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Off the Page: A Columbia UP Podcast
Film November 24, 2022

Billy Wilder

Dancing on the Edge

Joseph McBride

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
The director and cowriter of some of the world's most iconic films―including Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd., Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment―Billy Wilder earned acclaim as American cinema's greatest …

Off the Page: A Columbia UP Podcast

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Interviews with Columbia University Press authors.

Political Science November 22, 2022

The Modern Presidency

Six Debates That Define the Institution

Michael Genovese

Hosted by Caleb Zakarin
The Modern Presidency: Six Debates That Define the Institution (Columbia University Press, 2022) is a concisely written book that helps makes sense of the most powerful office in America. Michael frames …
LGBTQ+ Studies November 14, 2022

Transtopia in the Sinophone Pacific

Howard Chiang

Hosted by Thomas Baudinette
As a broad category of identity, “transgender” has given life to a vibrant field of academic research since the 1990s. Yet the Western origins of the field have tended to …
Women's History November 9, 2022

The Insider

A Life of Virginia C. Gildersleeve

Nancy Woloch

Hosted by Jane Scimeca
Virginia C. Gildersleeve was the most influential dean of Barnard College, which she led from 1911 to 1947. An organizer of the Seven College Conference, or “Seven Sisters,” she defended …
Critical Theory October 18, 2022

Unbearable Life

A Genealogy of Political Erasure

Arthur Bradley

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
In ancient Rome, any citizen who had brought disgrace upon the state could be subject to a judgment believed to be worse than death: damnatio memoriae, condemnation of memory. The …
Literary Studies October 5, 2022

V. S. Naipaul's Journeys

From Periphery to Center

Sanjay Krishnan

Hosted by Gargi Binju
The author of more than thirty books of fiction and nonfiction and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, V. S. Naipaul (1932–2018) is one of the most acclaimed authors …
Asian Review of Books September 29, 2022

To Raise a Fallen People

The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Indian Views on International Politics

Rahul Sagar

Hosted by Nicholas Gordon
Most people tend to mark the beginning of Indian international relations thought to Nehru, and his self-proclaimed attempt to build a true non-aligned movement and more enlightened international system. But …
Diplomatic History September 28, 2022

Ideology in U.S. Foreign Relations

New Histories

Christopher Nichols and David Milne

Hosted by Grant Golub
Ideology drives American foreign policy in ways seen and unseen. Racialized notions of subjecthood and civilization underlay the political revolution of eighteenth-century white colonizers; neoconservatism, neoliberalism, and unilateralism propelled the …
Literary Studies September 28, 2022

Vineland Reread

Peter Coviello

Hosted by Christian Long
Vineland is hardly anyone’s favorite Thomas Pynchon novel. Marking Pynchon’s return after vanishing for nearly two decades following his epic Gravity’s Rainbow, it was initially regarded as slight, a middling …
Critical Theory September 26, 2022

The Quantified Scholar

How Research Evaluations Transformed the British Social Sciences

Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra

Hosted by Dave O'Brien
How do metrics and quantification shape social science? In The Quantified Scholar: How Research Evaluations Transformed the British Social Sciences (Columbia UP, 2022), Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, an Associate Professor in …
Chinese Studies September 16, 2022

Buddhist Historiography in China

John Kieschnick

Hosted by Lance Pursey
Since the early days of Buddhism in China, monastics and laity alike have expressed a profound concern with the past. In voluminous historical works, they attempted to determine as precisely …
Art September 12, 2022

Art After Liberalism

Nicholas Gamso

Hosted by Pierre d'Alancaisez
Art After Liberalism (Columbia UP, 2022) is an account of creative practice at a moment of converging political and social rifts – a moment that could be described as a …
Middle Eastern Studies September 9, 2022

Worldmaking in the Long Great War

How Local and Colonial Struggles Shaped the Modern Middle East

Jonathan Wyrtzen

Hosted by Ronay Bakan
It is widely believed that the political problems of the Middle East date back to the era of World War I, when European colonial powers unilaterally imposed artificial borders on …
General History August 16, 2022

Building States

The United Nations, Development, and Decolonization, 1945–1965

Eva-Maria Muschik

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
Postwar multilateral cooperation is often viewed as an attempt to overcome the limitations of the nation-state system. However, in 1945, when the United Nations was founded, large parts of the …
Literary Studies August 2, 2022

Free Indirect

The Novel in a Postfictional Age

Timothy Bewes

Hosted by Iqra Shagufta Cheema
What is the purpose of a novel? What purpose or logic do literary critics assign to a novel? How has the novel changed? What does that mean for its readers …
Biography June 24, 2022

German, Jew, Muslim, Gay

The Life and Times of Hugo Marcus

Marc David Baer

Hosted by Armanc Yildiz
Hugo Marcus (1880–1966) was a man of many names and many identities. Born a German Jew, he converted to Islam and took the name Hamid, becoming one of the most …
Sociology June 20, 2022

The Urbanization of People

The Politics of Development, Labor Markets, and Schooling in the Chinese City

Eli Friedman

Hosted by Michael Johnston
Amid a vast influx of rural migrants into urban areas, China has allowed cities wide latitude in providing education and other social services. While millions of people have been welcomed …
East Asian Studies June 15, 2022

The Musha Incident

A Reader on the Indigenous Uprising in Colonial Taiwan

Michael Berry

Hosted by Li-Ping Chen
On October 27, 1930, members of six Taiwanese indigenous groups ambushed the Japanese attendees of an athletic competition at the Musha Elementary School, killing 134. The uprising came as a …
Journalism June 13, 2022

Not Exactly Lying

Fake News and Fake Journalism in American History

Andie Tucher

Hosted by Jenna Spinelle
Long before the current preoccupation with “fake news,” American newspapers routinely ran stories that were not quite, strictly speaking, true. Today, a firm boundary between fact and fakery is a …
Film June 6, 2022

Alluring Monsters

The Pontianak and Cinemas of Decolonization

Rosalind Galt

Hosted by Jules O'Dwyer
In Alluring Monsters: The Pontianak and Cinemas of Decolonization (Columbia University Press, 2021), film scholar Rosalind Galt offers a cinematic exploration of the pontianak, a female vampire ghost whose origins …