Andreas E. Feldmann, "Repertoires of Terrorism: Organizational Identity and Violence in Colombia's Civil War" (Columbia UP, 2024)

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

#Science #Books #Arts #History #New Books Network

46:39

“If we march into that village and we start trying to persecute people for using poison, something that's very illegal, nobody's going to talk to us. We're not going to find out where the poison came from. We're not going to be able to shut anything down. We should take the approach that people are using poison because they're desperate, because they see no other alternative.” – Andrew Stein Andrew Stein is a wildlife ecologist who spent the past 25 years studying human carnivore conflict from African wild dogs and lions in Kenya and Botswana to leopards and hyenas in Namibia. His work has long focused on finding ways for people and predators to coexist. He is the founder of CLAWS , an organization based in Botswana that's working at the intersection of cutting-edge wildlife research and community driven conservation. Since its start in 2014 and official launch as an NGO in 2020, CLAWS has been pioneering science-based, tech-forward strategies to reduce conflict between people and carnivores. By collaborating closely with local communities, especially traditional cattle herders, CLAWS supports both species conservation and rural livelihoods—making coexistence not just possible, but sustainable.…

about a year ago 42:18

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In Repertoires of Terrorism: Organizational Identity and Violence in Colombia's Civil War (Columbia University Press, 2024) Dr. Feldmann argues that armed groups’ distinct uses—repertoires—of terrorism arise from their particular organisational identities, the central and enduring attributes that distinguish one faction from other warring parties. He investigates a range of groups that took part in the Colombian conflict over the course of its evolution from ideological to criminal warfare, demonstrating that organisational identity plays a critical role in producing and rationalising violence. Armed parties employ their unique repertoires as a means of communication to assert their relevance and territorial presence and to differentiate themselves from enemies and rivals. Repertoires of Terrorism is based on an extensive data set covering thousands of incidents, as well as interviews, archival research, and testimony. It sheds new light on both armed groups’ use of violence in Colombia’s civil war and the factors that shape terrorist activity in other conflicts.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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.

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Andreas E. Feldmann, "Repertoires of Terrorism: Organizational Identity and Violence in Colombia's Civil War" (Columbia UP, 2024)

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

published about a year ago

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428 एपिसोडस

#Science #Books #Arts #History #New Books Network

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1 year ago1:11:28

1:11:28

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Adam Kabat, "The River Imp and the Stinky Jewel and Other Tales: Monster Comics from Edo Japan" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:03:08

1 year ago1:03:08

1:03:08

Adam Kabat’s The River Imp and the Stinky Jewel and Other Tales: Monster Comics from Edo Japan (Columbia UP, 2023) is an in-depth introduction to the rich and ribald world of kibyōshi , a short-lived (1778-1807) subgenre of books combining text and illustration on the same page, much like comic books and manga today. This book presents a selection of five kibyōshi in which monsters play central roles. Each of these short books is reproduced in its entirety, accompanied by Kabat’s translations and commentary. Kabat’s selection of tales communicates the entertainment value and thematic variety of these stories, as well as their deep web of interconnections with contemporary culture and the urban economy. The book will be of interest not only to scholars of premodern history and literature, but also to a larger audience including the growing ranks of manga and anime fans.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Maggie Hennefeld, "Death by Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema" (Columbia UP, 2024) 59:52

1 year ago59:52

59:52

Can you really die from laughing too hard? Between 1870 and 1920, hundreds of women suffered such a fate—or so a slew of sensationalist obituaries would have us believe. How could laughter be fatal, and what do these reports of women’s risible deaths tell us about the politics of female joy? In Death by Laughter: Female Hysteria and Early Cinema (Columbia University Press, 2024), Dr. Maggie Hennefeld reveals the forgotten histories of “hysterical laughter,” exploring how women’s amusement has been theorised and demonised, suppressed and exploited. In nineteenth-century medicine and culture, hysteria was an ailment that afflicted unruly women on the cusp of emotional or nervous breakdown. Cinema, Hennefeld argues, made it possible for women to laugh outrageously as never before, with irreversible social and political consequences. As female enjoyment became a surefire promise of profitability, alarmist tales of women laughing themselves to death epitomised the tension between subversive pleasure and its violent repression. Dr. Hennefeld traces the social politics of women’s laughter from the heyday of nineteenth-century sentimentalism to the collective euphoria of early film spectatorship, traversing contagious dancing outbreaks, hysteria photography, madwomen’s cackling, cinematic close-ups, and screenings of slapstick movies in mental asylums. Placing little-known silent films and an archive of remarkable, often unusual texts in conversation with affect theory, comedy studies, and feminist film theory, this book makes a timely case for the power of hysterical laughter to change the world. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming 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.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
SherAli Tareen, "Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship After Empire" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:31:35

1 year ago1:31:35

1:31:35

Friendship—particularly interreligious friendship—offers both promise and peril. After the end of Muslim political sovereignty in South Asia, how did Muslim scholars grapple with the possibilities and dangers of Hindu-Muslim friendship? How did they negotiate the incongruities between foundational texts and attitudes toward non-Muslims that were informed by the premodern context of Muslim empire and the realities of British colonialism, which rendered South Asian Muslims a political minority? In Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship After Empire (Columbia University Press, 2023), SherAli Tareen , Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin & Marshall College, explores how leading South Asian Muslim thinkers imagined and contested the boundaries of Hindu-Muslim friendship from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. He argues that often what was at stake in Muslim scholarly debates on Hindu-Muslim friendship were unresolved tensions over the meaning of Islam in the modern world. Tareen’s framework also provides a timely perspective on the historical roots of present-day Hindu-Muslim relations, considering how to overcome thorny legacies and open new horizons for interreligious friendship. In our conversation we discussed Muslim scholarly translations of Hinduism, Hindu-Muslim theological polemics, intra-Muslim debates on cow sacrifice, and debates on emulating Hindu customs and habits.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Amy Paeth, "The American Poet Laureate" A History of U.S. Poetry and the State" (Columbia UP, 2023) 53:21

1 year ago53:21

53:21

The American Poet Laureate: A History of U.S. Poetry and the State (Columbia University Press, 2023) by Dr. Amy Paeth shows how the state has been the silent centre of poetic production in the United States since World War II. It is the first history of the national poetry office, the U.S. poet laureate, highlighting the careers of Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Pinsky, Tracy K. Smith, Juan Felipe Herrera, and Joy Harjo at the nation’s Capitol. It is also a history of how these state poets participated in national arts programming during the Cold War. Drawing on previously unexplored archival materials at the Library of Congress and materials at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Dr. Paeth describes the interactions of federal bodies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and the National Endowment for the Arts, with literary organisations and with private patrons, including “Prozac heiress” Ruth Lilly. The consolidation of public and private interests is crucial to the development of state verse culture, recognizable at the first National Poetry Festival in 1962, which followed Robert Frost’s “Mission to Moscow,” and which became dominant in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The American Poet Laureate contributes to a growing body of institutional and sociological approaches to U.S. literary production in the postwar era and demonstrates how poetry has played a uniquely important, and largely underacknowledged, role in the cultural front of the Cold War. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming 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.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Catherine Tan, "Spaces on the Spectrum: How Autism Movements Resist Experts and Create Knowledge" (Columbia UP, 2024) 45:41

41 weeks ago45:41

45:41

Movements that take issue with conventional understandings of autism spectrum disorder, a developmental disability, have become increasingly visible. Drawing on more than three years of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with participants, Dr. Catherine Tan investigates two autism-focused movements, shedding new light on how members contest expert authority. Examining their separate struggles to gain legitimacy and represent autistic people, she develops a new account of the importance of social movements as spaces for constructing knowledge that aims to challenge dominant frameworks. Spaces on the Spectrum: How Autism Movements Resist Experts and Create Knowledge (Columbia University Press, 2024) examines the autistic rights and alternative biomedical movements, which reimagine autism in different and conflicting ways: as a difference to be accepted or as a sickness to treat. Both, however, provide a window into how ideas that conflict with dominant beliefs develop, take hold, and persist. The autistic rights movement is composed primarily of autistic adults who contend that autism is a natural human variation, not a disorder, and advocate for social and cultural inclusion and policy changes. The alternative biomedical movement, in contrast, is dominated by parents and practitioners who believe in the disproven idea that vaccines trigger autism and seek to reverse it with scientifically unsupported treatments. Both movements position themselves in opposition to researchers, professionals, and parents outside their communities. Spaces on the Spectrum offers timely insights into the roles of shared identity and communal networks in movements that question scientific and medical authority. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Natasha L. Mikles, "Shattered Grief: How the Pandemic Transformed the Spirituality of Death in America" (Columbia UP, 2024) 56:06

41 weeks ago56:06

56:06

The COVID-19 pandemic left millions grieving their loved ones without the consolation of traditional ways of mourning. Patients were admitted to hospitals and never seen again. Social distancing often meant conventional funerals could not be held. Religious communities of all kinds were disrupted at the exact moment mourners turned to them for support. These unprecedented circumstances caused dramatic transformations of not only communal rituals but also how people make meaning after the losses of loved ones. Shattered Grief: How the Pandemic Transformed the Spirituality of Death in America (Columbia UP, 2024) is an intimate portrait of how COVID-19 changed the ways Americans approach, understand, and mourn death. Based on extensive interviews incorporating a multitude of perspectives—including funerary and medical professionals, religious leaders, grief counselors, death doulas, spirit mediums, community organizers, and those who lost loved ones—it provides a snapshot of how people renegotiated spiritual and religious traditions, worldviews, identities, and communities during the deadliest pandemic in a century. Through these diverse and powerful voices, Natasha L. Mikles tells the story of spiritual innovation, religious change, and the struggle to achieve personal and national self-understanding against the backdrop of mass casualties. Compelling and accessible, Shattered Grief is an essential book for a range of readers interested in how we make sense of death and dying. Natasha L. Mikles is an assistant professor at Texas State University. Her research interests revolve around lived interpretations of death, mourning, and the afterlife in diverse religious traditions ranging from contemporary American spirituality to nineteenth-century Tibetan Buddhism. She has written on topics like the Tibetan Gesar epics, contemporary Tibetan religion, spiritual mediums during the pandemic, and pedagogical reflections on teaching religion. She is also the editor of Journal of Gods and Monsters , and the co-editor of The Religion Matters Reader.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Jonathan Judaken, "Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism" (Columbia UP, 2024) 1:16:29

41 weeks ago1:16:29

1:16:29

Despite its persistence and viciousness, anti-Semitism remains undertheorized in comparison with other forms of racism and discrimination. How should anti-Semitism be defined? What are its underlying causes? Why do anti-Semites target Jews? In what ways has Judeophobia changed over time? What are the continuities and disconnects between mediaeval anti-Judaism and the Holocaust? How does criticism of the state of Israel relate to anti-Semitism? And how can social theory illuminate the upsurge in attacks on Jews today? Considering these questions and many more, Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism (Columbia University Press, 2024) by Dr. Jonathan Judaken is at once a philosophical reflection on key problems in the analysis of anti-Semitism and a history of its leading theories and theorists. Jonathan Judaken explores the methodological and conceptual issues that have vexed the study of Judeophobia and calls for a reconsideration of the definitions, categories, and narratives that underpin overarching explanations. He traces how a range of thinkers have wrestled with these challenges, examining the theories of Jean-Paul Sartre, the Frankfurt School, Hannah Arendt, and Jean-François Lyotard, alongside the works of sociologists Talcott Parsons and Zygmunt Bauman and historians Léon Poliakov and George Mosse. Dr. Judaken argues against claims about the uniqueness of Judeophobia, demonstrating how it is entangled with other racisms: Islamophobia, Negrophobia, and xenophobia. Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism not only urges readers to question how they think about Judeophobia but also draws them into conversation with a range of leading thinkers whose insights are sorely needed in this perilous moment. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Neena Mahadev, "Karma and Grace: Religious Difference in Millennial Sri Lanka" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:24:28

41 weeks ago1:24:28

1:24:28

Around the turn of the millennium, Pentecostal churches began to pepper majority-Buddhist Sri Lanka, setting off a sense of alarm among Buddhists who saw Christianity as a neocolonial threat to the nation. Rumors of foul play in the death of a Buddhist monk, as well as allegations of proselytizing in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami and during the final stages of civil war, spurred nationalist anxieties, moral panics, and even episodes of violence by Buddhists against Christians suspected of facilitating “unethical” conversions. Through vivid ethnography and keen observations of media events, Karma and Grace: Religious Difference in Millennial Sri Lanka (Columbia UP, 2023) illuminates disputes over religious freedom and pluralism amid the rise of charismatic Christianity in Sri Lanka. Neena Mahadev explores the dueling efforts of Buddhist nationalists and Christian evangelists to reshape Sri Lanka’s religious, economic, and political landscapes. She considers theological and political impasses between Buddhism’s vast timescales of karma and Christians’ promises of the immediacy of their God’s salvific grace. While Christian missions spread “the Good News,” subsets of Buddhists produced bad press, sting operations, and disparaging media to impede born-again churches from taking root. In gripping detail, Mahadev recounts how modernist and traditionalist Theravāda Buddhists, Pentecostal newcomers, long-established Christian denominations, local deity and spirit cults, and the innovations of mavericks intermingle in a multireligious public sphere. Even amid trenchant conflicts, Karma and Grace demonstrates that social proximity between rivals is also conducive to religious experimentation and the ambiguities of identity that allow Sri Lankans to live with difference. Neena Mahadev is an assistant professor of anthropology at Yale-NUS College and holds a courtesy appointment with the National University of Singapore.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Pierre Sokolsky, "Clock in the Sun: How We Came to Understand Our Nearest Star" (Columbia UP, 2024) 29:03

41 weeks ago29:03

29:03

On the surface of the Sun, spots appear and fade in a predictable cycle, like a great clock in the sky. In medieval Russia, China, and Korea, monks and court astronomers recorded the appearance of these dark shapes, interpreting them as omens of things to come. In Western Europe, by contrast, where a cosmology originating with Aristotle prevailed, the Sun was regarded as part of the unchanging celestial realm, and it took observations through telescopes by Galileo and others to establish the reality of solar imperfections. In the nineteenth century, amateur astronomers discovered that sunspots ebb and flow about every eleven years—spurring speculation about their influence on the weather and even the stock market. Exploring these and many other crucial developments, Pierre Sokolsky provides a history of knowledge of the Sun through the lens of sunspots and the solar cycle. He ranges widely across cultures and throughout history, from the earliest recorded observations of sunspots in Chinese annals to satellites orbiting the Sun today, and from worship of the Sun as a deity in ancient times to present-day scientific understandings of stars and their magnetic fields. Considering how various thinkers sought to solve the puzzle of sunspots, Sokolsky sheds new light on key discoveries and the people who made them, as well as their historical and cultural contexts. Fast-paced, comprehensive, and learned, Clock in the Sun: How We Came to Understand Our Nearest Star (Columbia UP, 2024) shows readers our closest star from many new angles. Garima Garg is a New Delhi based journalist and author.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Amanda McMillan Lequieu, "Who We Are Is Where We Are: Making Home in the American Rust Belt" (Columbia UP, 2024) 41:40

