New Books Network

Thea Riofrancos, Associate Professor of Political Science and expert on climate politics and resource extraction. She discusses why lithium is vital for decarbonization and the geopolitical maps of where it is produced. She explores social and environmental harms in places like Chile, European onshoring conflicts, and how communities organize resistance. Conversations end with governance fixes and demand-reduction strategies.

Mona Makininejadbanadaki, lecturer and postgraduate researcher in sociology and social policy, unpacks diaspora politics and identity narratives. She examines how diaspora framings, Islamophobia, and Kemalist influences shape portrayals of the conflict. Short takes explore dehumanization, transnational alliances, and how Orientalist lenses make certain wars imaginable.

Justin Cammy, a Yiddish scholar and literary historian; Lara Lempert, curator who conserved the Vilna manuscripts; Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, translator and Lithuania’s culture minister. They discuss the 2017 discovery of Sutzkever’s Ten Poems manuscript. Short readings and translations appear. Conversations cover conservation, manuscript materiality, translation challenges, and the project’s collaborative, cross-cultural significance.

Ted Goossen, a veteran translator of Japanese literature, reflects on arriving in Japan in 1968 and his long career translating Kawakami and Murakami. He discusses translating Hiromi Kawakami’s The Third Love, choices about Japanese love terms, linking Edo and Heian worlds to modern women, and shifting themes as women writers gain prominence in contemporary Japanese fiction.

Salman Sayyid, a comparative political analyst unpacking post-colonial power, and Tanzeen Doha, an anthropologist specializing in Bangladesh, discuss authoritarianism and resistance. They trace Bangladesh’s July 2024 student uprising and its roots. They compare why Bangladesh ousted an autocrat while Pakistan remains under military-backed repression. They examine student cadres, secular elite tensions, and the role of intellectual currents.

Casey Walker, novelist (Iowa Writers’ Workshop MFA; forthcoming Mexicali), discusses his story “Islands” set at a tense lake house and the fraught relationships among three orphaned brothers. He recounts the story’s decade-long evolution, editorial reshaping that uncovered key scenes, and teasers about his historical novel Mexicali set on the US–Mexico border.

John Masiulionis, author and hospice advocate working to build a children’s hospice in San Diego. He discusses his picture book Walking Each Other Home – Zachary’s Mission and its themes of a child’s mission, earth angels, and unconditional love. He also talks about his videocast series, experiences with real hospices, and how personal struggles shaped his work.

Nurhaizatul Jamil, Associate Professor of Global South Studies and author studying Islamic piety and gender. She explores Islamic self-help seminars in Singapore, how women navigate faith, love, work and consumption. Listens to how state racialization, affective teaching, and neoliberal advice shape pious transformation. Hints at modest fashion, ecoethics, and interdisciplinary approaches.

Kate Knave, a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Research Fellow at Edinburgh and author of A Drive to Survive, challenges the Free Energy framework from a bioenactivist perspective. She contrasts metabolism-driven autopoiesis with sensor-guided movementism. Topics include cybernetics, predictive processing, individuation, constraint closure, and applying organismal ideas to ecosystems and designed environments.

Jan Yager, sociologist and prolific author on productivity and relationships, presents eleven memorable principles for mastering time. She discusses research-driven methods, practical exercises, using AI and delegation, crafting routines that enable spontaneity, honoring relationships and pets, and the role of endings and stillness in making time work for a fulfilling life.