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In the first major biography of Baldwin in more than a decade, James Baldwin: Living in Fire (Pluto Press, 2019), Bill V. Mullen celebrates the personal and political life of the great African-American writer who changed the face of Western politics and culture. As a lifelong anti-imperialist, black queer advocate, and feminist, Baldwin (1924-1987) was a passionate chronicler of the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, the U.S. war against Vietnam, Palestinian liberation struggle, and the rise of LGBTQ rights. Mullen explores how Baldwin's life and work channel the long history of African-American freedom struggles, and explains how Baldwin both predicted and has become a symbol of the global Black Lives Matter movement. Bill V. Mullen is Professor of English and American Studies at Purdue University. His specializations are American Literature and Studies, African American Studies, Cultural Studies, Working-Class Studies, Critical Race Theory and Marxist Theory. 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. Twitter. 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
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit andrewsullivan.substack.comCharles is a writer, social scientist, and longtime friend. He currently holds the F.A. Hayek Chair Emeritus in Cultural Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. His many books include Losing Ground, The Bell Curve (co-authored with Richard Herrnstein), Coming Apart, Facing Reality, and Human Diversity (which we discussed on the Dishcast in 2021). His new book is Taking Religion Seriously. If you think you know who Charles is from the way the MSM has described him for years, this conversation may surprise.For two clips of our convo — on how science has revived old ideas of God over the past several decades, and the connection between psychedelics and agape — head to our YouTube page. (Charles is the second guest we've had who has come out as an LSD experimenter on the show; Rod Dreher was the other one.)Other topics: how Charles lived for decades without a “God-sized hole”; the security and comfort of modern life; when death and suffering was far more common; the 24/7 distractions of today; meditation retreats; Charles learning TM in Thailand; Quakerism and his wife Catherine's discovery that she loved her child “more than evolution requires”; how religiosity falls on a bell curve; my Irish grandmother's faith; “why is there something rather than nothing?”; the Big Bang and fine-tuning; logos; multiverses; the materialism of Dawkins et al; the evolutionary role of religion; CS Lewis; the Golden Rule; pure altruism; the transcendence in nature; near-death experiences; dementia and terminal lucidity; consciousness outside the brain; the soul; the collective consciousness in Buddhism; the strange details of the Gospels; the feminism of Jesus; the adulteress he saved; how grace is contagious; the Nativity; crucifixion and the Resurrection; the Jefferson Bible; the sacraments; the doubt in faith; Oakeshott; “Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs”; my HIV diagnosis; theodicy; Camus; TS Eliot; transhumanism, and the boredom of too much life.Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy. Coming up: Karen Hao on artificial intelligence, Michel Paradis on Eisenhower, David Ignatius on the Trump effect globally, Mark Halperin on the domestic front, and Arthur Brooks on the science of happiness. As always, please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
Does good democratic government require intelligent, moral, and productive citizens? Can our political institutions educate the kind of citizens we wish or need to have? With recent arguments "against democracy" and fears about the rise of populism, there is growing scepticism about whether liberalism and democracy can continue to survive together. Some even question whether democracy is worth saving. In Democracy Tamed: French Liberalism and the Politics of Suffrage (Oxford UP, 2024), Gianna Englert argues that the dilemmas facing liberal democracy are not unique to our present moment, but have existed since the birth of liberal political thought in nineteenth-century France. Combining political theory and intellectual history, Englert shows how nineteenth-century French liberals championed the idea of "political capacity" as an alternative to democratic political rights and argued that voting rights should be limited to capable citizens who would preserve free, stable institutions against revolutionary passions and democratic demands. Liberals also redefined democracy itself, from its ancient meaning as political rule by the people to something that, counterintuitively, demanded the guidance of a capable few rather than the rule of all.Understandably, scholarly treatments of political capacity have criticized the idea as exclusionary and potentially dangerous. Englert argues instead that political capacity was a flexible standard that developed alongside a changing society and economy, allowing liberals to embrace democracy without abandoning their first principles. She reveals a forgotten, uncharted path of liberalism in France that remained open to political democracy while aiming to foster citizen capacity. Overall, Democracy Tamed tells the story of how the earliest liberals deployed their notion of the "new democracy" to resist universal suffrage. But it also reveals how later liberals would appropriate their predecessors' antidemocratic arguments to safeguard liberal democracies as we have come to know them. Gianna Englert is Associate Professor of Humanities in The Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. 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
Does good democratic government require intelligent, moral, and productive citizens? Can our political institutions educate the kind of citizens we wish or need to have? With recent arguments "against democracy" and fears about the rise of populism, there is growing scepticism about whether liberalism and democracy can continue to survive together. Some even question whether democracy is worth saving. In Democracy Tamed: French Liberalism and the Politics of Suffrage (Oxford UP, 2024), Gianna Englert argues that the dilemmas facing liberal democracy are not unique to our present moment, but have existed since the birth of liberal political thought in nineteenth-century France. Combining political theory and intellectual history, Englert shows how nineteenth-century French liberals championed the idea of "political capacity" as an alternative to democratic political rights and argued that voting rights should be limited to capable citizens who would preserve free, stable institutions against revolutionary passions and democratic demands. Liberals also redefined democracy itself, from its ancient meaning as political rule by the people to something that, counterintuitively, demanded the guidance of a capable few rather than the rule of all.Understandably, scholarly treatments of political capacity have criticized the idea as exclusionary and potentially dangerous. Englert argues instead that political capacity was a flexible standard that developed alongside a changing society and economy, allowing liberals to embrace democracy without abandoning their first principles. She reveals a forgotten, uncharted path of liberalism in France that remained open to political democracy while aiming to foster citizen capacity. Overall, Democracy Tamed tells the story of how the earliest liberals deployed their notion of the "new democracy" to resist universal suffrage. But it also reveals how later liberals would appropriate their predecessors' antidemocratic arguments to safeguard liberal democracies as we have come to know them. Gianna Englert is Associate Professor of Humanities in The Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. 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/political-science
Does good democratic government require intelligent, moral, and productive citizens? Can our political institutions educate the kind of citizens we wish or need to have? With recent arguments "against democracy" and fears about the rise of populism, there is growing scepticism about whether liberalism and democracy can continue to survive together. Some even question whether democracy is worth saving. In Democracy Tamed: French Liberalism and the Politics of Suffrage (Oxford UP, 2024), Gianna Englert argues that the dilemmas facing liberal democracy are not unique to our present moment, but have existed since the birth of liberal political thought in nineteenth-century France. Combining political theory and intellectual history, Englert shows how nineteenth-century French liberals championed the idea of "political capacity" as an alternative to democratic political rights and argued that voting rights should be limited to capable citizens who would preserve free, stable institutions against revolutionary passions and democratic demands. Liberals also redefined democracy itself, from its ancient meaning as political rule by the people to something that, counterintuitively, demanded the guidance of a capable few rather than the rule of all.Understandably, scholarly treatments of political capacity have criticized the idea as exclusionary and potentially dangerous. Englert argues instead that political capacity was a flexible standard that developed alongside a changing society and economy, allowing liberals to embrace democracy without abandoning their first principles. She reveals a forgotten, uncharted path of liberalism in France that remained open to political democracy while aiming to foster citizen capacity. Overall, Democracy Tamed tells the story of how the earliest liberals deployed their notion of the "new democracy" to resist universal suffrage. But it also reveals how later liberals would appropriate their predecessors' antidemocratic arguments to safeguard liberal democracies as we have come to know them. Gianna Englert is Associate Professor of Humanities in The Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. 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