41 weeks ago41:40

41:40

Half a century ago, deindustrialization gutted blue-collar jobs in the American Midwest. But today, these places are not ghost towns. People still call these communities home, even as they struggle with unemployment, poverty, and other social and economic crises. Why do people remain in declining areas through difficult circumstances? What do their choices tell us about rootedness in a time of flux? Through the cases of the former steel manufacturing hub of southeast Chicago and a shuttered mining community in Iron County, Wisconsin, Amanda McMillan Lequieu traces the power and shifting meanings of the notion of home for people who live in troubled places. Building from on-the-ground observations of community life, archival research, and interviews with long-term residents, she shows how inhabitants of deindustrialized communities balance material constraints with deeply felt identities. McMillan Lequieu maps how the concept of home has been constructed and the ways it has been reshaped as these communities have changed. She considers how long-term residents navigate the tensions around belonging and making ends meet long after the departure of their community’s founding industry. In Who We Are Is Where We Are: Making Home in the American Rust Belt (Columbia UP, 2024), Amanda McMillan Lequieu links the past and the present, rural and urban, to shed new light on life in postindustrial communities. Beyond a story of Midwestern deindustrialization, this timely book provides broader insight into the capacious idea of home—how and where it is made, threatened, and renegotiated in a world fraught with change. Michael O. Johnston , Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is in the areas of social construction of experience, identity, and place. He is currently conducting research for his next project that looks at nightlife and the emotional labor that is performed by employees of bars and nightclubs. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, "An Impossible Friendship: Group Portrait, Jerusalem Before and After 1948" (Columbia UP, 2024) 53:34

42 weeks ago53:34

53:34

In Jerusalem, as World War II was coming to an end, an extraordinary circle of friends began to meet at the bar of the King David Hotel. This group of aspiring artists, writers, and intellectuals—among them Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, Sally Kassab, Walid Khalidi, and Rasha Salam, some of whom would go on to become acclaimed authors, scholars, and critics—came together across religious lines in a fleeting moment of possibility within a troubled history. What brought these Muslim, Jewish, and Christian friends together, and what became of them in the aftermath of 1948, the year of the creation of the State of Israel and the Palestinian Nakba? Sonja Mejcher-Atassi tells the story of this unlikely friendship and in so doing offers an intimate cultural and social history of Palestine in the critical postwar period. She vividly reconstructs the vanished social world of these protagonists, tracing the connections between the specificity of individual lives and the larger contexts in which they are embedded. In exploring this ecumenical friendship and its artistic, literary, and intellectual legacies, Mejcher-Atassi demonstrates how social biography can provide a picture of the past that is at once more inclusive and more personal. This group portrait, she argues, allows us to glimpse alternative possibilities that exist within and alongside the fraught history of Israel/Palestine. Bringing a remarkable era to life through archival research and nuanced interdisciplinary scholarship, An Impossible Friendship: Group Portrait, Jerusalem Before and After 1948 (Columbia UP, 2024) unearths prospects for historical reconciliation, solidarity, and justice. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi is a professor of Arabic and comparative literature at the American University of Beirut. She is the author of Reading Across Modern Arabic Literature and Art (2012), as well as coeditor of The Theatre of Sa’dallah Wannous: A Critical Study of the Syrian Playwright and Public Intellectual (2021), Rafa Nasiri: Artist Books (2016), and Archives, Museums, and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World (2012).…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Trish Kahle on the Labor History of Energy Systems 1:01:21

43 weeks ago1:01:21

1:01:21

Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Trish Kahle, Assistant Professor of History at Georgetown University-Qatar, about Kahle's new project, "Power Up: A Social History of American Electricity," which focuses especially on the labor history of both constructing and maintaining the electricity grid. They also talk about Kahle's forthcoming book, Energy Citizenship: Coal and Democracy in the American Century (Columbia UP, 2024), which "traces how modern U.S. social citizenship has been shaped by coal miners and the fuel they extracted." The pair also discuss the emerging field of the "energy humanities" and what it means to take a labor-centered approach to energy history.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Allison Elias, "The Rise of Corporate Feminism: Women in the American Office, 1960-1990" (Columbia UP, 2022) 49:26

43 weeks ago49:26

49:26

From the 1960s through the 1990s, the most common job for women in the United States was clerical work. Even as college-educated women obtained greater opportunities for career advancement, occupational segregation by gender remained entrenched. How did feminism in corporate America come to represent the individual success of the executive woman and not the collective success of the secretary? Allison Elias argues that feminist goals of advancing equal opportunity and promoting meritocracy unintentionally undercut the status and prospects of so-called "pink-collar" workers. In the 1960s, ideas about sex equality spurred some clerical workers to organize, demanding "raises and respect," while others pushed for professionalization through credentialing. This cross-class alliance pushed a feminist agenda that included unionizing some clerical workers and advancing others who had college degrees into management. But these efforts diverged in the 1980s, when corporations adopted measures to move qualified women into their upper ranks. By the 1990s, corporate support for professional women resulted in an individualistic feminism that focused on the needs of those at the top. Meanwhile, as many white, college-educated women advanced up the corporate ladder, clerical work became a job for lower-socioeconomic-status women of all races. The Rise of Corporate Feminism: Women in the American Office, 1960-1990 (Columbia UP, 2022) considers changes in the workplace surrounding affirmative action, human resource management, automation, and unionization by groups such as 9to5. At the intersection of history, gender, and management studies, this book spotlights the secretaries, clerks, receptionists, typists, and bookkeepers whose career trajectories remained remarkably similar despite sweeping social and legal change. Jane Scimeca is Professor of History at Brookdale Community College. @JaneScimeca1…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Adrian Johnston, "Infinite Greed: The Inhuman Selfishness of Capital" (Columbia UP, 2024) 1:56:17

43 weeks ago1:56:17

1:56:17

Marxism and psychoanalysis have a rich and complicated relationship to one another, with countless figures and books written on the possible intersection of the two. Our guest today, Adrian Johnston, returns to NBN to discuss his own latest entry into the genre, Infinite Greed: The Inhuman Selfishness of Capital (Columbia UP, 2024). While the book does retread some already-covered territory, Johnston’s book stands out as a unique entry in a crowded field by emphasizing the theoretical overlap of psychoanalytic concepts with the economic core of Marx’s thinking. Libidinal economics are turned into, well, economics and vice-versa in this detailed and rigorously written study that deserves to become one of the canonical texts in the Freudo-Marxist tradition. Adrian Johnston is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of New Mexico and a faculty member of the Emory Psychoanalytic Institute. He is the author of numerous books, including three previously discussed on this podcast; A New German Idealism: Hegel, Zizek and Dialectical Materialism , and Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism volumes one and two . He is also the coeditor, with Slavoj Zizek and Todd McGowan of the book series Diaeresis .…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Alex V. Barnard, "Conservatorship: Inside California's System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness" (Columbia UP, 2023) 59:36

43 weeks ago59:36

59:36

Is involuntary psychiatric treatment the solution to the intertwined crises of untreated mental illness, homelessness, and addiction? In recent years, politicians and advocates have sought to expand the use of conservatorships, a legal tool used to force someone deemed “gravely disabled,” or unable to meet their needs for food, clothing, or shelter as a result of mental illness, to take medication and be placed in a locked facility. At the same time, civil liberties and disability rights groups have seized on cases like that of Britney Spears to argue that conservatorships are inherently abusive. Conservatorship: Inside California's System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness (Columbia UP, 2023) is an incisive and compelling portrait of the functioning—and failings—of California’s conservatorship system. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with professionals, policy makers, families, and conservatees, Alex V. Barnard takes readers to the streets where police encounter homeless people in crisis, the locked wards where people receiving treatment are confined, and the courtrooms where judges decide on conservatorship petitions. As he shows, California’s state government has abdicated authority over this system, leaving the question of who receives compassionate care and who faces coercion dependent on the financial incentives of for-profit facilities, the constraints of underresourced clinicians, and the desperate struggles of families to obtain treatment for their loved ones. This book offers a timely warning: reforms to expand conservatorship will lead to more coercion but little transformative care until government assumes accountability for ensuring the health and dignity of its most vulnerable citizens. Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is in the areas of social construction of experience, identity, and place. He is currently conducting research for his next project that looks at nightlife and the emotional labor that is performed by employees of bars and nightclubs. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website , Google Scholar , Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Lisa M. P. Munoz, "Women in Science Now: Stories and Strategies for Achieving Equity" (Columbia UP, 2023) 36:44

44 weeks ago36:44

36:44

Women working in the sciences face obstacles at virtually every step along their career paths. From subtle slights to blatant biases, deep systemic problems block women from advancing or push them out of science and technology entirely. Women in Science Now: Stories and Strategies for Achieving Equity (Columbia UP, 2023) examines solutions to this persistent gender gap, offering new perspectives on how to make science more equitable and inclusive for all. This book shares stories and insights of women from a range of backgrounds working in various disciplines, illustrating the journeys that brought them to the sciences, the challenges they faced along the way, and the important contributions they have made to their fields. Lisa M. P. Munoz combines these narratives with a wealth of data to illuminate the size and scope of the challenges women scientists face, while highlighting research-based solutions to help overcome these obstacles. She presents groundbreaking studies in social psychology and organizational behavior that are informing novel approaches for combating historic and ongoing inequities. Through a combined focus on personal experiences and social-science research, this timely book provides both a path toward greater gender equity and an inspiring vision of science and scientists.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Tessa Hill and Eric Simons, "At Every Depth: Our Growing Knowledge of the Changing Oceans" (Columbia UP, 2024) 53:01

44 weeks ago53:01

53:01

At Every Depth: Our Growing Knowledge of the Changing Oceans (Columbia UP, 2024) takes readers on a journey from California tidepools to Antarctic poles, showcasing myriad efforts to research and protect marine environments. Through insightful interviews, oceanographer Tessa Hill and science journalist Eric Simons offer a compelling exploration of humanity's relationship with the ocean. They shed light on research methodologies, the ocean's importance, and the vital role of indigenous peoples in ocean stewardship. Tune in to their interview with the New Books Network, where they share stories from how the research came together, how COVID affected their investigation, and what people can do today to build closer relationships with the ocean.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Timothy Morton, "Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology" (Columbia UP, 2024) 1:07:01

44 weeks ago1:07:01

1:07:01

Hell on earth is real. The toxic fusion of big oil, Evangelical Christianity, and white supremacy has ignited a worldwide inferno, more phantasmagoric than anything William Blake could dream up and more cataclysmic than we can fathom. Escaping global warming hell, this revelatory book shows, requires a radical, mystical marriage of Christianity and biology that awakens a future beyond white male savagery. In Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology (Columbia University Press, 2024) Dr. Timothy Morton argues that there is an unexpected yet profound relationship between religion and ecology that can guide a planet-scale response to the climate crisis. Spiritual and mystical feelings have a deep resonance with ecological thinking, and together they provide the resources environmentalism desperately needs in this time of climate emergency. Morton finds solutions in a radical revaluation of Christianity, furnishing ecological politics with a language of mercy and forgiveness that draws from Christian traditions without bringing along their baggage. They call for a global environmental movement that fuses ecology and mysticism and puts race and gender front and centre. This nonviolent resistance can stage an all-out assault on the ultimate Satanic mill: the concept of master and slave, manifesting today in white supremacy, patriarchy, and environmental destruction. Passionate, erudite, and playful, Hell takes readers on a full-colour journey into the contemporary underworld—and offers a surprising vision of salvation. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new 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.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Thomas Larkin, "The China Firm: American Elites and the Making of British Colonial Society" (Columbia UP, 2024) 32:10

45 weeks ago32:10

32:10

What roles did Americans play in the expanding global empires of the nineteenth century? In The China Firm: American Elites and the Making of British Colonial Society (Columbia University Press, 2024), Thomas M. Larkin examines the Hong Kong–based Augustine Heard & Company, the most prominent American trading firm in treaty-port China, to explore the ways American elites at once made and were made by British colonial society. Following the Heard brothers throughout their firm’s rise and decline, The China Firm reveals how nineteenth-century China’s American elite adapted to colonial culture, helped entrench social and racial hierarchies, and exploited the British imperial project for their own profit as they became increasingly invested in its political affairs and commercial networks. Through the central narrative of Augustine Heard & Co., Larkin disentangles the ties that bound the United States to China and the British Empire in the nineteenth century. Drawing on a vast range of archival material from Hong Kong, China, Boston, and London, he weaves the local and the global together to trace how Americans gained acceptance into and contributed to the making of colonial societies and world-spanning empires. Uncovering the transimperial lives of these American traders and the complex ways extraimperial communities interacted with British colonialism, The China Firm makes a vital contribution to global histories of nineteenth-century Asia and provides an alternative narrative of British empire. Thomas Larkin in Assistant Professor of History at the University of Prince Edward Island. Twitter . Website . Brian Hamilton is chair of the Department of History and Social Science at Deerfield Academy. Twitter . Website .…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Terry Williams, "Life Underground: Encounters with People Below the Streets of New York" (Columbia UP, 2024) 25:24

1 year ago25:24

25:24

Aboveground, Manhattan’s Riverside Park provides open space for the densely populated Upper West Side. Beneath its surface run railroad tunnels, disused for decades, where over the years unhoused people have taken shelter. The sociologist Terry Williams ventured into the tunnel residents’ world, seeking to understand life on the margins and out of sight. He visited the tunnels between West Seventy-Second and West Ninety-Sixth Streets hundreds of times from 1991 to 1996, when authorities cleared them out to make way for Amtrak passenger service, and again between 2000 and 2020. Life Underground: Encounters with People Below the Streets of New York (Columbia UP, 2024) explores this society below the surface and the varieties of experience among unhoused people. Bringing together anecdotal material, field observations, photographs, transcribed conversations with residents, and excerpts from personal journals, Williams provides a vivid ethnographic portrait of individual people, day-to-day activities, and the social world of the underground and their engagement with the world above, which they call “topside.” He shows how marginalized people strive to make a place for themselves amid neglect and isolation as they struggle for dignity. Featuring Williams’s distinctive ethnographic eye and deep empathy for those on the margins, Life Underground shines a unique light on a vanished subterranean community.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Sandra Fahy, "Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record" (Columbia UP, 2019) 51:33

