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Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Interviews with Columbia University Press authors.

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70:25

Margaret Hennefeld, "Specters of Slapstick and Silent...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2019/03/05

In the early days of film, female comedians appeared in films that included both strange activities and slapstick. In her new book Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes (Columbia University Press, 2018), Margaret Hennefeld, Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, reviews the role of these women, as well as how their appearances had a cultural and political effect, particularly in the feminist movement leading to

77:55

Alexandre Kojève, "Atheism," trans by Jeff Love...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2019/02/25

Columbia University press has just released a new translation of a work by philosopher Alexandre Kojève, simply titled Atheism, translated by Professor Jeff Love. Considered to be one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant and unconventional thinkers, Kojève was a Russian émigré to France whose lectures on Hegel in the 1930s galvanized a generation of French intellectuals. Although Kojève wrote a great deal, he published very little in his lifetime, and so the ongoing rediscovery of his work

70:30

Thomas Patton, "The Buddha’s Wizards: Magic,...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2019/02/11

In his recent monograph, The Buddha’s Wizards: Magic, Protection, and Healing in Burmese Buddhism(Columbia University Press, 2018), Thomas Patton examines the weizzā, a figure in Burmese Buddhism who is possessed with extraordinary supernatural powers, usually gained through some sort of esoteric practice. Like the tantric adept in certain other Buddhist traditions, the weizzā can use his skills both to manipulate human affairs in the present world and to help people progress towards Buddhist

66:30

Perrin Selcer, "The Postwar Origins of the Global...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2018/12/24

Having been born into a world in which people knew about anthropogenic global warming, I grew up in the “global environment.” Although the category “global environment” seems normal, if not natural, Perrin Selcer shows just how recent its origins actually are. In his innovative new book, The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment: How the United Nations Built Spaceship Earth(Columbia University Press, 2018), Selcer investigates how cosmopolitan scientists in the post-WWII era attempted and failed

68:55

Howard Chiang, "After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2018/12/17

Howard Chiang’s new book is a masterful study of the relationship between sexual knowledge and Chinese modernity. After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China (Columbia University Press, 2018) guides readers through the history of eunuchs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the techniques of visualization that helped establish the conditions that produced sex as an object of empirical knowledge, the rise of sexology in the 1920s, the discourse of “sex

39:50

Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, “What Slaveholders Think:...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2018/10/17

According to the Walk Free Foundation, there are currently 46 million slaves in the world. Despite being against international law, slavery is not yet culturally condemned everywhere. Despite being human rights violators, many perpetrators are respected members of their communities. In his new book, What Slaveholders Think: How Contemporary Perpetrators Rationalize what They Do (Columbia University Press, 2017), Professor Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick, from the University of San Diego and the University

58:38

Jeffrey D. Sachs, "A New Foreign Policy: Beyond...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2018/10/10

If you are tired of reading the same, Washington-based, consensus, 'realist' and or 'neo-conservative', critiques of American foreign policy, here is something to salivate on: Jeffrey D. Sachs', A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (Columbia University Press, 2018). By turns, noted author Jeffrey Sachs' book is unorthodox, iconoclastic, novel and indeed at times eccentric. A New Foreign Policy provides a road map for a U.S. foreign policy that embraces globalism, cooperation,

60:41

Larry Shapiro, “The Miracle Myth: Why Belief in the...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2018/09/26

There are many who believe Moses parted the Red Sea and Jesus came back from the dead. Others are certain that exorcisms occur, ghosts haunt attics, and the blessed can cure the terminally ill. Though miracles are immensely improbable, people have embraced them for millennia, seeing in them proof of a supernatural world that resists scientific explanation. In The Miracle Myth: Why Belief in the Resurrection and the Supernatural Is Unjustified (Columbia University Press, 2016), Professor Larry

40:52

Michal Kravel-Tovi, “When the State Winks: The...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2018/04/25

In When the State Winks: The Performance of Jewish Conversion in Israel (Columbia University Press, 2017), Michal Kravel Tovi, associate professor in the department of sociology and anthropology at Tel Aviv University, offers an intimate, insightful ethnography of the current field of Jewish conversion in Israel. It highlights the complex and often conflicted nature of an intimate, individual religious performance that is at once and the same time also one of the most pressing political issues in

69:26

Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, “The Emergence of Iranian...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2017/12/20

Over the past century, virtually every Iranian—whether living in Iran or in the diaspora—has been exposed, to one degree or another, to certain commonly held nationalistic beliefs about what it means to be Iranian. These beliefs include the idea that Iranians are an “Aryan” race; that pre-Islamic Iran was a sort of golden age, marked by a glorious Persian Empire; and that this pure Iranian “soul” was subsequently “polluted” by the arrival of Arab culture, language and even religion in the seventh

