New Books in Human Rights
447 episodes - English - Latest episode: 10 days ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsInterviews with scholars of human rights about their new books
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Episodes
Lorenza B. Fontana, "Recognition Politics: Indigenous Rights and Ethnic Conflict in the Andes" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
April 18, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourRecognition Politics: Indigenous Rights and Ethnic Conflict in the Andes (Cambridge University Press, 2023) by Dr. Lorenza B. Fontana is a pioneering work that explores a new wave of widely overlooked conflicts that have emerged across the Andean region, coinciding with the implementation of internationally acclaimed indigenous rights. Why are groups that have peacefully cohabited for decades suddenly engaging in hostile and, at times, violent behaviours? What is the link between these confli...
Elliott Prasse-Freeman, "Rights Refused: Grassroots Activism and State Violence in Myanmar" (Stanford UP, 2023)
April 16, 2024 08:00 - 58 minutesOver three years have passed since a military coup of February 2021 in Myanmar precipitated a popular uprising that has since transformed into a revolutionary situation. While researchers and writers have cobbled together edited books trying to come to terms with all that has happened and how we might interpret it in relation to Myanmar’s recent past, Elliott Prasse Freeman’s Rights Refused: Grassroots Activism and State Violence in Myanmar (Stanford University Press, 2023) is the first autho...
Michael Davis, "Freedom Undone: The Assault on Liberal Values in Hong Kong" (Association for Asian Studies, 2023)
March 27, 2024 08:00 - 1 hour"What happened in Hong Kong is not an anomaly but a warning" - Hong Kong Human Rights defender Chow Hang Tung, speech written from prison upon receiving a human rights award. In our interview today, I spoke with Professor Michael C. Davis, author of Freedom Undone: The Assault on Liberal Values and Institutions in Hong Kong (AAS and Columbia UP, 2024). In his latest book, he writes about how one of the world's most free-wheeling cities has transitioned from a vibrant global center of culture ...
Patryk I. Labuda, "International Criminal Tribunals and Domestic Accountability" (Oxford UP, 2023)
March 22, 2024 08:00 - 58 minutesIn the 1990s, the promise of justice for atrocity crimes was associated with the revival of international criminal tribunals (ICTs). More recently, however, there has been a renewed emphasis on domestic accountability for international crimes across the globe. In identifying a 'complementarity turn', a paradigm shift toward domestic accountability in the field of international criminal justice, this book investigates how the shadow of international criminal tribunals influences the treatment ...
Rachel Blumenthal, "Right to Reparations: The Claims Conference and Holocaust Survivors, 1951–1964" (Lexington, 2021)
March 18, 2024 08:00 - 39 minutesRight to Reparations: The Claims Conference and Holocaust Survivors, 1951–1964 (Lexington, 2021) examines the early years of the Claims Conference, the organization which lobbies for and distributes reparations to Holocaust survivors, and its operations as a nongovernmental actor promoting reparative justice in global politics. Rachel Blumenthal traces the founding of the organization by one person, and its continued campaign for the payment of compensation to survivors after Israel left the ...
Alke Jenss, "Selective Security in the War on Drugs: The Coloniality of State Power in Colombia and Mexico" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023)
March 18, 2024 08:00 - 43 minutesParamilitaries, crime, and tens of thousands of disappeared persons—the so-called war on drugs has perpetuated violence in Latin America, at times precisely in regions of economic growth. Legal and illegal economy are difficult to distinguish. A failure of state institutions to provide security for its citizens does not sufficiently explain this. Selective Security in the War on Drugs: The Coloniality of State Power in Colombia and Mexico (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023) (Rowman & Littlefield, 20...