1 year ago51:33

51:33

“The things that are happening to North Korea are happening to all of us…they are part of the human community. To say that this is just a problem for North Korea is to say that North Koreans are not part of the human community.” In her new book, Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record (Columbia University Press, 2019), Sandra Fahy gives a thorough and compelling analysis of testimonies and reports on North Korea. Fahy explores the United Nation’s report as well as North Korea’s response to the report. The book also tackles issues of famine and hunger, information control, movement within the country and outside it, in addition to other pertinent issues. The book is full of detailed reporting on the issues but is still written in an accessible way in order to help readers understand more about North Korea and its people. Sarah E. Patterson is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Michigan.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Christopher J. Devine, "I’m Here to Ask for Your Vote: How Presidential Campaign Visits Influence Voters" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:04:39

1 year ago1:04:39

1:04:39

During presidential campaigns, candidates crisscross the country nonstop—visiting swing states, their home turf, and enemy territory. But do all those campaign visits make a difference when Election Day comes? If so, how and under what conditions? Do they mobilise the partisan faithful or persuade undecided voters? What do campaigns try to achieve through campaign visits—and when do they succeed? I’m Here to Ask for Your Vote: How Presidential Campaign Visits Influence Voters (Columbia University Press, 2023) by Dr. Christopher J. Devine is a comprehensive and compelling examination of the strategy and effectiveness of presidential campaign visits. Dr. Devine uses an original database of presidential and vice-presidential campaign visits from 2008 through 2020 to estimate the effects of visits on vote choice and turnout, both among individual voters and within counties. He finds that campaign visits do not usually influence voting behaviour, but when they do, most often it is by persuading undecided voters—as was the case for John McCain in 2008 and even Donald Trump in 2020. Challenging the recent emphasis on candidates playing to their base, this book suggests that persuasion is still a viable campaign strategy, in which candidate visits may play a major role. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming 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.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Imani D. Owens, "Turn the World Upside Down: Empire and Unruly Forms of Black Folk Culture in the U.S. and Caribbean" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:05:20

1 year ago1:05:20

1:05:20

In the first half of the twentieth century, Black hemispheric culture grappled with the legacies of colonialism, U.S. empire, and Jim Crow. As writers and performers sought to convey the terror and the beauty of Black life under oppressive conditions, they increasingly turned to the labor, movement, speech, sound, and ritual of everyday “folk.” Many critics have perceived these representations of folk culture as efforts to reclaim an authentic past. Imani D. Owens recasts Black creators’ relationship to folk culture, emphasizing their formal and stylistic innovations and experiments in self-invention that reach beyond the local to the world. Turn the World Upside Down: Empire and Unruly Forms of Black Folk Culture in the U.S. and Caribbean (Columbia UP, 2023) explores how Black writers and performers reimagined folk forms through the lens of the unruly―that which cannot be easily governed, disciplined, or managed. Drawing on a transnational and multilingual archive―from Harlem to Havana, from the Panama Canal Zone to Port-au-Prince―Owens considers the short stories of Eric Walrond and Jean Toomer; the ethnographies of Zora Neale Hurston and Jean Price-Mars; the recited poetry of Langston Hughes, Nicolás Guillén, and Eusebia Cosme; and the essays, dance work, and radio plays of Sylvia Wynter. Owens shows how these figures depict folk culture―and Blackness itself―as a site of disruption, ambiguity, and flux. Their works reveal how Black people contribute to the stirrings of modernity while being excluded from its promises. Ultimately, these works do not seek to render folk culture more knowable or worthy of assimilation, but instead provide new forms of radical world-making. Omari Averette-Phillips is a doctoral student in the Department of History at UC Davis. He can be reached at omariaverette@gmail.com .…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Simon Partner, "Koume's World: The Life and Work of a Samurai Woman Before and After the Meiji Restoration" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:02:41

1 year ago1:02:41

1:02:41

In 1864, on a midsummer’s day, Kawai Koume, a 60-year old matriarch of a samurai family in Wakayama, makes a note in her diary, which she had dutifully written in for over three decades. There are reports of armed clashes in Kyoto. It’s said that the emperor has ordered the expulsion of the foreigners, and it’s also said that a large band of vagabond soldiers has gathered in Senju in Edo. It’s said that in Edo people are wearing their [winter] kimono linings, and in Nikko it has been snowing. I don’t know if it’s true. But really, every day we hear nothing but disturbing rumors. The Meiji Restoration, which ousts the shogun and restores the emperor’s power, happens four years later. Koume’s diary is the central document in Simon Partner’s latest book Koume’s World: The Life and Work of a Samurai Woman Before and After the Meiji Restoration (Columbia University Press, 2023) In this interview, Simon and I talk about Kawai Koume, her diary, and everything she witnessed in the decades covered by her journal. Simon Partner is professor of history at Duke University. He is the author of three previous books that chronicle modern Japanese history through the lives of ordinary people such as farmers, shopkeepers, and housewives, including most recently The Merchant’s Tale: Yokohama and the Transformation of Japan (Columbia University Press: 2018). You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books , including its review of Koume’s World . Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia . Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon .…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Todd McGowan, "Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution" (Columbia UP, 2019) 52:21

1 year ago52:21

52:21

An Interview with Todd McGowan about his recent Emancipation After Hegel: Achieving a Contradictory Revolution (Columbia University Press, 2019). The book advocates for the relevance of Hegel’s dialectical method to questions of contemporary theory and politics. It seeks to disabuse readers of common misapprehensions concerning Hegel’s philosophy, such as the familiar thesis-antithesis-synthesis schema to which the dialectic has so often been reduced, and to show that the concept of contradiction understood in Hegelian fashion is intrinsically subversive of authority. By championing contradiction over ‘difference’ it defies the rhetoric of much leftist theory as it has been formulated in the wake of so-called ‘post-structuralism’. Emancipation After Hegel also combines sophisticated discussion of matters like the limits of formal logic and the history of German Idealism with playful allusions to Star Trek characters and classic films like Casablanca and Bridge on the River Kwai. Bill Schaffer is a semi-retired academic and writer. He received his PhD from the University of Sydney and held positions teaching Film Studies, Philosophy, and Literature at campuses in Australia and the UK. He has published widely in Film and Animation Studies. He is currently a scholar of No Fixed Institution.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Cheow Thia Chan, "Malaysian Crossings: Place and Language in the Worlding of Modern Chinese Literature" (Columbia UP, 2022) 1:07:06

1 year ago1:07:06

1:07:06

Malaysian Chinese (Mahua) literature is marginalized on several fronts. In the international literary space, which privileges the West, Malaysia is considered remote. The institutions of modern Chinese literature favor mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Within Malaysia, only texts in Malay, the national language, are considered national literature by the state. However, Mahua authors have produced creative and thought-provoking works that have won growing critical recognition, showing Malaysia to be a laboratory for imaginative Chinese writing. Highlighting Mahua literature’s distinctive mode of evolution, Cheow Thia Chan demonstrates that authors’ grasp of their marginality in the world-Chinese literary space has been the impetus for—rather than a barrier to—aesthetic inventiveness. He foregrounds the historical links between Malaysia and other Chinese-speaking regions, tracing how Mahua writers engage in the “worlding” of modern Chinese literature by navigating interconnected literary spaces. Focusing on writers including Lin Cantian, Han Suyin, Wang Anyi, and Li Yongping, whose works craft signature literary languages, Chan examines narrative representations of multilingual social realities and authorial reflections on colonial Malaya or independent Malaysia as valid literary terrain. Delineating the inter-Asian “crossings” of Mahua literary production—physical journeys, interactions among social groups, and mindset shifts—from the 1930s to the 2000s, he contends that new perspectives from the periphery are essential to understanding the globalization of modern Chinese literature. By emphasizing the inner diversities and connected histories in the margins, Malaysian Crossings: Place and Language in the Worlding of Modern Chinese Literature (Columbia UP, 2022) offers a powerful argument for remapping global Chinese literature and world literature. Cheow Thia Chan is assistant professor of Chinese studies at the National University of Singapore. His research interests include modern Chinese literature, Singapore and Malaysian Chinese Literature, Southeast Asian Chinese Studies, Diaspora Studies, and Urban Studies. Li-Ping Chen is a teaching fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
John Horgan, "Terrorist Minds: The Psychology of Violent Extremism from Al-Qaeda to the Far Right" ( Columbia UP, 2023) 34:42

1 year ago34:42

34:42

What makes a person want to become a terrorist? Who becomes involved in terrorism, and why? In what ways does participating in violent extremism change someone? And how can people become deradicalized? John Horgan―one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of terrorism―takes readers on a globe-spanning journey into the terrorist mindset. Drawing on groundbreaking personal interviews as well as decades of research from psychologists and others, he traces the pathways that lead people into violent extremism and explores what happens to them as their involvement deepens. Horgan provides an up-to-date, evidence-based understanding of the patterns, motives, and mentalities of violent extremists from the Islamic State and al-Shabaab to white supremacists and incels. He argues that there is not a straightforward psychological profile of a terrorist, in part because of the great variety of today’s extremists, who are able to attract a more diverse pool of recruits than ever before. But even though there is no one-size-fits-all profile, psychological study can provide crucial insight into why and how people become terrorists. Accessible and nuanced, Terrorist Minds: The Psychology of Violent Extremism from Al-Qaeda to the Far Right (Columbia UP, 2023) is an essential book for readers interested in what psychology can explain about extremist behavior.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Science Is a Creative Human Enterprise: A Discussion with Natalie Aviles 59:19

1 year ago59:19

59:19

Listen to this interview of Natalie Aviles , Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Virginia. We talk about how organizations shape people, and how people shape science. Natalie Aviles : "I think, in general, the more self-conscious that scientists can be about what motivates them, about what makes them happy, about what drives them — the more, then, they can try to imagine a future that satisfies not only their intellectual curiosity but helps them navigate, too, the very sort of prosaic conditions that they find themselves in on a day-to-day basis." Works referred to in the interview: Natalie Aviles. An Ungovernable Foe: Science and Policy Innovation in the U.S. National Cancer Institute (Columbia University Press 2023) Natalie Aviles. "Environing innovation: Toward an ecological pragmatism of scientific practice." ( Sociological Perspectives 2023) Robin Scheffler and Natalie Aviles. "State planning, cancer vaccine infrastructure, and the origins of the oncogene theory." ( Social Studies of Science 2022) Natalie Aviles. "Scientific innovation as environed social learning." (In: Inquiry, Agency, and Democracy . Edited by Gross, Reed, and Winship. Columbia University Press 2022) Natalie Aviles. "Situated practice and the emergence of ethical research." ( Science, Technology, & Human Values 2018)…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Eviane Leidig, "The Women of the Far Right: Social Media Influencers and Online Radicalization" (Columbia UP, 2023) 40:39

1 year ago40:39

40:39

On mainstream social media platforms, far-right women make extremism relatable. They share Instagram stories about organic foods that help pregnant women propagate the “pure” white race and post behind-the-scenes selfies at antivaccination rallies. These social media personalities model a feminine lifestyle, at once promoting their personal brands and radicalizing their followers. Amid discussions of issues like dating, marriage, and family life, they call on women to become housewives to counteract the corrosive effects of feminism and champion the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which motivated massacres in Christchurch, El Paso, and Buffalo. Eviane Leidig offers an in-depth look into the world of far-right women influencers, exploring the digital lives they cultivate as they seek new recruits for white nationalism. Going beyond stereotypes of the typical male white supremacist, she uncovers how young, attractive women are playing key roles as propagandists, organizers, fundraisers, and entrepreneurs. Leidig argues that far-right women are marketing themselves as authentic and accessible in order to reach new followers and spread a hateful ideology. This insidious—and highly gendered—strategy takes advantage of the structure of social media platforms, where far-right women influencers’ content is shared with and promoted to mainstream audiences. Providing much-needed expertise on gender and the far right, this timely and accessible book also details online and offline approaches to countering extremism. Rameen Mohammed is a community organizer based in Texas, a fellow for Muslim Counterpublics Lab and a soon-to-be law student.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
William R. Jankowiak, "Illicit Monogamy: Inside a Fundamentalist Mormon Community" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:09:07

1 year ago1:09:07

1:09:07

Angel Park is a Mormon fundamentalist polygamous community where plural marriages between one man and multiple women are common. Based on many years of in-depth ethnographic research, in Illicit Monogamy: Inside a Fundamentalist Mormon Community (Columbia UP, 2023), William Jankowiak considers the plural family from the points of view of husbands, wives, and children, giving a balanced account of its complications and conflicts. Through an extensive case study, the book not only gives the readers a real feeling for the society, but also invites us to rethink something essential about being human. William R. Jankowiak is professor of anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the author of Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City: An Anthropological Account (1993) as well as the editor of Romantic Passion: A Universal Experience? (1995) and Intimacies: Love and Sex Across Cultures (2008), among other books. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here .…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Dana R. Fisher, "Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action" (Columbia UP, 2024) 30:43

1 year ago30:43

30:43

We've known for decades that climate change is an existential crisis. For just as long, we've seen the complete failure of our institutions to rise to the challenge. Governments have struggled to meet even modest goals. Fossil fuel interests maintain a stranglehold on political and economic power. Even though we have seen growing concern from everyday people, civil society has succeeded only in pressuring decision makers to adopt watered-down policies. All the while, the climate crisis worsens. Is there any hope of achieving the systemic change we need? In Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action (Columbia UP, 2024), Dana R. Fisher argues that there is a realistic path forward for climate action—but only through mass mobilization that responds to the growing severity and frequency of disastrous events. She assesses the current state of affairs and shows why public policy and private-sector efforts have been ineffective. Spurred by this lack of progress, climate activism has become increasingly confrontational. Fisher examines the radical flank of the climate movement: its emergence and growth, its use of direct action, and how it might evolve as the climate crisis worsens. She considers when and how activism is most successful, identifying the importance of creating community, capitalizing on shocking moments, and cultivating resilience. Clear-eyed yet optimistic, Saving Ourselves offers timely insights on how social movements can take power back from deeply entrenched interests and open windows of opportunity for transformative climate action. Dana R. Fisher is the director of the Center for Environment, Community, and Equity and a professor in the School of International Service at American University. Her books include Activism Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns Is Strangling Progressive Politics in America (2006) and American Resistance: From the Women’s March to the Blue Wave (Columbia, 2019). Patricia Houser, PhD, AICP, is a researcher and writer on environmental issues. After several decades as a professor of geography and urban planning, she has turned to public education and outreach.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Till Hilmar, "Deserved: Economic Memories After the Fall of the Iron Curtain" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:19:03

