University of Minnesota Press

Cities across the US are rethinking streets, going beyond sidewalks and bike lanes to welcome nonmotorists to share the roadway. David L. Prytherch, author of Reclaiming the Road: Mobility Justice beyond Complete Streets, traces the historical evolution of America's streets and explores contemporary movements to retake them from cars for diverse forms of mobility and community life. Can we design more just streets? Here, Prytherch is joined in conversation with Mimi Sheller and Peter Norton.David Prytherch is professor of geography at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is author of Reclaiming the Road: Mobility Justice beyond Complete Streets; Law, Engineering, and the American Right-of-Way: Imagining a More Just Street; and coeditor of Transport, Mobility, and the Production of Urban Space. Mimi Sheller is Dean of The Global School at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Sheller is founding co-editor of the journal Mobilities, founding co-director of the Centre for Mobilities at Lancaster University, England, and past president of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility. Sheller is author of Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes.Peter Norton is associate professor of history in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia. He is author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City and Autonorama: The Illustory Promise of High-Tech Driving.REFERENCES:John UrryThe Death and Life of Great American Cities / Jane JacobsPeople for Mobility JusticeRobert MosesComplete StreetsThe UntokeningKimberlé CrenshawPraise for the book:"Reporting from the front lines of recent post-pandemic physical and cultural transformations of public space in nine major American cities, David L. Prytherch raises profound questions about what streets are for and how they might be equitably shared. The result is a fresh, hopeful vision for intersectional mobility justice and public placemaking."—Mimi Sheller, author of Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes"David L. Prytherch gives a crisp, clear, and accessible narrative of the movement to reclaim public streets after one hundred years of domination by private automobile interests. Steering us through the politics of streets during the Covid-19 pandemic and recovery, this is a refreshingly innovative and optimistic book for anyone concerned about our urban mobility future."—Jason Henderson, coauthor of Street Fights in Copenhagen: Bicycle and Car Politics in a Green Mobility CityReclaiming the Road: Mobility Justice beyond Complete Streets by David L. Prytherch is available from University of Minnesota Press.

Cinema can be furtive and intensely beautiful—and it can leave a viewer craving more. Cinemal is Tessa Laird's passionate inquiry into the desire to write about animals and to write about art, juxtaposing the two and burrowing into the ways that films mimic the majesty, mystery, and movements of animals. Here, Laird is joined in conversation with Giovanni Aloi and Caroline Picard, editors of the Art after Nature series with University of Minnesota Press.Tessa Laird is an artist, writer, and senior lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Her books include a fictocritical exploration of color, A Rainbow Reader, and a cultural history of bats, Bat, in Reaktion Books' celebrated Animal series.Giovanni Aloi teaches art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is author or editor of many books on the nonhuman and art.Caroline Picard is a writer, cartoonist, curator, and founder of the Green Lantern Press.EPISODE REFERENCES:The Animal That Therefore I Am / Jacques DerridaDonna HarawayArthur and Corinne CantrillMichael TaussigMonocultures of the Mind / Vandana ShivaWhat Animals Teach Us about Politics / Brian MassumiLen Lye, New Zealand modernist artistSergei EisensteinElectric Animal / Akira LippitBaptiste MarizotUndrowned / Alexis Pauline GumbsSriwhana SpongPraise for the book:“Original, erudite, and playful all in one, Cinemal is not only a joy to read but estranges the very idea of cinema, and therefore of life, in ways wondrous and wise.”—Michael Taussig, Columbia University“A sparkling, engaging book, a virtuosic and thrilling interleaving of experimental cinema, philosophies of the more-than-human, and stories of animal encounters. Celebrating the variety and inventiveness of cinematic experimentation, Tessa Laird calls for us to remake our human senses in order to align better with the needs of the planet.”—Laura U. Marks, author of The Fold: From Your Body to the CosmosArt after Nature is a series edited by Giovanni Aloi and Caroline Picard that explores epistemological questions that emerge from the expanding, environmental consciousness of the humanities.Cinemal: The Becoming-Animal of Experimental Film by Tessa Laird is available from University of Minnesota Press.

“There is no such thing as a raw, natural, aggressive urge that underlies human violence. While we inherit defense mechanisms, they work only when triggered culturally.” So opens John Protevi's Regimes of Violence: Toward a Political Anthropology, which takes as its biocultural basis that social practices shape our bodies and minds, and analyzes human aggression throughout history: early nomadic foragers, organized sports, berserkers and blackout rages, maroons escaping slavery, the January 6th invasion of the US Capitol, and responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. Protevi entwines the philosophical with the anthropological and considers why humans' capacity for cooperation and sharing is persistently overlooked by stories of aggression and warfare. This book is an important contribution to the studies of Deleuze and Guattari, and here, Andrew Culp (Dark Deleuze) and Protevi (“joyous Deleuze”) dig into myriad shades of human expression from philosophical and cultural perspectives.John Protevi is professor of French studies and philosophy at Louisiana State University and author of Regimes of Violence: Toward a Political Anthropology; Political Affect: Connecting the Social and the Somatic; Life, War, Earth: Deleuze and the Sciences; and Edges of the State.Andrew Culp is director of the MA Aesthetics and Politics program at California Institute of the Arts and author of Dark Deleuze and A Guerrilla Guide to Refusal. Episode references:Francisco VarelaEvan ThompsonEsequiel Di PaoloHanne De JaegherFrancisco Varela, Eleanor Rosch, Evan Thompson / The Embodied MindWilhelm ReichBaruch SpinozaSigmund Freud Gustave Le BonJeremy Gilbert / Common GroundRodrigo Nunes / Neither Vertical nor HorizontalManuel DeLanda / War in the Age of Intelligent MachinesManuel DeLanda / A Thousand Years of Nonlinear HistoryDeleuze and Guattari / Anti-OedipusBatailleNietzscheMarxFreudDeleuze and Guattari / A Thousand PlateausClaude Lévi-Strauss / Wild ThoughtLisa Adkins / The Time of MoneyArline T. Geronimus / Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust SocietyAndrew Culp / Dark DeleuzeDeleuze and Guattari / What Is Philosophy?Suzanne de Brunhoff / Marx on MoneyQuentin BadaireQuentin Badaire's book review of Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. ScottLewis Henry MorganHobbesLockeDaniel Luban / Hobbesian Slavery (essay in Political Theory)RousseauCase studies discussed in this episode:BerserkersEsprit de CorpsRobert BalesShenetta White-BallardPraise for the book:"A brilliant and novel political anthropology that updates our most entrenched philosophical biases and looks to a politics of joy beyond the relations of command."—Davide PanagiaRegimes of Violence: Toward a Political Anthropology by John Protevi is available from University of Minnesota Press.

Scholars have long challenged the common assumption of midwestern isolationism. In Global Heartland, historian Peter Simons reorients the way we look at the critical period in US history from the 1930s through 1950s, showing how farmers across the Midwest understood their work as contributing to an era of international upheaval, geographical reimagination, and global ecological thinking. Here, Simons is joined in conversation with Michael Lansing about the rural heartland, US foreign policy, and the changing and multidisciplinary ways that scholars approach history.Peter Simons is a historian in upstate New York and author of Global Heartland: Cultivating the American Century on the Midwestern Farm.Michael Lansing is a professor of history at Augsburg University and author of Insurgent Democracy: The Nonpartisan League in North American Politics. EPISODE REFERENCES:Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the Middle of the American Century / Hendrik MeijerThe Heartland: An American History / Kristin HogansonGrasslands Grown: Creating Place on the US Northern Plains and Canadian Prairies / Molly P. RozumBack East: How Westerners Invented a Region / Flannery BurkeSupermarket USA: Food and Power in the Cold War Farms Race / Shane HamiltonNuclear Country: The Origins of the Rural New Right / Catherine McNicol StockLester E. Helland Papers, Wisconsin Veterans Museum, MadisonPraise for the book:“From Lend-Lease to Food for Peace, Global Heartland reveals how rural Midwesterners came to see their farms as being at the heart of the world.”—Kristin Hoganson“This rich and revealing book transforms the way we think about the rural heartland.”—Michael LansingGlobal Heartland: Cultivating the American Century on the Midwestern Farm by Peter Simons is available from University of Minnesota Press.

Talia Mae Bettcher's Beyond Personhood provides an entirely new philosophical approach to trans experience, trans oppression, gender dysphoria, and the relationship between gender and identity. Arguing that the tense relation between trans oppression and resistance is mediated through the complex social phenomenon of gender make-believe, Bettcher introduces the groundbreaking theory of interpersonal spatiality, which requires rejection of the philosophical concepts of person, self, and subject. Here, Bettcher is joined in conversation with Judith Butler.Talia Mae Bettcher is professor of philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles, and author of Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy and coeditor of Trans Philosophy.Judith Butler is Distinguished Professor in the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. They are author of several books including Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity and, most recently, Who's Afraid of Gender?Praise for the book:"It's a beautiful book. Challenging, crucial, indispensable to our times." —Judith Butler (in this episode)"Profound and provocative . . . broadly relevant to many disciplines and social movements."—Susan Stryker, Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Stanford UniversityBeyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy is available from University of Minnesota Press.

​"Infrastructure is invisible until it breaks." How do we visualize something that cannot be physically seen? What limitations do existing knowledge structures impose that reverberate through planetary problem-solving processes, including public health and environmental crises? This episode brings together two scholars who think elementally: Lisa Yin Han, who operates in the blue humanities or ocean humanities, who studies mediation and the deep seafloor; and Gloria Chan-Sook Kim, who focuses on scientific problems of knowledge and visualization and more specifically, microbes. Their astounding conversation goes from emerging microbes to the seabed to places where their research intersects, including catastrophic deferral, scalar mediation, the figure of the plume, and the concept of resolution.Lisa Yin Han is assistant professor of media studies at Pitzer College and author of Deepwater Alchemy: Extractive Mediation and the Taming of the Seafloor.Gloria Chan-Sook Kim is a scholar of visual culture, media studies, and science and technology studies, assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside, and author of Microbial Resolution: Visualization and the Security in the War on Microbes. Episode references:Melody JueCelina Osuna, desert humanitiesNicole StarosielskiChristopher P. Heuer / Into the WhiteAndrea BallesteroAdriana Petryna / Life ExposedCelia LoweStefan Helmreich / Alien OceanJames Hamilton-Paterson / Seven-TenthsDeepwater Alchemy and Microbial Resolution are available from University of Minnesota Press.

There's living coral, and then there's Coral—the iconicity and imaginary of living coral. As Melody Jue writes in Coralations, coral alternates between signifying an organism and signifying an environment, all too often imagined as a tourist destination. In rethinking the limitations of Coral, Jue opens up possibilities for a more expansive sense of environmental media, more inclusive goals for multispecies justice, and more nuanced forms of oceanic care work. Here, Jue is joined in conversation with Ann Elias. Melody Jue is associate professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Jue is author of Coralations and Wild Blue Media: Thinking through Seawater and coeditor of Saturation: An Elemental Politics with Rafico Ruiz.Ann Elias is professor emerita of visual culture at the University of Sydney. Elias is author of many books including Coral Empire: Underwater Oceans, Colonial Tropics, Visual Modernity.REFERENCES:Coral Whisperers (Irus Braverman)Situated Knowledges (Donna Haraway, in the journal Feminist Studies)Her Seal Skin Coat (Lauren Beukes, short story)Sylvia EarleJacques CousteauCalifornia Against the Sea (Rosanna Xia)Jean PainlevéZoological Surrealism (James Leo Cahill)Alien Ocean (Stefan Helmreich)Chasing Coral documentaryCoralations by Melody Jue is available from University of Minnesota Press. This book is part of the Forerunners series, and an open-access edition is available to read free online at manifold.umn.edu.

