Best Vanias Podcasts (2026)

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Andrea Gevurtz Arai ed., "Spaces of Creative Resistance: Social Change Projects in Twenty-First-Century East Asia" (Rutgers UP, 2025) 1:22:45

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5d ago1:22:45

1:22:45

An exciting collection of stories of change that most people don’t usually hear from the bottom up, from the grassroots, about what’s happening in East Asia. Spaces of Creative Resistance: Social Change Projects in Twenty-First-Century East Asia (Rutgers UP, 2025) brings together an exciting cross-regional interdisciplinary group of scholars, schol…

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Nicholas L. Caverly, "Demolishing Detroit: How Structural Racism Endures" (Stanford UP, 2025) 49:56

6d ago49:56

49:56

In this episode, Nick Caverly talks about his new book, Demolishing Detroit: How Structural Racism Endures (Stanford UP, 2025). For decades, Detroit residents, politicians, planners, and advocacy organizations have campaigned for the elimination of empty buildings from city neighborhoods. Leveling these structures, many argue, is essential to makin…

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Suvi Rautio, "The Invention of Tradition in China: Story of a Village and a Nation Remade" (Springer Nature, 2024) 1:18:40

7d ago1:18:40

1:18:40

Today, anthropologist Professor Anru Lee is joining NBN as a guest host to interview me, Suvi Rautio, on my new book, The Invention of Tradition in China: Story of a Village and a Nation Remade published by Palgrave in 2024. In China, heritage projects are sprouting across the countryside carrying the promise of Xi Jinping’s “Chinese dream” as a ca…

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Karma F. Frierson, "Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz" (U California Press, 2025) 49:56

9d ago49:56

49:56

The Caribbean port city of Veracruz is many things. It is where the Spanish first settled and last left the colony that would go on to become Mexico. It is a destination boasting the “happiest Carnival in the world,” nightly live music, and public dancing. It is also where Blackness is an integral and celebrated part of local culture and history, b…

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Karma F. Frierson, "Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz" (U California Press, 2025) 49:56

9d ago49:56

49:56

The Caribbean port city of Veracruz is many things. It is where the Spanish first settled and last left the colony that would go on to become Mexico. It is a destination boasting the “happiest Carnival in the world,” nightly live music, and public dancing. It is also where Blackness is an integral and celebrated part of local culture and history, b…

1
Karma F. Frierson, "Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz" (U California Press, 2025) 49:56

9d ago49:56

49:56

The Caribbean port city of Veracruz is many things. It is where the Spanish first settled and last left the colony that would go on to become Mexico. It is a destination boasting the “happiest Carnival in the world,” nightly live music, and public dancing. It is also where Blackness is an integral and celebrated part of local culture and history, b…

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Irvin Ibargüen, "Caught in the Current: Mexico's Struggle to Regulate Emigration, 1940-1980" (UNC Press, 2025) 53:12

11d ago53:12

53:12

Migration between the United States and Mexico is often compared to the river that runs along the border: a "flow" of immigrants, a "flood" of documented and undocumented workers, a "dam" that has broken. Scholars, journalists, and novelists often tell this story from a south-to-north perspective, emphasizing Mexican migration to the United States,…

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Irvin Ibargüen, "Caught in the Current: Mexico's Struggle to Regulate Emigration, 1940-1980" (UNC Press, 2025) 53:12

11d ago53:12

53:12

Migration between the United States and Mexico is often compared to the river that runs along the border: a "flow" of immigrants, a "flood" of documented and undocumented workers, a "dam" that has broken. Scholars, journalists, and novelists often tell this story from a south-to-north perspective, emphasizing Mexican migration to the United States,…

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Leo R. Chavez, "The Latino Threat: How Alarmist Rhetoric Misrepresents Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation" (Stanford UP, 2025) 1:13:42

12d ago1:13:42

1:13:42

News media and pundits too frequently perpetuate the notion that Latinos, both US-born and immigrants, are an invading force bent on destroying the American way of life. Leo R. Chavez challenges the basic tenets of this assumption and other myths of the "Latino threat," providing a critical investigation into the fears and prejudices that are used …

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Leila Hudson, "Lines of Flight, Assemblages of Home: Syrian Women Displaced" (Syracuse UP, 2025) 52:13

13d ago52:13

52:13

While humanitarian organizations and media outlets often reduce Syrian refugees to statistics or brief anecdotes, the real story of displacement unfolds in the intimate spaces of family life. Through the interwoven narratives of five middle-aged sisters from Damascus, Lines of Flight, Assemblages of Home reveals how Syrian women navigate war, exile…