Does good democratic government require intelligent, moral, and productive citizens? Can our political institutions educate the kind of citizens we wish or need to have? With recent arguments "against democracy" and fears about the rise of populism, there is growing scepticism about whether liberalism and democracy can continue to survive together. Some even question whether democracy is worth saving. In Democracy Tamed: French Liberalism and the Politics of Suffrage (Oxford UP, 2024), Gianna Englert argues that the dilemmas facing liberal democracy are not unique to our present moment, but have existed since the birth of liberal political thought in nineteenth-century France. Combining political theory and intellectual history, Englert shows how nineteenth-century French liberals championed the idea of "political capacity" as an alternative to democratic political rights and argued that voting rights should be limited to capable citizens who would preserve free, stable institutions against revolutionary passions and democratic demands. Liberals also redefined democracy itself, from its ancient meaning as political rule by the people to something that, counterintuitively, demanded the guidance of a capable few rather than the rule of all.Understandably, scholarly treatments of political capacity have criticized the idea as exclusionary and potentially dangerous. Englert argues instead that political capacity was a flexible standard that developed alongside a changing society and economy, allowing liberals to embrace democracy without abandoning their first principles. She reveals a forgotten, uncharted path of liberalism in France that remained open to political democracy while aiming to foster citizen capacity. Overall, Democracy Tamed tells the story of how the earliest liberals deployed their notion of the "new democracy" to resist universal suffrage. But it also reveals how later liberals would appropriate their predecessors' antidemocratic arguments to safeguard liberal democracies as we have come to know them. Gianna Englert is Associate Professor of Humanities in The Hamilton School for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. 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
Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran: The Autobiography of Mahboob Qirvanian provides a translation of a compelling autobiography that chronicles the life of Mahboob Qirvanian, from childhood and enslavement in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire to his eventual liberation in Iran. The Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran is a poignant and compelling account of one man's journey through struggle, resilience, and unimaginable suffering. In the early twentieth century, Mahboob Qirvanian recorded his personal experiences of forced migration and enslavement as he navigated his path from captivity in Africa to full citizenship and a reconstructed identity in Iran. Written in Persian and Arabic, this remarkable autobiography serves as a powerful testament to Mahboob's endurance, suffering, and ultimate transformation. Through insightful analysis, Behnaz A. Mirzai places Mahboob's narrative – the only known account by a former African slave in Iran – within the context of the political upheavals of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran and the Tanzimat reforms of the Ottoman Empire. This book not only sheds light on Mahboob's personal story and the historical injustices of slavery but also engages with broader themes of displacement, identity, and social justice. In doing so, it invites readers to reflect on the enduring legacies of racial inequality and the ongoing struggles for freedom and dignity in the modern world. Behnaz A. Mirzai is a professor of Middle Eastern history at Brock University and senior guest researcher at Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies at University of Bonn. 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
Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran: The Autobiography of Mahboob Qirvanian provides a translation of a compelling autobiography that chronicles the life of Mahboob Qirvanian, from childhood and enslavement in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire to his eventual liberation in Iran. The Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran is a poignant and compelling account of one man's journey through struggle, resilience, and unimaginable suffering. In the early twentieth century, Mahboob Qirvanian recorded his personal experiences of forced migration and enslavement as he navigated his path from captivity in Africa to full citizenship and a reconstructed identity in Iran. Written in Persian and Arabic, this remarkable autobiography serves as a powerful testament to Mahboob's endurance, suffering, and ultimate transformation. Through insightful analysis, Behnaz A. Mirzai places Mahboob's narrative – the only known account by a former African slave in Iran – within the context of the political upheavals of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran and the Tanzimat reforms of the Ottoman Empire. This book not only sheds light on Mahboob's personal story and the historical injustices of slavery but also engages with broader themes of displacement, identity, and social justice. In doing so, it invites readers to reflect on the enduring legacies of racial inequality and the ongoing struggles for freedom and dignity in the modern world. Behnaz A. Mirzai is a professor of Middle Eastern history at Brock University and senior guest researcher at Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies at University of Bonn. 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/middle-eastern-studies
Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran: The Autobiography of Mahboob Qirvanian provides a translation of a compelling autobiography that chronicles the life of Mahboob Qirvanian, from childhood and enslavement in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire to his eventual liberation in Iran. The Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran is a poignant and compelling account of one man's journey through struggle, resilience, and unimaginable suffering. In the early twentieth century, Mahboob Qirvanian recorded his personal experiences of forced migration and enslavement as he navigated his path from captivity in Africa to full citizenship and a reconstructed identity in Iran. Written in Persian and Arabic, this remarkable autobiography serves as a powerful testament to Mahboob's endurance, suffering, and ultimate transformation. Through insightful analysis, Behnaz A. Mirzai places Mahboob's narrative – the only known account by a former African slave in Iran – within the context of the political upheavals of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran and the Tanzimat reforms of the Ottoman Empire. This book not only sheds light on Mahboob's personal story and the historical injustices of slavery but also engages with broader themes of displacement, identity, and social justice. In doing so, it invites readers to reflect on the enduring legacies of racial inequality and the ongoing struggles for freedom and dignity in the modern world. Behnaz A. Mirzai is a professor of Middle Eastern history at Brock University and senior guest researcher at Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies at University of Bonn. 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
Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran: The Autobiography of Mahboob Qirvanian provides a translation of a compelling autobiography that chronicles the life of Mahboob Qirvanian, from childhood and enslavement in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire to his eventual liberation in Iran. The Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran is a poignant and compelling account of one man's journey through struggle, resilience, and unimaginable suffering. In the early twentieth century, Mahboob Qirvanian recorded his personal experiences of forced migration and enslavement as he navigated his path from captivity in Africa to full citizenship and a reconstructed identity in Iran. Written in Persian and Arabic, this remarkable autobiography serves as a powerful testament to Mahboob's endurance, suffering, and ultimate transformation. Through insightful analysis, Behnaz A. Mirzai places Mahboob's narrative – the only known account by a former African slave in Iran – within the context of the political upheavals of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran and the Tanzimat reforms of the Ottoman Empire. This book not only sheds light on Mahboob's personal story and the historical injustices of slavery but also engages with broader themes of displacement, identity, and social justice. In doing so, it invites readers to reflect on the enduring legacies of racial inequality and the ongoing struggles for freedom and dignity in the modern world. Behnaz A. Mirzai is a professor of Middle Eastern history at Brock University and senior guest researcher at Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies at University of Bonn. 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/african-studies
Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran: The Autobiography of Mahboob Qirvanian provides a translation of a compelling autobiography that chronicles the life of Mahboob Qirvanian, from childhood and enslavement in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire to his eventual liberation in Iran. The Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran is a poignant and compelling account of one man's journey through struggle, resilience, and unimaginable suffering. In the early twentieth century, Mahboob Qirvanian recorded his personal experiences of forced migration and enslavement as he navigated his path from captivity in Africa to full citizenship and a reconstructed identity in Iran. Written in Persian and Arabic, this remarkable autobiography serves as a powerful testament to Mahboob's endurance, suffering, and ultimate transformation. Through insightful analysis, Behnaz A. Mirzai places Mahboob's narrative – the only known account by a former African slave in Iran – within the context of the political upheavals of the Constitutional Revolution in Iran and the Tanzimat reforms of the Ottoman Empire. This book not only sheds light on Mahboob's personal story and the historical injustices of slavery but also engages with broader themes of displacement, identity, and social justice. In doing so, it invites readers to reflect on the enduring legacies of racial inequality and the ongoing struggles for freedom and dignity in the modern world. Behnaz A. Mirzai is a professor of Middle Eastern history at Brock University and senior guest researcher at Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies at University of Bonn. 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/biography