University of Minnesota Press, est. 1925, turns 100 this year. Yes, we are twice as old as Saturday Night Live. And just as old as The New Yorker and The Great Gatsby. The Press has had only five directors in its history, and many current staff have been on for more than a few decades.How about another serendipitous milestone: this podcast, est. 2020, is releasing its 100th episode right here, right now. The past 99 episodes have focused on our authors. Between authorship and publication, a book passes through more than a few hands, and today we are getting into it with people who have dedicated their days, years, and decades in service of books and research. About half of our staff are represented here. Without further adieu, come meet (half of) the Press!People appearing in this episode include:Douglas Armato, director of University of Minnesota PressSusan Doerr, associate directorEmily Hamilton, associate director for book publishingLaura Westlund, managing editor and development officerJason Weidemann, editorial directorPieter Martin, senior editorMichael Stoffel, managing editor–scholarly booksHeather Skinner, publicity director and assistant marketing managerRachel Moeller, assistant production manager and art directorErik Anderson, senior acquisitions editorMaggie Sattler, digital marketing managerEric Lundgren, development and outreach managerEliza Edwards, production assistantEmma Saks, editorial assistantCarina Bolaños Lewen, exhibits and marketing assistantAnthony Silvestri, journals managerZack Stewart, journals production specialistAlena Rivas, publicity associateKeep up with our centennial at z.umn.edu/ump100.Thank you for listening.

Between the 1850s and 1930s, before playhouses for children reached the mainstream, they were often fully functional cottages designed by well-known architects for British royalty, American industrialists, and Hollywood stars. Recognizing the playhouse in this era as a stage for the purposeful performance of upper-class identity, Abigail A. Van Slyck illuminates their role as carefully planned architectural manifestations of adult concerns, from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert's Swiss Cottage (1853) to the children's cottage on the grounds of Cornelius Vanderbilt's Newport mansion (1886) to the glass-block playhouse given to Shirley Temple in 1936, and many more in between. Here, Van Slyck is joined in conversation with Annmarie Adams, Marta Gutman, and Kate Solomonson.Abigail A. Van Slyck is the Dayton Professor Emeritus of Art History at Connecticut College and author of Playhouses and Privilege: The Architecture of Elite Childhood; A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890-1960; and Free to All: Carnegie Libraries and American Culture, 1890-1920.Annmarie Adams is an architectural historian at McGill University in Montreal. Adams is author of Medicine by Design: The Architect and the Modern Hospital, 1893-1943; Architecture in the Family Way: Doctors, Houses, and Women, 1870-1900; and coauthor of Designing Women: Gender and the Architectural Profession.Marta Gutman is dean and professor in the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York. Gutman is author of A City for Children: Women, Architecture, and the Charitable Landscapes of Oakland, 1850-1950.Kate Solomonson is architectural historian and professor emeritus in the Department of Architecture at the University of Minnesota. Solomonson is coeditor, with Van Slyck, of the Architecture, Landscape, and American Culture series with University of Minnesota Press.EPISODE REFERENCES:-Hanover estate: Osborne (Swiss Cottage), Isle of Wight, UK. For Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.-Vanderbilt estate: The Breakers, Newport, Rhode Island. For Cornelius Vanderbilt II and Alice Claypoole Gwynne Vanderbilt.-Dow estate: Foxhollow Farm (Fallsburgh), Rhinebeck, New York. For Tracy Dows and Alice Olin Dows.-Whitney estate: Greentree, Manhasset, Long Island. For Payne Whitney and Helen Hay Whitney.-Dodge estate: Meadow Brook Hall (since 1929, Knole Cottage; before 1929, Hilltop Lodge), Rochester, Michigan. For Alfred Wilson and Matilda Dodge Wilson.-Ford estate: Gaukler Pointe, Grosse Pointe, Michigan. For Edsel Ford and Eleanor Clay Ford.Designing the Creative Child / Amy F. OgataPastoral Capitalism / Louise MozingoThe research of Barbara Penner (Bartlett School of Architecture, London)Praise for the book:"Beautifully written, impeccably researched, and profusely illustrated, Playhouses and Privilege is a must-read for anyone interested in the study of children, architecture, privilege, and play."—Marta Gutman, dean, Spitzer School of Architecture, CUNY"Small spaces can host big stories. In charting the spatial components of social prestige, Abigail A. Van Slyck delineates shifting conceptions of childhood, modulating gender politics, charged interactions between parents and children, and popular representations of youthful celebrity. This is a riveting read—focused and yet expansive, innovative, and insightful at every turn."—Simon Sleight, coeditor of A Cultural History of Youth in the Modern AgePlayhouses and Privilege: The Architecture of Elite Childhood by Abigail A. Van Slyck is available from University of Minnesota Press.

“If the public can predict you, it starts to like you. But the Marchesa didn't want to be liked.” For the first three decades of the twentieth century, the Marchesa Luisa Casati astounded Europe. Artists such as Man Ray painted, sculpted, and photographed her; writers such as Ezra Pound and Jack Kerouac praised her strange beauty. An Italian woman of means who questioned the traditional gender codes of her time, she dismissed fixed identities as mere constructions. Gathering on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the first publication of Infinite Variety: The Life and Legend of the Marchesa Casati (the first full-length biography of Luisa Casati, now offered in an updated, ultimate edition), Michael Orlando Yaccarino joins Valerie Steele, Joan Rosasco, and Francesca Granata in conversation about the enigma that is the Marchesa Casati.Michael Orlando Yaccarino is a writer specializing in international genre film, fashion, music, and unconventional historic figures. Scot D. Ryersson (1960–2024) was an award-winning writer, illustrator, and graphic designer. Michael and Scot collaborated on many projects, are coauthors of Infinite Variety: The Life and Legend of the Marchesa Casati, The Ultimate Edition, and are founders of the Casati Archives. www.marchesacasati.comValerie Steele is a fashion historian and director and chief curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Steele is the author or editor of twenty-five books, including Paris Fashion, Fetish, and Fashion Designers A-Z.Joan Rosasco taught at Smith College, Columbia University, and New York University, with focus on European art and culture, French literature, and the Belle Époque period. She is author of numerous publications including The Septet.Francesca Granata is associate professor of fashion studies at Parsons School of Design. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary visual culture, fashion history and theory, and gender and performance studies. Granata is editor of Fashion Criticism and author of Experimental Fashion, and wrote the afterword to Infinite Variety.Praise for the book:"Ryersson and Yaccarino are judicious historians of frivolity who capture the tone of a life that was obscenely profligate yet strangely pure."—The New Yorker"A meticulously researched biography, Infinite Variety is as much art history as chronicle of personal obsession."—The New York Times"Fascinating . . . with or without her cheetahs, the Marchesa Casati's circus of the self makes her a natural for the new millennium."—Vanity FairInfinite Variety: The Life and Legend of Marchesa Casati, The Ultimate Edition is available from University of Minnesota Press.

Microbes: We can't see them, but we have no choice but to live with them. Microbes have significant, enduring impacts on human health and remind us to resist the abstraction of crucial forces in our everyday lives. Welcome to a multidisciplinary conversation about microbes, featuring Amber Benezra (Gut Anthro), Gloria Chan-Sook Kim (Microbial Resolution), and Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer (American Disgust) in a wide-ranging conversation that opens up possibilities for imagining more equitable approaches to science, visualizing and embodying the microbe, and conceptualizing health at individual, societal, and planetary levels.Amber Benezra is assistant professor of science and technology studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey, and is author of Gut Anthro: An Experiment in Thinking with Microbes, a finalist for the Ludwik Fleck Prize from the Society for Social Studies of Science.Gloria Chan-Sook Kim is assistant professor of media and culture at the University of California, Riverside, and is author of Microbial Resolution: Visualization and Security in the War against Emerging Microbes.Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer is professor of science and technology studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic University, and is author of American Disgust: Racism, Microbial Medicine, and the Colony Within; The Slumbering Masses: Sleep, Medicine, and Modern American Life; Theory for the World to Come: Speculative Fiction and Apocalyptic Anthropology; and Unraveling: Remaking Personhood in a Neurodiverse Age. Praise for the books:“We learn from microbes—and the messy, fragile, tenacious humans that study them—how much the minute details of mundane life matter. Alternately hopeful and unsettling, Gut Anthro is a book that expertly does what microbes have always done: change how we see, how we collaborate, and who we are.”—Emily Yates-Doerr, author of The Weight of Obesity“Gloria Chan-Sook Kim's visual methodology proposes a clear optic for understanding how global health responses to microbial threats will fail unless we wrestle with the systems that perpetuate the conditions for the next mutant microbe on the horizon.” —Stefanie R. Fishel, author of The Microbial State“American Disgust pushes readers to think beyond individual taste to consider how whiteness shapes what is acceptable or profane and how to grow our capacity for the unfamiliar. It is a refreshing take on a long-debated concept.”—Ashanté M. Reese, coeditor of Black Food MattersBooks by Amber Benezra, Gloria Chan-Sook Kim, and Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer are available from University of Minnesota Press.

Humans are one species on a planet of millions of species. The literary collection Creature Needs is a project that grew out of a need to do something with grievous, anxious energy—an attempt to nourish the soul in a meaningful way, and an attempt to start somewhere specific in the face of big, earthly challenges and changes, to create a polyvocal call to arms about animal extinction and habitat loss and the ways our needs are interconnected. The book's editors, Christopher Kondrich, Lucy Spelman, and Susan Tacent, are joined here in conversation.More about the book: Creature Needs is published in collaboration with the nonprofit organization Creature Conserve. The following writers contributed new literary works inspired by scientific articles: Kazim Ali, Mary-Kim Arnold, Ramona Ausubel, David Baker, Charles Baxter, Aimee Bender, Kimberly Blaeser, Oni Buchanan, Tina Cane, Ching-In Chen, Mónica de la Torre, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Thalia Field, Ben Goldfarb, Annie Hartnett, Sean Hill, Hester Kaplan, Donika Kelly, Robin McLean, Miranda Mellis, Rajiv Mohabir, Kyoko Mori, David Naimon, Craig Santos Perez, Beth Piatote, Rena Priest, Alberto Ríos, Eléna Rivera, Sofia Samatar, Sharma Shields, Eleni Sikelianos, Maggie Smith, Juliana Spahr, Tim Sutton, Jodie Noel Vinson, Asiya Wadud, Claire Wahmanholm, Marco Wilkinson, Jane Wong.About the editors:Christopher Kondrich, poet in residence at Creature Conserve, is author of Valuing, winner of the National Poetry Series, and Contrapuntal. His writing has been published in The Believer, The Kenyon Review, and The Paris Review.Lucy Spelman is founder of Creature Conserve, a nonprofit dedicated to combining art with science to cultivate new pathways for wildlife conservation. A zoological medicine veterinarian, she teaches biology at the Rhode Island School of Design and is author of National Geographic Kids Animal Encyclopedia and coeditor of The Rhino with Glue-On Shoes.Susan Tacent, writer in residence at Creature Conserve, is a writer, scholar, and educator whose fiction has been published in Blackbird, DIAGRAM, and Tin House Online.Episode references:The Lord God Bird by Chelsea Steubayer-Scudder in Emergence MagazineThinking Like a Mountain by Jedediah Purdy in n+1Praise for the book:A thought-provoking and emotionally resonant read that stands out for its lyrical prowess and formal innovation, making it a significant contribution to contemporary literature as well as a key volume bridging the gap between the worlds of science and art.”—Library JournalCreature Needs: Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation is available from University of Minnesota Press.

