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Education Podcasts

Authors join peers, scholars, and friends in conversation. Topics include environment, humanities, race, social justice, cultural studies, art, literature and literary criticism, media studies, sociology, anthropology, grief and loss, mental health, and more.

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United States

Description:

Authors join peers, scholars, and friends in conversation. Topics include environment, humanities, race, social justice, cultural studies, art, literature and literary criticism, media studies, sociology, anthropology, grief and loss, mental health, and more.

Twitter:

@UMinnPress

Language:

English

Contact:

6123011934


Episodes

The disruptive forces of an oil boom

2/27/2024
During the past decade, new oil plays have unsettled energy landscapes and imaginaries in the US. Settling the Boom, a volume of essays, studies how the disruptive forces of an oil boom in the northern Great Plains of Williston, North Dakota, are contained through the extension of settler temporalities, reassertions of heteropatriarchy, and the tethering of life to the volatility of oil and its cruel optimisms. Here, the book’s coeditors Mary E. Thomas and Bruce Braun are joined in conversation. Mary E. Thomas is associate professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at The Ohio State University. She is coeditor of Settling the Boom, coauthor of Urban Geography, and author of Multicultural Girlhood. Bruce Braun is professor of geography at the University of Minnesota. He is coeditor of Settling the Boom and Political Matter, and author of The Intemperate Rainforest. Episode references: Cruel Optimism / Lauren Berlant Pollution Is Colonialism / Max Liboiron White Earth (film) Jessica Christy, Through the Window exhibition Location of focus: Western North Dakota, including Willison (Williston Basin) and Dickinson, within the Bakken Formation. Settling the Boom: The Sites and Subjects of Bakken Oil, is available from University of Minnesota Press. This edited collection includes contributions from Morgan Adamson, Kai Bosworth, Thomas S. Davis, and Jessica Lehman.

Duration:00:47:29

Expelling public schools: Antiracist politics and school privatization.

2/21/2024
John Arena examines the more than two-decade struggle to privatize public schools in Newark, New Jersey—a conflict that is raging in cities across the country. Arena’s book Expelling Public Schools reveals the political rise of Cory Booker and Ras Baraka and what this particular case study illuminates about contemporary post-civil rights Black politics. Here, Arena is joined in conversation with David Forrest. John (Jay) Arena is associate professor of sociology at CUNY’s College of Staten Island. Arena is author of Expelling Public Schools: How Antiracist Politics Enable School Privatization in Newark and Driven from New Orleans: How Nonprofits Betray Public Housing and Promote Privatization. David Forrest is associate professor of politics at Oberlin College. He is author of A Voice but No Power: Organizing for Social Justice in Minneapolis. Works and scholars referenced: Adolph Reed Jr. (Stirrings in the Jug) David M. Kotz (The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism) Cedric Johnson Frances Fox Piven (Challenging Authority) Jane McAlevey (No Shortcuts) Preston H. Smith II (Racial Democracy and the Black Metropolis) Sharon Kurtz (Workplace Justice) Marc Doussard and Greg Schrock (Justice at Work) Kristen Buras (Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space) Touré Reed (Toward Freedom) Alf Gunvald Nilsen and Laurence Cox (We Make Our Own History) Colin Barker, Laurence Cox, John Krinsky, and Alf Gunvald Nilsen, editors (Marxism and Social Movements) Rosa Luxemburg (Rosa Luxemburg Speaks) Chris Maisano (“What Does Revolution Mean in the 21st Century?”, Jacobin) Mark R. Beissinger (The Revolutionary City) People and organizations referenced: Cory Booker Chris Christie Ras Baraka Newark’s downtown Teachers Village complex Sharpe James Cami Anderson Christopher Cerf Randi Weingarten Albert Shanker Karen Lewis Al Moussab Newark Education Workers This episode was recorded in September 2023. Expelling Public Schools: How Antiracist Politics Enable School Privatization in Newark is available from University of Minnesota Press. "Expelling Public Schools offers a fascinating look into the racial politics of corporate school reform in Newark Public Schools. John Arena takes a long view—just over two decades—and examines the reform movements and countermovements in the district from the top down and the bottom up. In assessing corporate school reform efforts under mayors Cory Booker and Ras Baraka, this deeply researched book illuminates the mechanisms that maintain educational inequality." —Rand Quinn, author of Class Action: Desegregation and Diversity in San Francisco Schools "It is rare to encounter a work that treats actually existing Black life, an approach best articulated by Cedric Johnson, to critically address contemporary Black urban regimes. Thoughtful, careful, and incisive, Expelling Public Schools does just that. In this moment when antiracism (and surface critiques of antiracism) is rife, John Arena’s work provides a wonderful tonic." —Lester Spence, author of Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-hop and Black Politics