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Whitney Laemmli, Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies at the Pratt Institute, about her forthcoming book, Making Movement Modern: Science, Politics, and the Body in Motion. The book traces a technique for visualizing human movement, Labanotation, from its origins in expressionist dance, Austro-Hungarian military discipline, and contemporary physiology to its employment in factories and offices a half-century later. In this way, Making Movement Modern provides a beautiful example of following an object of study into many different, surprising, and unexpected worlds. The pair also discuss one of Laemmli's new projects, which examines the history of Western ideas and theories that memory might be stored not only in brains but also in bodies. 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
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Whitney Laemmli, Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies at the Pratt Institute, about her forthcoming book, Making Movement Modern: Science, Politics, and the Body in Motion. The book traces a technique for visualizing human movement, Labanotation, from its origins in expressionist dance, Austro-Hungarian military discipline, and contemporary physiology to its employment in factories and offices a half-century later. In this way, Making Movement Modern provides a beautiful example of following an object of study into many different, surprising, and unexpected worlds. The pair also discuss one of Laemmli's new projects, which examines the history of Western ideas and theories that memory might be stored not only in brains but also in bodies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts
A bracing, accessible history of white American liberals—and why it's time to change the conversation about them.If there's one thing most Americans can agree on, it's that everyone hates white liberals. Conservatives hate them for being culturally tolerant and threatening to usher in communism. Libertarians hate them for believing in the power of the state. Socialists hate them for serving as capitalism's beard. Even liberals hate liberals—either because they can't manage to overcome their own prejudices, or precisely because they're so self-hating.This is the starting point for Kevin M. Schultz's lively new history of white liberals in the United States. He efficiently lays out the array of objections to liberals—ineffective, spineless, judgmental, authoritarian, and more—in a historical frame that shows how protean the concept has been throughout the past hundred years. It turns out, he declares, that how you define a “white liberal” is less a reflection of reality and more a Rorschach test revealing your own anxieties.Sharply assessing how decades of attacks on liberals and liberalism have steadily hollowed out the center of American political life, Schultz also explains precisely what needs to be done to avoid digging ourselves even further into the hole of polarization. The ultimate goal, he argues, is to achieve political fragmentation that will fuel the rise of a true multiparty system, where ideology will matter more, not less.With a tight command of postwar American history and a spirited voice, Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A Critical History (University of Chicago Press, 2025) is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand—and envision a way forward in—the complicated landscape of American politics. Kevin M. Schultz is professor and chair of history at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He is the author of Buckley and Mailer and Tri-Faith America. 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: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos 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
A bracing, accessible history of white American liberals—and why it's time to change the conversation about them.If there's one thing most Americans can agree on, it's that everyone hates white liberals. Conservatives hate them for being culturally tolerant and threatening to usher in communism. Libertarians hate them for believing in the power of the state. Socialists hate them for serving as capitalism's beard. Even liberals hate liberals—either because they can't manage to overcome their own prejudices, or precisely because they're so self-hating.This is the starting point for Kevin M. Schultz's lively new history of white liberals in the United States. He efficiently lays out the array of objections to liberals—ineffective, spineless, judgmental, authoritarian, and more—in a historical frame that shows how protean the concept has been throughout the past hundred years. It turns out, he declares, that how you define a “white liberal” is less a reflection of reality and more a Rorschach test revealing your own anxieties.Sharply assessing how decades of attacks on liberals and liberalism have steadily hollowed out the center of American political life, Schultz also explains precisely what needs to be done to avoid digging ourselves even further into the hole of polarization. The ultimate goal, he argues, is to achieve political fragmentation that will fuel the rise of a true multiparty system, where ideology will matter more, not less.With a tight command of postwar American history and a spirited voice, Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A Critical History (University of Chicago Press, 2025) is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand—and envision a way forward in—the complicated landscape of American politics. Kevin M. Schultz is professor and chair of history at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He is the author of Buckley and Mailer and Tri-Faith America. 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: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
A bracing, accessible history of white American liberals—and why it's time to change the conversation about them.If there's one thing most Americans can agree on, it's that everyone hates white liberals. Conservatives hate them for being culturally tolerant and threatening to usher in communism. Libertarians hate them for believing in the power of the state. Socialists hate them for serving as capitalism's beard. Even liberals hate liberals—either because they can't manage to overcome their own prejudices, or precisely because they're so self-hating.This is the starting point for Kevin M. Schultz's lively new history of white liberals in the United States. He efficiently lays out the array of objections to liberals—ineffective, spineless, judgmental, authoritarian, and more—in a historical frame that shows how protean the concept has been throughout the past hundred years. It turns out, he declares, that how you define a “white liberal” is less a reflection of reality and more a Rorschach test revealing your own anxieties.Sharply assessing how decades of attacks on liberals and liberalism have steadily hollowed out the center of American political life, Schultz also explains precisely what needs to be done to avoid digging ourselves even further into the hole of polarization. The ultimate goal, he argues, is to achieve political fragmentation that will fuel the rise of a true multiparty system, where ideology will matter more, not less.With a tight command of postwar American history and a spirited voice, Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A Critical History (University of Chicago Press, 2025) is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand—and envision a way forward in—the complicated landscape of American politics. Kevin M. Schultz is professor and chair of history at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He is the author of Buckley and Mailer and Tri-Faith America. 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: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
A bracing, accessible history of white American liberals—and why it's time to change the conversation about them.If there's one thing most Americans can agree on, it's that everyone hates white liberals. Conservatives hate them for being culturally tolerant and threatening to usher in communism. Libertarians hate them for believing in the power of the state. Socialists hate them for serving as capitalism's beard. Even liberals hate liberals—either because they can't manage to overcome their own prejudices, or precisely because they're so self-hating.This is the starting point for Kevin M. Schultz's lively new history of white liberals in the United States. He efficiently lays out the array of objections to liberals—ineffective, spineless, judgmental, authoritarian, and more—in a historical frame that shows how protean the concept has been throughout the past hundred years. It turns out, he declares, that how you define a “white liberal” is less a reflection of reality and more a Rorschach test revealing your own anxieties.Sharply assessing how decades of attacks on liberals and liberalism have steadily hollowed out the center of American political life, Schultz also explains precisely what needs to be done to avoid digging ourselves even further into the hole of polarization. The ultimate goal, he argues, is to achieve political fragmentation that will fuel the rise of a true multiparty system, where ideology will matter more, not less.With a tight command of postwar American history and a spirited voice, Why Everyone Hates White Liberals (Including White Liberals): A Critical History (University of Chicago Press, 2025) is a must-read for anyone wishing to understand—and envision a way forward in—the complicated landscape of American politics. Kevin M. Schultz is professor and chair of history at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He is the author of Buckley and Mailer and Tri-Faith America. 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: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-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/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
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
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