Public schools are one of the last remaining universal public goods in the United States—and are also some of our most unequal institutions. In Unsettling Choice, Ujju Aggarwal explores how the expansion of choice-based programs led to greater inequality and segregation in a gentrifying New York City neighborhood during the years following the Great Recession, mobilizing mechanisms rooted in market logics to recruit families with economic capital on their side while solidifying a public sphere that increasingly resembled the private. Here, Aggarwal is joined in conversation with Sabina Vaught.Ujju Aggarwal is assistant professor of anthropology and experiential learning at The New School. She is author of Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education and coeditor of What's Race Got to Do with It? How Current School Reform Policy Maintains Racial and Economic Inequality.Sabina Vaught is professor at the University of Pittsburgh and director of the Kinloch Commons for Critical Pedagogy and Leadership. Vaught is coauthor of The School-Prison Trust and author of Compulsory: Education and the Dispossession of Youth in a Prison School.  Episode references:Ruth Wilson GilmoreChristina HeathertonCindy KatzSelma JamesJoão Costa VargasMorgan Talty / Fire ExitPraise for the book:“A must-read to understand the racialized violence inherent within one of the most fundamental aspects of education in the United States: the logic of choice.”—Damien Sojoyner“Read this book, and be moved and transformed.”—Sabina VaughtUnsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education by Ujju Aggarwal is available from University of Minnesota Press.

The first major neo-Nazi party in the US was led by a science fiction fan. So opens Jordan S. Carroll's Speculative Whiteness, a book that traces ideas about white nationalism through the entangled histories of science fiction culture and white supremacist politics, showing that debates about representation in science fiction films and literature are struggles over who has the right to imagine and inhabit the future. Here, Carroll is joined in conversation with David M. Higgins.Jordan S. Carroll is the author of Reading the Obscene: Transgressive Editors and the Class Politics of US Literature (Stanford University Press, 2021) and Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (University of Minnesota Press, 2024). He received his PhD in English literature from the University of California, Davis. He was awarded the David G. Hartwell Emerging Scholar Award by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, and his first book won the MLA Prize for Independent Scholars. Carroll's writing has appeared in American Literature, Post45, Twentieth-Century Literature, the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, and The Nation. He works as a writer and educator in the Pacific Northwest.David M. Higgins (he/they) is associate professor of English and chair of the Department of Humanities and Communication at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Worldwide, and a senior editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books. David is the author of Reverse Colonization: Science Fiction, Imperial Fantasy, and Alt-Victimhood, which won the 2022 Science Fiction Research Association Book Award. He has also published a critical monograph examining Ann Leckie's SF masterwork Ancillary Justice (2013), and his research has been published in journals such as American Literature, Science Fiction Studies, Paradoxa, and Extrapolation. In the public sphere, David has been a featured speaker on NPR's radio show On Point, and his literary journalism has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books and The Guardian. David serves as the second vice president for the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA).EPISODE REFERENCES:James H. MadoleRichard B. SpencerDune (Frank Herbert)The Iron Dream (Norman Spinrad)Samuel DelanyAlain BadiouFrancis Parker Yockey / “destiny thinking”“Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind” by Elisabeth Zerofsky, on Robert Paxton. New York Times Magazine.Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky)Fredric JamesonSpeculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right by Jordan S. Carroll is available from University of Minnesota Press. This book is part of the Forerunners series, and an open-access edition is available to read free online at manifold.umn.edu.“Carroll reminds us that our future is contingent. Fascists have a vision for the future that excludes most of humanity, but fascists can be defeated. The future is for everyone—if we make it that way.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

Policy expert and climate scientist Anna Farro Henderson explores how science is done, discussed, legislated, and imagined in her new book, Core Samples: A Climate Scientist's Experiments in Politics and Motherhood. Grounded in her experience as an environmental policy advisor to Minnesota Senator Al Franken and Governor Mark Dayton, Henderson brings readers behind the closed doors of discovery and debate—and illuminates the messy, contradictory humanity of our scientific and political institutions. Here, Henderson is joined in conversation with Tenzin Dolkar and Roberta Downing on getting your voice heard in politics.Anna Farro Henderson is an award-winning writer, PhD scientist, and environmental policy expert. She is a fellow at the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, teaches at the Loft Literary Center, and works in climate advocacy. She lives with her family in St. Paul, where she makes daily visits to the Mississippi River.Tenzin Dolkar has more than 15 years of experience in policy development, advocacy, community organizing, and management with state and local governments. Dolkar is a council member on the Metropolitan Council, and has previously served as the State of Minnesota's Rail Director and as a policy advisor on transportation, agriculture, and rural issues for Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton.Roberta Downing is a public policy professional with more than 20 years of experience. Downing held a congressional fellowship administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and served on the US Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions under Senator Edward M. Kennedy; has held several academic and policy-focused positions, including for the offices of US Senator Sherrod Brown and DC Mayor Muriel E. Bowser; and is principal and co-founder of Harper Downing LLC, a Minnesota-based government affairs consulting firm.Praise for the book:“Honest and immersive, this book offers a behind-the-scenes look at how culture (and who crafts it) shapes everything from the sediment the narrator studies to the policies that define climate action today.”—Elizabeth Rush, author of The Quickening“Anna Farro Henderson's deep encounters with Big Science and Big Bureaucracy will help you understand why progress on matters of life and death can be so maddeningly slow; her encounters with herself may help you figure out how to live your own life.”—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature“With fierce intelligence and wild exuberance, Anna Farro Henderson throws herself headlong into the biggest challenges of our time: how to love fully, create abundantly, and stop the ruin of the precious ecosystems that sustain us.”—Lia Purpura, author of All the Fierce Tethers“Some books are so good I want to shout about them to the rooftops. Core Samples is one of those.”—Vick Mickunas, Dayton Daily NewsCore Samples: A Climate Scientist's Experiments in Politics and Motherhood by Anna Farro Henderson is available from University of Minnesota Press.

In a timely challenge to the potent political role of digital technology, Cyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology argues that right-wing ideology was built into both the technical and social construction of the digital world from the start. Leveraging more than a decade of research, David Golumbia, who passed away in 2023, traced how digital evangelism has driven a worldwide shift toward the political right, concealing inequality, xenophobia, dishonesty, and massive corporate concentrations of wealth and power beneath the idealistic presumption of digital technology as an inherent social good. George Justice wrote the foreword to Cyberlibertarianism, and is joined in conversation with Frank Pasquale.George Justice is professor of English literature and provost at the University of Tulsa.Frank Pasquale is professor of law at Cornell Tech and Cornell Law School.David Golumbia (1963–2023) was associate professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of Cyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology; The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism; and The Cultural Logic of Computation.EPISODE REFERENCES:Tim WuLawrence LessigWikileaksDavid E. Pozen: Transparency's Ideological Drift https://openyls.law.yale.edu/handle/20.500.13051/10354Stefanos Geroulanos / Transparency in Postwar France#CreateDontScrapeDavid Golumbia / ChatGPT Should Not Exist (article)M. T. Anderson / FeedJonathan Crary / Scorched Earth"If you want to understand the origins of our information hellscape with its vast new inequalities, corrupt information, algorithmic control, population-scale behavioral manipulation, and wholesale destruction of privacy, then begin here."—Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism"Cyberlibertarianism is essential for understanding the contemporary moment and the recent past that got us here. It stands as a monumental magnum opus from a meticulous thinker and sharp social critic who is sorely missed."—Sarah T. Roberts, director, Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, UCLACyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology is available from University of Minnesota Press.

Energy transition is crucial to the struggle against climate change. Imre Szman is concerned with who is trying to lay claim to the narratives guiding our transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, how they are doing it, and why and to what ends. Mark Simpson joins Szeman in conversation about Szeman's new book, Futures of the Sun: The Struggle over Renewable Life. Imre Szeman is director of the Institute for Environment, Conservation, and Sustainability and professor of human geography at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He is cofounder of the Petrocultures Research group.Mark Simpson is professor of English and film studies at the University of Alberta, one of the founding collaborators on the research collective After Oil, and a core member of the Petrocultures Research Group.REFERENCES:-Imre Szeman, essay, System Failure: Oil, Futurity, and the Anticipation of Disaster, South Atlantic Quarterly-Timothy Mitchell / Carbon Democracy-Seth Klein / A Good War-Jennifer Wenzel, essay, Forms of Life: Thinking Fossil Infrastructure and Its Narrative Grammar, Social Text-Extinction Rebellion / Common Sense for the 21st Century-After Oil Collective / Solarities-University of Toronto's Institute for Inclusive Economies and Sustainable Livelihoods, director, Sergio Montero-Our Common Future, also known as the Brundtland ReportFutures of the Sun: The Struggle over Renewable Life is available from University of Minnesota Press. This book is part of the Forerunners series, and an open-access edition is available to read free online at manifold.umn.edu.“The content of this book is extraordinary. Imre Szeman is an exceptional expert, well-versed in analysing the complex intersections between energy, society, and politics. The book is a real opportunity to deepen our understanding of contemporary energy and political issues.”—International Journal of Environmental Studies

"We aren't done with Pee-wee's Playhouse because there's much to learn from sticking with it." So opens Cait McKinney's I Know You Are, but What Am I?, a book that thinks across the ways we remember and misremember Pee-wee. McKinney explores the expansive, mediated landscape of the television show; engages a reparative retelling of the actor Paul Reubens's 1991 arrest in a suburban adult film theater; and gets into the collecting of the iconic Talking Pee-wee dolls and their afterlives on eBay and YouTube. Here, McKinney is joined in conversation with John Stadler.Cait McKinney is associate professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University.John Stadler is assistant professor of film studies at North Carolina State University.I Know You Are, but What Am I?: On Pee-wee Herman is available from University of Minnesota Press as part of its Forerunners series. An open-access edition is available to read free online at manifold.umn.edu.

Identified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, contemporary Macau has metamorphosed into a surreal, hypermodern urban landscape augmented by massive casino megaresorts, including two of the world's largest buildings. In Betting on Macau: Casino Capitalism and China's Consumer Revolution, Tim Simpson uncovers various roots of the region's radical transformation. Here, Simpson is joined in conversation with Cathryn H. Clayton.Tim Simpson is associate professor of communication at the University of Macau.Cathryn H. Clayton is associate professor and chair of the Asian studies program at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.WORKS REFERENCED:David Schwartz / Suburban XanaduNatasha Dow Schüll / Addiction by DesignSusan Strange / Casino CapitalismCathryn H. Clayton / Sovereignty at the EdgePEOPLE REFERENCED:Sheldon AdelsonJohn Maynard KeynesDeng Xiaoping“A must-read for scholars and practitioners of urban planning and architecture, particularly those working in or studying urbanization in China.” —Miodrag MitrašinovićBetting on Macau: Casino Capitalism and China's Consumer Revolution is available from University of Minnesota Press.

In the decades leading up to the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia, a collective of young artists based in Zagreb used the city's public spaces as a platform for radical individual expression. The Group of Six Authors and their circle in the period from 1975 to 1985 are the focus of Adair Rounthwaite's book This Is Not My World: Art and Public Space in Socialist Zagreb, which highlights the friction between public and private that was the foundation of their innovative practices. Rounthwaite is joined here in conversation with Mechtild Widrich.Adair Rounthwaite is author of This Is Not My World: Art and Public Space in Socialist Zagreb and Asking the Audience: Participatory Art in 1980s New York. Rounthwaite is associate professor of art history at the University of Washington.Mechtild Widrich is author of Monumental Cares: Sites of History and Contemporary Art and Performative Monuments: The Rematerialisation of Public Art. Widrich is an art historian, curator, and professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.   REFERENCES:Caroline A. JonesTerry SmithChika Okeke-Agulu Vlasta DelimarTomislav GotovacAna MendietaSasha Su-Ling WellandJenny Lin / Above SeaLiz Kotz / Words to Be Looked AtVlado MartekMladen StilinovićGina BeaversThis Is Not My World is available from University of Minnesota Press.

