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- African Studies
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- Asian American Studies
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- Co-Authored
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- Invested Investor
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- NBN Book of the Day
- NBN Seminar
- New Books with Miranda Melcher
- On the Cusp: Between Strategy and Ethics
- Postscript: Conversations on Politics and Political Science
- Practical History
- Preparing for Life After Grad School
- Psychology and Climate Change
- Syriac Studies
- The Chair: In The Room at the Fed
- Oceanic Studies
About Thomas Discenna
My primary research explores different aspects of academic labor including graduate unionization efforts, contingency, undergraduate labor in the form of unpaid internships as well as the labor of the professoriate. I was President of one of the oldest collective bargaining chapters of the AAUP. In addition, I maintain an active line of research in rhetorical theory and the study of the early twentieth century German philosopher Ernst Cassirer.Tom Discenna is Professor of Communication at Oakland University whose work examines issues of academic labor and communicative labor more broadly.
NBN Episodes hosted by Thomas:
March 29, 2026
Para Power
Today, we're speaking with Nicholas Juravich, author of Para Power: How Paraprofessional Labor Changed Education (U Illinois Press, 2024). In this boo…
March 26, 2026
For the Love of Labor
My guest today is Cathryn J. Prince the author of For the Love of Labor: The Life of Pauline Newman (U Illinois Press, 2026). From her start as one of…
March 25, 2026
Work Won't Love You Back
In Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone (Bold Type Books, 2021), Sarah Jaffe argues that modern…
March 23, 2026
Health and Efficiency
Our guest today is Steffan Blayney, the author of Health & Efficiency: Fatigue, the Science of Work, and the Making of the Working-Class Body. In Heal…
March 21, 2026
Twenty-Two Cents an Hour
In Twenty-Two Cents an Hour: Disability Rights and the Fight to End Subminimum Wages (Cornell UP, 2022), Doug Crandell uncovers the harsh reality of p…
March 11, 2026
Worker Centered
Worker Centered: Allyship & Action in the Contemporary Labor Movement (Oxford UP, 2024) is a close-to-the-ground, ethnographic narrative of a workplac…
March 4, 2026
Debating the American Dream
Our guest today is Elizabeth Suhay, the author of Debating the American Dream: How Explanations for Inequality Polarize Politics. Faith in the America…
February 25, 2026
The Pandemic Workplace
A provocative book arguing that the workplace is where we learn to live democratically. In The Pandemic Workplace: How We Learned to Be Citizens in th…
February 18, 2026
Troublemaker
My guest today is Carla Kaplan, the author of Troublemaker: The Fierce, Unruly Life of Jessica Mitford (Harper, 2025). In Troublemaker, Kaplan tells t…
January 17, 2026
The Middle-Class New Deal
An expansive policy blueprint for meaningfully expanding the middle class for the first time in a century The US middle class was a product of state a…
January 9, 2026
Learning Skilled Trades in the Workplace
This open access book describes and explains a fifty-year-old woman’s process of developing trade competences. Drawing from daily journal entries, pho…
November 27, 2025
King: A Life
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's King: A Life (FSG, 2023) is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon …
November 3, 2025
Fierce Desires
One of The New Yorker’s Best Books of the Year A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year From an esteemed scho…
October 28, 2025
An Education
For many years, Diane Ravitch was among the country’s leading conservative thinkers on education. The cure for what ailed the school system was clear,…
October 11, 2025
A Blueprint for Worker Solidarity
Naomi R Williams is associate professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations at Rutgers University. Their primary research interests include labo…
August 2, 2025
Seven Social Movements That Changed America
How do social movements arise, wield power, and bring about meaningful change? Renowned scholar Linda Gordon investigates these and other salient ques…
June 29, 2025
We Are the Union
Eric Blanc is an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University, researching new workplace organizing, strikes, digital labor activism, an…
May 17, 2025
The Education Myth
The Education Myth: How Human Capital Trumped Social Democracy (Cornell UP, 2023) questions the idea that education represents the best, if not the on…
April 14, 2025
The Fantasy Economy
Wage stagnation, growing inequality, and even poverty itself have resulted from decades of neoliberal decision making, not the education system, write…
March 4, 2025
Undeclared
Undeclared: A Philosophy of Formative Higher Education (MIT Press, 2024) is an imaginative tour of the contemporary university as it could be: a place…
March 1, 2025
Race, Culture and the Video Game Industry
My guest today Sam Srauy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Journalism, and Public Relations at Oakland University, Her res…
January 20, 2025
Over Work
Following Overwhelmed, Brigid Schulte's groundbreaking examination of time management and stress, the prizewinning journalist now turns her attention …
January 10, 2025
White Poverty
My guest today is Jonathon Wilson-Hartgrove. Wilson-Hartgrove is a writer, preacher, and moral activist. He is an assistant director at the Center fo…
December 14, 2024
Rhetorical Democracy
Rhetorical Democracy: How Communication Shapes Political Culture (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024) offers an explanation and diagnosis of the current sta…