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For many years, Diane Ravitch was among the country's leading conservative thinkers on education. The cure for what ailed the school system was clear, she believed: high-stakes standardized testing, national standards, accountability, competition, charters, and vouchers. Then Ravitch saw what happened when these ideas were put into practice and recanted her long-held views. The problem was not bad teachers or failing schools, as conservatives claimed, but poverty. She denounced privatization as a hoax that did not help students and that harmed the public school system. She urged action to address the root causes of inequality. In An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else (Columbia UP, 2025) this passionate and timely memoir of her life's work as a historian and advocate, Ravitch traces her ideological evolution. She recounts her personal and intellectual journey: her childhood in Houston, her years among the New York intelligentsia, her service in government, and her leftward turn. Ravitch shares how she came to hold conservative views and why she eventually abandoned them, exploring her switch from championing standards-based curriculum and standardized testing to arguing for greater investment in professional teachers and in public schools. Bringing together candid reflections with decades of research on education, Ravitch makes a powerful case for becoming, as she calls herself, “an activist on behalf of public schools.” Diane Ravitch is a historian of education and a prominent commentator about education and politics. Her many books include Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools (2013); The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (2010); and The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805–1973 (1974). Ravitch was assistant secretary of education under President George H. W. Bush and served on the national testing board during the Clinton administration. She is cofounder and president of the Network for Public Education Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For many years, Diane Ravitch was among the country's leading conservative thinkers on education. The cure for what ailed the school system was clear, she believed: high-stakes standardized testing, national standards, accountability, competition, charters, and vouchers. Then Ravitch saw what happened when these ideas were put into practice and recanted her long-held views. The problem was not bad teachers or failing schools, as conservatives claimed, but poverty. She denounced privatization as a hoax that did not help students and that harmed the public school system. She urged action to address the root causes of inequality. In An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else (Columbia UP, 2025) this passionate and timely memoir of her life's work as a historian and advocate, Ravitch traces her ideological evolution. She recounts her personal and intellectual journey: her childhood in Houston, her years among the New York intelligentsia, her service in government, and her leftward turn. Ravitch shares how she came to hold conservative views and why she eventually abandoned them, exploring her switch from championing standards-based curriculum and standardized testing to arguing for greater investment in professional teachers and in public schools. Bringing together candid reflections with decades of research on education, Ravitch makes a powerful case for becoming, as she calls herself, “an activist on behalf of public schools.” Diane Ravitch is a historian of education and a prominent commentator about education and politics. Her many books include Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools (2013); The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (2010); and The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805–1973 (1974). Ravitch was assistant secretary of education under President George H. W. Bush and served on the national testing board during the Clinton administration. She is cofounder and president of the Network for Public Education Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For many years, Diane Ravitch was among the country's leading conservative thinkers on education. The cure for what ailed the school system was clear, she believed: high-stakes standardized testing, national standards, accountability, competition, charters, and vouchers. Then Ravitch saw what happened when these ideas were put into practice and recanted her long-held views. The problem was not bad teachers or failing schools, as conservatives claimed, but poverty. She denounced privatization as a hoax that did not help students and that harmed the public school system. She urged action to address the root causes of inequality. In An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else (Columbia UP, 2025) this passionate and timely memoir of her life's work as a historian and advocate, Ravitch traces her ideological evolution. She recounts her personal and intellectual journey: her childhood in Houston, her years among the New York intelligentsia, her service in government, and her leftward turn. Ravitch shares how she came to hold conservative views and why she eventually abandoned them, exploring her switch from championing standards-based curriculum and standardized testing to arguing for greater investment in professional teachers and in public schools. Bringing together candid reflections with decades of research on education, Ravitch makes a powerful case for becoming, as she calls herself, “an activist on behalf of public schools.” Diane Ravitch is a historian of education and a prominent commentator about education and politics. Her many books include Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools (2013); The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (2010); and The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805–1973 (1974). Ravitch was assistant secretary of education under President George H. W. Bush and served on the national testing board during the Clinton administration. She is cofounder and president of the Network for Public Education

What's the secret to keeping your balance? The ear does more than hear: it helps us stay stable by perceiving movements and gravity. Elegant sensors deep within the skull detect every twist, turn, and tumble, powering swift reflexes that keep vision and balance steady. This is the vestibular system. It's primordial and ubiquitous: every animal has one, and even plants have a rudimentary version. It works so well that we take it for granted--until it fails. How does this remarkable system function? What happens when it goes haywire? How can modern medicine treat vestibular disease? The Great Balancing Act: An Insider's Guide to the Human Vestibular System (Columbia UP, 2025) tells the story of the vestibular system, from T. rex hearing organs to cochlear implants, and from the unsung power of hair cells to inner-ear problems in outer space. Combining neuroscience, history, and medicine, Jeffrey D. Sharon--a vestibular doctor and researcher--explains the sense of balance using accessible language and wry humor. He recounts how pioneering scientists solved the mysteries of the vestibular system and shows why it is necessary for spatial reasoning and abstract thought. Sharon explores the devastating consequences of vestibular problems such as vertigo, dizziness, and imbalance, offering an expert, patient-friendly look at emerging and future treatments. Engaging and entertaining, this book invites readers to discover a little-known yet vital part of ourselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

What's the secret to keeping your balance? The ear does more than hear: it helps us stay stable by perceiving movements and gravity. Elegant sensors deep within the skull detect every twist, turn, and tumble, powering swift reflexes that keep vision and balance steady. This is the vestibular system. It's primordial and ubiquitous: every animal has one, and even plants have a rudimentary version. It works so well that we take it for granted--until it fails. How does this remarkable system function? What happens when it goes haywire? How can modern medicine treat vestibular disease? The Great Balancing Act: An Insider's Guide to the Human Vestibular System (Columbia UP, 2025) tells the story of the vestibular system, from T. rex hearing organs to cochlear implants, and from the unsung power of hair cells to inner-ear problems in outer space. Combining neuroscience, history, and medicine, Jeffrey D. Sharon--a vestibular doctor and researcher--explains the sense of balance using accessible language and wry humor. He recounts how pioneering scientists solved the mysteries of the vestibular system and shows why it is necessary for spatial reasoning and abstract thought. Sharon explores the devastating consequences of vestibular problems such as vertigo, dizziness, and imbalance, offering an expert, patient-friendly look at emerging and future treatments. Engaging and entertaining, this book invites readers to discover a little-known yet vital part of ourselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

