New Books in Critical Theory

Afleveringen

• 
  The Real Pain of Punishment: Prison, Belonging, and the Quest for Humanized Justice with Federica Coppola (Cambridge UP, 2026) 03.10.2026 29min

  The Real Pain of Punishment: Prison, Belonging, and the Quest for Humanized Justice (Cambridge UP, 2026) highlights the concept of 'belonging' as an unprecedented lens for critically interrogating the legitimacy of incarceration across penal theory, sentencing practice, and human rights frameworks. The chapters chart pathways for bridging the gap between the normative idea of punishment and the stark realities of prison life. The final chapter, written with scholars currently and formerly incarcerated in a New York State facility, reflects on how embracing belonging within penal approaches can inform responses to harm grounded in humanization, proximity, empowerment, and collaboration. With this chapter and more, the book, advances a call for deeper epistemic dialogue within legal discourse on crime, punishment, and justice.
• 
  Rhetorical Powers: How Rising States Shape International Order with Sasikumar Sundaram (Columbia UP, 2026) 02.10.2026 1u 7min

  Recent years have seen a striking resurgence of anti-imperial and anticolonial rhetoric on the international stage, from Global South to Global North and from the Left to the Right. Why do states deploy these forms of rhetoric in global politics? How do practitioners from the so-called non-Western world differ in their use and performance of rhetoric, and in what ways do they shape international order? In Rhetorical Powers: How Rising States Shape International Order (Columbia UP, 2026) Sasikumar Sundaram provides a bold new theory of rhetoric as power politics, demonstrating how non-Western states challenge their silencing within the Western-led international order. He argues that, in the deeply hierarchical international system, states in the lower rungs resort to rhetorical performances in order to be heard. Through anti-imperial and anticolonial rhetorical statecraft, states such as India, Brazil, and China seek to expose and exploit the contradictions in the legitimating principles, norms, and rules of the international system—and, in so doing, pursue and exercise power. Today, as Russia, Europe, and even the United States engage in anti-imperial and anticolonial rhetoric, Sundaram shows why lessons from the non-Western world are crucial to recognizing the dynamics of power politics and global disorder. A bracing challenge to established theories of power in international relations, Rhetorical Powers underscores the need to address enduring forms of silencing within the international order. Hosted by Sachin Nikarge
• 
  Born Again: Romanticism and Fundamentalism with Jeffrey Champlin (U Toronto Press, 2025) 01.10.2026 50min

  Born Again: Romanticism and Fundamentalism (U Toronto Press, 2025) examines the deep historical roots of fundamentalism in Protestantism and the imaginative traditions of Romantic literature. It explores how the resurgence of fundamentalist thought within “born again” Christianity seeks to repress the trauma of modernity through the belief that the world must be radically transformed to align with a divine standard. By analysing the logic of this repression, the book reveals an alternative vision: a “revivalist rebirth” that offers a new ethical imperative to creatively shape the world in collaboration with others. Thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, Percy Shelley, and Friedrich Schlegel are central to the analysis, as are the literary works Faust and Frankenstein. Jeffrey Champlin illustrates how a revivalist imagination challenges blind faith, presenting figures of life reawakened to conscious moral and political engagement. Engaging with Arendt’s politics of natality and Derrida’s ethics of survival, Born Again offers pathways to reimagine a world that confronts the profound losses fueling fundamentalist ideologies, making it a timely and thought-provoking exploration for contemporary readers. Jeffrey Champlin is Director of the Learning Commons and Lecturer in the Humanities at Bard College Berlin. His research emphasizes connections between literature and political theory. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.
• 
  How to Stay Human Forever: On America's Digital Technology Crisis with James Poulos 30.09.2026 1u 4min