Across language and politics, feminism and phenomenology, and decolonial theory, Trans Philosophy addresses trans worldmaking in all its beauty and mundanity. The volume's four editors, Perry Zurn, Andrea J. Pitts, Talia Mae Bettcher, and PJ DiPietro focus on the contributions of trans and gender-nonconforming philosophers from around the globe. Showcasing writing from a range of emerging and established voices, Trans Philosophy addresses discrimination, embodiment, identity, language, and law, utilizing diverse philosophical methods to attend to significant intersections between trans experience and class, disability, race, nationality, and sexuality. Here, the book's four editors engage each other in conversation.Perry Zurn is visiting associate professor of feminist, gender, and sexuality studies at Cornell University and associate professor of philosophy at American University. He is author of Curiosity and Power: The Politics of Inquiry and How We Make Each Other: Trans Life at the Edge of the University and coeditor of Curiosity Studies: A New Ecology of Knowledge.Andrea J. Pitts is associate professor of comparative literature at the University at Buffalo. They are author of Nos/Otras: Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Multiplicitous Agency, and Resistance and coeditor of Theories of the Flesh: Latinx and Latin American Feminisms, Transformation, and Resistance.Talia Mae Bettcher is professor of philosophy at California State University, Los Angeles. She is author of Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy (Minnesota, 2025); Berkeley's Philosophy of Spirit: Consciousness, Ontology, and the Elusive Subject; and Berkeley: A Guide for the Perplexed.PJ DiPietro is associate professor of women's and gender studies and director of the LGBTQ studies program at Syracuse University. They are author of Sideways Selves: Travesti and Jotería Struggles across the Américas and coeditor of Speaking Face to Face: The Visionary Philosophy of María Lugones.Contributing writers to Trans Philosophy include: Megan Burke, Sonoma State U; Robin Dembroff, Yale U; Marie Draz, San Diego State U; Che Gossett, U of Pennsylvania; Ryan Gustafsson, U of Melbourne; Stephanie Kapusta, Dalhousie U; Tamsin Kimoto, Washington U, St. Louis; Hil Malatino, Pennsylvania State U and Rock Ethics Institute; Amy Marvin, Lafayette U; Marlene Wayar.WORKS AND PERSONS REFERENCED:C. Riley Snorton / Black on Both SidesPerry Zurn / Curiosity Studies and Curiosity and Power and How We Make Each OtherHil Malatino / Side Affects and Trans CareHortense SpillerJacob HaleGwen AraujoSpecial issue of Hypatia: Transgender Studies and Feminism: Theory, Politics, and Gendered Realities, edited by Talia Mae Bettcher and Ann GarryWhat Is Trans Philosophy? By Talia Mae Bettcher in HypatiaMarlene WayarTalia Mae Bettcher / Beyond PersonhoodMary JonesMarsha P. JohnsonMaría LugonesMarco Chivalan-CarrilloAmaranta Gómez RegaladoMarcia OchoaJosefina FernándezDiana MaffiaLohana BerkinsTourmalineTrans Philosophy is available from University of Minnesota Press.

Marlene M. Johnson's memoir is an essential record of the ascension of women in American politics. In Rise to the Challenge: A Memoir of Politics, Leadership, and Love, Johnson chronicles her life of learning and leadership in activism, entrepreneurship, politics, and public service, weaving professional play-by-plays with candidness about navigating personal loss. Here, Johnson is joined in conversation with Lori Sturdevant and Elisabeth (Betsy) Griffith.Marlene M. Johnson was Minnesota's first woman lieutenant governor, serving in Governor Rudy Perpich's administration from 1983 until 1991. She is cofounder of the Minnesota Chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners and the Minnesota Women's Campaign Fund and was executive director and CEO of NAFSA: Association of International Educators for nearly two decades. She is on the advisory board of Kakenya's Dream, a board member of the Washington Office on Latin America, and a trustee of The Alexandria Trust. She lives in Washington, DC.Lori Sturdevant is a retired Star Tribune editorial writer and columnist who has written about Minnesota government and politics since 1978.Elisabeth Griffith is an American historian, educator, and activist. She is author of Formidable: American Women and the Fight for Equality: 1920–2020 and In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.OTHER WORKS REFERENCED:Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief / Pauline BossTurnout: Making Minnesota the State That Votes / Joan Anderson Growe with Lori SturdevantLoving Someone who has Dementia / Pauline BossPraise for Rise to the Challenge:“Marlene M. Johnson wasn't just the first woman to be Minnesota's Lieutenant Governor. She was also the first Lieutenant Governor to have a specific policy portfolio. She had access and influence in ways that laid the groundwork for me and others to follow. Marlene is of a class of women who made important strides in DFL politics, and I'm grateful for her place in Minnesota's history and for this book that tells that story”.—Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan“An essential document of the midcentury rise of women into American politics. In this memoir of a remarkable public life, Marlene M. Johnson braids a love story tragically turned into caregiving and the domestic devotion of guardian and advocate. She proves that faithfulness in love and commitment to the betterment of the world are not opposites after all.”—Patricia Hampl, author of The Art of the Wasted Day“In the dynamic mid-twentieth-century women's movement, Marlene M. Johnson stood out and stood up with clarity of vision and purpose. Her multiple public service initiatives propelled her to a national presence and then into international education leadership.”—Judge Harriet Lansing, retired, Minnesota Court of Appeals“An important read for aspiring public servants, male or female.”—J. Brian Atwood, former administrator, US Agency for International Development

How are spaces once imagined to be empty, vast, and mysterious transformed into something with material and cultural value? Two authors tackle this same question, one from the perspective of the seafloor, and one from Canada's oil sands: key spaces where the meaning of sustainability is actively negotiated. Deepwater Alchemy: Extractive Mediation and the Taming of the Seafloor by Lisa Yin Han looks at oceanic media and shows how deepwater mediation is entangled in existential hopes and fears for our planetary future. Petroturfing: Refining Canadian Oil through Social Media by Jordan B. Kinder looks at how an increasingly influential network of pro-oil groups in Canada work to reform the public view of oil extraction as something socially, economically, and ecologically beneficial. Here, Lisa and Jordan are joined in conversation with Thomas Pringle.Lisa Yin Yan is assistant professor of media studies at Pitzer College.Jordan B. Kinder is assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University.Thomas Pringle is assistant professor of cinema and media studies at the University of Southern California. Pringle is co-author, with Gertrud Koch and Bernard Stiegler, of Machine.REFERENCES:Nature's Metropolis / William CrononEthical Oil / Ezra LevantTar Wars / Geo TakachSustaining Seas / eds. Elspeth Probyn, Kate Johnson, and Nancy Lee (referencing essay by Lesley Green)Oceaning / Adam FishAnimal Revolution / Ron BroglioZoe Todd, “Fossil Fuels and Fossil Kin: An Environmental Kin Study of Weaponised Fossil Kin and Alberta's So-Called ‘Energy Resources Heritage,'” Antipode (2023)After Oil CollectiveIsabelle StengersPraise for Deepwater Alchemy:“An essential contribution to the watery depths of the blue humanities.”—Jennifer Gabrys“Deepwater Alchemy tells a story vital to our present.”—Stefan HelmreichPraise for Petroturfing:“A profound and necessary book.”—Janet Walker“Offers great insight into an underdeveloped aspect of the cultural study of energy.”—Stephanie LeMenager

For Chris Marker, writing came before filmmaking. A decade after Marker's death, critics continue to rediscover his remarkable oeuvre, which comprised writing, photography, film, video, radio, and digital media. Associated with the Left Bank subset of the French New Wave, Marker is perhaps best recognized for directing La Jetée (1962). To celebrate the publication of the first English translation of Marker's early writings (published between 1948 and 1955), Steven Ungar, the editor of Chris Marker: Early Film Writings, with translator Sally Shafto, have joined Jean-Michel Frodo and Sam Di Iorio in conversation.“The French Cinema has its dramatists and its poets, its technicians, and its autobiographers, but only has one true essayist: Chris Marker.”—film theorist Roy ArmesChris Marker (born Christian Hippolyte François Georges Bouche-Villeneuve, 1921–2012) was a French writer, artist, and director. His time-travel film La Jetée (1962) is one of the most celebrated shorts ever made. A true polymath, his later creations ranged from videos and the interactive CD-ROM Immemory to the multimedia digital platform Second Life.Steven Ungar is professor emeritus of cinematic arts, French, and comparative literature at the University of Iowa. He is author of several books including Critical Mass: Social Documentary in France from the Silent Era to the New Wave.Sally Shafto is a French film scholar and translator and assistant professor of English at Framingham State University. She is author of The Zanzibar Films and the Dandies of May 1968, and her translations include Jean-Marie Staub and Danièle Huillet's Writings. She teaches at Framingham State University.Jean-Michel Frodon is a journalist and one of the most influential film critics and film historians in the world. He is author or contributor of several books including The World of Jia Zhangke and Le Cinéma Français de la Nouvelle Vague a Nos Jours, and wrote the foreword to “Night and Fog”: A Film in History by Sylvie Lindeperg. Frodon blogs at Projection Publique.Sam Di Iorio is Associate Professor of French at Hunter College and Deputy Executive Officer of the Ph.D. Program in French at the CUNY Graduate Center. He has written about postwar films and filmmakers, political theory, and cultural history for Screen, Trafic, Film Comment and the Criterion Collection. His essay “Comolli's Detours: Free Jazz, Film Theory, Cinéma Direct” is forthcoming with Amsterdam University Press. EPISODE REFERENCES AND RECOMMENDED READING:-André Bazin-Robert Cannon's Gerald McBoing-Boing-Alain Resnais-Agnès Varda-Jean Rouch-René Leibowitz-Joseph Rovan (born Joseph Adolph Rosenthal)-Nicole Védrès-Eternal Current Events (translated by Jackson B. Smith)-Le Dépays / Chris Marker-Camera Obscura piece by Ivan Cerecina translating Nicole Védrès's “Les feuilles bougent” (“The Leaves Are Stirring”) and an accompanying essay-Republic of Images / Alan Williams-Le Cinéma Français de la Nouvelle Vague a Nos Jours / Jean-Michel Frodon-The Fragile Present: Statues Also Die with Night and Fog by Sam Di Iorio; article in South Central Review.-Trafic N°105 (Printemps 2018), with article by Sam Di IorioMORE CHRIS MARKER:chrismarker.chGorgomancy.netThe Criterion ChannelChris Marker: Early Film Writings is available from University of Minnesota Press."One of the pleasures of Chris Marker's films is the singular literary voice of his inimitable commentaries, in all its wit and quicksilver intelligence. That voice is present here, being honed through contact with others' images and before Marker moved from the page to the screen himself. This groundbreaking collection introduces aficionados old and new to work likely unknown to them and allows us all to discover another dimension of this prodigious artist: Marker the film critic."—Chris Darke, author of La Jetée (BFI Film Classics)