What's the secret to keeping your balance? The ear does more than hear: it helps us stay stable by perceiving movements and gravity. Elegant sensors deep within the skull detect every twist, turn, and tumble, powering swift reflexes that keep vision and balance steady. This is the vestibular system. It's primordial and ubiquitous: every animal has one, and even plants have a rudimentary version. It works so well that we take it for granted--until it fails. How does this remarkable system function? What happens when it goes haywire? How can modern medicine treat vestibular disease? The Great Balancing Act: An Insider's Guide to the Human Vestibular System (Columbia UP, 2025) tells the story of the vestibular system, from T. rex hearing organs to cochlear implants, and from the unsung power of hair cells to inner-ear problems in outer space. Combining neuroscience, history, and medicine, Jeffrey D. Sharon--a vestibular doctor and researcher--explains the sense of balance using accessible language and wry humor. He recounts how pioneering scientists solved the mysteries of the vestibular system and shows why it is necessary for spatial reasoning and abstract thought. Sharon explores the devastating consequences of vestibular problems such as vertigo, dizziness, and imbalance, offering an expert, patient-friendly look at emerging and future treatments. Engaging and entertaining, this book invites readers to discover a little-known yet vital part of ourselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's the secret to keeping your balance? The ear does more than hear: it helps us stay stable by perceiving movements and gravity. Elegant sensors deep within the skull detect every twist, turn, and tumble, powering swift reflexes that keep vision and balance steady. This is the vestibular system. It's primordial and ubiquitous: every animal has one, and even plants have a rudimentary version. It works so well that we take it for granted--until it fails. How does this remarkable system function? What happens when it goes haywire? How can modern medicine treat vestibular disease? The Great Balancing Act: An Insider's Guide to the Human Vestibular System (Columbia UP, 2025) tells the story of the vestibular system, from T. rex hearing organs to cochlear implants, and from the unsung power of hair cells to inner-ear problems in outer space. Combining neuroscience, history, and medicine, Jeffrey D. Sharon--a vestibular doctor and researcher--explains the sense of balance using accessible language and wry humor. He recounts how pioneering scientists solved the mysteries of the vestibular system and shows why it is necessary for spatial reasoning and abstract thought. Sharon explores the devastating consequences of vestibular problems such as vertigo, dizziness, and imbalance, offering an expert, patient-friendly look at emerging and future treatments. Engaging and entertaining, this book invites readers to discover a little-known yet vital part of ourselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/neuroscience

What's the secret to keeping your balance? The ear does more than hear: it helps us stay stable by perceiving movements and gravity. Elegant sensors deep within the skull detect every twist, turn, and tumble, powering swift reflexes that keep vision and balance steady. This is the vestibular system. It's primordial and ubiquitous: every animal has one, and even plants have a rudimentary version. It works so well that we take it for granted--until it fails. How does this remarkable system function? What happens when it goes haywire? How can modern medicine treat vestibular disease? The Great Balancing Act: An Insider's Guide to the Human Vestibular System (Columbia UP, 2025) tells the story of the vestibular system, from T. rex hearing organs to cochlear implants, and from the unsung power of hair cells to inner-ear problems in outer space. Combining neuroscience, history, and medicine, Jeffrey D. Sharon--a vestibular doctor and researcher--explains the sense of balance using accessible language and wry humor. He recounts how pioneering scientists solved the mysteries of the vestibular system and shows why it is necessary for spatial reasoning and abstract thought. Sharon explores the devastating consequences of vestibular problems such as vertigo, dizziness, and imbalance, offering an expert, patient-friendly look at emerging and future treatments. Engaging and entertaining, this book invites readers to discover a little-known yet vital part of ourselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's the secret to keeping your balance? The ear does more than hear: it helps us stay stable by perceiving movements and gravity. Elegant sensors deep within the skull detect every twist, turn, and tumble, powering swift reflexes that keep vision and balance steady. This is the vestibular system. It's primordial and ubiquitous: every animal has one, and even plants have a rudimentary version. It works so well that we take it for granted--until it fails. How does this remarkable system function? What happens when it goes haywire? How can modern medicine treat vestibular disease? The Great Balancing Act: An Insider's Guide to the Human Vestibular System (Columbia UP, 2025) tells the story of the vestibular system, from T. rex hearing organs to cochlear implants, and from the unsung power of hair cells to inner-ear problems in outer space. Combining neuroscience, history, and medicine, Jeffrey D. Sharon--a vestibular doctor and researcher--explains the sense of balance using accessible language and wry humor. He recounts how pioneering scientists solved the mysteries of the vestibular system and shows why it is necessary for spatial reasoning and abstract thought. Sharon explores the devastating consequences of vestibular problems such as vertigo, dizziness, and imbalance, offering an expert, patient-friendly look at emerging and future treatments. Engaging and entertaining, this book invites readers to discover a little-known yet vital part of ourselves.