In 1907, eight years before she published her first novel, a twenty-five-year-old Virginia Woolf drafted three interconnected comic stories chronicling the adventures of a giantess named Violet—a teasing tribute to Woolf's friend Mary Violet Dickinson. But it was only in 2022 that Woolf scholar Urmila Seshagiri discovered a final, revised typescript of the stories. The typescript revealed that Woolf had finished this mock-biography, making it her first fully realized literary experiment and a work that anticipates her later masterpieces. Published here for the first time in its final form, The Life of Violet blends fantasy, fairy tale, and satire as it transports readers into a magical world where the heroine triumphs over sea-monsters as well as stifling social traditions.In these irresistible and riotously plotted stories, Violet, who has powers “as marvelous as her height,” gleefully flouts aristocratic proprieties, finds joy in building “a cottage of one's own,” and travels to Japan to help create a radical new social order. Amid flights of fancy such as a snowfall of sugared almonds and bathtubs made of painted ostrich eggs, The Life of Violet upends the marriage plot, rejects the Victorian belief that women must choose between virtue and ambition, and celebrates women's friendships and laughter.A major literary discovery that heralds Woolf's ambitions to revolutionize fiction and sheds new light on her great themes, The Life of Violet: Three Early Stories (Princeton UP, 2025) is first and foremost a delight to read. This volume features a preface, afterword, notes, and photographs that provide rich historical, literary, and biographical context. Urmila Seshagiri is Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is the author of Race and the Modernist Imagination, the editor of the Oxford World's Classics edition of Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room, and a contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books. 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
In 1907, eight years before she published her first novel, a twenty-five-year-old Virginia Woolf drafted three interconnected comic stories chronicling the adventures of a giantess named Violet—a teasing tribute to Woolf's friend Mary Violet Dickinson. But it was only in 2022 that Woolf scholar Urmila Seshagiri discovered a final, revised typescript of the stories. The typescript revealed that Woolf had finished this mock-biography, making it her first fully realized literary experiment and a work that anticipates her later masterpieces. Published here for the first time in its final form, The Life of Violet blends fantasy, fairy tale, and satire as it transports readers into a magical world where the heroine triumphs over sea-monsters as well as stifling social traditions.In these irresistible and riotously plotted stories, Violet, who has powers “as marvelous as her height,” gleefully flouts aristocratic proprieties, finds joy in building “a cottage of one's own,” and travels to Japan to help create a radical new social order. Amid flights of fancy such as a snowfall of sugared almonds and bathtubs made of painted ostrich eggs, The Life of Violet upends the marriage plot, rejects the Victorian belief that women must choose between virtue and ambition, and celebrates women's friendships and laughter.A major literary discovery that heralds Woolf's ambitions to revolutionize fiction and sheds new light on her great themes, The Life of Violet: Three Early Stories (Princeton UP, 2025) is first and foremost a delight to read. This volume features a preface, afterword, notes, and photographs that provide rich historical, literary, and biographical context. Urmila Seshagiri is Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is the author of Race and the Modernist Imagination, the editor of the Oxford World's Classics edition of Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room, and a contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books. 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
In 1907, eight years before she published her first novel, a twenty-five-year-old Virginia Woolf drafted three interconnected comic stories chronicling the adventures of a giantess named Violet—a teasing tribute to Woolf's friend Mary Violet Dickinson. But it was only in 2022 that Woolf scholar Urmila Seshagiri discovered a final, revised typescript of the stories. The typescript revealed that Woolf had finished this mock-biography, making it her first fully realized literary experiment and a work that anticipates her later masterpieces. Published here for the first time in its final form, The Life of Violet blends fantasy, fairy tale, and satire as it transports readers into a magical world where the heroine triumphs over sea-monsters as well as stifling social traditions.In these irresistible and riotously plotted stories, Violet, who has powers “as marvelous as her height,” gleefully flouts aristocratic proprieties, finds joy in building “a cottage of one's own,” and travels to Japan to help create a radical new social order. Amid flights of fancy such as a snowfall of sugared almonds and bathtubs made of painted ostrich eggs, The Life of Violet upends the marriage plot, rejects the Victorian belief that women must choose between virtue and ambition, and celebrates women's friendships and laughter.A major literary discovery that heralds Woolf's ambitions to revolutionize fiction and sheds new light on her great themes, The Life of Violet: Three Early Stories (Princeton UP, 2025) is first and foremost a delight to read. This volume features a preface, afterword, notes, and photographs that provide rich historical, literary, and biographical context. Urmila Seshagiri is Distinguished Professor of Humanities and Professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is the author of Race and the Modernist Imagination, the editor of the Oxford World's Classics edition of Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room, and a contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books. 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/literature
Selfies are more than fleeting images—across India, they shape how people imagine themselves, connect with others, and inhabit spaces. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Xenia Zeiler from the University of Helsinki talks to Prof. Avishek Ray about his co-authored book Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India. This book explores how the digital selfie, unlike traditional photography, turns the lens inward while reconfiguring social identities, gender norms, power relations, and everyday interactions. Drawing on rich, situated examples, it shows how selfies operate as acts of self-making and place-making in contemporary India. At once playful and political, intimate and public, selfies offer a fascinating entry point into the fast-changing cultures of digital media and visual expression. Avishek Ray is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at the National Institute of Technology Silchar, India. His research spans mobility, marginality, and digital culture, with a focus on South Asia. He is the author of The Vagabond in the South Asian Imagination (Routledge, 2022) and co-author of Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India (Routledge, 2024). A Fulbright-Nehru Fellow (2021), he has held visiting fellowships at institutions across Europe, North America, and Asia. Xenia Zeiler is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her research and teaching are situated at the intersection of digital media, culture, and society, specifically as related to India and global Indian communities. Her focus within this wider field of digital culture is video games and gaming research, in India and beyond. She also researches and teaches digital religion, popular culture, cultural heritage, and mediatization processes. 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
Selfies are more than fleeting images—across India, they shape how people imagine themselves, connect with others, and inhabit spaces. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Xenia Zeiler from the University of Helsinki talks to Prof. Avishek Ray about his co-authored book Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India. This book explores how the digital selfie, unlike traditional photography, turns the lens inward while reconfiguring social identities, gender norms, power relations, and everyday interactions. Drawing on rich, situated examples, it shows how selfies operate as acts of self-making and place-making in contemporary India. At once playful and political, intimate and public, selfies offer a fascinating entry point into the fast-changing cultures of digital media and visual expression. Avishek Ray is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at the National Institute of Technology Silchar, India. His research spans mobility, marginality, and digital culture, with a focus on South Asia. He is the author of The Vagabond in the South Asian Imagination (Routledge, 2022) and co-author of Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India (Routledge, 2024). A Fulbright-Nehru Fellow (2021), he has held visiting fellowships at institutions across Europe, North America, and Asia. Xenia Zeiler is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her research and teaching are situated at the intersection of digital media, culture, and society, specifically as related to India and global Indian communities. Her focus within this wider field of digital culture is video games and gaming research, in India and beyond. She also researches and teaches digital religion, popular culture, cultural heritage, and mediatization processes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology
Selfies are more than fleeting images—across India, they shape how people imagine themselves, connect with others, and inhabit spaces. In this episode of the Nordic Asia Podcast, Prof. Xenia Zeiler from the University of Helsinki talks to Prof. Avishek Ray about his co-authored book Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India. This book explores how the digital selfie, unlike traditional photography, turns the lens inward while reconfiguring social identities, gender norms, power relations, and everyday interactions. Drawing on rich, situated examples, it shows how selfies operate as acts of self-making and place-making in contemporary India. At once playful and political, intimate and public, selfies offer a fascinating entry point into the fast-changing cultures of digital media and visual expression. Avishek Ray is Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at the National Institute of Technology Silchar, India. His research spans mobility, marginality, and digital culture, with a focus on South Asia. He is the author of The Vagabond in the South Asian Imagination (Routledge, 2022) and co-author of Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India (Routledge, 2024). A Fulbright-Nehru Fellow (2021), he has held visiting fellowships at institutions across Europe, North America, and Asia. Xenia Zeiler is Professor of South Asian Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her research and teaching are situated at the intersection of digital media, culture, and society, specifically as related to India and global Indian communities. Her focus within this wider field of digital culture is video games and gaming research, in India and beyond. She also researches and teaches digital religion, popular culture, cultural heritage, and mediatization processes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies
How did “the West” come to be used as a collective self-designation signaling political and cultural commonality? When did “Westerners” begin to refer to themselves in this way? Was the idea handed down from the ancient Greeks, or coined by nineteenth-century imperialists? Neither, writes Georgios Varouxakis in The West: The History of an Idea (Princeton UP, 2025), his ambitious and fascinating genealogy of the idea. “The West” was not used by Plato, Cicero, Locke, Mill, or other canonized figures of what we today call the Western tradition. It was not first wielded by empire-builders. It gradually emerged as of the 1820s and was then, Varouxakis shows, decisively promoted in the 1840s by the French philosopher Auguste Comte (whose political project, incidentally, was passionately anti-imperialist). The need for the use of the term “the West” emerged to avoid the confusing or unwanted consequences of the use of “Europe.” The two overlapped, but were not identical, with the West used to differentiate from certain “others” within Europe as well as to include the Americas. After examining the origins, Varouxakis traces the many and often astonishingly surprising changes in the ways in which the West has been understood, and the different intentions and consequences related to a series of these contested definitions. While other theories of the West consider only particular aspects of the concept and its history (if only in order to take aim at its reputation), Varouxakis's analysis offers a comprehensive account that reaches to the present day, exploring the multiplicity of current, and not least, prospective future meanings. He concludes with an examination of how, since 2022, definitions and membership of the West have been reworked to consider Ukraine, as the evolution and redefinitions continue. Georgios Varouxakis is professor of the history of political thought in the School of History at Queen Mary University of London and Codirector of the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought. He is the author of Mill on Nationality, Victorian Political Thought on France and the French, and Liberty Abroad: J. S. Mill on International Relations and the coauthor of Contemporary France. 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
How did “the West” come to be used as a collective self-designation signaling political and cultural commonality? When did “Westerners” begin to refer to themselves in this way? Was the idea handed down from the ancient Greeks, or coined by nineteenth-century imperialists? Neither, writes Georgios Varouxakis in The West: The History of an Idea (Princeton UP, 2025), his ambitious and fascinating genealogy of the idea. “The West” was not used by Plato, Cicero, Locke, Mill, or other canonized figures of what we today call the Western tradition. It was not first wielded by empire-builders. It gradually emerged as of the 1820s and was then, Varouxakis shows, decisively promoted in the 1840s by the French philosopher Auguste Comte (whose political project, incidentally, was passionately anti-imperialist). The need for the use of the term “the West” emerged to avoid the confusing or unwanted consequences of the use of “Europe.” The two overlapped, but were not identical, with the West used to differentiate from certain “others” within Europe as well as to include the Americas. After examining the origins, Varouxakis traces the many and often astonishingly surprising changes in the ways in which the West has been understood, and the different intentions and consequences related to a series of these contested definitions. While other theories of the West consider only particular aspects of the concept and its history (if only in order to take aim at its reputation), Varouxakis's analysis offers a comprehensive account that reaches to the present day, exploring the multiplicity of current, and not least, prospective future meanings. He concludes with an examination of how, since 2022, definitions and membership of the West have been reworked to consider Ukraine, as the evolution and redefinitions continue. Georgios Varouxakis is professor of the history of political thought in the School of History at Queen Mary University of London and Codirector of the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought. He is the author of Mill on Nationality, Victorian Political Thought on France and the French, and Liberty Abroad: J. S. Mill on International Relations and the coauthor of Contemporary France. 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/history
How did “the West” come to be used as a collective self-designation signaling political and cultural commonality? When did “Westerners” begin to refer to themselves in this way? Was the idea handed down from the ancient Greeks, or coined by nineteenth-century imperialists? Neither, writes Georgios Varouxakis in The West: The History of an Idea (Princeton UP, 2025), his ambitious and fascinating genealogy of the idea. “The West” was not used by Plato, Cicero, Locke, Mill, or other canonized figures of what we today call the Western tradition. It was not first wielded by empire-builders. It gradually emerged as of the 1820s and was then, Varouxakis shows, decisively promoted in the 1840s by the French philosopher Auguste Comte (whose political project, incidentally, was passionately anti-imperialist). The need for the use of the term “the West” emerged to avoid the confusing or unwanted consequences of the use of “Europe.” The two overlapped, but were not identical, with the West used to differentiate from certain “others” within Europe as well as to include the Americas. After examining the origins, Varouxakis traces the many and often astonishingly surprising changes in the ways in which the West has been understood, and the different intentions and consequences related to a series of these contested definitions. While other theories of the West consider only particular aspects of the concept and its history (if only in order to take aim at its reputation), Varouxakis's analysis offers a comprehensive account that reaches to the present day, exploring the multiplicity of current, and not least, prospective future meanings. He concludes with an examination of how, since 2022, definitions and membership of the West have been reworked to consider Ukraine, as the evolution and redefinitions continue. Georgios Varouxakis is professor of the history of political thought in the School of History at Queen Mary University of London and Codirector of the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought. He is the author of Mill on Nationality, Victorian Political Thought on France and the French, and Liberty Abroad: J. S. Mill on International Relations and the coauthor of Contemporary France. 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
Over the course of the last century, there has been an outsized incidence of conflict between democracies and personalist regimes—political systems where a single individual has undisputed executive power and prominence. In most cases, it has been the democratic side that has chosen to employ military force. Why Democracies Fight Dictators (Oxford UP, 2025) takes up the question of why liberal democracies are so inclined to engage in conflict with personalist dictators. Building on research in political science, history, sociology, and psychology and marshalling evidence from statistical analysis of conflict, multi-archival research of American and British perceptions during the Suez Crisis and Gulf War, and non-democracies' understanding of the threat from Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, Madison V. Schramm offers a novel and nuanced explanation for patterns in escalation and hostility between liberal democracies and personalist regimes. When conflicts of interest arise between the two types of states, Schramm argues, cognitive biases and social narratives predispose leaders in liberal democracies to perceive personalist dictators as particularly threatening and to respond with anger—an emotional response that elicits more risk acceptance and aggressive behavior. She also locates this tendency in the escalatory dynamics that precede open military conflict: coercion, covert action, and crisis bargaining. At all of these stages, the tendency toward anger and risk acceptance contributes to explosive outcomes between democratic and personalist regimes. Madison Schramm, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto 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