Has the idea of the end of the world captured your imagination? Ted Toadvine's book The Memory of the World: Deep Time, Animality, and Eschatology contends that a preoccupation with the world's precarity relies on a flawed understanding of time that neglects the past and present with the goal of managing the future. Toadvine integrates insights from phenomenology, deconstruction, critical animal studies, and new materialism to argue for a new philosophy of time that takes seriously the entangled temporal events spanning cosmic, geological, evolutionary, and human durations. Here Toadvine is joined in conversation with David Morris and Benjamin Décarie-Daigneault.Ted Toadvine is Nancy Tuana Director of the Rock Ethics Institute and professor of philosophy at The Pennsylvania State University.David Morris is professor of philosophy at Concordia University in Montreal.Benjamin Décarie-Daigneault is a graduate student of philosophy at The Pennsylvania State University.REFERENCES:Maurice Merleau-Ponty (body of works including Phenomenology of Perception)Immanuel KantDipesh ChakrabartyMichel Serres / The IncandescentMartin HeideggerJacques DerridaJean-Luc NancyJerome MillerHenri BergsonEdmund HusserlJames PlayfairJames Hutton (Hutton's Unconformity)John Sallis / StoneAdam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson / The Blind SpotJane BennettDonald S. Maier / What's So Good About Biodiversity?Ferdinand de SaussureÉmile P. Torres / Human ExtinctionRachel Carson / Silent SpringKyle Powys WhyteAlfred North Whitehead / The Concept of Nature  The Memory of the World: Deep Time, Animality, and Eschatology is available from University of Minnesota Press.“The Memory of the World achieves two important things: it steers our understanding of Merleau-Ponty toward a temporal interpretation of his thought and, at the same time, it uses that reading to make a critical intervention amongst theories of environmental apocalypse. Ted Toadvine's concept of ‘biodiacritics' should lead to a reorientation of the ‘eschatological imagination,' producing effects in knowledge that are as insightful as they are impactful. This is a wonderful book that is a pleasure to think alongside.”—John Ó Maoilearca

Antoine Volodine is the primary pseudonym of a French-Russian writer of many books. The meditative, postapocalyptic noir Mevlido's Dreams, translated by Gina M. Stamm, is an urgent communiqué from a far-future reality of irreversible environmental damage and civilizational collapse that asks what it means to love and care for others at the end of the world. Here, Stamm is joined in conversation with Joshua Armstrong about translating this key work in Volodine's post-exotic fictional universe.Gina M. Stamm is assistant professor of French at the University of Alabama.Joshua Armstrong is associate professor of French at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.Mevlido's Dreams: A Post-Exotic Novel is available from University of Minnesota Press.“Translator Stamm does an admirable job of rendering Volodine's serpentine prose in English, and the noirish, surrealist story turns into an unlikely romp as it riffs on the absurdity of 20th-century political institutions and pop culture.” —Publishers Weekly“Certainly the strangest and arguably one of the most accomplished contemporary writers of fiction in French, Antoine Volodine has created a vast and perplexing universe of bad dreams in several dozen works under a variety of pseudonyms over the past forty years. Mevlido's Dreams provides a new pathway into Volodine's labyrinth, which for all the horrors it recounts is always cast in stylishly crafted prose.” —David Bellos, Princeton University

Joanna Brooks's ancestors were among the early waves of emigrants to leave England for North America. Her book Why We Left: Untold Stories and Songs of America's First Immigrants reveals the violence and dislocation that propelled seventeenth- and eighteenth-century working-class English emigration, and follows American folk ballads back across the Atlantic to find histories of economic displacement, environmental destruction, and social betrayal at the heart of the early Anglo-American migrant experience. A tenth-anniversary edition of the book has just been released, which includes a new preface and develops a haunting historical perspective on the ancestors we thought we knew. Here, Brooks is joined by Desmond Hassing in conversation.Joanna Brooks is an award-winning scholar and writer whose work tends to catastrophes of human belonging in American history. The author or editor of ten books on race, religion, colonialism, and social movements, her writing has been featured in the BBC, NPR, the Daily Show, CNN, MSNBC, and the Washington Post.An enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and a San Diego native, Dr. Desmond Hassing is a conceptual artist, scholar, and activist who focuses on educating Western subjects on the intentionally disremembered subject of the Indigenous Peoples of North America. Hassing is founder of the Indigenous Peoples Reading Room, a planned open-access scholarship archive, and creator of The National Indian Project, an annotated bibliography of Native American, First Nations, and Pacific Islander representations in DC/National comic books of the same period. Hassing is lecturer in the Department of American Indian Studies at San Diego State University.Why We Left: Untold Stories and Songs of America's First Immigrants is available from University of Minnesota Press.“A surprising, bold, and altogether brilliant contribution to our understanding of why people crossed the Atlantic to live in a strange new world.”—Marcus Rediker

Everything Is Police is a new book by Tia Trafford, who argues that institutional and interpersonal policing have been central to colonial modernity, the result of which is a situation where we cannot practically experience or even imagine worlds free from policing. Trafford is joined here in conversation with Melayna Lamb.Tia Trafford is reader in philosophy and design at University for the Creative Arts in London. They are author of Everything Is Police and The Empire at Home, and coeditor of Alien Vectors.Melayna Lamb is lecturer at the University of Law, UK, and author of A Philosophical History of Police Power.EPISODE REFERENCES:Frank B. Wilderson IIIRinaldo WalcottThe Empire at Home / Tia TraffordJared SextonTapji GarbaSylvia WynterFrantz FanonSara-Maria SorentinoSaidiya HartmanDavid MarriottBiko Mandela GraySylvia WynterSara-Maria SorentinoMute Compulsion / Søren MauImmanuel KantWilliam Wimsatt on generative entrenchmentRed, White & Black / Frank B. Wilderson IIIThe First Black Slave Society / Hilary BecklesSean CapenerPaul GilroyStuart HallJohn LockeSlavery is a Metaphor / essay by Tapji Garba and Sara-Maria Sorentino, published in AntipodeTaija McDougallPetero KaluléEverything Is Police is available from University of Minnesota Press. An open-access edition is available to read free online at manifold.umn.edu.

EL Putnam's new book Livestreaming: An Aesthetics and Ethics of Technical Encounter considers how livestreaming constitutes new patterns of being together that are complex, ambivalent, and transformative. Digging into how humans and technology co-evolve, Putnam and Noel Fitzpatrick engage in conversation about relation and hyper-individualism, glitch and switchtasking, activism and hidden labor and performance and more.EL Putnam is an artist-philosopher and assistant professor of digital media at Maynooth University, Ireland. Putnam is author of Livestreaming: An Aesthetics and Ethics of Technical Encounter in the University of Minnesota Press Forerunners series and The Maternal, Digital Subjectivity, and the Aesthetics of Interruption.Noel Fitzpatrick is Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics and the Academic Lead of the European Culture and Technology Laboratory at the Technological University Dublin.Episode references:Gilbert SimondonBernard StieglerYuk Hui HegelKantJackson PollockHeideggerPaul RicoeurAyana EvansAna VoogN. Katherine HaylesMiriam WolfDiamond Reynolds and the livestream of Philando Castile's murderSafiya Umoja NobleChristina SharpeSaidiya HartmanTonia SutherlandJacques RancièreSimone BrowneÈdouard GlissantSusan SontagSara AhmedH. P. GriceRelated works:On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects / SimondonOn the Existence of Digital Objects / HuiArt and Cosmotechnics / HuiOneself as Another / RicoeurMemory, History, Forgetting / RicoeurResurrecting the Black Body / SutherlandDark Matters / BrowneRegarding the Pain of Others / SontagLivestreaming: An Aesthetics and Ethics of Technical Encounter is available from University of Minnesota Press. An open-access edition is available to read free online at manifold.umn.edu.

Educators who underestimate children's knowledge about citizenship and immigration status can marginalize or misunderstand these students and their families. In Knowing Silence: How Children Talk about Immigration Status in School, author Ariana Mangual Figueroa models new ways scholars might collaborate with educators, children, and families—and makes audible the experiences of immigrant-origin students in their own terms, ultimately offering teachers and researchers a crucial framework for understanding citizenship in the contemporary classroom. Here, the author is joined in conversation with collaborators Dra. Aurora Chang, Claudia Rolando, and Lumari Sosa Garzón.Ariana Mangual Figueroa is author of Knowing Silence and associate professor of urban education and Latin American, Iberian, and Latino cultures at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). She is a co-principal investigator at the CUNY Initiative on Immigration and Education (CUNY IIE).Dra. Aurora Chang is associate professor of higher education at Loyola University and incoming Director of Faculty Development and Career Advancement at George Mason University. Chang is founder of Academic Life Simplified.Claudia Rolando is a graduate of Brooklyn College and an educator in New York.Lumari Sosa Garzón is a Mexican student in the Macaulay Honors program with a TheDream.US scholarship at Brooklyn College, majoring in psychology and minoring in anthropology. Lumari is a co-author of the Afterword appearing in Knowing Silence.Episode references:-Published research of Michael Fix and Wendy Zimmerman (“All under One Roof: Mixed-Status Families in an Era of Reform,” International Migration Review)-The Struggles of Identity, Education, and Agency in the Lives of Undocumented Students (Dra. Aurora Chang)-The Undocumented Americans (Karla Cornejo Villavicencio)-The New York State Youth Leadership Council-Lives in Limbo (Roberto G. Gonzales)-concept of Community Cultural Wealth / Dr. Tara Yosso-Plyler v. Doe, Supreme Court decision, 1982-The New School's Parsons Scholars ProgramRecommended reference:-Areli is a Dreamer / Areli MoralesKnowing Silence: How Children Talk about Immigration Status in School is available from University of Minnesota Press."No words can express all that I think and feel about this beautiful, brilliant book. Narrated innovatively and with the utmost of care, with rich analyses of language data and thought-provoking insights drawn from a longitudinal and intimate ethnographic research relationship, Knowing Silence will surely make you think, wonder, laugh, cry—and see and hear young people who are growing up in contexts of immigration in new ways."—Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, UCLA"Using child-centered methodologies, Ariana Mangual Figueroa unveils the critical yet often invisible aspects of students' lives and highlights unintended chilling effects of school practices. Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this is an important and compelling contribution to the field."—Carola Suárez-Orozco, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Estado Vegetal is Manuela Infante's riveting experimental performance art through which plants are charged with an agency capable of uprooting culturally grounded conceptions of the world. The book Estado Vegetal: Performance and Plant-Thinking, edited by Giovanni Aloi, is the first book dedicated to this performance and features essays from scholars and artists, including a fictional continuation of Infante's work by Mandy-Suzanne Wong. Here, Infante and Wong join Art after Nature series editors Giovanni Aloi and Caroline Picard in conversation.Manuela Infante is a Chilean playwright, director, screenwriter, and musician who creates her own performances and tours in America, Europe, and Asia. Her works include Estado Vegetal and Metamorphosis. Mandy-Suzanne Wong is a Bermudian writer of fiction and essays. She is an award-winning author whose books include The Box and Drafts of a Suicide Note.Giovanni Aloi teaches art history, theory, and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is author or editor of many books on the nonhuman and art.Caroline Picard is a writer, cartoonist, curator, and founder of the Green Lantern Press.A performance of Manuela Infante's Estado Vegetal (Vegetative State), performed by Marcela Salinas, is available to watch on YouTube.Art after Nature is a series edited by Giovanni Aloi and Caroline Picard that explores epistemological questions that emerge from the expanding, environmental consciousness of the humanities.Estado Vegetal: Performance and Plant-Thinking is available from University of Minnesota Press and includes pieces by Maaike Bleeker, Lucy Cotter, Prudence Gibson, Michael Marder, Dawn Sanders, Catriona Sandilands, Sibila Sotomayor Van Rysseghem, and Mandy-Suzanne Wong.Episode references:The Conquest of America / Tzvetan TodorovCapitalist Realism / Mark FisherHorizon / Manuela Infante

