New Books in Critical Theory
Marshall Poe
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.
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Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com
Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/
Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetworkSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
Episodes
Mentioned books
Apr 28, 2026 • 55min
Francisco Martínez, "The Future of Hiding: Secrecy, Infrastructure, and Ecological Memory in Estonia's Siberia" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Francisco Martínez, an anthropologist of material culture and experimental ethnography, explores how basements, bunkers, garages, and mining landscapes shape identity and secrecy. He discusses shadow spaces as social technologies, the ecological memory of extractive regions, and how opacity, infrastructure, and marginality rework belonging and future imaginaries.
9 snips
Apr 27, 2026 • 19min
Rugged Individualism
Jo Hoffman, a Centenary junior in English, French, and gender studies, and Drew Bennett, a Centenary student in literary theory, unpack rugged individualism. They trace its origins in frontier life and 1920s politics. They contrast bootstrap myths with community-focused societies. They explore Marxist and feminist critiques and link frontier masculinity to modern inequality.
Apr 22, 2026 • 1h 8min
Sarah Jaffe, "From the Ashes: Grief and Transformation in a World on Fire" (Bold Type Books, 2024)
Sarah Jaffe, journalist and labor reporter known for writing on work and social movements, discusses grief as a public, political force. She traces grieving from personal loss to collective sites like George Floyd Square. Conversations cover grief versus capitalist productivity, pandemic and climate mourning, migration and borders, and strikes as moments of refusal and solidarity.
Apr 18, 2026 • 39min
Manuel Barcia, "Pirate Imperialism: Trade, Abolition, and Global Suppression of Maritime Raiding, 1825–1870" (Yale UP, 2026)
Manuel Barcia, a professor of global and Atlantic history who studies imperialism and maritime violence, discusses 19th-century campaigns framed as anti-piracy. He traces how legal doctrines, technology, and commerce justified violent suppression across the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, and Asia. The conversation highlights who was labeled pirate, imperial double standards, and non-Western roles in policing seas.
Apr 18, 2026 • 31min
169* Hannah Arendt on Oases (JP)
A spirited tour of Hannah Arendt's idea of oases as life-giving spaces separate from politics. Short takes on representative thinking, imagination as a political resource, and limits of empathy. Discussions link literature, Melville, and solitude to protecting judgment. The talk contrasts desertlike worldlessness with friendship, art, and love as shelters for action and truth.
16 snips
Apr 17, 2026 • 1h 8min
Amanda Anderson and Simon During, "Humanities Theory" (Oxford UP, 2026)
Simon During, a cultural theorist on postcolonialism and the history of the humanities, and Amanda Anderson, a moral-life and cultural criticism scholar at Brown, discuss what a plural, global humanities world looks like. They cover media framings, the divide between academic and public humanities, internet and AI impacts, value pluralism, and efforts to include non-Western and indigenous knowledges.
8 snips
Apr 17, 2026 • 1h 1min
Audrey Borowski, "Leibniz in His World: The Making of a Savant" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Audrey Borowski, a Leverhulme Early Career and Isaac Newton Trust Fellow at Cambridge who works on philosophy of AI, discusses her book on young Leibniz. She explores his Paris years, courtly struggles, failed projects, and role as a connector in the Republic of Letters. The conversation traces his many identities and why his ambitions and ideas still matter for debates about machines and cosmopolitan thought.
17 snips
Apr 16, 2026 • 1h 13min
Alisa Kessel, "Rape Fantasies: Rape Culture and the Persistence of Sexual Violence" (Oxford UP, 2025)
Alisa Kessel, political theorist who studies consent and sexual violence, discusses how rape culture functions as a political system. She reframes rape as entitlement and domination, traces intersectional lenses like settler colonialism and white supremacy, and explores topics from bathroom bills and OnlyFans to protection myths and community‑based care.
Apr 15, 2026 • 1h 9min
Devika Dutt et al., "Decolonizing Economics: An Introduction" (Polity Press, 2025)
Ingrid Harvold Kvangraven, an academic economist focused on political economy and critiques of Eurocentrism. She discusses why economics must be decolonized. Short takes cover how economics became depoliticized, limits of agent‑based models, structural power in development and climate debates, and why diversity alone cannot fix epistemic biases.
5 snips
Apr 14, 2026 • 56min
Donald Sassoon, "Revolutions: A New History" (Verso Books, 2025)
Donald Sassoon, Emeritus Professor of Comparative European History, offers a longue durée reconceptualization of revolutions. He traces revolutions as decades-long processes across cases like France, Russia, China, England, Italy and Germany. He examines how revolutions begin unexpectedly, the roles of elites and organization, nationalism and state-building, and how wars, reforms, and external shocks shape outcomes.
