Best Cornell University Press Podcasts (2025)

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1869, Ep. 176 with Matt Biggar, author of Connected to Place 29:21

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5h ago29:21

29:21

Use promo code 09POD to save 30% on Connected to Place:https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501783999/connected-to-place/Transcript:https://otter.ai/u/KoB6-9RgsOUXRf2W10Nq3CpFmhk?utm_source=copy_urlMatt Biggar is Founder and Principal of Connected to Place. He has worked as a strategy consultant, researcher, writer, speaker, teacher, and e…

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Stephen Murphy, "Buddhist Landscapes: Art and Archaeology of the Khorat Plateau, 7th to 11th Centuries (NUS Press, 2024) 55:48

1h ago55:48

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This important new work, Buddhist Landscapes: Art and Archaeology of the Khorat Plateau, 7th to 11th Centuries (NUS Press, 2023) by Stephen Murphy, build on extensive fieldwork and archaeological surveys to reveal the Khorat Plateau as having a distinctive Buddhist culture, including new forms of art and architecture, and a characteristic aesthetic…

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Jean-Thomas Tremblay, "Breathing Aesthetics" (Duke UP, 2022) 1:03:40

1h ago1:03:40

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In Breathing Aesthetics (Duke University Press (2022), Jean-Thomas Tremblay argues that difficult breathing indexes the uneven distribution of risk in a contemporary era marked by the increasing contamination, weaponization, and monetization of air. Tremblay shows how biopolitical and necropolitical forces tied to the continuation of extractive cap…

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Nicholas Gamso, "Art After Liberalism" (Columbia UP, 2022) 1:23:31

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Art After Liberalism (Columbia UP, 2022) is an account of creative practice at a moment of converging political and social rifts – a moment that could be described as a crisis of liberalism. The apparent failures of liberal thinking are a starting point for an inquiry into emergent ways of living, acting, and making art in the company of others. Wh…

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Taylor McCall, "The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe" (Reaktion Books, 2023) 36:55

4h ago36:55

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Taylor McCall's The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe (Reaktion, 2023) is the first history of medieval European anatomical images. Richly illustrated, The Art of Anatomy in Medieval Europe explores the many ways in which medieval surgeons, doctors, monks, and artists understood and depicted human anatomy. Taylor McCall refutes the common misconcep…

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Fahad Ahmad Bishara, "Monsoon Voyagers: An Indian Ocean History" (U California Press, 2025) 45:10

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In 1924, the Al-A‘waj, also known as the Crooked, set sail from Kuwait on a trading journey around the Persian Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz, to Western India and, eventually, back to the Gulf. Dhows had sailed this route for centuries—and would continue to sail it for a few more decades still. Fahad Ahmad Bishara talks about this specific 192…

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Sebastian Truskolaski, "Adorno and the Ban on Images" (Bloomsbury, 2022) 58:05

4d ago58:05

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Adorno and the Ban on Images (Bloomsbury, 2022) upends some of the myths that have come to surround the work of the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno – not least amongst them, his supposed fatalism. Sebastian Truskolaski argues that Adorno's writings allow us to address what is arguably the central challenge of modern philosophy: how to picture a world…

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Ilan Kelman, "Antarcticness: Inspirations and Imaginaries" (UCL Press, 2022) 42:16

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Antarcticness: Inspirations and Imaginaries (UCL Press, 2022) edited by Ilan Kelman Antarcticness joins disciplines, communication approaches, and ideas to explore meanings and depictions of Antarctica. Personal and professional words in poetry and prose, plus images, present and represent Antarctica, as presumed and as imagined, alongside what is …

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Faisal Devji, "Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam" (Yale UP, 2025) 1:04:48

4d ago1:04:48

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Faisal Devji's Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam (Yale UP, 2025) is a compelling examination of the rise of Islam as a global historical actor. Until the nineteenth century, Islam was variously understood as a set of beliefs and practices. But after Muslims began to see their faith as an historical actor on the world stage, they ne…

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Killian Clarke, "Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed" (Cambridge UP, 2025) 1:05:01