Masculinity in Transition is a book that moves the study of masculinity away from an overriding preoccupation with cisnormativity, whiteness, and heteronormativity, and toward a wider and more generative range of embodiments, identifications, and ideologies. Author K. Allison Hammer's bold rethinking of masculinity and its potentially toxic effects lays bare the underlying fragility of normative masculinity. Here, Hammer is joined in conversation with Kale Bantigue Fajardo. This episode was recorded in late fall of 2023.K. Allison Hammer (they/them) is assistant professor and coordinator of women, gender, and sexuality studies at Southern Illinois University. Hammer is author of Masculinity in Transition.Kale Bantigue Fajardo (he/him) is associate professor of American studies and Asian American studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Fajardo is author of Filipino Crosscurrents: Oceanographies of Seafaring, Masculinities, and Globalization.REFERENCES:The Politics of Friendship / Jacques DerridaThe Feeling of Kinship / David EngMen in Place / Miriam J. AbelsonTrue Sex / Emily SkidmoreMasculinities in Theory / Todd ReeserGertrude SteinFemale Masculinity / Jack HalberstamSons of the Movement / Bobby NobleThe Future of Whiteness / Linda Martín AlcoffDisturbing Attachments / Kadji AminEmily DickinsonWilla CatherStone Butch Blues / Leslie FeinbergMinnie Bruce PrattAndrea GibsonReinaldo ArenasMarlon RiggsPresidential masculinity (Reagan, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden)The Color Pynk / Omise'eke Natasha TinsleyNao BustamanteJudith ButlerThe Crying Game (film, 1992)Disclosure (film, 2020)BuddhismCare Work / Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-SamarasinhaTrans Care / Hil MalatinoNormal Life / Dean SpadeMutual Aid / Dean SpadeWorkers in Industrial America / David BrodyMasculinity in Transition and Filipino Crosscurrents are available from University of Minnesota Press.MORE: Listen to more talks with K. Allison Hammer on the University of Minnesota Press YouTube page (with Greta Olson and Christopher Breu), the Gender Stories podcast, and on In Conversation with Frank Schaeffer."A major intervention into masculinities studies, Masculinity in Transition brilliantly and consistently pushes the field toward a critical understanding of masculinity as a complex gender formation."—Christopher Breu, author of Hard-Boiled Masculinities"How might we understand masculinity if we turn toward culture rather than biology? K. Allison Hammer uncover(s) remakings of masculinity that center care, porosity, and unruly alliances—uplifting models for the precarious now."—Amber Jamilla Musser, author of Sensual Excess: Queer Femininity and Brown Jouissance

During the past decade, new oil plays have unsettled energy landscapes and imaginaries in the US. Settling the Boom, a volume of essays, studies how the disruptive forces of an oil boom in the northern Great Plains of Williston, North Dakota, are contained through the extension of settler temporalities, reassertions of heteropatriarchy, and the tethering of life to the volatility of oil and its cruel optimisms. Here, the book's coeditors Mary E. Thomas and Bruce Braun are joined in conversation.Mary E. Thomas is associate professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at The Ohio State University. She is coeditor of Settling the Boom, coauthor of Urban Geography, and author of Multicultural Girlhood.Bruce Braun is professor of geography at the University of Minnesota. He is coeditor of Settling the Boom and Political Matter, and author of The Intemperate Rainforest.Episode references:Cruel Optimism / Lauren BerlantPollution Is Colonialism / Max LiboironWhite Earth (film)Jessica Christy, Through the Window exhibitionLocation of focus:Western North Dakota, including Willison (Williston Basin) and Dickinson, within the Bakken Formation.Settling the Boom: The Sites and Subjects of Bakken Oil, is available from University of Minnesota Press. This edited collection includes contributions from Morgan Adamson, Kai Bosworth, Thomas S. Davis, and Jessica Lehman.

John Arena examines the more than two-decade struggle to privatize public schools in Newark, New Jersey—a conflict that is raging in cities across the country. Arena's book Expelling Public Schools reveals the political rise of Cory Booker and Ras Baraka and what this particular case study illuminates about contemporary post-civil rights Black politics. Here, Arena is joined in conversation with David Forrest.John (Jay) Arena is associate professor of sociology at CUNY's College of Staten Island. Arena is author of Expelling Public Schools: How Antiracist Politics Enable School Privatization in Newark and Driven from New Orleans: How Nonprofits Betray Public Housing and Promote Privatization.David Forrest is associate professor of politics at Oberlin College. He is author of A Voice but No Power: Organizing for Social Justice in Minneapolis.Works and scholars referenced:Adolph Reed Jr. (Stirrings in the Jug)David M. Kotz (The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism)Cedric JohnsonFrances Fox Piven (Challenging Authority)Jane McAlevey (No Shortcuts)Preston H. Smith II (Racial Democracy and the Black Metropolis)Sharon Kurtz (Workplace Justice)Marc Doussard and Greg Schrock (Justice at Work)Kristen Buras (Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space)Touré Reed (Toward Freedom)Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Laurence Cox (We Make Our Own History)Colin Barker, Laurence Cox, John Krinsky, and Alf Gunvald Nilsen, editors (Marxism and Social Movements)Rosa Luxemburg (Rosa Luxemburg Speaks)Chris Maisano (“What Does Revolution Mean in the 21st Century?”, Jacobin)Mark R. Beissinger (The Revolutionary City)People and organizations referenced:Cory BookerChris ChristieRas BarakaNewark's downtown Teachers Village complexSharpe JamesCami AndersonChristopher CerfRandi WeingartenAlbert ShankerKaren LewisAl MoussabNewark Education WorkersThis episode was recorded in September 2023.Expelling Public Schools: How Antiracist Politics Enable School Privatization in Newark is available from University of Minnesota Press."Expelling Public Schools offers a fascinating look into the racial politics of corporate school reform in Newark Public Schools. John Arena takes a long view—just over two decades—and examines the reform movements and countermovements in the district from the top down and the bottom up. In assessing corporate school reform efforts under mayors Cory Booker and Ras Baraka, this deeply researched book illuminates the mechanisms that maintain educational inequality."—Rand Quinn, author of Class Action: Desegregation and Diversity in San Francisco Schools"It is rare to encounter a work that treats actually existing Black life, an approach best articulated by Cedric Johnson, to critically address contemporary Black urban regimes. Thoughtful, careful, and incisive, Expelling Public Schools does just that. In this moment when antiracism (and surface critiques of antiracism) is rife, John Arena's work provides a wonderful tonic."—Lester Spence, author of Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-hop and Black Politics

More than twenty years ago, a bizarre confluence of meteorological events resulted in the most damaging blowdown in Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness's history. It traveled 1,300 miles and lasted 22 hours, flattening nearly 500,000 acres of the Superior National Forest. Hundreds of campers and paddlers were stranded and dozens injured; amazingly, no one died. The historic storm ultimately reshaped the region's forests in ways we have yet to fully understand. Here, author Cary J. Griffith is joined in conversation with scientist Lee Frelich and Peter Leschak, who was involved in the response and rescue effort.Cary Griffith is author of several novels and four books of nonfiction, including Gunflint Falling: Blowdown in the Boundary Waters and Gunflint Burning: Fire in the Boundary Waters. He is recipient of a Minnesota Book Award and a Midwest Book Award.Lee Frelich is director of the Center for Forest Ecology at the University of Minnesota. He is listed among the top 1% of scientists in the Web of Science, Ecology, and Environment and has authored more than 200 publications, and has been featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, and the Washington Post.Peter Leschak was chief of the French Township fire department in Side Lake, Minnesota, for thirty years. He has written ten books and has worked in a variety of wildfire-related capacities and held positions of leadership in the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Forest Service.Gunflint Falling: Blowdown in the Boundary Waters is available from University of Minnesota Press."In the tradition of The Perfect Storm, Cary J. Griffith brings readers into the Boundary Waters moment by moment as an epic gale sweeps through. Ample maps and in-depth interviews with witnesses both immerse us in one terrifying day and offer a glimpse of the past and future of Minnesota's boreal forest."—Kim Todd, author of Sensational: The Hidden History of America's “Girl Stunt Reporters”"In Gunflint Falling, Cary J. Griffith provides an accurate, comprehensive narrative of those impacted by one of the region's most devastating storms. The damage and pain brought by the derecho storm was more severe than anything previously experienced in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The reader is taken into the personal experiences of the injured and those searching for them for fourteen days in the million-acre wilderness, and Griffith's narrative of these experiences demonstrates how, when faced with an emergency, we come together to help one another."—Jim Sanders, retired forest supervisor, Superior National Forest (1996-2011), USDA Forest Service

What is fossil civilization? In the book No More Fossils, Dominic Boyer tells the story of how we came to rationalize fossil fuel use through successive phases of sucropolitics (plantation sugar), carbopolitics (industrial coal), and petropolitics (oil and plastics), showing what tethers us to petroculture today and what it will take to overcome the forces that mire us in place. What can we do to make electroculture a more just and sustainable alternative? In this episode, Boyer is joined in conversation about modern energy politics with Cara Daggett.Dominic Boyer is an anthropologist, media maker, and environmental researcher who teaches at Rice University. His books include No More Fossils, Energopolitics, and Hyposubjects.Cara Daggett is associate professor of political science at Virginia Tech and author of The Birth of Energy.References:The Birth of Energy / Cara DaggettAnna TsingCarbon Democracy / Timothy MitchellMichel Foucault on biopowerSweetness and Power / Sidney MintzHegel, Haiti, and Universal History / Susan Buck-MorssFossil Capital / Andreas Malm15-Minute CityJohn LockeAlexander Dunlap on Fossil Fuel+Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More / Alexei YurchakStaying with the Trouble / Donna HarawayAriella AzoulayKyle Powys WhyteGeontologies / Elizabeth PovinelliLow Carbon Pleasure / a collaborative experimental art and performance project by Dominic Boyer, Cymene Howe, and othersStacy Alaimo / ecophiliaNo More Fossils is available from University of Minnesota Press. An open-access edition is available to read free online at manifold.umn.edu. 

