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Urban Studies
European Politics May 16, 2022

The Political Philosophy of the European City

From Polis, Through City-State, to Megalopolis?

Ferenc Hörcher

Hosted by Stephen Satkiewicz
To many the city might seem simply a large urban area to live within, but it actually forms an important political concept and community that has been influential throughout European …

Urban Studies

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Interviews with scholars of urban studies about their new books

Law May 6, 2022

Indelible City

Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong

Louisa Lim

Hosted by Jane Richards
In this timely book, award-winning journalist and longtime Hong Konger, Louisa Lim, weaves together Hong Kong's fraught political and social history with her own first hand account of the spirit …
Critical Theory May 6, 2022

Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski

The Sonic Ecologies of Black Music in the Early 21st Century

Dhanveer Singh Brar

Hosted by Gummo Clare
Teklife, Ghettoville, Eski: The Sonic Ecologies of Black Music in the Early 21st Century (Goldsmiths Press, 2021) uses three Black electronic musics – footwork, grime, and the work of the …
Music May 4, 2022

Move On Up

Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power

Aaron Cohen

Hosted by Bradley Morgan
Curtis Mayfield. The Chi-Lites. Chaka Khan. Chicago’s place in the history of soul music is rock solid. But for Chicagoans, soul music in its heyday from the 1960s to the 1980s …
German Studies May 4, 2022

Afropolitan Encounters

Literature and Activism in London and Berlin

Anna von Rath

Hosted by Nicole Coleman
Afropolitan Encounters: Literature and Activism in London and Berlin (Peter Lang, 2022), the first book in the new series “Imagining Black Europe,” explores what Afropolitanism does. Mobile people of African …
Anthropology April 22, 2022

Indigenous Dispossession

Housing and Maya Indebtness in Mexico

M. Bianet Castellanos

Hosted by Jolon Timms
Following the recent global housing boom, tract housing development became a billion-dollar industry in Mexico. At the national level, neoliberal housing policy has overtaken debates around land reform. For Indigenous …
General History April 20, 2022

Four Streets and a Square

A History of Manhattan and the New York Idea

Marc Aronson

Hosted by Robert Snyder
The poet Walt Whitman wrote in his 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass that New York was a “City of the world! (for all races are here, All lands of …
Science, Technology, and Society April 19, 2022

Technology of the Oppressed

Inequity and the Digital Mundane in Favelas of Brazil

David Nemer

Hosted by Austin Clyde
In Technology of the Oppressed: Inequity and the Digital Mundane in Favelas of Brazil (MIT Press, 2022), David Nemer draws on extensive ethnographic fieldwork to provide a rich account of …
Asian Review of Books April 14, 2022

The Impossible City

A Hong Kong Memoir

Karen Cheung

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
Hong Kong is almost impossible to explain to those not from the city. Too often, the city has had to struggle with shorthand used by those writing about the city …
SSEAC Stories April 14, 2022

Greater Angkor and Global Urbanism

Roland Fletcher

Hosted by Natali Pearson
Cambodia is home to Angkor, one of the most important archaeological sites of Southeast Asia. Greater Angkor, the capital of the Khmer Empire, was a low-density city covered about a …
Environmental Studies April 13, 2022

Wild by Design

The Rise of Ecological Restoration

Laura J. Martin

Hosted by Kathryn (Kate) Carpenter
Environmental restoration is a global pursuit and a major political concern. Governments, nonprofits, private corporations, and other institutions spend billions of dollars each year to remove invasive species, build wetlands …
Latin American Studies April 13, 2022

Selling Black Brazil

Race, Nation, and Visual Culture in Salvador, Bahia

Anadelia Romo

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
In Selling Black Brazil: Race, Nation, and Visual Culture in Salvador, Bahia (University of Texas Press, 2022), Anadelia Romo argues that visual images were central to the shift from emulating …
East Asian Studies April 13, 2022

Terror Capitalism

Uyghur Dispossession and Masculinity in a Chinese City

Darren Byler

Hosted by Ed Pulford
The continuing crisis in Xinjiang has, thanks to the work of many scholars and reporters, led to greatly increased awareness of the region's history and Uyghur population among publics outside China. But so far  less appreciated have been …
General History April 11, 2022

The Spirit of New York

Defining Events in the Empire State's History (2nd Edition)

Bruce W. Dearstyne

Hosted by Deidre Tyler
In The Spirit of New York: Defining Events in the Empire State's History (2nd Edition; SUNY Press, 2022), Bruce W. Dearstyne presents New York State history through an exploration of …
Sociology April 7, 2022

Housing in the Margins

Negotiating Urban Formalities in Berlin's Allotment Gardens

Hanna Hilbrandt

Hosted by Anna Zhelnina
Housing in the Margins: Negotiating Urban Formalities in Berlin's Allotment Gardens (John Wiley & Sons, 2021) offers a theoretically informed and empirically detailed exploration of unruly housing practices and their …
Sociology April 6, 2022

How to Build a Global City

Recognizing the Symbolic Power of a Global Urban Imagination

Michele Acuto

Hosted by Rituparna Patgiri
In How to Build a Global City: Recognizing the Symbolic Power of a Global Urban Imagination (Cornell University Press, 2022), Michele Acuto considers the rise of a new generation of so-called …
Science, Technology, and Society April 5, 2022

Where Futures Converge

Kendall Square and the Making of a Global Innovation Hub

Robert Buderi

Hosted by Galina Limorenko
Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has been called “the most innovative square mile on the planet.” It's a life science hub, hosting Biogen, Moderna, Pfizer, Takeda, and others. It's a …
Popular Culture April 5, 2022

In Praise of Good Bookstores

Jeff Deutsch

Hosted by Rebekah Buchanan
In In Praise of Good Bookstores (Princeton University Press, 2022), Jeff Deutsch, the director of the Seminary Co-op Bookstores in Chicago, aims to make the case for the value of spaces …
Nordic Asia Podcast April 4, 2022

Urban Climate Change and Adaptation

Messages from the IPCC Report for Southeast Asia

Winston Chow

Hosted by Quynh Le Vo
“An atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership,” is how UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described the IPCC report published in February 2022. But what did …
Architecture April 1, 2022

American Urbanist

How William H. Whyte's Unconventional Wisdom Reshaped Public Life

Richard K. Rein

Hosted by Bryan Toepfer
On an otherwise normal weekday in the 1980s, commuters on busy Route 1 in central New Jersey noticed an alarming sight: a man in a suit and tie dashing across …