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Sharon Sliwinski, "An Alphabet for Dreamers: How to See the World with Eyes Closed" (MIT Press, 2025) 29:35

14d ago29:35

29:35

Borrowing from the traditional alphabet book genre for children, An Alphabet for Dreamers: How to See the World with Eyes Closed (MIT Press, 2025) by Dr. Sharon Sliwinski provides adult readers with a new grammar for dreams, or what neuroscientist Sidarta Ribeiro calls “oracles of the night.” In this book, Dr. Sliwinski restores dreaming to its pro…

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Luis Felipe Murillo, "Common Circuits: Hacking Alternative Technological Futures" (Stanford UP, 2025) 41:20

15d ago41:20

41:20

A digital world in relentless movement—from artificial intelligence to ubiquitous computing—has been captured and reinvented as a monoculture by Silicon Valley "big tech" and venture capital firms. Yet very little is discussed in the public sphere about existing alternatives. Based on long-term field research across San Francisco, Tokyo, and Shenzh…

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Megan Tobias Neely, "Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street" (U California Press, 2022) 1:01:57

16d ago1:01:57

1:01:57

In Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street (U California Press, 2022) Megan Tobias Neely, a former hedge fund worker takes an ethnographic approach to hedge funds. Manager? A greedy fraudster, a visionary entrepreneur, a wolf of Wall Street? She gives readers an insider perspective on the phenomenon. Facing an unpredictable and risky s…

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Yasmin Cho, "Politics of Tranquility: The Material and Mundane Lives of Buddhist Nuns in Post-Mao Tibet" (Cornell UP, 2025) 53:29

10d ago53:29

53:29

Politics of Tranquility: The Material and Mundane Lives of Buddhist Nuns in Post-Mao Tibet (Cornell University Press, 2025) concerns the Tibetan Buddhist revival in China, illustrating the lives of Tibetan Buddhist nuns and exploring the political effects that arise from their nonpolitical daily engagements in the remote, mega-sized Tibetan Buddhis…

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Jerry Moore, "Cat Tales: A History" (Thames & Hudson, 2025) 38:22

18d ago38:22

38:22

For as long as cats have coexisted with humans, they have been feared, revered and respected. They appear as dynamic hunters in Palaeolithic carvings and cave paintings; were venerated as gods in ancient Egypt; and still have the power to fascinate and frighten us, as the popularity of Joe Exotic, the self-styled Tiger King, shows. How did we go fr…

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Montserrat Bonvehi Rosich and Seth Denizen, "Thinking Through Soil: Wastewater Agriculture in the Mezquital Valley" (Harvard UP, 2025) 1:01:53

22d ago1:01:53

1:01:53

To think through soil is to engage with some of the most critical issues of our time. In addition to its agricultural role in feeding eight billion people, soil has become the primary agent of carbon storage in global climate models, and it is crucial for biodiversity, flood control, and freshwater resources. Perhaps no other material is asked to d…

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James Sears, "Queering Rehoboth Beach: Beyond the Boardwalk" (Temple UP, 2024) 56:04

23d ago56:04

56:04

“Create A More Positive Rehoboth” was a decades-long goal for progress and inclusiveness in a charming beach town in southern Delaware. Rehoboth, which was established in the 19th century as a Methodist Church meeting camp, has, over time, become a thriving mecca for the LGBTQ+ community. In Queering Rehoboth Beach: Beyond the Boardwalk (Temple UP,…

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“Rurality 2.0”: How City Migrants are Reshaping Norway’s Rural Regions with Tom Bratrud 1:11:07

24d ago1:11:07

1:11:07

In today’s episode, we talk to Tom Bratrud about his ongoing, long-term work with city-dwellers who migrate to rural parts of Norway. This research forms the basis of Tom’s forthcoming book project, which has the working title Rurality 2.0: Redefining Urban-Rural Divides in the Mountains of Norway. Tom Bratrud is Associate Professor in Social Anthr…

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Shilla Lee , "Crafting Rural Japan: Traditional Potters and Rural Creativity in Regional Revitalization" (Routledge, 2024) 1:04:36

18d ago1:04:36

1:04:36

Centering collaborations and frictions around a Japanese town’s pottery industry, Crafting Rural Japan: Traditional Potters and Rural Creativity in Regional Revitalization (Routledge, 2024)n discusses the place of creative village policy in the revitalization of rural Japan, highlighting how rural Japan is moving from a state of regional extinction…

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Anna Zhelnina, "Private Life, Public Action: How Housing Politics Mobilized Citizens in Moscow" (Temple UP, 2025) 52:01