Duration:01:13:52

Blowdown in the Boundary Waters

1/30/2024
More than twenty years ago, a bizarre confluence of meteorological events resulted in the most damaging blowdown in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness’s history. It traveled 1,300 miles and lasted 22 hours, flattening nearly 500,000 acres of the Superior National Forest. Hundreds of campers and paddlers were stranded and dozens injured; amazingly, no one died. The historic storm ultimately reshaped the region’s forests in ways we have yet to fully understand. Here, author Cary J. Griffith is joined in conversation with scientist Lee Frelich and Peter Leschak, who was involved in the response and rescue effort. Cary Griffith is author of several novels and four books of nonfiction, including Gunflint Falling: Blowdown in the Boundary Waters and Gunflint Burning: Fire in the Boundary Waters. He is recipient of a Minnesota Book Award and a Midwest Book Award. Lee Frelich is director of the Center for Forest Ecology at the University of Minnesota. He is listed among the top 1% of scientists in the Web of Science, Ecology, and Environment and has authored more than 200 publications, and has been featured in the New York Times, Newsweek, and the Washington Post. Peter Leschak was chief of the French Township fire department in Side Lake, Minnesota, for thirty years. He has written ten books and has worked in a variety of wildfire-related capacities and held positions of leadership in the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Forest Service. Gunflint Falling: Blowdown in the Boundary Waters is available from University of Minnesota Press. "In the tradition of The Perfect Storm, Cary J. Griffith brings readers into the Boundary Waters moment by moment as an epic gale sweeps through. Ample maps and in-depth interviews with witnesses both immerse us in one terrifying day and offer a glimpse of the past and future of Minnesota’s boreal forest." —Kim Todd, author of Sensational: The Hidden History of America’s “Girl Stunt Reporters” "In Gunflint Falling, Cary J. Griffith provides an accurate, comprehensive narrative of those impacted by one of the region’s most devastating storms. The damage and pain brought by the derecho storm was more severe than anything previously experienced in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The reader is taken into the personal experiences of the injured and those searching for them for fourteen days in the million-acre wilderness, and Griffith’s narrative of these experiences demonstrates how, when faced with an emergency, we come together to help one another." —Jim Sanders, retired forest supervisor, Superior National Forest (1996-2011), USDA Forest Service

Duration:00:41:06

Sugar, coal, oil: No more fossils.

1/23/2024
What is fossil civilization? In the book No More Fossils, Dominic Boyer tells the story of how we came to rationalize fossil fuel use through successive phases of sucropolitics (plantation sugar), carbopolitics (industrial coal), and petropolitics (oil and plastics), showing what tethers us to petroculture today and what it will take to overcome the forces that mire us in place. What can we do to make electroculture a more just and sustainable alternative? In this episode, Boyer is joined in conversation about modern energy politics with Cara Daggett. Dominic Boyer is an anthropologist, media maker, and environmental researcher who teaches at Rice University. His books include No More Fossils, Energopolitics, and Hyposubjects. Cara Daggett is associate professor of political science at Virginia Tech and author of The Birth of Energy. References: The Birth of Energy / Cara Daggett Anna Tsing Carbon Democracy / Timothy Mitchell Michel Foucault on biopower Sweetness and Power / Sidney Mintz Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History / Susan Buck-Morss Fossil Capital / Andreas Malm 15-Minute City John Locke Alexander Dunlap on Fossil Fuel+ Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More / Alexei Yurchak Staying with the Trouble / Donna Haraway Ariella Azoulay Kyle Powys Whyte Geontologies / Elizabeth Povinelli Low Carbon Pleasure / a collaborative experimental art and performance project by Dominic Boyer, Cymene Howe, and others Stacy Alaimo / ecophilia No More Fossils is available from University of Minnesota Press. An open-access edition is available to read free online at manifold.umn.edu.