  Many Americans have a constant dread of impending doom. Glued to the screens of our computers and smartphones, we sense that some total catastrophe is just around the corner. But what if our anxiety stems from an event that’s already completely destroyed an old world? What if the real cataclysm was the introduction of those computers and smartphones, and our current political, cultural, and social crisis is just our way of merely dealing with the fallout? So argues the political theorist James Poulos, who is my guest in Episode 7 of Season 6 on Madison’s Notes. Having earned his PhD in government at Georgetown University, he was a founding editor of The American Mind, Return, and Frontier, where he is currently editorial director. The author of The Art of Being Free (2017), Human, Forever (2021), I Know This Sounds Crazy (2024), and an upcoming book called, Golden Age Problems, he recently wrote a Palladium Magazine essay called, “The Dostoevskian Moment,” which we use along with Human, Forever to discuss the digital technology crisis. Along the way we discuss media theorists like Marshall McLuhan and Jean Beaudrillard, the American political tradition, post-Cold-War civilizational states, cryptocurrency and AI, digital sovereignty, the modern camps fighting over technology among effective altruists, vitalists, gnostics and post-humanists, conversions to Eastern Orthodoxy, the Pink Police State, why Mars colonies are safer for humanity than Lunar ones, and the genius of David Lynch. Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on the JMP substack page, “Madison’s Footnotes. Please share and enjoy.
• 
  Do We Really Need To Choose Between Jobs and the Environment? 29.09.2026 34min

  Host Licia Cianetti talks to Lorenzo Feltrin about his recent book Workers and the World: Fighting Ecological Crisis from Within (Verso, 2026). They discuss how the climate and ecological crisis often confronts workers with the impossible choice between the end of the month and the end of the world, but how this choice between jobs and environment is not as zero-sum as it is usually represented. Lorenzo explains how people living near toxic industries often lose both jobs and the environment, how this takes different forms in different parts of the world, and how new solidarities can emerge that could save livelihoods and nature. Guest: Lorenzo Feltrin is a post-doctoral researcher at the University Ca’ Foscari in Venice, working on a Marie Curie Global Fellowship titled "Labour and Ecology in an International Perspective: Porto Marghera in the Phosphates Archipelago". Between 2021 and 2024 he worked at the University of Birmingham. Presenter: Licia Cianetti is Associate Professor at the University of Birmingham and Founding Deputy Director of CEDAR. She is the Principal Investigator of an upcoming research project on “Resisting Inter-Scalar Authoritarian Networks and Coalitions” (funded by the EU under Horizon Europe grant no. 101286676). The People, Power, Politics podcast brings you the latest insights into the factors that are shaping and re-shaping our political world. It is brought to you by the Centre for Elections, Democracy, Accountability and Representation (CEDAR) based at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom.
• 
  Vulgar Marxism: Revolutionary Politics and the Dilemmas of Worker Education, 1891-1931 with Edward Baring (U Chicago Press, 2025) 28.09.2026 48min

  Offers a transformative reading of the Marxist tradition by uncovering its connections to the institutions and practices of worker education. For the past hundred years, “vulgar Marxism” has been the go-to insult among socialist and communist intellectuals, a shorthand for the ways Marxist theory could go wrong. But why would thinkers advocating for working-class emancipation use “vulgarity” as an epithet? In Vulgar Marxism: Revolutionary Politics and the Dilemmas of Worker Education, 1891–1931 (U Chicago Press, 2025), Edward Baring seeks an answer by delving into debates over Marxism in the first decades of the twentieth century. He shows that this common phrase wasn’t aimed primarily at popular understandings of Marx. Rather, it was used to attack intellectuals for failing to teach Marx’s theory to the working masses correctly. His history of “vulgar Marxism” homes in on the project of mass worker education at a time when the project was both widely pursued and fiercely contested. Worker education offered a mechanism through which Marxist theory was meant to promote large-scale social and political change, and it drew on a massive infrastructure of schools, publishing houses, and educational bureaus that stretched across Europe and reached millions. By centering this project, Baring radically recasts the history of Marxism from the Second International to World War II. He challenges classic oppositions between “economistic” and “cultural” versions of Marxism; rereads many of the most significant Marxist theorists of the time, including Karl Kautsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Georg Lukács, and Antonio Gramsci; and offers new resources for understanding how Marxist ideas transformed as they traveled around Europe and then spread throughout the world. Edward Baring is associate professor of history and human values at Princeton University. He is the author of Converts to the Real and The Young Derrida. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.
• 
  How Real Is Race?: Unraveling Race, Biology, and Culture with Carol C. Mukhopadhyay and Rosemary Henze (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025) 28.09.2026 1u 35min