27d ago52:01

52:01

Renovation, an urban renewal plan in Moscow that was announced in the spring of 2017, proposed to demolish thousands of socialist-era apartment buildings. In a country where it is rare under an authoritarian government, residents supported or opposed the redevelopment by mobilizing and organizing into local alliances. They were often shocked by the…

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Anna Shadrina, "The Babushka Phenomenon: Older Women and the Political Sociology of Ageing in Russia" (UCL Press, 2025) 44:50

28d ago44:50

44:50

The Babushka Phenomenon: Older Women and the Political Sociology of Ageing in Russia (UCL Press, 2025) by Dr. Anna Shadrina examines the social production of ageing in post-Soviet Russia, highlighting the role of grandmothers as primary caregivers due to men’s traditional estrangement from family life. This expectation places grandmothers, or babus…

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Theresa Delgadillo, "Geographies of Relation: Diasporas and Borderlands in the Americas" (U Michigan Press, 2024) 55:52

28d ago55:52

55:52

Geographies of Relation: Diasporas and Borderlands in the Americas (U Michigan Press, 2024) offers a new lens for examining diaspora and borderlands texts and performances that considers the inseparability of race, ethnicity, and gender in imagining and enacting social change. Theresa Delgadillo crosses interdisciplinary and canonical borders to in…

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Theresa Delgadillo, "Geographies of Relation: Diasporas and Borderlands in the Americas" (U Michigan Press, 2024) 55:52

29d ago55:52

55:52

Geographies of Relation: Diasporas and Borderlands in the Americas (U Michigan Press, 2024) offers a new lens for examining diaspora and borderlands texts and performances that considers the inseparability of race, ethnicity, and gender in imagining and enacting social change. Theresa Delgadillo crosses interdisciplinary and canonical borders to in…

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Is a River Alive?: A Conversation with Robert Macfarlane 34:00

24d ago34:00

34:00

Hailed in the New York Times as "a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler," Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? (W.W. Norton, 2025) is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that river…

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Is a River Alive?: A Conversation with Robert Macfarlane 34:00

26d ago34:00

34:00

Hailed in the New York Times as "a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler," Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? (W.W. Norton, 2025) is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that river…

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Paulette F. C. Steeves, "The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere" (U Nebraska Press, 2021) 40:01

30d ago40:01

40:01

The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere (U Nebraska Press, 2021) is a reclaimed history of the deep past of Indigenous people in North and South America during the Paleolithic. Paulette F. C. Steeves mines evidence from archaeology sites and Paleolithic environments, landscapes, and mammalian and human migrations to make the case that …

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Marc Sommers, "We the Young Fighters: Pop Culture, Terror, and War in Sierra Leone" (U Georgia Press, 2023) 1:18:50

1M ago1:18:50

1:18:50

We the Young Fighters: Pop Culture, Terror, and War in Sierra Leone (U Georgia Press, 2023) by Dr. Marc Sommers is at once a history of a nation, the story of a war, and the saga of downtrodden young people and three pop culture superstars. Reggae idol Bob Marley, rap legend Tupac Shakur, and the John Rambo movie character all portrayed an upside-d…

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Allison Christine Meier, "Grave" (Bloomsbury, 2023) 50:17

28d ago50:17

50:17

Grave (Bloomsbury, 2023) by Allison C. Meier takes a ground-level view of how burial sites have transformed over time and how they continue to change. As a cemetery tour guide, Meier has spent more time walking among tombstones than most. Even for her, the grave has largely been invisible, an out of the way and unobtrusive marker of death. However,…

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Erika Pani, "Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexico, 1848-1867" (UNC Press, 2025) 57:37

1M ago57:37

57:37

Between the late 1840s and the late 1860s, the United States and Mexico had quite a bit in common. Both suffered from reactionary succession movements, both faced brutal civil wars, and both had to figure out a method of reconstructing broken nations in their aftermath. In Torn Asunder: Republican Crises and Civil Wars in the United States and Mexi…

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Elizabeth Anne Davis, "The Time of the Cannibals: On Conspiracy Theory and Context" (Fordham UP, 2024) 1:30:48

1M ago1:30:48

1:30:48

In 2009, the body of a former president of the Republic of Cyprus, Tassos Papadopoulos, was stolen from his grave. The Time of the Cannibals reconsiders this history and the public discourse on it to reconsider how we think about conspiracy theory, and specifically, what it means to understand conspiracy theories “in context.” The months after Papa…

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Renata Keller, "The Fate of the Americas: The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Hemispheric Cold War" (UNC Press, 2025) 37:12

