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Andrew, Nick, James, and Parker return after a year to review to the newly translated 1961 novella, The Luminous Fairies and Mothra, written by Shinichiro Nakamura, Takehiro Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta, and translated by Jeffrey Angles! We would like to thank the University of Minnesota Press for giving us the opportunity to read this novella before its January 13th, 2026 release date!Introductions - (0:00)Synopsis - (2:56)The Discussion - (6:19)Final Thoughts - (1:03:04)Next Time... - (1:06:15)Sign Off - (1:07:03)Contact Us:Email: gforcekaijupod@gmail.com Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/gforcekaijupod.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/gforcekaijupod/profilecard/?igsh=aWNoYzFtZHIwdHRqFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/15UT3JSkpH/?mibextid=wwXIfr
In this festive descent into methodological despair, Chris and Matt convene a secret cabal of elite psychology podcasters within the Decoding Cloister, operating under the distant yet reassuring gaze of Arch-Wizard Paul Bloom, whose role is largely ceremonial but nonetheless morally binding.Joining them are Dave Pizarro (Very Bad Wizards) and Michael Inzlicht (Two Psychologists Four Beers, emeritus), for what can only be described as an end-of-year audit of social psychology's moral character.What follows is a mixture of intense hubris, disciplinary self-loathing, and revolutionary insights, delivered via one of the most sadistic Christmas quizzes ever devised. The quiz format allows the episode to do what psychology does best: create the feeling of measurement while hovering dangerously close to intuition.Alongside the quiz, we engage in some meta-commentary and sensemaking reflections on audience capture and the state of psychology-themed podcasts in 2025. In other words, it's Christmas, so naturally everyone is discussing perverse incentives, damaged reputations, and the slow moral corrosion of institutions.So join us, won't you? For the first International Congress on Psychology-Themed Podcasting and Gurus…LinksMickey's SubstackMickey's Work and Play LabTwo Psychologists Four BeersVery Bad WizardsUhlmann, E. L., Pizarro, D. A., & Diermeier, D. (2015). A person-centered approach to moral judgment. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(1), 72-81.Ovsyannikova, D., de Mello, V. O., & Inzlicht, M. (2025). Third-party evaluators perceive AI as more compassionate than expert humans. Communications Psychology, 3(1), 4.ReferencesAlter, A. L., Oppenheimer, D. M., Epley, N., & Eyre, R. N. (2007). Overcoming intuition: Metacognitive difficulty activates analytic reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136(4), 569–576.Aarts, H., & Dijksterhuis, A. (2003). The silence of the library: Environment, situational norm, and social behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84(1), 18–28.Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). On the ethics of intervention in human psychological research: With special reference to the Stanford Prison Experiment. Cognition, 2(2), 243–256.Resnick, B. (2018, June 13). The Stanford Prison Experiment was massively influential. We just learned it was a fraud. Vox.Festinger, L., Riecken, H. W., & Schachter, S. (1956). When prophecy fails. University of Minnesota Press.
What do technical renderings of plant cells in trees have to do with Disney's animated opus Fantasia? Quite a bit, as it turns out: such emergent scientific models and ideas about nature were an important inspiration for Disney's groundbreaking animated realism. In Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), Dr. Colin Williamson presents a vivid portrait of how developments in biology, physics, and geology between 1900 and the long 1960s influenced not just Disney but the American cartoon industry as a whole. Drawing on original research on the scientific appetites of animators and studios such as Winsor McCay, the Fleischer Brothers, Walt Disney, and United Productions of America, Dr. Williamson opens new avenues for understanding the history and aesthetics of cartoons. Interrogating the differences between art and science and reconsidering the realms of dream, magic, and fantasy as they pertain to pop culture, he yields novel proposals for bridging longstanding divides between animation, live-action cinema, and the history of science. Drawn to Nature not only illuminates the extent to which animators have drawn on scientific insights, it also considers seriously how commercial animations themselves participate in scientific discourse. It revises and revitalizes our existing narratives about the history of American animation to uncover the many ways science informs our collective cultural imagination. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
What do technical renderings of plant cells in trees have to do with Disney's animated opus Fantasia? Quite a bit, as it turns out: such emergent scientific models and ideas about nature were an important inspiration for Disney's groundbreaking animated realism. In Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), Dr. Colin Williamson presents a vivid portrait of how developments in biology, physics, and geology between 1900 and the long 1960s influenced not just Disney but the American cartoon industry as a whole. Drawing on original research on the scientific appetites of animators and studios such as Winsor McCay, the Fleischer Brothers, Walt Disney, and United Productions of America, Dr. Williamson opens new avenues for understanding the history and aesthetics of cartoons. Interrogating the differences between art and science and reconsidering the realms of dream, magic, and fantasy as they pertain to pop culture, he yields novel proposals for bridging longstanding divides between animation, live-action cinema, and the history of science. Drawn to Nature not only illuminates the extent to which animators have drawn on scientific insights, it also considers seriously how commercial animations themselves participate in scientific discourse. It revises and revitalizes our existing narratives about the history of American animation to uncover the many ways science informs our collective cultural imagination. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
What do technical renderings of plant cells in trees have to do with Disney's animated opus Fantasia? Quite a bit, as it turns out: such emergent scientific models and ideas about nature were an important inspiration for Disney's groundbreaking animated realism. In Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), Dr. Colin Williamson presents a vivid portrait of how developments in biology, physics, and geology between 1900 and the long 1960s influenced not just Disney but the American cartoon industry as a whole. Drawing on original research on the scientific appetites of animators and studios such as Winsor McCay, the Fleischer Brothers, Walt Disney, and United Productions of America, Dr. Williamson opens new avenues for understanding the history and aesthetics of cartoons. Interrogating the differences between art and science and reconsidering the realms of dream, magic, and fantasy as they pertain to pop culture, he yields novel proposals for bridging longstanding divides between animation, live-action cinema, and the history of science. Drawn to Nature not only illuminates the extent to which animators have drawn on scientific insights, it also considers seriously how commercial animations themselves participate in scientific discourse. It revises and revitalizes our existing narratives about the history of American animation to uncover the many ways science informs our collective cultural imagination. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies
What do technical renderings of plant cells in trees have to do with Disney's animated opus Fantasia? Quite a bit, as it turns out: such emergent scientific models and ideas about nature were an important inspiration for Disney's groundbreaking animated realism. In Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), Dr. Colin Williamson presents a vivid portrait of how developments in biology, physics, and geology between 1900 and the long 1960s influenced not just Disney but the American cartoon industry as a whole. Drawing on original research on the scientific appetites of animators and studios such as Winsor McCay, the Fleischer Brothers, Walt Disney, and United Productions of America, Dr. Williamson opens new avenues for understanding the history and aesthetics of cartoons. Interrogating the differences between art and science and reconsidering the realms of dream, magic, and fantasy as they pertain to pop culture, he yields novel proposals for bridging longstanding divides between animation, live-action cinema, and the history of science. Drawn to Nature not only illuminates the extent to which animators have drawn on scientific insights, it also considers seriously how commercial animations themselves participate in scientific discourse. It revises and revitalizes our existing narratives about the history of American animation to uncover the many ways science informs our collective cultural imagination. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art
What do technical renderings of plant cells in trees have to do with Disney's animated opus Fantasia? Quite a bit, as it turns out: such emergent scientific models and ideas about nature were an important inspiration for Disney's groundbreaking animated realism. In Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), Dr. Colin Williamson presents a vivid portrait of how developments in biology, physics, and geology between 1900 and the long 1960s influenced not just Disney but the American cartoon industry as a whole. Drawing on original research on the scientific appetites of animators and studios such as Winsor McCay, the Fleischer Brothers, Walt Disney, and United Productions of America, Dr. Williamson opens new avenues for understanding the history and aesthetics of cartoons. Interrogating the differences between art and science and reconsidering the realms of dream, magic, and fantasy as they pertain to pop culture, he yields novel proposals for bridging longstanding divides between animation, live-action cinema, and the history of science. Drawn to Nature not only illuminates the extent to which animators have drawn on scientific insights, it also considers seriously how commercial animations themselves participate in scientific discourse. It revises and revitalizes our existing narratives about the history of American animation to uncover the many ways science informs our collective cultural imagination. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications
What do technical renderings of plant cells in trees have to do with Disney's animated opus Fantasia? Quite a bit, as it turns out: such emergent scientific models and ideas about nature were an important inspiration for Disney's groundbreaking animated realism. In Drawn to Nature: American Animation in the Age of Science (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), Dr. Colin Williamson presents a vivid portrait of how developments in biology, physics, and geology between 1900 and the long 1960s influenced not just Disney but the American cartoon industry as a whole. Drawing on original research on the scientific appetites of animators and studios such as Winsor McCay, the Fleischer Brothers, Walt Disney, and United Productions of America, Dr. Williamson opens new avenues for understanding the history and aesthetics of cartoons. Interrogating the differences between art and science and reconsidering the realms of dream, magic, and fantasy as they pertain to pop culture, he yields novel proposals for bridging longstanding divides between animation, live-action cinema, and the history of science. Drawn to Nature not only illuminates the extent to which animators have drawn on scientific insights, it also considers seriously how commercial animations themselves participate in scientific discourse. It revises and revitalizes our existing narratives about the history of American animation to uncover the many ways science informs our collective cultural imagination. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society
Courtesy of University of Minnesota Press, Elijah sits down with translator and writer Jeffrey Angles learning the secrets about his latest work; The Luminous Fairies and Mothra by Shin'ichirō Nakamura, Takehiko Fukunaga, and Yoshie Hotta.Check-out Jeffrey's work here:Order "Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again" (Paperback) by Shigeru Kayama - https://www.amazon.com/Godzilla-Raids-Again-Shigeru-Kayama/dp/1517915236Order "Writing the Love of Boys: Origins of Bishonen Culture in Modernist Japanese Literature" (Paperback) by Jeffrey Angles - https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Love-Boys-Modernist-Literature/dp/0816669708Order "The Book of the Dead" (Paperback) by Orikuchi Shinobu - https://www.amazon.com/Book-Dead-Orikuchi-Shinobu/dp/0816688109/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0Kaiju Conversation is a podcast series diving into the world of tokusatsu featuring genres like science fiction, J-Horror, action, and comedy! From Godzilla, Gamera, and Ultraman to the deepest darkest places like Zeiram, Zebraman, and Tetsuo: The Iron Man.The podcast is hosted by Elijah Thomas and Jackson Gibbens. Email: kaijuconversation@gmail.comTwitter/Facebook: @kaiju_convers Instagram: kaiju_conversLinktree:https://linktr.ee/Kaiju_Convers YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuni8GjDt1abcYq39cOxzDw Discord Server:https://discord.gg/gEwRexe Merchandise:https://teespring.com/stores/kaiju-conversation • Host: Elijah Thomashttps://linktr.ee/ET13_PRODUCTIONS• Co-host/Editor: Jackson Gibbenshttps://linktr.ee/RexXenoDon't forget to leave us a 5-star review!
Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film (University of Minnesota Press, 2025) is an interdisciplinary examination of the stubborn attachment of Asian diasporas to settler-colonial ideals and of the decolonial possibilities Asian diasporic films imagine. Author Beenash Jafri uniquely addresses the complexities of Asian–Indigenous relationality through film and visual media, urging film scholars to approach their subjects with an eye to the entanglements of race, diaspora, and Indigeneity. Beenash Jafri is an associate professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies at UC Davis. Her work engages longstanding debates on relationality and coalition across feminist and queer, Indigenous and critical ethnic studies. She is the co-editor of Cultural Studies in the Interregnum (Temple University Press, 2025), and of Amerasia's forthcoming special issue on Asian Settler Colonial Critique. Her writing has been published in academic venues such as GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Feminist Studies, Settler Colonial Studies, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies, and Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association; and in public venues such as Reappropriate, Public Books, ASAP/J, Truthout, and Briarpatch Magazine. 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
Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film (University of Minnesota Press, 2025) is an interdisciplinary examination of the stubborn attachment of Asian diasporas to settler-colonial ideals and of the decolonial possibilities Asian diasporic films imagine. Author Beenash Jafri uniquely addresses the complexities of Asian–Indigenous relationality through film and visual media, urging film scholars to approach their subjects with an eye to the entanglements of race, diaspora, and Indigeneity. Beenash Jafri is an associate professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies at UC Davis. Her work engages longstanding debates on relationality and coalition across feminist and queer, Indigenous and critical ethnic studies. She is the co-editor of Cultural Studies in the Interregnum (Temple University Press, 2025), and of Amerasia's forthcoming special issue on Asian Settler Colonial Critique. Her writing has been published in academic venues such as GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Feminist Studies, Settler Colonial Studies, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies, and Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association; and in public venues such as Reappropriate, Public Books, ASAP/J, Truthout, and Briarpatch Magazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film (University of Minnesota Press, 2025) is an interdisciplinary examination of the stubborn attachment of Asian diasporas to settler-colonial ideals and of the decolonial possibilities Asian diasporic films imagine. Author Beenash Jafri uniquely addresses the complexities of Asian–Indigenous relationality through film and visual media, urging film scholars to approach their subjects with an eye to the entanglements of race, diaspora, and Indigeneity. Beenash Jafri is an associate professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies at UC Davis. Her work engages longstanding debates on relationality and coalition across feminist and queer, Indigenous and critical ethnic studies. She is the co-editor of Cultural Studies in the Interregnum (Temple University Press, 2025), and of Amerasia's forthcoming special issue on Asian Settler Colonial Critique. Her writing has been published in academic venues such as GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Feminist Studies, Settler Colonial Studies, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies, and Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association; and in public venues such as Reappropriate, Public Books, ASAP/J, Truthout, and Briarpatch Magazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film (University of Minnesota Press, 2025) is an interdisciplinary examination of the stubborn attachment of Asian diasporas to settler-colonial ideals and of the decolonial possibilities Asian diasporic films imagine. Author Beenash Jafri uniquely addresses the complexities of Asian–Indigenous relationality through film and visual media, urging film scholars to approach their subjects with an eye to the entanglements of race, diaspora, and Indigeneity. Beenash Jafri is an associate professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies at UC Davis. Her work engages longstanding debates on relationality and coalition across feminist and queer, Indigenous and critical ethnic studies. She is the co-editor of Cultural Studies in the Interregnum (Temple University Press, 2025), and of Amerasia's forthcoming special issue on Asian Settler Colonial Critique. Her writing has been published in academic venues such as GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Feminist Studies, Settler Colonial Studies, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies, and Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association; and in public venues such as Reappropriate, Public Books, ASAP/J, Truthout, and Briarpatch Magazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/communications
Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film (University of Minnesota Press, 2025) is an interdisciplinary examination of the stubborn attachment of Asian diasporas to settler-colonial ideals and of the decolonial possibilities Asian diasporic films imagine. Author Beenash Jafri uniquely addresses the complexities of Asian–Indigenous relationality through film and visual media, urging film scholars to approach their subjects with an eye to the entanglements of race, diaspora, and Indigeneity. Beenash Jafri is an associate professor of Gender, Sexuality and Women's Studies at UC Davis. Her work engages longstanding debates on relationality and coalition across feminist and queer, Indigenous and critical ethnic studies. She is the co-editor of Cultural Studies in the Interregnum (Temple University Press, 2025), and of Amerasia's forthcoming special issue on Asian Settler Colonial Critique. Her writing has been published in academic venues such as GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Feminist Studies, Settler Colonial Studies, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies, and Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association; and in public venues such as Reappropriate, Public Books, ASAP/J, Truthout, and Briarpatch Magazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics
Douglas Armato, the fifth director in the University of Minnesota Press's 100-year history, will soon retire after 27 years of leadership at the Press—following an almost-50-year career in book publishing. On the occasion of this milestone event, he unites several titans of university publishing in a tremendous conversation about change and comradeship, past progress and future speculation, and persistent through it all, an abiding passion for what is at the core of this work: books. Gathered with Armato are Lisa Bayer, director of University of Georgia Press; Greg Britton, editorial director at Johns Hopkins University Press; Jennifer Crewe, associate provost and director of Columbia University Press; and Dean Smith, director of Duke University Press; in a conversation moderated by Bill Germano, professor of English at Cooper Union.More about Armato's acquisitions, collaborations, and retirement news: z.umn.edu/DA27.More about the Press's 100-year history and influence: z.umn.edu/wordfactory100.This is a University of Minnesota Press production. Thank you for listening.Episode chapters:02:30: What has scholarly publishing gained, and what has it lost, since we started in the business?05:08: Side hustles to sustain the bottom line.10:02: Are university presses and university libraries still close allies?17:52: How is the outside world meant to understand what a university press does?22:45: It's a job for hopeless romantics willing to fall in love with ideas (and not necessarily ones you even like).28:40: Whither AI? How is the AI tsunami different from or similar to past massive paradigm changes for publishing, such as the Internet and e-books?35:22: In a world of e-books, does a book need to go out of print? Should books go out of print?41:00: What is the ideal role for scholarly publishers with regard to tenure decisions?48:24: Memories and anecdotes about working with Doug Armato.