In Visible Archives is a book that explores a number of feminist and cultural touchstones of the 1980s and examines how visual culture interacts with these pivotal moments. Author Margaret Galvan goes deep into the archives to bring together a decade's worth of research that includes comics, collages, photographs, drawings, and other media produced by women including Nan Goldin, Alison Bechdel, Lee Marrs, and Gloria Anzaldúa. Galvan demonstrates how women represented their bodies and sexualities on their own terms and created visibility for new, diverse identities. Galvan is joined here in conversation with Anna Peppard and Ramzi Fawaz.Margaret Galvan is assistant professor of English at the University of Florida and author of In Visible Archives: Queer and Feminist Visual Culture in the 1980s.Anna Peppard is a writer, researcher, podcaster, and educator. Peppard is an adjunct lecturer in the department of Communication, Popular Culture, and Film at Brock University and editor of Supersex: Sexuality, Fantasy, and the Superhero.Ramzi Fawaz is an award-winning queer cultural critic, public speaker, and educator. Fawaz is a Romnes Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and author of Queer Forms and The New Mutants. Episode references:Trina RobbinsHillary Chute / Graphic WomenGloria Anzaldúa / Borderlands and This Bridge Called My BackAlison BechdelNan GoldinDiary (1982) from the Barnard Sex Conference (Hannah Alderfer, Beth Jaker, Marybeth Nelson)Kristen Hogan / The Feminist Bookstore MovementLee Marrs / The Further Fattening Adventures of Pudge, Girl BlimpWitnesses: Against Our Vanishing (exhibit)Roberta GregoryMaria Cotera / Chicana por mi Raza (digital project)Chicana Movidas / edited by Dionne Espinoza, María Eugenia Cotera, and Maylei BlackwellIn Visible Archives: Queer and Feminist Visual Culture in the 1980s is available from University of Minnesota Press. This book has an open-access Manifold edition that is free to read online."Margaret Galvan asks all the right questions about queer and feminist visual storytelling from the 1980s: Where were these works situated? How did communities use them? How have they been archived? Both commentary upon as well as an integral part of the activist project begun by the creators themselves, In Visible Archives helps keep these remarkable works visible for us all."—Justin Hall, California College of the Arts, editor of No Straight Lines"This wonderful book demonstrates the critical importance of community-based archives. Utilizing primary source materials, Margaret Galvan has produced an original and consequential contribution to the history of the feminist sex wars, and her attention to the visual aspects of those documents provides long overdue recognition to the period's artists, designers, and activists."—Gayle Rubin, University of Michigan

Benjamin Meiches explores the role of animals laboring alongside humans (mine-clearance dogs, milk-producing cows and goats, disease-identifying rats) in humanitarian operations, generating new ethical possibilities of care in humanitarian practice—and opening up new ethical ways to think about being human in terms of how we interact with nonhuman animals. Meiches, author of Nonhuman Humanitarians, is joined here in conversation with Stefanie Fishel.Benjamin Meiches is associate professor of politics at the Univeristy of Washington-Tacoma. He is author of Nonhuman Humanitarians: Animal Interventions in Global Politics and The Politics of Annihilation: A Genealogy of Genocide. Stefanie Fishel is lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. Fishel is author of The Microbial State: Global Thriving and the Body Politic and contributor to the edited volume The Long 2020.EPISODE REFERENCES:-Emmanuel Levinas, “The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights,” in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism (trans. Sean Hand)-Heifer International (organization)-J. M. Coetzee / The Lives of Animals-Brian Massumi / What Animals Teach Us about Politics-Liisa Malkki / The Need to Help-Timothy Morton / Dark Ecology-Timothy Morton / Ecology without Nature-David Shannon / Duck on a Bike-Jack Halberstam / Wild Things-Eugene Thacker / In the Dust of This Planet

What inspires desire for plants? In The Cactus Hunters, Jared Margulies takes readers through the intriguing world of succulent collecting, where collectors and conservationists alike are animated by passions that sometimes exceed the limits of the law. His globe-spanning journey offers complex insight into the fields of botany and criminology, political ecology and human geography, and psychoanalysis. Here, Margulies is joined in conversation with Samantha Walton.Jared Margulies is assistant professor of political ecology in the Department of Geography at the University of Alabama. Margulies is author of The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade.Samantha Walton is professor of modern literature at Bath Spa University in England. Walton is author of Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure and The Living World: Nan Shepherd and Environmental Thought.EPISODE REFERENCES:Nan ShepherdThe Detectorists (British comedy series)Sheffield Branch of the British Cactus and Succulent SocietyCactus and Succulent Society of AmericaJacques LacanSigmund FreudHannah DickinsonPaul KingsburyAnna SecorLucas PohlRobert Fletcher / Failing ForwardAlberto Vojtech FričLocations discussed:EnglandBrazilCzech RepublicMexicoThe Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade is available from University of Minnesota Press."This book offers a powerful example of the value of close attention to the entangled lives of plants and their people."—Thom van Dooren, author of A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions"A deeply felt and nuanced reckoning with desire as a structurally produced and world-making force—a unique and major contribution to political ecology."—Rosemary Collard, author of Animal Traffic: Lively Capital in the Global Exotic Pet Trade

“There is always some moment when other-than-human life bursts into presence amid the clamor of urban routine.” —Maan Barua, Lively CitiesOne of the fundamental dimensions of urbanization is its radical transformation of nature. The book Lively Cities: Reconfiguring Urban Ecology departs from conventions of urban studies to argue that cities are lived achievements forged by a multitude of entities, drawing attention to a suite of beings, human and nonhuman, that make up the material politics of city making. From macaques and cattle in Delhi to invasive parakeet colonies in London, author Maan Barua examines the rhythms, paths, and agency of nonhumans across the city. Barua is joined here in conversation with Sandra Jasper.Maan Barua is a university lecturer in human geography at the University of Cambridge.Sandra Jasper, a geographer and urbanist, is assistant professor of geography and gender at Humboldt University of Berlin.References:Matthew GandyTom FryGarry MarvinVinciane DespretAnindya SinhaARCH+ exhibit Cohabitation: A Manifesto for the Solidarity of Non-Humans and Humans in Urban Space (https://archplus.net/de/cohabitation-EN/)Yi-Fu TuanDeleuzeCharles EltonMarxLaura FortunatoSylvia FedericiLively Cities: Reconfiguring Urban Ecology is available from University of Minnesota Press.

Terrorism on Trial examines the contemporary role U.S. domestic courts play in the global war on terror. Author Nicole Nguyen advocates for a rethinking of popular understandings of political violence and its root causes, and exposes how dominant academic discourses, geographical imaginations, and social processes have shaped terrorism prosecutions—and disempower communities of color.Author Nicole Nguyen is joined here in conversation with Nadine Naber. This conversation was recorded in August 2023.Nicole Nguyen is associate professor of criminology, law, and justice at the University of Illinois Chicago, and is author of Terrorism on Trial: Political Violence and Abolitionist Futures;  Suspect Communities: Anti-Muslim Racism and the Domestic War on Terror; and A Curriculum of Fear: Homeland Security in U.S. Public Schools.Nadine Naber is professor in the Gender and Women's Studies and Global Asian Studies programs at the University of Illinois Chicago. Naber is founder of Liberate Your Research Workshops.Terrorism on Trial is available from University of Minnesota Press.

In Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood, Charlotte Wrigley considers how permafrost—and its disappearance—redefines extinction to be a lack of continuity that affects both life and nonlife on earth. With a look at the coldest regions in the world, Wrigley examines the wild new economies and mitigation strategies responding to thawing permafrost, including such projects as Pleistocene Park, Colossal, and Sooam Biotech, and offers a new angle on extinction through the concept of discontinuity. Here, Wrigley is joined in conversation with Pey-Yi Chu.Charlotte Wrigley is a postdoctoral researcher at The Greenhouse – Center for Environmental Humanities at the University of Stavanger, Norway. She is author of Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood: Permafrost and Extinction in the Russian Arctic.Pey-Yi Chu is associate professor of history at Pomona College in Claremont, California. She is author of The Life of Permafrost: A History of Frozen Earth in Russian and Soviet Science. PUBLICATION REFERENCES:The Life of Permafrost / Pey-Yi ChuOnce Upon the Permafrost / Susan CrateThe Breath of the Permafrost / Nikolai Sleptsov-SylykCryopolitics / Joanna Radin and Emma Kowal, editorsPLACES REFERENCED:-Yakutsk, the capital of the Russian region of the Sakha Republic-Chersky, Arctic port in the Sakha District on the Kolyma River-Permafrost bank on the Kolyma called Duvanny Yar-Pleistocene Park in CherskyPEOPLE MENTIONED:-Sergey and Nikita Zimov, geophysicist and son behind Pleistocene Park project-George Church of Harvard University, behind the business Colossal-Hwang Woo-Suk (Sooam Biotech), biotechnology expert and veterinarian who claimed to clone human embryonic cells and does work in Yakutsk with mammoths.-Stewart Brand, environmentalist and founder of the Long Now Foundation, known for quote: “We are as gods, so we have to get good at it.”More about the book: z.umn.edu/EarthIceBoneBlood

From his first days as a rookie firefighter and emergency medical technician to his command of a company as a twenty-year veteran, Jeremy Norton has made regular, direct encounters with the sick, the dying, and the dead. In his memoir, Trauma Sponges: Dispatches from the Scarred Heart of Emergency Response, Norton documents the life of an emergency responder in Minneapolis, revealing the stark realities of humanity at its finest and its worst. Here, Norton is joined in conversation with colleagues: Captain Ricardo Anaya, Captain Shana York, and retired Captain Bridget Bender.Jeremy Norton has been a firefighter/EMT with the Minneapolis Fire Department since 2000. He was born and raised in Washington, DC, and was a high school teacher in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He taught creative writing at the Loft Literary Center before joining the MFD.Bridget Bender is a recently retired captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department.Ricardo Anaya is a captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department and has been a Minneapolis firefighter since 2015.Shana York is a longtime firefighter and captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department.Trauma Sponges is available from University of Minnesota Press."While many bear witness to injustice and decide that silence best serves their privilege, some use their privilege to dismantle the inequities that created the disparities in the first place. Jeremy Norton is the latter."—Dr. Michele Harper, author of The Beauty in Breaking"Trauma Sponges is a powerful book, by turns tender, brutal, and incisive, full of wisdom and wonder."—Sam Lipsyte, author of No One Left to Come Looking for You and The Ask"Norton is the Poet Laureate of Emergency Services, a writer whose talent and heart spark and crackle on every page, devastating and dazzling with equal measure. He sorts through the wreckage of the lives he's saved and those that were lost, presenting us with what remains: our raw humanity and, somehow, hope."—Nora McInerny, founder of the Terrible, Thanks for Asking podcast and best-selling author of Bad Vibes Only"With clarity and sensitivity, Jeremy Norton has written an eye-opening book that shows us what firefighting is often about: encountering medical emergencies more often than fires, helping strangers through the trauma of death and loss, and witnessing the ways that racism, poverty, and violence singe our society. Theirs is a particular courage that we must all celebrate."—Dr. Sunita Puri, author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour

Unfolding amid an atmosphere of profound anxiety and disillusionment, the new American war film demonstrates a breakdown of the prevailing cultural narratives that had come to characterize conflict in the previous century. In the wake of 9/11, both the nature of military conflict and the symbolic frameworks that surround it have been dramatically reshaped.  The New American War Film charts society's shifting attitudes toward violent conflict and what is broadly considered to be its acceptable repercussions. Drawing attention to changes in gender dynamics and the focus on war's lasting psychological effects within films such as The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, Eye in the Sky, American Sniper, and others, author Robert Burgoyne analyzes how cinema both reflects and reveals the makeup of the national imaginary.Robert Burgoyne taught film studies for several decades at Wayne State University and at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He is author of seven books including The New American War Film and Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at U.S. History. Kim Nelson is the Director of the Humanities Research Group and an Associate Professor at the University of Windsor in Canada. Her films have been screened internationally at film festivals and by broadcasters in Canada and the US. She is co-editor of The Routledge Companion to History and the Moving Image and author of Making History Move: Five Principles of the Historical Film.FILM REFERENCES:The Hurt Locker (2008)Saving Private Ryan (1998)Spanish–American War films of Thomas Edison's 1898-99 seriesEye in the Sky (2015)Restrepo (2010)American Sniper (2014)Zero Dark Thirty (2012)A Private War (2018)Platoon (1986)Full Metal Jacket (1987)Born on the Fourth of July (1989)Battleship Potemkin (1925)DOCUMENTARY REFERENCES:Restrepo (2010 film)Infidel (2010 photo series)Into the Korengal (2010 photo series)Sleeping Soldiers—single screen (2009 short video, Tim Hetherington)OTHER REFERENCES:Fredric JamesonHomer/The IliadThomas Elsaesser on “productive pathology”-Robert Burgoyne's The New American War Film and Film Nation are available from University of Minnesota Press.

In Gramsci at Sea, author Sharad Chari asks how the environmental crisis of the oceans is linked to legacies of capitalism and imperialism across and within the oceans. Chari reads Antonio Gramsci as a thinker of the oceanic crisis, drawing on the philosopher's prison notes and questions concerning waves of imperial power in the inter-war oceans of his time. Here, Chari is joined in conversation with Charne Lavery, Melissa Marschke, and Philippe Le Billon.Sharad Chari is associate professor of geography and critical theory at the University of California, Berkeley. He is author of Gramsci at Sea and Fraternal Capital.Charne Lavery is senior lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. She is author of Writing Ocean Worlds.Melissa Marschke is professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. She is author of Life, Fish and Mangroves.Philippe Le Billon is professor in the Department of Geography and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. He is author of Wars of Plunder.Persons and works referenced:-Fernando Coronil-The Many-Headed Hydra by Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh-Meg Samuelson, “Thinking with Sharks,” Australian Humanities Review-Matthew Shutzer-Gavin Capps-Damien Hirst's shark tanks-Moby Dick by Herman Melville (character of Pip)-Ellen Gallagher-Katherine McKittrick-Drexciya-John Akomfrah's Vertigo Sea-Kamau Brathwaite's “tidalectics”More about the book:Gramsci at Sea is available from University of Minnesota Press. An open-access edition is available to read for free online at manifold.umn.edu.

Focusing on Friedrich Nietzsche's reception of the life sciences of his day (including concerns with insects and the emergent social properties they exhibit) and his reflections on technology—research areas as central to Nietzsche's work as they are to posthumanism—Edgar Landgraf provides fresh readings of Nietzsche and a critique of posthumanist and transhumanist philosophies in his new book, Nietzsche's Posthumanism. Here, Landgraf is joined in conversation with Christian Emden and Stefan Herbrechter.Edgar Landgraf is distinguished research professor of German at Bowling Green State University. He is author of Nietzsche's Posthumanism and Improvisation as Art, and coeditor of Posthumanism in the Age of Humanism and Play in the Age of Goethe.Christian Emden is Frances Moody Newman Professor at Rice University where he teaches German intellectual history and political thought. He is author of several books on Nietzsche, including Nietzsche's Naturalism and Nietzsche on Language, Consciousness, and the Body.Stefan Herbrechter is former Reader in Cultural Theory at Coventry University and former professor of English and cultural studies at Heidelberg University in Germany. He is an independent scholar of critical posthumanism and author of several books including Before Humanity and Posthumanism.Episode references:Friedrich NietzscheCary WolfeBaruch SpinozaJane BennettAlfred EspinasBernard StieglerErnst KappCharles DarwinRosi BraidottiFrancesca FerrandoPatricia MacCormackTamar Sharon Reading list:Vibrant Matter / Jane BennettOn Animal Societies / Alfred EspinasNietzsche's Animal Philosophy / Vanessa LemmMeeting the Universe Halfway / Karen BaradNietzsche's Naturalism / Christian J. EmdenNietzsche on Language, Consciousness, and the Body / Christian J. EmdenHow We Became Posthuman / N. Katherine HaylesStaying with the Trouble / Donna HarawayPosthumanism / Stefan HerbrechterThe Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism / Arthur KrokerInsect Media / Jussi ParikkaBefore the Law / Cary WolfeKeywords: Nietzsche, posthumanism, transhumanism, critical posthumanism, swarm theory, insects, history of technology, human agency, posthumanist ethics, posthumanist politics

In Noah's Arkive, Jeffrey J. Cohen and Julian Yates examine the long history of imagining endurance against climate change catastrophe—as well as alternative ways of creating refuge. Arguing that the biblical ark may well be the worst possible exemplar of human behavior, this book uncovers the startling afterlife of the Genesis narrative and surveys the long history of dwelling with the consequences of choosing only a few to survive in order to start the world over. Here, Cohen and Yates are interviewed by Steven Swarbrick.Jeffrey J. Cohen is Dean of Humanities at Arizona State University. He is author or editor of several books, including Noah's Arkive, Stone, Veer Ecology, and Elemental Ecocriticism.Julian Yates is H. Fletcher Brown Professor of English and Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware. He is author or editor of several books, including Noah's Arkive; Of Sheep, Oranges, and Yeast; and Error, Misuse, Failure.Steven Swarbrick is assistant professor of English at Baruch College, City University of New York. He is author of The Environmental Unconscious.Episode references:Bible (Genesis)Athanasius Kircher (Arca Noe)N. K. Jemisin (Emergency Skin)Jeanette Winterson (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit)Rebecca Solnit (A Paradise Built in Hell, “disaster utopias”)Donna Haraway (A Cyborg Manifesto, The Companion Species Manifesto)Anna TsingSilo (Apple TV+ show) (with speculation spoiler alert)William de Brailes (The Flood of Noah) (image appearing in color in the book)Arks visited in this book include:Ark Encounter, Williamstown, KentuckyBiosphere 2, Pinal County, ArizonaThe Ark of Safety, Frostburg, MarylandKeywords: environmental humanities, climate change, Genesis, catastrophe, disaster utopias, artificial intelligence, ark thinking, medieval studies, monsters, giants, groundless reading, tension, contradiction, hope“The worst thing you can do, we have learned, is to imagine that you are no longer on an ark.” (from Noah's Arkive, page 3)

As military and other forms of political violence become the planetary norm, On Posthuman War traces the expansion of war as manifest within humanity's individual, sociocultural, and biological existence. Author Mike Hill identifies three human-focused disciplines newly turned against humanity (demography, anthropology, and neuroscience) and questions the very notion of society. This episode brings Hill into conversation with Robyn Marasco and Warren Montag.Mike Hill is professor of English at SUNY Albany. He is coauthor (with Warren Montag) of The Other Adam Smith and author of After Whiteness and On Posthuman War.Robyn Marasco teaches political theory at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. Marasco is author of The Highway of Despair.Warren Montag is professor of English at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Montag is author of several books including Althusser and His Contemporaries.Episode references:Immanuel KantClaus von Clausewitz (On War)Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3–24) of 2006The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (from University of Chicago Press)The Gates DoctrineNational Security StrategyAmerican Sniper (opening of the film)Alain BadiouTopics:US war strategy (specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan)Gender politics in the USCrisis in the humanitiesClimate changeTerms/keywords:CivilianizedDe-civilianizedIdentity infiltrationComputation“Moving through the three fields of study identified in what follows as war disciplines (demography, anthropology, and neuroscience), computational technology is key … because, like war, it is both ubiquitous and largely invisible.” (from the Preface, page xxi)

In the 2010s cities and counties across the US witnessed long-overdue change as they engaged more with questions of social, economic, and racial justice. After decades of urban economic restructuring that intensified class divides and institutional and systemic racism, dozens of local governments countered the conventional wisdom that cities couldn't address inequality—enacting progressive labor market policies, from $15 minimum wages to paid sick leave. In their book Justice at Work: The Rise of Economic and Racial Justice Coalitions in Cities, Marc Doussard and Greg Schrock visit case studies in cities including Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Seattle, and New Orleans, and show that the contemporary wave of successful progressive organizing efforts is likely to endure—but their success hinges on a few factors including sustaining power at the grassroots. Here, Marc Doussard is in conversation with David B. Reynolds.Marc Doussard is professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is coauthor of Justice at Work: The Rise of Economic and Racial Justice Coalitions in Cities and author of Degraded Work: The Struggle at the Bottom of the Labor Market.David B. Reynolds was director of the Center for Labor and Community Studies at University of Michigan. Reynolds has been a labor educator for 20 years and is coauthor of A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement and coeditor of Igniting Justice and Progressive Power: The Partnership for Working Families Cities.Books and published works referenced:-Justice at Work: The Rise of Economic and Racial Justice Coalitions in Cities by Marc Doussard and Greg Schrock-Degraded Work: The Struggle at the Bottom of the Labor Market by Marc Doussard-A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement by Amy B. Dean and David B. Reynolds-Igniting Justice and Progressive Power: The Partnership for Working Families Cities by David B. Reynolds and Louise Simmons-Partnering for Change: Unions and Community Groups Build Coalitions for Economic Justice, edited by David B. Reynolds (with essay by Reynolds and Jen Kern: Labor and the Living Wage Movement)-”Living Wage Campaigns: An activist's guide to building the movement for economic justice.” David Reynolds and Jen Kern. (Labor Studies Center, Wayne State University and Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2000.)-Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies by John Kingdon-The City Is the Factory, edited by Miriam Greenberg and Penny LewisOther references:-Fight for 15-ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now)-PowerSwitch Action: https://www.powerswitchaction.org/-American Rescue Plan (also known as the American Rescue Plan Act or ARPA)-The Green New DealCities mentioned:SeattleDetroitDenverChicagoSan JoseSan DiegoSilicon ValleyAnn Arbor

Lichens are composite organisms made of a fungus and an alga or cyanobacteria thriving in a mutually beneficial relationship. The Lichen Museum looks to these complex organisms, remarkable for their symbiosis, diversity, longevity, and adaptability, as models for relations rooted in collaboration and nonhierarchical structures. Author A. Laurie Palmer channels the personal, the scientific, the philosophical, and the poetic to imagine a radical new approach to human interconnection. Palmer is joined in conversation with Art after Nature series editors Giovanni Aloi and Caroline Picard.A. Laurie Palmer is an artist and professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.Dr. Giovanni Aloi is an author, educator, and curator specializing in the representation of nature and the environment in art. Aloi is editor-in-chief of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture.Caroline Picard is a writer, cartoonist, curator, and executive director of Green Lantern Press.Praise for The Lichen Museum:"A deeply engaging, provocative, humorous, and moving account of why we should pay more attention to lichens. As lichens can be found anywhere, the entire surface of the earth becomes the lichen museum." —Heather Davis, author of Plastic Matter"Meditative and inquisitive." —Foreword"Reading this work feels like taking a series of walks with a particularly curious and sensitive companion, consistently attentive to otherwise neglected facets of the actual environment." —e-fluxLearn more about The Lichen Museum at the University of Minnesota Press website.

The first biography of Robert Smithson, Inside the Spiral deepens understanding of his art by addressing the potent forces in his life that were shrouded by his success, including his suppressed early history as a painter; his affiliation with Christianity, astrology, and alchemy; and his sexual fluidity. Author Suzaan Boettger uncovers Smithson's story with great sensitivity to the experiences of loss and existential strife that defined his distinct artistic language. This biographical analysis offers unprecedented insight into the hidden impulses of one of modern art's most enigmatic figures. Here, Suzaan Boettger is joined in conversation with Greg Lindquist.Suzaan Boettger is a scholar, arts journalist, and critic based in New York City. She is author of Inside the Spiral: The Passions of Robert Smithson and Earthworks: Art and the Landscape of the Sixties.Greg Lindquist is an artist, writer, and professor who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.References/artworks of Robert Smithson:Spiral JettyBuried AngelPlungeThe Flayed AngelsVile FlowerDark SisterEast Coast/West Coast. Artwork by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. Broken Circle/Spiral Hill (Emmen, Netherlands)Amarillo RampReferences/published works:-A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey (Robert Smithson, article in Artforum)-The Writings of Robert Smithson / edited by Nancy Holt; 1979.-"Living extinction: Robert Smithson's Dinosaurs," by Suzaan Boettger (Burlington Contemporary)-Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings / Jack Flam, editor-Robert Smithson. MOCA catalogue, 2004. Connie Butler, Thomas Crow, Eugenie Tsai-The Shape of Time / George Kubler.-”Jackson Pollock/Robert Smithson: The Myth/The Mythologist.” Howard Junker. Arts Magazine, May 1978.-”The Art Establishment,” Harold Rosenberg. Esquire, January 1, 1965.References/people:Virginia Dwan (gallery owner)Doug Chrismas (gallery owner)Isenheim AltarpieceRuth KligmanJackson PollockJasper JohnsLouise NevelsonMore about the book: z.umn.edu/InsideTheSpiral