54:52

Simone Muller, “Wiring the World: The Social and...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2017/07/10

Simone Muller’s Wiring the World: The Social and Cultural Creation of Global Telegraph Networks (Columbia University Press, 2016) is a superb account of the laying of submarine telegraph cables in the nineteenth century and the battles over them in the subsequent decades. Her book shows how expanding telegraph networks were instrumental in processes of capitalism, nation-building, and globalization. To track these grand developments, however, Muller reconstructs the network of people who built,

27:28

Blake Atwood, “Reform Cinema in Iran: Film and...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2017/06/26

Iranian cinema has close connections to the 1979 Islamic revolution. Ayatollah Khomeini , explicitly pointed to the uses of cinema for religious and revolutionary political purposes. But Iranian films and the means of film production gradually changed in the post-Khomeini period. In Reform Cinema in Iran: Film and Political Change in the Islamic Republic (Columbia University Press, 2016), Blake Atwood, Assistant Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at

51:44

Audrey Truschke, “Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2017/04/03

Contemporary scholarship on the Mughal empire has generally ignored the role Sanskrit played in imperial political and literary projects. However, in Culture of Encounters: Sanskrit at the Mughal Court (Columbia University Press, 2016), Audrey Truschke, Assistant Professor of South Asian History at Rutgers University–Newark, demonstrates that Sanskrit was central to the process of royal self-definition. She documents how Brahman and Jain intellectuals were working closely with Persian-speaking

33:06

Sarah Hammerschlag, “Broken Tablets: Levinas,...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2017/03/20

In Broken Tablets: Levinas, Derrida, and the Literary Afterlife of Religion (Columbia University Press, 2016), Sarah Hammerschlag, Associate Professor of Religion and Literature at the University of Chicago Divinity School, explores the admiring and at times oppositional philosophical kinship between Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, two of the France’s greatest 20th century philosophers. One fundamental aspect of the Levinas-Derrida relationship is each man’s relationship to his Jewish identity

68:00

Li Zhi, “A Book To Burn And A Book To Keep (Hidden):...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2017/03/09

Rivi Handler-Spitz, Pauline C. Lee, and Haun Saussy have created a wonderful resource for readers, researchers, students, and teachers alike. A Book To Burn And A Book To Keep (Hidden): Selected Writings (Columbia University Press, 2016) collects and translates a range of works by Li Zhi, a fascinating and significant...

29:01

Ronojoy Sen, “Nation at Play: A History of Sport in...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2017/03/06

Covering sporting activities from ancient times right up to the modern day, Ronojoy Sen’s Nation at Play: A History of Sport in India (Columbia University Press, 2016) is at once broad in its scope, yet detailed in its analysis of key events. From football, to the Olympics, to cricket the book explores how sporting life changes in relation to wider societal transformations. I found it both highly readable, and packed full of the type of stories that appeal to sports aficionados.

58:05

Brian T. Edwards, “After the American Century: The...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2017/03/06

American culture is ubiquitous across the globe. It travels to different social contexts and is consumed by international populations. But the relationship between American culture and the meanings attached to the United States change over time. During the 20th century, the American Century, American culture generally aided in the positive global perception of U.S. policies and governance. In After the American Century: The Ends of U.S. Culture in the Middle East (Columbia University Press, 2016),

66:57

Eric Dietrich, “Excellent Beauty: The Naturalness of...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2016/04/15

Although there are many deep criticisms of a scientific view of humanity and the world, a persistent theme is that the scientific worldview eliminates mystery, and in particular, the wonders and mysteries of the world’s religions. In Excellent Beauty: The Naturalness of Religion and the Unnaturalness of the World (Columbia University Press), Eric Dietrich argues that the human thirst for mystery would still be slated even if we explain away the mysteries of religion in scientific, specifically

56:11

Eli Zaretsky, “Political Freud: A History” (Columbia...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2015/12/02

Back in the early 70s, Eli Zaretsky wrote for a socialist newspaper and was engaged to review a recently released book, Psychoanalysis and Feminism by Juliet Mitchell. First, he decided, he’d better read some Freud. This started a life-long engagement with psychoanalysis and leftist politics, and his new book Political Freud: A History (Columbia University Press, 2015) conveys the richness of his decades of reading Freud. Following his 2004 Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of

62:20

Sophal Ear, “Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign...

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast ·

2015/08/18

Although recent decades have brought with them many critiques of international development projects worldwide, Sophal Ear is especially well positioned to have written a book addressing the successes and failures of foreign donor assistance to countries emerging from long periods of violent conflict. A Cambodian trained in political science in the United States who also spent time working at the World Bank, Ear brings a no-nonsense approach to Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance

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Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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