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Why do some revolutions fail and succumb to counterrevolutions, whereas others go on to establish durable rule? Marshalling original data on counterrevolutions worldwide since 1900 and new evidence from the reversal of Egypt's 2011 revolution, in Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed (Cambridge UP, 2025) Dr. Killian Clarke ex…

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Yanqiu Zheng, "In Search of Admiration and Respect: Chinese Cultural Diplomacy in the United States, 1875–1974" (U Michigan Press, 2024) 1:12:18

11d ago1:12:18

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What does it mean for a country to seek admiration — and what kinds of institutions try to make that admiration possible? Yanqiu Zheng’s In Search of Admiration and Respect: Chinese Cultural Diplomacy in the United States, 1875–1974 (U Michigan Press, 2024) traces how China attempted to reshape its international image across a century marked by imp…

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Ana Patricia Rodríguez, "Avocado Dreams: Remaking Salvadoran Life and Art in the Washington, D.C. Metro Area" (University of Arizona Press, 2025) 33:03

12d ago33:03

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For more than four generations, Salvadorans have made themselves at home in the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and have transformed the region, contributing their labor, ingenuity, and culture to the making of a thriving but highly neglected and overlooked community. In this episode, we sit down with Ana Patricia Rodríguez, author of Av…

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Dustin Condren, "An Imaginary Cinema: Sergei Eisenstein and the Unrealized Film" (Cornell UP, 2024) 1:07:57

9d ago1:07:57

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An Imaginary Cinema: Sergei Eisenstein and the Unrealized Film (Cornell UP, 2024) explores the unfinished cinematic projects developed and abandoned by Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein between 1927 and 1937. Centred on seven major film concepts, the book examines what it means for a work of art—particularly a film—to remain unfinished or unrealis…

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Philip Nash, "Clare Boothe Luce: American Renaissance Woman" (Routledge, 2022) 1:04:56

14d ago1:04:56

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Philip Nash's book Clare Boothe Luce: American Renaissance Woman (Routledge, 2022) is a concise and highly readable political biography that examines the life of one of the most accomplished American women of the 20th century. Wife and mother, author, editor, playwright, political activist, war journalist, Congresswoman, ambassador, pundit, and fem…

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Rizvana Bradley, "Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form" (Stanford UP, 2023) 1:02:09

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In Anteaesthetics: Black Aesthesis and the Critique of Form (Stanford UP, 2023), Rizvana Bradley begins from the proposition that blackness cannot be represented in modernity's aesthetic regime, but is nevertheless foundational to every representation. Troubling the idea that the aesthetic is sheltered from the antiblack terror that lies just beyon…

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Basit Kareem Iqbal, "The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution" (Fordham UP, 2025) 1:16:50

18d ago1:16:50

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Basit Kareem Iqbal's new book The Dread Heights: Tribulation and Refuge after the Syrian Revolution (Fordham UP, 2025) uses ethnographic scenes from Jordan and Canada to contextualize the role of Muslim charities and community organizations that support displaced refugees from the Syrian catastrophe. Through these encounters, however, we learn not …

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Eric H. Cline, "Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed" (Princeton UP, 2025) 1:07:05

18d ago1:07:05

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From the acclaimed author of 1177 B.C., a spellbinding account of the archaeological find that opened a window onto the vibrant diplomatic world of the ancient Near East In 1887, an Egyptian woman made an astonishing discovery among the ruins of the heretic king Akhenaten’s capital city, a site now known as Amarna. She found a cache of cuneiform ta…

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Ronald Angelo Johnson, "Entangled Alliances: Racialized Freedom and Atlantic Diplomacy During the American Revolution" (Cornell UP, 2025) 1:25:55

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Entangled Alliances is a reinterpretation of the American Revolution through analysis of diplomacy in the emerging United States during decades of hemispheric transformation. Ronald Angelo Johnson brings to light the fascinating story of American patriots and rebels from Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) allying against European tyranny. The American Re…

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Justin Marozzi, "Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World" (Pegasus Books, 2025) 40:01

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Slavery has been a ubiquitous practice throughout much of world history–and the Muslim world was no exception. Slave soldiers, concubines, and eunuchs can be found throughout Muslim writings—which, as Justin Marozzi points out in his book Captives and Companions: A History of Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Islamic World (Pegasus Books, 2025), e…