Since Xi Jinping's accession to power in 2012, nearly every aspect of China's relations with Africa has grown dramatically. Beijing has increased the share of resources it devotes to African countries, expanding military cooperation, technological investment, and educational and cultural programs as well as extending its political influence. China's Relations with Africa: A New Era of Strategic Engagement (Columbia University Press, 2023) examines the full scope of contemporary political and security relations between China and Africa. David H. Shinn and Joshua Eisenman not only explain the specific tactics and methods that Beijing uses to build its strategic relations with African political and military elites but also contextualize and interpret them within China's larger geostrategy. They argue that the priorities of Chinese leaders―including the conflation of threats to the Communist Party with threats to the country, a growing emphasis on relations in the Global South, and a focus on countering U.S. hegemony―have combined to elevate Africa's importance among policy makers in Beijing. Ranging from diplomacy and propaganda to arms sales and space cooperation, from increasingly frequent People's Liberation Army Navy port calls in Africa to the rising number of African students studying in China, this book marshals extensive and compelling qualitative and quantitative evidence of the deepening ties between China and Africa. Drawing on two decades of systematic data and hundreds of surveys and in-person interviews, Shinn and Eisenman shed new light on the state of China-Africa relations today and consider what the future may hold. Byline Nomeh Anthony Kanayo, Ph.D. Candidate in International Relations at Florida International University, with research interest in Africa's diaspora relations, African-China relations, Great power rivalry and IR theories. Check out my new article https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sciaf.2025.e02699 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Why is it so difficult to account for the role of identity in literary studies? Why do both writers and scholars of Indian English literature express resistance to India and Indianness? What does this reveal about how non-Western literatures are read, taught, and understood? Drawing on years of experiences in classrooms and on U.S. university campuses, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan explores how writers, critics, teachers, and students of Indian English literatures negotiate and resist the categories through which the field is defined: ethnic, postcolonial, and Anglophone.Overdetermined: How Indian English Literature Becomes Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Anglophone (Columbia UP, 2025) considers major contemporary authors who disavow identity even as their works and public personas respond in varied ways to the imperatives of being “Indian.” Chapters examine Bharati Mukherjee's rejection of “ethnic” Americanness; Chetan Bhagat's “bad English”; Amit Chaudhuri's autofictional literary project; and Jhumpa Lahiri's decision to write in Italian, interspersed with meditations on the iconicity of the theorists Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Edward Said. Through an innovative method of accented reading and sharing stories and syllabi from her teaching, Srinivasan relates the burdens of representation faced by ethnic and postcolonial writers to the institutional and disciplinary pressures that affect the scholars who study their works. Engaging and self-reflexive, Overdetermined offers new insight into the dynamics that shape contemporary Indian English literature, the politics of identity in literary studies, and the complexities of teaching minoritized literatures in the West. Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan is assistant professor of English at Rice University. Her books include the essays What is We? (2025) and the coedited Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (2023), and her public writing has appeared in numerous venues. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Why is it so difficult to account for the role of identity in literary studies? Why do both writers and scholars of Indian English literature express resistance to India and Indianness? What does this reveal about how non-Western literatures are read, taught, and understood? Drawing on years of experiences in classrooms and on U.S. university campuses, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan explores how writers, critics, teachers, and students of Indian English literatures negotiate and resist the categories through which the field is defined: ethnic, postcolonial, and Anglophone.Overdetermined: How Indian English Literature Becomes Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Anglophone (Columbia UP, 2025) considers major contemporary authors who disavow identity even as their works and public personas respond in varied ways to the imperatives of being “Indian.” Chapters examine Bharati Mukherjee's rejection of “ethnic” Americanness; Chetan Bhagat's “bad English”; Amit Chaudhuri's autofictional literary project; and Jhumpa Lahiri's decision to write in Italian, interspersed with meditations on the iconicity of the theorists Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Edward Said. Through an innovative method of accented reading and sharing stories and syllabi from her teaching, Srinivasan relates the burdens of representation faced by ethnic and postcolonial writers to the institutional and disciplinary pressures that affect the scholars who study their works. Engaging and self-reflexive, Overdetermined offers new insight into the dynamics that shape contemporary Indian English literature, the politics of identity in literary studies, and the complexities of teaching minoritized literatures in the West. Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan is assistant professor of English at Rice University. Her books include the essays What is We? (2025) and the coedited Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (2023), and her public writing has appeared in numerous venues. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Since Xi Jinping's accession to power in 2012, nearly every aspect of China's relations with Africa has grown dramatically. Beijing has increased the share of resources it devotes to African countries, expanding military cooperation, technological investment, and educational and cultural programs as well as extending its political influence. China's Relations with Africa: A New Era of Strategic Engagement (Columbia University Press, 2023) examines the full scope of contemporary political and security relations between China and Africa. David H. Shinn and Joshua Eisenman not only explain the specific tactics and methods that Beijing uses to build its strategic relations with African political and military elites but also contextualize and interpret them within China's larger geostrategy. They argue that the priorities of Chinese leaders―including the conflation of threats to the Communist Party with threats to the country, a growing emphasis on relations in the Global South, and a focus on countering U.S. hegemony―have combined to elevate Africa's importance among policy makers in Beijing. Ranging from diplomacy and propaganda to arms sales and space cooperation, from increasingly frequent People's Liberation Army Navy port calls in Africa to the rising number of African students studying in China, this book marshals extensive and compelling qualitative and quantitative evidence of the deepening ties between China and Africa. Drawing on two decades of systematic data and hundreds of surveys and in-person interviews, Shinn and Eisenman shed new light on the state of China-Africa relations today and consider what the future may hold. Byline Nomeh Anthony Kanayo, Ph.D. Candidate in International Relations at Florida International University, with research interest in Africa's diaspora relations, African-China relations, Great power rivalry and IR theories. Check out my new article https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sciaf.2025.e02699 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Why is it so difficult to account for the role of identity in literary studies? Why do both writers and scholars of Indian English literature express resistance to India and Indianness? What does this reveal about how non-Western literatures are read, taught, and understood? Drawing on years of experiences in classrooms and on U.S. university campuses, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan explores how writers, critics, teachers, and students of Indian English literatures negotiate and resist the categories through which the field is defined: ethnic, postcolonial, and Anglophone.Overdetermined: How Indian English Literature Becomes Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Anglophone (Columbia UP, 2025) considers major contemporary authors who disavow identity even as their works and public personas respond in varied ways to the imperatives of being “Indian.” Chapters examine Bharati Mukherjee's rejection of “ethnic” Americanness; Chetan Bhagat's “bad English”; Amit Chaudhuri's autofictional literary project; and Jhumpa Lahiri's decision to write in Italian, interspersed with meditations on the iconicity of the theorists Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Edward Said. Through an innovative method of accented reading and sharing stories and syllabi from her teaching, Srinivasan relates the burdens of representation faced by ethnic and postcolonial writers to the institutional and disciplinary pressures that affect the scholars who study their works. Engaging and self-reflexive, Overdetermined offers new insight into the dynamics that shape contemporary Indian English literature, the politics of identity in literary studies, and the complexities of teaching minoritized literatures in the West. Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan is assistant professor of English at Rice University. Her books include the essays What is We? (2025) and the coedited Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (2023), and her public writing has appeared in numerous venues. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Since Xi Jinping's accession to power in 2012, nearly every aspect of China's relations with Africa has grown dramatically. Beijing has increased the share of resources it devotes to African countries, expanding military cooperation, technological investment, and educational and cultural programs as well as extending its political influence. China's Relations with Africa: A New Era of Strategic Engagement (Columbia University Press, 2023) examines the full scope of contemporary political and security relations between China and Africa. David H. Shinn and Joshua Eisenman not only explain the specific tactics and methods that Beijing uses to build its strategic relations with African political and military elites but also contextualize and interpret them within China's larger geostrategy. They argue that the priorities of Chinese leaders―including the conflation of threats to the Communist Party with threats to the country, a growing emphasis on relations in the Global South, and a focus on countering U.S. hegemony―have combined to elevate Africa's importance among policy makers in Beijing. Ranging from diplomacy and propaganda to arms sales and space cooperation, from increasingly frequent People's Liberation Army Navy port calls in Africa to the rising number of African students studying in China, this book marshals extensive and compelling qualitative and quantitative evidence of the deepening ties between China and Africa. Drawing on two decades of systematic data and hundreds of surveys and in-person interviews, Shinn and Eisenman shed new light on the state of China-Africa relations today and consider what the future may hold. Byline Nomeh Anthony Kanayo, Ph.D. Candidate in International Relations at Florida International University, with research interest in Africa's diaspora relations, African-China relations, Great power rivalry and IR theories. Check out my new article https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sciaf.2025.e02699 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Why is it so difficult to account for the role of identity in literary studies? Why do both writers and scholars of Indian English literature express resistance to India and Indianness? What does this reveal about how non-Western literatures are read, taught, and understood? Drawing on years of experiences in classrooms and on U.S. university campuses, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan explores how writers, critics, teachers, and students of Indian English literatures negotiate and resist the categories through which the field is defined: ethnic, postcolonial, and Anglophone.Overdetermined: How Indian English Literature Becomes Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Anglophone (Columbia UP, 2025) considers major contemporary authors who disavow identity even as their works and public personas respond in varied ways to the imperatives of being “Indian.” Chapters examine Bharati Mukherjee's rejection of “ethnic” Americanness; Chetan Bhagat's “bad English”; Amit Chaudhuri's autofictional literary project; and Jhumpa Lahiri's decision to write in Italian, interspersed with meditations on the iconicity of the theorists Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Edward Said. Through an innovative method of accented reading and sharing stories and syllabi from her teaching, Srinivasan relates the burdens of representation faced by ethnic and postcolonial writers to the institutional and disciplinary pressures that affect the scholars who study their works. Engaging and self-reflexive, Overdetermined offers new insight into the dynamics that shape contemporary Indian English literature, the politics of identity in literary studies, and the complexities of teaching minoritized literatures in the West. Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan is assistant professor of English at Rice University. Her books include the essays What is We? (2025) and the coedited Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (2023), and her public writing has appeared in numerous venues. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Since Xi Jinping's accession to power in 2012, nearly every aspect of China's relations with Africa has grown dramatically. Beijing has increased the share of resources it devotes to African countries, expanding military cooperation, technological investment, and educational and cultural programs as well as extending its political influence. China's Relations with Africa: A New Era of Strategic Engagement (Columbia University Press, 2023) examines the full scope of contemporary political and security relations between China and Africa. David H. Shinn and Joshua Eisenman not only explain the specific tactics and methods that Beijing uses to build its strategic relations with African political and military elites but also contextualize and interpret them within China's larger geostrategy. They argue that the priorities of Chinese leaders―including the conflation of threats to the Communist Party with threats to the country, a growing emphasis on relations in the Global South, and a focus on countering U.S. hegemony―have combined to elevate Africa's importance among policy makers in Beijing. Ranging from diplomacy and propaganda to arms sales and space cooperation, from increasingly frequent People's Liberation Army Navy port calls in Africa to the rising number of African students studying in China, this book marshals extensive and compelling qualitative and quantitative evidence of the deepening ties between China and Africa. Drawing on two decades of systematic data and hundreds of surveys and in-person interviews, Shinn and Eisenman shed new light on the state of China-Africa relations today and consider what the future may hold. Byline Nomeh Anthony Kanayo, Ph.D. Candidate in International Relations at Florida International University, with research interest in Africa's diaspora relations, African-China relations, Great power rivalry and IR theories. Check out my new article https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sciaf.2025.e02699 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