Exploded Views: Speculative Form and the Labor of Inquiry (U Minnesota Press, 2025) is the latest book by scholar Jonathan P. Eburne, J. H. Hexter Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. An experiment in returning to incomplete scholarly projects to renovate and reimagine them, the book stages a series of encounters with essays “suspended in process”: essays that Jonathan began writing but that didn't materialize in their intended form. Fascinating, witty, and original, Exploded Views is a record of Jonathan's intellectual curiosity in its rich idiosyncrasy—from the parasitical deformations of insect galls to the speculative science of “orgone energy,” from Leonora Carrington's surrealist art and literature to methamphetamine addiction in the time of late capitalism, and more. It's also a challenge for scholars to account for the many kinds of labor that make and unmake scholarship, and, just as importantly, an unabashed defence of "nerding out" as the humanities scholar's prerogative. This conversation brings together Exploded Views with the work of NBN host Alix Beeston, whose interest in abandoned and interrupted scholarly and creative works informs her recent co-edited book Incomplete. Like Exploded Views itself, Jonathan and Alix's frank and wide-ranging discussion brings to the foreground the kinds of scholarly activity that usually sit in the background of scholarly writing, not least the communities, relationships, and environments that define intellectual labor. What does it mean, Jonathan and Alix ask, to be doing the kind of work we do as scholars? What does it feel like to do this work? What does it require or cost? And what might be the value of cultural criticism as an inventive, creative practice—or even, perhaps, a form of relational labor akin to friendship? The non-profit bookstore Jonathan helped to found is The Print Factory in Bellafonte, Pennsylvania—check it out if you're in the area! Exploded Views is available now from the University of Minnesota Press. 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
Exploded Views: Speculative Form and the Labor of Inquiry (U Minnesota Press, 2025) is the latest book by scholar Jonathan P. Eburne, J. H. Hexter Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. An experiment in returning to incomplete scholarly projects to renovate and reimagine them, the book stages a series of encounters with essays “suspended in process”: essays that Jonathan began writing but that didn't materialize in their intended form. Fascinating, witty, and original, Exploded Views is a record of Jonathan's intellectual curiosity in its rich idiosyncrasy—from the parasitical deformations of insect galls to the speculative science of “orgone energy,” from Leonora Carrington's surrealist art and literature to methamphetamine addiction in the time of late capitalism, and more. It's also a challenge for scholars to account for the many kinds of labor that make and unmake scholarship, and, just as importantly, an unabashed defence of "nerding out" as the humanities scholar's prerogative. This conversation brings together Exploded Views with the work of NBN host Alix Beeston, whose interest in abandoned and interrupted scholarly and creative works informs her recent co-edited book Incomplete. Like Exploded Views itself, Jonathan and Alix's frank and wide-ranging discussion brings to the foreground the kinds of scholarly activity that usually sit in the background of scholarly writing, not least the communities, relationships, and environments that define intellectual labor. What does it mean, Jonathan and Alix ask, to be doing the kind of work we do as scholars? What does it feel like to do this work? What does it require or cost? And what might be the value of cultural criticism as an inventive, creative practice—or even, perhaps, a form of relational labor akin to friendship? The non-profit bookstore Jonathan helped to found is The Print Factory in Bellafonte, Pennsylvania—check it out if you're in the area! Exploded Views is available now from the University of Minnesota Press. 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 the Process, I came to realize ... how nature in my own life had been such a healing force." - James Bonilla We wrap up season 11 with New York-born Puerto Rican writer and retired professor emeritus, James Bonilla. James's story is filled with transformation, healing, and wisdom. Born with congenital cataracts, at the age of nine, his right eye was injured in school by a fellow student's actions. For over ten years, James was blind. At the age of 19, doctors removed the cataracts (although the childhood injury remained). On his way home from the hospital, he remembers seeing the world in Technicolor through his own eyes. As a writer, James was comfortable writing about his identities as a Puerto Rican and a person with impaired sight. But it wasn't until he did the Process that he could accept his family's struggle with mental illness. He released patterns of shame that stemmed from his experiences of abandonment as a young child. In accepting his own mental illness, James found deeper healing of those issues through the power of nature. He realized that nature had been a constant source of healing throughout his life. Upon graduating, James felt called to share his experience healing mental illness with others. Because of his work at the Process, James emerged emboldened to share this experience in his new memoir, An Eye for An I. We hope you enjoy this inspiring conversation with James and Drew. We'll be back in early 2026 with season 12 of the Hoffman Podcast. Content Warning: This episode mentions suicide and includes intense emotional content and targeted racism. Please use your discretion. If you or someone you know is suicidal, reach out to The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-TALK (8255), or message the Crisis Text Line at 741741. More about James Bonilla James Francisco Bonilla is a New York-born Puerto Rican writer and retired professor emeritus of cultural competence and leadership at Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. James was born with congenital cataracts and has never had sight in his left eye. Following a racially-motivated assault at age nine, he lost much of his remaining sight in the right eye. Ten years later, a medical breakthrough restored sight to his right eye. Seeking relief and inspiration, he found unexpected solace in the natural world. This discovery led him toward both personal healing and advocacy work. Due to his experiences, James was drawn into the early disability rights movement and community organizing. This helped shape his work as a nationally recognized social justice educator and environmentalist. James received his doctoral degree from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, School of Education in Organizational Leadership. He is a former Chair of the Faculty Advisory Committee to the National Conference on Racial & Ethnic Diversity in American Higher Education. He has made hundreds of presentations to universities, conferences, and human service organizations in the area of diversity, including outdoor education and environmental programs. His memoir, An Eye for An I: Growing Up With Blindness, Bigotry, and Family Mental Illness, was just released by the University of Minnesota Press. In it, he invites readers to empathize and consider their own potential to be of service in a broken, yet beautiful world. Read more about James' memoir on Hamline University's site. Follow James on Facebook and LinkedIn. Learn more about James here. Listen on Apple Podcasts As mentioned in this episode: Nuyorican: "The Nuyorican movement is a cultural and intellectual movement involving poets, writers, musicians, and artists who are Puerto Rican or of Puerto Rican descent, who live in or near New York City, and either call themselves or are known as Nuyoricans." Read more... Congenital Cataracts New York Association for the Blind Lisa Wenger, Hoffman teacher and coach • Listen to Lisa on the Hoffman Podcast - The Sparkle in Her ...
