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Critical Theory
High Theory April 1, 2022

Welcome to High Theory!

Kim Adams and Soronik Bosu

Hosted by Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu
Welcome to High Theory! High Theory is a podcast in which we get high on the substance of theory. And we ask the three standard questions, to each other, and …

Critical Theory

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Interviews with scholars of critical theory about their new books.

LGBTQ+ Studies March 25, 2023

Violent Inheritance

Sexuality, Land, and Energy in Making the North American West

E. Cram

Hosted by Clayton Jarrard
Violent Inheritance: Sexuality, Land, and Energy in Making the North American West (U California Press, 2022) deepens the analysis of settler colonialism's endurance in the North American West and how …
Psychology March 23, 2023

Capitalism and Desire

The Psychic Cost of Free Markets

Todd McGowan

Hosted by Eugenio Duarte
If you have ever gotten excited over buying a new object only to feel let down once you acquire it, then today’s discussion will be relevant to you. My guest …
High Theory March 23, 2023

ACLA 2023

How Will Critique Save the World?: Popular Theory and Public Humanities

Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu

Hosted by Kim Adams and Saronik Bosu
This episode of High Theory is based upon a conference paper Saronik and Kim wrote for the American Comparative Literature Association Conference in 2023. It departs from our usual conversational …
Art March 22, 2023

Visual Culture and the Forensic

Culture, Memory, Ethics

David Houston Jones

Hosted by Pierre d'Alancaisez
The relationship between images and truth has a complicated history. In the Western tradition, the Kantian settlement on aesthetic judgment as detached from external interests gave rise to artistic production …
Critical Theory March 22, 2023

Imperfect Victims

Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism

Leigh Goodmark

Hosted by Kendall Dinniene
Leigh Goodmark’s new book, Imperfect Victims: Criminalized Survivors and the Promise of Abolition Feminism (U California Press, 2023), uses the stories of individual criminalized survivors of gender based violence to …
Critical Theory March 21, 2023

The Politics of Precarity

Spaces of Extractivism, Violence, and Suffering

Gediminas Lesutis

Hosted by Shraddha Chatterjee
Based on critical theory and ethnographic research, Gediminas Lesutis' book The Politics of Precarity: Spaces of Extractivism, Violence, and Suffering (Routledge, 2021) explores how intensifying geographies of extractive capitalism shape human …
Critical Theory March 21, 2023

Combat Trauma

Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in Post-9/11 America

Nadia Abu El-Haj

Hosted by Stephen Dozeman
One of the most recognizable tropes in American society in the past few decades is the scarred war veteran, returning from foreign lands with wounds both visible and invisible …
Policing, Incarceration, and Reform March 21, 2023

Injustice, Inc.

How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor

Daniel L. Hatcher

Hosted by Deidre Tyler
Injustice, Inc.: How America's Justice System Commodifies Children and the Poor (U California Press, 2023) exposes the ways in which justice systems exploit America's history of racial and economic inequality to …
Jewish Studies March 21, 2023

Jewish Antifascism and the False Promise of Settler Colonialism

Max Kaiser

Hosted by Miriam Schulz
Max Kaiser's book Jewish Antifascism and the False Promise of Settler Colonialism (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022) takes a timely look at histories of radical Jewish movements, their modes of Holocaust memorialisation, and …
Journalism March 20, 2023

Borderland

Decolonizing the Words of War

Chrisanthi Giotis

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
Every two seconds a person is displaced, caught in one of the more than 40 active conflicts around the world that show no sign of ending. Since 1994, there has …
Art March 19, 2023

Autonomy

The Social Ontology of Art under Capitalism

Nicholas Brown

Hosted by Kaveh Rafie
In Autonomy: The Social Ontology of Art under Capitalism (Duke University Press, 2019), Nicholas Brown offers a fresh perspective on aesthetic autonomy and its political value, one of the great debates of the twentieth century …
Politics & Polemics March 18, 2023

The Struggle for a Decent Politics

On "Liberal" as an Adjective

Michael Walzer

Hosted by Keith Krueger
The national purpose of the American state is to realize and then sustain the democracy and the equality that was the promise of our founding. I believe that requires perennial …
African American Studies March 17, 2023

It's Always Been Ours

Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies

Jessica Wilson

Hosted by Ari Barbalat
In It's Always Been Ours: Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies (Hachette Go, 2023) eating disorder specialist and storyteller Jessica Wilson challenges us to rethink what having a "good" …
Think About It March 17, 2023

Vivian Gornick on Emma Goldman

Book Talk 58

Vivian Gornick

Hosted by Uli Baer
What Is to Be Done? In her luminous biography Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life (Yale UP, 2011), Vivian Gornick brings us back to this question, originally made …
Gender Studies March 17, 2023

Between Banat

Queer Arab Critique and Transnational Arab Archives

Mejdulene Bernard Shomali

Hosted by Fulya Pinar
In Between Banat: Queer Arab Critique and Transnational Arab Archives (Duke UP, 2023), Mejdulene Bernard Shomali examines homoeroticism and non-normative sexualities between Arab women in transnational Arab literature, art, and …
Critical Theory March 16, 2023

Playing Oppression

The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games

Mary Flanagan and Mikael Jakobsson

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
Playing Oppression: The Legacy of Conquest and Empire in Colonialist Board Games (MIT Press, 2023) by Dr. Mary Flanagan & Dr. Mikael Jakobsson is a striking analysis of popular board …
The Future of . . . with Owen Bennett-Jones March 13, 2023

The Future of Nonviolence

A Conversation with Julie M. Norman

Julie M. Norman

Hosted by Owen Bennett-Jones
Ever since Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, non-violent resistance has held a special place in the public imagination. What can be better after all than forcing political change without …
Politics & Polemics March 12, 2023

The Covid Consensus

The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left

Toby Green and Thomas Fazi

Hosted by Pierre d'Alancaisez
During the first months of the pandemic, governments worldwide agreed that ‘following the science’ with hard lockdowns and vaccine mandates was the best way to preserve life. But evidence is …
Music March 12, 2023

Dave Brubeck and the Performance of Whiteness

Kelsey Klotz

Hosted by Nathan Smith
How can we—jazz fans, musicians, writers, and historians—understand the legacy and impact of a musician like Dave Brubeck? It is undeniable that Brubeck leveraged his fame as a jazz musician …