Dariusz Tołczyk, "Blissful Blindness: Soviet Crimes under Western Eyes" (Indiana UP, 2023)
March 08, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourThe most heinous Soviet crimes - the Red Terror, brutal collectivization, the Great Famine, the Gulag, Stalin's Great Terror, mass deportations, and other atrocities - were treated in the West as a controversial topic. With the Cold War dichotomy of Western democracy versus Soviet communism deeply imprinted in our minds, we are not always aware that these crimes were very often questioned, dismissed, denied, sometimes rationalized, and even outright glorified in the Western world. Facing a ch...
The Reeducation of Race with Sonali Thakkar (JP)
March 07, 2024 09:00 - 48 minutesNYU professor Sonali Thakkar’s brilliant first book, The Reeducation of Race: Jewishness and the Politics of Antiracism in Postcolonial Thought (Stanford UP, 2023), begins as a mystery of sorts. When and why did the word “equality” get swapped out of the 1950 UNESCO Statement on Race, to be replaced by “educability, plasticity”? She and John sit down to discuss how that switcheroo allowed for a putative anti-racism that nonetheless preserved a sotto voce concept of race. They discuss the foun...
Maxine Lowy, "Latent Memory: Human Rights and Jewish Identity in Chile" (U Wisconsin Press, 2022)
February 27, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourIn the first half of the twentieth century, Jewish immigrants and refugees sought to rebuild their lives in Chile. Despite their personal histories of marginalization in Europe, many of these people or their descendants did not take a stand against the 1973 military coup, nor the political persecution that followed. Chilean Jews' collective failure to repudiate systematic human rights violations and their tacit support for the military dictatorship reflected a complicated moral calculus that ...
Ned Richardson-Little, "The Human Rights Dictatorship: Socialism, Global Solidarity and Revolution in East Germany" (Cambridge UP, 2020)
February 26, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourIn The Human Rights Dictatorship: Socialism, Global Solidarity and Revolution in East Germany (Cambridge UP, 2020), Ned Richardson-Little exposes the forgotten history of human rights in the German Democratic Republic, placing the history of the Cold War, Eastern European dissidents and the revolutions of 1989 in a new light. By demonstrating how even a communist dictatorship could imagine itself to be a champion of human rights, this book challenges popular narratives on the fall of the Berl...
Sandra Fahy, "Dying for Rights: Putting North Korea’s Human Rights Abuses on the Record" (Columbia UP, 2019)
February 24, 2024 09:00 - 51 minutes“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 we...
Jonathan A. C. Brown, "Slavery and Islam" (Oneworld Academic, 2019)
February 21, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourIn his majestic and encyclopedic new book Slavery and Islam (Oneworld Academic, 2019), Jonathan A. C. Brown presents a sweeping analysis of Muslim intellectual, political, and social entanglements with slavery, and some of the thorniest conceptual and ethical problems involved in defining and writing about slavery. Self-reflective and bold, Slavery and Islam also offers a remarkable combination of intellectual and social history, anchored in layers of complex yet eminently accessible textual ...
Robert Louis Wilken, "Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom" (Yale UP, 2019)
February 20, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourRobert Louis Wilken, the William R. Kenan Professor Emeritus of the History of Christianity at the University of Virginia, has written an intellectual history of the ideas surrounding freedom of religion. Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom (Yale University Press, 2019) offers a revisionist history of how the ideas of freedom of conscience and freedom of religion originated in the writings of the Christian fathers of the early Church, such as Tertullian an...
Kerstin Bree Carlson, "The Justice Laboratory: International Law in Africa" (Brookings Institution Press, 2022)
February 09, 2024 09:00 - 56 minutesEver since World War II, the United Nations and other international actors have created laws, treaties, and institutions to punish perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. These efforts have established universally recognized norms and have resulted in several high-profile convictions in egregious cases. But international criminal justice now seems to be a declining force—its energy sapped by long delays in prosecutions, lagging public attention, and a globally risin...
Chrystin Ondersma, "Dignity Not Debt: An Abolitionist Approach to Economic Justice" (U California Press, 2024)
February 03, 2024 09:00 - 31 minutesAmerican households have a debt problem. The problem is not, as often claimed, that Americans recklessly take on too much debt. The problem is that US debt policies have no basis in reality. Weaving together the histories and trends of US debt policy with her own family story, Chrystin Ondersma debunks the myths that have long governed debt policy, like the belief that debt leads to prosperity or the claim that bad debt is the result of bad choices, both of which nest in the overarching myth ...
Rachel Nolan, "Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala" (Harvard UP, 2024)
January 28, 2024 09:00 - 42 minutesThe poignant saga of Guatemala's adoption industry: an international marketplace for children, built on a foundation of inequality, war, and Indigenous dispossession. In 2009 Dolores Preat went to a small Maya town in Guatemala to find her birth mother. At the address retrieved from her adoption file, she was told that her supposed mother, one Rosario Colop Chim, never gave up a child for adoption--but in 1986 a girl across the street was abducted. At that house, Preat met a woman who strongl...
Veena R. Howard, "Gandhi's Global Legacy: Moral Methods and Modern Challenges" (Lexington Books, 2022)
January 18, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourWhile there has been sustained interest in Gandhi's methods and continued academic inquiry, Gandhi's Global Legacy: Moral Methods and Modern Challenges (Lexington Books, 2022) is unique in bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars who analyze Gandhi's tactics, moral methods, and philosophical principles, not just in the fields of social and political activism, but in the areas of philosophy, religion, literature, economics, health, international relations, and interpersonal com...
Justine Nolan and Martijn Boersma, "Addressing Modern Slavery" (UNSW Press, 2019)
January 14, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourBefore you left your house this morning, chances are that you used products and consumed goods that were produced by modern slavery. From the coffee you drink, to the clothes and shoes that you wear, to the phone that you use, modern slavery is a pervasive global problem that encroaches into the daily lives of all of us. In Addressing Modern Slavery (UNSW Press, 2019), Professor Justine Nolan and Associate Professor Martijn Boersma provide a comprehensive and accessible account of the role o...
Jennifer V. Evans, "The Queer Art of History: Queer Kinship After Fascism" (Duke UP, 2023)
January 12, 2024 09:00 - 34 minutesIn The Queer Art of History: Queer Kinship After Fascism (Duke UP, 2023), Jennifer V. Evans examines postwar and contemporary German history to broadly argue for a practice of queer history that moves beyond bounded concepts and narratives of identity. Drawing on Black feminism, queer of color critique, and trans studies, Evans points out that although many rights for LGBTQI people have been gained in Germany, those rights have not been enjoyed equally. There remain fundamental struggles arou...
Con Coughlin, "Assad: The Triumph of Tyranny" (Picador, 2023)
January 12, 2024 09:00 - 33 minutesIn Assad: The Triumph of Tyranny (Picador, 2023), Con Coughlin, veteran commentator on war in the Middle East and author of Saddam: The Secret Life, examines how a mild-mannered ophthalmic surgeon has transformed himself into the tyrannical ruler of a once flourishing country. Until the Arab Spring of 2011, the world’s view of Bashar al-Assad was largely benign. He and his wife, a former British banker, were viewed as philanthropic individuals doing their best to keep their country at peace. ...
Eva van Roekel, "Phenomenal Justice: Violence and Morality in Argentina" (Rutgers UP, 2020)
January 11, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourIn Phenomenal Justice: Violence and Morality in Argentina (Rutgers University Press, 2020), Eva van Roekel grounds her research in phenomenological anthropology and the anthropology of emotion to offer readers a novel and compelling perspective on justice proceedings in the aftermath of historical crimes against humanity. Van Roekel approaches the question: how do survivors, victims, and perpetrators of political violence experience justice on their own terms? Focusing on the reopened trials ...
Paul F. Diehl et al., "When Peacekeeping Missions Collide: Balancing Multiple Roles in Peace Operations" (Oxford UP, 2023)
January 08, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourThe contemporary world is beset with a wide variety of conflicts, all of which have features without historical precedent. While most accounts of peacekeeping focus on attempts to limit violent conflict, this traditional view hardly captures the variety of challenges that today's peacekeepers face. Peacekeepers are now thrust into the unconventional roles of monitoring elections, facilitating transitions to the rule of law, distributing humanitarian aid, and resolving conflicts in civil socie...
Rita Kesselring, "Bodies of Truth: Law, Memory, and Emancipation in Post-Apartheid South Africa" (Stanford UP, 2017)
January 08, 2024 09:00 - 49 minutesRita Kesselring’s important book Bodies of Truth: Law, Memory, and Emancipation in Post-Apartheid South Africa (Stanford University Press, 2017) seeks to understand the embodied and everyday effects of state-sponsored violence as well the limits of the law to produce social repair. Of particular interest in Kesselring’s theorizing of the relationship between the body and the law as a mechanism to critique South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Dr. Kesselring’s book is an innovati...
Melanie Joy, "How to End Injustice Everywhere" (Lantern, 2023)
January 08, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourIn this eye-opening and compelling work, psychologist Melanie Joy reveals the common denominator driving all forms of injustice. The mentality that drives us to oppress and abuse humans is the same mentality that drives us to oppress and abuse nonhumans and the environment, as well as those in our own groups working for justice. How to End Injustice Everywhere: Understanding the Common Denominator Driving All Injustices, to Create a Better World for Humans, Animals, and the Planet (Lantern Pu...
Emma Kuby, "Political Survivors: The Resistance, the Cold War, and the Fight against Concentration Camps After 1945" (Cornell UP, 2019)
January 07, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourEmma Kuby’s new book, Political Survivors: The Resistance, the Cold War, and the Fight against Concentration Camps After 1945 (Cornell UP, 2019) traces the fascinating history of the International Commission Against the Concentration Camp Regime (CICRC) established in 1949 by the French intellectual and Nazi camp survivor David Rousset. In the wake of the Second World War, Rousset called upon fellow deportees who had been detained for their political activities to serve as expert witnesses to...
Katherine M. Marino, "Feminism for the Americas: The Making of an International Human Rights Movement" (UNC Press, 2019)
January 03, 2024 09:00 - 55 minutesKatherine M. Marino is an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Feminism for the Americas: The Making of an International Human Rights Movement (University of North Carolina Press, 2019) follows the many Latin American and Caribbean women in the first half of the century who not only championed feminism for the continent but also contributed to defining the meaning of international human rights. They drove a transnational movement for women’s suffrage th...
Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim, "Decolonizing Human Rights" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
January 03, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourIn his extensive body of work, Professor Abdullahi Ahmed An-Naim challenges both historical interpretations of Islamic Sharia and neo-colonial understanding of human rights. To advance the rationale of scholarship for social change, An-Naim proposes advancing the universality of human rights through internal discourse within Islamic and African societies and cross-cultural dialogue among human cultures. This book proposes a transformation from human rights organized around a state determined ...
Laura Briggs, "Taking Children: A History of American Terror" (U California Press, 2020)
December 31, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourLaura Briggs’s Taking Children: A History of American Terror (University of California Press 2020) is a forceful and captivating book that readers won’t be able to put down, and that listeners from all sort of backgrounds will definitely want to hear more about. Weaving together histories of Black communities (in the US and the Americas more broadly), Native Americans, and multiple Latin Americans countries, Briggs tells us how taking of children has been used as a strategy to terrorize commu...
Lynette J. Chua, "The Politics of Rights and Southeast Asia" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
December 15, 2023 09:00 - 25 minutesThe Politics of Rights and Southeast Asia (Cambridge UP, 2022) offers an empirically-grounded approach to understanding the mobilisation of rights in the region. Instead of deriving definitions of rights from abstract philosophical text, court verdicts or statutes, the book advances a socio-legal approach which considers rights as social practices that take meaning from the various ways in which people enact, mobilise, and practice these rights. In doing so, the book offers a point of view th...
Paolo Caroli, "Transitional Justice in Italy and the Crimes of Fascism and Nazism" (Routledge, 2022)
December 11, 2023 05:00 - 1 hourPaolo Caroli's book Transitional Justice in Italy and the Crimes of Fascism and Nazism (Routledge, 2022) presents a comprehensive analysis of the Italian experience of transitional justice examining how the crimes of Fascism and World War II have been dealt with from a comparative perspective. Applying an interdisciplinary and comparative methodology, the book offers a detailed reconstruction of the prosecution of the crimes of Fascism and the Italian Social Republic as well as crimes committ...
Mark Munsterhjelm, "Forensic Colonialism: Genetics and the Capture of Indigenous Peoples" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023)
December 10, 2023 09:00 - 33 minutesForensic genetic technologies are popularly conceptualized and revered as important tools of justice. The research and development of these technologies, however, has been accomplished through the capture of various Indigenous Peoples' genetic material and a subsequent ongoing genetic servitude. In Forensic Colonialism: Genetics and the Capture of Indigenous Peoples (McGill-Queen's UP, 2023), Mark Munsterhjelm explores how controversial studies of Indigenous Peoples have been used to develop...
Humanitarian Issues of Immigration in Japan: From Historical Background to Current Policies
December 08, 2023 09:00 - 27 minutesJapan has historically maintained extended periods of isolationist policies and continues to uphold some of the strictest immigration laws in the world today. The country has also long had a tumultuous relationship with non-ethnic Japanese residents, including Taiwanese and Korean nationals who were first forced to become Japanese citizens under imperialist rule, only to be deprived of their statuses after Japan formally lost its colonies. More recently, foreign nationals seeking employment a...
Wendy S. Hesford, "Violent Exceptions: Children's Human Rights and Humanitarian Rhetorics" (Ohio State UP, 2021)
December 07, 2023 09:00 - 44 minutesViolent Exceptions: Children's Human Rights and Humanitarian Rhetorics (Ohio State UP, 2021) turns to the humanitarian figure of the child-in-peril in twenty-first-century political discourse to better understand how this figure is appropriated by political constituencies for purposes rarely to do with the needs of children at risk. Wendy S. Hesford shows how the figure of the child-in-peril is predicated on racial division, which, she argues, is central to both conservative and liberal logic...
Dolly Kikon and Joel Rodrigues, "Food Journeys: Stories from the Heart" (Zubaan Books, 2023)
December 06, 2023 09:00 - 50 minutesFood Journeys: Stories from the Heart (Zubaan Books, 2023) is a powerful collection that draws on personal experiences, and the meaning of grief, rage, solidarity, and life. Feminist anthropologist Dolly Kikon and peace researcher Joel Rodrigues present a wide-ranging set of stories and essays accompanied by recipes. They bring together poets, activists, artists, writers, and researchers who explore how food and eating allow us to find joy and strength while navigating a violent history of mi...
Kevin F. Adler and Donald W. Burnes, "When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America" (North Atlantic Books, 2023)
November 28, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourThink about the last time that you saw or interacted with an unhoused person. What did you do? What did you say? Did you offer money or a smile, or did you avert your gaze? Kevin F. Adler and Donald W. Burnes's book When We Walk By: Forgotten Humanity, Broken Systems, and the Role We Can Each Play in Ending Homelessness in America (North Atlantic Books, 2023) takes an urgent look at homelessness in America, showing us what we lose--in ourselves and as a society--when we choose to walk past an...
Fae Garland and Mitchell Travis, "Intersex Embodiment: Legal Frameworks Beyond Identity and Patienthood" (Bristol UP, 2022)
November 26, 2023 09:00 - 56 minutesWhat is intersex and why does it matter? What is the power of law to disrupt dominant narratives? I had a fascinating conversation with authors Dr Fae Garland and Dr Mitchell Travis about their book, Intersex Embodiment: Legal Frameworks Beyond Identity and Disorder (Bristol UP, 2023). We got into detail about these groundbreaking human rights issues. We spoke about the very real challenges faced in conducting legal research that has meaningful impact for social change. In research spanning m...