Checkpoint 300, the highly securitized border facility between occupied Bethlehem and Jerusalem, is a central feature of Israeli control of Palestinian land and life. An apparatus of turnstiles, overcrowded corridors, and invasive inspections, the checkpoint regulates the movement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, granting access to some while excluding most. Offering a nuanced exploration of space in Checkpoint 300: Colonial Space in Palestine (U Minnesota Press, 2025), Mark Griffiths reveals Checkpoint 300 as a stark symbol of Israeli colonialism that embodies larger systems of control and violence. Griffiths's sensitive and timely work highlights the myriad ways Palestinians are affected by Israel's spatial control—whether they travel through the checkpoint or not—demonstrating how colonial infrastructures of inequity extend far beyond their physical boundaries to shape daily life. Drawing on nearly a decade of fieldwork, Griffiths examines how colonial power infiltrates family dynamics, enforces gendered mobility restrictions, shapes local economies, and extends into the global exchange of capital and security technologies. He also underscores how Palestinians endure and resist under oppressive conditions and how indigenous forms of life and living are sustained, illuminating how colonial space is contested and countered, unmade and remade. Blending meticulous research with vivid human stories to show the lived realities of borders, power, and resistance in the West Bank, Checkpoint 300 portrays the checkpoint as an entry into the ways that colonial space is formed through security infrastructure that is both the product and producer of wider geographies of oppression, complicity, and control. Mark Griffiths is reader in political geography at Newcastle University. He is coeditor of Encountering Palestine: Un/making Spaces of Colonial Violence. 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/new-books-network
Checkpoint 300, the highly securitized border facility between occupied Bethlehem and Jerusalem, is a central feature of Israeli control of Palestinian land and life. An apparatus of turnstiles, overcrowded corridors, and invasive inspections, the checkpoint regulates the movement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, granting access to some while excluding most. Offering a nuanced exploration of space in Checkpoint 300: Colonial Space in Palestine (U Minnesota Press, 2025), Mark Griffiths reveals Checkpoint 300 as a stark symbol of Israeli colonialism that embodies larger systems of control and violence. Griffiths's sensitive and timely work highlights the myriad ways Palestinians are affected by Israel's spatial control—whether they travel through the checkpoint or not—demonstrating how colonial infrastructures of inequity extend far beyond their physical boundaries to shape daily life. Drawing on nearly a decade of fieldwork, Griffiths examines how colonial power infiltrates family dynamics, enforces gendered mobility restrictions, shapes local economies, and extends into the global exchange of capital and security technologies. He also underscores how Palestinians endure and resist under oppressive conditions and how indigenous forms of life and living are sustained, illuminating how colonial space is contested and countered, unmade and remade. Blending meticulous research with vivid human stories to show the lived realities of borders, power, and resistance in the West Bank, Checkpoint 300 portrays the checkpoint as an entry into the ways that colonial space is formed through security infrastructure that is both the product and producer of wider geographies of oppression, complicity, and control. Mark Griffiths is reader in political geography at Newcastle University. He is coeditor of Encountering Palestine: Un/making Spaces of Colonial Violence. 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/political-science
Checkpoint 300, the highly securitized border facility between occupied Bethlehem and Jerusalem, is a central feature of Israeli control of Palestinian land and life. An apparatus of turnstiles, overcrowded corridors, and invasive inspections, the checkpoint regulates the movement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, granting access to some while excluding most. Offering a nuanced exploration of space in Checkpoint 300: Colonial Space in Palestine (U Minnesota Press, 2025), Mark Griffiths reveals Checkpoint 300 as a stark symbol of Israeli colonialism that embodies larger systems of control and violence. Griffiths's sensitive and timely work highlights the myriad ways Palestinians are affected by Israel's spatial control—whether they travel through the checkpoint or not—demonstrating how colonial infrastructures of inequity extend far beyond their physical boundaries to shape daily life. Drawing on nearly a decade of fieldwork, Griffiths examines how colonial power infiltrates family dynamics, enforces gendered mobility restrictions, shapes local economies, and extends into the global exchange of capital and security technologies. He also underscores how Palestinians endure and resist under oppressive conditions and how indigenous forms of life and living are sustained, illuminating how colonial space is contested and countered, unmade and remade. Blending meticulous research with vivid human stories to show the lived realities of borders, power, and resistance in the West Bank, Checkpoint 300 portrays the checkpoint as an entry into the ways that colonial space is formed through security infrastructure that is both the product and producer of wider geographies of oppression, complicity, and control. Mark Griffiths is reader in political geography at Newcastle University. He is coeditor of Encountering Palestine: Un/making Spaces of Colonial Violence. 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/middle-eastern-studies
Checkpoint 300, the highly securitized border facility between occupied Bethlehem and Jerusalem, is a central feature of Israeli control of Palestinian land and life. An apparatus of turnstiles, overcrowded corridors, and invasive inspections, the checkpoint regulates the movement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, granting access to some while excluding most. Offering a nuanced exploration of space in Checkpoint 300: Colonial Space in Palestine (U Minnesota Press, 2025), Mark Griffiths reveals Checkpoint 300 as a stark symbol of Israeli colonialism that embodies larger systems of control and violence. Griffiths's sensitive and timely work highlights the myriad ways Palestinians are affected by Israel's spatial control—whether they travel through the checkpoint or not—demonstrating how colonial infrastructures of inequity extend far beyond their physical boundaries to shape daily life. Drawing on nearly a decade of fieldwork, Griffiths examines how colonial power infiltrates family dynamics, enforces gendered mobility restrictions, shapes local economies, and extends into the global exchange of capital and security technologies. He also underscores how Palestinians endure and resist under oppressive conditions and how indigenous forms of life and living are sustained, illuminating how colonial space is contested and countered, unmade and remade. Blending meticulous research with vivid human stories to show the lived realities of borders, power, and resistance in the West Bank, Checkpoint 300 portrays the checkpoint as an entry into the ways that colonial space is formed through security infrastructure that is both the product and producer of wider geographies of oppression, complicity, and control. Mark Griffiths is reader in political geography at Newcastle University. He is coeditor of Encountering Palestine: Un/making Spaces of Colonial Violence. 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/critical-theory
Checkpoint 300, the highly securitized border facility between occupied Bethlehem and Jerusalem, is a central feature of Israeli control of Palestinian land and life. An apparatus of turnstiles, overcrowded corridors, and invasive inspections, the checkpoint regulates the movement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, granting access to some while excluding most. Offering a nuanced exploration of space in Checkpoint 300: Colonial Space in Palestine (U Minnesota Press, 2025), Mark Griffiths reveals Checkpoint 300 as a stark symbol of Israeli colonialism that embodies larger systems of control and violence. Griffiths's sensitive and timely work highlights the myriad ways Palestinians are affected by Israel's spatial control—whether they travel through the checkpoint or not—demonstrating how colonial infrastructures of inequity extend far beyond their physical boundaries to shape daily life. Drawing on nearly a decade of fieldwork, Griffiths examines how colonial power infiltrates family dynamics, enforces gendered mobility restrictions, shapes local economies, and extends into the global exchange of capital and security technologies. He also underscores how Palestinians endure and resist under oppressive conditions and how indigenous forms of life and living are sustained, illuminating how colonial space is contested and countered, unmade and remade. Blending meticulous research with vivid human stories to show the lived realities of borders, power, and resistance in the West Bank, Checkpoint 300 portrays the checkpoint as an entry into the ways that colonial space is formed through security infrastructure that is both the product and producer of wider geographies of oppression, complicity, and control. Mark Griffiths is reader in political geography at Newcastle University. He is coeditor of Encountering Palestine: Un/making Spaces of Colonial Violence. 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/geography
As the environmental crisis worsens, not everyone is drawing the same lessons. On the far right, xenophobic and racist ideas are increasingly dressed up as means of protecting nature. And, as scholar Alexander Menrisky posits, contemporary American culture furnishes a wealth of material for the right, from the ubiquity of apocalyptic and misanthropic ideas to concerns with Wellness and bodily purity. (Encore presentation.) Alexander Menrisky, Everyday Ecofascism: Crisis and Consumption in American Literature University of Minnesota Press, 2025 The post The Fodder of Eco-Fascism appeared first on KPFA.