In this episode, we chat with Diana Leon-Boys— Assistant Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Department of Communication Arts—about her lifelong work examining the navigation of girlhood through a Latinx lens. Her book Elena, Princesa of the Periphery: Disney's Flexible Latina Girl extends conversations about minority representation and the complex relationship it has with child development. We host a dialogue between Diana's research and Henry's observations about boyhood in his book Where the Wild Things Were: Boyhood and Permissive Parenting in Postwar America. We discuss how both scholars pull from their own personal experiences growing up in America and how they interacted with their childhood media. We explore how the proliferation and production of children's and family media shape ideas of adolescence. Diana and Henry relate this back to their roles as parents within an ever-evolving media landscape where funding for educational children's content is dwindling. They further discuss how representation within media has changed over time and minority groups' relation to it. This is where Diana brings in her newer projects about depictions of Quinceañeras and Día de los Muertos in TV and films. We are left to ask what the politics of childhood are and what reforms can be done with current children's media.Here are some of the references from this episode, for those who want to dig a little deeper:Academic TextsDiana Leon-Boys:Elena, Princesa of the Periphery: Disney's Flexible Latina GirlQuinceañeras: Latinidades and Girlhood in Popular CultureHenry Jenkins:Where the Wild Things Were: Boyhood and Permissive Parenting in Postwar AmericaThe Children's Culture Reader“Just a Spoonful of Sugar: Permissive Child-Rearing and Walt Disney's Mary Poppins”“‘You've Got to Be Carefully Taught': The Whiteness of Permissive Culture”MIT Salute to Doctor SeussInterview about the bookOthers:Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family LifeKids in the Middle: How Children of Immigrants Negotiate Community Interactions for Their FamiliesLatina Teenhood: Intersectionalizing subjectivities in the post-network era.Crafting Public Opinion: The Effectiveness of China's Media Control Policies under Xi JinpingMade to Play House: Dolls and the Commercialization of American Girlhood, 1830-1930 Advice Books:The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child CareDare to Discipline People, Places, Toys, and HolidaysPhilippe ArièsDr. Vikki KatzDía de los MuertosQuinceañerasBenjamin SpockMargaret MeadDr. SeussFred RogersStephanie PérezRaquel Reyes [American Girl Doll]Samantha Parkington [Doll]Julie AndrewsWalt DisneyDisneyland and Disney WorldPaper DollsFDRSigmund Freud Shows, Films, and Other MediaPee-wee's PlayHouseDennis the Menace [59-63' show, Comics]Leave It To BeaverThe Cosby ShowOne Piece [Anime, Manga, Live Action]Disney+EncantoCocoSnow White [Animated, Live Action]Little Mermaid [Animated, Live Action]Chinese State Media sounded like Fox MediaRogue OneSesame StreetGordita ChroniclesBaker and the BeautyBlueyDescendants film franchiseOn My BlockWednesdayMary PoppinsSaludos AmigosHarry Potter film seriesDora The Explorer The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T.Mad Magazine Classic IllustratedGabby's DollhouseQuinceañeras episodesSuper Sweet 16Wizards of Waverly PlaceDora the Explorer NewsDefunding of PBS Quinceañeras in ProtestOne Piece Flags in Indonesia ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry, Colin and the How Do You Like It So Far? account! You can also email us at howdoyoulikeitsofarpodcast@gmail.com.Music:“In Time” by Dylan Emmett and “Spaceship” by Lesion X.In Time (Instrumental) by Dylan Emmet https://soundcloud.com/dylanemmetSpaceship by Lesion X https://soundcloud.com/lesionxbeatsCreative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/in-time-instrumentalFree Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/lesion-x-spaceshipMusic promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/AzYoVrMLa1Q––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Over the course of the last century, there has been an outsized incidence of conflict between democracies and personalist regimes—political systems where a single individual has undisputed executive power and prominence. In most cases, it has been the democratic side that has chosen to employ military force. Why Democracies Fight Dictators (Oxford UP, 2025) takes up the question of why liberal democracies are so inclined to engage in conflict with personalist dictators. Building on research in political science, history, sociology, and psychology and marshalling evidence from statistical analysis of conflict, multi-archival research of American and British perceptions during the Suez Crisis and Gulf War, and non-democracies' understanding of the threat from Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, Madison V. Schramm offers a novel and nuanced explanation for patterns in escalation and hostility between liberal democracies and personalist regimes. When conflicts of interest arise between the two types of states, Schramm argues, cognitive biases and social narratives predispose leaders in liberal democracies to perceive personalist dictators as particularly threatening and to respond with anger—an emotional response that elicits more risk acceptance and aggressive behavior. She also locates this tendency in the escalatory dynamics that precede open military conflict: coercion, covert action, and crisis bargaining. At all of these stages, the tendency toward anger and risk acceptance contributes to explosive outcomes between democratic and personalist regimes. Madison Schramm, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto 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/military-history
Over the course of the last century, there has been an outsized incidence of conflict between democracies and personalist regimes—political systems where a single individual has undisputed executive power and prominence. In most cases, it has been the democratic side that has chosen to employ military force. Why Democracies Fight Dictators (Oxford UP, 2025) takes up the question of why liberal democracies are so inclined to engage in conflict with personalist dictators. Building on research in political science, history, sociology, and psychology and marshalling evidence from statistical analysis of conflict, multi-archival research of American and British perceptions during the Suez Crisis and Gulf War, and non-democracies' understanding of the threat from Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, Madison V. Schramm offers a novel and nuanced explanation for patterns in escalation and hostility between liberal democracies and personalist regimes. When conflicts of interest arise between the two types of states, Schramm argues, cognitive biases and social narratives predispose leaders in liberal democracies to perceive personalist dictators as particularly threatening and to respond with anger—an emotional response that elicits more risk acceptance and aggressive behavior. She also locates this tendency in the escalatory dynamics that precede open military conflict: coercion, covert action, and crisis bargaining. At all of these stages, the tendency toward anger and risk acceptance contributes to explosive outcomes between democratic and personalist regimes. Madison Schramm, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto 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/political-science
Over the course of the last century, there has been an outsized incidence of conflict between democracies and personalist regimes—political systems where a single individual has undisputed executive power and prominence. In most cases, it has been the democratic side that has chosen to employ military force. Why Democracies Fight Dictators (Oxford UP, 2025) takes up the question of why liberal democracies are so inclined to engage in conflict with personalist dictators. Building on research in political science, history, sociology, and psychology and marshalling evidence from statistical analysis of conflict, multi-archival research of American and British perceptions during the Suez Crisis and Gulf War, and non-democracies' understanding of the threat from Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, Madison V. Schramm offers a novel and nuanced explanation for patterns in escalation and hostility between liberal democracies and personalist regimes. When conflicts of interest arise between the two types of states, Schramm argues, cognitive biases and social narratives predispose leaders in liberal democracies to perceive personalist dictators as particularly threatening and to respond with anger—an emotional response that elicits more risk acceptance and aggressive behavior. She also locates this tendency in the escalatory dynamics that precede open military conflict: coercion, covert action, and crisis bargaining. At all of these stages, the tendency toward anger and risk acceptance contributes to explosive outcomes between democratic and personalist regimes. Madison Schramm, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto 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
Katharine Jenkins offers an introduction to feminist philosophy, giving the reader an idea of what it is, why it is important, and how to think about it. She explores key topics such as gender oppression, beauty, objectification, and sexuality. Moreover, she considers questions about the relation between the personal and the political, what it is to be a woman, whether there is a distinctive kind of women's knowledge, and what feminist philosophy can bring to our understanding of such aspects of our world as justice, work, and the environment. Feminist Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2025) takes a richly intersectional approach, recognizing the combined impact of such factors as race and class as well as gender. Katharine Jenkins is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, and was previously Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham. She specialises in social philosophy, especially feminist philosophy and social ontology. She is the author of Ontology and Oppression: Race, Gender, and Social Reality (OUP, 2023). 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
Katharine Jenkins offers an introduction to feminist philosophy, giving the reader an idea of what it is, why it is important, and how to think about it. She explores key topics such as gender oppression, beauty, objectification, and sexuality. Moreover, she considers questions about the relation between the personal and the political, what it is to be a woman, whether there is a distinctive kind of women's knowledge, and what feminist philosophy can bring to our understanding of such aspects of our world as justice, work, and the environment. Feminist Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2025) takes a richly intersectional approach, recognizing the combined impact of such factors as race and class as well as gender. Katharine Jenkins is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, and was previously Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham. She specialises in social philosophy, especially feminist philosophy and social ontology. She is the author of Ontology and Oppression: Race, Gender, and Social Reality (OUP, 2023). 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/gender-studies