Heather Smith-Cannoy et al., "Sex Trafficking and Human Rights: The Status of Women and State Responses" (Georgetown UP, 2022)
November 16, 2023 09:00 - 58 minutesHuman trafficking for the sex trade is a form of modern-day slavery that ensnares thousands of victims each year, disproportionately affecting women and girls. While the international community has developed an impressive edifice of human rights law, these laws are not equally recognized or enforced by all countries. Sex Trafficking and Human Rights demonstrates that state responsiveness to human trafficking is shaped by the political, social, cultural, and economic rights afforded to women i...
Malcolm D. Evans, "Tackling Torture: Prevention in Practice" (Bristol UP, 2023)
November 08, 2023 09:00 - 58 minutesHow big a problem is torture? Are the right things being done to prevent it? Why does the UN appear at times to be so impotent in the face of it? Tackling Torture: Prevention in Practice (Bristol University Press, 2023) by Malcolm D. Evans tells the story of torture prevention under international law, setting out what is really happening around the world. Challenging assumptions about torture’s root causes, he calls for what is needed to enable us to bring about change. The author draws on ov...
Jan Selling, "Romani Liberation: A Northern Perspective on Emancipatory Struggles and Progress" (Central European UP, 2022)
November 05, 2023 09:00 - 58 minutesWell-known for his work in Critical Romani Studies, Jan Selling talks with Lavinia Stan about his latest book. Centered on Scandinavia, Romani Liberation: A Northern Perspective on Emancipatory Struggles and Progress (Central European UP, 2022) challenges the stereotype describing Romani as passive and incapable of responsibility and agency. Selling also criticizes benevolent but paternalistic attitudes that center on Romani victimhood. The interview offers an overview of the various chapters...
Wendy H. Wong, "We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age" (MIT Press, 2023)
November 02, 2023 08:00 - 56 minutesOur data-intensive world is here to stay, but does that come at the cost of our humanity in terms of autonomy, community, dignity, and equality? In We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age (MIT Press, 2023), Wendy H. Wong argues that we cannot allow that to happen. Exploring the pervasiveness of data collection and tracking, Wong reminds us that we are all stakeholders in this digital world, who are currently being left out of the most pressing conversations around technology, ethics, an...
Cheryl Lawther and Luke Moffett, "Research Handbook on Transitional Justice" (Edward Elgar, 2023)
October 31, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutesListen to this engaging interview with Cheryl Lawther, who talks about why the Research Handbook on Transitional Justice (Edward Elgar, 2023) is one of the most widely used books in the field of transitional justice. The second edition brings together scholarly experts to reconsider how societies deal with gross human rights violations, structural injustices and mass violence. Contextualized by historical developments, the Research Handbook covers a diverse range of concepts, actors and mecha...
Luke Moffett, "Reparations and War: Finding Balance in Repairing the Past" (Oxford UP, 2023)
October 27, 2023 08:00 - 57 minutesFor thousands of years, reparations have been used to secure the end of war and to alleviate its deleterious consequences. While human rights law establishes that victims have a right to reparations, reparations are not always feasible and are often difficult to deliver. In Reparations and War: Finding Balance in Repairing the Past (Oxford UP, 2023), Professor Luke Moffett used interviews with hundreds of victims, ex-combatants, government officials, and civil society actors from six post-co...
From the Invention of the Passport to the Golden Passport
October 24, 2023 08:00 - 36 minutesIn this episode of International Horizons, RBI director John Torpey interviews Kristin Surak, professor at the London School of Economics, about her new book, The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires (Harvard University Press, 2023). The conversation starts with the contrast of Torpey’s The Invention of the Passport (Cambridge UP, 2018) and the “golden passport,” which reflects how, in the past three decades, many countries have opened avenues for the wealthy to buy passports and...
The Israeli Defense Force (IDF)'s Ethical Code
October 24, 2023 08:00 - 52 minutesIn the past week, the entire world has been focusing on the murderous attack by the Hamas organization against the State of Israel and Israel's response to these actions. Hamas has killed 1,300 civilians and soldiers, including children, the elderly, and women. Furthermore, the methods used by Hamas in their killings have displayed an unprecedented level of cruelty, including acts of desecration of the living and the dead, sexual violence, and harming children. Additionally, they have abducte...
Rory Finnin, "Blood of Others: Stalin's Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity" (U Toronto Press, 2022)
October 11, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourBlood of Others: Stalin's Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity (U Toronto Press, 2022) offers a cultural history of Crimea and the Black Sea region, one of Europe’s most volatile flashpoints, by chronicling the aftermath of Stalin’s 1944 deportation of the Crimean Tatars in four different literary traditions. In the spring of 1944, Stalin deported the Crimean Tatars, a small Sunni Muslim nation, from their ancestral homeland on the Black Sea peninsula. The gravity of this event, whi...
Stephanie Southworth and Sara Brallier, "Homelessness in the 21st Century: Living the Impossible American Dream" (Routledge, 2023)
October 08, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourAn accessible and engaging introductory text on homelessness and housing policy, this timely book uses a sociopolitical framework for understanding issues of homelessness in the United States. The authors, leading sociologists in their field, use data from over 250 interviews and field notes to demonstrate that homelessness is rooted in the structure of our society. They identify and describe the structural barriers faced by people who become homeless including the lack of affordable housing,...
Angie Lederach, "Feel the Grass Grow: Ecologies of Slow Peace in Colombia" (Stanford UP, 2023)
October 06, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourWhat can collaborative research with Colombian campesino leaders teach us about building peace? In this episode, I talk with Angie Lederach, author of Feel the Grass Grow: Ecologies of Slow Peace in Colombia (Stanford UP, 2023). Angie describes how a background in international peacebuilding led her to work with grassroots Colombian peacebuilders and how they co-constructed a research design drawing on the principles of Participatory Action Research. She explains how engaging in PAR affected ...
Kashmir Hill, "Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It" (Random House, 2023)
September 28, 2023 08:00 - 37 minutesNew York Times tech reporter Kashmir Hill was skeptical when she got a tip about a mysterious app called Clearview AI that claimed it could, with 99 percent accuracy, identify anyone based on just one snapshot of their face. The app could supposedly scan a face and, in just seconds, surface every detail of a person’s online life: their name, social media profiles, friends and family members, home address, and photos that they might not have even known existed. If it was everything it claimed ...
Damani Partridge, "Blackness As a Universal Claim: Holocaust Heritage, Noncitizen Futures, and Black Power in Berlin" (U California Press, 2022)
September 24, 2023 08:00 - 43 minutesIn this bold and provocative new book, Blackness as a Universal Claim: Holocaust Heritage, Noncitizen Futures, and Black Power in Berlin (University of California Press, 2023), Damani Partridge examines the possibilities and limits for a universalized Black politics. German youth of Turkish, Arab, and African descent use claims of Blackness to hold states and other institutions accountable for racism today. Partridge tracks how these young people take on the expressions of Black Power, acting...
Debbie Sharnak, "Of Light and Struggle: Social Justice, Human Rights, and Accountability in Uruguay" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2023)
September 15, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourDebbie Sharnak's new book, Of Light and Struggle: Social Justice, Human Rights, and Accountability in Uruguay (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023) is an important and vibrant history of international and local activism in response to dictatorship from 1973 to 1985. Uruguayans suffered numerous human rights abuses under the repressive military government during this period. Activists, transnational social movements, and international policymakers both worked together and clashed as they pu...