Duration:01:04:05

Comics, visual culture, and feminism in the 1980s

1/17/2024
In Visible Archives is a book that explores a number of feminist and cultural touchstones of the 1980s and examines how visual culture interacts with these pivotal moments. Author Margaret Galvan goes deep into the archives to bring together a decade’s worth of research that includes comics, collages, photographs, drawings, and other media produced by women including Nan Goldin, Alison Bechdel, Lee Marrs, and Gloria Anzaldúa. Galvan demonstrates how women represented their bodies and sexualities on their own terms and created visibility for new, diverse identities. Galvan is joined here in conversation with Anna Peppard and Ramzi Fawaz. Margaret Galvan is assistant professor of English at the University of Florida and author of In Visible Archives: Queer and Feminist Visual Culture in the 1980s. Anna Peppard is a writer, researcher, podcaster, and educator. Peppard is an adjunct lecturer in the department of Communication, Popular Culture, and Film at Brock University and editor of Supersex: Sexuality, Fantasy, and the Superhero. Ramzi Fawaz is an award-winning queer cultural critic, public speaker, and educator. Fawaz is a Romnes Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and author of Queer Forms and The New Mutants. Episode references: Trina Robbins Hillary Chute / Graphic Women Gloria Anzaldúa / Borderlands and This Bridge Called My Back Alison Bechdel Nan Goldin Diary (1982) from the Barnard Sex Conference (Hannah Alderfer, Beth Jaker, Marybeth Nelson) Kristen Hogan / The Feminist Bookstore Movement Lee Marrs / The Further Fattening Adventures of Pudge, Girl Blimp Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing (exhibit) Roberta Gregory Maria Cotera / Chicana por mi Raza (digital project) Chicana Movidas / edited by Dionne Espinoza, María Eugenia Cotera, and Maylei Blackwell In Visible Archives: Queer and Feminist Visual Culture in the 1980s is available from University of Minnesota Press. This book has an open-access Manifold edition that is free to read online. "Margaret Galvan asks all the right questions about queer and feminist visual storytelling from the 1980s: Where were these works situated? How did communities use them? How have they been archived? Both commentary upon as well as an integral part of the activist project begun by the creators themselves, In Visible Archives helps keep these remarkable works visible for us all." —Justin Hall, California College of the Arts, editor of No Straight Lines "This wonderful book demonstrates the critical importance of community-based archives. Utilizing primary source materials, Margaret Galvan has produced an original and consequential contribution to the history of the feminist sex wars, and her attention to the visual aspects of those documents provides long overdue recognition to the period’s artists, designers, and activists." —Gayle Rubin, University of Michigan

Duration:00:49:36

Care is more than human—it's creaturely.

12/5/2023
Benjamin Meiches explores the role of animals laboring alongside humans (mine-clearance dogs, milk-producing cows and goats, disease-identifying rats) in humanitarian operations, generating new ethical possibilities of care in humanitarian practice—and opening up new ethical ways to think about being human in terms of how we interact with nonhuman animals. Meiches, author of Nonhuman Humanitarians, is joined here in conversation with Stefanie Fishel. Benjamin Meiches is associate professor of politics at the Univeristy of Washington-Tacoma. He is author of Nonhuman Humanitarians: Animal Interventions in Global Politics and The Politics of Annihilation: A Genealogy of Genocide. Stefanie Fishel is lecturer in politics and international relations at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. Fishel is author of The Microbial State: Global Thriving and the Body Politic and contributor to the edited volume The Long 2020. EPISODE REFERENCES: -Emmanuel Levinas, “The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights,” in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism (trans. Sean Hand) -Heifer International (organization) -J. M. Coetzee / The Lives of Animals -Brian Massumi / What Animals Teach Us about Politics -Liisa Malkki / The Need to Help -Timothy Morton / Dark Ecology -Timothy Morton / Ecology without Nature -David Shannon / Duck on a Bike -Jack Halberstam / Wild Things -Eugene Thacker / In the Dust of This Planet

Duration:00:55:37

Cactus hunters and the illicit succulent trade.

11/14/2023
What inspires desire for plants? In The Cactus Hunters, Jared Margulies takes readers through the intriguing world of succulent collecting, where collectors and conservationists alike are animated by passions that sometimes exceed the limits of the law. His globe-spanning journey offers complex insight into the fields of botany and criminology, political ecology and human geography, and psychoanalysis. Here, Margulies is joined in conversation with Samantha Walton. Jared Margulies is assistant professor of political ecology in the Department of Geography at the University of Alabama. Margulies is author of The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade. Samantha Walton is professor of modern literature at Bath Spa University in England. Walton is author of Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure and The Living World: Nan Shepherd and Environmental Thought. EPISODE REFERENCES: Nan Shepherd The Detectorists (British comedy series) Sheffield Branch of the British Cactus and Succulent Society Cactus and Succulent Society of America Jacques Lacan Sigmund Freud Hannah Dickinson Paul Kingsbury Anna Secor Lucas Pohl Robert Fletcher / Failing Forward Alberto Vojtech Frič Locations discussed: England Brazil Czech Republic Mexico The Cactus Hunters: Desire and Extinction in the Illicit Succulent Trade is available from University of Minnesota Press. "This book offers a powerful example of the value of close attention to the entangled lives of plants and their people." —Thom van Dooren, author of A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions "A deeply felt and nuanced reckoning with desire as a structurally produced and world-making force—a unique and major contribution to political ecology." —Rosemary Collard, author of Animal Traffic: Lively Capital in the Global Exotic Pet Trade

Duration:00:51:05

Imagining a new—human and nonhuman—grammar of urban life.

11/7/2023
“There is always some moment when other-than-human life bursts into presence amid the clamor of urban routine.” —Maan Barua, Lively Cities One of the fundamental dimensions of urbanization is its radical transformation of nature. The book Lively Cities: Reconfiguring Urban Ecology departs from conventions of urban studies to argue that cities are lived achievements forged by a multitude of entities, drawing attention to a suite of beings, human and nonhuman, that make up the material politics of city making. From macaques and cattle in Delhi to invasive parakeet colonies in London, author Maan Barua examines the rhythms, paths, and agency of nonhumans across the city. Barua is joined here in conversation with Sandra Jasper. Maan Barua is a university lecturer in human geography at the University of Cambridge. Sandra Jasper, a geographer and urbanist, is assistant professor of geography and gender at Humboldt University of Berlin. References: Matthew Gandy Tom Fry Garry Marvin Vinciane Despret Anindya Sinha ARCH+ exhibit Cohabitation: A Manifesto for the Solidarity of Non-Humans and Humans in Urban Space (https://archplus.net/de/cohabitation-EN/) Yi-Fu Tuan Deleuze Charles Elton Marx Laura Fortunato Sylvia Federici Lively Cities: Reconfiguring Urban Ecology is available from University of Minnesota Press.

Duration:00:56:27

Political violence and abolitionist futures.

11/3/2023
Terrorism on Trial examines the contemporary role U.S. domestic courts play in the global war on terror. Author Nicole Nguyen advocates for a rethinking of popular understandings of political violence and its root causes, and exposes how dominant academic discourses, geographical imaginations, and social processes have shaped terrorism prosecutions—and disempower communities of color. Author Nicole Nguyen is joined here in conversation with Nadine Naber. This conversation was recorded in August 2023. Nicole Nguyen is associate professor of criminology, law, and justice at the University of Illinois Chicago, and is author of Terrorism on Trial: Political Violence and Abolitionist Futures; Suspect Communities: Anti-Muslim Racism and the Domestic War on Terror; and A Curriculum of Fear: Homeland Security in U.S. Public Schools. Nadine Naber is professor in the Gender and Women’s Studies and Global Asian Studies programs at the University of Illinois Chicago. Naber is founder of Liberate Your Research Workshops. Terrorism on Trial is available from University of Minnesota Press.

Duration:00:57:45

Redefining extinction through thawing permafrost.

10/26/2023
In Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood, Charlotte Wrigley considers how permafrost—and its disappearance—redefines extinction to be a lack of continuity that affects both life and nonlife on earth. With a look at the coldest regions in the world, Wrigley examines the wild new economies and mitigation strategies responding to thawing permafrost, including such projects as Pleistocene Park, Colossal, and Sooam Biotech, and offers a new angle on extinction through the concept of discontinuity. Here, Wrigley is joined in conversation with Pey-Yi Chu. Charlotte Wrigley is a postdoctoral researcher at The Greenhouse – Center for Environmental Humanities at the University of Stavanger, Norway. She is author of Earth, Ice, Bone, Blood: Permafrost and Extinction in the Russian Arctic. Pey-Yi Chu is associate professor of history at Pomona College in Claremont, California. She is author of The Life of Permafrost: A History of Frozen Earth in Russian and Soviet Science. PUBLICATION REFERENCES: The Life of Permafrost / Pey-Yi Chu Once Upon the Permafrost / Susan Crate The Breath of the Permafrost / Nikolai Sleptsov-Sylyk Cryopolitics / Joanna Radin and Emma Kowal, editors PLACES REFERENCED: -Yakutsk, the capital of the Russian region of the Sakha Republic -Chersky, Arctic port in the Sakha District on the Kolyma River -Permafrost bank on the Kolyma called Duvanny Yar -Pleistocene Park in Chersky PEOPLE MENTIONED: -Sergey and Nikita Zimov, geophysicist and son behind Pleistocene Park project -George Church of Harvard University, behind the business Colossal -Hwang Woo-Suk (Sooam Biotech), biotechnology expert and veterinarian who claimed to clone human embryonic cells and does work in Yakutsk with mammoths. -Stewart Brand, environmentalist and founder of the Long Now Foundation, known for quote: “We are as gods, so we have to get good at it.” More about the book: z.umn.edu/EarthIceBoneBlood

Duration:00:47:04

Emergency response and its significant toll.

10/17/2023
From his first days as a rookie firefighter and emergency medical technician to his command of a company as a twenty-year veteran, Jeremy Norton has made regular, direct encounters with the sick, the dying, and the dead. In his memoir, Trauma Sponges: Dispatches from the Scarred Heart of Emergency Response, Norton documents the life of an emergency responder in Minneapolis, revealing the stark realities of humanity at its finest and its worst. Here, Norton is joined in conversation with colleagues: Captain Ricardo Anaya, Captain Shana York, and retired Captain Bridget Bender. Jeremy Norton has been a firefighter/EMT with the Minneapolis Fire Department since 2000. He was born and raised in Washington, DC, and was a high school teacher in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He taught creative writing at the Loft Literary Center before joining the MFD. Bridget Bender is a recently retired captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department. Ricardo Anaya is a captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department and has been a Minneapolis firefighter since 2015. Shana York is a longtime firefighter and captain with the Minneapolis Fire Department. Trauma Sponges is available from University of Minnesota Press. "While many bear witness to injustice and decide that silence best serves their privilege, some use their privilege to dismantle the inequities that created the disparities in the first place. Jeremy Norton is the latter." —Dr. Michele Harper, author of The Beauty in Breaking "Trauma Sponges is a powerful book, by turns tender, brutal, and incisive, full of wisdom and wonder." —Sam Lipsyte, author of No One Left to Come Looking for You and The Ask "Norton is the Poet Laureate of Emergency Services, a writer whose talent and heart spark and crackle on every page, devastating and dazzling with equal measure. He sorts through the wreckage of the lives he's saved and those that were lost, presenting us with what remains: our raw humanity and, somehow, hope." —Nora McInerny, founder of the Terrible, Thanks for Asking podcast and best-selling author of Bad Vibes Only "With clarity and sensitivity, Jeremy Norton has written an eye-opening book that shows us what firefighting is often about: encountering medical emergencies more often than fires, helping strangers through the trauma of death and loss, and witnessing the ways that racism, poverty, and violence singe our society. Theirs is a particular courage that we must all celebrate." —Dr. Sunita Puri, author of That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour

Duration:01:19:55

The New American War Film

9/28/2023
Unfolding amid an atmosphere of profound anxiety and disillusionment, the new American war film demonstrates a breakdown of the prevailing cultural narratives that had come to characterize conflict in the previous century. In the wake of 9/11, both the nature of military conflict and the symbolic frameworks that surround it have been dramatically reshaped. The New American War Film charts society’s shifting attitudes toward violent conflict and what is broadly considered to be its acceptable repercussions. Drawing attention to changes in gender dynamics and the focus on war’s lasting psychological effects within films such as The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, Eye in the Sky, American Sniper, and others, author Robert Burgoyne analyzes how cinema both reflects and reveals the makeup of the national imaginary. Robert Burgoyne taught film studies for several decades at Wayne State University and at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He is author of seven books including The New American War Film and Film Nation: Hollywood Looks at U.S. History. Kim Nelson is the Director of the Humanities Research Group and an Associate Professor at the University of Windsor in Canada. Her films have been screened internationally at film festivals and by broadcasters in Canada and the US. She is co-editor of The Routledge Companion to History and the Moving Image and author of Making History Move: Five Principles of the Historical Film. FILM REFERENCES: The Hurt Locker (2008) Saving Private Ryan (1998) Spanish–American War films of Thomas Edison’s 1898-99 series Eye in the Sky (2015) Restrepo (2010) American Sniper (2014) Zero Dark Thirty (2012) A Private War (2018) Platoon (1986) Full Metal Jacket (1987) Born on the Fourth of July (1989) Battleship Potemkin (1925) DOCUMENTARY REFERENCES: Restrepo (2010 film) Infidel (2010 photo series) Into the Korengal (2010 photo series) Sleeping Soldiers—single screen (2009 short video, Tim Hetherington) OTHER REFERENCES: Fredric Jameson Homer/The Iliad Thomas Elsaesser on “productive pathology” -Robert Burgoyne's The New American War Film and Film Nation are available from University of Minnesota Press.

Duration:00:57:31

Gramsci at Sea

9/19/2023
In Gramsci at Sea, author Sharad Chari asks how the environmental crisis of the oceans is linked to legacies of capitalism and imperialism across and within the oceans. Chari reads Antonio Gramsci as a thinker of the oceanic crisis, drawing on the philosopher’s prison notes and questions concerning waves of imperial power in the inter-war oceans of his time. Here, Chari is joined in conversation with Charne Lavery, Melissa Marschke, and Philippe Le Billon. Sharad Chari is associate professor of geography and critical theory at the University of California, Berkeley. He is author of Gramsci at Sea and Fraternal Capital. Charne Lavery is senior lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. She is author of Writing Ocean Worlds. Melissa Marschke is professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. She is author of Life, Fish and Mangroves. Philippe Le Billon is professor in the Department of Geography and the School of Public Policy and Global Affairs at the University of British Columbia. He is author of Wars of Plunder. Persons and works referenced: -Fernando Coronil -The Many-Headed Hydra by Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh -Meg Samuelson, “Thinking with Sharks,” Australian Humanities Review -Matthew Shutzer -Gavin Capps -Damien Hirst’s shark tanks -Moby Dick by Herman Melville (character of Pip) -Ellen Gallagher -Katherine McKittrick -Drexciya -John Akomfrah’s Vertigo Sea -Kamau Brathwaite’s “tidalectics” More about the book: Gramsci at Sea is available from University of Minnesota Press. An open-access edition is available to read for free online at manifold.umn.edu.