Katharine Jenkins offers an introduction to feminist philosophy, giving the reader an idea of what it is, why it is important, and how to think about it. She explores key topics such as gender oppression, beauty, objectification, and sexuality. Moreover, she considers questions about the relation between the personal and the political, what it is to be a woman, whether there is a distinctive kind of women's knowledge, and what feminist philosophy can bring to our understanding of such aspects of our world as justice, work, and the environment. Feminist Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2025) takes a richly intersectional approach, recognizing the combined impact of such factors as race and class as well as gender. Katharine Jenkins is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, and was previously Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham. She specialises in social philosophy, especially feminist philosophy and social ontology. She is the author of Ontology and Oppression: Race, Gender, and Social Reality (OUP, 2023). 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
Katharine Jenkins offers an introduction to feminist philosophy, giving the reader an idea of what it is, why it is important, and how to think about it. She explores key topics such as gender oppression, beauty, objectification, and sexuality. Moreover, she considers questions about the relation between the personal and the political, what it is to be a woman, whether there is a distinctive kind of women's knowledge, and what feminist philosophy can bring to our understanding of such aspects of our world as justice, work, and the environment. Feminist Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2025) takes a richly intersectional approach, recognizing the combined impact of such factors as race and class as well as gender. Katharine Jenkins is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, and was previously Assistant Professor at the University of Nottingham. She specialises in social philosophy, especially feminist philosophy and social ontology. She is the author of Ontology and Oppression: Race, Gender, and Social Reality (OUP, 2023). 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
The European left seemed to be in rude health during the 1970s. Never had so many political parties committed to representing the working class been in power simultaneously across the continent. New forms of mobilisation led by female, immigrant, and young wage-earners seemed to reflect the growing strength of the workers' movement rather than its pending obsolescence. Parties and trade unions grew rapidly as a diverse new generation entered the ranks. Why did the left's forward march halt so abruptly? The Halted March of the European Left: The Working Class in Britain, France, and Italy, 1968-1989 (Oxford UP, 2025)shows how the left's defeats after the mid-1970s were not the inevitable result of de-industrialisation or, more precisely, the transition to a globalised and post-Fordist world that abolished the working class as a great historical actor. Choices that were made during a concentrated but decisive moment contributed to the left's lost battles. The British, French, and Italian left managed the shift to a new era by marginalising those groups of workers who had invested it with hopes of social and political transformation. Communist, socialist, and social democratic parties helped disempower the new components of the working class in workplaces, in society, in the political system, and successfully disciplined their traditional working-class supporters. The left encountered a crisis of purpose and identity, a sense of both defeat and lost opportunities, and the dissolution of the idea of a community of fate amongst workers. This book provides a comparative analysis of the left's fragmenting relationship with the working class and a 'feel' for the culture of three leading industrial countries during a traumatic transition of late twentieth-century history. It concludes that decisions taken by the left during the 1970s contributed to the tragic inversion of the expected outcome of that hopeful decade. Matt Myers is a Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Oxford 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
The European left seemed to be in rude health during the 1970s. Never had so many political parties committed to representing the working class been in power simultaneously across the continent. New forms of mobilisation led by female, immigrant, and young wage-earners seemed to reflect the growing strength of the workers' movement rather than its pending obsolescence. Parties and trade unions grew rapidly as a diverse new generation entered the ranks. Why did the left's forward march halt so abruptly? The Halted March of the European Left: The Working Class in Britain, France, and Italy, 1968-1989 (Oxford UP, 2025)shows how the left's defeats after the mid-1970s were not the inevitable result of de-industrialisation or, more precisely, the transition to a globalised and post-Fordist world that abolished the working class as a great historical actor. Choices that were made during a concentrated but decisive moment contributed to the left's lost battles. The British, French, and Italian left managed the shift to a new era by marginalising those groups of workers who had invested it with hopes of social and political transformation. Communist, socialist, and social democratic parties helped disempower the new components of the working class in workplaces, in society, in the political system, and successfully disciplined their traditional working-class supporters. The left encountered a crisis of purpose and identity, a sense of both defeat and lost opportunities, and the dissolution of the idea of a community of fate amongst workers. This book provides a comparative analysis of the left's fragmenting relationship with the working class and a 'feel' for the culture of three leading industrial countries during a traumatic transition of late twentieth-century history. It concludes that decisions taken by the left during the 1970s contributed to the tragic inversion of the expected outcome of that hopeful decade. Matt Myers is a Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Oxford 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
The European left seemed to be in rude health during the 1970s. Never had so many political parties committed to representing the working class been in power simultaneously across the continent. New forms of mobilisation led by female, immigrant, and young wage-earners seemed to reflect the growing strength of the workers' movement rather than its pending obsolescence. Parties and trade unions grew rapidly as a diverse new generation entered the ranks. Why did the left's forward march halt so abruptly? The Halted March of the European Left: The Working Class in Britain, France, and Italy, 1968-1989 (Oxford UP, 2025)shows how the left's defeats after the mid-1970s were not the inevitable result of de-industrialisation or, more precisely, the transition to a globalised and post-Fordist world that abolished the working class as a great historical actor. Choices that were made during a concentrated but decisive moment contributed to the left's lost battles. The British, French, and Italian left managed the shift to a new era by marginalising those groups of workers who had invested it with hopes of social and political transformation. Communist, socialist, and social democratic parties helped disempower the new components of the working class in workplaces, in society, in the political system, and successfully disciplined their traditional working-class supporters. The left encountered a crisis of purpose and identity, a sense of both defeat and lost opportunities, and the dissolution of the idea of a community of fate amongst workers. This book provides a comparative analysis of the left's fragmenting relationship with the working class and a 'feel' for the culture of three leading industrial countries during a traumatic transition of late twentieth-century history. It concludes that decisions taken by the left during the 1970s contributed to the tragic inversion of the expected outcome of that hopeful decade. Matt Myers is a Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Oxford 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
The European left seemed to be in rude health during the 1970s. Never had so many political parties committed to representing the working class been in power simultaneously across the continent. New forms of mobilisation led by female, immigrant, and young wage-earners seemed to reflect the growing strength of the workers' movement rather than its pending obsolescence. Parties and trade unions grew rapidly as a diverse new generation entered the ranks. Why did the left's forward march halt so abruptly? The Halted March of the European Left: The Working Class in Britain, France, and Italy, 1968-1989 (Oxford UP, 2025)shows how the left's defeats after the mid-1970s were not the inevitable result of de-industrialisation or, more precisely, the transition to a globalised and post-Fordist world that abolished the working class as a great historical actor. Choices that were made during a concentrated but decisive moment contributed to the left's lost battles. The British, French, and Italian left managed the shift to a new era by marginalising those groups of workers who had invested it with hopes of social and political transformation. Communist, socialist, and social democratic parties helped disempower the new components of the working class in workplaces, in society, in the political system, and successfully disciplined their traditional working-class supporters. The left encountered a crisis of purpose and identity, a sense of both defeat and lost opportunities, and the dissolution of the idea of a community of fate amongst workers. This book provides a comparative analysis of the left's fragmenting relationship with the working class and a 'feel' for the culture of three leading industrial countries during a traumatic transition of late twentieth-century history. It concludes that decisions taken by the left during the 1970s contributed to the tragic inversion of the expected outcome of that hopeful decade. Matt Myers is a Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Oxford 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/italian-studies