  Tune in to this discussion about How Real Is Race?: Unraveling Race, Biology, and Culture by Carol C. Mukhopadhyay, Rosemary Henze, and Yolanda T. Moses (Rowman & Littlefield, 2025) Biologically speaking, there is no such thing as race. Yet this seems to contradict the experiences of people in the United States and other countries where racial classification is used daily, by individuals and institutions. Race still matters, whether in wealth accumulation, educational achievement, health, the legal system, or in personal safety. How can race not be real when we experience its effects every day? Mukhopadhyay, Henze, and Moses systematically deconstruct the myth of race as biology and address the reality of race as a cultural invention, drawing on biocultural, historical, and cross-cultural anthropological perspectives. In doing so, they shed light on the intricate interplay among race, biology, culture, power, and stratification. Part I, “The Fallacy of Race as Biology,” unravels the myth that races are biologically valid divisions of humanity. Part II, “Culture Creates Race,” explores race as a social construction; the emergence of the racial worldview as ideological justification for inequality; and how social processes, especially restrictions on interracial sex and marriage, maintained visible markers of racial hierarchy. Part III, “Contemporary Issues,” examines current manifestations of racial stratification including the educational achievement gap, health disparities, and how the language of race embodies and reinforces a racial worldview. Dr. Mukhopadhyay is a cultural anthropologist whose specialties are gender, family, sexuality, race, cultural diversity, multicultural education, cognitive anthropology, ethnographic decision-modeling, theory and methodology. Her research has focused on gendered activities, in households, politics, music, and science & engineering (STEM). This has involved fieldwork in both the United States and India. Dr. Rosemary Henze is an educational anthropologist whose teaching, research, and educational projects seek to enhance social justice and equity in education. She applies concepts and methods from anthropology and linguistics to the study of race relations, immigration and multilingualism, Islamophobia, and the spread of English, among other topics. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature.
• 
  The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to 21st-Century Fascism with Max Haiven (MIT Press, 2026) 28.09.2026 58min

  A provocative examination of the ways our economy has been rigged by financialization, and the importance of games to our dangerous political moment. In an age when capitalism feels like an unwinnable game, extreme reactionary ideas and politics are on the rise. The Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, Squid Game and much of reality TV are cultural reflections of a society of relentless, lonely competition, where each of us must become a player: a savvy risk-taker, a miniature corporation of one. But in a gamed economy we players feel played, and new forms of fascism promise harsh justice and revenge. This book theorizes the connections between the financialization of the capitalist economy, the gamification of our lives, and the rising threat of a uniquely twenty-first century form of fascistic politics. From vicious online swarmings to the QAnon conspiracy fantasy, from the siege of the US Capitol to the abuse of “free speech,” The Player and the Played: From Gamed Capitalism to 21st-Century Fascism with Max Haiven (MIT Press, 2026) analyzes the “playgrom” as a new form of extremist violence. Max Haiven explores how “derivative fascisms” both repeat and reinvent the terrors of the past in a financialized form. How have we learned to love the cheats who have power but loathe the cheats without it? It unpacks the worldbuilding (and world-destroying) urge of Silicon Valley. And it poses the urgent question: what is the antifascist game? Rudolf Thomas Inderst (*1978) enjoys video games since the early 1980s. He received a master’s degree in political science, American cultural studies as well as contemporary and recent history from Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich and holds three PhDs in game studies (LMU Munich, University of Passau & University of Vechta). Currently, he's teaching as a professor for game design and game studies at the University of Applied Sciences Neu-Ulm HNU, Germany, holds the position as lead editor at the online journal TITEL kulturmagazin for the game section, and is editor of the weekly game research newsletter Game Studies Watchlist.
• 
  Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature with Matthew Leggatt (SUNY Press, 2026) 27.09.2026 50min