For more than 150 years, Italy has been home to a resilient and evolving resistance against the pervasive influence of mafias. While these criminal organizations are renowned for their vast international business enterprises, the collective actions taken to oppose them are less known. In Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism (U Minnesota Press, 2025), Dr. Christina Jerne explores anti-mafia activism, revealing how ordinary people resist, counter, and prevent criminal economies from proliferating. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among anti-mafia alliances in Campania, Sicily, and other parts of Italy, Dr. Jerne details a particular aspect of mafia activities: providing cash relief and other forms of patronage to individuals and groups. Her research shows how activism has evolved to imitate this sustaining role. Activists are increasingly challenging mafia control both by creating alternative economies—from producing food that interrupts mafia labor practices to organizing tourism that supports anti-mafia hospitality—and by subversively adopting business tactics similar to the mafia's to compete with their social influence and legitimacy. Exposing the political implications of this mimetic opposition, Dr. Jerne points to its potential impact on crime prevention and criminalization, both in Italy and globally. Opposition by Imitation shows how these modern-day Robin Hoods are redefining collective action, taking what was controlled by the mafias and returning it to the collective. This contentious economic turn, against the backdrop of broader social movements, reveals significant political possibilities afforded by imitative opposition. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 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
For more than 150 years, Italy has been home to a resilient and evolving resistance against the pervasive influence of mafias. While these criminal organizations are renowned for their vast international business enterprises, the collective actions taken to oppose them are less known. In Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism (U Minnesota Press, 2025), Dr. Christina Jerne explores anti-mafia activism, revealing how ordinary people resist, counter, and prevent criminal economies from proliferating. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among anti-mafia alliances in Campania, Sicily, and other parts of Italy, Dr. Jerne details a particular aspect of mafia activities: providing cash relief and other forms of patronage to individuals and groups. Her research shows how activism has evolved to imitate this sustaining role. Activists are increasingly challenging mafia control both by creating alternative economies—from producing food that interrupts mafia labor practices to organizing tourism that supports anti-mafia hospitality—and by subversively adopting business tactics similar to the mafia's to compete with their social influence and legitimacy. Exposing the political implications of this mimetic opposition, Dr. Jerne points to its potential impact on crime prevention and criminalization, both in Italy and globally. Opposition by Imitation shows how these modern-day Robin Hoods are redefining collective action, taking what was controlled by the mafias and returning it to the collective. This contentious economic turn, against the backdrop of broader social movements, reveals significant political possibilities afforded by imitative opposition. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology
For more than 150 years, Italy has been home to a resilient and evolving resistance against the pervasive influence of mafias. While these criminal organizations are renowned for their vast international business enterprises, the collective actions taken to oppose them are less known. In Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism (U Minnesota Press, 2025), Dr. Christina Jerne explores anti-mafia activism, revealing how ordinary people resist, counter, and prevent criminal economies from proliferating. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among anti-mafia alliances in Campania, Sicily, and other parts of Italy, Dr. Jerne details a particular aspect of mafia activities: providing cash relief and other forms of patronage to individuals and groups. Her research shows how activism has evolved to imitate this sustaining role. Activists are increasingly challenging mafia control both by creating alternative economies—from producing food that interrupts mafia labor practices to organizing tourism that supports anti-mafia hospitality—and by subversively adopting business tactics similar to the mafia's to compete with their social influence and legitimacy. Exposing the political implications of this mimetic opposition, Dr. Jerne points to its potential impact on crime prevention and criminalization, both in Italy and globally. Opposition by Imitation shows how these modern-day Robin Hoods are redefining collective action, taking what was controlled by the mafias and returning it to the collective. This contentious economic turn, against the backdrop of broader social movements, reveals significant political possibilities afforded by imitative opposition. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics
For more than 150 years, Italy has been home to a resilient and evolving resistance against the pervasive influence of mafias. While these criminal organizations are renowned for their vast international business enterprises, the collective actions taken to oppose them are less known. In Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism (U Minnesota Press, 2025), Dr. Christina Jerne explores anti-mafia activism, revealing how ordinary people resist, counter, and prevent criminal economies from proliferating. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among anti-mafia alliances in Campania, Sicily, and other parts of Italy, Dr. Jerne details a particular aspect of mafia activities: providing cash relief and other forms of patronage to individuals and groups. Her research shows how activism has evolved to imitate this sustaining role. Activists are increasingly challenging mafia control both by creating alternative economies—from producing food that interrupts mafia labor practices to organizing tourism that supports anti-mafia hospitality—and by subversively adopting business tactics similar to the mafia's to compete with their social influence and legitimacy. Exposing the political implications of this mimetic opposition, Dr. Jerne points to its potential impact on crime prevention and criminalization, both in Italy and globally. Opposition by Imitation shows how these modern-day Robin Hoods are redefining collective action, taking what was controlled by the mafias and returning it to the collective. This contentious economic turn, against the backdrop of broader social movements, reveals significant political possibilities afforded by imitative opposition. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/italian-studies
For more than 150 years, Italy has been home to a resilient and evolving resistance against the pervasive influence of mafias. While these criminal organizations are renowned for their vast international business enterprises, the collective actions taken to oppose them are less known. In Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism (U Minnesota Press, 2025), Dr. Christina Jerne explores anti-mafia activism, revealing how ordinary people resist, counter, and prevent criminal economies from proliferating. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among anti-mafia alliances in Campania, Sicily, and other parts of Italy, Dr. Jerne details a particular aspect of mafia activities: providing cash relief and other forms of patronage to individuals and groups. Her research shows how activism has evolved to imitate this sustaining role. Activists are increasingly challenging mafia control both by creating alternative economies—from producing food that interrupts mafia labor practices to organizing tourism that supports anti-mafia hospitality—and by subversively adopting business tactics similar to the mafia's to compete with their social influence and legitimacy. Exposing the political implications of this mimetic opposition, Dr. Jerne points to its potential impact on crime prevention and criminalization, both in Italy and globally. Opposition by Imitation shows how these modern-day Robin Hoods are redefining collective action, taking what was controlled by the mafias and returning it to the collective. This contentious economic turn, against the backdrop of broader social movements, reveals significant political possibilities afforded by imitative opposition. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today I am deeply honored to spend time with poet, activist, and scholar Jamaica Osorio. Shortly after October 7, 2023, she began to write a series of astonishing poems about the war in Gaza and the genocide. Osorio graces us with readings of some of those poems, and engages in a rich, complex, and deeply moving discussion of what went into their composition. Throughout, we talk about the power of poetry to suspend time and allow us the space to contemplate the impossible. We talk about the nature of not knowing, of the inexpressible, and the ways certain poems can give us the strength, energy, and commitment to persist in working for the liberation of all peoples, even when dwelling in grief.Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio is a Kanaka Maoli wahine artist / activist / scholar / storyteller born and raised in Pālolo Valley to parents Jonathan and Mary Osorio. Jamaica earned her PhD in English (Hawaiian literature) in 2018 from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Currently, Jamaica is an Associate Professor of Indigenous and Native Hawaiian Politics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. In 2020 her poetry and activism were the subject of an award-winning film, This is the Way we Rise which premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2021. In 2022 she was a lead artist and Co-writer of the revolutionary VR Documentary, On the Morning You Wake (To the end of the world), that premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2022 and won the XR experience Jury award at SXSW 2022. She is a proud past Kaiāpuni student, Ford Dissertation (2017) and Post Doctoral (2022) Fellow, and a graduate of Kamehameha, Stanford University (BA) and New York University (MA). She is the author of the award winning book Remembering our Intimacies: Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻĀina, and Ea which was published in 2021 by The University of Minnesota Press. She believes in the power of aloha ʻāina and collective action to pursue liberatory, decolonial, and abolitionist futures of abundance.
Writer and researcher Sasha Davis speaks to This Is Hell! to talk about his new book “Replace The State: How To Change The World When Elections And Protests Fail”, published by University of Minnesota Press. The book talks about bringing new hope for social justice movements by looking to progressive campaigns that have found success by unconventional, and more direct, means since elections and protests might have become stagnated in regards to bring forth societal change. (https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517919528/replace-the-state/) We will have new installments of Rotten History and Hangover Cure. We will also be sharing your answers to this week's Question from Hell! from Patreon. Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thisishell
Writer and researcher Sasha Davis speaks to This Is Hell! to talk about his new book “Replace The State: How To Change The World When Elections And Protests Fail”, published by University of Minnesota Press. The book talks about bringing new hope for social justice movements by looking to progressive campaigns that have found success by unconventional, and more direct, means since elections and protests might have become stagnated in regards to bring forth societal change. (https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517919528/replace-the-state/) Help keep This Is Hell! completely listener supported and access bonus episodes by subscribing to our Patreon: www.patreon.com/thisishell
What pedagogies arise from institutional betrayal? How can we do the work we love in contexts where harassment is endemic and administrative responses to it escalate the problem? What assumptions have normalized the expectation that our institutions cannot be spaces of love?In this episode, we welcome Dr. Jennifer Doyle to discuss all of these issues as they arise in her most recent book, Shadow of My Shadow (Duke University Press, 2024). This remarkable work develops from Doyle's own experience of being stalked by a student and unfurls into a bracing critique of the institutional administration of harassment cases--as well as the attachments that arise in their aftermath. This line of inquiry builds on Doyle's Campus Sex / Campus Security (Semiotexte, 2015), on how the bureaucratic management of sex on college campuses coincides with the militarization of campus police.Jennifer Doyle is a writer, arts and performance curator, sports analyst, and professor of English. She serves on the Board of Directors of Human Resources Los Angeles; her most recent co/curated exhibition is Sciencia Sexualis at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, LA (2024-2025). In addition to the books named above, Jennifer is the author of Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art (Duke University Press, 2013) and Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire (University of Minnesota Press, 2006). She is also the voice behind the beloved soccer blog From a Left Wing (2007-2013) and, now, The Sport Spectacle.Links to recommended stuff!Esme Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias (Graywolf, 2019)Barbara Johnson, "Muteness Envy" in The Barbara Johnson Reader (Duke UP, 2014)Francois Tosquelles, Psychotherapy and Materialism, English translation (ICI Berlin Press, 2024)Camille Robcis, Disalienation (University of Chicago Press 2021)Colm Toibin, The Magician (Scribner, 2022)Alexandra Horowitz, On Looking (Scribner, 2014)
This Is Not My World: Art and Public Spaces in Socialist Zagreb (U Minnesota Press, 2024) examines the Group of Six Authors—a collective of young artists who staged provocative art events in the public spaces of socialist Yugoslavia during the 1970s and early 1980s. The book analyses how these spaces, which had long been forums of state ideological control, were transformed into a contested terrain in which personal creativity and new identities could emerge. Drawing on artist interviews and extensive documentation, Adair Rounthwaite situates the Group's work within broader developments in conceptualism and avant-garde theory in the second half of the 20th century, offering a richly detailed account of this fascinating episode in global art history. 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
This Is Not My World: Art and Public Spaces in Socialist Zagreb (U Minnesota Press, 2024) examines the Group of Six Authors—a collective of young artists who staged provocative art events in the public spaces of socialist Yugoslavia during the 1970s and early 1980s. The book analyses how these spaces, which had long been forums of state ideological control, were transformed into a contested terrain in which personal creativity and new identities could emerge. Drawing on artist interviews and extensive documentation, Adair Rounthwaite situates the Group's work within broader developments in conceptualism and avant-garde theory in the second half of the 20th century, offering a richly detailed account of this fascinating episode in global art history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/intellectual-history
This Is Not My World: Art and Public Spaces in Socialist Zagreb (U Minnesota Press, 2024) examines the Group of Six Authors—a collective of young artists who staged provocative art events in the public spaces of socialist Yugoslavia during the 1970s and early 1980s. The book analyses how these spaces, which had long been forums of state ideological control, were transformed into a contested terrain in which personal creativity and new identities could emerge. Drawing on artist interviews and extensive documentation, Adair Rounthwaite situates the Group's work within broader developments in conceptualism and avant-garde theory in the second half of the 20th century, offering a richly detailed account of this fascinating episode in global art history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art
This Is Not My World: Art and Public Spaces in Socialist Zagreb (U Minnesota Press, 2024) examines the Group of Six Authors—a collective of young artists who staged provocative art events in the public spaces of socialist Yugoslavia during the 1970s and early 1980s. The book analyses how these spaces, which had long been forums of state ideological control, were transformed into a contested terrain in which personal creativity and new identities could emerge. Drawing on artist interviews and extensive documentation, Adair Rounthwaite situates the Group's work within broader developments in conceptualism and avant-garde theory in the second half of the 20th century, offering a richly detailed account of this fascinating episode in global art history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/eastern-european-studies
We're throwing it back to the 1996 cult classic film The Craft just in time for Halloween! We begin with a conversation about Hannah and Marcelle's teenage witch phases (of course they both had them), before digging into the filmic landscape of the 90s. Hannah argues that The Craft's interest in girlhood and power was a catalyst that paved the way for pop culture to come, like Buffy and Charmed and Practical Magic. Hannah then draws on Stacy Gillis and Rebecca Munford's “Genealogies and Generations: The Politics and Praxis of Third Wave Feminism" and Jessica Rosenberg and Gitana Garofalo's “Riot Grrrl: Revolutions from Within" to help understand the resonance of film. If you too went through a witch phase, or indeed are still a practicing witch, then this episode is for you!***Works CitedBastién, Angelica Jade. “The Profound, Enduring Legacy of The Craft.” Vulture 27 October 2017. https://www.vulture.com/2017/10/the-craft-its-enduring-legacy.html. Gillis, Stacy, and Rebecca Munford. “Genealogies and Generations: The Politics and Praxis of Third Wave Feminism.” Women's History Review 13.2 (2004): 165–82. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/10.1080/09612020400200388 Heywood, Leslie and Jennifer Drake, eds. Introduction. Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Jacobs, Matthew and Julia Brucculieri. “Relax, It's Only Magic: An Oral History Of ‘The Craft.'” Huffpost 20 May 2016. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-craft-oral-history_n_5734f7c9e4b060aa7819d362. Walker, Rebecca. “Becoming the Third Wave.” Ms. Magazine January/February 1992.***To learn more about Material Girls, head to our Instagram at instagram.com/ohwitchplease! Or check out our website ohwitchplease.ca. We'll be back next week with a Material Concerns episode, but until then, go check out all the other content we have on our Patreon at Patreon.com/ohwitchplease! Patreon is how we produce the show and pay our team! Material Girls is a show that makes sense of the zeitgeist through materialist critique* and critical theory! Each episode looks at a unique object of study (something popular now or from back in the day) and over the course of three distinct segments, Hannah and Marcelle apply their academic expertise to the topic at hand.*Materialist Critique is, at its simplest possible level, a form of cultural critique – that is, scholarly engagement with a cultural text of some kind – that is interested in modes of production, moments of reception, and the historical and ideological contexts for both.Music Credits:“Shopping Mall”: by Jay Arner and Jessica Delisle ©2020Used by permission. All rights reserved. As recorded by Auto Syndicate on the album “Bongo Dance”. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Charles J. Stivale (Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Wayne State University) and Dan Smith (Professor of Philosophy, Purdue University) join me to discuss: Deleuze, Gilles. 2025. On Painting. Edited by David Lapoujade, translated by Charles J. Stivale. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Although Charles is the translator of this New Book, he has been working with Dan for years on The Deleuze Seminars (website here). Dan is also the translator of Deleuze's Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, which Deleuze published shortly after giving this seminar. I thank Charles for bringing him in to contribute to our discussion! From the inside flap: “ ” Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University nathan.smith@yale.edu Available for the first time in English: the complete and annotated transcripts of Deleuze's 1981 seminars on paintingFrom 1970 until 1987, Gilles Deleuze held a weekly seminar at the Experimental University of Vincennes and, starting in 1980, at Saint-Denis. In the spring of 1981, he began a series of eight seminars on painting and its intersections with philosophy. The recorded sessions, newly transcribed and translated into English, are now available in their entirety for the first time. Extensively annotated by philosopher David Lapoujade, On Painting illuminates Deleuze's thinking on artistic creation, significantly extending the lines of thought in his book Francis Bacon.Through paintings and writing by Rembrandt, Delacroix, Turner, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Klee, Pollock, and Bacon, Deleuze explores the creative process, from chaos to the pictorial fact. The introduction and use of color feature prominently as Deleuze elaborates on artistic and philosophical concepts such as the diagram, modulation, code, and the digital and the analogical. Through this scrutiny, he raises a series of profound and stimulating questions for his students: How does a painter ward off grayness and attain color? What is a line without contour? Why paint at all?Written and thought in a rhizomatic manner that is thoroughly Deleuzian—strange, powerful, and novel—On Painting traverses both the conception of art history and the possibility of color as a philosophical concept. 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