1 year ago1:19:03

1:19:03

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, people across the former socialist world saw their lives transformed. In just a few years, labor markets were completely disrupted, and the meanings attached to work were drastically altered. How did people who found themselves living under state socialism one day and capitalist democracy the next adjust to the changing social order and its new system of values? Till Hilmar examines memories of the postsocialist transition in East Germany and the Czech Republic to offer new insights into the power of narratives about economic change. Despite the structural nature of economic shifts, people often interpret life outcomes in individual terms. Many are deeply attached to the belief that success and failure must be deserved. Emphasizing individual effort, responsibility, and character, they pass moral judgments based on a person’s fortunes in the job market. Hilmar argues that such frameworks represent ways of making sense of the profound economic and social dislocations after 1989. People craft narratives of deservingness about themselves and others to solve the problem of belonging in a new social order. Drawing on in-depth interviews with engineers and care workers as well as historical and comparative analysis of the breakdown of communism in Eastern Europe, Deserved: Economic Memories After the Fall of the Iron Curtain (Columbia UP, 2023) sheds new light on the moral imagination of capitalism and the experience of economic change. This book also offers crucial perspective on present-day politics, showing how notions of deservingness and moral worth have propelled right-wing populism. Jill Massino is a scholar of modern Eastern Europe with a focus on Romania, gender, and everyday life.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Thom van Dooren, "The Wake of Crows: Living and Dying in Shared Worlds" (Columbia UP, 2019) 1:10:15

1 year ago1:10:15

1:10:15

Crows can be found almost everywhere that people are, from tropical islands to deserts and arctic forests, from densely populated cities to suburbs and farms. Across these diverse landscapes, many species of crow are doing well: their intelligent and adaptive ways of life have allowed them to thrive amid human-driven transformations. Indeed, crows are frequently disliked for their success, seen as pests, threats, and scavengers on the detritus of human life. But among the vast variety of crows, there are also critically endangered species that are barely hanging on to existence, some of them the subjects of passionate conservation efforts. The Wake of Crows: Living and Dying in Shared Worlds (Columbia UP, 2019) is an exploration of the entangled lives of humans and crows. Focusing on five key sites, Thom van Dooren asks how we might live well with crows in a changing world. He explores contemporary possibilities for shared life emerging in the context of ongoing processes of globalization, colonization, urbanization, and climate change. Moving among these diverse contexts, this book tells stories of extermination and extinction alongside fragile efforts to better understand and make room for other species. Grounded in the careful work of paying attention to particular crows and their people, The Wake of Crows is an effort to imagine and put into practice a multispecies ethics. In so doing, van Dooren explores some of the possibilities that still exist for living and dying well on this damaged planet. Thom van Dooren is associate professor at the University of Sydney. He is the author of Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction (Columbia, 2014) and coeditor of E xtinction Studies: Stories of Time, Death, and Generations (Columbia, 2017). Mark Molloy is the reviews editor at MAKE: A Literary Magazine.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Jie Li, "Cinematic Guerrillas: Propaganda, Projectionists, and Audiences in Socialist China" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:07:43

1 year ago1:07:43

1:07:43

Welcome to the latest episode of New Books in Chinese Studies! I am your host, Julia Keblinska, and today I will be talking today to Jie Li, about her new book, Cinematic Guerrillas: Propaganda, Projectionists, and Audiences in Socialist China (Columbia UP, 2023). The book describes the Chinese media revolution, namely the enormous media project undertaken by the communist state to “solder” a dispersed and heterogenous populace into the revolutionary masses. Li shows how in the face of postwar material constraints and technological shortages, cultural workers (and audiences) became human components of audiovisual media networks that connected and built the new nation. Through a careful reading of archival sources and oral interviews, Li excavates two historically grounded terms, the guerrilla and the spirit medium, to develop a theoretical framework that explains how cinema and propaganda functioned in the socialist state. Her chapters explore the top-down visions of the cinematic image economy (the directives laid down by Mao and Jiang Qing), the grassroots labor of mobile projectionists, and the memories of film workers and audiences who, respectively, struggled to contain and enjoyed the polysemy inherent in socialist film experience. I’m very eager to hear Jie Li tell us more about this fascinating text! NOTE: I apologize for sound issues in the recording and hope you can enjoy our conversation despite them! Julia Keblinska is a postdoc at the East Asian Studies Center at the Ohio State University specializing in Chinese media history and comparative socialisms.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Thomas Kelly, "The Inscription of Things: Writing and Materiality in Early Modern China" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:36:15

1 year ago1:36:15

1:36:15

Why would an inkstone have a poem inscribed on it? Early modern Chinese writers did not limit themselves to working with brushes and ink, and their texts were not confined to woodblock-printed books or the boundaries of the paper page. Poets carved lines of verse onto cups, ladles, animal horns, seashells, walking sticks, boxes, fans, daggers, teapots, and musical instruments. Calligraphers left messages on the implements ordinarily used for writing on paper. These inscriptions—terse compositions in verse or epigrammatic prose—relate in complex ways to the objects on which they are written. Thomas Kelly develops a new account of the relationship between Chinese literature and material culture by examining inscribed objects from the late Ming and early to mid-Qing dynasties. He considers how the literary qualities of inscriptions interact with the visual and physical properties of the things that bear them. Kelly argues that inscribing an object became a means for authors to grapple with the materiality and technologies of writing. Facing profound social upheavals, from volatility in the marketplace to the violence of dynastic transition, writers turned to inscriptions to reflect on their investments in and dependence on the permanence of the written word. Shedding new light on cultures of writing in early modern China, The Inscription of Things: Writing and Materiality in Early Modern China (Columbia UP, 2023) broadens understandings of the links between the literary and the material. Huijun Mai is an Assistant Professor in Medieval Chinese Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Skylar Bayer and Gabriela Serrato Marks, "Uncharted: How Scientists Navigate Their Own Health, Research, and Experiences of Bias" (Columbia UP, 2023) 37:07

1 year ago37:07

37:07

People with disabilities are underrepresented in STEM fields, and all too often, they face isolation and ableism in academia. Uncharted: How Scientists Navigate Their Own Health, Research, and Experiences of Bias (Columbia UP, 2023) is a collection of powerful first-person stories by current and former scientists with disabilities or chronic conditions who have faced changes in their careers, including both successes and challenges, because of their health. It gives voice to common experiences that are frequently overlooked or left unspoken. These deeply personal accounts describe not only health challenges but also the joys, sorrows, humor, and wonder of science and scientists. With a breadth of perspectives on being disabled or chronically ill, these stories highlight the intersectionality of minoritized identities with the disability community. Uncharted features essays by contributors who are d/Deaf, blind, neurodivergent, wheelchair users, have experienced traumatic brain injuries, have blood sugar disorders, have rare medical diagnoses, or have received psychiatric diagnoses, among many others. In many cases, the scientific field is not fully accessible to them, and they frankly describe struggling as well as thriving alongside their conditions. Skylar Bayer is a marine ecologist and science communicator. Currently a marine habitat resource specialist in the NOAA Fisheries Alaska Regional Office, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Maine’s School of Marine Sciences for research on the sex lives of scallops and is a producer for the Story Collider. Gabi Serrato Marks is a geochemist turned writer. She received her PhD in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography and is now a partner at the scientist-focused PR firm Stellate Communications. Her work has been published in Scientific American and Audubon and on the PBS Eons YouTube Channel…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Lawrence Sherman and Dennis Plies, "Every Brain Needs Music: The Neuroscience of Making and Listening to Music" (Columbia UP, 2023) 42:14

1 year ago42:14

42:14

Whenever a person engages with music--when a piano student practices a scale, a jazz saxophonist riffs on a melody, a teenager sobs to a sad song, or a wedding guest gets down on the dance floor--countless neurons are firing. Playing an instrument requires all of the resources of the nervous system, including cognitive, sensory, and motor functions. Composition and improvisation are remarkable demonstrations of the brain's capacity for creativity. Something as seemingly simple as listening to a tune involves mental faculties most of us don't even realize we have. Larry S. Sherman, a neuroscientist and lifelong musician, and Dennis Plies, a professional musician and teacher, collaborate to show how our brains and music work in harmony. They consider music in all the ways we encounter it--teaching, learning, practicing, listening, composing, improvising, and performing--in terms of neuroscience as well as music pedagogy, showing how the brain functions and even changes in the process. Every Brain Needs Music: The Neuroscience of Making and Listening to Music (Columbia UP, 2023) draws on leading behavioral, cellular, and molecular neuroscience research as well as surveys of more than a hundred musical people. It provides new perspectives on learning to play, teaching, how to practice and perform, the ways we react to music, and why the brain benefits from musical experiences. Written for both musical and nonmusical people, including newcomers to brain science, Every Brain Needs Music is a lively and easy-to-read exploration of the neuroscience of music and its significance in our lives. Melek Firat Altay is a neuroscientist, biologist and musician. Her research focuses on deciphering the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Jean Yen-chun Lin, "A Spark in the Smokestacks: Environmental Organizing in Beijing Middle-Class Communities" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:02:51

1 year ago1:02:51

1:02:51

Environmental organising in Beijing emerged in an unlikely place in the 2000s: new gated residential communities. After rapid population growth and housing construction led to a ballooning trash problem and overflowing landfills, many first-time homeowners found their new neighbourhoods facing an unappetizing prospect—waste incinerator projects slated for their backyards. Delving into the online and offline conversations of communities affected by the proposed incinerators, A Spark in the Smokestacks: Environmental Organizing in Beijing Middle-Class Communities (Columbia University Press, 2023) by Dr. Jean Yen-chun Lin demonstrates how a rising middle class acquires the capacity for organising in an authoritarian context. Dr. Lin examines how urban residents create civic life through everyday associational activities—learning to defend property rights, fostering participation, and mobilising to address housing-related grievances. She shows that homeowners cultivated petitioning skills, informational networks, and community leadership, which they would later deploy against incinerator projects. To interact with government agencies, they developed citizen science–based tactics, a middle-class alternative to disruptive protests. Homeowners drew on their professional connections, expertise, and fundraising capabilities to produce reports that boosted their legitimacy in city-level dialogue. Although only one of the three incinerator projects Dr. Lin follows was ultimately cancelled, some communities established durable organisations that went on to tackle other environmental problems. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and ethnography, A Spark in the Smokestacks casts urban Chinese communities as “schools of democracy,” in which residents learn civic skills and build capacity for collective organising. Through compelling case studies of local activism, this book sheds new light on the formation of civil society and social movements more broadly. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming 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.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Robert B. Rakove, "Days of Opportunity: The United States and Afghanistan Before the Soviet Invasion" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:21:05

1 year ago1:21:05

1:21:05

Long before the 1979 Soviet invasion, the United States was closely concerned with Afghanistan. For much of the twentieth century, American diplomats, policy makers, businesspeople, and experts took part in the Afghan struggle to modernize, delivered vital aid, and involved themselves in Kabul’s conflicts with its neighbors. For their own part, many Afghans embraced the potential benefits of political and commercial ties with the United States. Yet these relationships ultimately helped make the country a Cold War battleground. Robert B. Rakove sheds new light on the little-known and often surprising history of U.S. engagement in Afghanistan from the 1920s to the Soviet invasion, tracing its evolution and exploring its lasting consequences. Days of Opportunity: The United States and Afghanistan Before the Soviet Invasion (Columbia UP, 2023) chronicles the battle for influence in Kabul, as Americans contended with vigorous communist bloc competition and the independent ambitions of successive Afghan governments. Rakove examines the phases of peaceful Cold War competition, including development assistance, cultural diplomacy, and disaster relief. He demonstrates that Americans feared the “loss” of Afghanistan to Soviet influence—and were never simply bystanders, playing pivotal roles in the country’s political life. The ensuing collision of U.S., Soviet, and Afghan ambitions transformed the country—and ultimately led it, and the world, toward calamity. Harnessing extensive research in U.S. and international archives, Days of Opportunity unveils the remarkable and tragic history of American involvement in Afghanistan. Robert B. Rakove is a lecturer in international relations at Stanford University. He is the author of Kennedy, Johnson, and the Nonaligned World (2012). Zeb Larson is a recent graduate of The Ohio State University with a PhD in History. His research deals with the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to zeb.larson@gmail.com.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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The Future of Innovation: A Discussion with Min W. Jung 33:54

1 year ago33:54

33:54

Humans have been so dominant on Earth in large part because of their capacity to innovate – but how does that work exactly? Why can they innovate so much? That issue has been studied by Professor Min W. Jung from the Center for Synaptic Brain Dysfunctions at the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea. He is the author of A Brain for Innovation: The Neuroscience of Imagination and Abstract Thinking (Columbia UP, 2023). Listen to him in conversation with Owen Bennett Jones. Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Daniel Shea and Nicholas F. Jacobs, "The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America" (Columbia UP, 2023) 53:29

1 year ago53:29

53:29

The widening gulf between rural and urban America is becoming the most serious political divide of our day. Support for Democrats, up and down the ballot, has plummeted throughout the countryside, and the entire governing system is threatened by one-party dominance. After Donald Trump's surprising victories throughout rural America, pundits and journalists went searching for answers, popping into roadside diners and opining from afar. Rural Americans are supposedly bigots, culturally backwards, lazy, scared of the future, and radical. But is it that simple? Is the country splintering between two very different Americas--one rural, one urban? This pathbreaking book pinpoints forces behind the rise of the "rural voter"--a new political identity that combines a deeply felt sense of place with an increasingly nationalized set of concerns. Combining a historical perspective with the largest-ever national survey of rural voters, Nicholas F. Jacobs and Daniel M. Shea uncover how this overwhelmingly crucial voting bloc emerged and how it has roiled American politics. They show how perceptions of economic and social change, racial anxieties, and a traditional way of life under assault have converged into a belief in rural uniqueness and separateness. Rural America believes it rises and falls together, and that the Democratic Party stands in the way. An unparalleled exploration of rural partisanship, this book offers a timely warning that the chasm separating urban and rural Americans cannot be papered over with policies or rhetoric. Instead, The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America (Columbia University Press, 2023) demonstrates, this division strikes at the heart of enduring conflicts over American identity. Nicholas F. Jacobs is assistant professor of government at Colby College. Daniel M. Shea is professor and chair of government at Colby College. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Anne Mendelson, "Spoiled: The Myth of Milk as Superfood" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:05:55

