Podcast Episodes
Back to SearchMujun Zhou, "The Death and Life of Chinese Civil Society" (U Michigan Press, 2026)
Episode 132
In a society undergoing rapid transformation, how do people engage in debates around a foreign concept and in doing so, pursue contested political fu…
2 weeks, 1 day ago
Berardino Palumbo, "Where Saints Show Respect: Mafia, Modernity, and Rituals of Power" (Berghahn Books, 2026)
Episode 412
Where Saints Show Respect: Mafia, Modernity, and Rituals of Power is an anthropological exploration of how authority is produced not only through vio…
2 weeks, 3 days ago
Abigail Ocobock, "Marriage Material: How an Enduring Institution Is Changing Same-Sex Relationships" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Episode 81
It is no secret that marriage rates in the United States are at an all-time low. Despite this significant decline, the institution of marriage endure…
2 weeks, 4 days ago
Gwyneth Lonergan, "Borders, Citizenship, and Pregnancy: Migrant Women’s Experiences of Pregnancy and Maternity Care in the UK" (Bristol UP, 2025)
Using the analytical framework of reproductive justice, Borders, Citizenship, and Pregnancy: Migrant Women’s Experiences of Pregnancy and Maternity C…
3 weeks, 2 days ago
Lia Kent, "The Unruly Dead: Spirits, Memory, and State Formation in Timor-Leste" (U Wisconsin Press, 2024)
“What might it mean to take the dead seriously as political actors?” asks Lia Kent in this exciting new contribution to critical human rights scholar…
3 weeks, 2 days ago
Yingyi Ma, "Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education" (Columbia UP, 2020)
In Ambitious and Anxious: How Chinese College Students Succeed and Struggle in American Higher Education (Columbia UP, 2020), sociologist Yingyi Ma o…
3 weeks, 3 days ago
Larry M. Bartels and Katherine J. Cramer, "The Politics of Social Change: From the Sixties to the Present Through the Eyes of a Generation" (U Chicago Press, 2026)
Few time periods have been as defined by waves of monumental social change as the United States during the 1960s. Even today, almost sixty years late…
3 weeks, 3 days ago
Beans Velocci, "Sex Isn't Real: The Invention of an Incoherent Binary" (Duke UP, 2026)
In Sex Isn’t Real: The Invention of an Incoherent Binary (Duke UP, 2026), Beans Velocci traces the history of current high stakes attempts to defin…
4 weeks ago
Cedric de Leon, "Freedom Train: Black Politics and the Story of Interracial Labor Solidarity" (U California Press, 2025)
Our guest today is Cedric de Leon, author of Freedom Train: Black Politics and the Story of Interracial Labor Solidarity (U California Press, 2025)…
1 month ago
Melissa Butcher, "The Trouble with Freedom: Love, Hate and America’s Future" (Manchester UP, 2026)
As Melissa Butcher puts it in her book The Trouble with Freedom: Love, Hate and America’s Future (Manchester UP, 2026) when asked to rank the importa…
1 month ago