New Books in Critical Theory

Marshall Poe

Episodes

Mentioned books

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Mar 30, 2026 • 1h 2min

Ainehi Edoro, "Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think" (Columbia UP, 2026)

Ainehi Edoro, Mellon-Morgridge Assistant Professor and founding editor of Brittle Paper, explores how African novels make forests into thinking, agentive worlds. She discusses forests as sites of worldbuilding, fragmentation as a creative method, rethinking literary history through indigenous forms, and speculative aquatic forests that imagine multispecies futures.
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Mar 30, 2026 • 20min

Pre-Reading

They explore the idea of knowing about books and films before we actually read or watch them. The conversation traces how shared sources like newspapers and Twitter shape expectations and spoilers. They consider ethical and political consequences, including care, spoiler culture, and tactics against book bans. They also argue for treating pre-reading as a legitimate object of study in literary scholarship.
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Mar 30, 2026 • 59min

Mark Pennington, "Foucault and Liberal Political Economy: Power, Knowledge, and Freedom" (Oxford UP, 2025)

Mark Pennington, Professor of Political Economy at King’s College London, discusses his book on Foucault and liberal political economy. He explores decentralized surveillance and cultural agency. He critiques positivism and expert rule. He examines identity politics, public-health micromanagement, ecological governance, and predictive surveillance. He calls for humility and pluralistic responses to crises.
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Mar 29, 2026 • 1h 32min

Emmanuel Ofuasia, "Ìwà: the Process-Relational Dimension to African Metaphysics" (Springer, 2024)

Emmanuel Ofuasia, a Nigerian-born philosopher and decoloniality researcher at the University of Pretoria, links Kemet and Yorùbá thought through process-relational metaphysics. He discusses rethinking colonial periodization, proposing an African trivalent logic, comparing primordial concepts like NUN and Ìwà, and arguing for relational ontology, plant sentience, and new directions in African metaphysical historiography.
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Mar 28, 2026 • 1h 5min

Thomas Hegghammer and Diego Gambetta eds., "Fight, Flight, Mimic: Identity Mimicry in Conflict" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Thomas Hegghammer, Senior Research Fellow and scholar of militant Islamism, discusses identity mimicry in conflict. He explores deceptive mimicry, how time and longevity signal commitment online, and the limits of low-bandwidth interaction. The conversation also covers tradeoffs of observation, linking online and offline behavior, and how AI may change signaling and countermeasures.
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Mar 26, 2026 • 54min

The Criminal Record Complex: Risk, Race, and the Struggle for Work in America

Dr. Melissa Burch, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and director of the Afterlives of Conviction Project, studies criminal records and employment. She traces how background checks became widespread, explores the Ban the Box movement, and recounts ethnographic fieldwork with job-seekers and workforce staff. She challenges the belief that screening ensures workplace safety and points toward deeper structural change.
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Mar 24, 2026 • 26min

Hsuan L Hsu, "Olfactory Worldmaking" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

Hsuan L. Hsu, an academic in English and environmental humanities who studies smell and sensory justice. He explores how scent shapes memory, racialized breathing, and diasporic connection. He discusses art and literature that use olfaction to imagine alternative, more equitable worlds. The conversation highlights speculative and reparative uses of smell across fiction, installations, and cultural practices.
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Mar 23, 2026 • 1h 17min

David Bather Woods, "Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy's Greatest Pessimist" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

David Bather Woods, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Schopenhauer scholar, discusses his new biography of Arthur Schopenhauer. He explores Schopenhauer’s worldly concerns like love, fame, boredom, suicide, and mental illness. The conversation traces Schopenhauer’s influence on artists and thinkers and highlights compassion, humor, and why his pessimism still resonates today.
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Mar 23, 2026 • 17min

Prolepsis

A close look at prolepsis, the flash-forward technique in novels and its modern uses. Discussion of how flash-forwards stage structural violence and institutional racism. Links between literary form and contemporary anxieties about unequal vulnerability. References to historical texts and debates in world literature and narrative theory.
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6 snips
Mar 21, 2026 • 50min

Philip C. Almond, "Noah and the Flood in Western Thought" (Cambridge UP, 2025)

Philip C. Almond, Emeritus Professor in the History of Religious Thought, unpacks Noah as more than a biblical figure — a proto-shipbuilder, navigator, scientist and founder of disciplines. He traces the flood’s secular and religious afterlives across geology, biology, interfaith readings, racial misuse, ark hunts, and modern climate anxiety. The conversation connects ancient narratives to today’s environmental responsibilities.

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