1 year ago1:05:55

1:05:55

Why is cows' milk, which few nonwhite people can digest, promoted as a science-backed dietary necessity in countries where the majority of the population is lactose-intolerant? Why are gigantic new dairy farms permitted to deplete the sparse water resources of desert ecosystems? Why do thousands of U.S. dairy farmers every year give up after struggling to recoup production costs against plummeting wholesale prices? Exploring these questions and many more, Spoiled: The Myth of Milk as Superfood (Columbia UP, 2023) is an unflinching and meticulous critique of the glorification of fluid milk and its alleged universal benefits. Anne Mendelson's groundbreaking book chronicles the story of milk from the Stone Age peoples who first domesticated cows, goats, and sheep to today's troubled dairy industry. Spoiled shows that drinking fresh milk was rare until Western scientific experts who were unaware of genetic differences in the ability to digest lactose deemed it superior to traditional fermented dairy products. Their flawed beliefs fueled the growth of a massive and environmentally devastating industry that turned milk into a cheap, ubiquitous commodity. Mendelson's wide-ranging account also examines the consequences of homogenization and refrigeration technologies, the toll that modern farming takes on dairy cows, and changing perceptions of raw milk since the advent of pasteurization. Unraveling the myths and misconceptions that prop up the dairy industry, Spoiled calls for more sustainable, healthful futures in our relationship with milk and the animals that provide it. Melek Firat Altay is a neuroscientist, biologist and musician. Her research focuses on deciphering the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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The Future of the Rural-Urban Divide: A Discussion with Nicholas F. Jacobs and Daniel M. Shea 41:34

1 year ago41:34

41:34

The town/countryside split has always been a feature of democratic Western politics and has impacted party choice. The advent of rust belts may have added a layer of complexity and may help explain why the differences between rural and urban voters seem to be deepening in the US. Nicholas F. Jacobs and Daniel M. Shea are the authors of The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America (Columbia UP, 2023). Listen to them discuss the rural-urban divide with Owen Bennett-Jones. Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Mingwei Song, "Fear of Seeing: A Poetics of Chinese Science Fiction" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:12:36

1 year ago1:12:36

1:12:36

I am talking today to Mingwei Song about his new book, Fear of Seeing: A Poetics of Chinese Science Fiction (Columbia UP, 2023). The book is a sweeping account of contemporary Chinese science fiction that begins by asking, has “anything new arrived with the new century that redefined contemporaneousness?” As listeners might guess, in Song’s account, the aesthetics of science fiction are the new and invigorating arrival on the scene of Chinese literature. Whether it be the technological sublime of Liu Cixin or the bodily horrors of Han Song, new wave Chinese science fiction engages with the problem of representing China with what Song identifies as the poetics of the invisible. Song shows how the invisible functions in chapters dedicated to both the major contemporary figures mentioned above, as well canonical writers like Lu Xun, and the newest and edgiest science fiction writers that have recently emerged onto the literary scene in China. Fear of Seeing shows how science fiction given “a country deprived of liberal imagination” a “multitude of new dreams.” At the same time, he suggests, the utopian (as well as quite dystopian) possibilities, political and aesthetic, opened up by new wave Chinese science fiction exist in an ambivalent relationship to state power. We will discuss these points as well as many others in detail in the following interview. Julia Keblinska is a postdoc at the East Asian Studies Center at the Ohio State University specializing in Chinese media history and comparative socialisms.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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William B. Eimicke et al., "Leveling the Learning Curve: Creating a More Inclusive and Connected University" (Columbia UP, 2023) 50:03

1 year ago50:03

50:03

Will the COVID-19 pandemic be remembered as a turning point in how universities deliver teaching and learning? How might the widespread use of digital tools change higher education? Leveling the Learning Curve: Creating a More Inclusive and Connected University (Columbia UP, 2023) explores the role of digital education at this crucial crossroads. Built on interviews with more than fifty leading practitioners from major universities and ed-tech firms, Leveling the Learning Curve is an indispensable guide to the inner workings of digital education. Written for university managers and leaders, it explores how new tools can allow universities to reach new audiences and address long-standing imbalances. The authors examine challenges to implementing digital education programs and provide insight into how universities have managed to balance the needs of faculty and on- and off-campus students. The book traces the history of digital education initiatives from Khan Academy, TED Talks, and MOOCs through the pandemic, examining both successes and failures. It offers compelling examples of what a "connected university" looks like in practice, sharing ways digital tools can bring in wider audiences, expand interdisciplinary teaching and learning, connect students to real-life issues, help meet equity goals, and open new revenue streams. Designed as both a manual and an in-depth study, Leveling the Learning Curve is required reading for educational leaders looking to navigate the complex waters of postpandemic digital education.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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The Future of Paying Attention: A Discussion with Carolyn Dicey Jennings 40:55

1 year ago40:55

40:55

Is it really harder to pay attention to something than it used to be? No doubt the world is getting faster, and social media platforms are so good at grabbing attention. But how real is the problem and in particular, does it impact our creativity? Carolyn Dicey Jennings is based at the University of California, Merced, and has just co-written a chapter called “Attention, Technology, and Creativity” in a book called Scenes of Attention: Essays on Mind, Time, and the Senses published by Columbia UP (2023) Listen to her in conversation with Owen Bennett Jones. Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Trenton W. Holliday, "Cro-Magnon: The Story of the Last Ice Age People of Europe" (Columbia UP, 2023) 42:33

1 year ago42:33

42:33

During the Last Ice Age, Europe was a cold, dry place teeming with mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, reindeer, bison, cave bears, cave hyenas, and cave lions. It was also the home of people physically indistinguishable from humans today, commonly known as the Cro-Magnons. Our knowledge of them comes from either their skeletons or the tools, art, and debris they left behind. Cro-Magnon: The Story of the Last Ice Age People of Europe (Columbia UP, 2023) tells the story of these dynamic and resilient people in light of recent scientific advances. Trenton Holliday-a paleoanthropologist who has studied the Cro-Magnons for decades-explores questions such as: Where and when did anatomically modern humans first emerge? When did they reach Europe, and via what routes? How extensive or frequent were their interactions with Neandertals? What did Cro-Magnons look like? What did they eat, and how did they acquire their food? What can we learn about their lives from studying their skeletons? How did they deal with the glacial cold? What does their art tell us about them? Holliday offers new insights into these ancient people from anthropological, archaeological, genetic, and geological perspectives. He also considers how the Cro-Magnons responded to Earth's postglacial warming almost 12,000 years ago, showing that how they dealt with climate change holds valuable lessons for us as we negotiate life on a rapidly warming planet. Melek Firat Altay is a neuroscientist, biologist and musician. Her research focuses on deciphering the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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David C. Atherton, "Writing Violence: The Politics of Form in Early Modern Japanese Literature" (Columbia UP, 2023) 50:03

1 year ago50:03

50:03

Edo-period Japan was a golden age for commercial literature. A host of new narrative genres cast their gaze across the social landscape, probed the realms of history and the fantastic, and breathed new life into literary tradition. But how to understand the politics of this body of literature remains contested, in part because the defining characteristics of much early modern fiction—formulaicness, reuse of narratives, stock characters, linguistic and intertextual play, and heavy allusion to literary canon—can seem to hold social and political realities at arm’s length. David C. Atherton offers a new approach to understanding the relationship between the challenging formal features of early modern popular literature and the world beyond its pages. Focusing on depictions of violence—one of the most fraught topics for a peaceful polity ruled over by warriors—he connects concepts of form and formalization across the aesthetic and social spheres. Atherton shows how the formal features of early modern literature had the potential to alter the perception of time and space, make social and economic forces visible, defamiliarize conventions, give voice to the socially peripheral, and reshape the contours of community. Through careful readings of works by the major writers Asai Ryōi, Ihara Saikaku, Chikamatsu Monzaemon, Ueda Akinari, and Santō Kyōden, Writing Violence: The Politics of Form in Early Modern Japanese Literature (Columbia UP, 2023) reveals the essential role of literary form in constructing the world—and in seeing it anew. Jingyi Li is a PhD Candidate in Japanese History at the University of Arizona. She researches about early modern Japan, literati, and commercial publishing.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Adam Blum et al., "Here I'm Alive: The Spirit of Music in Psychoanalysis" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:37:44

2 years ago1:37:44

1:37:44

Today we have a group session (read: an hour and a half) with the authors Adam Blum, Peter Goldberg, and Michal Levin discussing their new book Here I’m Alive: The Spirit of Music in Psychoanalysis (Columbia University Press, 2023). Acknowledging that “We’re not the first to think about music in the clinical situation” the authors focused on the analytic project “as a kind of music in its own right.” With an interest in sensory, non-representational experiences. “ We settled on music as a primordial operating system that all human beings are brought into.” We begin the interview with each author sharing their ideas on a key tenet of the book which is that “Before we can become fully functioning emotional, rational, linguistic, cultural, social, or political animals, human beings first become musical animals.” From here we explore the questions posed in the book. “ What does the frame, frame?” What is meant by “Music is never the creation of an individual in isolation… there is no such thing as private music”, “What is the process of human musicalization”, “What happens to us when the rhythm changes?” This was a rich discussion and each author sharpened my thinking. One of the more meaningful exchanges came around my reaction to this line in the book, "the analytic frame may be usable as rhythm from the get-go; the analyst drops the beat, and the dance begins." In my reading I disagreed sharply. It is the patient who comes in an drops the beat! Peter's clarifying response to me may be the highlight of many highlights in this enchanting jam session of an interview. Near the end of our discussion in which the vicissitudes of induction as enchantment have made repeated appearances, I quote a passage that synthesizes much of the previous 90 minutes and speaks to the emotional resonance of the book. “There is a good reason why psychoanalysis has been ambivalent about, if not terrified, of enchantment, which is that it’s overwhelmingly powerful and potentially extremely hazardous. Why? Because at bottom the human being seeks and needs induction. We are thus radically suggestible and susceptible to influence and in-form-ation (and possibly ex-form-ation) by the environment, a “dethroning of the ego” that Freud could never accept. Our need for enchantment renders us essentially and permanently vulnerable to being taken over, and the crucial distinction between whether we are malevolently exploited or benevolently induced into culture is harrowingly historical, a matter of what world into which one is born.” (p.70) Christopher Russell, LP is a psychoanalyst in Chelsea, Manhattan.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Margaret Hillenbrand, "On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China" (Columbia UP, 2023) 46:19

2 years ago46:19

46:19

Margaret Hillenbrand’s On the Edge: Feeling Precarious in China (Columbia UP, 2023) examines the negative cultural forms that have emerged in response to China’s exclusionary contemporary socioeconomic system. Hillenbrand considers the social strain exerted on members of the “underclass,” the 300 million migrant workers whose toil has underwritten China’s economic rise since the passing of the command economy. She describes the socio-legal condition of disenfranchisement, an internal displacement or “civic-half life” experienced by marginalized workers, as “zombie citizenship,” a purposefully inflammatory definition that evokes both the workers’ experience of civic suspension and their class others’ fears of falling into similar abjection. In this compelling narrative, contemporary Chinese social, legal, and cultural life is wrapped in an ambient mood of jeopardy. Through close readings of diverse texts, performances, and films that both amplify and diffuse the violent conflicts of dispossession and dislocation, she makes the case for culture’s capacity to “intervene palpably in social experience.” The cultural forms Hillenbrand introduces and analyzes themselves teeter on the edge, on one hand, the edge of exploitation and aesthetic empowerment. The ugly feelings these works evoke affectively concretize the “ever-impending dissolution of that apparent boundary” between those already on the cliff’s edge and those who may yet come to share this precarious space. I look forward to probing the complexities of this freighted and violent cultural work with our guest. Julia Keblinska is a postdoc at the East Asian Studies Center at the Ohio State University specializing in Chinese media history and comparative socialisms.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol, "Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working-Class Voters Are Turning Away from the Democratic Party" (Columbia UP, 2023) 39:11

2 years ago39:11

39:11

In the heyday of American labor, the influence of local unions extended far beyond the workplace. Unions fostered tight-knit communities, touching nearly every aspect of the lives of members--mostly men--and their families and neighbors. They conveyed fundamental worldviews, making blue-collar unionists into loyal Democrats who saw the party as on the side of the working man. Today, unions play a much less significant role in American life. In industrial and formerly industrial Rust Belt towns, Republican-leaning groups and outlooks have burgeoned among the kinds of voters who once would have been part of union communities. In Rust Belt Union Blues: Why Working-Class Voters Are Turning Away from the Democratic Party (Columbia UP, 2023), Lainey Newman and Theda Skocpol provide timely insight into the relationship between the decline of unions and the shift of working-class voters away from Democrats. Drawing on interviews, union newsletters, and ethnographic analysis, they pinpoint the significance of eroding local community ties and identities. Using western Pennsylvania as a case study, Newman and Skocpol argue that union members' loyalty to Democratic candidates was as much a product of the group identity that unions fostered as it was a response to the Democratic Party's economic policies. As the social world around organized labor dissipated, conservative institutions like gun clubs, megachurches, and other Republican-leaning groups took its place. Rust Belt Union Blues sheds new light on why so many union members have dramatically changed their party politics. It makes a compelling case that Democrats are unlikely to rebuild credibility in places like western Pennsylvania unless they find new ways to weave themselves into the daily lives of workers and their families. Stephen Pimpare is a Senior Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Janet Chrzan and Kima Cargill, "Anxious Eaters: Why We Fall for Fad Diets" (Columbia UP, 2022) 1:04:07

2 years ago1:04:07

1:04:07

What makes fad diets so appealing to so many people? And how did these fads become so central to conversations about food and nutrition? Anxious Eaters: Why We Fall for Fad Diets (Columbia University Press, 2022) shows that fad diets are popular because they fulfill crucial social and psychological needs―which is also why they tend to fail. Authors Janet Chrzan and Kima Cargill bring together anthropology, psychology, and nutrition to explore what these programs promise yet rarely fulfill for dieters. They demonstrate how fad diets help people cope with widespread anxieties and offer tantalizing glimpses of attainable self-transformation. Chrzan and Cargill emphasize the social contexts of diets, arguing that beliefs about nutrition are deeply rooted in pervasive cultural narratives. Considering dietary beliefs and practices in terms of culture, nutrition, and individual psychological needs, Anxious Eaters refrains from moralizing or promoting a “right” way to eat. Instead, it offers new ways of understanding the popularity of a wide range of eating trends, including the Atkins Diet and other low- or no-carb diets; beliefs that ingredients like wheat products and sugars are toxic, allergenic, or addictive; food avoidance and “Clean Eating” practices; and paleo or primal diets. Anxious Eaters sheds new light on why people adopt such diets and why these diets remain so attractive even though they often fail. Janet Chrzan teaches nutritional anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Alcohol: Social Drinking in Cultural Context (2013) as well as coeditor of Research Methods for the Anthropological Study of Food and Nutrition (2017) and Organic Food, Farming, and Culture (2019). Garrett Broad is Associate Professor of Communication Studies in Rowan University’s Edelman College of Communication & Creative Arts, where he also serves as Provost’s Fellow in the Catalysts for Sustainability Initiative. His research and teaching explores the connections between contemporary social movements, food systems, and digital media technology. He is the author of More Than Just Food: Food Justice and Community Change , as well as a variety of articles on food's relationship to environmental sustainability, economic equity, and the health of humans and nonhuman animals.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Alexandra Kaloyanides, "Baptizing Burma: Religious Change in the Last Buddhist Kingdom" (Columbia UP, 2023) 34:56