Since Xi Jinping's accession to power in 2012, nearly every aspect of China's relations with Africa has grown dramatically. Beijing has increased the share of resources it devotes to African countries, expanding military cooperation, technological investment, and educational and cultural programs as well as extending its political influence. China's Relations with Africa: A New Era of Strategic Engagement (Columbia University Press, 2023) examines the full scope of contemporary political and security relations between China and Africa. David H. Shinn and Joshua Eisenman not only explain the specific tactics and methods that Beijing uses to build its strategic relations with African political and military elites but also contextualize and interpret them within China's larger geostrategy. They argue that the priorities of Chinese leaders―including the conflation of threats to the Communist Party with threats to the country, a growing emphasis on relations in the Global South, and a focus on countering U.S. hegemony―have combined to elevate Africa's importance among policy makers in Beijing. Ranging from diplomacy and propaganda to arms sales and space cooperation, from increasingly frequent People's Liberation Army Navy port calls in Africa to the rising number of African students studying in China, this book marshals extensive and compelling qualitative and quantitative evidence of the deepening ties between China and Africa. Drawing on two decades of systematic data and hundreds of surveys and in-person interviews, Shinn and Eisenman shed new light on the state of China-Africa relations today and consider what the future may hold. Byline Nomeh Anthony Kanayo, Ph.D. Candidate in International Relations at Florida International University, with research interest in Africa's diaspora relations, African-China relations, Great power rivalry and IR theories. Check out my new article https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sciaf.2025.e02699 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since Xi Jinping's accession to power in 2012, nearly every aspect of China's relations with Africa has grown dramatically. Beijing has increased the share of resources it devotes to African countries, expanding military cooperation, technological investment, and educational and cultural programs as well as extending its political influence. China's Relations with Africa: A New Era of Strategic Engagement (Columbia University Press, 2023) examines the full scope of contemporary political and security relations between China and Africa. David H. Shinn and Joshua Eisenman not only explain the specific tactics and methods that Beijing uses to build its strategic relations with African political and military elites but also contextualize and interpret them within China's larger geostrategy. They argue that the priorities of Chinese leaders―including the conflation of threats to the Communist Party with threats to the country, a growing emphasis on relations in the Global South, and a focus on countering U.S. hegemony―have combined to elevate Africa's importance among policy makers in Beijing. Ranging from diplomacy and propaganda to arms sales and space cooperation, from increasingly frequent People's Liberation Army Navy port calls in Africa to the rising number of African students studying in China, this book marshals extensive and compelling qualitative and quantitative evidence of the deepening ties between China and Africa. Drawing on two decades of systematic data and hundreds of surveys and in-person interviews, Shinn and Eisenman shed new light on the state of China-Africa relations today and consider what the future may hold. Byline Nomeh Anthony Kanayo, Ph.D. Candidate in International Relations at Florida International University, with research interest in Africa's diaspora relations, African-China relations, Great power rivalry and IR theories. Check out my new article https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sciaf.2025.e02699

Why is it so difficult to account for the role of identity in literary studies? Why do both writers and scholars of Indian English literature express resistance to India and Indianness? What does this reveal about how non-Western literatures are read, taught, and understood? Drawing on years of experiences in classrooms and on U.S. university campuses, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan explores how writers, critics, teachers, and students of Indian English literatures negotiate and resist the categories through which the field is defined: ethnic, postcolonial, and Anglophone.Overdetermined: How Indian English Literature Becomes Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Anglophone (Columbia UP, 2025) considers major contemporary authors who disavow identity even as their works and public personas respond in varied ways to the imperatives of being “Indian.” Chapters examine Bharati Mukherjee's rejection of “ethnic” Americanness; Chetan Bhagat's “bad English”; Amit Chaudhuri's autofictional literary project; and Jhumpa Lahiri's decision to write in Italian, interspersed with meditations on the iconicity of the theorists Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Edward Said. Through an innovative method of accented reading and sharing stories and syllabi from her teaching, Srinivasan relates the burdens of representation faced by ethnic and postcolonial writers to the institutional and disciplinary pressures that affect the scholars who study their works. Engaging and self-reflexive, Overdetermined offers new insight into the dynamics that shape contemporary Indian English literature, the politics of identity in literary studies, and the complexities of teaching minoritized literatures in the West. Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan is assistant professor of English at Rice University. Her books include the essays What is We? (2025) and the coedited Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (2023), and her public writing has appeared in numerous venues. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here

Why is it so difficult to account for the role of identity in literary studies? Why do both writers and scholars of Indian English literature express resistance to India and Indianness? What does this reveal about how non-Western literatures are read, taught, and understood? Drawing on years of experiences in classrooms and on U.S. university campuses, Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan explores how writers, critics, teachers, and students of Indian English literatures negotiate and resist the categories through which the field is defined: ethnic, postcolonial, and Anglophone.Overdetermined: How Indian English Literature Becomes Ethnic, Postcolonial, and Anglophone (Columbia UP, 2025) considers major contemporary authors who disavow identity even as their works and public personas respond in varied ways to the imperatives of being “Indian.” Chapters examine Bharati Mukherjee's rejection of “ethnic” Americanness; Chetan Bhagat's “bad English”; Amit Chaudhuri's autofictional literary project; and Jhumpa Lahiri's decision to write in Italian, interspersed with meditations on the iconicity of the theorists Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Edward Said. Through an innovative method of accented reading and sharing stories and syllabi from her teaching, Srinivasan relates the burdens of representation faced by ethnic and postcolonial writers to the institutional and disciplinary pressures that affect the scholars who study their works. Engaging and self-reflexive, Overdetermined offers new insight into the dynamics that shape contemporary Indian English literature, the politics of identity in literary studies, and the complexities of teaching minoritized literatures in the West. Ragini Tharoor Srinivasan is assistant professor of English at Rice University. Her books include the essays What is We? (2025) and the coedited Thinking with an Accent: Toward a New Object, Method, and Practice (2023), and her public writing has appeared in numerous venues. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/book-of-the-day

Over the centuries, we have learned to peer into what was once invisible. Imaging devices like cameras, telescopes, microscopes, and MRI machines map the world around, beyond, and within us in ways the naked eye could never see. In so doing, these technologies have transformed our understanding of our place in the universe and our conception of our own bodies--and we may be on the cusp of an even greater revolution. Daniel K. Sodickson--a physicist and biomedical imaging innovator--explores the rich history and surprising future of vision, from the evolution of eyes to emerging high-tech devices. Beginning in the early oceans, when organisms first developed sight, The Future of Seeing: How Imaging is Changing the World (Columbia UP, 2025) tells the stories of the many remarkable tools people have invented to extend our natural vision. Ranging from the tales of brilliant inventors to profiles of everyday people, this book shows how imaging has transformed the practice of medicine, reshaped the global economy, and complicated the notion of privacy. In the era of artificial intelligence, Sodickson argues, it will be reinvented even further, emulating not only our senses but also our brains. Inviting and eye-opening, The Future of Seeing is a revelatory look at what imaging teaches us about the way we see the world, each other, and ourselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Over the centuries, we have learned to peer into what was once invisible. Imaging devices like cameras, telescopes, microscopes, and MRI machines map the world around, beyond, and within us in ways the naked eye could never see. In so doing, these technologies have transformed our understanding of our place in the universe and our conception of our own bodies--and we may be on the cusp of an even greater revolution. Daniel K. Sodickson--a physicist and biomedical imaging innovator--explores the rich history and surprising future of vision, from the evolution of eyes to emerging high-tech devices. Beginning in the early oceans, when organisms first developed sight, The Future of Seeing: How Imaging is Changing the World (Columbia UP, 2025) tells the stories of the many remarkable tools people have invented to extend our natural vision. Ranging from the tales of brilliant inventors to profiles of everyday people, this book shows how imaging has transformed the practice of medicine, reshaped the global economy, and complicated the notion of privacy. In the era of artificial intelligence, Sodickson argues, it will be reinvented even further, emulating not only our senses but also our brains. Inviting and eye-opening, The Future of Seeing is a revelatory look at what imaging teaches us about the way we see the world, each other, and ourselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science