1M ago37:12

37:12

Despite twenty-first-century fears of nuclear conflagrations with North Korea, Russia, and Iran, the Cuban Missile Crisis is the closest the United States has come to nuclear war. That history has largely been a bilateral narrative of the US-USSR struggle for postwar domination, with Cuba as the central staging ground--a standard account that obscu…

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Sarah Hoiland, "Righteous Sisterhood: The Politics and Power of an All-Women's Motorcycle Club" (Temple UP, 2025) 44:53

1M ago44:53

44:53

A righteous sister identifies herself as a biker. She might wrench, or maintain, her own bike, and she prefers to ride with other righteous sisters. Righteous Sisterhood: The Politics and Power of an All-Women's Motorcycle Club (Temple UP, 2025) is Dr. Sarah Hoiland’s insightful ethnography about an all-women motorcycle club (MC). She recounts stor…

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Pyet DeSpain, "Rooted in Fire: A Celebration of Native American and Mexican Cooking" (HarperOne, 2025) 50:45

1M ago50:45

50:45

Chef Pyet DeSpain joins the New Books Network to discuss her new cookbook, Rooted in Fire: A Celebration of Native American and Mexican Cooking (HarperOne, 2025). Drawing from her Potawatomi and Mexican heritage, DeSpain shares recipes that connect past and present, including bison meatballs with Wojape BBQ sauce, raspberry mezcal quail, and poblan…

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Christina Jerne, "Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia Activism" (U Minnesota Press, 2025) 56:40

1M ago56:40

56:40

For more than 150 years, Italy has been home to a resilient and evolving resistance against the pervasive influence of mafias. While these criminal organizations are renowned for their vast international business enterprises, the collective actions taken to oppose them are less known. In Opposition by Imitation: The Economics of Italian Anti-Mafia …

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Heath Pearson, "Life Beside Bars: Confinement and Capital in an American Prison Town" (Duke UP, 2024) 1:05:01

1M ago1:05:01

1:05:01

In Life Beside Bars: Confinement and Capital in an American Prison Town (Duke UP, 2024), Heath Pearson showcases dynamic, interdependent community as the best hope for undoing the systems of confinement that reproduce capital in Cumberland County, New Jersey—a place that is home to three state prisons, one federal prison, and the regional jail. Pea…

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Nayma Qayum, "Village Ties: Women, NGOs, and Informal Institutions in Rural Bangladesh" (Rutgers UP, 2021) 1:02:46

2M ago1:02:46

1:02:46

Across the global South, poor women’s lives are embedded in their social relationships and governed not just by formal institutions – rules that exist on paper – but by informal norms and practices. Village Ties: Women, NGOs, and Informal Institutions in Rural Bangladesh (Rutgers UP, 2021) takes the reader to Bangladesh, a country that has risen fr…

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Mila Burns, "Dictatorship Across Borders: Brazil, Chile, and the South American Cold War" (UNC Press, 2025) 46:27

2M ago46:27

46:27

Dictatorship Across Borders: Brazil, Chile, and the South American Cold War (UNC Press, 2025) offers a groundbreaking perspective on the 1973 Chilean coup, highlighting Brazil’s pivotal role in shaping the political landscape of South America during the Cold War. Shifting the focus from the United States to interregional dynamics, Mila Burns argues…

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Season 5 | Episode #4 with Teacher and Lupus Advocates Vania and Alfredo Losoya 28:50

1M ago28:50

28:50

Season FIVE Episode FOUR of the Your Story Our Fight® podcast welcomes Vania and Alfredo Losoya. Vania Dzib is a dedicated educator, lupus warrior, and a passionate member of Lupus LA’s Patient Advocacy Panel. In the midst of the 2020 pandemic (a time defined by distance and uncertainty) she met her now-husband, Alfredo, through an online match. Wh…

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Karine Gagné, "Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas" (U Washington Press, 2019) 1:41:53

2M ago1:41:53

1:41:53

In her new book, Caring for Glaciers: Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas (University of Washington Press, 2019), Karine Gagné explores how relations of reciprocity between land, humans, animals, and glaciers foster an ethics of care in the Himalayan communities of Ladakh. She explores the way these relations are changing due to climate ch…

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Vania Smith-Oka, "Becoming Gods: Medical Training in Mexican Hospitals" (Rutgers UP, 2021) 49:05

2M ago49:05

49:05

In Becoming Gods: Medical Training in Mexican Hospitals (Rutgers University Press, 2021), Vania Smith-Oka follows a cohort of interns throughout their year of medical training in hospitals to understand how medical students become medical doctors. She ethnographically tracks their engagements with one another, interactions with patients, experience…

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Vania Smith-Oka, "Becoming Gods: Medical Training in Mexican Hospitals" (Rutgers UP, 2021) 49:05

2M ago49:05

49:05

In Becoming Gods: Medical Training in Mexican Hospitals (Rutgers University Press, 2021), Vania Smith-Oka follows a cohort of interns throughout their year of medical training in hospitals to understand how medical students become medical doctors. She ethnographically tracks their engagements with one another, interactions with patients, experience…

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Vania Smith-Oka, "Becoming Gods: Medical Training in Mexican Hospitals" (Rutgers UP, 2021) 49:05

2M ago49:05

49:05

In Becoming Gods: Medical Training in Mexican Hospitals (Rutgers University Press, 2021), Vania Smith-Oka follows a cohort of interns throughout their year of medical training in hospitals to understand how medical students become medical doctors. She ethnographically tracks their engagements with one another, interactions with patients, experience…

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Birgit Abels and Patrick Eisenlohr, "Atmospheric Knowledge: Environmentality, Latency, and Sonic Multimodality" (U California Press, 2025) 46:45

2M ago46:45

46:45

How do we know through atmospheres? How can being affected by an atmosphere give rise to knowledge? What role does somatic, nonverbal knowledge play in how we belong to places? Atmospheric Knowledge takes up these questions through detailed analyses of practices that generate atmospheres and in which knowledge emerges through visceral intermingling…

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Russell T. McCutcheon, "Our Primary Expertise: A Future for the Study of Religion" (Rutgers UP, 2025) 53:15

2M ago53:15

53:15

Our Primary Expertise argues counter to the longstanding trend in the field by seeing religion as mundane and not unique, which means that the field's research and teaching can have relevance all across human culture, and well beyond academia. Russell McCutcheon offers a timely argument by taking seriously threats to the humanities now happening al…

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Christopher Nelson, "When the Bones Speak: The Living, the Dead, and the Sacrifice of Contemporary Okinawa" (Duke UP, 2025) 1:08:00

2M ago1:08:00

1:08:00

Haunted by the past, ordinary Okinawans struggle to live with the unbearable legacies of war, Japanese nationalism, and American imperialism. They are caught up in a web of people and practices--living and dead, visible and immaterial--that exert powerful forces often beyond their control. In When the Bones Speak, Christopher T. Nelson examines the…

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James Scorer, "Latin American Comics in the Twenty-First Century: Transgressing the Frame" (U Texas Press, 2024) 41:10

2M ago41:10

41:10

How do comics cross boarders? In Latin American Comics in the Twenty-First Century: Transgressing the Frame James Scorer, a Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Manchester, considers the rise of a distinctively Latin American comics culture, capturing the interconnections and differences as comics production have evolved in the …

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Patrick Brittenden, "Algerian and Christian: Christian Theological Formation, Identity and Mission in Contemporary Algeria" (Regnum Books, 2025) 1:10:02

2M ago1:10:02

1:10:02

Algerian and Christian are two words that many people do not put together. Dr. Patrick Brittenden does. In this episode, we talk with Patrick about his new book Algerian and Christian: Christian Theological Formation, Identity and Mission in Contemporary Algeria (Regnum Books International, 2025). He invites readers into the complex, often painful,…

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Stephen Huard, "Calibrated Engagement: Chronicles of Local Politics in the Heartland of Myanmar" (‎Berghahn Books, 2024) 52:03

2M ago52:03

52:03

This episode of New Books in Southeast Asian Studies features Stéphen Huard talking about Calibrated Engagement: Chronicles of Local Politics in the Heartland of Myanmar (‎Berghahn Books, 2024), in which he takes a deep dive into the history and anthropology of village leadership in Myanmar’s central dry zone, or anya. In it, Stéphen develops “cali…

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Pablo Meninato and Gregory Marinic, "Urban Labyrinths: Informal Settlements, Architecture, and Social Change in Latin America" (Routledge, 2025) 1:17:22

2M ago1:17:22

1:17:22

Urban Labyrinths: Informal Settlements, Architecture, and Social Change in Latin America examines intervention initiatives in informal settlements in Latin American cities as social, spatial, architectural, and cultural processes. From the mid-20th century to the present, Latin America and other regions in the Global South have experienced a remark…

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Claudia Gastrow, "The Aesthetics of Belonging: Indigenous Urbanism and City Building in Oil-Boom Luanda" (UNC Press Books, 2024) 58:19

2M ago58:19

58:19

After centuries of colonial rule, the end of Angola’s three-decade civil war in 2002 provided an irresistible opportunity for the government to reimagine the Luanda cityscape. Awash with petrodollars cultivated through strategic foreign relationships, President José Eduardo dos Santos rolled out a national reconstruction program that sought to tran…