Duration:00:38:51

On Nietzsche and posthumanist philosophy

8/18/2023
Focusing on Friedrich Nietzsche’s reception of the life sciences of his day (including concerns with insects and the emergent social properties they exhibit) and his reflections on technology—research areas as central to Nietzsche’s work as they are to posthumanism—Edgar Landgraf provides fresh readings of Nietzsche and a critique of posthumanist and transhumanist philosophies in his new book, Nietzsche’s Posthumanism. Here, Landgraf is joined in conversation with Christian Emden and Stefan Herbrechter. Edgar Landgraf is distinguished research professor of German at Bowling Green State University. He is author of Nietzsche’s Posthumanism and Improvisation as Art, and coeditor of Posthumanism in the Age of Humanism and Play in the Age of Goethe. Christian Emden is Frances Moody Newman Professor at Rice University where he teaches German intellectual history and political thought. He is author of several books on Nietzsche, including Nietzsche’s Naturalism and Nietzsche on Language, Consciousness, and the Body. Stefan Herbrechter is former Reader in Cultural Theory at Coventry University and former professor of English and cultural studies at Heidelberg University in Germany. He is an independent scholar of critical posthumanism and author of several books including Before Humanity and Posthumanism. Episode references: Friedrich Nietzsche Cary Wolfe Baruch Spinoza Jane Bennett Alfred Espinas Bernard Stiegler Ernst Kapp Charles Darwin Rosi Braidotti Francesca Ferrando Patricia MacCormack Tamar Sharon Reading list: Vibrant Matter / Jane Bennett On Animal Societies / Alfred Espinas Nietzsche’s Animal Philosophy / Vanessa Lemm Meeting the Universe Halfway / Karen Barad Nietzsche’s Naturalism / Christian J. Emden Nietzsche on Language, Consciousness, and the Body / Christian J. Emden How We Became Posthuman / N. Katherine Hayles Staying with the Trouble / Donna Haraway Posthumanism / Stefan Herbrechter The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism / Arthur Kroker Insect Media / Jussi Parikka Before the Law / Cary Wolfe Keywords: Nietzsche, posthumanism, transhumanism, critical posthumanism, swarm theory, insects, history of technology, human agency, posthumanist ethics, posthumanist politics

Duration:00:47:46

Ark thinking: Climate change and the Great Flood

8/8/2023
In Noah’s Arkive, Jeffrey J. Cohen and Julian Yates examine the long history of imagining endurance against climate change catastrophe—as well as alternative ways of creating refuge. Arguing that the biblical ark may well be the worst possible exemplar of human behavior, this book uncovers the startling afterlife of the Genesis narrative and surveys the long history of dwelling with the consequences of choosing only a few to survive in order to start the world over. Here, Cohen and Yates are interviewed by Steven Swarbrick. Jeffrey J. Cohen is Dean of Humanities at Arizona State University. He is author or editor of several books, including Noah’s Arkive, Stone, Veer Ecology, and Elemental Ecocriticism. Julian Yates is H. Fletcher Brown Professor of English and Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware. He is author or editor of several books, including Noah’s Arkive; Of Sheep, Oranges, and Yeast; and Error, Misuse, Failure. Steven Swarbrick is assistant professor of English at Baruch College, City University of New York. He is author of The Environmental Unconscious. Episode references: Bible (Genesis) Athanasius Kircher (Arca Noe) N. K. Jemisin (Emergency Skin) Jeanette Winterson (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit) Rebecca Solnit (A Paradise Built in Hell, “disaster utopias”) Donna Haraway (A Cyborg Manifesto, The Companion Species Manifesto) Anna Tsing Silo (Apple TV+ show) (with speculation spoiler alert) William de Brailes (The Flood of Noah) (image appearing in color in the book) Arks visited in this book include: Ark Encounter, Williamstown, Kentucky Biosphere 2, Pinal County, Arizona The Ark of Safety, Frostburg, Maryland Keywords: environmental humanities, climate change, Genesis, catastrophe, disaster utopias, artificial intelligence, ark thinking, medieval studies, monsters, giants, groundless reading, tension, contradiction, hope “The worst thing you can do, we have learned, is to imagine that you are no longer on an ark.” (from Noah’s Arkive, page 3)

Duration:00:49:03

Have we ever been civilian? On war’s expansion beyond the battlefield.

8/1/2023
As military and other forms of political violence become the planetary norm, On Posthuman War traces the expansion of war as manifest within humanity’s individual, sociocultural, and biological existence. Author Mike Hill identifies three human-focused disciplines newly turned against humanity (demography, anthropology, and neuroscience) and questions the very notion of society. This episode brings Hill into conversation with Robyn Marasco and Warren Montag. Mike Hill is professor of English at SUNY Albany. He is coauthor (with Warren Montag) of The Other Adam Smith and author of After Whiteness and On Posthuman War. Robyn Marasco teaches political theory at Hunter College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. Marasco is author of The Highway of Despair. Warren Montag is professor of English at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Montag is author of several books including Althusser and His Contemporaries. Episode references: Immanuel Kant Claus von Clausewitz (On War) Counterinsurgency Field Manual (FM 3–24) of 2006 The U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual (from University of Chicago Press) The Gates Doctrine National Security Strategy American Sniper (opening of the film) Alain Badiou Topics: US war strategy (specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan) Gender politics in the US Crisis in the humanities Climate change Terms/keywords: Civilianized De-civilianized Identity infiltration Computation “Moving through the three fields of study identified in what follows as war disciplines (demography, anthropology, and neuroscience), computational technology is key … because, like war, it is both ubiquitous and largely invisible.” (from the Preface, page xxi)

Duration:01:14:53

The Rise of Economic and Racial Justice Coalitions in Cities

6/13/2023
In the 2010s cities and counties across the US witnessed long-overdue change as they engaged more with questions of social, economic, and racial justice. After decades of urban economic restructuring that intensified class divides and institutional and systemic racism, dozens of local governments countered the conventional wisdom that cities couldn’t address inequality—enacting progressive labor market policies, from $15 minimum wages to paid sick leave. In their book Justice at Work: The Rise of Economic and Racial Justice Coalitions in Cities, Marc Doussard and Greg Schrock visit case studies in cities including Chicago, Detroit, Denver, Seattle, and New Orleans, and show that the contemporary wave of successful progressive organizing efforts is likely to endure—but their success hinges on a few factors including sustaining power at the grassroots. Here, Marc Doussard is in conversation with David B. Reynolds. Marc Doussard is professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He is coauthor of Justice at Work: The Rise of Economic and Racial Justice Coalitions in Cities and author of Degraded Work: The Struggle at the Bottom of the Labor Market. David B. Reynolds was director of the Center for Labor and Community Studies at University of Michigan. Reynolds has been a labor educator for 20 years and is coauthor of A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement and coeditor of Igniting Justice and Progressive Power: The Partnership for Working Families Cities. Books and published works referenced: -Justice at Work: The Rise of Economic and Racial Justice Coalitions in Cities by Marc Doussard and Greg Schrock -Degraded Work: The Struggle at the Bottom of the Labor Market by Marc Doussard -A New New Deal: How Regional Activism Will Reshape the American Labor Movement by Amy B. Dean and David B. Reynolds -Igniting Justice and Progressive Power: The Partnership for Working Families Cities by David B. Reynolds and Louise Simmons -Partnering for Change: Unions and Community Groups Build Coalitions for Economic Justice, edited by David B. Reynolds (with essay by Reynolds and Jen Kern: Labor and the Living Wage Movement) -”Living Wage Campaigns: An activist’s guide to building the movement for economic justice.” David Reynolds and Jen Kern. (Labor Studies Center, Wayne State University and Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, 2000.) -Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies by John Kingdon -The City Is the Factory, edited by Miriam Greenberg and Penny Lewis Other references: -Fight for 15 -ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) -PowerSwitch Action: https://www.powerswitchaction.org/ -American Rescue Plan (also known as the American Rescue Plan Act or ARPA) -The Green New Deal Cities mentioned: Seattle Detroit Denver Chicago San Jose San Diego Silicon Valley Ann Arbor

Duration:01:14:44

The Lichen Museum with A. Laurie Palmer (Art after Nature 4)

4/21/2023
Lichens are composite organisms made of a fungus and an alga or cyanobacteria thriving in a mutually beneficial relationship. The Lichen Museum looks to these complex organisms, remarkable for their symbiosis, diversity, longevity, and adaptability, as models for relations rooted in collaboration and nonhierarchical structures. Author A. Laurie Palmer channels the personal, the scientific, the philosophical, and the poetic to imagine a radical new approach to human interconnection. Palmer is joined in conversation with Art after Nature series editors Giovanni Aloi and Caroline Picard. A. Laurie Palmer is an artist and professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Dr. Giovanni Aloi is an author, educator, and curator specializing in the representation of nature and the environment in art. Aloi is editor-in-chief of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture. Caroline Picard is a writer, cartoonist, curator, and executive director of Green Lantern Press. Praise for The Lichen Museum: "A deeply engaging, provocative, humorous, and moving account of why we should pay more attention to lichens. As lichens can be found anywhere, the entire surface of the earth becomes the lichen museum." —Heather Davis, author of Plastic Matter "Meditative and inquisitive." —Foreword "Reading this work feels like taking a series of walks with a particularly curious and sensitive companion, consistently attentive to otherwise neglected facets of the actual environment." —e-flux Learn more about The Lichen Museum at the University of Minnesota Press website.

Duration:00:43:49

Inside the Spiral: The Passions of Robert Smithson

4/11/2023
The first biography of Robert Smithson, Inside the Spiral deepens understanding of his art by addressing the potent forces in his life that were shrouded by his success, including his suppressed early history as a painter; his affiliation with Christianity, astrology, and alchemy; and his sexual fluidity. Author Suzaan Boettger uncovers Smithson’s story with great sensitivity to the experiences of loss and existential strife that defined his distinct artistic language. This biographical analysis offers unprecedented insight into the hidden impulses of one of modern art’s most enigmatic figures. Here, Suzaan Boettger is joined in conversation with Greg Lindquist. Suzaan Boettger is a scholar, arts journalist, and critic based in New York City. She is author of Inside the Spiral: The Passions of Robert Smithson and Earthworks: Art and the Landscape of the Sixties. Greg Lindquist is an artist, writer, and professor who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. References/artworks of Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty Buried Angel Plunge The Flayed Angels Vile Flower Dark Sister East Coast/West Coast. Artwork by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. Broken Circle/Spiral Hill (Emmen, Netherlands) Amarillo Ramp References/published works: -A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey (Robert Smithson, article in Artforum) -The Writings of Robert Smithson / edited by Nancy Holt; 1979. -"Living extinction: Robert Smithson’s Dinosaurs," by Suzaan Boettger (Burlington Contemporary) -Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings / Jack Flam, editor -Robert Smithson. MOCA catalogue, 2004. Connie Butler, Thomas Crow, Eugenie Tsai -The Shape of Time / George Kubler. -”Jackson Pollock/Robert Smithson: The Myth/The Mythologist.” Howard Junker. Arts Magazine, May 1978. -”The Art Establishment,” Harold Rosenberg. Esquire, January 1, 1965. References/people: Virginia Dwan (gallery owner) Doug Chrismas (gallery owner) Isenheim Altarpiece Ruth Kligman Jackson Pollock Jasper Johns Louise Nevelson More about the book: z.umn.edu/InsideTheSpiral

Duration:01:07:41

Making breathable worlds through citizen engagement

3/17/2023
Modern environments are awash with pollutants. The book Citizens of Worlds is the first thorough study of the increasingly widespread use of digital technologies to monitor and respond to air pollution. Drawing on data from the Citizen Sense research group, which worked with communities in the US and the UK to develop digital-sensor toolkits, author Jennifer Gabrys argues that citizen sensing promises positive change—and also collides with entrenched power structures. What are worlds? Who can do environmental monitoring? How might different means of computation tell a more complete story about pollution and its effects? In this episode, Jennifer talks with Helen Pritchard about Citizen Sense’s collaborative research in northeastern Pennsylvania and southeast and central London. Jennifer Gabrys is chair in Media, Culture, and Environment in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. She leads the Planetary Praxis group, and Citizen Sense and AirKit projects. Her books include Citizens of Worlds: Open-Air Toolkits for Environmental Struggle; How to Do Things with Sensors; and Program Earth: Environmental Sensing Technology and the Making of a Computational Planet. Her work can be found at planetarypraxis.org and jennifergabrys.net. Helen Pritchard is professor and head of research at IXDM (Institute for Experimental Design and Media Cultures) at the HGK in Basel. Helen is an artist-designer, member of Citizen Sense, co-organizer of The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest, and a contributor to Critical Media Lab. More info: helenpritchard.info. Citizen Sense is a research initiative funded by the European Research Council that investigates the relationship between technologies and practices of environmental sensing and citizen engagement. More info: citizensense.net. The book Citizens of Worlds: Open-Air Toolkits for Environmental Struggle is an open-access title, available to read for free at: manifold.umn.edu/projects/citizens-of-worlds Episode citations and references include: Alfred North Whitehead on breathing, subjects and worlds Frantz Fanon on combat breathing Open Air Alexis Pauline Gumbs Lauren Berlant Heather Love / Feeling Backward

Duration:00:52:27