacob Doherty

Hosted by Sneha Annavarapu
Uganda's capital, Kampala, is undergoing dramatic urban transformations as its new technocratic government seeks to clean and green the city. Waste Worlds: Inhabiting Kampala's Infrastructures of Disposability (U California Press …
Critical Theory May 17, 2022

Diminished Faculties

A Political Phenomenology of Impairment

Jonathan Sterne

Hosted by Gummo Clare
Diminished Faculties: A Political Phenomenology of Impairment (Duke UP, 2022) begins by calling into question a fundamental principle of orthodox phenomenology (and, for that matter, a great deal of humanities …
South Asian Studies May 17, 2022

Television in Bangladesh

News and Audiences

Ratan Kumar Roy

Hosted by Sharonee Dasgupta
Ratan Kumar Roy's book Television in Bangladesh: News and Audiences (Routledge, 2020) examines the role of 24/7 television news channels in Bangladesh. By using a multi-sited ethnography of television news media …
Medicine May 12, 2022

The Cage of Days

Time and Temporal Experience in Prison

Michael G. Flaherty and K. C. Carceral

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
Prisons operate according to the clockwork logic of our criminal justice system: we punish people by making them “serve” time. The Cage of Days: Time and Temporal Experience in Prison …
Anthropology May 11, 2022

Prophets and Ghosts

The Story of Salvage Anthropology

Samuel J. Redman

Hosted by Lukas Rieppel
Prophets and Ghosts: The Story of Salvage Anthropology (Harvard UP, 2021) is a searching account of nineteenth-century salvage anthropology, an effort to preserve the culture of “vanishing” Indigenous peoples through …
Sociology May 11, 2022

The Sociology of Bullying

Power, Status, and Aggression Among Adolescents

Christopher Donoghue

Hosted by Rituparna Patgiri
School shootings and suicides by young victims of bullying have spurred a proliferation of anti-bullying programs, yet most of the research done on school bullying has been from psychologists. The …
African Studies May 11, 2022

Africa’s Joola Shipwreck

Causes and Consequences of a Humanitarian Disaster

Karen Samantha Barton

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
In 2002, a government-owned Senegalese ferry named the Joola capsized in a storm off the coast of The Gambia in a tragedy that killed 1,863 people and left 64 survivors …
Anthropology May 10, 2022

Suspicion

Vaccines, Hesitancy, and the Affective Politics of Protection in Barbados

Nicole Charles

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
In 2014 Barbados introduced a vaccine to prevent certain strains of the human papillomavirus (HPV) and reduce the risk of cervical cancer in young women. Despite the disproportionate burden of …
High Theory May 10, 2022

Deterritorialization

A Discussion with Shweta Krishnan

Shweta Krishnan

Hosted by Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu
Saronik talks to Shweta Krishnan, doctoral candidate in Anthropology at George Washington University. She speaks about how she uses Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of deterritorialization in her work …
Catholic Studies May 10, 2022

Millennial Missionaries

How a Group of Young Catholics Is Trying to Make Catholicism Cool

Katherine Dugan

Hosted by Allison Isidore
Millennials in the U.S. have been characterized as uninterested in religion, as defectors from religious institutions, and as agnostic about the role of religious identity in their culture. Amid the …
Ethnographic Marginalia May 10, 2022

Studying Borderlands

Talking Ethnography with Dr. Sahana Ghosh

Sahana Ghosh

Hosted by Sneha Annavarapu
How do border policing and violence intersect with gender and sexuality to affect border communities? Today’s guest, Dr. Sahana Ghosh, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the National University of Singapore …
Anthropology May 9, 2022

The Sound of Salvation

Voice, Gender, and the Sufi Mediascape in China

Guangtian Ha

Hosted by Irene Promodh
The Jahriyya Sufis—a primarily Sinophone order of Naqshbandiyya Sufism in northwestern China—inhabit a unique religious soundscape. The hallmark of their spiritual practice is the “loud” (jahr) remembrance of God in …
Anthropology May 9, 2022

Collaborative Damage

An Experimental Ethnography of Chinese Globalization

Mikkel Bunkenborg, Morten Nielsen, and Morten Axel Pedersen

Hosted by Adam Bobeck
Collaborative Damage: An Experimental Ethnography of Chinese Globalization (Cornell UP, 2022) is an experimental ethnography of Chinese globalization that compares data from two frontlines of China's global intervention—sub-Saharan Africa and …