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Eric H. Cline, "Love, War, and Diplomacy: The Discovery of the Amarna Letters and the Bronze Age World They Revealed" (Princeton UP, 2025) 1:07:05

19d ago1:07:05

1:07:05

From the acclaimed author of 1177 B.C., a spellbinding account of the archaeological find that opened a window onto the vibrant diplomatic world of the ancient Near East In 1887, an Egyptian woman made an astonishing discovery among the ruins of the heretic king Akhenaten’s capital city, a site now known as Amarna. She found a cache of cuneiform ta…

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Aaron Magid, "The Most American King: Abdullah of Jordan" (Universal Publishers, 2025) 52:47

19d ago52:47

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The Most American King: Abdullah of Jordan (Universal Publishers, 2025) is the first comprehensive biography on Jordan’s King Abdullah. Drawing on interviews with over 100 individuals, including Abdullah's classmates, former Jordanian ministers, and CIA directors, The Most American King offers a thorough account of this key Arab leader. Aaron Magid…

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Aaron Magid, "The Most American King: Abdullah of Jordan" (Universal Publishers, 2025) 52:47

14d ago52:47

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The Most American King: Abdullah of Jordan (Universal Publishers, 2025) is the first comprehensive biography on Jordan’s King Abdullah. Drawing on interviews with over 100 individuals, including Abdullah's classmates, former Jordanian ministers, and CIA directors, The Most American King offers a thorough account of this key Arab leader. Aaron Magid…

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Mattin, "Social Dissonance" (MIT Press, 2022) 59:44

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We are not what we think we are. Our self-image as natural individuated subjects is determined behind our backs: historically by political forces, cognitively by the language we use, and neurologically by sub-personal mechanisms, as revealed by scientific and philosophical analyses. Under contemporary capitalism, as the gap between this self-image …

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Fahad Ahmad Bishara, "Monsoon Voyagers: An Indian Ocean History" (U California Press, 2025) 1:49:59

24d ago1:49:59

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Monsoon Voyagers follows the voyage of a single dhow (sailing vessel), the Crooked, along with its captain and crew, from Kuwait to port cities around the Persian Gulf and Western Indian Ocean, from 1924 to 1925. Through his account of the voyage, Fahad Ahmad Bishara unpacks a much broader history of circulation and exchange across the Arabian Sea …

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Sarah Griswold, "Resurrecting the Past: France's Forgotten Heritage Mandate" (Cornell UP, 2025) 55:19

29d ago55:19

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In Resurrecting the Past: France's Forgotten Heritage Mandate (Cornell UP, 2025), Dr. Sarah Griswold shows how the Levant became a crucial front in a post-1918 fight over the French past—a contingent and contradictory but always hard-charging struggle over a forgotten "heritage mandate." Many scholars, clergy, pundits, politicians, and investors pe…

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Elizabeth Currie, "Street Style: Art and Dress in the Time of Caravaggio" (Reaktion, 2025) 37:51

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In late sixteenth-century Rome, artists found inspiration in bustling streets and taverns, depicting soldiers, Romani fortune tellers, sex workers and servants among the city’s poorest inhabitants. Street Style: Art and Dress in the Time of Caravaggio (Reaktion, 2025) by Dr. Elizabeth Currie explores these hidden lives, uncovering how the stories o…

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

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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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Kalathmika Natarajan, "Coolie Migrants, Indian Diplomacy: Caste, Class and Indenture Abroad, 1914-67" (Oxford UP, 2026) 1:16:19

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Over the centuries, millions of migrant labourers sailed from the Indian subcontinent, across the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean, to shape what is now the world’s largest diaspora. Coolie Migrants, Indian Diplomacy: Caste, Class and Indenture Abroad, 1914-67 (Hearst, 2025 and Oxford UP, 2026) recovers the histories and legacies of those ‘coolie’ mi…

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Aria Fani, "Reading Across Borders: Afghans, Iranians, and Literary Nationalism" (U Texas Press, 2024) 52:28

1M ago52:28

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The dynamic and interconnected ways Afghans and Iranians invented their modern selves through literature. Contrary to the presumption that literary nationalism in the Global South emerged through contact with Europe alone, Reading Across Borders: Afghans, Iranians, and Literary Nationalism (University of Texas Press, 2024) demonstrates how the cult…

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Radio ReOrient 13.3: “Why Palestine Activism & Resistance Matter,” with Hatem Bazian and Ismail Patel, hosted by Claudia Radiven and Marchella Ward 1:07:59

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In this episode, Claudia Radiven and Chella Ward spoke with Ismail Patel and Hatem Bazian about Pro-Palestinian resistance and the nature of protests - from the Iraq war demonstrations to the recent protests after the events of October 7th 2023. This conversation extended into the nature of colonial projects of occupation and the role coloniality s…

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Cosima Clara Gillhammer, "Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy" (Reaktion Books, 2025) 1:12:24

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With implications for the history of religion and art alike, an exploration of the lasting influence of Christian liturgy across a range of media. Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy (Reaktion Books, 2025) offers a captivating journey through the history of religious rituals in Western Europe, showcasing the profound impact of Christ…

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1869, Ep. 175 with Michael McColly, author of Walking Chicago's Coast 28:24

1M ago28:24

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Use promo code 09POD to save 30% on Walking Chicago's Coast:https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501783142/walking-chicagos-coast/Transcript:https://otter.ai/u/Dl0aINXKuWDkNJ85vVULu65ZQbM?utm_source=copy_urlMichael McColly's essays have appeared in The New York Times, the Boston Review, and The Sun magazine. He is the author of the Lambda …

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Adair Rounthwaite, "This Is Not My World: Art and Public Space in Socialist Zagreb" (U Minnesota Press, 2024) 1:01:44

1M ago1:01:44

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This Is Not My World: Art and Public Spaces in Socialist Zagreb (U Minnesota Press, 2024) examines the Group of Six Authors—a collective of young artists who staged provocative art events in the public spaces of socialist Yugoslavia during the 1970s and early 1980s. The book analyses how these spaces, which had long been forums of state ideological…

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Gilles Deleuze, "On Painting" (U Minnesota Press, 2025) 1:39:48

1M ago1:39:48

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Charles J. Stivale (Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Wayne State University) and Dan Smith (Professor of Philosophy, Purdue University) join me to discuss: Deleuze, Gilles. 2025. On Painting. Edited by David Lapoujade, translated by Charles J. Stivale. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Although Charles is the translator of this New Book,…

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Joanna Woronkowicz, "Artists at Work: Rethinking Policy for Artistic Careers" (Stanford UP, 2025) 40:18

1M ago40:18

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What does it mean to be an artist? In Artists At Work: Rethinking Policy for Artistic Careers (Stanford UP, 2025) Joanna Woronkowicz, the co-founder of the Center for Cultural Affairs and co-director of the Arts, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Lab at Indiana University Bloomington and currently based at Copenhagen Business School, tells the story …

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Yong-Shik Lee, "Sustainable Peace in Northeast Asia" (Anthem Press, 2023) 1:02:36

1M ago1:02:36

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In the long run, countries in Northeast Asia will have to see the need for collective defense. Otherwise, you won’t be able to stop rivalry between powers like the U.S. and China. It sounds utopian now, but so did the idea of French and German soldiers serving under the same command a century ago. – Y.S. Lee, NBN Interview (2025) Sustainable Peace …

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Stevie Suan, "Anime's Identity: Performativity and Form Beyond Japan" (U Minnesota Press, 2021) 58:38

1M ago58:38

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A formal approach to anime rethinks globalization and transnationality under neoliberalism Anime has become synonymous with Japanese culture, but its global reach raises a perplexing question--what happens when anime is produced outside of Japan? Who actually makes anime, and how can this help us rethink notions of cultural production? In Anime's I…

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Paul Galvez, "Courbet's Landscapes: The Origins of Modern Painting" (Yale UP, 2022) 1:06:22

1M ago1:06:22

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Between 1862 and 1866 Gustave Courbet embarked on a series of sensuous landscape paintings that would later inspire the likes of Monet, Pissarro, and Cézanne. This series has long been neglected in favor of Courbet’s paintings of rural French life. Courbet's Landscapes: The Origins of Modern Painting (Yale UP, 2022) explores these astonishing paint…