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PODCAST

New Books in Critical Theory

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox:

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All Episodes

54:13

The Criminal Record Complex: Risk, Race, and the...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/26

Most employers in the United States routinely conduct criminal background checks on job applicants, weeding out those with criminal convictions—and thus denying opportunities to those who need them most. In The Criminal Record Complex: Risk, Race, and the Struggle for Work in America (Princeton UP, 2025), Melissa Burch sheds light on one of the most significant forces of social and economic marginalization of our time—discrimination on the basis of criminal records. Chronicling the daily

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26:15

Hsuan L Hsu, "Olfactory Worldmaking" (U Minnesota...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/24

Smell is a vital, if underappreciated, medium through which we inhabit and imagine the world. In Olfactory Worldmaking (University of Minnesota Press, 2026), Dr. Hsuan L. Hsu traces how olfactory experience communicates across visceral, material, and affective registers to offer new ways of relating, which challenge the extractive logics of racial and colonial capitalism. Blending environmental humanities, sensory studies, and critical ethnic studies, the book highlights how scent animates

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16:34

Prolepsis

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/23

In this episode of High Theory, Gloria Fisk talks to Kim about Prolepsis. Defined by Gerard Genette in the 1970s, prolepsis is a flash forward, the opposite of analepsis, a flash back. Initially the province of high modernism, this rhetorical device has become a well-worn trope with a surprising aptitude for representing violence in our current moment. Fisk shows us how prolepsis dramatizes the workings of structural violence in narrative form. In the episode, Gloria references Stokely Carmichael

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76:34

David Bather Woods, "Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/23

Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy’s Greatest Pessimist by David Bather WoodsAn engaging biography of one of the most influential Western philosophers and a thought-provoking exploration of how to live with Arthur Schopenhauer’s pessimism.Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) almost wasn’t one of the greatest philosophers of the nineteenth century. Born in the Free City of Danzig to a family of shipping merchants, he was destined for a life of imports and exports until his father

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70:16

Becca Voelcker, "Land Cinema in an Age of Extraction"...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/21

Land Cinema in an Age of Extraction considers nonfiction filmmakers and film collectives whose work advances an understanding of land as a locus of social and environmental responsibility. Diving into little-known archives to explore films that resonate across geographies, Becca Voelcker unearths key examples of eco-political counterculture, from farmer-filmmakers in Japan and Mali to a gardener-filmmaker in Massachusetts, and from filmed landscape-portraits of women in Los Angeles, Orkney, and the

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50:21

Philip C. Almond, "Noah and the Flood in Western...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/21

In a world beset by climatic emergencies, the continuing resonance of the flood story is perhaps easy to understand. Whether in the tortured alpha male intensity of Russell Crowe’s Noah, in Darren Aronofsky’s eponymous 2014 film, or other recent derivations, the biblical narrative has become a lightning rod for gathering environmental anxieties. However, Philip C. Almond’s masterful exploration of Western cultural history uncovers a far more complex Noah than is commonly recognised: not just the

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70:10

Paul Kohlbry, "Plots and Deeds: Agrarian Annihilation...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/20

The emancipatory potential and limits of land justice, when land is at once home, property, territory, and homeland.Peasant farming was once an integral part of Palestine's agrarian fabric. But after military occupation of the West Bank in 1967, Israeli land confiscations and economic policies pushed rural cultivators into wage labor. In recent decades, Palestinian land titling and private developers have driven the slow transformation of agricultural land into real estate. In Plots and Deeds:

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73:39

Piergiorgio Di Giminiani et al. eds., "The Futures of...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/20

Over the last thirty years, Latin America has undergone an unprecedented wave of reparations targeting victims of political violence during military regimes, Indigenous and Afro-Latin groups affected by historical processes of dispossession, and citizens suffering from environmental harm. Reparations prompt us to face uncomfortable pasts and in so doing, create conditions for imagination of multiple futures. In representing the experiences and hopes of those affected by political violence in El

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63:58

Miriam Ticktin, "Against Innocence: Undoing and...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/19

In this timely and bold book, Against Innocence: Undoing and Remaking the World (U Chicago Press, 2025), Miriam Ticktin explores how a concept that consistently appears as a moral good actually ends up creating harm for so many. Claims to innocence protect migrant children, but often at the expense of their parents; claims to the innocence of the fetus work to punish women. Ticktin shows how innocence structures political relationships, focusing on individual victims and saviors, while foreclosing

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58:24

H. S. Jones, "Liberal Worlds: James Bryce and the...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/17

James Bryce (1838–1922) was a leading figure in Britain’s Liberal Party and a distinguished historian, a versatile scholar-politician who moved seamlessly between academia and politics. He was, among many other things, a cabinet minister and a popular ambassador, an expert on American politics and on Roman law, an advocate for the Armenian people and an architect of the League of Nations, a world traveller and a climber of Mount Ararat. In Liberal Worlds: James Bryce and the Democratic