Charles J. Stivale (Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Wayne State University) and Dan Smith (Professor of Philosophy, Purdue University) join me to discuss: Deleuze, Gilles. 2025. On Painting. Edited by David Lapoujade, translated by Charles J. Stivale. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Although Charles is the translator of this New Book, he has been working with Dan for years on The Deleuze Seminars (website here). Dan is also the translator of Deleuze's Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, which Deleuze published shortly after giving this seminar. I thank Charles for bringing him in to contribute to our discussion! From the inside flap: “ ” Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University nathan.smith@yale.edu Available for the first time in English: the complete and annotated transcripts of Deleuze's 1981 seminars on paintingFrom 1970 until 1987, Gilles Deleuze held a weekly seminar at the Experimental University of Vincennes and, starting in 1980, at Saint-Denis. In the spring of 1981, he began a series of eight seminars on painting and its intersections with philosophy. The recorded sessions, newly transcribed and translated into English, are now available in their entirety for the first time. Extensively annotated by philosopher David Lapoujade, On Painting illuminates Deleuze's thinking on artistic creation, significantly extending the lines of thought in his book Francis Bacon.Through paintings and writing by Rembrandt, Delacroix, Turner, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Klee, Pollock, and Bacon, Deleuze explores the creative process, from chaos to the pictorial fact. The introduction and use of color feature prominently as Deleuze elaborates on artistic and philosophical concepts such as the diagram, modulation, code, and the digital and the analogical. Through this scrutiny, he raises a series of profound and stimulating questions for his students: How does a painter ward off grayness and attain color? What is a line without contour? Why paint at all?Written and thought in a rhizomatic manner that is thoroughly Deleuzian—strange, powerful, and novel—On Painting traverses both the conception of art history and the possibility of color as a philosophical concept. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
Charles J. Stivale (Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Wayne State University) and Dan Smith (Professor of Philosophy, Purdue University) join me to discuss: Deleuze, Gilles. 2025. On Painting. Edited by David Lapoujade, translated by Charles J. Stivale. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Although Charles is the translator of this New Book, he has been working with Dan for years on The Deleuze Seminars (website here). Dan is also the translator of Deleuze's Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, which Deleuze published shortly after giving this seminar. I thank Charles for bringing him in to contribute to our discussion! From the inside flap: “ ” Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University nathan.smith@yale.edu Available for the first time in English: the complete and annotated transcripts of Deleuze's 1981 seminars on paintingFrom 1970 until 1987, Gilles Deleuze held a weekly seminar at the Experimental University of Vincennes and, starting in 1980, at Saint-Denis. In the spring of 1981, he began a series of eight seminars on painting and its intersections with philosophy. The recorded sessions, newly transcribed and translated into English, are now available in their entirety for the first time. Extensively annotated by philosopher David Lapoujade, On Painting illuminates Deleuze's thinking on artistic creation, significantly extending the lines of thought in his book Francis Bacon.Through paintings and writing by Rembrandt, Delacroix, Turner, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Klee, Pollock, and Bacon, Deleuze explores the creative process, from chaos to the pictorial fact. The introduction and use of color feature prominently as Deleuze elaborates on artistic and philosophical concepts such as the diagram, modulation, code, and the digital and the analogical. Through this scrutiny, he raises a series of profound and stimulating questions for his students: How does a painter ward off grayness and attain color? What is a line without contour? Why paint at all?Written and thought in a rhizomatic manner that is thoroughly Deleuzian—strange, powerful, and novel—On Painting traverses both the conception of art history and the possibility of color as a philosophical concept. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/art
Animals are staging a revolution—they're just not telling us. From radioactive boar invading towns to jellyfish disarming battleships, Animal Revolution (U Minnesota Press, 2022) threads together news accounts and more in a powerful and timely work of creative, speculative nonfiction that imagines a revolution stirring and asks how humans can be a part of it. If the coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we should pay attention to how we bump up against animal worlds and how animals will push back. Animal Revolution is a passionate, provocative, cogent call for us to do so. Ron Broglio reveals how fur and claw and feather and fin are jamming the gears of our social machine. We can try to frame such disruptions as environmental intervention or through the lens of philosophy or biopolitics, but regardless the animals persist beyond our comprehension in reminding us that we too are part of an animal world. Animals see our technologies and machines as invasive beings and, in a nonlinguistic but nonetheless intensive mode of communicating with us, resist our attempts to control them and diminish their habitats. In doing so, they expose the environmental injustices and vulnerabilities in our systems. A witty, informative, and captivating work—at the juncture of posthumanism, animal studies, phenomenology, and environmental studies—Broglio reminds us of our inadequacy as humans, not our exceptionalism. Ron Broglio is professor of English, director of Desert Humanities, and associate director of the Institute for Humanities Research at Arizona State University. He is author or editor of several books, including Beasts of Burden: Biopolitics, Labor, and Animal Life and Surface Encounters: Thinking with Animals and Art. Callie Smith is a poet and a PhD candidate in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. 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 formal approach to anime rethinks globalization and transnationality under neoliberalism Anime has become synonymous with Japanese culture, but its global reach raises a perplexing question--what happens when anime is produced outside of Japan? Who actually makes anime, and how can this help us rethink notions of cultural production? In Anime's Identity: Performativity and Form Beyond Japan (U Minnesota Press, 2021), Stevie Suan examines how anime's recognizable media-form--no matter where it is produced--reflects the problematics of globalization. The result is an incisive look at not only anime but also the tensions of transnationality. Far from valorizing the individualistic "originality" so often touted in national creative industries, anime reveals an alternate type of creativity based in repetition and variation. In exploring this alternative creativity and its accompanying aesthetics, Suan examines anime from fresh angles, including considerations of how anime operates like a brand of media, the intricacies of anime production occurring across national borders, inquiries into the selfhood involved in anime's character acting, and analyses of various anime works that present differing modes of transnationality. Anime's Identity deftly merges theories from media studies and performance studies, introducing innovative formal concepts that connect anime to questions of dislocation on a global scale, creating a transformative new lens for analyzing popular media. Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing. 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 formal approach to anime rethinks globalization and transnationality under neoliberalism Anime has become synonymous with Japanese culture, but its global reach raises a perplexing question--what happens when anime is produced outside of Japan? Who actually makes anime, and how can this help us rethink notions of cultural production? In Anime's Identity: Performativity and Form Beyond Japan (U Minnesota Press, 2021), Stevie Suan examines how anime's recognizable media-form--no matter where it is produced--reflects the problematics of globalization. The result is an incisive look at not only anime but also the tensions of transnationality. Far from valorizing the individualistic "originality" so often touted in national creative industries, anime reveals an alternate type of creativity based in repetition and variation. In exploring this alternative creativity and its accompanying aesthetics, Suan examines anime from fresh angles, including considerations of how anime operates like a brand of media, the intricacies of anime production occurring across national borders, inquiries into the selfhood involved in anime's character acting, and analyses of various anime works that present differing modes of transnationality. Anime's Identity deftly merges theories from media studies and performance studies, introducing innovative formal concepts that connect anime to questions of dislocation on a global scale, creating a transformative new lens for analyzing popular media. Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies
A formal approach to anime rethinks globalization and transnationality under neoliberalism Anime has become synonymous with Japanese culture, but its global reach raises a perplexing question--what happens when anime is produced outside of Japan? Who actually makes anime, and how can this help us rethink notions of cultural production? In Anime's Identity: Performativity and Form Beyond Japan (U Minnesota Press, 2021), Stevie Suan examines how anime's recognizable media-form--no matter where it is produced--reflects the problematics of globalization. The result is an incisive look at not only anime but also the tensions of transnationality. Far from valorizing the individualistic "originality" so often touted in national creative industries, anime reveals an alternate type of creativity based in repetition and variation. In exploring this alternative creativity and its accompanying aesthetics, Suan examines anime from fresh angles, including considerations of how anime operates like a brand of media, the intricacies of anime production occurring across national borders, inquiries into the selfhood involved in anime's character acting, and analyses of various anime works that present differing modes of transnationality. Anime's Identity deftly merges theories from media studies and performance studies, introducing innovative formal concepts that connect anime to questions of dislocation on a global scale, creating a transformative new lens for analyzing popular media. Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
Animals are staging a revolution—they're just not telling us. From radioactive boar invading towns to jellyfish disarming battleships, Animal Revolution (U Minnesota Press, 2022) threads together news accounts and more in a powerful and timely work of creative, speculative nonfiction that imagines a revolution stirring and asks how humans can be a part of it. If the coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we should pay attention to how we bump up against animal worlds and how animals will push back. Animal Revolution is a passionate, provocative, cogent call for us to do so. Ron Broglio reveals how fur and claw and feather and fin are jamming the gears of our social machine. We can try to frame such disruptions as environmental intervention or through the lens of philosophy or biopolitics, but regardless the animals persist beyond our comprehension in reminding us that we too are part of an animal world. Animals see our technologies and machines as invasive beings and, in a nonlinguistic but nonetheless intensive mode of communicating with us, resist our attempts to control them and diminish their habitats. In doing so, they expose the environmental injustices and vulnerabilities in our systems. A witty, informative, and captivating work—at the juncture of posthumanism, animal studies, phenomenology, and environmental studies—Broglio reminds us of our inadequacy as humans, not our exceptionalism. Ron Broglio is professor of English, director of Desert Humanities, and associate director of the Institute for Humanities Research at Arizona State University. He is author or editor of several books, including Beasts of Burden: Biopolitics, Labor, and Animal Life and Surface Encounters: Thinking with Animals and Art. Callie Smith is a poet and a PhD candidate in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies
The product of years of embedded fieldwork within Indigenous film crews in Northwestern Australia, Dreaming Down the Track: Awakenings in Aboriginal Cinema (U Minnesota Press, 2025) delves deeply into Aboriginal cinema as a transformative community process. It follows the social lives of projects throughout their production cycles, from planning and editing to screening, broadcasting, and after-images. Across its narrative sweep, this ethnography engages the film career of Kukatja elder Mark Moora to demonstrate the impact of filmmaking on how Aboriginal futures are collectively imagined and called forth. William Lempert highlights a series of awakenings through which Moora ultimately came to view cinema as a process for catalyzing his family's return to their home country of Mangkayi. This biographical media journey paints an intimate portrait of the inspiring possibilities and sobering limitations of Indigenous envisioning within settler states. Lempert traces how Moora's life and films convey a multiplicity of Aboriginal experiences across time and space, from colonial contact to contemporary life in communities like Balgo, including the continued governmental attempts to undermine them. Amid ongoing negotiations to establish the first treaties between Indigenous nations and Australian states, Dreaming Down the Track illustrates what is at stake in how Aboriginal–State relations are represented and understood, both within communities and for the broader public. Lempert stays true to Moora's insight that film can preserve community stories for generations to come, toward the aim of enacting sovereign futures. William Lempert is Osterweis Family Associate Professor of anthropology at Bowdoin College. His writing has been published in several journals, including Cultural Anthropology and American Indian Culture and Research Journal. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). 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 product of years of embedded fieldwork within Indigenous film crews in Northwestern Australia, Dreaming Down the Track: Awakenings in Aboriginal Cinema (U Minnesota Press, 2025) delves deeply into Aboriginal cinema as a transformative community process. It follows the social lives of projects throughout their production cycles, from planning and editing to screening, broadcasting, and after-images. Across its narrative sweep, this ethnography engages the film career of Kukatja elder Mark Moora to demonstrate the impact of filmmaking on how Aboriginal futures are collectively imagined and called forth. William Lempert highlights a series of awakenings through which Moora ultimately came to view cinema as a process for catalyzing his family's return to their home country of Mangkayi. This biographical media journey paints an intimate portrait of the inspiring possibilities and sobering limitations of Indigenous envisioning within settler states. Lempert traces how Moora's life and films convey a multiplicity of Aboriginal experiences across time and space, from colonial contact to contemporary life in communities like Balgo, including the continued governmental attempts to undermine them. Amid ongoing negotiations to establish the first treaties between Indigenous nations and Australian states, Dreaming Down the Track illustrates what is at stake in how Aboriginal–State relations are represented and understood, both within communities and for the broader public. Lempert stays true to Moora's insight that film can preserve community stories for generations to come, toward the aim of enacting sovereign futures. William Lempert is Osterweis Family Associate Professor of anthropology at Bowdoin College. His writing has been published in several journals, including Cultural Anthropology and American Indian Culture and Research Journal. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies
The product of years of embedded fieldwork within Indigenous film crews in Northwestern Australia, Dreaming Down the Track: Awakenings in Aboriginal Cinema (U Minnesota Press, 2025) delves deeply into Aboriginal cinema as a transformative community process. It follows the social lives of projects throughout their production cycles, from planning and editing to screening, broadcasting, and after-images. Across its narrative sweep, this ethnography engages the film career of Kukatja elder Mark Moora to demonstrate the impact of filmmaking on how Aboriginal futures are collectively imagined and called forth. William Lempert highlights a series of awakenings through which Moora ultimately came to view cinema as a process for catalyzing his family's return to their home country of Mangkayi. This biographical media journey paints an intimate portrait of the inspiring possibilities and sobering limitations of Indigenous envisioning within settler states. Lempert traces how Moora's life and films convey a multiplicity of Aboriginal experiences across time and space, from colonial contact to contemporary life in communities like Balgo, including the continued governmental attempts to undermine them. Amid ongoing negotiations to establish the first treaties between Indigenous nations and Australian states, Dreaming Down the Track illustrates what is at stake in how Aboriginal–State relations are represented and understood, both within communities and for the broader public. Lempert stays true to Moora's insight that film can preserve community stories for generations to come, toward the aim of enacting sovereign futures. William Lempert is Osterweis Family Associate Professor of anthropology at Bowdoin College. His writing has been published in several journals, including Cultural Anthropology and American Indian Culture and Research Journal. Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. Her research examines the ways in which Afro-Brazilian media producers foment anti-racist visual politics through their image creation. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
Across the South, asylums were built with the promise of healing — but inside their walls, countless lives were marked by fear, neglect, and cruelty. In this episode of Southern Mysteries, explore the haunting history of institutions like Broughton Hospital, Cherry Hospital, Central State, and Bryce. From mysterious deaths and forced sterilizations to the tragedy of the Eller twins and the lifetime confinement of Junius Wilson, these are the real horrors that gave rise to Southern asylum ghost stories — and the suffering that still echoes through their halls. Join the Community on Patreon: Want more Southern Mysteries? You can hear the Southern Mysteries show archive of 60+ episodes along with Patron exclusive podcast, Audacious: Tales of American Crime and more when you become a patron of the show. You can immediately access exclusive content now at patreon.com/southernmysteries