Over the centuries, we have learned to peer into what was once invisible. Imaging devices like cameras, telescopes, microscopes, and MRI machines map the world around, beyond, and within us in ways the naked eye could never see. In so doing, these technologies have transformed our understanding of our place in the universe and our conception of our own bodies--and we may be on the cusp of an even greater revolution. Daniel K. Sodickson--a physicist and biomedical imaging innovator--explores the rich history and surprising future of vision, from the evolution of eyes to emerging high-tech devices. Beginning in the early oceans, when organisms first developed sight, The Future of Seeing: How Imaging is Changing the World (Columbia UP, 2025) tells the stories of the many remarkable tools people have invented to extend our natural vision. Ranging from the tales of brilliant inventors to profiles of everyday people, this book shows how imaging has transformed the practice of medicine, reshaped the global economy, and complicated the notion of privacy. In the era of artificial intelligence, Sodickson argues, it will be reinvented even further, emulating not only our senses but also our brains. Inviting and eye-opening, The Future of Seeing is a revelatory look at what imaging teaches us about the way we see the world, each other, and ourselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

Over the centuries, we have learned to peer into what was once invisible. Imaging devices like cameras, telescopes, microscopes, and MRI machines map the world around, beyond, and within us in ways the naked eye could never see. In so doing, these technologies have transformed our understanding of our place in the universe and our conception of our own bodies--and we may be on the cusp of an even greater revolution. Daniel K. Sodickson--a physicist and biomedical imaging innovator--explores the rich history and surprising future of vision, from the evolution of eyes to emerging high-tech devices. Beginning in the early oceans, when organisms first developed sight, The Future of Seeing: How Imaging is Changing the World (Columbia UP, 2025) tells the stories of the many remarkable tools people have invented to extend our natural vision. Ranging from the tales of brilliant inventors to profiles of everyday people, this book shows how imaging has transformed the practice of medicine, reshaped the global economy, and complicated the notion of privacy. In the era of artificial intelligence, Sodickson argues, it will be reinvented even further, emulating not only our senses but also our brains. Inviting and eye-opening, The Future of Seeing is a revelatory look at what imaging teaches us about the way we see the world, each other, and ourselves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/technology

Over the centuries, we have learned to peer into what was once invisible. Imaging devices like cameras, telescopes, microscopes, and MRI machines map the world around, beyond, and within us in ways the naked eye could never see. In so doing, these technologies have transformed our understanding of our place in the universe and our conception of our own bodies--and we may be on the cusp of an even greater revolution. Daniel K. Sodickson--a physicist and biomedical imaging innovator--explores the rich history and surprising future of vision, from the evolution of eyes to emerging high-tech devices. Beginning in the early oceans, when organisms first developed sight, The Future of Seeing: How Imaging is Changing the World (Columbia UP, 2025) tells the stories of the many remarkable tools people have invented to extend our natural vision. Ranging from the tales of brilliant inventors to profiles of everyday people, this book shows how imaging has transformed the practice of medicine, reshaped the global economy, and complicated the notion of privacy. In the era of artificial intelligence, Sodickson argues, it will be reinvented even further, emulating not only our senses but also our brains. Inviting and eye-opening, The Future of Seeing is a revelatory look at what imaging teaches us about the way we see the world, each other, and ourselves.

Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities (Columbia University Press, 2025), is a groundbreaking book that recasts the role of knowledge in the making of a colonial and postcolonial nation. It makes a case for a new literary and intellectual-historical approach to Islam in Africa. The Senegalese Muslim scholar Shaykh Musa Kamara (1864–1945) wrote History of the Blacks, a monumental history of West Africa, in a time when colonial discourses asserted that Africans lacked both writing and history. He sought to publish a bilingual Arabic and French edition of the book by working with humanists in colonial institutions, but the project was ultimately undermined by the disregard of the French state. Textual Life considers Kamara's story as a parable about the fate of the humanities amid epistemic and technological change. Wendell H. Marsh argues that Kamara's scholarship reflected what he calls the textual attitude, an orientation to the world mediated by reading. Colonial humanists shared this attitude even while upholding racial and religious hierarchies, and they took an interest in African texts and traditions. The bureaucrats and technocrats who succeeded them, however, disdained such dialogue—for reasons that bear a striking resemblance to the algorithmic antihumanism that is ascendant today. Drawing on Kamara's body of work, colonial archival documents, and postcolonial knowledge production within Senegal, Textual Life offers a decolonial vision of the humanities. By engaging with African and Muslim intellectual resources, Marsh shows how thinkers like Kamara who were subjected to colonialism can help us find a future after empire. Wendell Marsh is Associate Professor of African Literature and Philosophy at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University. Madina Thiam is Fannie Gaston-Johansson Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities (Columbia University Press, 2025), is a groundbreaking book that recasts the role of knowledge in the making of a colonial and postcolonial nation. It makes a case for a new literary and intellectual-historical approach to Islam in Africa. The Senegalese Muslim scholar Shaykh Musa Kamara (1864–1945) wrote History of the Blacks, a monumental history of West Africa, in a time when colonial discourses asserted that Africans lacked both writing and history. He sought to publish a bilingual Arabic and French edition of the book by working with humanists in colonial institutions, but the project was ultimately undermined by the disregard of the French state. Textual Life considers Kamara's story as a parable about the fate of the humanities amid epistemic and technological change. Wendell H. Marsh argues that Kamara's scholarship reflected what he calls the textual attitude, an orientation to the world mediated by reading. Colonial humanists shared this attitude even while upholding racial and religious hierarchies, and they took an interest in African texts and traditions. The bureaucrats and technocrats who succeeded them, however, disdained such dialogue—for reasons that bear a striking resemblance to the algorithmic antihumanism that is ascendant today. Drawing on Kamara's body of work, colonial archival documents, and postcolonial knowledge production within Senegal, Textual Life offers a decolonial vision of the humanities. By engaging with African and Muslim intellectual resources, Marsh shows how thinkers like Kamara who were subjected to colonialism can help us find a future after empire. Wendell Marsh is Associate Professor of African Literature and Philosophy at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University. Madina Thiam is Fannie Gaston-Johansson Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities (Columbia University Press, 2025), is a groundbreaking book that recasts the role of knowledge in the making of a colonial and postcolonial nation. It makes a case for a new literary and intellectual-historical approach to Islam in Africa. The Senegalese Muslim scholar Shaykh Musa Kamara (1864–1945) wrote History of the Blacks, a monumental history of West Africa, in a time when colonial discourses asserted that Africans lacked both writing and history. He sought to publish a bilingual Arabic and French edition of the book by working with humanists in colonial institutions, but the project was ultimately undermined by the disregard of the French state. Textual Life considers Kamara's story as a parable about the fate of the humanities amid epistemic and technological change. Wendell H. Marsh argues that Kamara's scholarship reflected what he calls the textual attitude, an orientation to the world mediated by reading. Colonial humanists shared this attitude even while upholding racial and religious hierarchies, and they took an interest in African texts and traditions. The bureaucrats and technocrats who succeeded them, however, disdained such dialogue—for reasons that bear a striking resemblance to the algorithmic antihumanism that is ascendant today. Drawing on Kamara's body of work, colonial archival documents, and postcolonial knowledge production within Senegal, Textual Life offers a decolonial vision of the humanities. By engaging with African and Muslim intellectual resources, Marsh shows how thinkers like Kamara who were subjected to colonialism can help us find a future after empire. Wendell Marsh is Associate Professor of African Literature and Philosophy at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University. Madina Thiam is Fannie Gaston-Johansson Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities (Columbia University Press, 2025), is a groundbreaking book that recasts the role of knowledge in the making of a colonial and postcolonial nation. It makes a case for a new literary and intellectual-historical approach to Islam in Africa. The Senegalese Muslim scholar Shaykh Musa Kamara (1864–1945) wrote History of the Blacks, a monumental history of West Africa, in a time when colonial discourses asserted that Africans lacked both writing and history. He sought to publish a bilingual Arabic and French edition of the book by working with humanists in colonial institutions, but the project was ultimately undermined by the disregard of the French state. Textual Life considers Kamara's story as a parable about the fate of the humanities amid epistemic and technological change. Wendell H. Marsh argues that Kamara's scholarship reflected what he calls the textual attitude, an orientation to the world mediated by reading. Colonial humanists shared this attitude even while upholding racial and religious hierarchies, and they took an interest in African texts and traditions. The bureaucrats and technocrats who succeeded them, however, disdained such dialogue—for reasons that bear a striking resemblance to the algorithmic antihumanism that is ascendant today. Drawing on Kamara's body of work, colonial archival documents, and postcolonial knowledge production within Senegal, Textual Life offers a decolonial vision of the humanities. By engaging with African and Muslim intellectual resources, Marsh shows how thinkers like Kamara who were subjected to colonialism can help us find a future after empire. Wendell Marsh is Associate Professor of African Literature and Philosophy at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University. Madina Thiam is Fannie Gaston-Johansson Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/middle-eastern-studies

Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities (Columbia University Press, 2025), is a groundbreaking book that recasts the role of knowledge in the making of a colonial and postcolonial nation. It makes a case for a new literary and intellectual-historical approach to Islam in Africa. The Senegalese Muslim scholar Shaykh Musa Kamara (1864–1945) wrote History of the Blacks, a monumental history of West Africa, in a time when colonial discourses asserted that Africans lacked both writing and history. He sought to publish a bilingual Arabic and French edition of the book by working with humanists in colonial institutions, but the project was ultimately undermined by the disregard of the French state. Textual Life considers Kamara's story as a parable about the fate of the humanities amid epistemic and technological change. Wendell H. Marsh argues that Kamara's scholarship reflected what he calls the textual attitude, an orientation to the world mediated by reading. Colonial humanists shared this attitude even while upholding racial and religious hierarchies, and they took an interest in African texts and traditions. The bureaucrats and technocrats who succeeded them, however, disdained such dialogue—for reasons that bear a striking resemblance to the algorithmic antihumanism that is ascendant today. Drawing on Kamara's body of work, colonial archival documents, and postcolonial knowledge production within Senegal, Textual Life offers a decolonial vision of the humanities. By engaging with African and Muslim intellectual resources, Marsh shows how thinkers like Kamara who were subjected to colonialism can help us find a future after empire. Wendell Marsh is Associate Professor of African Literature and Philosophy at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University. Madina Thiam is Fannie Gaston-Johansson Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities (Columbia University Press, 2025), is a groundbreaking book that recasts the role of knowledge in the making of a colonial and postcolonial nation. It makes a case for a new literary and intellectual-historical approach to Islam in Africa. The Senegalese Muslim scholar Shaykh Musa Kamara (1864–1945) wrote History of the Blacks, a monumental history of West Africa, in a time when colonial discourses asserted that Africans lacked both writing and history. He sought to publish a bilingual Arabic and French edition of the book by working with humanists in colonial institutions, but the project was ultimately undermined by the disregard of the French state. Textual Life considers Kamara's story as a parable about the fate of the humanities amid epistemic and technological change. Wendell H. Marsh argues that Kamara's scholarship reflected what he calls the textual attitude, an orientation to the world mediated by reading. Colonial humanists shared this attitude even while upholding racial and religious hierarchies, and they took an interest in African texts and traditions. The bureaucrats and technocrats who succeeded them, however, disdained such dialogue—for reasons that bear a striking resemblance to the algorithmic antihumanism that is ascendant today. Drawing on Kamara's body of work, colonial archival documents, and postcolonial knowledge production within Senegal, Textual Life offers a decolonial vision of the humanities. By engaging with African and Muslim intellectual resources, Marsh shows how thinkers like Kamara who were subjected to colonialism can help us find a future after empire. Wendell Marsh is Associate Professor of African Literature and Philosophy at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University. Madina Thiam is Fannie Gaston-Johansson Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Textual Life: Islam, Africa, and the Fate of the Humanities (Columbia University Press, 2025), is a groundbreaking book that recasts the role of knowledge in the making of a colonial and postcolonial nation. It makes a case for a new literary and intellectual-historical approach to Islam in Africa. The Senegalese Muslim scholar Shaykh Musa Kamara (1864–1945) wrote History of the Blacks, a monumental history of West Africa, in a time when colonial discourses asserted that Africans lacked both writing and history. He sought to publish a bilingual Arabic and French edition of the book by working with humanists in colonial institutions, but the project was ultimately undermined by the disregard of the French state. Textual Life considers Kamara's story as a parable about the fate of the humanities amid epistemic and technological change. Wendell H. Marsh argues that Kamara's scholarship reflected what he calls the textual attitude, an orientation to the world mediated by reading. Colonial humanists shared this attitude even while upholding racial and religious hierarchies, and they took an interest in African texts and traditions. The bureaucrats and technocrats who succeeded them, however, disdained such dialogue—for reasons that bear a striking resemblance to the algorithmic antihumanism that is ascendant today. Drawing on Kamara's body of work, colonial archival documents, and postcolonial knowledge production within Senegal, Textual Life offers a decolonial vision of the humanities. By engaging with African and Muslim intellectual resources, Marsh shows how thinkers like Kamara who were subjected to colonialism can help us find a future after empire. Wendell Marsh is Associate Professor of African Literature and Philosophy at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University. Madina Thiam is Fannie Gaston-Johansson Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Today's international system is made up of states: Territorial entities with defined borders, with exclusive control within those borders, diplomatic recognition by other states outside of them and usually (though not always) tied to some idea of the “nation.” But how many states have existed throughout history, such as during the nineteenth century? Some early counts put the number at just a few dozen–a measure that international relations professors Charles R. Butcher and Ryan D. Griffiths thought was far too low, missing polities throughout the non-Western world. Together, they put together their own count of independent states in the nineteenth century, as published in their latest work Before Colonization: Non-Western States and Systems in the Nineteenth Century (Columbia UP, 2025). Charles joins us today to talk about his work. He is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His research focuses on the legacies of historical states and state systems, democratization, and civil resistance. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Before Colonization. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Today's international system is made up of states: Territorial entities with defined borders, with exclusive control within those borders, diplomatic recognition by other states outside of them and usually (though not always) tied to some idea of the “nation.” But how many states have existed throughout history, such as during the nineteenth century? Some early counts put the number at just a few dozen–a measure that international relations professors Charles R. Butcher and Ryan D. Griffiths thought was far too low, missing polities throughout the non-Western world. Together, they put together their own count of independent states in the nineteenth century, as published in their latest work Before Colonization: Non-Western States and Systems in the Nineteenth Century (Columbia UP, 2025). Charles joins us today to talk about his work. He is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His research focuses on the legacies of historical states and state systems, democratization, and civil resistance. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Before Colonization. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