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53:34

Alec Ryrie, "The Age of Hitler and How We Will...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/15

Examining everything from popular novels to politics, an investigation of persistent fascination with Nazis—and where it might take us.We live in an age where Hitler and the Nazis dominate our cultural imagination, shaping values once defined by religion. Historian Alec Ryrie explores why society remains captivated by this struggle, from history and fiction to modern myths such as Star Wars and Harry Potter. He examines the costs of our Nazi obsession and questions what will come as our anti-Nazi

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51:56

Susannah B. Mintz, "Hypochondria: In Sickness and in...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/15

Hypochondria: In Sickness and in Story (Reaktion, 2026) proposes a bold reimagining of a frequently dismissed condition. Dr. Susannah B. Mintz reframes health anxiety not as a pathology but as a site of creative potential – exploring hypochondria as a form of communication, a reorientation to time, a convergence of personal and communal identity, a declaration of bodymind needs and an embrace of ageing’s transformations. Far-ranging in its attention to historical periods, national literatures,

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74:49

Tristan J. Rogers, "Conservatism, Past and Present:...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/14

In Conservatism, Past and Present: A Philosophical Introduction (Routledge, 2025), Tristan J. Rogers argues that philosophical conservatism is a coherent and compelling set of historically rooted ideas about conserving and promoting the human good. Part I, “Conservatism Past,” presents a history of conservative ideas, exploring themes, such as the search for wisdom, the limits of philosophy, reform in preference to revolution, the relationship between authority and freedom, and liberty as a

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41:11

Wendy Brown, "States of Injury: Power and Freedom in...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/12

A sympathetic critique that attempts to free Left politics from its own snares, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity (Princeton University Press, 2025) explores how woundedness became a basis for contemporary political identity. Without condemning identity politics, Wendy Brown carefully probes the varied historical forces generating them today and the ways these formative conditions constrain emancipatory desire. Along the way, she advances a novel feminist critical theory of

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50:55

What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/12

Mothers and fathers use their time differently, with women spending roughly twice as many hours on family labor as men. But what about the gendered differences in the ways women and men think? What’s on Her Mind examines the cognitive labor that families depend on, and reveals why this essential aspect of family life is disproportionately handled by women—even in couples that aspire to practice equality. While most accounts of household labor center on how people use their time, Dr. Allison Daminger

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50:05

Sari Hanafi, "Against Symbolic Liberalism: A Plea for...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/11

In an era of deepening polarization, Sari Hanafi examines how social scientists often reproduce the very injustices they seek to challenge, taking entrenched positions while dismissing alternative perspectives.He introduces the concept of symbolic liberalism - a contradiction in which individuals espouse classical liberal principles, yet act in politically illiberal ways. This, he argues, has exacerbated the pathologies of late modernity: authoritarianism, economic precarity, and environmental

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48:20

Jacob Stegenga, "Heart of Science: A Philosophy of...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/10

In Heart of Science: A Philosophy of Scientific Inquiry (University of Chicago Press, 2026), philosopher Jacob Stegenga breaks with the most dominant epistemologies of science to argue that in judging scientific activity, we should focus on its justification, not the achievement of truth or knowledge. Yet, Stegenga argues, the aim of science goes far beyond justification and is, instead, a special kind of truth—common knowledge, a broadly shared and mutually justified scientific finding. Drawing on

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69:27

Stephen Lee Naish, "Screen Captures: Film in the Age...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/10

Movies open a window into our collective soul. In Screen Captures: Film in the Age of Emergency (Lever Press, 2026), Stephen Lee Naish guides us through recent cinematic phenomena that reflect/refract our contemporary political existence. Stephen Lee Naish is a writer, independent researcher, and cultural critic. He is the author of several books on film, politics, music, and pop culture. He lives in Kingston, Ontario. He has appeared on the New Books Network three times for previous books: Create

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42:23

Sean Parson, "Punk Anarchism: An Anti-Politics of...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/07

Punk Anarchism: An Anti-Politics of Resistance (Bloomsbury, 2026) is a radical critique of contemporary politics, offering an alternative framework rooted in anarchism, punk rock, dadaism, situationism and political nihilism.Arguing that traditional approaches to political change are ineffective in the face of the climate crisis and the failures of liberal institutions, the book advocates for rejecting the possibility of meaningful political change within the existing political

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56:57

The Cave and the Coalition: Philosophy, Populism, and...

New Books in Critical Theory ·

2026/03/07

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI acting director Eli Karetny sits down with political theorist Laura Field to trace the intellectual currents shaping today’s right — from Straussian thought at the Claremont Institute to Catholic integralism, the manosphere, and Trump-era populism. Using Plato’s Allegory of the Cave as a touchstone, they interrogate how philosophical radicalism becomes political strategy, why some thinkers return to the “cave” with prudence while others return with

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645 results

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