  Wastelands and Wonderlands: Utopias and Dystopias in Film and Literature with Matthew Leggatt (SUNY Press, 2026) is an edited collection exploring utopias ad dystopias in films and literature. It challenges readers, in these uniquely dystopian times, to reevaluate their ideas about utopia and dystopia. The book brings together film, literary, and utopian studies scholars from across the world. As an interdisciplinary collection, it covers a wide range of utopias and dystopias, from those of visionaries as varied as William Morris and George Lucas to such fresh new and distinctive voices like Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and N. K. Jemisin. Contributors dismantle myths about utopian and dystopian film, literature, and television. Several chapters analyse the nature of utopian and dystopian fiction and its important relationship to our present moment. What's the future of utopia? What does it mean to be a utopia today? Do we still need the warnings of dystopia? Whether through ecocritical work, work aimed at decolonizing utopian studies, debates about our relationship with technology and the nonhuman, forms of utopian hope and pessimism, or new thinking about cinematic and literary techniques and production, the essays offer fresh insight into the subject area and something to interest any reader.
• 
  Femmephilia: Love Letters to Trans Mermaids, Queer Mothers, and Marilyn Monroe with Sophie Lewis 26.09.2026 1u 22min

  This episode’s centers on Sophie Lewis’s new book Femmephilia. A collection of essays published in various outlets over the last several years, this book will take readers through a number of disparate topics, from the recent Disney remake of The Little Mermaid to experiments with psychedelics to the bizarre meanings one might find at its end. Uniting it all though is an unapologetically anticapitalist and utopian feminism, one that sees in various examples and experiences of femme glimpses both of the contradictions of our present moment and brief glimmers of what an emancipated world might look like. Sophie Lewis is a freelance writer, with work appearing in a number of outlets including London Review of Books, The Drift and e-flux. Her previous books are Enemy Feminisms, Abolish the Family and Full Surrogacy Now.
• 
  Water Logics: Materialist Epistemologies for the Environmental Humanities with yasser elhariry and Edwige Tamalet Talbayev (U Virginia Press, 2026) 26.09.2026 46min

  Water Logics: Materialist Epistemologies for the Environmental Humanities (U Virginia Press, 2026) examines the epistemological adjustments that take place when we make water the source and medium for thinking about the world. Eschewing metaphorical readings of rivers, seas, and oceans, it brings together leading voices from across the social sciences and the humanities to argue rather for a distinct focus on materiality, engaging posthumanism, biotheory, and other cutting-edge theoretical approaches. From the Caribbean Sea to the Indian Ocean, this rich collection is inhabited by migrants, port cities, and coral reefs. It explores the fruitful potential of water for literary, anthropological, and ethical studies, bringing both cohesive transdisciplinarity and fresh comparative perspectives to hydro-criticism. Taken together, the wide range of critical interpretative practices constitutes a signal contribution to the blue humanities. Guest yasser elhariry is Associate Professor of French Studies and Chair of the Department of French & Italian Studies at Dartmouth College, where he is affiliated with the Programs in Comparative Literature, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies. He is the author of This Book Is Full of Holes: Literary Bodies & the Invention of an Idiom and Pacifist Invasions: Arabic, Translation & the Postfrancophone Lyric. He has published dozens of essays on Arabic and French lyric, translation, and postcolonialism. Along with Water Logics, he is coeditor most recently of Literature as Sound Studies, Re-Membering Hospitality in the Mediterranean, Abdelkébir Khatibi: Literature & Theory, and The Postlingual Turn. Guest Edwige Tamalet Talbayev is Associate Professor of French at Tulane University where she also holds affiliations with the Environmental Studies Program and the Middle East and North African Studies program, which she founded in 2022. Talbayev recently joined the faculty advisory board for the newly established Tulane Global Humanities Center. She concurrently serves as Professor Extraordinarius at the Institute for Social and Health Sciences at the University of South Africa (UNISA) and as a member of the advisory board for the Center for Francophone Research at the University of Leipzig. She is the long-time Editor of Expressions maghrébines and a co-editor of the “Passagen” book series at Georg Olms Verlag (Germany). Talbayev is the author of The Transcontinental Maghreb: Francophone Literature across the Mediterranean with Fordham UP and the co-editor of several edited collections; in addition to Water Logics and Rethinking Hospitality in the Mediterranean (both with our other guest today) these include a roundtable entitled “Ecocritical Terrains: Rethinking Tamazghan and Middle Eastern Environments” published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies in 2025. Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean. Their monograph Posthumanist Ecology in Global French Surrealism is forthcoming in 2027 from Northwestern University Press.
• 
  Assemblage Theory and Affect with Ian Buchanan (Bloomsbury, 2026) 25.09.2026 1u 28min

  From the inside flap: “ In this lucid and inventive work, Ian Buchanan argues that the pivotal concepts ‘assemblage’ and ‘affect,’ which were separated at birth, need to be reunited. Indeed, it is only by bringing them back together that we can fully understand their meaning. of Assemblage Theory and Affect (Bloomsbury, 2026) proposes three agenda-setting arguments: 1. Affect is a function of desire—its powers are the powers we attribute to desire. As such, like desire it should be considered a psychical agency. The assemblage, the body without organs and the abstract machine are all components of this psychical agency. 2. Affect is a capacitating power—it empowers us to meet life. Affect is not the measure of our response to a given stimulus, it is rather the capacity we have to respond to a stimulus in the way that we do. This is the essential argument of Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalytic project which is a kind of survivor’s guide to late capitalism. 3. The capacitating power of affect depends upon the combinations of bodies without organs and abstract machines that we have been able to put together by means of the assemblages available to us. This is what Deleuze means by an ethics of desire. ” Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University [email protected]
• 
  Driven to Their Knees: Humiliation in Contemporary Politics with Roxanne L. Euben (Princeton UP, 2025) 25.09.2026 56min

  Humiliation pervades our politics, from images of stripped Palestinian men in Gaza to mocking chants at MAGA rallies. It suffuses pictures and videos, speaks through bodies as well as words, and is expressed by those with too much power as well as by those with too little. In Driven to Their Knees, Roxanne Euben takes readers from conflicts in the Arabic-speaking world to America’s divided public square, advancing a theory of humiliation rooted in the ways people articulate and enact it. Euben analyzes some of the most conspicuous yet least studied Arabic expressions of humiliation, drawing on sources ranging from Qurʾānic commentary by Islamists to videos, poetry, songs, and tweets from the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Driven to Their Knees: Humiliation in Contemporary Politics (Princeton UP, 2025) reveals what the language of humiliation says—and also how it works. This groundbreaking book shows how humiliation expresses the imposition of impotence by those with undeserved power, and the way it converts relations of power into crises of virility. Humiliation rhetoric defines both the humiliated and the humiliator and issues an urgent call for a remedy in the viscerally charged language of emasculation. For Donald Trump and Usama bin Laden alike, this means driving their enemy to his knees for all to see, and then boasting about it to compound the degradation. But for others, humiliation galvanizes their struggle to “stand erect,” uniting them in a refusal to be bowed low. Humiliation is not just about power but is itself a powerful language that does far more than reflect contemporary politics. The language of humiliation remakes the very world in which we live. Roxanne L. Euben is the Walter H. and Leonore C. Annenberg Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. Her books include Journeys to the Other Shore: Muslim and Western Travelers in Search of Knowledge; Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism; and (with Muhammad Qasim Zaman) Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought: Texts and Contexts from al-Banna to Bin Laden (all Princeton). Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel: here
• 
  The Nature of Freedom: On the Republican Tradition with Philip Pettit 23.09.2026 57min