Today's international system is made up of states: Territorial entities with defined borders, with exclusive control within those borders, diplomatic recognition by other states outside of them and usually (though not always) tied to some idea of the “nation.” But how many states have existed throughout history, such as during the nineteenth century? Some early counts put the number at just a few dozen–a measure that international relations professors Charles R. Butcher and Ryan D. Griffiths thought was far too low, missing polities throughout the non-Western world. Together, they put together their own count of independent states in the nineteenth century, as published in their latest work Before Colonization: Non-Western States and Systems in the Nineteenth Century (Columbia UP, 2025). Charles joins us today to talk about his work. He is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His research focuses on the legacies of historical states and state systems, democratization, and civil resistance. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Before Colonization. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-review

Slow motion is everywhere in contemporary film and media, but it wasn't always so ubiquitous. How did slow motion ascend to the dubious honor of becoming our culture's least "special" effect? And what does slow motion — a trick secured paradoxically through the camera's ever-racing speeds of capture — tell us about the temporalities and trajectories of modernity?  Mark Goble, Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, takes up these questions in his latest book Downtime: The Twentieth Century in Slow Motion (Columbia UP, 2025), out now from Columbia University Press. In this conversation with Alix Beeston, Mark shares from his fascinating account of slow motion across film, art, and literature in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. For Mark, slow motion is a key index of a period of capitalist, ecological, political, and cultural crisis that we're still enduring — but that we hope will one day, however slowly, come to an end.  Tracking bodies and things as they move fast and slow at once also prompts new reflections on the value of the time that academic labor takes, the nature of its uneven rhythms and contingencies, and why dad jokes, witty asides, and extended bits on the impotence of Clyde in the classic 1968 film Bonnie and Clyde might turn out to be essential to scholarly writing.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Slow motion is everywhere in contemporary film and media, but it wasn't always so ubiquitous. How did slow motion ascend to the dubious honor of becoming our culture's least "special" effect? And what does slow motion — a trick secured paradoxically through the camera's ever-racing speeds of capture — tell us about the temporalities and trajectories of modernity?  Mark Goble, Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, takes up these questions in his latest book Downtime: The Twentieth Century in Slow Motion (Columbia UP, 2025), out now from Columbia University Press. In this conversation with Alix Beeston, Mark shares from his fascinating account of slow motion across film, art, and literature in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. For Mark, slow motion is a key index of a period of capitalist, ecological, political, and cultural crisis that we're still enduring — but that we hope will one day, however slowly, come to an end.  Tracking bodies and things as they move fast and slow at once also prompts new reflections on the value of the time that academic labor takes, the nature of its uneven rhythms and contingencies, and why dad jokes, witty asides, and extended bits on the impotence of Clyde in the classic 1968 film Bonnie and Clyde might turn out to be essential to scholarly writing.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

Slow motion is everywhere in contemporary film and media, but it wasn't always so ubiquitous. How did slow motion ascend to the dubious honor of becoming our culture's least "special" effect? And what does slow motion — a trick secured paradoxically through the camera's ever-racing speeds of capture — tell us about the temporalities and trajectories of modernity?  Mark Goble, Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, takes up these questions in his latest book Downtime: The Twentieth Century in Slow Motion (Columbia UP, 2025), out now from Columbia University Press. In this conversation with Alix Beeston, Mark shares from his fascinating account of slow motion across film, art, and literature in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. For Mark, slow motion is a key index of a period of capitalist, ecological, political, and cultural crisis that we're still enduring — but that we hope will one day, however slowly, come to an end.  Tracking bodies and things as they move fast and slow at once also prompts new reflections on the value of the time that academic labor takes, the nature of its uneven rhythms and contingencies, and why dad jokes, witty asides, and extended bits on the impotence of Clyde in the classic 1968 film Bonnie and Clyde might turn out to be essential to scholarly writing.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

Slow motion is everywhere in contemporary film and media, but it wasn't always so ubiquitous. How did slow motion ascend to the dubious honor of becoming our culture's least "special" effect? And what does slow motion — a trick secured paradoxically through the camera's ever-racing speeds of capture — tell us about the temporalities and trajectories of modernity?  Mark Goble, Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, takes up these questions in his latest book Downtime: The Twentieth Century in Slow Motion (Columbia UP, 2025), out now from Columbia University Press. In this conversation with Alix Beeston, Mark shares from his fascinating account of slow motion across film, art, and literature in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. For Mark, slow motion is a key index of a period of capitalist, ecological, political, and cultural crisis that we're still enduring — but that we hope will one day, however slowly, come to an end.  Tracking bodies and things as they move fast and slow at once also prompts new reflections on the value of the time that academic labor takes, the nature of its uneven rhythms and contingencies, and why dad jokes, witty asides, and extended bits on the impotence of Clyde in the classic 1968 film Bonnie and Clyde might turn out to be essential to scholarly writing.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art

What happens if you took one of the classic characters of Chinese literary fiction and dropped him into early 20th-century China? That's the premise of Wu Jianren's novel, New Story of the Stone (Columbia UP, 2025), written in 1905, which takes Jia Baoyu, from the classic Dream of the Red Chamber, and takes him first to Qing China and the Boxer Rebellion, and then to the fantastical “Realm of Civilization,” a world that, in Wu's eyes, reflected what he thought would happen if people embraced Chinese beliefs. Liz Webber just released a new translation on New Story of the Stone, and joins us today to talk about this piece of literary fanfiction, and what political points Wu wanted to achieve by writing his work of early Chinese science fiction. Liz Evans Weber is currently an assistant professor of instruction in Chinese and research assistant professor at the University of Rochester in New York, where she teaches a wide range of courses on Chinese literature and a workshop course on Chinese-to-English literary translation. Her published translations also include the short story “Boundless Night” by Yu Dafu (Renditions, Spring 2021) In 2025, she was awarded a Translation Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts for work on her next translation project, Flower in a Sea of Resentment by Jin Songcen and Zeng Pu. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of New Story of the Stone. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

What happens if you took one of the classic characters of Chinese literary fiction and dropped him into early 20th-century China? That's the premise of Wu Jianren's novel, New Story of the Stone (Columbia UP, 2025), written in 1905, which takes Jia Baoyu, from the classic Dream of the Red Chamber, and takes him first to Qing China and the Boxer Rebellion, and then to the fantastical “Realm of Civilization,” a world that, in Wu's eyes, reflected what he thought would happen if people embraced Chinese beliefs. Liz Webber just released a new translation on New Story of the Stone, and joins us today to talk about this piece of literary fanfiction, and what political points Wu wanted to achieve by writing his work of early Chinese science fiction. Liz Evans Weber is currently an assistant professor of instruction in Chinese and research assistant professor at the University of Rochester in New York, where she teaches a wide range of courses on Chinese literature and a workshop course on Chinese-to-English literary translation. Her published translations also include the short story “Boundless Night” by Yu Dafu (Renditions, Spring 2021) In 2025, she was awarded a Translation Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts for work on her next translation project, Flower in a Sea of Resentment by Jin Songcen and Zeng Pu. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of New Story of the Stone. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-fiction

We tend to think about movie stars as either glamorous or relatable. But in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Hollywood star system was taking shape, a number of unusual stars appeared on the silver screen, representing groups from which the American mainstream typically sought to avert its eyes. What did it mean for a white entertainment columnist to empathize with an ambiguously gendered Black child star? Or for boys to idolize Lon Chaney, famous for portraying characters with disabilities? Hollywood's Others: Love and Limitation in the Star System (Columbia UP, 2025) explores the affective ties between white, non-disabled audiences and the fascinatingly different stars with whom they identified—but only up to a point. Katherine Fusco argues that stardom in this era at once offered ways for viewers to connect across group boundaries while also policing the limits of empathy. Examining fan magazines alongside film performances, she traces the intense audience attachment to atypical celebrities and the ways the film industry sought to manage it. Fusco considers Shirley Temple's career in light of child labor laws and changing notions of childhood; shows how white viewers responded to Black music in depictions of the antebellum South; and analyzes the gender politics of conspiracy theories around celebrity suicides. Shedding light on marginalized stardoms and the anxieties they provoked, Hollywood's Others challenges common notions about film's capacity to build empathy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

We tend to think about movie stars as either glamorous or relatable. But in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Hollywood star system was taking shape, a number of unusual stars appeared on the silver screen, representing groups from which the American mainstream typically sought to avert its eyes. What did it mean for a white entertainment columnist to empathize with an ambiguously gendered Black child star? Or for boys to idolize Lon Chaney, famous for portraying characters with disabilities? Hollywood's Others: Love and Limitation in the Star System (Columbia UP, 2025) explores the affective ties between white, non-disabled audiences and the fascinatingly different stars with whom they identified—but only up to a point. Katherine Fusco argues that stardom in this era at once offered ways for viewers to connect across group boundaries while also policing the limits of empathy. Examining fan magazines alongside film performances, she traces the intense audience attachment to atypical celebrities and the ways the film industry sought to manage it. Fusco considers Shirley Temple's career in light of child labor laws and changing notions of childhood; shows how white viewers responded to Black music in depictions of the antebellum South; and analyzes the gender politics of conspiracy theories around celebrity suicides. Shedding light on marginalized stardoms and the anxieties they provoked, Hollywood's Others challenges common notions about film's capacity to build empathy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

We tend to think about movie stars as either glamorous or relatable. But in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Hollywood star system was taking shape, a number of unusual stars appeared on the silver screen, representing groups from which the American mainstream typically sought to avert its eyes. What did it mean for a white entertainment columnist to empathize with an ambiguously gendered Black child star? Or for boys to idolize Lon Chaney, famous for portraying characters with disabilities? Hollywood's Others: Love and Limitation in the Star System (Columbia UP, 2025) explores the affective ties between white, non-disabled audiences and the fascinatingly different stars with whom they identified—but only up to a point. Katherine Fusco argues that stardom in this era at once offered ways for viewers to connect across group boundaries while also policing the limits of empathy. Examining fan magazines alongside film performances, she traces the intense audience attachment to atypical celebrities and the ways the film industry sought to manage it. Fusco considers Shirley Temple's career in light of child labor laws and changing notions of childhood; shows how white viewers responded to Black music in depictions of the antebellum South; and analyzes the gender politics of conspiracy theories around celebrity suicides. Shedding light on marginalized stardoms and the anxieties they provoked, Hollywood's Others challenges common notions about film's capacity to build empathy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Returning to NBN is the philosopher Santiago Zabala, here to introduce his new book Signs from the Future: A Philosophy of Warnings (Columbia University Press, 2025). Warnings, for Zabala, are not synonymous with predictions. They are instead as much about the present as the future. They point towards already present crisis and contradictions. They also attempt to reorient us towards alternative paths. Embedded deeply in the critical hermeneutics of writers such as Heidegger, Arendt and Beauvoir but exploring contemporary issues such as gender, climate change and machine warfare, Zabala's book is an accessible and applicable text that simultaneously tries to destabilize us in our present complacency while grounding us in an urgent need to seek alternatives. Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is the author of numerous books, including one previously discussed on this show, Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Returning to NBN is the philosopher Santiago Zabala, here to introduce his new book Signs from the Future: A Philosophy of Warnings (Columbia University Press, 2025). Warnings, for Zabala, are not synonymous with predictions. They are instead as much about the present as the future. They point towards already present crisis and contradictions. They also attempt to reorient us towards alternative paths. Embedded deeply in the critical hermeneutics of writers such as Heidegger, Arendt and Beauvoir but exploring contemporary issues such as gender, climate change and machine warfare, Zabala's book is an accessible and applicable text that simultaneously tries to destabilize us in our present complacency while grounding us in an urgent need to seek alternatives. Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is the author of numerous books, including one previously discussed on this show, Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

Returning to NBN is the philosopher Santiago Zabala, here to introduce his new book Signs from the Future: A Philosophy of Warnings (Columbia University Press, 2025). Warnings, for Zabala, are not synonymous with predictions. They are instead as much about the present as the future. They point towards already present crisis and contradictions. They also attempt to reorient us towards alternative paths. Embedded deeply in the critical hermeneutics of writers such as Heidegger, Arendt and Beauvoir but exploring contemporary issues such as gender, climate change and machine warfare, Zabala's book is an accessible and applicable text that simultaneously tries to destabilize us in our present complacency while grounding us in an urgent need to seek alternatives. Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is the author of numerous books, including one previously discussed on this show, Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history

Returning to NBN is the philosopher Santiago Zabala, here to introduce his new book Signs from the Future: A Philosophy of Warnings (Columbia University Press, 2025). Warnings, for Zabala, are not synonymous with predictions. They are instead as much about the present as the future. They point towards already present crisis and contradictions. They also attempt to reorient us towards alternative paths. Embedded deeply in the critical hermeneutics of writers such as Heidegger, Arendt and Beauvoir but exploring contemporary issues such as gender, climate change and machine warfare, Zabala's book is an accessible and applicable text that simultaneously tries to destabilize us in our present complacency while grounding us in an urgent need to seek alternatives. Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is the author of numerous books, including one previously discussed on this show, Being at Large: Freedom in the Age of Alternative Facts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

Think running an insurance company or a bank is hard?  Try doing it as an African-American woman in the Jim Crow South.  Shennette Garrett-Scott's new book, Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal (Columbia University Press, 2019) tells the fascinating story of just such an endeavor, first the Independent Order of St. Luke, and then the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank, founded in Richmond in 1903.  Along the way, she tells the tale of force-of-nature strong women, particularly Maggie Lena Walker, who wouldn't take no for an answer as she built up a culture of business and entrepreneurship against incredibly long odds and never-ending efforts by regulators and competitors to thwart her efforts. It makes for gripping reading. Daniel Peris is Senior Vice President at Federated Investors in Pittsburgh. Trained as a historian of modern Russia, he is the author most recently of Getting Back to Business: Why Modern Portfolio Theory Fails Investors. You can follow him on Twitter @Back2BizBook or at http://www.strategicdividendinvestor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies