Help Support the NBN and NBN en Español on Patreon | Visit New Books Network en Español!

New Books Network

About Chad Valasek

C.J. Valasek is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology & Science Studies at the University of California San Diego. CJ’s research interests include the history of the human sciences, the influence of the behavioral sciences on medical practice and health policy, and digital wellness culture.

C.J. Valasek is a Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology & Science Studies at the University of California San Diego.

Chad's website

NBN Episodes hosted by Chad:

Science, Technology, and Society November 26, 2021

Conviction

The Making and Unmaking of the Violent Brain

Oliver Rollins

Hosted by Chad Valasek
Exposing ethical dilemmas of neuroscientific research on violence, this book warns against a dystopian future in which behavior is narrowly defined in relation to our biological makeup. Biological explanations for …
Science, Technology, and Society April 5, 2021

Break on Through

Radical Psychiatry and the American Counterculture

Lucas Richert

Hosted by Chad Valasek
"Antipsychiatry," Esalen, psychedelics, and DSM III: Radical challenges to psychiatry and the conventional treatment of mental health in the 1970s. The upheavals of the 1960s gave way to a decade …
Science, Technology, and Society March 12, 2021

Decarcerating Disability

Deinstitutionalization and Prison Abolition

Liat Ben-Moshe

Hosted by Chad Valasek
Prison abolition and decarceration are increasingly debated, but it is often without taking into account the largest exodus of people from carceral facilities in the twentieth century: the closure of …
Science, Technology, and Society February 5, 2021

Jim Crow Sociology

The Black and Southern Roots of American Sociology

Earl Wright, II

Hosted by Chad Valasek
Jim Crow Sociology: The Black and Southern Roots of American Sociology (U Cincinnati Press, 2020) is an extraordinary new volume that examines the origin, development, and significance of Black Sociology through the …
Science, Technology, and Society January 5, 2021

The Empire of Depression

A New History

Jonathan Sadowsky

Hosted by Chad Valasek
When is sorrow sickness? That is the question that this book asks, exploring how our understandings of sadness, melancholy, depression, mania and anxiety have changed over time, and how societies …
Science, Technology, and Society December 16, 2020

The Participant

A Century of Participation in Four Stories

Christopher M. Kelty

Hosted by Chad Valasek
Participation is everywhere today. It has been formalized, measured, standardized, scaled up, network-enabled, and sent around the world. Platforms, algorithms, and software offer to make participation easier, but new technologies …
Science, Technology, and Society December 11, 2020

Sensory Experiments

Psychophysics, Race, and the Aesthetics of Feeling

Erica Fretwell

Hosted by Chad Valasek
We so often take our senses as natural, but perhaps we should understand them as historically situated. Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race and the Aesthetics of Feeling (Duke University Press, 2020) allows us …
Science, Technology, and Society January 11, 2019

Geography of Digestion

Biotechnology and the Kellogg Enterprise

Nicholas Bauch

Hosted by Chad Valasek
While most people in the US are familiar with the ubiquitous Kellogg cereal brand, few know how it relates to US geography, science and technology around the turn of the …
Science, Technology, and Society November 21, 2018

Patent Politics

Life Forms, Markets, and the Public Interest in the United States and Europe

Shobita Parthasarathy

Hosted by Chad Valasek
In Patent Politics: Life Forms, Markets, and the Public Interest in the United States and Europe (University of Chicago Press, 2017), Shobita Parthasarathy takes us through a thirty year history …
Science, Technology, and Society June 1, 2018

The Biopolitics of Feeling

Race, Sex, and Science in the Nineteenth Century

Kyla Schuller

Hosted by Chad Valasek
Beginning with a discussion about Black Lives Matter may seem like an unlikely place to start a book about nineteenth century science and culture. However, by contrasting Black lives with …
Science, Technology, and Society April 23, 2018

Science for the People

Documents from America’s Movement of Radical Scientists

Sigrid Schmalzer, Daniel Chard, and Alyssa Botelho, eds.

Hosted by Chad Valasek
“What is needed now is not liberal reform or withdrawal, but a radical attack, a strategy of opposition. Scientific workers must develop ways to put their skills at the service …
Science, Technology, and Society April 20, 2018

The Postgenomic Condition

Ethics, Knowledge and Justice after the Genome

Jenny Reardon

Hosted by Chad Valasek
How do we create meaning after the genome? Such a profound question is at the center of the recently published book by Jenny Reardon, The Postgenomic Condition: Ethics, Knowledge and …