The European left seemed to be in rude health during the 1970s. Never had so many political parties committed to representing the working class been in power simultaneously across the continent. New forms of mobilisation led by female, immigrant, and young wage-earners seemed to reflect the growing strength of the workers' movement rather than its pending obsolescence. Parties and trade unions grew rapidly as a diverse new generation entered the ranks. Why did the left's forward march halt so abruptly? The Halted March of the European Left: The Working Class in Britain, France, and Italy, 1968-1989 (Oxford UP, 2025)shows how the left's defeats after the mid-1970s were not the inevitable result of de-industrialisation or, more precisely, the transition to a globalised and post-Fordist world that abolished the working class as a great historical actor. Choices that were made during a concentrated but decisive moment contributed to the left's lost battles. The British, French, and Italian left managed the shift to a new era by marginalising those groups of workers who had invested it with hopes of social and political transformation. Communist, socialist, and social democratic parties helped disempower the new components of the working class in workplaces, in society, in the political system, and successfully disciplined their traditional working-class supporters. The left encountered a crisis of purpose and identity, a sense of both defeat and lost opportunities, and the dissolution of the idea of a community of fate amongst workers. This book provides a comparative analysis of the left's fragmenting relationship with the working class and a 'feel' for the culture of three leading industrial countries during a traumatic transition of late twentieth-century history. It concludes that decisions taken by the left during the 1970s contributed to the tragic inversion of the expected outcome of that hopeful decade. Matt Myers is a Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Oxford 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/french-studies
Plato is a key figure from the beginnings of Western philosophy, yet the impact of his lived experience on his thought has rarely been explored. Born during a war that would lead to Athens' decline, Plato lived in turbulent times. In Plato: A Civic Life (Reaktion, 2025), Carol Atack explores how Plato's life in Athens influenced his thought, how he developed the Socratic dialogue into a powerful philosophical tool, and how he used the institutions of Athenian society to create a compelling imaginative world. Accessibly written, this book shows how Plato made Athens the place where diverse ideas were integrated into a new way of approaching the big questions about our lives, then and now. Carol Atack teaches classical Greek and ancient philosophy at the University of Cambridge. She is the author and coauthor of two books, most recently Anachronism and Antiquity. 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: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos 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
Plato is a key figure from the beginnings of Western philosophy, yet the impact of his lived experience on his thought has rarely been explored. Born during a war that would lead to Athens' decline, Plato lived in turbulent times. In Plato: A Civic Life (Reaktion, 2025), Carol Atack explores how Plato's life in Athens influenced his thought, how he developed the Socratic dialogue into a powerful philosophical tool, and how he used the institutions of Athenian society to create a compelling imaginative world. Accessibly written, this book shows how Plato made Athens the place where diverse ideas were integrated into a new way of approaching the big questions about our lives, then and now. Carol Atack teaches classical Greek and ancient philosophy at the University of Cambridge. She is the author and coauthor of two books, most recently Anachronism and Antiquity. 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: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies
Plato is a key figure from the beginnings of Western philosophy, yet the impact of his lived experience on his thought has rarely been explored. Born during a war that would lead to Athens' decline, Plato lived in turbulent times. In Plato: A Civic Life (Reaktion, 2025), Carol Atack explores how Plato's life in Athens influenced his thought, how he developed the Socratic dialogue into a powerful philosophical tool, and how he used the institutions of Athenian society to create a compelling imaginative world. Accessibly written, this book shows how Plato made Athens the place where diverse ideas were integrated into a new way of approaching the big questions about our lives, then and now. Carol Atack teaches classical Greek and ancient philosophy at the University of Cambridge. She is the author and coauthor of two books, most recently Anachronism and Antiquity. 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: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science
Plato is a key figure from the beginnings of Western philosophy, yet the impact of his lived experience on his thought has rarely been explored. Born during a war that would lead to Athens' decline, Plato lived in turbulent times. In Plato: A Civic Life (Reaktion, 2025), Carol Atack explores how Plato's life in Athens influenced his thought, how he developed the Socratic dialogue into a powerful philosophical tool, and how he used the institutions of Athenian society to create a compelling imaginative world. Accessibly written, this book shows how Plato made Athens the place where diverse ideas were integrated into a new way of approaching the big questions about our lives, then and now. Carol Atack teaches classical Greek and ancient philosophy at the University of Cambridge. She is the author and coauthor of two books, most recently Anachronism and Antiquity. 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: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
Plato is a key figure from the beginnings of Western philosophy, yet the impact of his lived experience on his thought has rarely been explored. Born during a war that would lead to Athens' decline, Plato lived in turbulent times. In Plato: A Civic Life (Reaktion, 2025), Carol Atack explores how Plato's life in Athens influenced his thought, how he developed the Socratic dialogue into a powerful philosophical tool, and how he used the institutions of Athenian society to create a compelling imaginative world. Accessibly written, this book shows how Plato made Athens the place where diverse ideas were integrated into a new way of approaching the big questions about our lives, then and now. Carol Atack teaches classical Greek and ancient philosophy at the University of Cambridge. She is the author and coauthor of two books, most recently Anachronism and Antiquity. 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: https://www.youtube.com/user/a48266/videos Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
Michael Rectenwald discusses his newly founded Anti-Zionist America PAC (AZAPAC) which exists to end America's political, financial, and military entanglement with Israel. He explains what has gone wrong with Zionist influence, how its mask has come off under the Trump administration, the attack on civil liberties, the devastation of Gaza, and more. He also gives an update on where we're at with the globalist project for a technocratic world state. Watch on BitChute / Brighteon / Rumble / Substack / YouTube Geopolitics & Empire · Michael Rectenwald: Disentangling the Zionist Lobby Through AZAPAC #572 *Support Geopolitics & Empire! Become a Member https://geopoliticsandempire.substack.com Donate https://geopoliticsandempire.com/donations Consult https://geopoliticsandempire.com/consultation **Visit Our Affiliates & Sponsors! Above Phone https://abovephone.com/?above=geopolitics easyDNS (15% off with GEOPOLITICS) https://easydns.com Escape The Technocracy (15% off with GEOPOLITICS) https://escapethetechnocracy.com/geopolitics Expat Money Summit 2025 (20% off VIP with EMPIRE) https://2025.expatmoneysummit.com PassVult https://passvult.com Sociatates Civis https://societates-civis.com StartMail https://www.startmail.com/partner/?ref=ngu4nzr Wise Wolf Gold https://www.wolfpack.gold/?ref=geopolitics Websites Michael Rectenwald https://www.michaelrectenwald.com AZAPAC https://www.aza-pac.com Substack https://mrectenwald.substack.com X https://x.com/RecTheRegime About Michael Rectenwald Dr. Michael Rectenwald is the author of twelve books, including The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty: Unraveling the Global Agenda (Jan. 2023), Thought Criminal (Dec. 2020); Beyond Woke (May 2020); Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom (Sept. 2019); Springtime for Snowflakes: “Social Justice” and Its Postmodern Parentage (an academic's memoir, 2018); Nineteenth-Century British Secularism: Science, Religion and Literature (2016); Academic Writing, Real World Topics (2015, Concise Edition 2016); Global Secularisms in a Post-Secular Age (2015); Breach (Collected Poems, 2013); The Thief and Other Stories (2013); and The Eros of the Baby-Boom Eras (1991). (See the Books page.) Michael was a distinguished fellow at Hillsdale College and a Professor of Liberal Studies and Global Liberal Studies at NYU. He also taught at Duke University, North Carolina Central University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Case Western Reserve University. His scholarly and academic essays have appeared in The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, Academic Questions, Endeavour, The British Journal for the History of Science, College Composition and Communication, International Philosophical Quarterly, the De Gruyter anthologies Organized Secularism in the United States and Global Secularisms in a Post-Secular Age, and the Cambridge University Press anthology George Eliot in Context, among others (see the Academic Scholarship page). He holds a Ph.D. in Literary and Cultural Studies from Carnegie Mellon University, a Master's in English Literature from Case Western Reserve University, and a B.A. in English Literature from the University of Pittsburgh. (See his C.V. for details.) Michael's writing for general audiences has appeared on The Mises Institute Wire, Newsweek, The Epoch Times, RT.com, Campus Reform, The New English Review, The International Business Times, The American Conservative, Quillette, The Washington Post, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, CLG News, LotusEaters.com, Chronicles, and others. (See the Essays and Presentations page.) Michael has appeared on major network political talk shows (Tucker Carlson Tonight, Tucker Carlson Originals, Fox & Friends, Fox & Friends First, Varney & Company, The Ingraham Angle, Unfiltered with Dan Bongino, The Glenn Beck Show), on syndicated radio shows (Coast to Coast AM, Glenn Beck, The Larry Elder Show, and many others),
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