  What is freedom? Benjamin Constant and Isaiah Berlin divided the answers to that question into two categories: the positive conception of the ancients (freedom to participate in political life) and the negative conception of the moderns (freedom from external constraints). But what if this dichotomy is a false one? My guest on Madison’s Notes thinks so. So in Episode 6 of Season 6, I interview the political philosopher, Philip Pettit. The L.S. Rockefeller University Professor of Human Values at Princeton, the Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University, Professor Pettit is the author of many books, including Republicanism (1997) and The State (2023). Today, drawing upon Republicanism and The State, the nature of freedom as “non-domination,” the neo-republican tradition that began in the Italian Renaissance with Machiavelli, and how this account worked through the Enlightenment and into the American Founding. Also along the way, we talk about Henrik Ibsen, what Constant and Berlin got wrong, the intellectual historian Quentin Skinner, the relationship between technology and freedom, and how political freedom relates to spiritual freedom. Hosted by Ryan Shinkel, Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. The transcript for this interview is available on the JMP substack page, “Madison’s Footnotes.
• 
  Angela Last, "Tainted Tools: New Materialisms As a Decolonial Project" (Manchester University Press, 2026) 22.09.2026 34min

  In Tainted Tools: New Materialisms As a Decolonial Project (Manchester University Press, 2026), Angela Last offers a provocative intervention into the tense relationship between new materialist and decolonial thought. Although both seek to challenge dominant European categories and hierarchies, they are often treated as incompatible. New materialisms, in particular, have been criticised for sustaining a white, universalised vision of the human and overlooking the racialised histories embedded in the "nonhuman." a The book traces these tensions to an earlier encounter between new materialist and decolonial projects forged through experimental combinations of Marx and Nietzsche. Once used to counter fascism, Stalinism and colonialism, this politically charged fusion gradually became depoliticised, leaving unresolved contradictions. Rather than reviving these early formations, the book brings their strategies into dialogue with contemporary new materialist and decolonial approaches to build greater theoretical solidarity in times of crisis. Angela Last is a cultural geographer working at the intersection of postcolonial and science studies.
• 
  Joe Jackson, "Kahlil Joseph and the Audiovisual Atlantic: Music, Modernity, Transmedia Art" (Bloomsbury, 2024) 20.09.2026 1u 11min

  Kahlil Joseph has collaborated with musicians FKA twigs, Flying Lotus, Sampha and Shabazz Palaces among many others. He has directed numerous films, music videos and advertisements across Africa, America and Europe. The award-winning filmmaker's disruptive style – which frequently merges visual representations of transcontinental experiences with the countercultural energies of Afrodiasporic music – challenges the Eurocentric biases underpinning Western media. At the same time, his works generate various contradictions and tensions because they are themselves products situated within an economic framework of neoliberal capitalism, at once offering alternative ways of being while, simultaneously, participating in and thereby sustaining the social structures that they otherwise seek to subvert and dismantle. Kahlil Joseph and the Audiovisual Atlantic (Bloomsbury, 2024) generates ground-breaking new dialogues between a range of audial and visual theories that are shaped by Paul Gilroy's conceptualisation of The Black Atlantic (1993). The book analyzes Joseph's work through intersections of emergent music video and new media concepts as well as film theories from African, American and European perspectives. Vitally, it argues that such an interdisciplinary and transcontinental approach to film, music and new media scholarship enriches the possibilities of their respective and, simultaneously, entwined branches of knowledge In the episode, we discuss Joe Jackson's pathway into studying Joseph's scholarship, his work's dialogue with Paul Gilroy (alongside a host of other vital scholars of the audiovisual and race) - and make the case for greater focus on the music video as a distinctive field of study. Follow this link for a sample of Joseph's work here 
• 
  Abi Bae and Hamza Hamouchene eds., "Towards Palestinian Liberation: Global Perspectives on Anti-Colonial Resistance and Solidarity" (Daraja Press, 2026) 19.09.2026 42min

  The book Towards Palestinian Liberation: Global Perspectives on Anti-Colonial Resistance & Solidarity (Daraja Press, 2026), published by Daraja Press, portrays a collection of solidarity movements around the world, highlighting the interconnectedness of global struggles with Palestine. It situates Palestine in a wider, historical decolonial liberation movement. By examining the role of economic and political interests, it critically assesses the opportunities and challenges that these movements face. This book is an amazing new addition to the critical literature on Palestine. Abi Bae is a Korean researcher and activist currently working at the Transnational Institute. Hamza Hamouchene is a London-based Algerian researcher-activist, commentator and a founding member of Algeria Solidarity Campaign (ASC), and Environmental Justice North Africa (EJNA). The host of this episode is Sarah Vogelsanger. Sarah Vogelsanger is a feminist researcher and writer based in London.
• 
  Catherine A John, "Afroindigenization: A Theory of Grassroots Cultural Practice" (Duke UP, 2026) 15.09.2026 44min

  In Afroindigenization: A Theory of Grassroots Cultural Practice (Duke University Press, 2026), Catherine A. John addresses the underbelly of spiritual resilience shaping a range of African diasporic institutions, traditions, and practices. John argues that repressed forms of indigenous African knowledge systems manifest in a myriad of culturally embodied ways in African diaspora spaces and places. From mermaid lore in rural Jamaica to hip-hop trance-induced dance in Los Angeles to the stories of two debaters-turned-social-media-influencers, John shows how the descendants of enslaved Africans express the signs and substance of their afroindigenous power through collective creativity. Drawing from scholars such as Vèvè Clark, Hortense Spillers, Dianne M. Stewart, and Sylvia Wynter, Afroindigenization exposes the cultural and spiritual ancestries that lie at the heart of modern Black identities and practices. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
• 
  John Charles Simon and Jennalee Donian, "Understanding Laughter and Humor: Why We Laugh, Why We Don’t, and Why It Matters" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2026) 12.09.2026 1u 6min

  In John Charles Simon and Jennalee Donian’s Understanding Laughter and Humor: Why We Laugh, Why We Don’t, and Why It Matters (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025), the authors put forward a comprehensive new theoretical approach to understanding laughter and the humour we use to inspire it. Applying an evolutionary and biological lens to these complex and universal human behaviours, the book distinguishes itself from classical and contemporary theories by focusing not simply on laughter’s causes and effects, but on what can be gleaned from considering its communicative meaning. At the centre of the book is the Mutual Vulnerability Theory (MVT) of Laughter, which understands laughter as a vital form of nonverbal communication, one that seeks in various ways to “lift” or “lower” moments of physical, emotional, cognitive, or social vulnerability between people. From this perspective, laughter sheds light on the social dynamics that govern human interaction, both positive and negative. It reveals the importance of vulnerability and status in our conscious and subconscious lives, while also underscoring our desire to cooperate, our respect for those who compete fairly, and our disdain for those who do not. Wide-ranging and highly accessible, Understanding Laughter and Humor will be of interest to general readers, humour scholars, psychologists, anthropologists, comedians, and anyone curious about a seemingly mundane but vital aspect of everyday life — one intrinsic not only to human sociality, but also deeply connected to our great ape relatives and evolutionary past. Additional content mentioned in the episode: Understanding Laughter and Humor: A Companion and Guide, Volume 1, the first in a companion-guide series applying MVT to examples of humour and laughter across different media and formats. John’s Psychology Today blog, Laughter and Humor 101, which expands on and explores various aspects of the Mutual Vulnerability Theory. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory
• 
  Robert A. Wilson, "Kin Matters: Relational Beings in the Fragile Sciences" (Oxford UP, 2026) 10.09.2026 1u 6min

  What is kinship? This central question in cultural anthropology is standardly answered in terms of culturally constructed relationships that are unconstrained by biological relationships. In Kin Matters: Relational Beings in the Fragile Sciences (Oxford UP, 2026), Robert Wilson proposes an alternative view that does not separate kin relations from biological facts about reproduction that are universally known, such as the fact that human females are pregnant before they give birth. On the Progenerative View, kinship is the cultural elaboration of reproductive relations, which act as constraints on kin relations. Wilson, who is professor of philosophy at the University of Western Australia, also analyzes incest avoidance from this perspective, and draws on clinical findings, primatology, and philosophy of mind and philosophy of biology to develop his biologically-based yet non-reductive and culturally variable view of kinship. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory