New Books in Critical Theory

Marshall Poe

Episodes

Mentioned books

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4 snips
Mar 2, 2026 • 35min

Jessi Streib, "The Accidental Equalizer: How Luck Determines Pay After College" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

Jessi Streib, Associate Professor of Sociology at Duke University, discusses her book 'The Accidental Equalizer: How Luck Determines Pay After College'. She explores the concept of 'luckocracy' in the hiring process and how it equalizes outcomes for college graduates. The podcast also delves into the role of 'fit' in assessing social class and how luck continues to play a role in career progression.
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Mar 1, 2026 • 36min

Sophie Salvo, "Articulating Difference: Sex and Language in the German Nineteenth Century"(U Chicago Press, 2024)

Sophie Salvo, Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago who researches language, gender, and intellectual history, explores how nineteenth-century German thought linked sex and language. She traces origin narratives, debates over grammatical gender, missionary reports of "women’s languages," and women scholars' counterstrategies. The conversation also ties these legacies to modern language culture wars.
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Feb 24, 2026 • 49min

Hanna Pickard, "What Would You Do Alone in a Cage with Nothing But Cocaine?: A Philosophy of Addiction" (Princeton UP, 2026)

Hanna Pickard, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Bioethics with clinical experience in addiction treatment. She challenges the brain-disease vs moral-failing split and explores why people keep using despite harms. The conversation covers rat studies, environmental explanations, a humanistic, heterogeneous paradigm, and rethinking responsibility without blame in treatment.
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23 snips
Feb 23, 2026 • 1h 26min

Martin Heidegger, "Being and Time: An Annotated Translation" (Yale UP, 2026)

Cyril Welch, professor emeritus and translator of Heidegger’s Being and Time, shares how decades of classroom work shaped his new annotated translation. He talks about reading Being with novels, Heidegger’s ties to Greek philosophy, phenomenology’s method, everydayness and authenticity, translation choices between colloquial English and German terms, and the text’s unfinished, threshold-like character.
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Feb 21, 2026 • 54min

Jie-Hyun Lim, "Victimhood Nationalism: History and Memory in a Global Age" (Columbia UP, 2025)

Jie-Hyun Lim, distinguished historian of memory studies and founder of the Critical Global Studies Institute, explores how nations craft moral authority by claiming suffering. He traces transformed war victims, transnational uses of Holocaust memory, Yasukuni’s symbolism, and competing narratives of guilt and innocence. The conversation probes reconciliation, colonial legacies, and strategies to counter perpetual victimhood politics.
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4 snips
Feb 21, 2026 • 37min

Jessica Martin, "Feminisms and Domesticity in Times of Crisis: The Rise of the Austerity Celebrity" (Bloomsbury, 2025)

Jessica Martin, Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds, studies gender, austerity, and popular culture. She traces how postfeminist and austerity-era celebrities repackaged domesticity and nostalgia. Short case studies look at thrift, blogging, Mumsnet, and how activist or sustainable figures are reframed by media.
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22 snips
Feb 21, 2026 • 1h 1min

Michelle Jackson, "The Division of Rationalized Labor" (Harvard UP, 2025)

Michelle Jackson, Associate Professor of Sociology at Stanford and author of The Division of Rationalized Labor, explores 150 years of job change. She unpacks task growth versus occupational specialization. She traces how science and prevention reshaped medicine, policing, education and manufacturing. She discusses role creep, community interventions, and how AI and place factor into the future of work.
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Feb 20, 2026 • 1h 3min

Eray Çayli, "Earthmoving: Extractivism, War, and Visuality in Northern Kurdistan" (U Texas Press, 2025)

Eray Çaylı, scholar of extractivism, coloniality, and visual culture, discusses fieldwork in Northern Kurdistan and his book Earthmoving. He explores how extractivism operates alongside humanitarian visuals. He highlights art practices, river and heritage transformations, and collaborative, non-extractive research approaches. The conversation centers on visuality, wartime landscape change, and how artists respond to and reshape these harms.
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Feb 19, 2026 • 1h 10min

Denys Gorbach, "The Making and Unmaking of the Ukrainian Working Class: Everyday Politics and Moral Economy in a Post-Soviet City" (Berghahn Books, 2024)

Denys Gorbach, a postdoctoral researcher and author of The Making and Unmaking of the Ukrainian Working Class, draws on years of ethnography in Kryvyi Rih. He explores everyday politics and moral economy, shifting readings of populism, and how housing and factory privatization reshaped workers’ expectations. He also discusses wartime mobilization, political fluidity, and what might reawaken mass political engagement.
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Feb 18, 2026 • 59min

John Drabinski, "So Unimaginable a Price: Baldwin and the Black Atlantic" (Northwestern UP, 2025)

John Drabinski, a professor of African American and Africana Studies and English, reads James Baldwin as a philosophical thinker. He situates Baldwin within mid-20th century Black Atlantic debates. Short, sharp topics include Baldwin’s focus on the auction block and spirituals, his images of African, white, and Negro, comparisons with Fanon, Black English as a lived world, and the idea of interstitial home life.

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