2 years ago34:56

34:56

Adoniram Judson was the 19th-century version of an American celebrity. Americans flocked to listen to his tales of being one of the first missionaries to enter the Kingdom of Burma. Americans wanted to hear of his mission in the Buddhist kingdom; Judson was reportedly uncomfortable with the attention. These missions to Burma flopped among the Buddhist majority, but won converts among its minorities: the Karen, the Kachin, and others. Alexandra Kaloyonides covers these missions in Baptizing Burma: Religious Change in the Last Buddhist Kingdom (Columbia University Press: 2023), her latest book. Alexandra Kaloyonides is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte where her teaching focuses on Buddhism. Dr. Kaloyanides serves as Associate Editor of Material Religion , served as Managing Editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review , and served as editor of the Asian Traditions section of Marginalia Review of Books, a Los Angeles Review of Books Channel. Today, Alex and I talk about the missions to Burma, their success among the country’s minority groups, and how Christian faith became wrapped in the country’s identity formation. Y ou can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books , including its review of Baptizing Burma . Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia . Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon .…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Angelina Chin, "Unsettling Exiles: Chinese Migrants in Hong Kong and the Southern Periphery During the Cold War" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:32:46

2 years ago1:32:46

1:32:46

The conventional story of Hong Kong celebrates the people who fled the mainland in the wake of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. In this telling, migrants thrived under British colonial rule, transforming Hong Kong into a cosmopolitan city and an industrial and financial hub. Unsettling Exiles: Chinese Migrants in Hong Kong and the Southern Periphery During the Cold War (Columbia UP, 2023) recasts identity formation in Hong Kong, demonstrating that the complexities of crossing borders shaped the city’s uneasy place in the Sinophone world. Angelina Y. Chin foregrounds the experiences of the many people who passed through Hong Kong without settling down or finding a sense of belonging, including refugees, deportees, “undesirable” residents, and members of sea communities. She emphasizes that flows of people did not stop at Hong Kong’s borders but also bled into neighboring territories such as Taiwan and Macau. Chin develops the concept of the “Southern Periphery”—the region along the southern frontier of the PRC, outside its administrative control yet closely tied to its political space. Both the PRC and governments in the Southern Periphery implemented strict migration and deportation policies in pursuit of border control, with profound consequences for people in transit. Chin argues that Hong Kong identity emerged from the collective trauma of exile and dislocation, as well as a sense of being on the margins of both the Communist and Nationalist Chinese regimes during the Cold War. Drawing on wide-ranging research, Unsettling Exiles sheds new light on Hong Kong’s ambivalent relationship to the mainland, its role in the global Cold War, and the origins of today’s political currents. Angelina Y. Chin is associate professor of history at Pomona College. She is the author of Bound to Emancipate: Working Women and Urban Citizenship in Early Twentieth-Century China and Hong Kong (2012). Li-Ping Chen is a teaching fellow in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include literary translingualism, diaspora, and nativism in Sinophone, inter-Asian, and transpacific contexts.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Megan Bryson and Kevin Buckelew eds., "Buddhist Masculinities" (Columbia UP, 2023) 53:40

2 years ago53:40

53:40

While early Buddhists hailed their religion's founder for opening a path to enlightenment, they also exalted him as the paragon of masculinity. According to Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha's body boasts thirty-two physical features, including lionlike jaws, thighs like a royal stag, broad shoulders, and a deep, resonant voice, that distinguish him from ordinary men. As Buddhism spread throughout Asia and around the world, the Buddha remained an exemplary man, but Buddhists in other times and places developed their own understandings of what it meant to be masculine. This transdisciplinary book brings together essays that explore the variety and diversity of Buddhist masculinities, from early India to the contemporary United States, and from bodhisattva-kings to martial monks. Buddhist Masculinities (Columbia UP, 2023) adopts the methods of religious studies, anthropology, art history, textual-historical studies, and cultural studies to explore texts, images, films, media, and embodiments of masculinity across the Buddhist world, past and present. It turns scholarly attention to normative forms of masculinity that usually go unmarked and unstudied precisely because they are "normal," illuminating the religious and cultural processes that construct Buddhist masculinities. Engaging with contemporary issues of gender identity, intersectionality, and sexual ethics, Buddhist Masculinities ushers in a new era for the study of Buddhism and gender. MEGAN BRYSON is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and chair of the Asian Studies program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She received her B.A. in Religious Studies and Chinese from University of Oregon, and her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Stanford University. Her research focuses primarily on themes of gender and ethnicity in Chinese religions, especially in the Dali region of Yunnan Province. The geographical specificity of her work is balanced by its temporal breadth, which ranges from the Nanzhao (649-903) and Dali (937-1253) kingdoms to the present, as reflected in her monograph, Goddess on the Frontier: Religion, Ethnicity, and Gender in Southwest China (Stanford University Press, 2016, an interview with her about this book is also on the New Books Network), which traces the worship of a local deity in Dali from the 12th to 21st centuries. KEVIN BUCKELEW is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Northwestern University. He received his B.A. in the liberal arts from Sarah Lawrence College, and his Ph.D. from Columbia University's Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures. His research focuses on Buddhism in premodern China, with special attention to the rise of the Chan (Zen) Buddhist tradition and to interactions between Chinese Buddhists and Daoists. Thematically, his work explores how religious identities take shape and assume social authority; how materiality, embodiment, and gender figure into Buddhist soteriology; and how Buddhists have grappled with the problem of human agency. Jue Liang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Case Western Reserve University. She is currently completing her first book, entitled Conceiving the Mother of Tibet: The Early Literary Lives of the Buddhist Saint Yeshé Tsogyel. She is also working on a second project, tentatively titled i. As a scholar of Buddhist literature, history, and culture in South and East Asia, she reflects in her research and teaching continuities as well as innovations in the gender discourses of Buddhist communities. She is also interested in the theory and practice of translation in general, and translating Tibetan literature in particular.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Ravi Gupta and Kenneth Valpey, "The Bhagavata Purana: Sacred Text and Living Tradition" (Columbia UP, 2013) 51:55

2 years ago51:55

51:55

Today I talked to Ravi Gupta and Kenneth Valpey about The Bhagavata Purana: Sacred Text and Living Tradition (Columbia UP, 2013) A vibrant example of living literature, the Bhagavata Purana is a versatile Hindu sacred text written in Sanskrit verse. Finding its present form by the tenth century C.E., the work inspired several major north Indian devotional (bhakti) traditions as well as schools of dance and drama, and continues to permeate popular Hindu art and ritual in both India and the diaspora. Introducing the Bhagavata Purana's key themes while also examining its extensive influence on Hindu thought and practice, this collection conducts the first multidimensional reading of the entire text. Each essay focuses on a key theme of the Bhagavata Purana and its subsequent presence in Hindu theology, performing arts, ritual recitation, and commentary. The authors consider the relationship between the sacred text and the divine image, the text's metaphysical and cosmological underpinnings, its shaping of Indian culture, and its ongoing relevance to contemporary Indian concerns. Also see: The Bhāgavata Purāna: Selected Readings The BhP Research Project The Bhagavata documentary Raj Balkaran is a scholar of Sanskrit narrative texts. He teaches at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and at his own virtual School of Indian Wisdom. For information see rajbalkaran.com.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Marion Holmes Katz, "Wives and Work: Islamic Law and Ethics Before Modernity" (Columbia UP, 2022) 1:43:03

2 years ago1:43:03

1:43:03

In this interview, I speak with Marion Holmes Katz about her latest book Wives and Work: Islamic Law and Ethics Before Modernity (Columbia UP, 2022). This fascinating book explores the question of wives’ domestic responsibilities from a Sunni Islamic legal perspective, covering scholarship from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries. The book addresses questions such as, does the wife have the obligation to provide housework? What counts as housework? And if it is true that the wife is not obligated to perform any household labor, as many western Muslims believe, how did the Muslim tradition reconcile this ruling with the anecdote involving Fatima’s request to the Prophet Muhammad for help with household work because she is overworked? And how did Muslim scholars reconcile this idea with what they understood to be morally, culturally, or religiously correct behavior from a woman? If the wife does choose to perform housework, is she entitled to compensation from her husband? For most Muslim scholars historically, answers to these questions involved distinguishing between ethical ideals and legal claims. Katz shows, for instance, that the discourse on women’s household labor evolves with time, context, geographical location, such that, for example, in the formative period, it was widely accepted that wives are not obligated to perform any household chores, but by the time we get to the 14th century, this doctrine is challenged. Overall, then, not only do scholarly views expectedly disagree with each other, but also, scholars are less interested in providing a set of generic rules about wifely duties and more in encouraging the fulfillment of duties as they’re understood in one’s own social location. In our conversation today, we discuss the book’s main contributions and its origins; a hadith report describing an incident about Fatima’s request to Muhammad for domestic help; what exactly domestic service means and who is required or obligated to provide it—and what that obligation means; what exactly is so ethical about household work, since this discourse is rooted in ethics for Muslim scholars; and how male scholars have historically treated domestic service. We end with some thoughts on discussions about Islamic law and domestic service from a class perspective; for example, where do poor men and poor wives fit into this discussion? What are their rights?…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Elaine Schattner, "From Whispers to Shouts: The Ways We Talk about Cancer" (Columbia UP, 2023) 50:32

2 years ago50:32

50:32

The “war on cancer” was launched during the Nixon Administration in 1971, but the term was part of the national dialog on cancer at least early as 1913. Pink ribbons have been ubiquitous symbols of breast cancer awareness and fund-raising promotions since the mid-1980s, but “cancer weeks” fostering awareness of the disease and gala fund-raisers staged by wealthy socialites were popular beginning at least 100 years earlier. Early detection was touted as a cure at the beginning of the 20th century, long before any treatments other than primitive surgery were available, not to mention tests like mammography to detect the disease. Elaine Schattner provides these and myriad other surprising insights from our long and tortuous relationship with cancer in From Whispers to Shouts: The Ways We Talk about Cancer (Columbia UP, 2023). It is a fascinating book that traces how public perception and portrayal of cancer in our conversations, media and culture has evolved over the past century and a half. Whispers reflect the fear and shame that have led many to hide a cancer diagnosis; shouts mark the advocacy and activism that is giving patients voice in both the doctor’s office and the public stage. Dr. Schattner, a medical oncologist, breast cancer survivor, and journalist enlists an intriguing cast of characters to tell the story: U.S. presidents, including Ulysses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland and Joe Biden; Babe Ruth; Nat King Cole; the writer Susan Sontag; AIDS activist Larry Kramer; Gilda Radner and Nora Ephron are just a few of those she features whose stories have helped shape our changing attitudes toward a disease that has long been viewed as a death sentence, but one that for increasing numbers of patients is now a manageable illness with prospects for meaningful survival. In the past 25 years, effective new, but costly drugs that target molecular drivers of tumors or unleash the immune system against the disease have transformed treatment for many patients. The rise of the internet and social media has vastly changed how we learn and talk about cancer. Dr. Schattner describes both good and bad ramifications of these disruptive events and says what is needed is greater understanding of the treatability of the disease. Ron Winslow, a former long-time medical reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, is a freelance medical and science journalist.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Nicholas Hoover Wilson, "Modernity's Corruption: Empire and Morality in the Making of British India" (Columbia UP, 2023) 46:15

2 years ago46:15

46:15

When Robert Clive, the man who established Company rule in India was hauled in front of Parliament to answer for crimes of corruption, he allegedly responded by saying, essentially, he could have been worse. Am I not rather deserving of praise for the moderation which marked my proceedings? Consider the situation in which the victory at Plassey had placed me. A great prince was dependent on my pleasure; an opulent city lay at my mercy; its richest bankers bid against each other for my smiles; I walked through vaults which were thrown open to me alone, piled on either hand with gold and jewels! Mr. Chairman, at this moment I stand astonished at my own moderation! The strange thing is that Clive’s argument was actually acceptable according to how many at the time understood corruption, as Nicholas Hoover Wilson writes in Modernity's Corruption: Empire and Morality in the Making of British India (Columbia University Press: 2023) . Nick uses Company rule in India as a way to examine how society’s view of corruption changed–from something governed by one’s situation, to a behavior that violates some universal code of ethics. In this interview, the two of us talk about Clive, Company rule, and why this period is a good period through which to understand the idea of “corruption.” Nicholas Hoover Wilson is associate professor of sociology at Stony Brook University. Nick’s research focuses on the historical sociology of empires and colonialism, through the case of the English East India Trading Company's presence in South Asia. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books , including its review of Modernity’s Corruption . Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia . Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon .…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Alejandro Portes and Ariel C. Armony, "Emerging Global Cities: Origin, Structure, and Significance" (Columbia UP, 2022) 1:00:08

2 years ago1:00:08

1:00:08

Certain cities—most famously New York, London, and Tokyo—have been identified as “global cities,” whose function in the world economy transcends national borders. Without the same fanfare, formerly peripheral and secondary cities have been growing in importance, emerging as global cities in their own right. The striking similarity of the skylines of Dubai, Miami, and Singapore is no coincidence: despite following different historical paths, all three have achieved newfound prominence through parallel trends. In this groundbreaking book, Alejandro Portes and Ariel C. Armony demonstrate how the rapid and unexpected rise of these three cities recasts global urban studies. They identify the constellation of factors that allow certain urban places to become “emerging global cities”—centers of commerce, finance, art, and culture for entire regions. The book traces the transformations of Dubai, Miami, and Singapore, identifying key features common to these emerging global cities. It contrasts them with “global hopefuls,” cities that, at one point or another, aspired to become global, and analyzes how Hong Kong is threatened with the loss of this status. Portes and Armony highlight the importance of climate change to the prospects of emerging global cities, showing how the same economic system that propelled their rise now imperils their future. Emerging Global Cities: Origin, Structure, and Significance (Columbia University Press, 2022) provides a powerful new framework for understanding the role of peripheral cities in the world economy and how they compete for and sometimes achieve global standing. Alejandro Portes is professor of law and distinguished scholar of arts and sciences at the University of Miami. He is the Howard Harrison and Gabrielle S. Beck Professor of Sociology (emeritus) and the founding director of the Center for Migration and Development at Princeton University. Portes is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the former president of the American Sociological Association. His books include City on the Edge: The Transformation of Miami (University of California Press, 1993) and Immigrant America: A Portrait (University of California Press, 2014). Ariel C. Armony is vice chancellor for global affairs and director of the University Center for International Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is also a professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Fulbright scholar at Nankai University, and a resident fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center. His publications include The Dubious Link: Civic Engagement and Democratization (Stanford University Press, 2004) and, with Portes, The Global Edge: Miami in the Twenty-First Century (University of California Press, 2018). Aleem Mahabir is a PhD candidate in Geography at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. His research interests lie at the intersection of Urban Geography, Social Exclusion, and Psychology. His dissertation research focuses on the link among negative psychosocial dispositions, exclusion, and under-development among marginalized communities in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. You can find him on Twitter .…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Lin Zhang, "The Labor of Reinvention: Entrepreneurship in the Chinese Digital Economy" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:00:32

2 years ago1:00:32

1:00:32

Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series. In this episode, our host Jing Wang discusses the book The Labor of Reinvention: Entrepreneurship in the New Chinese Digital Economy (Columbia UP, 2023) by Lin Zhang . You’ll hear about: A history of the book and Zhang’s entry into the fieldwork through family stories; How to understand entrepreneurialism as a dominant ideology in the global neoliberal labor economy and China’s positionality in the world; Why and how the book is organized based on three types of spaces – rural, urban, and transnational – across China and beyond; The similarities and differences between the elite and the grassroot entrepreneurs in Beijing; The e-commerce entrepreneurship as “platformized family production” in rural China and the roles played by government and large tech companies like Alibaba play in shaping the new rural production model; The limit and possibility of reinvention through “shanzhai” (copycat) e-commerce production; The gendered inequalities of entrepreneurial labor in rural and transnational spaces; What is “daigou” (personal shopping agents) in transnational e-commerce and the structural challenges entrepreneurs – especially women – face across national borders and digital platforms; What conversations in global studies of media and communication this book engages with. About the book From start-up founders in the Chinese equivalent of Silicon Valley to rural villages experiencing an e-commerce boom to middle-class women reselling luxury goods, the rise of internet-based entrepreneurship has affected every part of China. For many, reinventing oneself as an entrepreneur has appeared to be an appealing way to adapt to a changing economy and society. Yet in practice, digital entrepreneurship has also reinforced traditional Chinese ideas about state power, labor, gender, and identity. Lin Zhang explores how the everyday labor of entrepreneurial reinvention is remaking China amid changing geopolitical currents. She tells the stories of people from diverse class, gender, and age backgrounds across rural, urban, and transnational settings in rich detail, providing a multifaceted and ground-level view of the twenty-first-century Chinese economy. You can find more about the book here by the Columbia University Press. Author: Lin Zhang is an associate professor of communication and media studies at the University of New Hampshire. Host: Jing Wang is Senior Research Manager at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC), Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, with an affiliation at the Center of the Study of Contemporary China (CSCC). Editor & Producer : Jing Wang Our podcast is part of the multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication (CARGC) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. At CARGC, we produce and promote critical, interdisciplinary, and multimodal research on global media and communication. We aim to bridge academic scholarship and public life, bringing the very best scholarship to bear on enduring global questions and pressing contemporary issues.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Quinn Eastman, "The Woman Who Couldn't Wake Up: Hypersomnia and the Science of Sleepiness" (Columbia UP, 2023) 38:55

2 years ago38:55

38:55

Sleep was taking over Anna's life. Despite multiple alarm clocks and powerful stimulants, the young Atlanta lawyer could sleep for thirty or even fifty hours at a stretch. She stopped working and began losing weight because she couldn't stay awake long enough to eat. Anna's doctors didn't know how to help her until they tried an oddball drug, connected with a hunch that something produced by her body was putting her to sleep. The Woman Who Couldn't Wake Up: Hypersomnia and the Science of Sleepiness (Columbia UP, 2023) tells Anna's story-and the broader story of her diagnosis, idiopathic hypersomnia (IH), a shadowy sibling of narcolepsy that has emerged as a focus of sleep research and patient advocacy. Quinn Eastman explores the science around sleepiness, recounting how researchers have been searching for more than a century for the substances that tip the brain into slumber. He argues that investigation of IH could unlock new understandings of how sleep is regulated and controlled. Eastman foregrounds the experiences of people with IH, relating how publicity around Anna's successful treatment helped others form a community. He shows how a group of patients who felt neglected or dismissed united to steer research toward their little-known disorder. Sharing emerging science and powerful stories, this book testifies to the significance of underrecognized diseases and sheds new light on how our brains function, day and night. It is essential reading for anyone interested in sleep and sleep disorders, including those affected by or seeking to treat them. Melek Firat Altay is a neuroscientist, biologist and musician. Her research focuses on deciphering the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Anne Irfan, "Refuge and Resistance: Palestinians and the International Refugee System" (Columbia UP, 2023) 57:07

2 years ago57:07

57:07

In the decades after World War II, the United Nations established a global refugee regime that became central to the lives of displaced people around the world. This regime has exerted particular authority over Palestinian refugees, who are served by a specialized UN body, the Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Formed shortly after the 1948 war, UNRWA continues to provide quasi-state services such as education and health care to Palestinian refugee communities in the Middle East today. Refuge and Resistance: Palestinians and the International Refugee System (Columbia UP, 2023) is a groundbreaking international history of Palestinian refugee politics. Anne Irfan traces the history and politics of UNRWA’s interactions with Palestinian communities, particularly in the refugee camps where it functioned as a surrogate state. She shows how Palestinian refugees invoked internationalist norms to demand their political rights while resisting the UN’s categorization of their plight as an apolitical humanitarian issue. Refuge and Resistance foregrounds how nonelite activism shaped the Palestinian campaign for international recognition, showing that engagement with world politics was driven as much by the refugee grass roots as by the upper echelons of the Palestine Liberation Organization. It demonstrates that refugee groups are important actors in global politics, not simply aid recipients. Recasting modern Palestinian history through the lens of refugee camps and communities, Refuge and Resistance offers vital new perspectives for understanding politics beyond the nation-state. Roberto Mazza is currently a Visiting Lecturer at Northwestern University. He is the host of the Jerusalem Unplugged Podcast and to discuss and propose a book for interview can be reached at robbymazza@gmail.com . Twitter and IG: @robbyref Website: www.robertomazza.org…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Alexandra Kaloyanides, "Baptizing Burma: Religious Change in the Last Buddhist Kingdom" (Columbia UP, 2023) 46:20

2 years ago46:20

46:20

In July 1813, a young American couple from Boston arrived in the Buddhist kingdom of Burma to preach the gospel. Although Burmese Buddhists largely resisted Christian evangelism, members of minority religious communities embraced Baptist teachings and practices, reimagining both Buddhism and Christianity in the process. In her new book, Baptizing Burma: Religious Change in the Last Buddhist Kingdom (Columbia UP, 2023), religious studies scholar Alex Kaloyanides explores this history of power and conversion through the lens of sacred objects. Previously Tricycle ’s managing editor, Kaloyanides now serves as an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In this episode of Tricycle Talks , Tricycle ’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Kaloyanides to discuss the religious material culture of 19th-century Burma, what we miss when we study religions solely through their texts, and how her research has shaped how she thinks about religious conflict today. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review provides a unique and independent public forum for exploring Buddhism, establishing a dialogue between Buddhism and the broader culture, and introducing Buddhist thinking to Western disciplines. Tricycle Talks is a monthly podcast featuring prominent voices from within and beyond the Buddhist fold. Listen to more episodes here.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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M. Todd Bennett, "Neither Confirm Nor Deny: How the Glomar Mission Shielded the CIA from Transparency" (Columbia UP, 2022) 1:23:50

2 years ago1:23:50

1:23:50

When the Soviet K-129 submarine sank in the Pacific Ocean in 1968, the CIA saw a possible treasure trove of intelligence information on Soviet military codes. The race was on to devise how exactly to retrieve this potential information from the bottom of the ocean. After years of careful planning, the result was one of the most audacious espionage missions of the Cold War. The wreck of the K-129 would be recovered intact under the cover of a deep-sea mining operation, funded by business tycoon Howard Hughes. Unfortunately for the CIA, the winds of public opinion about its secret operations were changing in wake of the Watergate scandals that helped expose the operation to a wider audience. Out of the attempt to maintain secrecy that the so-called "Glomar response" of "neither confirm nor deny" was used for the first time in a legal setting. This story and its Cold War context is the subject of M. Todd Bennett's Neither Confirm Nor Deny: How the Glomar Mission Shielded the CIA from Transparency (Columbia University Press, 2023). M. Todd Bennett is associate professor of history at East Carolina University. He is the author of One World, Big Screen: Hollywood, the Allies, and World War II (2012). Bennett was formerly a historian at the U.S. Department of State; there, he edited the Foreign Relations of the United States volume that includes declassified records documenting the Glomar incident. Stephen Satkiewicz is an independent scholar whose research areas are related to Civilizational Analysis, Social Complexity, Big History, Historical Sociology, military history, War studies, International Relations, Geopolitics, as well as Russian and East European history.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Patrick J. Charles, "Vote Gun: How Gun Rights Became Politicized in the United States" (Columbia UP, 2023) 41:10

2 years ago41:10

41:10

Today, gun control is one of the most polarizing topics in American politics. However, before the 1960s, positions on firearms rights did not necessarily map onto partisan affiliation. What explains this drastic shift? Patrick J. Charles charts the rise of gun rights activism from the early twentieth century through the 1980 presidential election, pinpointing the role of the 1968 Gun Control Act. Gun rights advocates including the National Rifle Association had lobbied legislators for decades, but they had cast firearms control as a local issue. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 spurred congressional proposals to regulate firearms, gun rights advocates found common cause with states' rights proponents opposed to civil rights legislation. Following the enactment of the Gun Control Act, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle began to stake out firm positions. Politicians including Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan recognized the potential of gun control as a wedge issue, and gun rights became increasingly tied to the Republican Party. Drawing on a vast range of archival evidence, Charles offers new insight into the evolution of the gun rights movement and how politicians responded to anti-gun control hardliners. He examines in detail how the National Rifle Association reinvented itself as well as how other advocacy groups challenged the NRA's political monopoly. Offering a deep dive into the politicization of gun rights, Vote Gun: How Gun Rights Became Politicized in the United States (Columbia University Press, 2023) reveals the origins of the acrimonious divisions that persist to this day. Patrick J. Charles is senior historian and archivist for the United States Air Force. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Han Yu, "The Curious Human Knee" (Columbia UP, 2023) 56:14

2 years ago56:14

56:14

Where would we be without the knee? This down-to-earth joint connecting the thigh and the lower leg doesn’t receive the attention it deserves. Yet, as The Curious Human Knee (Columbia UP, 2023) reveals, it is crucial to countless facets of science, medicine, culture, and history—and even what makes us human. The science writer Han Yu provides an informative, surprising, and entertaining exploration of the human knee across time and place. She begins with our earliest ancestors, emphasizing that walking upright separates us from the apes and bipedal knees appeared long before big brains and sophisticated tools. Yu considers the intricate anatomy of the knee, its evolutionary history, and the complexity of treating knee pain, including her own. She examines why women’s knees might be more prone to damage than men’s and addresses the roles of race and class in ailments such as osteoarthritis. This book gets knee-deep into an astonishing range of topics—fashion from flappers to miniskirts and ripped jeans, cultural practices spanning Japanese knee walking and Thai boxing, and more. Yu reflects on the symbolic power of kneeling from the imperial court in China to the football field in the United States and shows why the knee figures into so many social and political phenomena. Distilling a vast amount of research in a style that is engaging, conversational, and even personal and witty, this book opens readers’ eyes to the complexity and significance of the humble knee. Rachel Pagones is an acupuncturist, educator, and author based in Cambridge, England.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Xiaomei Chen, "Performing the Socialist State: Modern Chinese Theater and Film Culture" (Columbia UP, 2023) 34:51

2 years ago34:51

34:51

Xiaomei Chen's book Performing the Socialist State: Modern Chinese Theater and Film Culture (Columbia UP, 2023) looks at three "founding fathers" of Chinese spoken drama: Tian Han, Hong Shen, and Ouyang Yuqian. Dr. Chen argues that these three theatre artists laid the groundwork for Mao-era Chinese drama during the earlier Republic period, and that there is more continuity between the two periods than has typically been supposed. She also argues that these artists were not mere victims of heavy-handed political ideologues, but were passionate and sophisticated political thinkers in their own right. By telling the stories of these three figures and their effect on later Chinese drama, Dr. Chen helps us understand why the performing arts have such notable political consequence in the history of 20th century China. Note: our interview with Dr. Chen on her 2016 book Staging Chinese Revolution can be found here . Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour, "The Politics of Survival: Black Women Social Welfare Beneficiaries in Brazil and the United States" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:30:34

2 years ago1:30:34

1:30:34

Poor Black women who benefit from social welfare are marginalized in a number of ways by interlocking systemic racism, sexism, and classism. The media renders them invisible or casts them as racialized and undeserving "welfare queens" who exploit social safety nets. Even when Black women voters are celebrated, the voices of the poorest too often go unheard. How do Afro-descendant women in former slave-holding societies survive amid multifaceted oppression? In The Politics of Survival: Black Women Social Welfare Beneficiaries in Brazil and the United States (Columbia University Press, 2023), Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour offers a comparative analysis of how Black women social welfare beneficiaries in Brazil and the United States defy systems of domination. She argues that poor Black women act as political subjects in the struggle to survive, to provide food for their children and themselves, and challenge daily discrimination even in dire circumstances. Mitchell-Walthour examines the effects of social welfare programs, showing that mutual aid networks and informal labor play greater roles in beneficiaries' lives. She also details how Afro-descendant women perceive stereotypes and discrimination based on race, class, gender, and skin color. Mitchell-Walthour considers their formal political participation, demonstrating that low-income Black women support progressive politics and that religious affiliation does not lead to conservative attitudes. Drawing on Black feminist frameworks, The Politics of Survival confronts the persistent invisibility of poor Black women by foregrounding their experiences and voices. Providing a wealth of empirical evidence on these women's views and survival strategies, this book not only highlights how systemic structures marginalize them but also offers insight into how they resist such forces. Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour is Dan T. Blue Endowed Chair of Political Science at North Carolina Central University. She is the author of The Politics of Blackness: Racial Identity and Political Behavior in Contemporary Brazil (2018). Mitchell-Walthour is a national co-coordinator of the U.S. Network for Democracy in Brazil and former president of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA). Reighan Gillam is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media (University of Illinois Press).…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Thomas Chen, "Made in Censorship: The Tiananmen Movement in Chinese Literature and Film" (Columbia UP, 2022) 58:34

2 years ago58:34

58:34

Hello, world! This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series. In this episode, our host Ignatius Suglo discusses the book Made in Censorship: The Tiananmen Movement in Chinese Literature and Film (Columbia University Press, 2022) by Thomas Chen . You’ll hear about: Author’s intellectual and professional trajectory that led him to the book; How to study Tiananmen Movement as a media event through a careful selection of literature and film materials; How to think of the productivity of silence and absence; The use of “positive energy” in mobilizing censorship; Human labor and the idea of “workshop” in the work of censorship; How iconic images such as “Tank Man” have been interpreted and appropriated; The role played by women in social movements and their representations in post-1989 China; The emergence of Internet in the 1990s and the paradoxical nature of “Internet sovereignty”; Author’s positionality and reflection on writing the book. About the book The violent suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations is thought to be contemporary China’s most taboo subject. Yet despite sweeping censorship, Chinese culture continues to engage with the history, meaning, and memory of the Tiananmen movement. Made in Censorship examines the surprisingly rich corpus of Tiananmen literature and film produced in mainland China since 1989, both officially sanctioned and unauthorized, contending that censorship does not simply forbid—it also shapes what is created. You can find more about the book here by Columbia University Press. Author: Thomas Chen graduated with a B.A. in Comparative Literature and English from Cornell University and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA. With a focus on modern Chinese literature and cinema, his research interests include world literature/cinema, translation studies, and historiography. His book Made in Censorship: The Tiananmen Movement in Chinese Literature and Film is available from Columbia University Press. Host: Ignatius Suglo is Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication. He completed his Ph.D. in China Studies at the University of Hong Kong. He also has a secondary specialization in African Studies. His research interests…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Sagang Sechen, "The Precious Summary: A History of the Mongols from Chinggis Khan to the Qing Dynasty" (Columbia UP, 2023) 49:14

2 years ago49:14

49:14

Buddhist cosmological history of the universe, history of Chinggis Khan, history of China, and history of the Mongols — The Precious Summary , written in 1662 by Sagang Sechen, is many things. As a whole, it is the most important work of Mongolian history on the period before the rise of the Manchu Qing dynasty. The Precious Summary: A History of the Mongols from Chinggis Khan to the Qing Dynasty (Columbia University Press 2023), translated by Johan Elverskog, is not only a fluid and lucid translation, but by adding extensive annotations and helpful introductions, Elverskog has made this epic history approachable to readers today. Whether you are well-versed in the Mongol-Oirat wars or if the name Altan Khan doesn’t (yet) mean anything to you, this is a fabulous introduction to Mongolian historiography that should be of interest to anyone looking to learn more about Mongolian sources, Inner Asian history, and the history of Buddhism in Asia. Johan Elverskog is Dedman Family Distinguished Professor, Professor of Religious Studies, and, by courtesy, Professor of History at Southern Methodist University. This is his second time on New Books, and you can hear a conversation about one of his other books, The Buddha’s Footprint: An Environmental History of Asia (University of Pennsylvania Press 2020) here . Sarah Bramao-Ramos is a PhD candidate in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard. She works on Manchu language books and is interested in anything with a kesike. She can be reached at sbramaoramos@g.harvard.edu…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Rob Verchick, "The Octopus in the Parking Garage: A Call for Climate Resilience" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:13:27

2 years ago1:13:27

1:13:27

One morning in Miami Beach, an unexpected guest showed up in a luxury condominium complex’s parking garage: an octopus. The image quickly went viral. But the octopus―and the combination of infrastructure quirks and climate impacts that left it stranded―is more than a funny meme. It’s a potent symbol of the disruptions that a changing climate has already brought to our doorsteps and the ways we will have to adjust. His well-research and multi-faceted book, The Octopus in the Parking Garage: A Call for Climate Resilience (Columbia UP, 2023) is a tour de force that is engaging, informative and a book that is hard to put down. Topics range from the potential loss of the Joshua Tree to the dangers our coral reefs face. Learning from “Lucy,” our three million year old ancestor who can be found in the Hall of Human Origins at the Natural History Museum in Washington, DC, is a lesson Verchick tells us, can open new windows into “a saga of resilience and adaptation.” He also illustrates how intersectionality can help us listen, learn and understand how interconnected networks of oppression are woven into the fabric of global warming and climate change. Rob Verchick examines how we can manage the risks that we can no longer avoid, laying out our options as we face climate breakdown. Although reducing carbon dioxide emissions is essential, we need to adapt to address the damage we have already caused. Verchick explores what resilience looks like on the ground, from early humans on the savannas to today’s shop owners and city planners. He takes the reader on a journey into the field: paddling through Louisiana’s bayous, hiking in one of the last refuges of Joshua trees in the Mojave Desert, and diving off Key Largo with citizen scientists working to restore coral reefs. The book emphasizes disadvantaged communities, which bear the brunt of environmental risk, arguing that building climate resilience is a necessary step toward justice. Engaging and accessible for nonexpert concerned citizens, The Octopus in the Parking Garage empowers readers to face the climate crisis and shows what we can do to adapt and thrive. Robert Verchick just became a 2023-2024 Harvard Radcliffe Fellow and will be working on the impact our current environment has on oceans and coasts this year. He is one of the leading scholars in disaster and climate change law and designed climate-resilience policies in the Obama administration. Karyne Messina is a licensed psychologist and psychoanalyst at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis and am on the medical staff of Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. She is the author of Resurgence of Populism: A Psychoanalytic Study of Projective Identification, Blame Shifting and the Corruption of Democracy (Routledge, 2022).…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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The Future of the Human Heart: A Discussion with Vincent M. Figueredo 40:20

2 years ago40:20

40:20

Long considered the most important of all organs, the human heart has fascinated artists and scientists alike. Listen to cardiologist Vincent Figueredo discuss knowledge of and attitudes towards the heart in societies ancient and modern. Figueredo is the author of The Curious History of the Heart: A Cultural and Scientific Journey (Columbia UP, 2023). Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Jacqueline Mondros and Joan Minieri, "Organizing for Power and Empowerment: The Fight for Democracy" (Columbia UP, 2023) 33:25

2 years ago33:25

33:25

Jacqueline Mondros and Joan Minieri's book Organizing for Power and Empowerment: The Fight for Democracy (Columbia UP, 2023) draws on extensive research to portray how social-action organizations have evolved over the past twenty-five years, building power in the struggle for social and economic justice. It explores how organizers increasingly target corporate influence and attacks on democracy. Their strategies and theories of change confront racial, gender, and economic inequity and fight pervasive intersectional injustice. The book tells the stories of a variety of geographically and racially diverse organizations and features the voices and experiences of more than forty organizers working across a range of issues. The organizers describe campaigns that activate people around issues that matter in their daily lives--work schedules, bail reform, schools, voting, and affordable housing--and connect them to broader topics such as racial justice, immigration, climate change, criminal justice, and workers' rights. They share their thoughts on building community organizations and empowering ordinary citizens to become leaders. The book underscores the leadership of Black Americans, other people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ people as they lead campaigns to address the disparate effects of inequality faced by their communities. It provides detailed analysis of new organizational structures and change strategies, including electoral activism, statewide organizing, and community-labor coalitions. This book sheds important new light on foundational organizing practices and the challenges and opportunities for progressive social action today. Stephen Pimpare is director of the Public Service & Nonprofit Leadership program and Faculty Fellow at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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A. Azfar Moin and Alan Strathern, "Sacred Kingship in World History: Between Immanence and Transcendence" (Columbia UP, 2022) 46:36

2 years ago46:36

46:36

Sacred kingship has been the core political form, in small-scale societies and in vast empires, for much of world history. Sacred Kingship in World History: Between Immanence and Transcendence (Columbia UP, 2022) recasts the relationship between religion and politics by exploring this institution in long-term and global comparative perspective. Editors A. Azfar Moin and Alan Strathern present a theoretical framework for understanding sacred kingship, which leading scholars reflect on and respond to in a series of essays. They distinguish between two separate but complementary religious tendencies, immanentism and transcendentalism, which mold kings into divinized or righteous rulers, respectively. Whereas immanence demands priestly and cosmic rites from kings to sustain the flourishing of life, transcendence turns the focus to salvation and subordinates rulers to higher ethical objectives. Secular modernity does not end the struggle between immanence and transcendence—flourishing and righteousness—but only displaces it from kings onto nations and individuals. After an essay by Marshall Sahlins that ranges from the Pacific to the Arctic, the book contains chapters on religion and kingship in settings as far-flung as ancient Egypt, classical Greece, medieval Islam, Mughal India, modern European drama, and ISIS. Sacred Kingship in World History sheds new light on how religion has constructed rulership, with implications spanning global history, religious studies, political theory, and anthropology. Alan Strathern teaches European and Global History as an Associate Professor in the Faculty of History at Oxford and as a Fellow at Brasenose College; he also lectures at St. John's College. He works on the global history of religious encounter and conversion, particularly in the early modern period (1500-1800), while additionally writing on the nature of religious change and its relationship with politics across world history. A. Azfar Moin is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He studies the early modern Islamic world from comparative perspectives with a focus on concepts and practices of sovereignty. Justin N. Smolin is a PhD candidate in the History of Religions specializing in at the Divinity School in the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the question of the translatability of religious difference, with a particular view to the early modern Islamicate world: his broader interests include literary history, translation, and political theology.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Elizabeth S. Hurd and Winnifred F. Sullivan, "At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion" (Columbia UP, 2021) 44:07

2 years ago44:07

44:07

From right to left, notions of religion and religious freedom are fundamental to how many Americans have understood their country and themselves. Ideas of religion, politics, and the interplay between them are no less crucial to how the United States has engaged with the world beyond its borders. Yet scholarship on American religion tends to bracket the domestic and foreign, despite the fact that assumptions about the differences between ourselves and others deeply shape American religious categories and identities. At Home and Abroad: The Politics of American Religion (Columbia UP, 2021) bridges the divide in the study of American religion, law, and politics between domestic and international, bringing together diverse and distinguished authors from religious studies, law, American studies, sociology, history, and political science to explore interrelations across conceptual and political boundaries. They bring into sharp focus the ideas, people, and institutions that provide links between domestic and foreign religious politics and policies. Contributors break down the categories of domestic and foreign and inquire into how these taxonomies are related to other axes of discrimination, asking questions such as: What and who counts as “home” or “abroad,” how and by whom are these determinations made, and with what consequences? Offering a new approach to theorizing the politics of religion in the context of the American nation-state, At Home and Abroad also interrogates American religious exceptionalism and illuminates imperial dynamics beyond the United States. Find the sister-project, Theologies of American Exceptionalism , here . Elizabeth Shakman Hurd is professor of political science and the Crown Chair in Middle East Studies at Northwestern University. She is the author of The Politics of Secularism in International Relations (2008) and Beyond Religious Freedom: The New Global Politics of Religion (2015). Winnifred Fallers Sullivan is Provost Professor in the Department of Religious Studies, director of the Center for Religion and the Human, and affiliated professor of law at Indiana University Bloomington. Her books include The Impossibility of Religious Freedom (2005) and Church State Corporation: Construing Religion in U.S. Law (2020). This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett , is currently a PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.com…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Geoff Harkness, "DVS Mindz: The Twenty-Year Saga of the Greatest Rap Group to Almost Make It Outta Kansas" (Columbia UP, 2023) 50:10

2 years ago50:10

50:10

99.9% of aspiring rappers never make it in the music industry. So why do we only hear the stories of the ones who do? DVS Mindz might be the greatest rap group you've never heard of. Formed in Topeka, Kansas, in the mid-1990s, they developed a reputation for ferocious rhyming and frenetic live performances. In their heyday, DVS Mindz released a critically acclaimed CD, received nominations for prestigious awards, and opened for legends such as Wu-Tang Clan, Run-DMC, and De La Soul as well as KC icon Tech N9ne. But the group struggled with creative differences, substance abuse, ego battles, and money issues, and they split up in 2003. Geoff Harkness takes readers on a unique two-decade journey alongside the members of DVS Mindz, chronicling their childhoods, their brush with success, and what became of them in the years that followed. Based on more than one hundred hours of video and audio recordings from 1999 to 2022, this fly-on-the-wall account offers a backstage pass into the recording studios and radio stations, video shoots and house parties, nightclubs and concert halls of the Kansas City-Lawrence-Topeka music scene circa 2000. DVS Mindz: The Twenty-Year Saga of the Greatest Rap Group to Almost Make It Outta Kansas (Columbia UP, 2023) is at once a compulsively readable group biography of four talented MCs, a vibrant voyage through the forgotten history of local hip hop, and a breathtakingly real story of struggling to achieve big dreams. Alex Kuchma is an MA student in history at York University. He has have researching hip-hop actively and collecting oral histories for more than a decade.…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

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Ethan Warren, "The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha" (Columbia UP, 2023) 1:01:03

2 years ago1:01:03

1:01:03

Paul Thomas Anderson’s evolution from a brash, self-anointed “Indiewood” auteur to one of his generation’s most distinctive voices has been one of the most remarkable career trajectories in recent film history. From early efforts to emulate his cinematic heroes to his increasingly singular late films, Anderson has created a body of work that balances the familiar and the strange, history and myth: viewers feel perpetually off balance, unsure of whether to expect a pitch-black joke or a moment of piercing emotional resonance. The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha (Columbia UP, 2023) provides the most complete account of Anderson’s career to date, encompassing his varied side projects and unproduced material; his personal and professional relationships with directors such as Jonathan Demme, Robert Altman, and Robert Downey Sr.; and his work as a director of music videos for Fiona Apple, Joanna Newsom, and Haim. Ethan Warren explores Anderson’s recurring thematic preoccupations―the fraught dynamics of gender and religious faith, biological and found families, and his native San Fernando Valley―as well as his screenwriting methods and his relationship to his influences. Warren argues that Anderson’s films conjure up an alternate American history that exaggerates and elides verifiable facts in search of a heightened truth marked by a deeper level of emotional hyperrealism. This book is at once an unconventional primer on Anderson’s films and a provocative reframing of what makes his work so essential. Ethan Warren is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and is the writer and director of the film West of Her. Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics (Twitter @15MinFilm).…

Off the Page: A Columbia University Press Podcast

1
Reinhold Martin, "Knowledge Worlds: Media, Materiality, and the Making of the Modern University" (Columbia UP, 2021) 1:43:02

2 years ago1:43:02